KGW has an extraordinary interview with Beau Breedlove up on its website. He certainly tells a pretty convincing sob story ("I played piano in nursing homes for years..." "I've never been anyone's pool boy or anything like that..."), and appears to have been interviewed before his grand piano in his 850 square foot apartment. Here's the transcript of the first seven minutes:

Breedlove: "I want to take this opportunity to talk about my credibility. I think that I was, you know, given a blow that was completely unfounded as far as me not being a credible witness. A lot of the things that they noted, especially the fact that my story changed, my story never changed. When it comes down to it, what happened with the quote unquote change in the story is that in the very beginning, on January 21st, Sam called me at 10:45 at night and said that he would like me to give a deposition to his attorneys. This was before the attorney general started his investigation, any of that. He said that he would like it if I could talk to his attorneys and if they could question me. And of course I agreed. I said, when? And he said well now, they're at your house already. And so at 11 o'clock at night I was questioned by his attorneys and I told them everything. I told Sam that I was going to tell the truth, and everything came to light, except that I was hesitant about talking about the kissing, because I wasn't sure what the legal repercussions might be for Sam, and I was really hesitant because at this point I didn't know I would get roped into things, I didn't know where responsibility would fall with me. And so I gave them my statement that evening at 11 o'clock and night, and then agreed to meet them in the morning at Sam's attorney's office, to go over my statement again, and then sign my statement. The following morning, and the night of giving the statement, I bought up the hypothetical question of what would the repercussions be of kissing before I was 17 and I was very specific, I was very, I gave a lot of details, I just told them hypothetically what would this mean? And then the following morning I posed that question again, they told me that it really didn't have any significance to the investigation, and that kissing was just kissing, there wasn't any legal ramifications, so it was better left unsaid."

Interviewer: Who told you to say that?

Breedlove: I think Sam Kauffman is I think his name.

Interviewer: What about Sam?

Breedlove: Well that was, as I took that, at that moment I had already decided that I wanted to tell them the truth, and as anybody who knows me, because of a past incident, I have a deep-seated fear of lying to any police officers, or anything like that, it's a true phobia of mine, I wanted to tell the whole truth, put it all out there. During the questioning by Sam's attorneys in the morning, I posed the question again, at that point in time I took a break, I told them that I was going to call Sam, and at that point in time they left the office, and I called Sam and I said your attorneys are asking these questions, this is what I remember happening, and I explicitly walked through the details of the kissing incidents before I was 18. Sam, I believe that was probably the second time we had ever talked about that since it happened. And he acknowledged that the incidents had happened, and said that it was up to me whether or not to tell the attorneys about it. At that point in time, during the discussion, we agreed that I wouldn't tell his attorneys, but I did tell him, I said if I ever get questioned about this by the attorney general, I'm telling the whole truth, I'm not leaving any of it out. And anyway as we know at that point in time it did come out.

Interviewer: Did Sam ever say 'don't talk about the kissing to my lawyers?'

Breedlove: He said that it was my decision, but you know how someone puts you in the position of saying it's your decision if you want to do this, but it's clear that this was something that he really didn't want to have happen.

Interviewer: You two had talked about the kissing incidents before?

Breedlove: Yeah I think the last time that we had talked about it was probably much closer to when it actually happened, probably the summer of 2005, maybe.

Interviewer: And what did he say?

Breedlove: At that point in time we never had much of a detailed conversation about it. Honestly it was four years ago, I don't remember.

Interviewer: Did he admit that you kissed?

Breedlove: Yes.

Interviewer: When you were under 18?

Breedlove: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you remember anything he said that sticks out?

Breedlove: No.

Interviewer: So when the attorney general's report came out and Sam said it never happened?

Breedlove: Yeah. Well he said that he didn't remember [smiles]. I was mad. Because I thought, I assumed that he would tell the truth. I assumed that he would tell the truth in the investigation, and I assumed that there would be some type of safety net to prevent people from lying. And I thought, honestly, I had never been put under oath, during the questioning, but I always treated it like I had been. I never had any reason not to. If I wanted to lie, if I wanted to exaggerate, I could have exaggerated a lot worse things than kissing. But I assumed that he would tell the truth, I had no...I literally never thought that he wouldn't tell the truth.

Interviewer: When the report came out and Sam's lawyers came out and said Beau has no credibility, what did you think about those late night phone calls, about calling Sam, did it all come together?

