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06/2000
Bad timing?
The mysterious indictment of Fred Yates
by Bob Fitrakis
In politics, like comedy, timing is everything.
This adage leads us to the curious indictment of Fred Yates, Mayor Michael Coleman's highly regarded campaign spokesperson. On the Sunday before last November's election day, as I was preparing for my public affairs radio show on WSMZ, two sources offered me strangely premature information. They said one of the candidates suggested as a likely replacement for Coleman on Columbus City Council--Fred Yates--had legal problems. The sources, who were politically linked to City Attorney Janet Jackson, told me that Yates had "theft charges" against him.
After Coleman's landslide victory that Tuesday, November 2, I kept turning up Yates rumors. Democratic Party regulars had various versions, from Yates allegedly being involved with stolen property to embezzlement. Throughout November, I made calls and searched databanks with the aid of a private investigator. I found that Yates had no arrest record, although a much younger man with a similar name had been evicted in the campus area by Triangle Real Estate, according to court records and attorney Charles T. Williams.
No arrests, no love nest in the campus area--why was the growing and obvious smear campaign against Yates continuing? There had to be something going on.
At the end of November, with Yates steadfastly insisting he wanted to be on City Council despite tremendous pressure to get him to serve on Coleman's staff, suddenly a new candidate emerged universally thought to be promoted by Jackson. It was my old neighbor and one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, Fred Ransier.
On December 5, I told listeners of my radio show that conventional wisdom from the Democratic Party had it that Yates would not be selected to serve on council because of alleged criminal problems. Party insiders all seemed to know about this--but how?
Three days later, up in Cuyahoga County, someone resurrected an old investigatory file and managed to get Yates indicted on December 8. How did people close to Janet Jackson, in the middle of the state, know that Yates was supposedly having problems in Cleveland? According to the Columbus Dispatch, the court didn't process the indictment until December 10.
Yates began making calls to Columbus Alive and The Other Paper that week, begging to know if the publications were working on a story about him. I talked to Yates and told him there was a possible smear campaign claiming he was charged with or convicted of theft. He sounded genuinely confused about the nature of the rumors of criminal activity.
The Other Paper chronicled Ransier's meteoric rise in its December 9 issue: "Ten days ago, Fred Ransier's name wasn't even in circulation as a candidate for appointment to Mayor-elect Mike Coleman's City Council seat. Now Ransier, chairman of the Columbus Civil Service Commission, has become the prohibitive favorite to land the job."
City Councilmembers, the Columbus Dispatch, and my reliable sources all say that Yates first heard of his possible indictment on December 14, the day council was screening candidates to replace Coleman. Some claim the information was leaked by the governor's office, but most insiders agree that this is nonsense. These sources claim the "Yates smear" was an intra-Democratic Party dispute leaked by people close to City Attorney Jackson, who appeared to be privy to information from Cleveland--information that Yates didn't possess because he'd never been called before a grand jury, a constitutional requirement before answering to a crime. The next day I learned of the indictment from two local attorneys who both insisted that Yates' Cleveland indictment was initiated in Columbus to keep him off City Council.
In many big cities like Detroit and Cleveland, it's not uncommon for candidates to be indicted just prior to an election. It's considered just another political ploy. By now I was convinced that, in the Yates case, these party machine tactics may have spread to Columbus.
Particularly interesting was the fact that both attorneys told me Fred's wife, Kathleen Ransier, had been Yates' business attorney. This was acknowledged by Yates when he declined comment to the Alive on December 17.
Repeated calls to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office weren't returned. In messages I left with the office, I asked how this two-year-old investigation--involving events between 1991 and 1994--suddenly coincided precisely with the date Yates was screening for Columbus City Council.
On December 16, The Other Paper ran a strangely naive political story lacking mention of the indictment in Cleveland, claiming there had been no smear campaign against Yates, and quoting Janet Jackson denying she had anything to do with such gutter politics.
Jackson, through a spokesperson, declined to comment for Alive's article this week.
Yates received a certified letter on Thursday, December 23, informing him of his indictment for aggravated theft involving the overbilling of the Ohio State Lottery Commission for advertising. In a front-page story on December 29, the Dispatch quoted Yates' attorney, the politically powerful George Forbes, as follows: "This thing has happened a couple of years ago...Why did it all of a sudden come back when this political thing was taking place?"
That remains a mystery. Add to it the equally important question of how people associated with the Columbus city attorney knew about the Cleveland indictment before it happened. Clairvoyance? I doubt it. While she'll never publicly acknowledge it, word has it that Janet Jackson is, in fact, quietly battling to keep Michael Coleman from being the dominant force in the Franklin County Democratic Party. Whether this has anything to do with the sudden demise of Yates' political career is a question worth pondering.
1/13/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
Last week, the Ohio Democratic Party and the Franklin County Democrats both held caucuses on the primary campaign issues and endorsements that will determine the future course of the tepid centrist political organizations.
On Monday, January 3, 12th and 15th Congressional District Dems met to elect delegates for the Bill Bradley and Al Gore campaigns. I ran as a Bradley delegate without illusions about Bradley's politics or my chances of winning. My preferred presidential candidate, Senator Paul Wellstone, the last unabashed progressive in the U.S. Senate, dropped out last year before he ever formally declared his candidacy. Such is the state of the Party of Roosevelt. A mere eight years ago, you could count on a progressive candidate like Jerry Brown going to the convention and raising hell. Not anymore.
It's doubtful that Ohio's 12th District delegates are going to cause much commotion at the convention in Los Angeles this summer. Gore's camp is dominated by the AFL-CIO--must've been the Veep's support for NAFTA and moving U.S. union jobs overseas that swung the labor bureaucrats--and the Bradley contingent is controlled by the likes of Jerry Hammond, Cindy Lazarus and Matt Habash.
The battle between Bradley and Gore more than anything else signals the death of the last splintered remnant of the McGovern wing of the party in Ohio. Hell, Bradley was a centrist New Democrat before being a New Democrat was cool. Still, there is a key difference that distinguishes the virtually indistinguishable candidates. Bradley's record on race issues is principled and impeccable. In 1996, he was one of only 21 Democratic Senators who broke rank with the Clinton-Gore administration to vote against the reactionary welfare reform plan which ended a 60-year federal commitment to poor kids. "State's rights" activists and reactionaries of every stripe accused Clinton and Gore of being opportunists and stealing their ideas. Bradley exposed the thinly veiled false racist stereotypes behind so-called "welfare reform."
Bradley's speech on the Senate floor after the L.A. riots is a testament to his belief in racial equality. He's called racial discrimination the "ultimate evil" and he still crusades for affirmative action programs. Locally, he's got Ben Espy in his corner, and Dick Austin, the architect behind Jesse Jackson's upset 1988 victory over Michael Dukakis in Franklin County. Still, Bradley can't beat Gore's regulars in Franklin County without a direct appeal to people of color, gays and lesbians, environmentalists and liberals who remain politically active but are nowhere to be found within the local Democratic Party.
Last Thursday, January 6, the Franklin County Democrats unanimously endorsed our local strain of Gore, Richard Cordray for U.S. Senate. The bland and benign Cordray received 38 percent of the vote for Ohio Attorney General in 1998. He got about the same percentage when he ran against Deborah Pryce in 1992 for U.S. Congress.
The day before the Cordray endorsement, the far more interesting Reverend Marvin McMickle of Shaker Heights submitted his petitions for U.S. Senate. You've heard all the gushing over the start of a new century and a new millennium. Consider this: In the entire 20th century, the two major parties nominated only nine African-American candidates for U.S. Senate. Two were elected.
The McMickle campaign is a rare opportunity to nominate an African-American senator. It's an even rarer opportunity to nominate an Ohio progressive and advocate of the nearly defunct "social gospel" doctrine. Rabbi Daniel Roberts of Temple Emanu Ell in University Heights described McMickle's "style of preaching" as one that "disturbed the comfortable and comforted the disturbed."
The 50-year-old McMickle, who earned a Ph.D. in American studies from Case Western Reserve and is the Ohio School Board president, is a long shot in central Ohio. Still, he could win here if people were aware of his platform. McMickle recently told the Gay People's Chronicle that he would vote for a lesbian and gay civil rights law.
The Cincinnati Post covered a campaign stop McMickle made in Hamilton County where he "attack[ed] the Republican Congress' `Contract with America' while promoting his own liberal agenda of helping the less fortunate and improving education, protecting the environment, aiding the causes of women and minorities."
McMickle's press conference last Wednesday drew scant coverage from Columbus' mainstream media. This did little to overcome his biggest hurdle--other than being in a state that never nominates blacks to the U.S. Senate--which is his lack of name recognition outside of northeast Ohio.
Bradley and McMickle's primary victories would serve as the best way to usher out the racist destruction so prevalent in the last century and millennium and signal a new beginning. Pass the word.
NOTE: Bob Fitrakis was not elected as a Bradley delegate and is not seeking re-election as the Democratic Central Committee 55th Ward representative.
1/20/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
Will Ohio be the nation's heartland for neo-Nazi terror? Last Sunday's NBC-4 news report on the National Alliance's leafleting in the Dublin and Grove City areas will come as no surprise to regular readers of this column. Erich Gliebe, of Cleveland, told Channel 4 that the organization targeted the two Columbus suburbs because the areas were "most receptive to their messages," according to producer Karen Baker.
The alliance is a West Virginia-based neo-Nazi organization headed for two decades by William Pierce, the author of The Turner Diaries. Tim McVeigh, convicted in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, was a zealous fan of Pierce's primer on race war. In the past few years, National Alliance membership has grown dramatically, operating in more than a dozen states.
Pierce calls Gliebe, a former amateur boxer, a "tireless recruiter and organizer, a man who has spent nearly every available minute working for the alliance." Gliebe's Cleveland organization is the single largest in the alliance, boasting some 60 open neo-Nazis and hosting an annual "Euro-American Cultural Fest." A recent intelligence report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization that monitors white supremacist groups, named Gliebe one of the elite "dirty dozen" of white supremacist leaders in the U.S.
Gliebe serves as the National Alliance's Midwest spokesperson and regional coordinator. His cultural fest has drawn the likes of Pierce, Tom Metzger, head of the neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance, and Steve Barry, editor of the white supremacist magazine The Resister. Not far behind in the alliance hierarchy is Hilliard's Matt Ball, also seen on Channel 4's January 16 report.
The influence of the Idaho-based Aryan Nations is beginning to fade as the health of its founder, the ailing and aged Richard Butler, 81, declines. Meanwhile, Pierce and the National Alliance appear to be growing stronger by the day. The alliance is busy building bridges to other fascist and white supremacist groups. Just last summer, the SPLC reported that Pierce and two "gussied-up skinheads" dined at the exclusive Washington, D.C., University Club with former Reagan Whitehouse staffer and GOP strategist Todd Blodgett.
Blodgett, a prot™g™ of the late Lee Atwater, a key GOP campaign strategist for both Presidents Reagan and Bush, is the son of wealthy Republican State Representative Gary Blodgett of Iowa. On April 26, 1999, Pierce and Blodgett incorporated Resistance Records LLC in the District of Columbia, according to the SPLC. The deal gave the National Alliance control over a defunct racist record company.
In October last year, Pierce went public with the fact that he now owned Resistance Records, the largest catalog and inventory of "white power" music in the U.S. A few years ago, prior to its demise, the record company was selling an estimated 50,000 white supremacist CDs every year.
The alliance's strategy is to reach out to both young neo-Nazi shock troops and older, more mainstream racist organizations with Republican ties, like the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). Two recent reports from the SPLC--Money, Music and the Doctor and Sharks in the Mainstream--document Pierce's activities. The CCC is little more than the reincarnation of the racist White Citizen's Councils of the '50s and '60s. Last year, during the Clinton impeachment trials, news reports documented that Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, and Representative Bob Barr, a Republican from Georgia, both wrote for the CCC's racist newsletter.
The CCC and the National Alliance have many things in common, including attacking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Black History Month and affirmative action. The CCC refuses to disclose the names of its members, but the SPLC collected the names of 175 CCC members and "found a significant number of members have been linked to unabashedly racist groups including the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People, the America First Party and the neo-Nazi National Alliance."
The CCC's leader, Gordon Lee Baum, attempted to recruit Vince Reed, the head of security for the Aryan Nations, to the CCC's national board in 1995, according to Reed. The council has also been endorsed by Senator Jesse Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, and various Republican politicians, particularly in the South. Council leaders have claimed responsibility for the defeat of former South Carolina Governor David Beasley, who angered the group by opposing the continued flying of the Confederate battle flag over the state's capital building.
It makes perfect sense that the National Alliance would pass out information attacking the Martin Luther King holiday the day before the event, and less than two months before the Ohio primary. The emergence of a highly emotional and polarizing political "wedge" issue, as Atwater liked to call them, comes at an opportune time for George W. Bush's presidential campaign in Ohio. Recall his father was elected as an anti-civil rights "states' rights" representative from Texas in 1966, and his son is now busy defending the states' rights of South Carolina to fly the Confederate flag. Pierce and his Central Ohio and Cleveland lackeys may simply be priming the pump for Bush.
1/27/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
What a way to start the new year. Not only did we dodge the Y2K bullet, but Senator George Voinovich's brother Paul Voinovich announced on January 7 that he's re-organizing the V Companies and VS Architects Inc. under Chapter 11. Following the $13.3 million jury verdict against the V Group in mid-December for shoddy construction and cost overruns in building the Jefferson County Jail, Pauly pledged, "We'll work harder to do better than we've ever done."
Fortunately for the taxpayers of Ohio, that won't be difficult for Paul Voinovich. A quick perusal of my mammoth and ever-expanding Brothers Voinovich file proves that there's lots of room for improvement.
Pauly probably learned a lot from the $5.7 million Highland Heights municipal complex he worked on in the early 1980s. Sure, the city's law director, Dale Feneli, blamed the Voinovich-Sgro Architects Inc. "for design flaws and poor oversight of the project" when the roof began to leak "shortly after the first employees moved in," according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. There were a few other problems: bathrooms built with residential rather than commercial plumbing; a floor drain not connected to the sanitary sewer system; and a burst pipe on the fire sprinkler system. But hey, that was the '80s.
OK, I'll be the first to concede that the '90s were also a little rough on Pauly and his alphabet soup of V Group/Voinovich Companies. Take Darrel Rowland's July 1992 article in the Columbus Dispatch. I mean, did he really have to write that "lawsuits against Paul Voinovich range literally from sea to sea"? It should have read "ocean to ocean." I prefer Paul's PR Newswire spin that his "Cleveland-based firm has earned a national reputation for its work."
For example, when Rowland noted that a California company "50 percent owned by Paul Voinovich was cited for not paying $386,000 in federal income taxes and forced into an involuntary bankruptcy by its creditors," he didn't even mention how much that bankruptcy might help Paul "reorganize" in the future. Rowland did point out that "$700,000 in delinquent real estate taxes in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, plus almost $30,000 on his company's headquarters in Cleveland, were, according to a company spokesperson, a `misunderstanding.'"
It's awfully easy for a guy like Pauly, with a high profile political brother like Senator George, to be taken the wrong way. Anyone can accidentally get hooked up with the wrong people. Just look at the controversial Waste Distillation company, in which Pauly was a partner in a Willoughby, Ohio, waste project in the early '90s. You try to put together a nice waste management deal with flamboyant rubbish hauler Daniel A. Dzina and what do you get? An environmental group called the "Concerned Citizens Research Group" writes that Anthony Hughes, "a convicted felon" who served time in prison for racketeering and embezzlement, was also a partner with Dzina in the Waste Distillation company.
Granted, in August 1999 the Plain Dealer called Dzina "a felon with an extensive history of controversy involving publicly funded contracts" and tried to blow his acquiring of the Golden Gloves gym facility in Cleveland all out of proportion. Even the Plain Dealer couldn't find anything criminal. Why else would the paper write about the gym: "If crimes haven't been committed, laws need to be changed"? A three-judge panel acquitted Dzina of charges of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary and felonious assault in 1977. No way one of Pauly's partners would beat a man to death with a baseball bat.
Nor would Pauly know that Hughes was "a former business partner of John `Curly' Montana, currently in prison for murder," as the Concerned Citizens Research Group stated in a 1991 report. In the early '80s, the Cleveland Press reported that Dzina dumped Cleveland rubbish on farm property in Orange Village. How was Dzina to know that the unlicensed, makeshift landfill was linked to two reputed ne'er-do-wells, Montana and Allen "Connie" Nakon?
I mean, who're they gonna try to link to Pauly next? Just because the Lake County News Herald wrote that Clark Miller, a Voinovich Company vice president, gave Willoughby officials "a 1984 study of a New Jersey prototype plant that closed in 1986 as an explanation" of Pauly's nifty waste-to-energy plant, people get the wrong ideas.
So Dzina and Pauly try to do a little business with Miller and, of course, they hire the most reputable accountant, Vincent Panichi, who's so good he's George Voinovich's campaign treasurer--and all people want to do is point out the negatives. The Plain Dealer had to bring up the issue of how Pauly got ahold of the Ohio rights to the "flameless technology" that the waste plant uses. Just because Clark Miller was on the selection committee that picked the Ohio EPA director under Governor George Voinovich, people read too much into it--like that state Senator Eric Fingerhut who called attention to it.
If you think Pauly didn't learn a lot from that Waste Distillation controversy, then think again. When convicted criminals like WTI waste incinerator lobbyist Michael Anthony Fabiano or convicted felons Vincent Zumpano and Ronald and Pasquale Deluca all started testifying about Clark and Pauly in the late 1990s, linking them to pay-offs and kickbacks and bribes in the Ohio River Valley, hardy anyone believed it. Well, maybe a few guys in the FBI, but what do the feds know?
Let me just leave you with the recent courageous words of the misunderstood Pauly V: "Rather than run away and shirk our responsibilities, we're staying put." And Ohio will be a better place for it in the new millennium.
2/03/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
Will the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations organization relocate its headquarters to Ohio? Floyd Cochran, former director of propaganda for the hate group, now a leading anti-racist activist, concedes that there's been "a lot of speculation" on a move by the group from their Hayden Lake, Idaho, compound to Southwest Ohio.
Why the Buckeye State? There's the failing health of 80-year-old Richard Butler, the founder and leader of both the Aryan Nations and the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Butler is the United States' most infamous Christian Identity preacher--a neo-Nazi ideology masquerading as religion that preaches Anglo-Saxons and Aryans are God's "only" chosen people. News reports say Butler has willed his 20-acre Idaho home and complex to his daughters, who've distanced themselves from his beliefs.
A year ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Butler personally, his church, Aryan Nations and Saphire, Inc., an Idaho corporation, in hopes of seizing the neo-Nazi organization's assets in a civil suit. The suit claims, "Members of the [Aryan Nations] security force chased them [Victoria and Jason Keenan] for over two miles, shot at them with assault rifles, detained them, battered them, and threatened to kill them." The center, successful in the past in suing white supremacist groups and seizing their assets, could force the Aryans to search for a new home.
Cochran describes the Hayden Lake compound as the "crown jewel" of the Aryan movement. "Take it away and there is no Aryan Nations," he told Columbus Alive. He says a likely place for the homeless neo-Nazis to head is New Vienna, Ohio. Harold Ray "Butch" Redfeairn, Butler's personal aide and most likely successor, set up a regional Midwest Aryan Nations center there in 1997.
Cochran points out that the Midwest is potentially much more fertile recruiting ground for white supremacist hate organizations than Butler's Northwest network. White supremacist David Duke, a former Nazi and Klan leader, understood this when he made Southern Ohio part of an all-white homeland (to be founded after the United States is shattered). "Most of the white supremacists seek out mountains and hills in their belief that this is where God's chosen people should flee in preparation for the final days," Cochran explained. "Draw a line from the Alleghenies in Pennsylvania down through Appalachia in its foothills and you're going to pick up a lot of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant and white supremacist organizations."
A brief comparison of hate groups available to an Ohio-centered Aryan Nations versus an Idaho-based neo-Nazi movement yields disturbing numbers. Idaho has nine hate groups compared to Ohio's 22--the seventh largest total in the U.S. The state of Wyoming, Idaho's neighbor, has one hate group; the Columbus suburb of Hilliard alone has two hate groups.
This concentration of hate is seen throughout the Midwest, but not the West, according to the latest Southern Poverty Law Center data. Pennsylvania has 27 hate groups. Montana has five; Michigan 24. Oregon 10 versus Indiana's 17. Washington and Illinois are a wash at 17 each. Heading south, 10 hate groups call Kentucky home, compared to Nevada's two. Let's see, that makes it 117 hate groups in the Midwest to 44 in the West--a rout in favor of Ohio being the country's heart of it all for hatred.
Of course, it may be difficult to continue the Idaho Aryan Nations' hate legacy in Ohio. Butler's organization spawned our country's foremost domestic terrorist group, The Order, in the 1980s and just last August one of Butler's former security men, Buford O. Furrow Jr., was charged with attacking a Jewish community center in Los Angeles and killing a non-white mailman. Three months later, Butler's Denver organizer, Nathan Thill, confessed on television that he murdered a black man because he was "wearing the enemy's uniform"--his black skin.
