Yesterday was a dramatic day in the Stevens trial.  Tapes, secretly recorded, between the Alaska Senator and the prosecutions chief witness were played in court.  The witness, Bill Allen, was cooperating with federal authorities:

In secretly recorded telephone conversations played in court Monday, Sen. Ted Stevens denied wrongdoing and spat out expletives to describe the federal agents who were raiding homes and offices in Alaska as part of a sweeping corruption probe.

"I don't know what the (expletive) these guys are doing, we'll have to figure that out later," Stevens said to Bill Allen, the chief executive of the oilfield services firm, Veco Corp. The jury heard the full-throated Stevens, profanity and all.

But the recordings also provided insight into how Stevens has maintained his presence in Washington and Alaska without shrinking in shame or embarrassment despite the long, public investigation and then his seven-count felony indictment in July.

A partial transcript of the tapes can be found here.

An audio of the tapes can be found here.