Breedlove: It all came together because we had had multiple phone conversations when he had said, you know...this isn't an exact quote, but essentially to mislead from what we were talking about I'm going to send you a text message after this phone call. And he would send me some random text message saying you know, I don't know, "thanks for talking to me I hope things work out with your boyfriend," or things like that. Things that had nothing to do with the actual phone conversation. And at the time I thought, oh that's fine, he's protecting himself, but now at this point in time I realize that he was doing it to cover himself, and putting me on the line.

Interviewer: How does that make you feel?

Breedlove: Angry. It makes me feel angry just for the fact that I, up until recently, I really thought I had a friendship with Sam, which means I really thought I could trust him. And that's disappointing. It's really disappointing.

Watch the whole thing at KGW. "I wouldn't have called Sam during my conversations with his attorneys to ask him advice about my relationship with my boyfriend," Breedlove quips.

The kiss in the city hall restroom before Breedlove was 18? "I know it happened. I have no questions about the timing of it at all."

Is Sam lying about this? "Yeah." Why? "To protect himself, and it really upsets me that this is just continuing to be lie after lie after lie, and it's come down to the very bottom of the bowl where the last person who can be burned in this situation is me, and he's still burned me to try to save his career."

Breedlove discusses the Hawaii shoplifting incident. "There are a hell of a lot of people who have a lot more talent at stealing clothes than I do," he says. Spent ten days in the Hawaii state pen with "two murderers, a rapist, and an identity thief," he says. "I've never done drugs in my life. I've never driven drunk. I've never done anything. This was my big mistake. This was my learning experience."

"I want to be involved, I want to do things, but I'm worried that people won't have me, now," he says.

Breedlove wouldn't discuss how much he got paid to be in Unzipped. "It's such a frivolous amount," he says, although he thought it would come out after the Attorney General's report was completed. "Bad timing," he laughs. "The money I had made for the magazine barely covered the expenses I had lost during this situation." "I know people think that I'm a gold digger, and how that judgment gets drug from this situation, I have no idea." "I've never been anyone's pool boy, or anything like that."

"How many people have been burned because of this story? I mean, going back to the first man who brought it up. Everything he was striving for was just shot." "Even up to the very end, up to me, everyone was totally burned in this situation to cover up lies." "But I think people who actually followed the details of this situation, you couldn't miss that. The attorney general may have chosen to go the way he went, but I know that regular people couldn't miss that. It's pretty blatant."

What do you think of Sam now?

"I don't know what to say."

The recall starts in earnest, next week.

Watch out: City Commissioners Randy Leonard and Amanda Fritz are butting heads again after their last contretemps in early May.

With this morning's council session taking all of an hour (seriously, what's up with the mayor being "out of town" the day the federal transportation secretary comes to town!? Who does it take to get him to cancel his travel plans? Joe Biden?! Although oddly, it's not like the mayor to turn down a photo opportunity...), I decided to busy myself with wonkish matters: Namely, trying to assess City Commissioner Amanda Fritz's political impact at city hall.

Specifically, I was curious to ask City Commissioner Randy Leonard about his feelings on Fritz's resolution last week to freeze merit pay raises for non-union employees. You may recall that Leonard greeted the proposal with characteristic "run into a burning building" enthusiasm last week:

Scratch that.

"The way it was presented was misleading," says Leonard, who has been doing some research on Fritz's proposal, suspecting that "this isn't going to just die," and that Fritz may bring it back in the next budget cycle.

"The most cursory research would indicate that the $2.8million savings are overrated by 40 percent," Leonard continues. He's been asking the city's Office of Management and Finance (OMF) to figure out how many of the city's 1500 non-union employees would in fact qualify for a merit increase, and it turns out, 40 percent of them are already at the top of their pay scale, and wouldn't qualify, he says.

"I'm suspecting that the actual savings are something short of $1million," says Leonard, who wants to have OMF run the numbers next week, to be sure.

It seems Leonard thinks Fritz may have been indulging in politicking by bringing forward the ordinance.

"The more cynical observers have suggested it's the great political, 'hey, any time you go after public employees'," he says. "If you read the blogs, it's like hey, they're public employees, right on, go after 'em, and I just don't like that kind of use of dedicated hard-working people in order to further a political agenda."

"It's popular to say or imply that public employees make too much money," Leonard continues. "That's always resonated well. But when you're in these positions, then it is unfair not to at minimum analyze the basics of that kind of belief if you're going to vote to do anything to curb those individuals' compensation."

"Amanda either knew what I realized after doing the most cursory research, or she didn't do the work necessary, and that by itself is troubling," says Leonard. "I do not like even the perception that we are using employees that do not have the benefit of representation as political pawns in a wider discussion."

Read the response from Fritz's office, after the jump.