Still, Redfeairn managed in a short period of time to sow violence from his base in western Clinton County, Ohio. Last July, Kale T. Kelly, Redfeairn's New Vienna lieutenant, was convicted on weapons charges stemming from an alleged plot to gather an arsenal to attack the government. In February 1997, the Kehoe brothers with ties to the Aryan Nations shot it out with Clinton County sheriff's deputies and Ohio State troopers before fleeing the state. Most analysts suggest the brothers were heading up to Columbus for the Aryan Nations' Statehouse rally, which drew scores of other white supremacist groups. Remember that the leader of the Aryan Republican Army, a.k.a. the Midwest Bank Bandits, was captured in Columbus after the neo-Nazi group carried out 22 bank robberies in the mid-1990s in order to fund a white supremacist revolution.
Two weeks ago, I pointed out one drawback to Ohio as the next Aryan Nations national headquarters site. The nation's fastest growing neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance, is already well-entrenched here with the organization's strongest chapter in Cleveland and a burgeoning central Ohio organization.
But hey, what about those Buckeyes? Most people know there's more important stuff to talk about in this city. If you're not one of them, you might want to consider attending the March 11-12 Building Democracy Conference in Chicago, "Continuing the Journey Against Hate," sponsored by the faith-based Center for New Community. There's no workshops on sports, but Floyd Cochran will be there. Check it out at www.newcomm.org.
2/10/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
The Octopussy lurks in the murky polluted waters of the Ohio River Valley. Scarier than the fabled Loch Ness Monster is the shadowy, mostly clandestine network involving organized crime, powerful politicians, mysterious Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens, the notorious and defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and the infamous Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio.
While campaigning at Ohio State University last Wednesday, February 2, Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore encountered Citizen Action activists shouting "What about WTI?" and "Keep your promises!" Gore's broken promise to halt the start-up of the WTI incinerator is as famous in environmental circles as President George Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge in 1988.
Hell, I was duped by Gore's promise myself in 1992. That year, I'd served as Jerry Brown's Midwest coordinator at the Democratic Party convention. When Greg Haas, the Clinton-Gore campaign coordinator, asked me to sign a letter to former Brown delegates and environmentalists urging them to support the "Dubba Bubba" ticket, I did.
My support for Clinton and Gore stemmed primarily from Gore's statements at a Weirton, West Virginia, campaign stop in July 1992 that: "The very idea of putting WTI in a flood plain, you know it's just unbelievable to me... We don't need these incinerators... I'll tell you this, a Clinton-Gore administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We'll be on your side for a change instead of the side of the garbage generators."
The letter I signed on behalf of the Clinton-Gore campaign touted the ticket's dedication to the environment. Unlike the numerous campaign pledges that Clinton dismissed as "pillow talk" between his first election and inauguration, Gore seemed sincere in his pledge to keep the WTI incinerator from firing up. On December 7, 1992, Gore issued a press release stating, "Serious questions concerning the safety of an East Liverpool, Ohio, hazardous waste incinerator must be answered before the plant may begin operation." Gore called for a "full investigation" by the U.S. General Accounting Office and pledged that the Clinton-Gore administration would not issue the plant a test burn permit until these questions were answered.
Within a few weeks, Clinton and Gore had reversed their opposition to the giant waste incinerator. Ohio Citizen Action recounts the history of WTI in its current newsletter: "According to unconfirmed reports from well-placed sources, Clinton's EPA administrator-designate, Carol Browner, called Valdus Adamkus, director of U.S. EPA's Great Lakes office. She asked Adamkus to approve WTI's initial `test burn' before January 20 [1992], so the incoming Clinton administration would not have to take responsibility for the decision."
By early January 1992 WTI had the OK from Adamkus for a test burn, even though 400 children attended East Elementary School only 1,100 feet away from the incinerator's stack, spewing lead, mercury and dioxin into the valley's air, and houses were as close as 320 feet away.
Why did Clinton and Gore renege on their promise? Ask billionaire Stephens, if you can find him. Stephens was the single largest financial backer of the '92 Clinton-Gore campaign. He raised a reported $100,000 in contributions that year and is widely credited as having saved the Clinton campaign by extending a $3.5 million line of credit through his bank during the dark days of the Gennifer Flowers sex scandal.
Stephens is the man responsible for introducing both the Pakistani bank BCCI to the United States and WTI to the Ohio River Valley. His family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. And he's been linked to several political scandals. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance resigned amid allegations that he was involved in shady dealings with Stephens. Coincidentally, Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy.
In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped in exchange for the defendants' promise not to violate security laws in the future, but they admitted no guilt. The New York Post reported in 1992 that it was Stephens who orchestrated BCCI's foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank covertly acquire U.S. banks. Investigative reporters Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin documented the flow of opium revenue from Afghanistan's Mujahedin anti-Soviet guerrillas into the accounts of BCCI. The Post also reported that Stephens allegedly introduced BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi to Burt Lance shortly after Lance resigned.
CIA Deputy Director Richard Kerr admitted to Congress at the time that BCCI "was involved in illegal activities such as money-laundering, narcotics and terrorism."
In 1975, Stephens originally chartered WTI as an Arkansas subsidiary. A July 1981 press release identified four firms involved in the plans to build the incinerator, including WTI, a subsidiary of Stephens Inc. of Little Rock, and Von Roll of America Inc., an affiliate of the Swiss firm Von Roll Limited. Recall that four Von Roll officials were later convicted in Switzerland for attempting to illegally sell "supergun parts" to the Iraqi government during the Persian Gulf War. It also owned New Jersey Steel, a company with reputed mob ties.
Von Roll lobbyist Tony Fabiano was recently fined by the Ohio Elections Commission for money-laundering violations in the 1994 Governor Voinovich re-election campaign and also pleaded guilty to tax charges related to his role in securing environmental permits from the defunct North Ohio Valley Air Authority for WTI.
That WTI should play such a prominent role in both national Democratic and Ohio Republican scandals should come as no surprise. The Wall Street Journal reported in 1991 that Stephens arranged a bailout for a small Texas oil company on the verge of bankruptcy. One of the company's directors and stockholders is also running for president--George W. Bush.
Beware the murky waters of the Ohio River Valley, where the secrets of BCCI, WTI and other monsters dwell. Be afraid of the Octopussy, be very afraid.
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2/17/2000 by Bob Fitrakis
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2/24/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
After Texas Governor George W. Bush faltered in New Hampshire, a spooky and shadowy right-wing network came to his rescue in South Carolina, turning a certain primary defeat into a double-digit victory. As the Washington Post noted, "An array of conservative groups have come in to reinforce Bush's message with phone banks, radio ads and mailings of their own."
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asserted that "Bush embraces the far-right fringe." From the racists who prohibit interracial dating at Bob Jones University to the moronic Confederate flag wavers, from Rush Limbaugh to Pat Robertson, and from the most extreme elements of the right-to-life movement to the Moonies, the Bush family network prevailed. NBC's Tim Russert pointed out that George W. was now "indebted to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell" and the Christian right.
Dutifully, the Washington Times--a paper owned by self-proclaimed messiah and cult leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon--ran a headline stating, "Bush scoffs at assertion he moved too far right." The bizarre and almost unbelievable relationship between the Bush family and the 80-year-old Moon is the dirty little secret of George W.'s campaign for President.
To understand the role the Moonies play in U.S. politics, one must start with Ryoichi Sasakawa, identified in a 1992 PBS Frontline investigative report as a key money source for Reverend Moon's far-flung world empire. In the 1930s, Sasakawa was one of Japan's leading fascists. He organized a private army of 1,500 men equipped with 20 warplanes. His men dressed in black shirts to emulate Mussolini. Sasakawa was an "uncondemned Class A war criminal" suddenly freed with another accused war criminal--Yoshio Kodama, a leading figure in Japan's organized crime syndicate Yakuza--in 1948.
In January 1995, Japan' s KYODO news service uncovered documents establishing that the one-time fascist war criminal suspect was earmarked as an informer by U.S. military intelligence two months prior to his unexplained release. Declassified documents link Kodama's release to the CIA. During World War II, the Kodama Agency, according to U.S. Army counterintelligence records, consisted of "systematically looting China of its raw materials" and dealing in heroin, guns, tungsten, gold, industrial diamonds and radium.
Both Sasakawa and Kodama's CIA ties are a reoccurring theme in their relationship with the Moonies. In 1977, Congressman Donald Fraser launched an investigation into Moon's background. The 444-page Congressional report alleged Moonie involvement with bribery, bank fraud, illegal kickbacks and arms sales. The report revealed that Moon's 20,000-member Unification Church was a creation of Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) Director Kim Chong Phil as a political tool to influence U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. CIA was the agency primarily responsible for the founding of the KCIA.
The Moon organizations have denied any links with the Korean government or intelligence community.
Moon, who is Korean, and his two Japanese buddies, Sasakawa and Kodama, first joined together in the 1960s to form the Asian People's Anti-Communist League with the aid of KCIA agents, alleged Japanese organized crime money and financial support from Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek. The League concentrated on uniting fascists, right-wing and anti-Communist forces throughout Asia.
In 1964, League funds set up Moon's Freedom Center in the United States. Kodama served as Chief Advisor to the Moon subsidiary Win Over Communism, an organization that served to protect Moon's South Korean investments. Sasakawa acted as Win Over Communism's chair.
In 1966, the League merged with the anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, another group with strong fascist ties, to form the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Later, in the 1980s, the retired U.S. Major General John Singlaub emerged as a key player in the Iran-Contra scandal through his chairmanship of the WACL. Singlaub enlisted paramilitary groups, foreign governments and right-wing Americans to support the Contra cause in Nicaragua.
Moon's Freedom Center served as the headquarters for the League in the United States. During the Iran-Contra hearings, the League was described as "a multi-national network of Nazi war criminals, Latin American death squad leaders, North American racists and anti-Semites and fascist politicians from every continent."
Working with the KCIA, Moon made his first trip to the U.S. in 1965 and obtained an audience with former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike, along with former President Harry S Truman, lent their names to the letterhead of the Moon-created Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. In 1969, Moon and Sasakawa jointly formed the Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), a pro-Vietnam War organization that lobbied the U.S. government.
In the 1970s, Moon earned notoriety in the Koreagate scandal after female followers of the Unification Church were accused of entertaining and keeping confidential files on several U.S. congressmen who they "lobbied" at a Washington Hilton Hotel suite rented by the Moonies. The U.S. Senate held hearings concerning Moon's "programmatic bribery of U.S. officials, journalists and others as part of an operation by the Korean CIA to influence the course of U.S. foreign policy."
The Fraser report noted that Moon was paid by the KCIA to stage demonstrations at the United Nations and run pro-South Korean propaganda campaigns. The Congressional investigator for the Fraser report said, "We determine that their [Moonies'] primary interest, at least in the U.S. at that time, was not religious at all but was political, it was attempt to gain power, influence and authority."
After Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980, Moon's political influence increased dramatically. Vice President George Bush, a former CIA director, invited Moon as his guest to the Reagan inauguration. Bush and Moon shared unsavory links to South American underworld figures. In 1980, according to the investigatory magazine IF, the Moon organization collaborated with a right-wing military coup in Bolivia that established the region's first narco-state.
Moon's credentials soared in conservative circles in 1982 with the inception of the Washington Times. Vice President Bush immediately saw the value of building an alliance with the politically powerful Moon organization, an alliance that Moon claims made Bush president. One ex-Moonie's website claims that during the 1988 Bush-Dukakis battle, Reverend Moon threatened his followers that he'd move all of them out of the U.S. if the evil Dukakis won.
Also in 1982, Moon was convicted of income tax evasion and spent more than a year in jail.
During the Gulf War, the Moonie-sponsored American Freedom Coalition organized "support the troop" rallies. The Frontline documentary identified the Washington Times as the most costly piece in Moon's propaganda arsenal, with losses estimated as high as $800 million. Still, Sasakawa's virtual monopoly over the Japanese speedboat gambling industry allowed the money to continue flowing to Moon's U.S. coffers.
The Bush-Moonie connection caused considerable controversy in September 1995, when the former president announced he would be spending nearly a week in Japan on behalf of a Moonie front organization, the Women's Federation for World Peace, founded and led by Moon's wife. Then-President Bush downplayed accusations of brain-washing and coercion against the Moonies. The New York Times noted that Bush's presence "is seen by some as lending the group [Moonies] legitimacy."
Longtime Moonie member S.P. Simonds wrote an editorial for the Portland Press Herald noting the Bushes "didn't need the reported million dollars paid by Moon and were well aware of the Church's history."
Bush shared the podium with Moon's wife and addressed a crowd of 50,000 in the Tokyo dome. Bush told the true believers, "Reverend and Mrs. Moon are engaged in the most important activities going on the world today."
The following year Moon bankrolled a series of "family values" conferences from Oakland to Washington, D.C. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, "In Washington, Moon opened his checkbook to such Republican Party mainstays as former Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush, GOP presidential candidate Jack Kemp and Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed."
Purdue University Professor of Sociology Anson Shupe, a longtime Moon watcher, said, "The man accused of being the biggest brainwasher in America has moved into mainstream Republican Americana."
Moon claimed at these family values conferences that he was the "only one who knows all the secrets of God." One of them, according to the Chronicle, is that "the husband is the owner of his wife's sexual organs and vice versa."
"President Ford, President Bush, who attended the Inaugural World Convention of the Family Federation for World Peace and all you distinguished guests are famous, but there's something that you do not know," the Chronicle quoted Moon as saying. "Is there anyone here who dislikes sexual organs?... Until now you may not have thought it virtuous to value the sexual organs, but from now, you must value them."
In November 1996, President Bush arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, amid controversy over a newly created Spanish-language Moon weekly newspaper called Tiempos del Mundo. Bush smoothed things over as the principal speaker at the paper's opening dinner on November 23.
The former president then traveled with Moon to neighboring Uruguay to help him open a Montevideo seminary to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of the Unification Church across Latin America. The young Japanese seminarians were later accused of laundering $80 million through an Uruguayan bank, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
The Times also reported that when Reverend Jerry Falwell's university faced bankruptcy, Moon's group bailed it out with millions of dollars in loans and grants.
The New York Times noted in 1997 that Moon "has been reaching out to conservative Christians in this country in the last few years by emphasizing shared goals like support for sexual abstinence outside of marriage and opposition to homosexuality." Moon also appeals to the Second Amendment crowd. In March 1999, the Washington Post reported that the messiah owned the lucrative Kahr Arms Company through Saeilo, Inc.
It's the shadowy network around the Moonies that the elder Bush could have called in to bail out his son's campaign in South Carolina. Make no mistake, George W. of Texas is little more than a frontman for the restoration of his father's unsavory connections, who hide behind the veil of national security to avoid accountability.
3/02/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
More than 200 youth and student activists blocked the intersection of High and 15th Sunday afternoon demanding a new trial--this time a fair one--for death-row inmate and political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Local protesters held the street for over 18 minutes at the February 27 rally.
Recent events, from the demonstrations at OSU's 1998 CNN Town Hall meeting on Iraq, to last November's protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, to Sunday's rally that took it to the streets of Columbus, are more and more reminiscent of pre-Reagan/Bush-era social protest. The activists are reclaiming traditions and slogans that insist the streets belong to the people.
I don't know whether Mumia is guilty or innocent, but I believe he sits on death row as a result of a rigged and unconstitutional prosecution and trial. Let's go over some of the facts of the case. Mumia's Philadelphia public radio show gave voice to the poor and oppressed prior to his arrest in December 1981. Mumia, a licensed taxi driver, was shot and nearly died at the scene where a Philadelphia police officer was slain. The officer was beating Mumia's brother at the time. Instead of acting as the professionals they claim to be, the Philly police allegedly proceeded to beat Mumia before taking him to the hospital.
Despite exculpatory evidence from eyewitnesses who saw two other men fleeing the scene, Mumia was charged with the murder and the police and prosecution proclaimed his licensed .38 revolver was the murder weapon. Medical examiners, however, report that the slain officer was shot with a .44-caliber bullet as he clutched the driver's license of a man other than Mumia.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Mumia's conviction is the testimony of the slain officer's partner. Two months after the incident, the partner claimed that Mumia had confessed to the crime in the hospital's emergency room and the officer had simply forgotten to note it in his reports or mention it to anybody. An emergency room doctor says the confession never happened.
But big-city cops wouldn't perjure themselves, would they? Except maybe in Los Angeles, where the police officers branded their bodies with a grinning skull in a cowboy hat and pledged an oath of silence as they delivered unprovoked beatings to suspected gang members and framed innocent people for crimes. Eleven officers have already been relieved of duty, and USA Today reports that at least a dozen others will be implicated "in serious misconduct," including murder, in the growing Los Angeles scandal. The preliminary estimates are that some 300 convictions are tainted by L.A. police corruption.
Or what about New York City? Police lie after brutally sodomizing an immigrant with a wooden toilet plunger. Last week, an all-white jury acquitted four New York policemen after they fired 41 shots at an unarmed immigrant, striking him 19 times, including his feet. The police claimed, in direct contradiction of eyewitnesses, that they thought his wallet was a gun and shot him so many times because he didn't fall right away.
Or what about the Columbus police? Back in the mid-'90s they allowed 29 people who had admitted to committing felonies to serve on the police force. With well over 300 citizen complaints filed against the police department with the U.S. Justice Department's Division of Civil Rights, what's the city's response? City Attorney Janet Jackson--incredibly--claims that the federal government has no jurisdiction over civil rights matters involving police brutality and misconduct.
Jackson's clearly been reading the 1963 and '64 speeches of the racist Alabama Governor George Wallace, or watching old video clips of Montgomery's fascist Police Chief Eugene "Bull" Connor, who argued the same thing before unleashing the Billy clubs, dogs and fire hoses on civil rights activists.
Speaking of fire hoses, remember Mumia, a founding member of Philadelphia's Black Panther Party and its former minister of information, had exposed police attacks on the MOVE organization. On May 13, 1985, police fired water cannons, tear gas and bullets into the MOVE house in an eviction action. When their attempts to drive MOVE members from the house failed, Philly police in a state police helicopter dropped a bomb--reportedly a full five-gallon gas can with nearly 10 pounds of military C-4 plastic explosives duct taped to it--and destroyed the MOVE house and 61 other homes on Osage Avenue and the adjoining Pine Street. Eleven occupants in the MOVE house died, including five children. Only Ramona Africa and 13-year-old Michael Moses Ward survived.
Instead of a righteous outcry demanding to know why in the hell the Philly cops dropped 10 pounds of military explosives in the middle of a residential neighborhood, the focus switched to the crimes of the victim, Ramona Africa. That was in spite of a March 1986 MOVE Commission investigatory report that deemed Philly's mayor Wilson Goode and his top administrators "grossly negligent" and said the death of the five children "appeared to be unjustified homicide."
In April 1986, a jury convicted Africa of riot and conspiracy charges stemming from the bombing of her house. She served a full seven-year sentence in prison. A civil court jury awarded her and relatives of two dead MOVE members $1.5 million in June 1996.
Africa was in Columbus to lead the February 27 rally on High Street. It was good to see her in fine spirits and strong voice. It's equally important to support a new generation of human rights activists who correctly understand, as they stated in their flier, that: "The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal concentrates the criminalization of black men, the suppression of dissent, the expanded death penalty, the gutting of defendant's rights, and a whole political atmosphere based on blame and punishment of the most oppressed."
3/09/2000
Red, white and green
Will Ralph Nader rain on Al Gore's parade?
by Bob Fitrakis
On Monday night, a dozen veteran central Ohio activists met in an upstairs room at the Clintonville Community Market. Their brief agenda posed a potential danger for likely Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore--to put Ralph Nader on Ohio's ballot this November.
Unlike Nader's token Green Party campaign in 1996, when he was an official write-in candidate in the Buckeye state and spent a mere $5,000 nationally, Ralph's new raiders claim that Mr. Citizen Action will spend $5 million this election. The well-established Green Parties in California and New Mexico are looking to Ohio as a bellwether state, to judge the seriousness of Nader enthusiasts across the country.
One sign of Nader's aspirations in Ohio is his supporters' goal of collecting the 5,000 signatures needed to place his name as an independent on the ballot. They hope to do so prior to the Green's national convention in late June. The core group in central Ohio includes petitioners seasoned in the Pickerington Ponds initiative, which garnered 12,000 signatures in just one month last year. A similar group of Naderites is already active in the Cleveland area.
While many of the Nader supporters at the March 6 meeting admitted that they had copies of Gore's Earth in the Balance in their home libraries, they were quick to point out the mountain of broken Clinton-Gore environmental promises. None perhaps more infamous than Gore's hollow vow to aid the people of East Liverpool, Ohio, in shutting down the toxic-spewing WTI incinerator.
In an age of dirty foreign money--take your pick, Japanese Nippon Group for Bush or the Indonesia Lippon Group for Gore--cynicism and spinmeisters, Citizen Nader represents to many grassroots activists the last best hope for modern democracy. Nader was first recognized as a consumer advocate with his 1965 bestseller Unsafe at Any Speed, which revealed both the engineering flaws of GM's Corvair and the corrupt practices of an auto industry that knowingly marketed unsafe vehicles. GM's attempt to discredit Nader backfired, leading to a large invasion of privacy settlement and the start of his career as America's foremost corporate watchdog.
