Gov. Craig Benson's press conference Thursday was one of the most emotional and unexpected public performances he's given since taking office.

Benson offered his first public response to a prosecutor's report that suggested that he and Safety Commissioner Dick Flynn had tampered with a criminal investigation into former attorney general Peter Heed and Heed's subsequent resignation.

In a rambunctious, half-hour face-off with the State House press corps, the governor submitted to an unusually aggressive grilling from reporters. It wasn't quite a "Dean Scream" moment, but Benson's responses struck more than a few observers as odd. At one point, Benson slapped his palms several times against the Executive Council table as he struggled to convey his disgust for Heed's behavior.

"I didn't write the resignation letter,"Benson said, punctuating the statement with a solid slap. "If Peter Heed thought he was innocent (slap, slap), if Peter Heed said 'I didn't do this' (slap, slap), would you quit if you didn't think you did any of this? I don't know what I think; I wasn't even there."

Even Benson seemed slightly confused by the hothouse atmosphere at one point. "What planet are we on?" he asked rhetorically.

"He seemed to be reacting rather strongly," said Rep. Tony Soltani, an Epsom Republican who caught Benson's performance on WMUR Thursday night. "It was like I've never seen him before. It was out of character."

At the beginning of questioning, Benson

calmly read from the witness statements Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway collected in his investigation into Heed's dance-floor behavior at a state-sponsored conference in May. As the governor flipped through the pages (which, helpfully, had been folded at the corner for his easy reference), he dwelled on the most salacious details gleaned from Hathaway's investigation.

In a three-minute span, the governor repeated the phrase "dirty-dancing" three times and described Heed's behavior as "dancing provocatively,""seductive dancing,""grinding,""touchy-feely,""like an idiot,""frat-party atmosphere" and "pelvic motions." (Benson failed to mention that Hathaway dismissed many of those witness statements as either irrelevant or misinformed in his original report.)

When a reporter attempted to interrupt Benson's recital, the governor raised a hand: "Hang on, I'm not done."

"Dirty-dancing was done on this woman's butt," Benson said.

Those who attended the governor's St. Patrick's Day presentation earlier this year may be experiencing déjà vu right about now.

Under the radar

Hathaway's report detailed the political insiders' game as it's played at the highest level. Hathaway concluded that Benson, Flynn and other state officials pooled confidential information, swapped rumors and decided the fate of the state attorney general in a series of phone calls and private meetings last June.

But the below-the-surface maneuvering that preceded the release of Hathaway's report offered another lesson in high-stakes State House poker. Take two Fridays ago, for instance, the day the Monitorfirst reported that Hathaway was questioning Benson and Flynn. That afternoon a staffer in Benson's office offered to show us the supporting documents from Hathaway's investigation because "they show a fuller picture of (Heed's) behavior and people's reactions to it."

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