In 1971, Nader helped found Public Citizen. I joined his PIRGIM (Public Interest Research Group in Michigan) as a college freshman in 1973. We followed nuclear waste trucks and found them traveling at unsafe speeds. We watched their drivers go into McDonald's while they left their engines running and their truck cabs unlocked, opening the door for would-be nuclear hijackers. We duly reported all of this to Washington, D.C. PIRGIM also brought Michigan its so-called Bottle Bill. By placing deposits on cans and bottles, recycling flourished in the state up north.
Nader's 1996 book, No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America, eloquently argues that both the Democratic and Republican Parties are captives of well-heeled special interest groups, that our courts are corrupted and justice is distorted by corporate PACs. All of this in the name of "tort reform."
Nader's progressive opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) should sell well in Ohio, a state that's lost thousands of well-paying manufacturing jobs while the average real wage in our boomtown known as Cowtown has declined by $1.50 in the past 20 years. If Nader runs in Ohio, at least someone other than the East Side's BREAD organization will mention "livable wages" for working families. Nader authored much of Jerry Brown's insurgent progressive campaign at the Democratic Party's 1992 platform hearings. Recently, he took on the World Trade Organization and their politics of reactionary globalization in Seattle.
Both Gore and Bradley, despite their posturing in the Democratic primary, are fundamentally pro-Big Business New Democrats. Come the fall, Gore will be busy taking progressives and environmentalists for granted while he reaches just to the Right of Center to snatch votes from Bush or McCain. At the same time, the Republican nominee will be busy touting his compassion and Gore's broken environmental promises and he reaches very slightly to the Left of Center.
In Ohio, as in California and other key swing states, Nader's presence on the ballot may help break the "greedlock" that the large multinational corporations have on both candidates and major parties. As one activist explained Monday night, "The Democrats on City Council are friendly and easier to talk to about environmental issues, but they still vote the same way as the Republicans."
The well-entrenched pattern of having to vote for the lesser of two evils may give way when disgruntled progressive Democrats and independent voters see Nader's name on the ballot. While the Bushes and Gores of the political world have searched the planet to find Buddhist monks and Moonies with bags of cash to launder into their campaign coffers, Nader spent his time taking on the most powerful corporations in the world and demanding they make our automobiles safer, our water and air cleaner.
Nader would be the only true "reformer with results" on the ballot. Granted, Bush would be the reformed drinker with enough money (through his Poppa's connections) to commandeer national TV airwaves. And Gore will run on the age-old Clinton strategy, "I'm not as bad as Bush, or Dole, or McCain."
Ask not what Citizen Nader has done for you--and it's plenty--ask what you can do for him. The Nader petitioners will meet again on Sunday, March 26, at 4 p.m. at the Clintonville Community Market. For more info call 766-4511.
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3/16/2000 by Bob Fitrakis
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3/23/2000
Council clash
Cops face off over civil rights
by Bob Fitrakis
Reversing the dictum of the Good Book, newly enthroned Columbus City Council President Matt Habash decreed at Monday's council meeting that "the last shall be last." Hardly the wisdom of Solomon.
By forcing Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) members and supporters, some who'd flown in from other states, to speak at the end of an unusually mundane and boring council agenda--and then limiting them to six speakers--Habash was begging for a confrontation at the March 20 meeting.
Habash's shabby treatment of citizens and police officers who support the consent decree proposed by the U.S. Justice Department to protect the Fourth and 14th Amendments in Columbus is perplexing. The POER believes that all citizens should be treated equally regardless of their race or bank account balance when they encounter the police. The organization holds that citizens should not be victimized by racial profiling or pretext traffic stops and coerced into illegal searches and seizures.
Why have our elected officials on City Council been so eerily silent on the issue of civil rights? There is, of course, the Holy Grail of Columbus political endorsements: "FOP endorsed."
But there's more to it than that. A group of 50 or so primarily black men show up at council chambers and Habash, the life-long social liberal, acts just like the Columbus police. First, he disrespects them, then he attempts to ignore them and the problem, and then he arbitrarily exerts his authority as if to say, "Hey, white guy in charge here." And when they question his arbitrary use of authority, Habash's cop buddies come rushing in to make matters worse. What happened at council this week is a microcosm of Columbus' police problem and the nation's race problems.
To understand what Fox 28's News Center called "Council Chaos," a look at events leading up to the council clash is essential. Just recently, the first African-American City Attorney, Janet Jackson, argued the all-too-familiar and discredited Dixiecrat line of state's rights. On behalf of the City of Columbus and its co-defendant Capital City Lodge No. 9 of the Fraternal Order of Police, our city attorney claims that the U.S. Justice Department has no business in enforcing civil rights in our city.
The 1994 federal law which gave the U.S. Justice Department the authority to bring civil suit against local police for violating the constitutional rights of citizens was passed in the aftermath of the vicious beating of Rodney King and the consequent riot in L.A. If local elected officials routinely kiss the ring and rump of the Fraternal Order of Police in order to get endorsements and campaign contributions, where are minorities and the poor to turn for a redress of grievances?
The riots that rocked the '60s--Watts 1965, Newark and Detroit 1967 and scores of others--were all caused by an institutional pattern of police violence and misconduct against black communities, according to the government's Kerner Commission. There was an attempt in the '70s to educate police about the U.S. Constitution and basic sociology through law enforcement educational grants. The Reagan reaction quickly thwarted these small efforts to turn the police into the foot soldiers of the Constitution.
On Monday, the official police line in response to their demonstration of force at council chambers was "We were just doing our job." But what about Saturday? At 4 p.m. on March 18, approximately 70 marchers, many of them children, assembled at POER attorney John Waddy's law office on Hamilton Park for a short march across Broad Street to the First A.M.E. Zion church.
The clearly constitutional march in support of the consent decree was met with police-state tactics. When POER President James Moss told me to expect a police helicopter overhead because his group is deemed "subversive," I dismissed it out of hand. My mistake, as a police helicopter soon roared overhead.
As we marched, police cruisers began to appear. And then there was the too-easy-to-spot undercover guy in a car with tinted windows in a church parking lot on Broad Street. As we marched down 18th Street to the church, six cruisers were visible.
After people began to enter the church to engage in subversive activities including prayer and free speech, a young white man pulled up and informed Waddy and I that "I just wanted to let you guys know that there's an undercover cop with a video camera taping you in that alley." I suppose the police were just doing their job.
And Janet Jackson was just doing her job when she opened up her mouth and Dixiecrat states' rights sentiments came out. And I suppose Matt Habash was just doing his job when he disrespected POER supporters while rolling out the red carpet to well-heeled zoning attorneys on the payroll of wealthy developers.
And if they don't like my column? Hey, I'm just doing my job.
Bob Fitrakis spoke in favor of the Justice Department consent decree at the Saturday POER "Stand Up for Justice" rally and at the City Council meeting on Monday.
3/30/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
A new generation of ideologues and academicians are openly working to resurrect the most destructive and discredited ideas of Nazi science. This "new eugenics" movement must be challenged.
Eugenics is the science of improving a race stock through selective breeding and, as Nazi Germany demonstrated, has horribly frightening consequences. The search for a "master race" usually leads to genocide.
Such ideas are now slyly creeping back on college campuses. Internationally, the Euro-American Student Unions promote campus activism on issues related to race and science. Articles posted on the group's web site range from rants about "Jewish influences" to a "Call to white Americans." Most of its so-called science seems to worship the Bell Curve and the belief that blacks have significantly lower IQs than whites.
Ohio State University and central Ohio have a curious history relating to eugenics and Nazi scientists. As the Wall Street Journal wrote last year, "Long before cloned sheep, egg donors and sperm banks, a group of wealthy Northeastern conservatives embarked on an experiment with the help of the U.S. Army Air Corps to find a way to improve the human race...The Pioneer Fund, alarmed by the declining U.S. birthrate and rising immigration, was at the forefront of the eugenics movement."
In 1940, the Pioneer Fund agreed to pay the all-white Air Corps members for breeding children. Two of the 12 children were Ward and Darby Warburton, twin brothers born on August 18, 1940, "at a hospital near Dayton, Ohio." Their father was stationed at a nearby airfield.
William Pierce, a former physics professor and the leader of the National Alliance, frequently refers to scientists sponsored by the Pioneer Fund in his calls for race war in the United States.
Founded in 1937, the Pioneer Fund is a nonprofit foundation with the stated purpose of studying "the problems of heredity and eugenics in the human race." Pierce's National Vanguard publication, citing race scientists, claimed, "It is the Negro's deficiency...which kept him in a state of savagery in his African environment and is now undermining the civilization of a racially mixed America."
Still earlier in Ohio history, the state has the distinction of hiring away H.H. Goddard from the Vineland Training School for the Feeble Minded in New Jersey in 1918. Steven J. Gould, in his Mismeasure of Man, called Goddard "The most unsubtle hereditarian of all...[who] used his unilinear scale of mental deficiency to identify intelligence as a single entity, and [who] assumed that everything important about it was inborn and inherited in family lines."
So impressed were Ohio public officials with Goddard's work that they hired him to head the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research. Sharing Ohio officials' views, according to Stefan Kuhl in his The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism, were Nazi Party members. Kuhl points out that Goddard's pseudo-scientific writings were central to the Nazi propaganda campaign to exterminate Jews and create a master race.
Madge Thurlow Macklin, an avid supporter in the 1930s of the controversial eugenics movement, spread the gospel of improving the human race through controlled breeding throughout North America. She co-founded the Canadian Eugenics Society in 1930, served on its executive committee between 1932-34 and acted as its director in 1935.
Macklin claimed that doctors ought to "determine who are physically and mentally qualified to be parents of the next generation." She advocated compulsory sterilization for the "unfit," like schizophrenics. In 1945, as World War II ended, she was terminated from her appointment in "medical genetics" at Ontario University.
What university would hire such a professor tied to Nazi science? In 1946, Macklin moved to Columbus and began lecturing in medical genetics at Ohio State University, where she remained until her retirement in 1959.
At the same time Macklin moved to Columbus, U.S. intelligence teams were busy rounding up Nazi scientists to bring to the U.S. to work at places like Wright Patterson Air Force base in Dayton. This is the infamous Operation Paperclip. These Nazi scientists were most visibly linked to the U.S. space program and secretly worked on a variety of CIA projects, including mind-control experiments like the MK-Ultra project at OSU.
In 1993, a mural at the Ohio State University Medical School made international news for portraying Nazi Colonel Hubertus Strughold as one of the mural's medical heroes. In the 1960s, Strughold was painted in the mural along with other medical giants like Marie Curie and Hippocrates.
I suppose OSU officials were unaware that Strughold headed the Luftwaffe Institute for Aviation Medicine, which conducted notorious experiments on inmates at Dachau, including immersing inmates in ice water to see how long it would take them to die, forcing them to drink sea water and placing them in air pressure chambers and slowly removing the air.
Nuremberg documents place Strughold at an October 1942 conference on the Dachau experiments. One scientist, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, told the War Crimes Tribunal that Strughold could have stopped the experiments at any time because he headed the institute that conducted them. The U.S. Army intelligence Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects listed Strughold as "wanted."
OSU can paint over celebratory images of Nazis like Strughold, but the ideas behind eugenics can (and do) survive. As groups like the Euro-American Student Unions and Pierce's National Alliance step up recruiting efforts on college campuses and attempt to veil their hatred in academic legitimacy, we need to recognize this "science" for the racism it is.
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4/06/2000 by Bob Fitrakis
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4/13/2000 by Bob Fitrakis
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4/20/2000
Make love, not debt
Behind the lines with World Bank protesters in Washington
by Bob Fitrakis
Dubbed "Seattle Two: The Sequel," the clash between critics of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and D.C. police last weekend proved irresistible to an activist and political junkie like me. As websites starting to percolate with stories from Washington detailing young protesters' heroics and attacks by the police, I knew, despite my planned traveling partners' canceling on me, that I had to go witness history in the making. So I embarked on my own road trip to the April 14-16 protests.
In Washington, police initially claimed they'd arrested only "several dozen people" at protests on Saturday. Under scrutiny from international reporters--who are much more aggressive and accurate in their news coverage than U.S. mainstream reporters--the police upped arrest figures to "approximately 600."
Earlier Saturday, the police raided and closed down demonstration central, or "the convergence center" for the Mobilization for Global Justice, the umbrella group organizing Sunday's rally. The center, in an old warehouse, served as the headquarters for a festive, creative and dedicated movement of new activists. Offering everything from Demonstration Techniques 101 to Intermediate First Aid, Advanced Tear Gas Coping Strategies and the ever-popular Giant Puppet Construction, it's no wonder the police illegally raided the joint.
The London Independent, being run by Brits and all, failed to parrot the standard police lie bantered around D.C. Instead, the Independent stated the obvious: "In preemptive strikes, the police closed the demonstrators' headquarters as a `fire risk' on Saturday, and arrested 600 people, more than were arrested in five days in Seattle."
District of Columbia Police Chief Charles Ramsey had a different take, preferred by the U.S. press: "We probably saved their lives...We're simply concerned about their safety and we want to make sure that there are no fire hazards."
In the official police version, a couple of fire marshals just happened to be walking by and noticed somebody using a propane camping stove. Thus, the ever-vigilant fire marshals raced in to close down the fire trap. International reporters noted that, luckily, the D.C. police were in the neighborhood in full riot gear to immediately begin evacuating and arresting those who wouldn't leave.
I'm just thankful that we live in a country where the police care so much. I remember a few years back, while covering an anti-police brutality march in the Ohio State University campus area, the police were so concerned about our Constitutional rights, or at least they later swore under oath to this fact, that they dispatched three squad cars of police who inadvertently Maced the marchers.
After the D.C. police "evacuated" 200 activists against their will, demonstrators filled the street and sang: "We want our puppets, oh yes we do, the cops have taken them, and we are blue. We want our stuff back, and our food too, we want our puppets, and so should you." Police eventually turned over the confiscated puppets, art supplies and foodstuff to the protesters, who stored them in rented trucks.
London's Daily Telegraph pointed out that the saintly D.C. police had spent $1 million on "new helmets, shin guards and gloves and is splashing out another $1.6 million on police overtime." Not a bad funding priority for a city with the second highest rate of infant mortality in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti, and where a pregnant working poor mother with no health insurance waits on average four months for free prenatal care.
The next day I witnessed the D.C. police rhythmically slapping their riot batons against their shiny new riot shin guards like a drill team. This wasn't the old school bang-your-nightstick-on-the-ground and then charge routine, this was worthy of ESPN 2's cheerleader competition coverage.
By Sunday morning, as I entered D.C. for the rally at the Ellipse, police had closed more than 60 blocks around the IMF building to vehicles and barred pedestrians from walking within a two block radius. As the Independent put it, the "central bankers and finance ministers... met behind a vast, multi-layered security screen, with roadblocks, wired fences, armored cars, phalanxes of police motorcyclists of helmeted officers." It took the French finance minister four hours to get from the Watergate Hotel to the IMF, no doubt infuriating the German minister expecting his usual greased-palm pay off.
The Columbus Dispatch dutifully towed the official line, reporting on Monday's front page, beside its AP report on the demonstrations, that the IMF "provides short-term credit to 182 member nations. The loans are used to stabilize nations' economies in times of crisis."
Contrast that to the Irish Times coverage the same day: "The loans, however, come at a price; the IMF insists that in order to be eligible for loans, the poor countries must open up their markets to foreign trade and adopt the free market principles that have prevailed in the U.S. for the last 20 years."
Like the Irish Times, dozens of speakers at Sunday's rally noted the obvious: sub-Sahara Africa owes more than $200 billion--three times the value of the region's annual exports--to the IMF. Vietnam owes $22 billion, roughly 87 percent of its gross national product. The IMF/World Bank's real scam is offering easy money to desperate, debt-ridden countries in return for accessing or owning their natural resources and using their people for sweatshop labor.
Ralph Nader eloquently explained it in his rally speech. As working people formed unions and passed environmental laws to protect their nation from the ravages of large undemocratic corporations, the corporations searched the Earth and found weak and vulnerable people to exploit, thus skirting labor and environmental laws.
Nader noted the fallacy of seeing this as a battle between "free traders" and "nationalistic protectionists." It's really a battle between a rapacious corporate capitalism and the democratic rights of people trying to protect their families and communities from merciless economic exploitation. Nader recently polled six percent in a national poll for president, passing Pat Buchanan. Nader, unlike the Ivy League lightweights George W. Bush and Al Gore, understands basic stats--that there's something fundamentally wrong in a world where "300 U.S. billionaires own more wealth than 3 billion people worldwide."
Michael Moore, of Roger and Me, The Big One and The Awful Truth fame, served as master of ceremonies at the April 16 rally--not to be confused with Michael Moore, Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO Moore tried to put a happy and benevolent face on world bank policy from his fortified bunker.
Meanwhile, the other Moore, the people's filmmaker, unveiled his plan to run a potted plant for Congress against unchallenged and well-entrenched incumbents. His thinking, "The potted plant would do much less harm." Moore asked the 20,000 demonstrators to write in "Ficus" in November. They chanted back "Ficus! Ficus!"
Ohio's own Dennis Kucinich, the courageous congressman from Cleveland, officially welcomed the revelers to Washington. He also blew out the speaker system as he praised the demonstrators' commitment to human rights and social justice. At first I suspected that it was most likely another Ohio congressmen and former banker, Senator George Voinovich, tampering with cables backstage.
But powerful enough to cut through the sound system static was the chant of the young demonstrators: "Ain't no power like the power of the people 'cause the power of the people don't stop." And, later, their polite instructions: "Anybody who's not arrestable please leave the street."
Before 5 p.m. Monday, the UPI reported that 600 more arrests were made, "including 400 `voluntary arrests.'" These new young volunteers for global justice didn't stop the summit, but their message, summed up on one sign, came through loud and clear: "Make Love, Not Debt."
4/27/2000
Death rate detectives
Why is Columbus so unhealthy? The answer is right under our dioxin-filled noses
by Bob Fitrakis
Local health officials and elected leaders are dumbfounded. Why is Columbus such an unhealthy place to live? Unfortunately, though these experts refuse to acknowledge it, the answer is obvious: it's been creating a carcinogenic stink right under their noses for more than 15 years.
"Using death certificates, the health department found that the city's death rates have increased significantly between 1990 and 1998. This has happened while the U.S. rate has decreased," the Columbus Dispatch reported after the Columbus Health Department held a death rate summit on April 13. Columbus residents are dying at high rates of heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes.
Health department spokesperson Liane Egle told the Dispatch, "The mystery is what is keeping us as a city from reducing these death rates."
Dr. David Frid, an OSU cardiologist pondered, "All these diseases are related to lifestyle...Are we different from other areas?"
This is shocking--whatever could have caused this? How about the largest point source of dioxin pollution in the United States, and possibly the world--the city-owned trash-burning power plant that operated for well over a decade until environmental "extremists" shut it down.
Before it was closed four years ago, Columbus' trash-burning power plant was the primo polluter in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inventory, spewing more deadly dioxin than all sources in Germany combined, twice as much as Holland and 592 times the amount of dioxin mandated as "safe" by the EPA.
Inadvertently, our elected officials turned a trash-burner into a souped-up dioxin generator by designing it to burn dirty Ohio coal instead of less volatile natural gas. They also built it on the cheap, without stack scrubbers and virtually no pollution control devices. This would be unheard of in private industry, but perfectly acceptable by then-mayor Buck Rinehart and his political cohorts when it went online in 1983.
Add to this that Columbus essentially had no recycling program in the 1980s and early '90s and mixed all its trash together, conjuring up a toxic brew. A famous EPA document, leaked by whistleblower William Sanjour in 1994, reported that our trash-burner emitted 17,982 nanograms of dioxin (part per billion) when the suggested EPA level was 30 nanograms.
Dioxin is one of the most toxic and carcinogenic chemicals known. The Guinness Book of World Records calls dioxin 2-3-7-8-TCDD the most deadly manmade substance, more lethal than plutonium. Dioxin, as the EPA notes, "bioaccumulates up the food chain." It's stored in our fat. There's no real way for men to get rid of it, other than allowing the chemical to slowly break down in their bodies. Women, of course, can pass it to their infants through the placenta or through fatty breast milk.
The journal of the National Cancer Institute uses a "15-year lag time" to document cancer caused by dioxin exposure. Let's see--1983-84, plus 15 years, equals 1998-99. Current Columbus death rates indicate that the trash-burner's toxins are coming home to roost, right on schedule.
When reached for comment this week, St. Lawrence University biochemist and world-renowned dioxin expert Dr. Paul Connett told Columbus Alive he wasn't surprised at all that Columbus was seeing an unexplained rise in the illnesses and deaths generally associated with dioxin exposure.
"As I warned in 1994, your trash-burner was producing the toxic equivalent of nearly a thousand grams--984 grams to be precise--of dioxin a year. That's more than five times the level that led to the evacuation at Seveso, Italy, and more than was spilled at Times Beach, Missouri," Connett said. "Granted, yours was spewed into the air and spread out over a longer period of time, but it's clearly going to have massive health implications."
Connett said it's absurd for Columbus officials "to blame it on lifestyle and to call on supposed `experts' to avoid getting to the cause of the problem, which is the heavy dioxin exposure." To scapegoat "lifestyle" is "intellectually dishonest."
Dioxin was the key ingredient in the defoliate Agent Orange used in Vietnam. A month ago, on March 29, the Air Force released a study showing a 47-percent increase in diabetes and elevated heart disease levels in Air Force veterans with high levels of chemical dioxin in their bloodstreams, according to the Los Angeles Times. The study was widely reported in the New York Times, Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times, but was conveniently left out of the Dispatch "mystery" articles.
Experts estimate that 95 percent of dioxin exposure comes from dioxin-contaminated food consumption. In 1994, the Columbus Free Press published photos of dairy cows grazing near the trash-burning power plant, eggs for sale and a cultivated farm just across the I-71 expressway from the plant.
That summer, the Free Press exposed attempts by the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) to cover up the dioxin problems at the plant. Sanjour said that SWACO's actions "might constitute a criminal conspiracy to violate federal environmental laws." In the October 1994 Free Press, I reported extensively on the U.S. EPA's three-year study of dioxin and its devastating impact on children's health.
Then-mayor Greg Lashutka "discounted" Sanjour's EPA document, claiming it lacked "statistical or scientific evidence."
Columbus city officials instead brought in a hired gun, Dr. Greg Ringo, who proceeded to use outdated data to explain to a befuddled and acquiescent mainstream media "that if we averaged all the known and unknown sources of dioxin in the U.S. from areas with and without trash incinerators, then on average, Columbus has no real dioxin problem."
The real problem is that our elected officials didn't listen when cancer experts warned that the trash-burner's dioxin output would catch up with Columbus within 15 years. Now, as current health statistics show, those predictions were deadly accurate.
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5/04/2000 : by Bob Fitrakis and Jamie Pietras
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5/04/2000
Tin soldiers
On the 30th anniversary of the Kent State killings, questions still linger
by Bob Fitrakis
Like the assassination of JFK, conspiracy questions linger over the four dead corpses of the students murdered at Kent State University 30 years ago. And well it should. The U.S. government's infiltration and suppression of anti-war organizations during the Vietnam era inevitably led to massive cover-ups. Much of what we know about the government's large-scale counter-intelligence operations against its citizens crosses the line into blatant criminality.
To understand what happened at Kent State we need to remember Operations MHCHAOS and Cointelpro, run respectively by the CIA and the FBI with the assistance of the National Security Agency. William A. Gordon's Four Dead in Ohio: Was there a conspiracy at Kent State?, written for the event's 25th anniversary, and August MacKenzie's 1997 The CIA's War at Home, are required reading for anyone trying to comprehend the government's complicity in the Kent State tragedy.
The lead story in Sunday's Akron Beacon Journal, "KSU: Who fired first?," resurrects questions surrounding the mysterious activities of Terry Norman and the bizarre behavior of the FBI following the May 4, 1970, shootings. As the Beacon Journal noted, "While five years of FBI files do not reveal a `smoking gun,' they at least point to missing guns and missing answers."
Norman, a 21-year-old part-time Kent State student, was the only person at the university other than the guardsmen known to have been armed when the incident took place. Armed with a .38-caliber pistol, a surveillance camera and a gas mask, Norman's role at Kent State is suspicious. In the days immediately after the shooting, Ohio National Guard General Sylvester Del Corso suggested that the guard fired in response to sniper bullets and tried to tie Norman to the shots.
For three years the FBI denied any connection to Norman, before finally admitting that they had paid him $125 in expenses in 1970 for infiltrating the National Socialists White People's Party, a neo-Nazi organization. Gordon documented that Norman served as an informant for both the campus police and the Akron office of the FBI. Since Norman was a paid FBI informant and many past FBI informants have functioned as agent provocateurs, there's a possibility that he served this role at Kent State.
Not only did the FBI lie about its relationship with Norman, the bureau also gave false testimony to Congress regarding ballistic tests on Norman's gun. The FBI told Congressional investigators that Norman's .38 had not been fired on May 4, when in fact its own lab test indicated that it had been fired at some undetermined point since its last cleaning.
In 1973, as evidence was being gathered for a civil trial, the Beacon Journal points out that Norman's gun "and an undetermined amount of M-1 rifles used by guardsmen were discovered missing."
The Beacon Journal reports the strange scenario when, "while trying to locate Norman's gun before 1973-74 civil trial, FBI officials found it had been sent by Kent State officials back to a Smith and Wesson factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. There, it had been renickeled--giving it a new exterior, presumably for resale--but not tested or repaired."
Both Guardsman Dennis Breckenridge and Guard Captain John Martin reported to their superior officers that Norman positioned himself between the guardsmen and the students and threw rocks at the students just prior to the shooting. Tom Masterson, a student, reported that Norman may have tossed as many as a dozen rocks. Norman admitted to throwing "two or three."
Norman's activities and the FBI cover-up fit the pattern of Cointelpro provocations. The question isn't "Who fired first?" but how far our government went to suppress legitimate dissent 30 years ago, and how far they'll go in the future.
5/11/2000
The ghost of Billy Joe Barone
by Bob Fitrakis
I see dead people. It's a political sixth sense. The ghost of former Ohio Attorney General William J. Brown (nee Barone) continues to haunt the Buckeye state's pay-to-play carousel. Former Ohio Inspector General David Sturtz used to comment, "Watch it go around long enough and you realize it's always the same riders"--even if they're no longer living.
Which brings us to the legend of Billy Joe, whom I last wrote about in Columbus Alive more than a year ago ("The Ballad of Billy Joe Brown"), 10 months before his death in November 1999 at age 59.
In 1970, Brown became Ohio's Attorney General at the tender age of 29--partly due to the fat bankroll of reputed organized crime associate "Fast" Eddie DeBartolo Jr. of Youngstown, one of his biggest campaign contributors. Elected three times as a Democrat, Brown suddenly turned his Emens, Kegler, Brown Law firm PAC into a Republican money machine in 1996.
Simply a case of Billy Joe growing conservative with age? Recently uncovered civil suits filed in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court against Brown, his firm, and business associate Michael E. Scoliere, suggest otherwise. The suits also offers interesting revelations on how the game is really played in Ohio, among the living and the dead.
In June 1996, Janice Spalla, then the sole shareholder and CEO of J. Chase and Bradley, Inc., (JC&B), a debt-collection firm doing half its business through the state attorney general's office, sued Brown and his firm. The suit alleged that Brown breached his duty as an attorney to Spalla and her firm by recommending Scoliere as his replacement at JC&B.
Spalla claimed her ordeal began in 1991, when her husband John Spalla, a "special counsel" to the Ohio Attorney General, "died suddenly and accidentally during a family vacation in Florida," according to her affidavit. The widow Spalla, with three young sons, looked to her husband's "long-time friend," old reliable Billy Joe Brown.
Seems Billy Joe was no heroic Billy Jack type. After a few years of aiding the Spalla family, and receiving $82,000 in legal fees from JC&B, Brown recommended Scoliere take his place as the company's lawyer. Scoliere, like Billy Joe and John Spalla before him, became "special counsel" to the attorney general's office, a title that let him go after state of Ohio debtors. Critics have long charged that the privatization of debt collection by Ohio is unnecessary and could be easily done by state employees.
"In or around October 1994, defendant Scoliere hired Hugh DeMoss to work for plaintiff JC&B.... Mr. DeMoss, who is not a `key employee,' received vacation, health and dental benefits immediately upon starting his employment.... Mr. DeMoss was then a candidate for local political office, and defendant Scoliere was his campaign treasurer," the suit states. Spalla called DeMoss a "ghost employee" who contributed "little or no work" in exchange for $14,378; he ran for Columbus City Council in 1995.
Scoliere, just prior to leaving JC&B, also hired former City Council president and renowned political player Jerry Hammond and his company Hammond & Associates for $14,000, according to court papers. Hammond consulted and lobbied on "special counsel work" that apparently aided Scoliere more than JC&B.
The suit also alleges that when Scoliere left JC&B in August 1995, he took the special counsel work files with him, half of the firm's business. That same year, the Scoliere clan became big fans of Attorney General Betty Montgomery and the Ohio Republican Party. Mike Scoliere gave Montgomery $1,000 that year. Not to be outdone, his retired and obviously civic-minded mom Mary doubled her son's donation from Library, Pennsylvania. Mark Scoliere of Venetia, Pennsylvania, caught Buckeye fever and gave another $500. And Joe Scoliere of New Jersey matched that.
That same year, Brown and his firm began making massive political donations, many to the Republican Party (see "The Ballad"). The Associated Press reported that between 1996 and 1998, Brown received $1.9 million in special counsel fees from Mont-gomery's office after he and his firm became heavy donors.
The infant firm Scoliere and Associates, flush with special counsel debt-collection work, thanks in part to Billy Joe, also emerged as a major political donor. In the 1997-98 election cycle, the firm became a "top contributor" to the Ohio Republican Party, giving $33,500 to the state's GOP, according to Ohio Citizen Action. Let's see, that's $2,500 more than National City Bank and only $3,125 less than Bank One.
So enthused were the Scoliere clan that Mike's mother sent another $2,500 from Pennsylvania in March 1996. Perhaps strapped by a fixed income, his mom could only cough up half that amount in January 1997.
In Billy Joe's obit, the mainstream press credited him with expanding the attorney general's office during his three-term tenure by eight-fold. Reportedly, this was to fight consumer fraud. But perhaps there's another explanation. That the Ohio Attorney General's office expands its business not primarily to aid the public good but to create and pass out work to private special counsels in exchange for political donations. Maybe these merry-go-round riders, living or dead, are taking the public on a never-ending ride.
5/18/2000
Throw away the key!
The U.S.--and Ohio--leads the world in the prison industry
by Bob Fitrakis
This Saturday, the fledgling Prisoner Advocacy Network (PAN) will join with the campus-based Copwatch crowd to demonstrate against the prison industrial complex. The rally couldn't come at a better time. The cover story for the May/June issue of the investigative magazine Mother Jones shouts: "Prison, Inc.: How one corporation is turning a rusting steel town into the private-prison capital of the world."
Last year, the top national story recognized by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies dealt with the same subject--Correction Corporation of America's (CCA) attempt to turn Youngstown into the nation's for-profit prison capital. Who says the Buckeye State isn't world-class?
Tragically, the city that once led the nation in steel production now leads in prison cell "profit unit production." Much like the highly questionable and smelly policy during Governor George Voinovich's regime to allow the importation of garbage and toxic waste into Ohio, CCA "imported 1,700 of the most violent inmates from Washington, D.C." into its Youngstown prisons beginning in 1997, according to Mother Jones.
PAN correctly points out in its literature that the prison industrial complex is race- and class-based, with more than 60 percent of the state prison population so-called minorities, and virtually all coming from lower economic classes. PAN also makes key links between the prison labor industry, which pays 40 cents an hour--look out low-wage Mexican and Haitian workers, Ohio's coming at you--and the weakening of labor unions across the country. If the Communist Chinese can masquerade as just another corporate capitalist entity to use prison labor, why can't we?
This may help explain why nearly 12,000 Ohio prisoners are serving sentences well beyond their eligible parole release dates. Five to 10 will get you 10 years in the brave new world of perpetual incarceration.
Back in September 1977, Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced without warning that it would close its Campbell Works, triggering the rapid de-industrialization of the steel town. Now workers can start at CCA's prison for $24,600 a year--much less than the steelworkers made 23 years ago.
The zero-tolerance drug policies launched in the Reagan years, coupled with the "privatization of government services" mantra, led to a tripling of prisoners since the 1970s. The New York Times last year noted that many of those now incarcerated are in for low-level drug possession and sales. The rates of drug use in the U.S. and in Western European democracies are virtually identical, while the incarceration rate in Europe for such offenses is almost non-existent.
CCA rushed into the privatization gap, staffing its Youngstown facilities "with guards who had little or no experience in corrections," Mother Jones documents. Between 1995 and 1998, 79 inmates escaped from CCA's private prisons, while only nine escaped from the entire California state system, which contains more than twice as many inmates.
Still, you've got to admire CCA's entrepreneurship. It takes a certain amount of business savvy to negotiate a $182 million contract with the District of Columbia to house the area's most violent felons in a state halfway across the country.
Of course, the deal tells us far more about Ohio's elected officials, such as the infamous Representative James Traficant Jr. who, when he's not being investigated by the FBI for alleged organized crime connections, found the time to sign a "memorandum of understanding" in May 1999 to add two more CCA facilities in his district.
Quick, somebody better warn Germany's Deutsche Bank and the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry--Ohio is jumping into re-industrialization in a big, big way! The United States ranks number two in the world in incarceration rates, according to the think tank The Sentencing Project. For every 100,000 people, the U.S. locks up 600 of its citizens. Compare that to Japan, which locks up 37 of every 100,000 citizens, and Germany, which locks up 85 per 100,000. Even by imprisoning political dissents, the Chinese can only manage 103 incarcerations per 100,000. Only the former Soviet state of Russia tops the U.S. in incarceration rates.
Legendary New Left activist Staughton Lynd's Prison Forum recently launched a campaign called "Schools, not jails." There's a novel idea for a state where the Republican-dominated Supreme Court has repeatedly declared the public K-12 educational system unconstitutional because of its blatant disparities and inadequacies.
The many ex-prisoners I've talked with about the rehabilitative power of the prison system, to a man, point out that drug use is rampant inside prison walls. Concentrated, dehumanizing brutalization--with little to no education or job training--is hardly a model for reforming nonviolent drug-related behavior. But try to explain that to a Prozac nation that worships its drug emporiums. And knows that it's illegal for the lower class to be addicted without a prescription.
I'm getting so nervous and anxious just thinking about the prison industrial complex, I've got to go now and call that 1-800 number for the drugs they advertise on TV. No doubt some 40-cents-an-hour prisoner in Ohio will take my credit card number as soon as I'm diagnosed over the Internet. God bless free enterprise. If the pills come in time, maybe I can make it out to 15th and High Streets on May 20 for the 4 p.m. demonstration.
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05/25/2000 / by Bob Fitrakis
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06/01/2000
Ransom notes
Rosa Smith's personal security funding should be spent on a district in dire academic straights
by Bob Fitrakis
Columbus needs to put the death threats against public schools Superintendent Rosa Smith in context. While certainly cause for concern, the increased security sideshow shouldn't distract from the more pressing academic problems the school system faces--or the taxpayer-funded pricetag of that increased security.
Smith's death threats reportedly came on March 1, just two days after the Columbus Public Schools were placed in a state of "academic emergency" by the Ohio Department of Education. The district Smith leads failed to meet 22 of the state's 27 educational standards, destroying the academic futures of many of its students. Threats aside, Smith must spell out to the public how, with her inflated raises, she intends to solve this crisis. In the month prior to the threats, Smith came under heavy fire from supporters of Charmaine Ware, director of Northwest Career Center, and Carletta Griffis-Anderson, principal at Deshler Elementary, two administrators she suspended without pay and attempted to terminate for allegedly falsifying a retirement party reimbursement. Over 100 parents and community activists protested at the Columbus school board meeting on February 1, attacking Smith's decision, and more parents and teachers rallied at Deshler Elementary in support of the administrators on February 24, one week prior to the death threats.
Smith recommended the harshest possible penalty for the two administrators, but the death threats sideshow has since shifted the focus away from Smith's decision-making as superintendent. On February 15, the school board voted to refer Smith's decision to a Ohio Department of Education referee.
How real and frightening were the threats against Smith? On March 1, amidst mounting turmoil in the district, a call was allegedly made to the business office of School Board President David Dobos, who was out of town. Perhaps an odd way to threaten the superintendent. Still stranger, the less-than-politically knowledgeable suspect supposedly called Mary Jo Kilroy with a threat, even though she's no longer a member of the school board.
Even more bizarre, the person in Dobos' office who received the threatening call did not initially alert law enforcement, but instead notified the Columbus Public Schools' communications department which handles media and public relations for the school system. Bad choice. These are the bureaucrats paid to spin such a story in a direction that deflects criticism away from the schools' academic emergency.
Within the last year, various school superintendents and administrators nationwide have been threatened. Their districts responded differently than the Columbus school board. In January 1999 in Paris, Maine, a female vice principal responsible for checking students' lockers, cars and bookbags for drugs received death threats from four students. When she wore a bullet-proof jacket after the threats, she was criticized and forced to resign by the school superintendent. In May 1999, the Oakland, California, superintendent received a death threat telling her to "bow out, bitch, or lose your life." The police quickly arrested a suspect and the crisis was resolved. Last December in Stow-Munroe Falls, Ohio, someone mailed the superintendent a dead fish, a traditional death threat.
Certain hazards come with public service and a high public profile. Simply writing this column makes me prone to a wide range of threats. I prefer to classify them by suspects: neo-Nazis, Klan members, friends of discredited state officials and a drunk guy who vaguely sounds like Greg Lashutka. But my threats aren't costing the taxpayers money.
So far, the Columbus school board has voted $109,000 for round-the-clock bodyguards for Rosa Smith until June 30. (Of course the security contract with Hall & Associates was unbid.) A May survey of the largest urban school districts conducted by the Great City Schools organization found that 26 out of 29 districts offered no personal-protection agent or guard for their superintendent. Of the three that did, none offered the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week protection that Smith is reportedly receiving.
Columbus Public School records indicate that hiring extra special duty police for board meetings cost taxpayers $22,748 between March 7 and April 24 of this year, figuring to be around $180,000 a year.
Smith also asked the board to hire a personal driver for her, and maybe buy or lease a car, in exchange for giving up her $500 car allowance. Twenty-four of the 29 districts in the Great City Schools survey refused private or personal drivers for their superintendents.
District spokeswoman Sharon Kornegay conceded to the Columbus Dispatch that she didn't "think there had been any threats" against Smith since March 1. The projected $600,000 in additional annual costs associated with the threats against Smith are coming out of the coffers of a school district in a state of academic emergency. This money desperately needs to be put to better use.
06/08/2000
Barely passing
Comrade Bob Taft bravely leads Ohio away from the evil clutches of democracy
by Bob Fitrakis
Thank God that Premier Bob Taft, of the Taft dynasty, had the good sense to bully the Ohio AFL-CIO into renouncing its "package of populist ballot initiatives," as the Columbus Dispatch described them.
Long live Comrade Taft and the People's Republic of Ohio! The three ballot initiatives in question would have moved our state dangerously close to democracy. Particularly pernicious was "Running Dog" labor leader William Burga's idea to take politics out of the political re-districting process which, in the words of the Dispatch, "was viewed as such a threat to the GOP's control of the General Assembly that it would spark retribution against labor."
The people are rejoicing at the actions of our Great Helmsman Taft who, acting on our behalf, summoned the renegade Burga to a private meeting in the governor's Statehouse office--which Taft holds in trust for the rejoicing masses--and directed Burga along the proper path.
Every 10 years the geographical boundaries of congressional districts are re-drawn by the incumbents to protect themselves from competitive elections in the coming decade. For instance, the late Chalmers Wylie's 15th district was re-drawn in 1992 to include many of the suburbs of the Columbus metro area and rural Union County, to encompass Republican voters and thus diminish harmful dissent and debate. It's gerrymandering--drawing a district to match the politician, not electing a politician that represents the district.
So successful was the wondrous Wylie and his amoeba-shaped district that his successor, Representative Deborah Pryce, can confidently call herself "The People's Representative for Life." Pryce is so snugly secure in her district that in April, she announced that she is running for the GOP vice chair post. When asked by the very rude and revisionist Roll Call newspaper in April to cite "her most noteworthy accomplishments," she responded, "I have been in leadership for some time now. It's just time to move up a notch."
Just like in China, democracy--people's rule--can be a destructive and disruptive force. No doubt Comrade Taft called Burga's attention to the disturbing recent observation by the Washington Post: "More than three-fourths of the House seats are regarded as effectively immune from challenge. While as many as 60 districts are theoretically targeted by one side or the other, realistically, fewer than half that number are in play."
Think about it. This means 30 Congressional seats will actually be contested between the Two Noble Parties That Act As One. Careful--15 more contested Congressional seats and democracy, albeit two-party democracy, will prevail in 10 percent of our nation.
These decadent liberal ideas have been beaten back in the past. A bitter and mean-spirited group of defeated candidates, led by the misguided former Republican Representative Clarence Miller, sued the state of Ohio following the 1992 Congressional elections. Miller and his motley crew, much like the hated Gang of Four, sought to mislead the people by overturning a law and forcing free and unfettered competitive elections in Ohio.
Miller's lawsuit went so far as to demand that political districts be drawn up in a politically neutral way, to maximize democratic competition. Ha! In December 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court wisely dismissed the case known as Miller et al vs. Ohio et al, letting the venerated old way, which has blessed us with the Taft dynasty, stand.
There are many signs that our directed democracy from above is working fine. The people don't really need a vote anyway--choices only offer confusion. Earlier this year, the highly respected scholarly journal Governing Magazine gave Columbus city officials a "C" grade for city management. That is most definitely passing--it's better than a D!--and the people are pleased. We can only plead that Comrade Charleta Tavares will quit varying from the wishes of our remarkable leaders, elected and unelected, and once again bring total unity in every City Council vote.
Perhaps Premier Taft could give her guidance. During his regime, nine other states were found to have worse conflicts-of-interest than Ohio in Statehouse committee assignments. Only 36 percent of our state legislators, according to the Center for Public Integrity, sit on legislative committees that regulate their personal business interests. Being number 10 on the conflicts-of-interest list is better than being nine! Of course, being nine is not always bad, as in the case of our state's percentage of lawmakers who have financial ties to organizations that lobby Ohio state government. Nine is better than eight!
By having such ties, public servants like Senator Roy L. Ray, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, can easily converse with the 200 registered lobbyists that spent at least $3 million to help stimulate Columbus' economy and guide electric deregulation through the state legislature in 1999. Ray, wishing to take no credit for his wisdom and virtue, kindly accepted $161,000 from Ohio Edison for his thoughtful "consultation."
Through Ray's efforts, the large utility companies, including Ohio Edison, were able to recoup $8.5 billion in costs from the grateful masses in so-called "stranded costs." Each month when the people pay their bills, they offer a token to the large utility companies who built nuclear power plants and dirty coal burners, risking their health, to keep us warm. Why should they be stuck with the bad investments they made to keep us warm? Things are going so well in Ohio without democracy, that the final stage of Communism is nearly at hand. The people rejoiced when the Center for Public Integrity conceded that our state score of 66 in overall integrity--a solid D in anyone's book--was indeed a "barely passing" grade.
Bob Fitrakis was a plaintiff along with the renegades in the Miller et al lawsuit. He confesses his error and his eyes now look only to the Magical Mystery Taft for guidance.
6/15/2000
Pomp, circumstance and bigotry
OSU picks an ultra-right-wing hypocrite to lead graduates into the future
by Bob Fitrakis
Ohio State University President Brit Kirwan should ask himself: Who're the real criminals? The university administrators who invited the vacuous political jock J.C. Watts Jr. to speak at commencement this year, or the relatives and friends of graduating student Oona Besman who were handcuffed and arrested for peacefully demonstrating against the totally inappropriate presence of Watts at the graduation ceremony?
Watts, an Oklahoma Representative, the only black Republican in the U.S. Congress and the leader of his party's Congressional Conference, has spent the entire year shilling for the Christian Coalition wing of the GOP and trying to resurrect the Reaganomic fiscal policies that devastated U.S. inner cities.
Earlier this month, Watts the politician was in Columbus for a party rally. Columbus Dispatch political editor Joe Hallett pointed out the hypocrisy in his message: "Watts, who proudly associates himself with Christian conservative organizations, became a flawed messenger by delivering a sermon about personal responsibility to the faithful gathered at Ohio GOP headquarters. Unmentioned were the two children Watts fathered out of wedlock, one of whom he relied on an aunt and uncle to raise; liens filed against him by the state of Oklahoma for income taxes three times during the 1980s; and lawsuits and garnishment actions against him for nonpayment of debts."
Sounds like a perfect commencement speaker, Dr. Kirwan.
Of course, Watts Jr. believes in "family values." Too bad he didn't listen to his daddy, J.C. "Buddy" Watts Sr., who told the Topeka Capital Journal, "I couldn't be no Republican because the Republican Party is against the poor man."
Watts Sr. added this homespun wisdom: "A black man voting for the Republicans makes about as much sense as a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders." On June 3, Representative Watts denounced President Clinton's $128 million federal initiative to give computer training to the nation's teachers, instead suggesting "a new approach"--get the federal government out of education and have state governments give students vouchers for private and religious schools. In the 104th Congress, Watts distinguished himself by having a zero-percent voting score from the American Civil Liberties Union, including voting for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Nothing like hanging ancient Jewish laws on the wall to teach a kid how to Yahoo, hey J.C.?
Maybe it's Watts' contempt for diversity that made him so appealing to OSU. After all, Watts was part of the notorious right-wing Republican Class of 1994. He stood out in that class for zealously preaching against affirmative action, even as the GOP went from having 107 black delegates in its 1992 convention to having "just over 50" out of 1,950 delegates in 1996, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 1996, there were approximately 8,000 elected black office holders in the U.S. Sixty or so called themselves Republicans.
Watts is also being touted as a possible VP candidate for George W. Bush, undoubtedly because, by contrast, Bush is a downright "compassionate" conservative compared to Watts' Social Darwinism. Hyperbole? Hardly. When Clinton urged Congress to quickly pass a Patients' Bill of Rights and a bill guaranteeing prescription drug coverage for seniors on Medicare last April, Watts opposed it and said the President was "scaring seniors." That same month, he rushed to Florida to demonstrate support for the crazed Miami Cubans holding Elian Gonzalez hostage. Watts also threw in a call for increased military spending.
Speaking of spending, a March 20 Wall Street Journal story pointed out that Watts was using a loophole in federal campaign laws to quietly raise $1.5 million "below radar."
There are so many reasons why Kirwan must have wanted Watts to lead OSU's students across the commencement podium. When President Clinton asked Congress to give the Food and Drug Administration increased power to regulate Big Tobacco, it was the "moral" stand of Watts to argue that it was none of Congress' business to intercede. In February, when Clinton proposed spending $20 million to help states offer workers paid family leave to spend time with their newborn children, it was Watts who opposed it. No doubt this signaled his commitment to "traditional" values, since the U.S. is the only industrialized democracy that lacks paid family leave.
Al Gore's campaign manager Donna Brazile, the first African-American female to run a major party's presidential campaign, said at the start of the year that "the Republicans bring out Colin Powell and J.C. Watts because they have no program, no policy... They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them." It's true of the Republican Party--recall that Peggy Noonan, speechwriter to Presidents Reagan and Bush, admitted as much in her book What I Saw at the Revolution. But Powell is no Watts. He represents a more moderate and modest Republicanism compared to the screaming banshee Shiite Republicanism of J.C.
Perhaps Kirwan wanted Watts as a commencement speaker because of his courage in standing fast in support of white supremacy. In March 1999, when Democrats attempted to pass a resolution condemning the racist Council of Conservative Citizens--a remake of the old white power councils that tells us there are "nine bottles of chocolate milk" in the world and only one bottle of white left--it was Watts who raced to the CCC's defense. To deflect attacks on his white Congressional mentors, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott from Mississippi and Representative Bob Barr from Georgia, who wrote for and addressed the CCC bigots, Watts substituted a lame resolution condemning all bigotry, as opposed to that practiced by Lott and Barr. So, President Kirwan, if you need a far-right bigot who hypocritically defends "families" while he dismantles the social programs families need most, who can do it? Watts can. Just make sure you quash any peaceful protests, and send graduates' families to jail if they dare to stand in opposition to your commencement speaker. A university like OSU is the last place we want to foster dissent against a brave visionary like J.C. Watts.
FEATURED ARTICLE
6/22/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
Glenda Fravel and Jeremy Murray are accused of no crimes, and have no warrants out for their arrest. So why did they find themselves staring down the barrels of guns, pointed at their heads by two bounty hunters?
It's a bungled comedy of errors that's left no one laughing
It was a lazy Saturday afternoon as Glenda Fravel and Jeremy Murray leisurely napped, exhausted from their recent move into a house on the 1100 block of Minnesota Avenue in the North Linden neighborhood. The rest the young couple enjoyed that May 20, while Fravel's mother baby-sat their two-year-old son Brian, proved short-lived--shattered by shouting outside the front door.
Fravel, startled from her sleep, peered out the window and saw two men with guns drawn approaching her porch, shouting demands that "Jeremy" step outside. Quickly rousing Murray, Fravel frantically apprised him of the situation.
As Murray headed to the door, one of the men kicked it partly open and claimed he had a warrant for Murray's arrest. Confused, Murray opened the door and asked to see the warrant. The two men could not produce one and, uninvited, pushed past him into the house.
Fravel and Murray, both 19, found themselves facing guns, aimed at their heads--one a large semi-automatic pistol and the other a rifle that looked like "a machine gun attached to a bulletproof vest," Murray later recalled.
The armed intruders demanded to know the whereabouts of Mike Miller, the long-time boyfriend of Jeremy's mother, Dirrenda Murray. "We told them he didn't live here and we hadn't seen him for awhile," Fravel said.
The men ordered the couple out of the house and onto the porch. While one trained his gun on Murray and Fravel, the other searched the premises. Spying the couple's photo album in the search, one intruder insisted they produce a photo of Miller. The men took a photo of Miller and Dirrenda and left.
"The whole time they were here they had guns to our heads, watching each move we made. They made me write down their names and pager numbers and told us to page them before 7 p.m. and let them know where Mike was," Fravel told Columbus Alive.
"George" and "Jerry" were the names the armed intruders gave. The phone numbers they provided connected to Columbus Bail Bonds. Murray remembered that he'd co-signed an $1,100 traffic violations bond for Mike Miller in March.
The men who threatened the young couple with guns were bounty hunters, looking for a man with traffic violations.
Murray said that Jerry demanded he produce $2,000 before 7 p.m. or they'd be back to kick in his door again and take him to jail. The panicked couple began a desperate search for Miller.
For George and Jerry, the armed threatening of Miller's acquaintances was just beginning. They next beat on the door of Jeremy's grandmother, Jacqueline Murray, and her boyfriend Keith Lefton.
"They came here twice the same night and pointed a gun at me that looked like a machine gun," Lefton told Alive.
Jacqueline Murray said she was upstairs when she heard pounding on the door. When the bounty hunters talked to her, she realized they had her confused with her daughter, Dirrenda.
Meanwhile, Fravel and Murray said they dutifully paged Jerry and told him that they couldn't find Miller, and asked to be left alone or they'd call the police. "Jerry said, `Call 'em, you pussy. I'll just tell 'em you fell down the stairs,'" Murray said. "He kept saying he was going to come back and `bounce' on my head."
The couple said Jerry gave them a new deadline of 10 p.m. to find Miller. "I tried to cooperate by calling around, looking for Mike. We still didn't find him," Fravel recalled. "So I paged them and told them nothing new and to quit harassing me, I have a baby and I'm tired of worrying if my door was getting kicked in again. The guy told me to count on it. And ever since then, they've done nothing but harass me."
Fravel called the Columbus police at about 10 p.m. that night, May 20, and a cruiser was dispatched two hours later, around midnight. "But they [the police] told me there was nothing they could do," she complained.
Last Friday, June 16--nearly a month after armed bounty hunters broke in Fravel and Murray's door, and only after Columbus Alive made inquiries into the case--a Columbus police cruiser was sent back to the North Linden house to take an investigative report. Alive has learned that a police investigation has now been opened into the incident.
Fravel and Murray claimed that Jerry and George staked out their house off and on for a week after first threatening them. On Friday, May 26, the bounty hunters followed the couple's friend Chad Swimm as he left the Minnesota Avenue house with his girlfriend, Courtney Milburn.
"This mean-looking guy with a .45 pulled a gun on me and yelled, `Get the hell outta your car!' I didn't know what I did," Swimm recalled. "I thought of all the possibilities, but it didn't make sense. He grabbed my wallet out of my back pocket and looked at my ID. But I don't look anything like Mike Miller." The 19-year-old Swimm, who describes himself as 5 feet 5 inches tall, 120 pounds, wonders how the bounty hunters could confuse him with the 6-foot-tall, 50-year-old Miller.
Milburn said she witnessed the bounty hunters point a gun at Swimm and force him up against the car. "When I saw it, they shoved me back and I started crying," Milburn said.
"He's not a very good detective," Swimm added. "The first place I would've looked is Mike's house."
Don Rookstool, Mike Miller's employer at Rookstool's Custom Painting, said that the bounty hunters unnerved him in their quest to find the traffic violator. "One was out here with a big gun on his hip beating on the door and calling me up and harassing me," said Rookstool. "They were threatening to kick in my door. I told them you do what you gotta do and I'll try and bring charges. They were making my whole family and me nervous."
Rookstool also said the bounty hunters went to Marysville to search for Miller, at a painting site, and they "knocked on neighbors' doors, terrorizing them."
So where was Mike Miller this whole time, the man wanted for traffic violations deemed so serious that bounty hunters had to shove guns in the faces of his friends and family? Was Miller on the lam? Was he hiding out?
No, Mike Miller was home. On Hiawatha Street in Columbus.
And he'd been at Scioto Downs on May 20, a suggestion Murray had offered the bounty hunters.
So why didn't the bounty hunters just visit Miller at home? It appears that a simple clerical mistake was at least partly to blame for this entire, sad comedy of errors.
When Miller was arrested on March 16--for a driving-without-a-license violation from 1995 and two 1996 traffic offenses--someone at the Franklin County Jail entered his address as Hiawatha Avenue (not Street) with no ZIP code. Apparently, someone in the Court Assignment Office then entered a Westerville ZIP code for Miller, since that's where Hiawatha Avenue is located, speculated Paul Herbert, the Franklin County municipal clerk of courts.
Miller posted two separate bail bonds on March 16: $1,100 for the 1995 driving offense and $2,000 on the 1996 tickets, both with Columbus Bail Bonds.
On April 14, Miller went to court for the 1995 ticket and received a continuance from Judge Dwayne W. Maynard. Miller told Columbus Alive that he thought the continuance was for all of the offenses, since they had him in court and didn't mention the warrants for his arrest on the 1996 violations. Meanwhile, mail from the court to Miller was being returned from the nonexistent Westerville address, which, had it existed, would have located him in the middle of Hoover Reservoir.
Herbert's office contacted Columbus Bail Bonds on May 9, giving the company 30 days to produce Miller, who hadn't shown for his court date on the 1996 violations because he never received the court's notice in the mail. The bounty hunters who looked for Miller for at least a week--and harassed his friends, family and boss--would have received a $200 finder's fee for bringing him in.
When asked if he was hiding from the bounty hunters, Miller said, "Hell no! I was at my house all the time waiting for my court date to come in the mail. And then I heard that guys with guns was harassing my mother-in-law, her son and my niece's little boyfriend. They choke-slammed him on a car. He only weighs about 110 pounds."
Miller described his arrest on June 7, a day before his bond was to be forfeited, as uneventful: "A very professional, very nice man came to my house and picked me up. He told me those other two bounty hunters were `assholes.'"
Herbert stressed that it was Miller's responsibility to keep track of his court date. But, after being informed of the address error on the jail slate and from the judge's assignment office, outside Herbert's jurisdiction, the clerk expedited a new court date for Miller, who was sitting in jail.
Judge Maynard sentenced Miller to "time served" plus four more days, and he was released on Saturday, June 18.
And just exactly who are "Jerry" and "George," the hapless bounty hunters who spent a week trying to find a guy who was sitting at home? That remains somewhat of a mystery.
Randy Treneff, attorney for Columbus Bail Bonds, said he had "no idea who they are." This, despite the fact that the armed men were passing out Columbus Bail Bonds' phone number. Treneff added, "All the bounty hunters here are independent contractors."
Treneff's reluctance to acknowledge that out-of-control bounty hunters work for the firm is understandable. Earlier this year, Columbus Alive reported on the indictment of bounty-hunting brothers Troy and Barry Thoman, their sidekick James A. Coleman and Marvin Napier, their bond-writing boss. The men were charged with abducting Amy Cox and, in a more widely publicized case, abducting, kidnapping and menacing Ladasha Denny and abducting her then-five-month-old son.
Napier owns Columbus Bail Bonds, and Robert Craven, an agent licensed to his company, was also indicted on kidnapping and menacing charges in the Denny case. All of the defendants are facing trials this summer.
Detective Carl Covey, of the Columbus Division of Police's Burglary Squad, headed the investigation that led to the indictment of the bondsmen and bounty hunters. Covey pointed out the obvious problems with bounty hunters, who operate virtually unregulated in Ohio: "They've got far more rights than a police officer. They can break into the house if they think a bail jumper's in there. But what they can't do once they ascertain that the person that they're looking for isn't there, is abduct people, hold them against their will and take things from them."
On June 5, State Representative David Goodman, a Republican from Bexley, introduced a bill to protect citizens from bounty hunters. One of Goodman's concerns is that many of the bounty hunters have criminal records themselves, in many cases felonies.
In calling for "criminal background checks" of bounty hunters, Goodman commented, "It is amazing to think that this is not already a requirement. I was amazed at how many incidents existed where the very person charged with apprehending a fugitive was one himself."
"We have regulations for hairdressers but there are no provisions addressing bail bondsmen or their hired hands, the bounty hunters," the legislator added.
One provision in Goodman's bill requires that, "in order to apprehend, detain, or arrest a principal, the individual must enter into a written contract" with the insurance company or a licensed bail bond agent appointed by the company. It also requires that "the contract must state the name of the principal who is to be pursued."
In other words, if Goodman's legislation passes, it would be much easier to find the full names of the mysterious "Jerry" and "George" and to establish who authorized them to point their guns, kick in doors and "bounce" on people's heads. Perhaps this would end the absurdity of bounty hunters operating virtually unregulated, often with criminal records or under indictment themselves, terrorizing innocent bystanders in their search for clerical-error-created bond skips who aren't really hiding.
06/29/2000
Infrequent fliers
African-Americans in Columbus come out on the short end of the racial profiling numbers game at the airport
by Bob Fitrakis
If you believe the mainstream media, there's no problem with racial profiling in Columbus. And the U.S. Department of Justice's attempt to add profiling to the civil suit against the city of Columbus and the Columbus Division of Police lacks a basis in fact.
Dutifully, the journalism majors who apparently skipped statistics and basic social science methodology reported the official police line supplied by Deputy Chief John Rockwell in the last few weeks. By now I'm sure you've heard it. Since nearly 25 percent of the city population is black and only 28 percent of the traffic tickets go to blacks, obviously there's no racial profiling going on here.
Rule 1: Always define the statistical "universe." Do blacks drive at the same rate as whites? Most studies indicate that blacks have fewer driver licenses, drive less, are demographically younger and disproportionately use public transportation. This is a mistake repeated often in political polls when candidates sometimes release data for all eligible voters instead of "likely" voters.
As pointed out by James Moss--the president of Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) and a retired officer and outspoken critic of the Columbus police department--what matters is the number of black drivers, not blacks in the population. A majority of people in the African-American workforce do not own an automobile or have a driver license. Approximately eight percent or less of the licensed drivers in Columbus are African American. So, if the statistical data from the Columbus police department is correct, 28 percent of tickets going to eight percent of the drivers--probable cause that some Columbus police officers are involved in racial profiling, Moss argues.
Racial profiling is not only measured in traffic tickets. It's measured in statistics of police stops and arrests for such things as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing official police business. This is the key data that needs to be collected.
That's why Mayor Michael Coleman's May 31 memo to new Public Safety Director Mitchell Brown is so important. The mayor wisely proposes that Columbus police cruisers be equipped with real time video cameras "to protect both our officers and our citizens." If Rockwell is right and the police aren't profiling and they're acting professionally, they have nothing to worry about.
Also, the mayor rightly wants "to create an internal `officer leadership institute' to provide officers with continuing education, particularly in the areas of personal protection, changes in the law, cultural sensitivity, civil rights and anti-discrimination laws and community policing."
The most damning evidence offered by Moss and the POER regarding racial profiling isn't the traditional "Driving While Black" or DWB problem of frequent traffic stops, but his allegations against the narcotics squads at Port Columbus International Airport. Moss claims that former Columbus police Detective James Hagan contacted POER in 1997 to report racial profiling at the airport. Moss asserts that Hagan, then a 25-year veteran of the force, told him that K-9 dogs were being used to sniff for traces of illegal drugs on paper currency carried by African Americans.
Moss said Hagan "told us that ticket agents were rewarded monetarily by the drug task force at the airport who helped in this illegal profiling." In a POER press release issued June 23, Moss said the latest statistical data "from the Columbus police showed out of 205 stops [at the airport], 148 stops were African Americans, 38 were white, and 19 were Hispanic. The number of African American stops represented 72 percent of the total stops." Keep in mind, there's undeniable data that blacks are infrequent fliers, so there are far fewer African-Americans at the airport to begin with.
These numbers, if correct--and I've not known Moss to be wrong yet on these public records requests--represents far more than racial profiling. It represents a racial war against black fliers. Even more shocking is Moss' finding that 63 African-American women were stopped, compared to six white women. This means African-American women represented 95 percent of all the stops of females at Port Columbus.
Police usually focus on the racist retail level of drug sales, busting small-time users in downtrodden neighborhoods instead of breaking up the overwhelmingly white import and trafficking operations. If the narcotics squads really wanted to make a dent in drug traffic at the airport, they'd focus on the cargo planes and semi trucks at Port Columbus and Rickenbacker International Airport (usually owned by white businessmen) instead of stopping the few black fliers waiting at gates as passengers. Moss said the police's narcotics division got their ideas about the drug trade from the Pam Grier flick Jackie Brown.
The Columbus police are already backpedaling on the airport profiling, blaming it now on the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Citizens in Columbus deserve full disclosure of all documents regarding profiling at Port Columbus. The numbers that the police have provided so far just don't add up to justice.
07/06/2000
Passing gas
Why is Ohio really being squeezed by soaring gas prices?
by Bob Fitrakis
Why are gasoline prices so high in Ohio lately? While the silly debate about pennies-per-gallon gas taxes rages on front pages, a much more interesting tidbit was buried on page B5 in the Columbus Dispatch on July 1.
In a brief article titled "Fuel pipeline battle turning into marathon," Marathon Ashland Petroleum spokesperson Chuck Rice said: "With the recent gasoline price spikes, there should be little doubt that recent supply constraints in the Midwest have been due in part to infrastructure constraints and inflexibility."
Chuckie's obviously engaging in doublespeak. No, I'm not referring his repeated use of the words "recent" and "constraints" in a single sentence. The problem is his babble about "infrastructure"--a thinly veiled pitch for the 130-mile pipeline that Marathon's planning to carry liquid fuels from the Ohio River to our fair Capital City.
A permit application filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documents Marathon's proposal to climb every hill and forge every stream, or at least many of them, to get oil across Ohio. The pipeline Rice is shilling for will cross 319 streams and 40 wetlands.
Some may recall that on February 25, Marathon withdrew its federal application for the pipeline after coming under heavy criticism because its permit excluded any public notification and comment. At the time Rice said he didn't know how long the project would be delayed. Apparently, it will be on hold through a summer of high gas prices, in order to soften up public opinion that is more and more sensitive to environmental concerns.
Jacked-up Ohio gas prices may make Buckeyes forget about Marathon's early February pipeline spill that allowed more than 573,000 gallons of crude oil to flow into Kentucky streams and farms. Joe Smith of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection said the oil spill amounted to the equivalent of 64 separate 18-wheel tankers.
Squeezed by gas prices and often trapped in oversized SUVs that they never take off-road, suburban Ohioans are likely to tune out the real horror stories of crude oil flowing into Two Mile Creek, the Kentucky River tributary, or the stench of sulfurous odor opponents of the pipeline will certainly point out. Hell, if gas prices go high enough, that little old 286,000 gallon spill of fuel oil at Marathon's Calettsburg refinery last November won't be enough to merit a lifted eyebrow.
Remember as gas prices soared to $2 a gallon in the Midwest, 40 and 50 cents above prices in Tennessee, oil companies' flacks usually claimed it was due to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency demanding cleaner gas. But as the Dayton Daily News pointed out back in June, "Ohio does not require reformulated gas."
Rice also mentioned to the Dispatch that other factors, including "a major Midwest pipeline rupture in March," may be a cause.
Over and over again, Rice beats the drum for a new pipeline. Exactly why do we need a new oil pipeline? A Dispatch editorial, attempting to paint Marathon as a safe company, noted: "Ohio, despite having three times more pipeline miles than highway miles, has had relatively few spills." Why exactly would Marathon need a new pipeline if there's already so much capacity in the state?
South Bloomingville farmer Thomas Amerine suggested a plausible explanation in his letter to the Dispatch: "The only motivation to build the Marathon-Ashland pipeline is money." Amerine and critics charge that Marathon's plan will save the company four cents a gallon on 100,000 or more gallons a day of fuel by building a new 14-inch high pressure line. Amerine claims that Marathon already has "pipelines in place to serve central Ohio for the next 20-plus years."
If Marathon and the oil industry keep prices artificially high in Ohio, the public is less likely to express concern as trees are clear-cut in the Hocking Hills region to make way for more fuel. As naturalist Paul Knopp Jr. stressed in a letter to the Dispatch, the planned pipeline will be coming through "the most visited scenic spot in Ohio," and one with "a healthy, biologically rich landscape." Wonder what it'll look like after one of those Kentucky-type oil spills?
In a joint letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency expressed concern over "numerous aquatic habitat crossings," and the impact on wildlife along the proposed pipeline route. Marathon plans to build the pipeline along an abandoned 1916 pipeline route. The original pipeline had an easement of 25 feet or less. The company claims it's entitled to a 75 foot easement for construction "and a permanent 50-foot easement that would allow for aerial inspection of the corridor," according to the Dispatch.
Rising gas prices should have Ohioans thinking about alternative and cleaner fuels, about decent mass transportation, and about how we're being ripped-off by oil companies who blame environmental standards when Ohio doesn't even require reformulated gas. I've lived in Ohio nearly 14 years and there's always been enough gas--until now. Conveniently, the gas squeeze comes as Marathon fights for its ecologically devastating and economically unnecessary new pipeline.
07/13/2000
The hunter
Mysterious bounty hunter George steps forward with his version of the "Hunted" escapades
by Bob Fitrakis
Three weeks ago, in the June 22 cover story "Hunted," Columbus Alive reported on the escapades of two bounty hunters going by the names of "Jerry" and "George" who allegedly kicked in doors, terrorized innocent people with guns and, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, promised to come back and do it again. We couldn't track down the bounty hunters at the time; as was reported, they never fully identified themselves to the people they were pursuing.
But one of the elusive bounty hunters finally tracked me down at the Alive offices last week to tell his side of the story.
George Pardos, a six-foot one-inch, 295-pound ex-Marine and former OSU wrestler, told Alive in an interview that he's the mysterious "George" in question.
Pardos was described by both Glenda Fravel and Jeremy Murray as the "nice one" in the good bounty hunter-bad bounty hunter routine that occurred at their home on May 20. The couple claimed that two uninvited bounty hunters kicked their door ajar and pushed past them into their house, one of them with a pistol and the other with a rifle that looked like a "machine gun attached to a bulletproof vest."
Pardos said he can't speak to the two apparent shoe prints on the couple's door because he was the security, or "sweeper," who had gone behind the house to make sure the man they were looking for didn't escape out the back door. George contends he was invited into the couple's house and said that he neither pointed his SP89--a $5,000 9mm assault rifle banned for importation by the Clinton administration--nor his Glock backup at the couple. He admitted that, during the incident, he was wearing a bulletproof vest to which the SWAT-style rifle attaches.
As to Murray and Fravel's contention that the bounty hunters coerced them into giving a photo from their photo album of Miller, Pardos said he asked them twice and they gave it to him.
"Jerry" had a contract with Columbus Bail Bonds, according to Pardos, to find Mike Miller, who'd failed to show for trial on two traffic tickets. When asked why he needed to be so heavily armed to pick up a bond-skip with no history of violence, Pardos stressed as the "sweeper" that it's best to be over-prepared.
Pardos identified himself as the owner of Mid-Atlantic, a recovery service for commercial loan and banking firms seeking to repossess capital equipment. He said he was trained in the military to chase deserters and produced certificates showing four military seminars related to the security field. He also produced a transcript documenting a degree in criminal justice from Ohio State University.
He readily admitted that many bounty hunters lack training and that there's definitely a need to regulate the industry.
Pardos refused to disclose the last name of "Jerry," but promised to tell him that Columbus Alive wants to speak with him. Pardos admitted that, since the May 20 incident, Columbus Bail Bonds is no longer using his and Jerry's services.
As for Fravel's frantic call to 911 at 11:58 p.m. that evening, and her report of phone harassment from "Jerry" and his threat that he was headed back over to kick in their door, Pardos said he can't speak to the specifics, but he thinks that was unlikely.
The paperwork that Pardos produced from Columbus Bail Bonds appeared incomplete, which may explain why the bounty hunters went to the address on Minnesota Avenue where Fravel and Murray reside. Pardos asserted that Columbus Bail Bonds only gave the bounty hunters Miller's skip on a 1995 traffic ticket, which contained an old address. Miller had also skipped on a 1996 traffic bond, which listed a Hiawatha Avenue in Columbus as his address, but listed an incorrect Westerville ZIP code, a mistake easily identified by a former Columbus Bail Bonds employee, Bill Neill.
Neill said that this may have been a paperwork foul-up but suggests it's also possible that the bounty hunters were given incomplete paperwork so they wouldn't have to be paid their 10 percent finder's fees on both bond skips. "When I worked there, the owner of the firm would do it to beat the bounty hunters out of skip fees," Neill explained.
Pardos insisted that he had the legal right to go to the Minnesota Avenue residence because Murray, although only 18 years old, had been the second co-signer on the bond for Miller, his mother's boyfriend. The beefy bounty hunter contended he is well within his rights under an 1872 Supreme Court decision and existing Ohio law.
Currently, Ohio law allows bail bondsmen to arrest those who skip their court dates. The law reads: "For the purpose of surrendering the defendant, the bail [bondsman] may arrest him at any time or place before he is finally charged, or, by a written authority endorsed on a certified copy of the bond, may empower any person of suitable age and discretion to do so."
Pardos portrayed himself as a man of "suitable age and discretion." What's open for debate is whether the tactics used by him or, more specifically, the as-yet-unheard-from "Jerry," were appropriate to use against someone accused of traffic offenses. I know if Pardos shows up at my house that well-armed because I was the second signer on a bond for someone who missed a court date on a traffic ticket, I'm liable to defend myself and property out of my basic right of self-defense. What happens when the bounty hunters encounter somebody as well-armed as they are, without "discretion"?
07/20/2000
by Bob Fitrakis
It's the last Saturday, ever, in Columbus' original "liberated zone" known as Tradewinds. Business is brisk inside the campus area's former countercultural headquarters. It's a fire sale--not a prairie fire as the Revolutionary Youth Movement envisioned sparking in the late '60s--and one customer is panicking and hording his favorite incense.
The store's owner, 59-year-old Yvette Garayalde Wyman, calms the frantic buyer by offering him a phone number to put him in touch with her supplier. A young man quickly grabs a T-shirt inscribed "Tree Hugger." I buy a sterling silver ring engraved with, Wyman informs me, a Native American fertility symbol.
The store's motif and merchandise seems like the product of a business merger of Garcia, Hoffman and Guevera. That's Jerry, Abbie and Che, for identification purposes. On July 15, Tradewinds' last Saturday, unrepentant yippies mingled easily amongst the tie-dye with a new generation of retro, neo and nouveau hippies and freaks.
Scott Solomon, Wyman's landlord, recently gave her a three-day eviction notice.
Tradewinds' pro-bono lawyer, Joe Reed, got a seven-day extension from the court--so on Wednesday, July 19, the business founded by the late and legendary community activist Libby Gregory was scheduled to vanish from the Columbus counterculture scene for good.
But not without one last fight.
Former Columbus Guardian editor Mimi Morris e-mailed her community of friends and political allies last week: "For over 30 years, this store has been the place where OSU first encountered alternatives, where exiled Columbusites went to check in when visiting their old hometown, and (very importantly) where the Columbus Free Press found sanctuary when the FBI tried to stifle dissent in Columbus."
Morris, a Free Press staffer and activist in the '70s, raised the question of whether Campus Partners' ambitious redevelopment plan killed the store. My, my. How the times are a changing--back.
Wyman said she became part owner with Gregory in 1975. "You had to do political work to be part of Tradewinds. We wanted to run a business the way we wanted work to be rather than the way it was," she explained.
Local artist Paul Volker, who worked both at the store and on the Free Press, sheltered in the upstairs offices, echoed this theme: "I think that one of the great things about Tradewinds was that it was a business, a capitalist endeavor, but it did not belong to `capitalists' per se. So it's like saying, `Capitalists don't have a monopoly on capitalism.' Having a store that functions as a hub for the community is a great thing."
Volker, along with Jill Hurley, painted the comfortably familiar mural on the Tradewinds storefront, 1651 N. High St. on the corner of Chittenden Avenue. There was "the dragon over the door," "the moon and the stars" over the window and at the end "the great wave."
Symbolically, the great wave known as the "corporate chaining and malling" of America blew away the entrepreneurial spirit of Tradewinds. When asked what would take its place, Wyman offered, "The word `Starbucks' comes to mind."
Wyman called it the "sterilization of High Street" and suggested that Campus Partners made the already run-down south campus area even worse by forcing out businesses. "There's simply no foot traffic or businesses left to attract customers," she explained.
Already in Chapter 13 reorganization, Wyman refused to pay a $2,000 water bill she claimed resulted from a burst pipe. "I've never paid water in all the time I've leased here and suddenly I'm responsible when a pipe burst?" Wyman believes the landlords who own the deteriorating property in the south campus area intentionally ran it into the ground, because it made more economic sense; once the area becomes blighted and a slum, they'll be eligible for public money, she observed.
Tradewinds' lawyer Reed admitted that the store didn't pay its rent on the first of this month, but has always paid its rent by the end of each month, and had never had a problem with this arrangement before. More than a year remained on Tradewinds' lease, which Reed says is "below market value." The $2,000 water bill was the first water bill the store received in 19 years, he said.
Reed said he is filing a counterclaim, for "intentional interference with business," and sees as Solomon's motivation the "gentrification" of High Street, which has unleashed corporations with deep pockets looking to lease in the campus area.
When contacted by Columbus Alive, Campus Partners spokesperson Steve Sterrett said he was unaware of Tradewinds' demise. "Campus Partners gets unfairly blamed for a lot of things," he said. "I was sorry to see the Souvlaki Palace go also. We favor locally owned small businesses."
Sterrett noted that Tradewinds was not part of agency's "Gateway Development Project," since the store was north of Chittenden and 12th avenues. He said that Tradewinds fit into Campus Partners vision of a lively and vibrant High Street.
He also denied a rumor that the Tradewinds landlord was on the board of Campus Partners.
Landlord Solomon also told Alive that neither he nor his father serves on the Campus Partners board, despite rumors circulating in the pro-Tradewinds camp. On the advice of his attorney, Solomon declined to comment on the Tradewinds situation, citing pending litigation.
As the Alive goes to print, Morris and Volker are orchestrating a symbolic "de-commissioning" of the Tradewinds murals. Volker said, while communities have often come together to paint murals, "This is the first one I know of where people have gathered to paint one out."
He explained, "It is important that we in the community `bury our own dead,' as it were. The store is closed, the mural is dead. Rather than letting the landlord have the privilege of destroying the work, I felt it was better to paint it over ourselves. In this way, the community...the family...still retains full rights to the corpse."
Volker sees the white paint covering his mural as "a death shroud."
Tom McGuire offers a positive perspective on Volker's website, columbusart.com, seeing the "diaspora" from the community gathering spot in a different light: "Good things sprang from such seed as was scattered around," from the strong activist winds that blew from Tradewinds.
The community activism nurtured at Tradewinds lives on in numerous organizations, from the Community Festival to the Free Press quarterly journal and website to this very column. Still, I'm reminded that we don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing up High Street.
07/22/2000
Holy roller
by Bob Fitrakis
After weeks of political punditing, Texas Guv George W. Bush finally picked his veep candidate, his dad's friend Dick Cheney. Left out in the cold are the prominent Republican Ohioans mentioned as Vice Presidential material: U.S. Representative John Kasich, Senator George Voinovich, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and U.S. Representative Deborah Pryce.
Not that I didn't wish and hope and pray for Johnny Boy Kasich or former Governor V to be the "spare tire on the auto of government," just for the fodder they'd provide for this column.
Bush and Kasich would have been too much like an Eddie Haskell-Opie Taylor ticket. What would Kasich bring to the campaign? From his failed presidential run we know he has less voter appeal than Alan Keyes and he's fairly obscure even elsewhere in Ohio. Of course, it would be interesting to see the national press dig into his early and bizarre connections to the Moonie cult, which was all over his 1982 campaign and played a key role in his election to Congress.
I suspect Kasich's real motive for seeking the VP spot is so he could leverage his position to get backstage passes for all the hot rock groups. As a mere Congressman, he once threatened the Grateful Dead that they would "never play Washington again" when they wouldn't let him backstage.
Voinovich as veep is even more deliciously inviting. Instead of the sycophantic PR and steady drumbeat of propaganda from the editorial pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, you'd get the national press crawling up his corrupt butt with a proctoscope. Not a pleasant sight, but politically far more interesting than President Reagan's colon polyps.
Voinovich, a proven statewide vote-getter, has more secrets than Tony Soprano, and more connections. Voinovich told the Dispatch that he "credits the Holy Spirit for guiding his long political career." What, was he watching reruns of the Godfather again? I'm thinking of Michael Corleone at a baptism scene.
Now George, was it really the Holy Spirit that guided you to write a letter getting the alleged mob-connected Don King out of jail after his second murder? You sure it wasn't Casper the Friendly Ghost you were listening to, who told you to do a favor for a friend? You sure it was the apparition of God who told you to go to the mobster Teamster boss Jackie Presser's funeral in 1988 and give the eulogy? C'mon, who was it whispering in your ear when you appointed Umberto Fideli to the Ohio Turnpike Commission after you tried to appoint reputed organized crime associate Carmen Paresi but were rejected?
You still never explained why you brought the formerly CIA-owned and drug-linked Southern Air Transport freight company to Rickenbacker International Airport with state tax dollars. Was the Holy Spirit simply trying to reform the now-defunct airline that had a dozen of its pilots linked to drug-running in a CIA Inspector General's report? Maybe you could elaborate on how this Holy Spirit thing works its connections to the Iran-Contra scandal.
I suppose you could make a case for the Holy Spirit telling you to "honor thy brother" by passing state tax dollars to him to go on a prison- and jail-building spree. The front page of the June 26 Cleveland Plain Dealer offers us profound insight into your reality, Senator. Did the voice of God speak to you in 1996, directing you to the exact spot in a 259-page budget bill so you could veto an obscure provision that everybody but you and your brother supported, allowing his employer, the Corrections Corporation of America, to retain its seven-year tax abatement? Sure, the Dispatch buried the AP report about your veto inside its pages. But the national press wouldn't have been so kind if you were Bush's running mate.
It's not God at work in your political career, it's mammon. A top member of your 1996 team that sought to secure your VP nomination told me that your brother Paul Voinovich worked openly to scuttle your nomination because he didn't want the scrutiny.
I can only hope that your claims of righteousness, which are like filthy rags, will one day undergo a final judgment. I'm still praying for a New York Times interview and investigation of your leading minority contractor when you were governor, the infamous and always entertaining T.G. Banks. There's still a lot of explaining to do.
Still, Bush-Voinovich would have been the most publicly pious team, with the Texas governor already proclaiming Jesus as his favorite philosopher and George guided by the third entity of the Holy Trinity. They could have mastered Machiavelli's old maxim: Don't take religion seriously, but always be the first one out on high holy days for public professions of faith if you want to manipulate the people.
INVESTIGATION
08/03/2000
The Politics of Punishment
part two of a Columbus Alive investigation
by Bob Fitrakis
The hot-button capital-punishment debate has become even more contentious in the last year. The rise in use of DNA evidence is garnering the most headlines--freeing wrongly convicted people from death rows nationwide--led by a high-profile execution moratorium in Illinois.
How are innocent people landing on death row? A June study by Columbia University law professor James Liebman provides a peek at the answer. In the 28 states Liebman studied, 68 percent of death-penalty convictions were reversed at the federal level because of errors in the judicial process.Polls indicate that people are increasingly questioning the fairness of the death-penalty process. A June Gallup poll showed that 66 percent of Americans support the death penalty, down from 80 percent just six years ago. That support may continue to decline drastically, under further scrutiny of state executions. Much like a trip to the sausage factory, Americans may lose their appetite for lethal injection when they learn what really goes on in courtrooms and on death row.
A jury sentenced John Byrd Jr. to death without knowing that Ronald Armstead, the trial's key witness, avoided a return to prison after his testimony against Byrd. The jury was misled about the witness' long criminal history, and left with the impression that Armstead's testimony was an unselfish act of civic virtue.
Attempts to cross-examine Armstead about his criminal past were thwarted by prosecutors' objections sustained by the trial court. Thus, jurors could not consider pertinent facts, such as that Armstead had recently committed a crime, had violated his parole, and was facing an impending return to the penitentiary.
He was hardly a selfless citizen doing a good deed.
Such suspect prosecutory behavior caused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, then the oldest and longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, to announce in February 1994 that he would vote to oppose all future death sentences. He claimed that the system for imposing capital punishment was simply too arbitrary and biased against poor and black defendants to pass Constitutional muster.
"From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," Blackmun proclaimed, "I believe that the death penalty, as currently administered, is unconstitutional."
Blackmun's words are those of a judge appointed by President Richard Nixon because of his dedication to "law and order." Blackmun played a key role in restoring capital punishment in 1976, yet he concluded that "the problem is that the inevitability of factual, legal and moral error gives us a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent and reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution."
Three weeks after Justice Blackmun's condemnation of the death penalty, Ohio officials worked fervishly to carry out Byrd's execution, despite his remaining appeals. Then-Attorney General Lee Fisher filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on March 14, 1994, after conferring with then-Governor George Voinovich, asking the court to allow Ohio's first execution in 31 years.
Byrd waited in his death house cell 13 steps from "Old Thunderbolt," as the Cleveland Plain Dealer called it, or "Old Sparky," as the competing Columbus Dispatch referred to the electric chair. None of the mainstream news coverage at the time raised the Armstead issues exposed by Columbus Alive last week.
Byrd condemned "the apparent unprecedented and mean-spirited tactics being employed by the `Honorable' Carl Rubin, the judge assigned to my case. It seems that although he had my writ of habeas corpus and motion for a stay of execution before him since March 7, he decided to wait until the `11th hour' before making a ruling, knowing full well that the situation was critical and time was of the essence." The Sixth Circuit Court removed Judge Rubin from handling Byrd's case.
In 1994, after Ohio failed to kill Byrd, then-State Senator Betty Montgomery chaired a panel seeking ways to speed up appeals in death penalty cases. A news account in the Plain Dealer documents her utter contempt for an academic witness suggesting that the system was fundamentally flawed. Montgomery invited the family of slain convenience store clerk Monte Tewksbury to testify, and ended up endorsing a constitutional change that outlawed a death penalty appeal to the state appeals court.
Why was the state of Ohio in such a hurry to kill Byrd? Maybe so nosy reporters couldn't dig up Armstead's dubious past and shed light on the suspicious behavior of the Hamilton County prosecutors. Late last year, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer specifically singled out the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office for its overzealous conduct in pursuing death-penalty cases.
In February, Illinois Governor George Ryan halted executions in his state for a year pending a full investigation of the capital punishment system, one which has admittedly put 13 innocent people on death row. Remember, it wasn't the mainstream media that brought the wrongful convictions to light, but a college professor and his students doing research on death penalty cases.
The New Hampshire legislature voted in May to repeal the state's seldom-used death penalty, although Governor Jeanne Shaheen quickly vetoed the proposal. The next month found both the states of Maryland and Virginia commuting or postponing a death sentence because of questions of basic trial fairness.
This, of course, did not stop Texas governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush from carrying out the execution of Gary Graham on June 22, even after three jurors filed affidavits expressing doubts about the lone eyewitness' identification of Graham. Bush's actions drew the condemnation of the ultra-conservative Reverend Pat Robertson.
At the July meeting of the American Bar Association, the group's President-elect Martha Barnett, citing "gross injustice" in the application of the death penalty, called upon the nation's lawyers to support a moratorium on capital punishment. As the lawyers met, President Bill Clinton put the execution of any federal prisoners on hold while the U.S. Justice Department reviews new clemency rules for death-row inmates and completes a federal death-penalty study.
Concern over the death penalty spread to the Ohio Statehouse as Representative Shirley A. Smith introduced legislation calling for a moratorium on capital punishment in Ohio. Governor Bob Taft immediately dismissed Smith's bill and issued a statement that he has no plans to suspend death-penalty sentences. The governor's spokesperson, former Plain Dealer writer Mary Ann Sharkey, informed the media that "He [Taft] believes we have sufficient safeguards with the appeals process and the parole board, and the governor reviews each case."
At the same time that Taft was preaching the superiority of Ohio's capital punishment system, Florida's St. Petersburg Times released a study indicating that "the state's registry of death-penalty defense lawyers appears to have been designed to keep death-row inmates from getting the full defense they are entitled to." Florida Governor Jed Bush supports the system where death-row attorneys cap their hours at 840, despite a study saying on average they need 3,300 hours to thoroughly defend their clients.
Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan said, "If you make a mistake in a non-capital case and the defendant is innocent, you can open the prison door. But if you make a mistake in a capital case, you can't dig up" the defendant.
Lacking the Ohio's governor's confidence, a judge in Georgia ordered the body of a man executed four years ago to be dug up for DNA testing a little over a week after Taft's pronouncements. A Virginia judge turned down a similar request earlier in the year.
08/17/2000
Impending collapse
The savings and loan scandal haunts City Council hopeful Warren Tyler
by Bob Fitrakis
The ghost of the Home State Savings and Loan scandal, described by the Washington Post as "Ohio's biggest banking crisis since the Great Depression," haunts Columbus City Council hopeful Warren Tyler.
Currently residing in Upper Arlington, Tyler may move to Columbus to do for our fair city what he did for the state under Governor Richard Celeste. Tyler headed Ohio's Commerce Department from January 1983 to February 1985. Celeste moved him to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency just prior to the eruption of the Home State Savings scandal.
Before City Council votes to appoint Tyler--who's on the shortlist of possible replacements for Councilmember Fred Ransier--they might want to read his August 1985 testimony before the Ohio General Assembly's Joint Select Committee on Savings and Loans. Tyler, as the commerce director, supervised the Ohio Division of Savings and Loans. In his testimony, he acknowledged that he failed to inform Governor Celeste of the problems plaguing Marvin Warner's Home State Savings and Loan.
Tyler told state investigators that he never mentioned it to the governor because he was "convinced" the situation was "under control." What he supposedly never told the governor was that Warner's savings and loan had invested more than $140 million of its customers' cash in an obscure Florida-based company with questionable business practices. When that company, E.S.M. Government Securities Inc., collapsed in March 1985, 90,000 Home State depositors were left in the lurch.
Celeste closed 71 Ohio savings and loans to prevent a run on the banks and had to virtually liquidate the state's private insurance fund to cover the losses. Warner later served 28 months of a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for nine fraud-related charges in connection with the savings and loan collapse.
Better yet, skip Tyler's testimony and read the statements from former Chief Examiner of Savings and Loans Kurt A. Kreinbring, who, according to the Columbus Dispatch, resigned his state job "because of his frustration of the [Celeste] administration's unwillingness or inability to force Home State to divest itself of the E.S.M. investment."
Kreinbring told the joint select committee that "he had at least three conversations with Tyler between mid-1983 and November 1984 about Examiner's [Kreinbring's] concerns in connection with Home State's ballooning investments and repurchase agreements with E.S.M."
Facts suggest that Tyler was the governor's "go to" guy in protecting Warner, a fat cat money-raiser for Celeste and other powerful state and national Democrats. Warner emerged on the national political scene in 1975 as a major fund-raiser for then-obscure one-term governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Despite the protests of the American Foreign Service Association, President Carter appointed Warner Ambassador to Switzerland, where press accounts say he was not well-received.
In the spring of '82, Warner became the Daddy Warbucks for the underdog Celeste in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Warner contributed $36,000 to the Celeste campaign, hosted a fund-raiser that netted $200,000, and co-signed a $75,000 loan at a critical financial time, according to the Washington Post. The governor's campaign manager, Dick Austin, became a registered lobbyist for Home State Savings. Warner had open access to Governor Celeste, and when the savings and loan scandal broke, more than one Ohio newspaper compared him to the notorious Burt Lance, who was forced out of the Carter administration.
On February 27, 1981, IRS, DEA and U.S. Customs Service agents busted Great American Bank of Dade County as part of Operation Greenback, a Reagan administration attempt to crack down on drug money laundering. The bank and three middle-level employees were later indicted for allegedly laundering $94 million in drug money. According to press accounts, Warner had large holdings in Great American Bank, which he quietly sold after the raid.
The untimely deaths of three Warner associates hampered the federal government's investigation into the E.S.M./Home State collapse and allegations of money laundering. Alan Novick, president of E.S.M. and a Celeste contributor, died of a heart attack November 23, 1984, just prior to the scandal. Novick was later portrayed as the "domineering mastermind of [the] huge financial fraud," according to the New York Times.
Warner's son-in-law and prominent Miami attorney Steve Arky died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 22, 1985. E.S.M.'s court-appointed receiver, Thomas Tew, accused Arky of closing his E.S.M. account and withdrawing $2 million just before the collapse.
On November 13, 1986, under pressure from federal investigators and facing a three-year prison term, E.S.M.'s comptroller Henry Earl Riddel "suffocated himself with a plastic bag," according to the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal reported that the court-appointed trustee for E.S.M. was investigating more than $6 billion in questionable E.S.M. transactions.
The New York Times reported that Ohio officials were warned of the problem in a 1982 audit: "Home State faced the possible loss of $125 million in investments with E.S.M.," Sylvester Hentschell, chief examiner for the Division of Savings and Loans, advised the division's Superintendent Clark Wideman in October 1982. Wideman resigned in January 1983.
Enter Warren Tyler as commerce director. In July 1984 the new superintendent of the Savings and Loan Division, C. Lawrence Huddleston, wrote Tyler and warned him, "I'm not willing to take the hit when this thing blows up." Still, Tyler claimed that it wasn't worth bothering the governor over the impending Home State collapse.
Now Tyler wants to bring his political skills to City Council. Perhaps it would be best if the council suggested he go live with Marvin Warner on his horse-breeding Warnerton Farm in Ocala, Florida. The farm was worth an estimated $5 million in 1993 when the moneyman left prison.
NEWS BRIEF
08/24/2000
Ohio Citizen Action organized scores of local activists to join with parents and children from Marion's contaminated River Valley Middle and High School in a vigil Monday night at the Governor's Mansion. The candlelight vigil was a desperate plea to Governor Bob Taft to halt the opening of the River Valley Schools and to reassign the students before the beginning of classes, slated for Tuesday, August 22.
Demonstrators carried signs asking "What if they were your kids?" and insisting that "Kids shouldn't play on toxic waste."
The two River Valley schools were built on the site of the former U.S. Army Marion Engineering Depot, the largest facility of its kind in the nation until its closing and subsequent sale to the school district in 1961. The U.S. Army acknowledges dumping, burning and burying solvents, fuel oil, chemical agents and paint on the property for nearly two decades.
Some 70 different chemicals have been documented on or near the school property, including arsenic, vinyl chlorine, tricholoroethyline, benzo (a) pyrene, chromium, lead, PCBs and a host of toxic solvents.
In 1997, the River Valley school nurse reported to the Ohio Department of Health that a disproportionate number of leukemia cases had struck River Valley students and graduates. Between 1966 and 1995, leukemia death rates rose by 122 percent in the city of Marion, and brain cancer death rates increased by 40 percent in the county. The rate of esophageal cancer is 10 times higher than expected, according to Ohio Citizen Action. In 1999, the U.S. Army found "an eminent threat to human health" on Army Reserve property near the schools.
Citizen Action spokesperson Noreen Warnock told those gathered at the vigil that a "state of emergency" exists in Marion, and produced an executive order her organization drafted for the governor's signature. The order calls for "the reassignment of all students to other schools."
Marion resident Mike Griffith shares that sentiment. He told Columbus Alive, "All the state and federal pronouncements are always qualified. They'll say there's no eminent or immediate danger but they don't want to assess the combined risk of a hundred chemicals and 20 metals in the soil and air in and around the school."
Kent Krumanaker of Marion suggests that it would be easy to reassign the schoolkids to four other schools in the county. "We wanted it closed three years ago. We need to take these kids out of harm's way," he said.
Last year, River Valley School Superintendent Thomas G. Shade filed an application with the Ohio Schools Facilities Commission Extreme Environmental Contamination Program in order to get funds to build a new school. The application noted that "extensive ongoing investigations by the [Army] Corps have revealed that the entire site is contaminated and it includes a six-acre chemical waste disposal pit."
"Arial photos suggest that former disposal areas may extend below the current middle school building," the application continues. "Surface soil contamination contains unacceptable levels of carcinogenics" which the students are being exposed to through "inhalation, ingestion and dermal contact."
The superintendent's application to the facilities commission pointed out that environmental studies "show extensive and severe surface and subsurface soil contamination in many areas utilized by the students, including the athletic fields, practice areas and the agricultural activities area."
The school district is currently gathering evidence for a possible lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers.
The governor was not in during the course of the candlelight vigil, but state troopers guarding the residence promised to deliver the newly drafted executive order to him. Many of the demonstrators vowed to stay all night in order to make their plea to the governor in person before the schools opened Tuesday morning.
08/31/2000
Super Populist
Gore's quick change leaves him looking like a pale imitation of Nader
by Bob Fitrakis
Much like Clark Kent, the mild-mannered preppy New Democrat Vice President Al Gore did a quick change at the Democratic National Convention and emerged as Super Populist. Gore now pledges to fight for "the people, not the powerful." His new slogan and denouncements of "Big Tobacco, Big Oil, big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the HMOs" is reminiscent of President Bill Clinton's 1992 rhetoric fashioned by leftist pollster Stanley Greenberg.
Al From, the head of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, recently told the Washington Post that he doesn't see a problem with Gore using populist rhetoric "so long as it's used to sell centrist policies." Clinton used similar tactics to twice carry the five critical swing states of Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Pennsylvania--states where GOP governors have won 12 out of the last 13 elections.
But Gore faces obstacles in Ohio that Clinton did not: The presence of Ralph Nader on the statewide ballot and a reinvigorated Ohio Green Party supporting his independent candidacy. Nader, who's raised $2 million and is running a serious campaign this year, unlike 1996, should appear on 45 state ballots by election day. In 1996, Green petitioners in Ohio failed to get the 5,000 signatures necessary to place Nader on the ballot.
Ohio's key role as the nation's foremost bellwether state--having picked the winning president in all but two elections in the 20th century--will elevate the debate over Nader's candidacy, especially since last week's Survey/USA poll of likely Ohio voters showed Gore and Governor George W. Bush in a virtual dead heat in the Buckeye State.
While Gore loyalists predict that the Nader campaign will wither in Ohio, Nader forces in central Ohio are riding a wave of optimism. In January, 11 people showed up for the first statewide campaign meeting. There was a slight improvement in March when a dozen people attended a central Ohio Nader meeting at the Clintonville Community Market. Last week, some 65 Nader campaigners met at the Northwood Community building. As a former Franklin County Democratic Party wardperson, I don't remember the local Democrats turning out 65 volunteers for any campaign, even when there was free beer.
Nader's explosive potential to attract voters was demonstrated on July 21 when more than 1,000 enthusiastic supporters packed OSU's Independence Hall to cheer the nation's foremost consumer advocate. An OSU campus Green Party emerged almost spontaneously from the Nader appearance.
In contrast to the pseudo-populism of Gore, it's easier to believe Nader when he tells you the problem is "excessive concentration of power and wealth in a few hands," or when he says, "instead of government of, by, and for the people, we have a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors and for the DuPonts." Nader's dedicated his whole life to holding these behemoth corporate entities accountable--as opposed to Gore and Bush, who've dedicated themselves to shaking down corporate PACs for campaign contributions.
"I've had many, many folks say that when they listen to Nader talk, they couldn't believe it. Somebody was actually saying the truth. Some describe it as `a religious experience,' I kid you not," local Nader campaign spokesperson Paul Dumouchelle told Columbus Alive. "There is a hunger out there for a political movement that truly speaks to the situation of Americans suffering from an economy where real wages have declined in the past couple of decades, where people are so time-starved from working low wage jobs to make ends meet that their children's upbringing is suffering, where everyone suffers from real and painful health care insecurity or increasing health care expenses that leave them paying more for less care than before. Ralph Nader is offering real solutions to these problems."
Without Nader's presence in the campaign, you can bet that Al Gore would be pandering to the right of center with conservative rhetoric, instead of doing his impersonation of William Jennings Bryan. Expect to hear increasingly shrill attacks on Nader from Gore loyalists invoking the supposed specter of the "Greater Evil," the Republicans' Bush.
But what about the evil known as the WTI waste incinerator? Remember, candidate Gore promised the people of East Liverpool, Ohio, that he would close that toxic generator back in '92. He didn't.
And what about the Veep's role in championing the privatization of the Piketon Gaseous Diffusion Plant--a scam that will enrich the investment bankers who brokered the deal but threw hundreds of well-paid union workers out of their jobs?
Gore can talk all he wants about "earth in the balance," but it was he and Clinton who pushed NAFTA through Congress without any continental environmental standards, minimum wage or occupational health and safety requirements.
Ultimately, the Nader campaign is not about winning the White House; rather, it's about building a progressive grassroots alternative movement in Ohio. This is more important than ever, since the Ohio Democratic Party has turned its attention to large and questionable "soft money" donations and its base is more Astroturf than natural grassroots.
Nader's message is clear and he needs to be heard: "The corporations are becoming more arrogant, more powerful, more abusive and more shameless. They're taking over the two parties in full vision of the mass media that is reporting every detail, every day, and they don't care. The two parties don't care.... And they can't reform themselves."
09/07/2000
NEWS BRIEF
Police critics say they're being harassed
Last week's decision by U.S. District Judge William Rea allowing the Los Angeles Police Department to be sued under the federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) might not be a bad idea for Columbus, suggests James Moss, president of Police Officers for Equal Rights.
"In Columbus, it's hard to prosecute police officers for criminal activity. The way they've designed the internal affairs system, where it covers up rather than exposes wrongdoing, needs to be changed," Moss told Columbus Alive.
Former Public Safety Director Thomas Rice recommended that the city separate the Internal Affairs Bureau from Columbus Division of Police oversight and move it out of police headquarters, so the bureau would serve as a more effective watchdog. Moss agrees with the intent of that suggestion and goes even further, suggesting that we may need "a new unit or new [oversight] system in Columbus." Moss argues that there's a standard pattern for dealing with police critics in Columbus, and virtually every complaint made to the Internal Affairs Bureau comes back classified as "unfounded," with the implication that those complaining are always "lying about the incident."
Moss, a retired 24-year veteran police sergeant with the Columbus Division of Police, has continued to raise allegations of police misconduct and harassment even after the U.S. Department of Justice finding that the division has engaged in a "pattern and practice" of abuse against minorities, women, poor and young people. Moss contends that he's paying the price for blowing the whistle on city police.
Last March, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery's office sent a letter to Police Officers for Equal Rights, Inc. requesting the "submission of registration material and annual financial reports with applicable fees for years ending December 31, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998." So far, POER has turned over financial reports for the last three years and has requested reports from the older years from the group's accountant.
Moss claims this is just another form of state and local "harassment" of a group complaining to the federal government about the Columbus police. Of course, it may be natural for the Attorney General's office, which for decades kept lists of "subversive" groups, to investigate Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER).
Moss has provided tapes of phone calls he received that he categorizes as "threatening and harassing" to the Columbus Division of Police Organized Crime Bureau, and he says he's filed "several reports with the local FBI."
In a recent letter to Columbus Dispatch writer Bruce Cadwallader, Moss wrote, "All Columbus police members who served on our [POER] executive board have been charged by Chief [James] Jackson with some petty and fabricated charges. This tactic is a way to intimidate our members to quit."
For a recent article, the Dispatch attempted to contact 14 POER members. The paper reported that "three declined comment, saying they feared retribution from white officers."
Last month, the battle between the civil rights group and the police division heated up after POER called upon the local U.S. attorney to seek indictments against police officers who allegedly assaulted two black youths in separate incidents on the Near East Side. At an August 7 press conference about the alleged assaults, Moss went so far as to charge that the first elected African-American city attorney, Janet Jackson, was not doing her job. "You can't go to the city attorney with these things, so where do you go?" Moss asked.
The city attorney responded, "Don't accuse me of not doing my job until you give me the opportunity to do my job," the Dispatch reported.
POER is now advocating tactics similar to the campus-based Copwatch organization: The organization wants "citizens to arm themselves with cameras, video cameras and tape recorders to protect themselves when police officers engage in criminal activity." Moss sees this as an obviously "more proactive role" in monitoring officer conduct.
Moss asserts, "It is so easy for our members to align with the status quo. Our members must be willing to challenge unjust incidents, stand for unpopular causes, and have strength to fight the status quo." He says the main reason that POER has been so successful in its struggle against police misconduct within the police division is because "many honest Columbus police officers" are giving the POER information.
He readily concedes that the group's activities have taken a toll on his private life and causes him concern over his family's safety. He points out that his daughter, Shondrika L. Moss, was stopped and searched by the Columbus police at Columbus International Airport, an act he terms "a blatant form of racial profiling."
On August 16, the police division sent Moss its usual findings in four complaints he had pending against police with the Internal Affairs Bureau. Last September, he filed charges against Officer Joseph Plancon for allegedly assaulting him at a KKK rally; the next day he alleges that Officer Phillip S. Grounds "conducted a biased vehicle accident investigation" against him; he filed the same charge against Officer Donald Hoar three months later; and he also alleged that last April 18, Officer Roy B. Constable "used excessive force," illegally detained him, and pointed a firearm at his forehead. The Columbus Division of Police found all charges "unfounded."
To make matters worse, Moss insists that the Columbus police have been making duplicate copies of his records requests, thus inflating POER's copying bill. In an August 10 letter, the city claimed that POER owes $6,084.05 for a 1996 records request and is planning to refer the matter to the city attorney's office for collection.
09/07/2000
MEDIA WATCH
Drug policy reformers last week were talking about Newsweek's September 4 story on Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey's chronic habit of secretly taping interviews with reporters.
The fact that McCaffrey--whose Office of National Drug Control cut secret deals with major TV networks to slip anti-drug messages into prime time TV and secretly tracked visitors to drug-policy related web sites--would secretly tape interviews with journalists is no big shocker.
What is surprising is that then-New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal reportedly was one of those taped by McCaffrey in 1996. They were talking off-the-record about ways to attack millionaire philanthropist George Soros. Soros, whose wealth was used to foster drug reform think-tank the Lindesmith Center, is frequently beaten up in the press by die-hard drug warriors like Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse head and infrequent Washington Post columnist Joe Califano.
As a columnist, Rosenthal's certainly entitled to spew his own anti-drug opinions (Rosenthal, who was editor of the Times from 1977 to 1986 and is now a columnist for the New York Daily News, is a notorious drug war hawk). But strategy sessions with government sources? Gee, maybe those crazy drug law reformers at NORML and High Times are onto something when they say the mainstream press is conspiring with the government against pot-smokers.
When McCaffrey visited Columbus last March, he met with the Columbus Dispatch for an hour, though what they talked about never appeared in print. Incidentally, McCaffrey backed out of a scheduled interview with Columbus Alive after the paper submitted some proposed questions to him, as requested. We wanted to ask about contradictions in the country's drug policies. McCaffrey suddenly had to cancel the interview.
Arena secrets exposed!
A secret comparable to the final episode of Survivor?
That's what WBNS is saying about the yet-to-be-opened Nationwide Arena. With promises of suspense and intrigue rivaled only by Geraldo Rivera's 1985 exclusive look at Al Capone's tomb, Channel 10 has been running commercials all week boasting about its exclusive "first look" at the Columbus Blue Jackets' home on September 8. The arena officially opens the next night with a sold-out Tim McGraw and Faith Hill concert.
The station's team of crack reporters must have fought tooth and nail to get access to a place shrouded in such mystery. Or, more likely, they just got the keys from John F. Wolfe, whose Dispatch Printing Company owns Channel 10 and is a 10 percent minority partner in the yet-to-be-opened arena.
It must have been a tough decision for Wolfe, deciding which of his babies--the Dispatch or Channel 10--would get the exclusive scoop. (What, no Wolfe-owned WBNS 1460 AM radio? Oh yeah, they're broadcasting the hockey games.) In the Sunday, September 3, edition of the Dispatch, the paper ran a special, 16-page pull-out section on the arena. Can't help but wonder what nooks and crannies are left for Channel 10 to explore. Let's just hope they fare a little better than Geraldo.
But let's give credit where credit is due here. At least the Dispatch disclosed that it has a financial stake in the arena. Granted, the disclosure was a little hard to find--and believe us, Media Watch was looking. On page six of the 16-page fluff job, buried in the middle of a story about how much money the city is spending on the arena ($33.3 million), the Dispatch admitted that the city is spending money on its arena.
Maybe the small disclosure was the Dispatch's way of avoiding a Staples Center-style fiasco. A year ago, in a parable that's become legendary among journalists, the Los Angeles Times published a special Sunday magazine devoted to the Staples Center, the new L.A. arena in which the Times is an investor. (The Times' Staples Center magazine pull-out was 164 pages, a little heftier than the Dispatch's 16-pager.) The problem was, the Times agreed to share ad revenue from the Staples Center magazine with the Staples Center--without telling the Times writers working on the magazine or disclosing the financial interest to readers. It was a textbook breach of journalistic credibility: You don't give money (lots of it, it turns out) to the subjects of your stories. The Staples Center fiasco was so embarrassing to the Times, the esteemed Chandler family, who owned the paper for nearly a century, quickly sold the Times to the Chicago Tribune, and the Times publisher and CEO behind the Staples magazine were both shown the door.
But the Dispatch had no qualms about letting readers know who owns what, at least those readers who made it through the page-six story about sewers and road construction. Presumably, the Dispatch scribes writing for Sunday's arena pull-out already knew they were covering a company investment.
(In the interest of further disclosure, you should know that Columbus Alive publisher Sally Crane's family is a minority investor in the Blue Jackets, not that it's done us any good yet. Media Watch is still waiting for an invitation to the Pizzuti Club Lounge.)
We don't blame the Dispatch for the fawning coverage. The arena is a big deal--we're excited about it--and the daily paper in any city would be expected to provide a laudatory special section like Sunday's "A big-league building." We're just looking forward to the day--one month from today--when Columbus will become a big-league city and we can stop defensively calling everything "big league."
Revelation of the week
"Abusing trust key trait of con artists"
--Columbus Dispatch headline
September 5, page A1
FEATURED ARTICLE
09/14/2000
How did nuclear missile parts land in a Mansfield junkyard? The U.S. military doesn't deny the mix-up, but doesn't want to give Allen Hogan his day in court
by Bob Fitrakis and Jamie Pietras
Allen Hogan's 27-acre scrap yard, the Autojumble, and his adjacent house stand on Mansfield's Fifth Avenue as a radioactive testament to the Cold War. Just exactly how Hogan and his young daughter Erin became some of the last casualties of the nuclear arms race is a reminder that the U.S. military-industrial complex's fear of the former Soviet Union may still be responsible, to borrow a military term, for collateral damages.
On a cold, March day in 1994, Allen Hogan drove to a Columbus auction and bid on Lot 178 offered by the U.S. Defense Revitalization and Marketing Office (DRMO). In an apparent bargain, Hogan bought 2,180 pounds of scrap magnesium for $75, to resell.
"I looked at the math," he said. Hogan figured the magnesium was worth $400 to $500. "It looked like a no-brainer."
What the government failed to disclose at the sale, but now readily admits, is that Hogan unknowingly took possession of hot waste from a former Minuteman nuclear missile, made up of a radioactive magnesium-thorium alloy. Hogan had his ton of "scrap magnesium" trucked to his Mansfield salvage yard. For nearly three years, Allen worked and Erin played, and the little girl helped her dad sort through the scrap metal, surrounded by high levels of radiation.
"The stuff got drug around and kicked and stomped and spread and shoved around and stuck in various corners," Hogan said. He didn't have a clue the material might be contaminated.
Hogan recalls that he and Erin would gather trash on their property and burn it in a barrel during those three years. Government records indicate that in a later cleanup, a radiation-contaminated burn barrel was removed from the Autojumble. Eventually, the nuclear waste contaminated virtually the entire property.
Hogan's medical records indicate that in January and April of 1995, he was examined for nasal inflammation, tender sinuses and a nasal septum defect, all likely symptoms from breathing radioactive material. He couldn't go to Christmas dinners at the in-laws the year of his nasal problems. "I laid home on Christmas day because I couldn't breathe," he recalled.
In October 1996, amidst growing health problems, Hogan contracted with Northern Ohio Scrap Service of Cleveland to crush and remove various car bodies. The scrap service took the junk cars to the Luntz Corporation in Canton for shredding and recycling.
On November 22, 1996, Lake County Auto Recyclers of Perry, a subcontractor, returned four crushed cars to the Autojumble after the cars had set off a "radioactive antenna" at the Luntz Corporation. Hogan determined that what the four cars had in common was the scrap magnesium he had stored in their trunks. In a later affidavit, he said, "It occurred to me that there might be a connection."
Within days, Hogan contacted DRMO in hopes of confirming his suspicion. Ben Wilmouth soon called from the Radiation Safety Office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and set up a mid-December meeting. Wilmouth came out, photographed and surveyed the property, and told Hogan that it was probably "mag-thor" radioactive waste.
Hogan contends in a lawsuit filed last December in U.S. District Court in Columbus that Wilmouth assured him "that the government would take whatever steps necessary to take care of the situation, and that they would remove the mag-thor from my property." Naively, Hogan took the government at its word and assumed "that would be the end of the problem."
Several U.S. Air Force personnel descended on the Autojumble in January 1997. Their mission was to remove the mag-thor scrap. Hogan claims that they told him the mag-thor "was nothing to worry about." At the end of January, Wilmouth returned with still more personnel to haul out the four radioactive cars and a flatbed truck full of mag-thor. It appeared all was going well. In April 1997, Wilmouth returned again, to arrange the "big, final cleanup" that would solve the problem. Hogan says that Wilmouth and other government officials repeatedly reassured him that there was nothing to worry about and everything would be as good as new.
Hogan swears that he "told the officials that we had handled, sleep near, worked and played in these radioactive materials, and even burned pieces of it for years. They advised me there was no problem."
On June 10, 1997, the government installed a project office trailer on Hogan's property to coordinate the crew of up to 16 workers who toiled for three-and-a-half weeks on site. Air Force representatives promised complete removal of soil if necessary and issued a press release to that effect.
The Mansfield News Journal ran an article on the day the cleanup started under the headline "Radioactive material found: Air Force mistakenly sold scrap material, assisting with cleanup." The story quoted Larry Glidewell, an environmental public affairs specialist with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, assuring everyone that "most of the 87 pounds of metal was cleared away in January."
"[I]f any soil is shown to contain thorium, it will be removed," Glidewell told the News Journal.
The amount of metal Glidewell cited apparently referred to the thorium the government removed. Hogan repeatedly tried to find out how much of the total metal was removed--he bought one ton of "magnesium," not 87 pounds--but received no answers, he said. Glidewell declined to comment for this story, citing government policy on pending litigation, as did other military personnel contacted by Columbus Alive.
Air Force officials attempted to clean the property using bulldozers and other heavy equipment in June 1997, but Hogan says that "I continued to find pieces of the mag-thor alloy routinely." After the "big cleanup," Wilmouth came back and took away the additional radioactive material collected by Hogan.
Columbus Alive has viewed a videotape of Wilmouth and Hogan wandering around the Autojumble with Wilmouth's Geiger counter repeatedly registering "hot" for high radiation. Despite these readings, the U.S. Air Force informed Hogan on July 15, 1997, that the U.S. Air Force Office of the Command Surgeon had determined that potential adverse health effects due to the radioactive contamination was "infinitely small to insignificant."
The government paid a third-party contractor to perform a radiological survey of the site and collect soil samples in July 1997. The contractor concluded that no soil excavation was needed. A September 5 letter from the Air Force informed Hogan that both the third party contractor and the government now believed that future health risks to the Hogans were "negligible."
Later in 1997, Hogan bought an old ambulance and stored it for resale. Ironically, he found a booklet in the ambulance giving instructions for the handling of radioactive materials. The book indicated that burning thorium was hazardous to anyone within 1,000 feet.
"My daughter and I had burned pieces of mag-thor alloy as we cleaned parts of the yard. This was the first time I ever had an inkling that there were health risks associated with our exposure to this mag-thor," Hogan recalled. "You're not supposed to be smoking this, ingesting this, putting it on your food. Well, when you're a six-year-old child, where do you put your hands? That's my fear, this is my only child."
Government documents show that another 18 pounds of radioactive waste was removed from the site in October 1998. In February 1999, another 30 pounds of radioactive material was carted away.
Under the Federal Torts Claim Act, Hogan had to file an administrative claim with the Air Force before he could sue for damages. On January 28, 1999, he filed his initial administrative claim alleging permanent injury to his business, property and himself due to the radioactive contamination of his land. He listed himself as the "claimant" but discussed in detail his daughter Erin's exposure to the radioactive waste. Hogan filed a second administrative claim with the Air Force on April 9 alleging that the radioactive contamination of his property constituted an "on-going tort, a continuing nuisance."
The government's response in a June 21, 1999, letter shocked Hogan. Judith M. Regan, chief of the Air Force's Environmental Torts Branch, wrote Hogan that: "We regret that you were sold the magnesium-thorium alloy. However, you have failed to file a timely and substantiated claim. Therefore, we cannot make any payment to you."
Regan reasoned, "Clearly, you suspected the material you had was radioactive in October 1996 when the vehicles you tried to sell were returned to you. You were certainly aware of the radioactive material in December 1996 when an Air Force representative visited your salvage yard. Consequently, any claim you had as a result of the purchase of the magnesium-thorium alloy had to be filed prior to January 1999. However, your first claim was not filed until January 28, 1999, therefore the statute of limitations bars certain aspects of your claim."
Also, since Hogan had not officially listed Erin as a claimant, but merely discussed her, she was also barred from receiving money for her exposure to radiation. By Regan's reasoning, "If you burned the alloy prior to January 1997, then any claim for injuries is barred by the statute of limitations. If, on the other hand, you burned the alloy in or after January 1997 then your claim is barred by your own negligence, since you knew or should have known you were burning radioactive material. A reasonable person would restrain from burning such material as it might be harmful to do so. Additionally, we believe that any open burning of material you knew to be radioactive would have violated Ohio law."
Hogan is worried the government might actually come after him for violating state law against burning material he didn't know was radioactive. Frustrated with a situation that's escalated to a "slow-moving version of 60 Minutes," Hogan took a sample of his radioactive junk and left it in an envelope outside the office of a claims lawyer at Wright-Patterson. "I was returning lost property--Is that crime?" Hogan asked.
Apparently so, said Hogan. He's been banned from Wright-Patterson and said U.S. attorneys have been waving the incident "like a carrot" in front of his legal counsel.
Eight government attorneys submitted a motion to dismiss Hogan's claims on April 28, 2000. The United States of America, the official plaintiff in the suit, will be arguing its motion before U.S. District Judge James Graham in Columbus on September 25. The government will argue that Hogan's claim should be dismissed not because it is invalid, but because he should have filed it sooner. For example, since Hogan "remembered suffering from a deviated septum and rectal bleeding in 1994 or 1995," court documents note, he apparently should have surmised then that the government had accidentally contaminated him with radioactive material.
Hogan's attorney James McNamara calls the government's position "absurd." As McNamara sees it, "The government made a huge mistake. They admit they erroneously sold radioactive waste to my client, contaminated his property, assured him that everything would be OK and now they're saying that because he trusted their assurances, he's barred because of a statute of limitation claim."
The 48-year-old father said he's merely seeking retribution for the government's radioactive screw-up. "This is my only hope," Hogan said of the lawsuit. "I thought the Air Force was supposed to protect us from nuclear attacks."
"The bottom line is [the radioactive mag-thor] is not mine. It's theirs," Hogan continued. "They have failed to clean up. They have lied about the health issues. What else is there? I could run away and hide. I could walk away from this, but this is my life's work."
9/14/2000
Stone cold steel
AK Steel wages an old-fashioned class war against its workers
by Bob Fitrakis
It's been a hard year for the 620 locked-out members of the United Steelworkers of America Local 169--as hard as the steel they used to forge in Mansfield's AK Steel plant. The workers and thousands of their supporters rallied, marched and broke bread together in a "One-Year of Solidarity" rally in the downtown square last Saturday, September 9.
On September 1, 1999, AK (then Armco) Steel brought back the good old days of class warfare by locking out its workforce. It happened after the workers' contract expired on August 31 that year and the union members voted to continue working while bargaining for a new agreement.
But when the night shift showed up, the steelworkers were greeted by a newly installed chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and patrolled, literally, by an army of 200 jack-booted private security guards. As the workers tell it, within a matter of hours the century-old Bowman Steel Mill turned into a twin of the even older, heavily fortified federal penitentiary that Mansfield's famous for.
AK Steel is demanding that workers accept unlimited mandatory overtime, after 120 jobs were eliminated. Refusal to work the overtime would be cause for termination. Prior to the growth of the United Steelworkers union in the 1930s, workers routinely worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, with a mandatory 24-hour day once every two weeks when the day shift switched to night shift and vice versa. Many Mansfield workers contend they are once again being asked to choose between their jobs and their families, and they shouldn't be forced to work under threat of fire because the company threw 120 hard-working co-workers and neighbors into the street.
The steel company is also demanding the usual anti-labor provisions that have become typical in the new corporate economy: Destruction of long-standing seniority practices protected by the union contract; cuts in contributions to the workers' pension plan; and the right to contract out work to cheap non-union labor.
Neither Main Street in Mansfield nor Wall Street have responded to the reactionary tactics of the company. In the year since the lock-out started, AK Steel shareholders have lost more than $1.3 billion in value in their stock holdings. Alan H. McCoy, an AK spokesperson, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the company "needs a market-competitive contract and the ability to schedule workers to meet customer demand."
Local, state and federal politicians have overwhelmingly sided with the workers. On March 22, 10 Ohio Congressional representatives, a majority of the state's delegation, signed a letter to AK Steel's Chairman and CEO Richard Wardrop asking: "What provocation could possibly justify this heavy-handed response from AK Steel?" The letter said, in part--and Columbus residents are likely to have seen this quote on billboards here in the capital--that the conduct of AK Steel would seem to be an embarrassment to the state of Ohio. The representatives are urging AK Steel to open its heavily fortified gates and allow the workers to return to work and continue bargaining.
The presence of the private Darth Vader-clad security force stirs heated emotions in Mansfield. Workers on Saturday were quick to point out that a former guard told the Mansfield News Journal that he and his cohorts were trained to provoke the locked-out workers. Workers claim that the guards in full regalia have followed various union members and their families around town in an attempt to intimidate them. Speaker after speaker at Saturday's rally denounced AK's tactics as "economic terrorism."
The most amazing thing about the rally was the old-fashioned spirit of community solidarity it evoked. The attitudes of the workers and their supporters stand in stark contrast to the vicious anti-social market-driven thuggery of AK Steel. An honor system prevailed where you donated whatever you wanted in exchange for food and drinks. One of the locked-out workers was an extraordinary chili chef, and he cooked up a big vat of molten chili to share with supporters. Plenty of big names showed up to taste the chili and speak out against the lock-out: Bill Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO; Noreen Warnock of Ohio Citizen Action; Marcia Webb of the NAACP; Alice Chen of United Students Against Sweatshops; and my personal favorite, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.
How will it end in Johnny Appleseed's hometown? I'm betting that the seeds of solidarity sowed by a tight-knit community of workers, neighbors and friends will emerge triumphant over the cold black jack-boots of corporate power. Solidarity forever.
NEWS BRIEF
09/21/2000
In a strange tangent to the corruption allegations against Fairfield County Sheriff Gary DeMastry, a strongly worded and potentially embarrassing lawsuit was filed last week against a high-profile Buckeye Lake developer and member of the powerful Wolfe family. The complaint involves allegations of possible criminal wrongdoing against Andrew B. Wolfe, the son of Edgar T. Wolfe Jr., the late publisher of the Columbus Dispatch who died in a plane crash in 1975.
Andrew Wolfe is a Buckeye Lake-area developer and the president, CEO and sole shareholder of LOBOCO, Inc., according to court records. Wolfe's property holdings include the upscale Heron Bay development at Buckeye Lake. Marty Finta, LOBOCO's former vice president and chief financial officer prior to his February 10 termination, is suing Wolfe for "an amount in excess of $10 million."
Finta's complaint alleges that he was wrongfully terminated after confronting Wolfe about a LOBOCO employee's allegations that "Wolfe had pressured him [the employee] to lie in his testimony as a favor to one of the potential targets of the [Fairfield County] grand jury proceeding."
"The employee stated he had been pressured to testify falsely about being a paid drug informant for the Fairfield County Sheriff's office," Finta's complaint states.
On February 10, Fairfield County Sheriff DeMastry was indicted on 323 charges of public corruption. State auditors claim that DeMastry and his employees misspent $349,500 between 1994 and 1998. A state audit released August 8 questioned eight checks totaling $11,700 written to DeMastry from two of the sheriff's office's funds. DeMastry insists that the money was for undercover drug buys and informants. State auditors claim there's very little documentation or verification to support the sheriff's claim.
Shortly after meeting with the LOBOCO employee who testified in the DeMastry investigation, Finta claims he met with Wolfe in his office and told the CEO that "a LOBOCO employee may have lied in the grand jury proceeding at Wolfe's direction." The complaint says that, "Wolfe threw his arms in the air and responded, `Fuck it. I had nothing to do with it.'"
After meeting again with the employee, who repeated his allegations, Finta advised the employee to seek legal counsel. He gave Wolfe the same advice at a February 9 meeting. Finta claims he had a duty to bring the issue to Wolfe's attention, and that Wolfe's response to his advice to consult a lawyer was to become "enraged" and yell, "Fuck it, I quit."
The next day at LOBOCO headquarters, according to the complaint, "Wolfe screamed, `Fucking everyone is fired.' Wolfe then came into the hallway and screamed again, `Everyone is fucking fired.'"
In the court document, Finta swears that Wolfe's behavior was not out of character since "Wolfe has a history in engaging in a pattern and practice of violence, profane and physically threatening outbursts towards the employees who work for him." The complaint states, "During Finta's employment, Wolfe also often would come to work or would be at work while under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Wolfe often also exhibited wild mood swings, violent outbursts and emotional episodes."
Wolfe ordered all LOBOCO employees to leave corporate headquarters and "turn in their keys" on February 10, according to Finta. Eventually, all the LOBOCO employees were allowed to return to work, "except Finta."
The complaint argues that "Finta, as an officer of LOBOCO, had a fiduciary obligation and duties of loyalty and care under Ohio law to report to Wolfe that a LOBOCO employee may have provided false testimony in grand jury proceedings at the request of the company's president." It notes that Finta "also had an obligation under Ohio's perjury and crime reporting statutes to investigate whether the LOBOCO employee had in fact committed perjury and whether he had done so at the direction and request of Wolfe."
Finta asserts that at the time of his termination, Coastal and Custom Homes, a separate company Finta owned and one that worked with LOBOCO, "was projected to build approximately 50 homes for LOBOCO lot purchasers at Heron Bay." Additionally, Coastal and Custom Homes projected building "at least 29 condo units at Heron Bay, and 194 condo units at another Wolfe property development project in Fairfield County." The potential revenue from these deals amounted to more than $5 million.
By "arbitrarily and capriciously" severing the ties between Coastal and Custom Homes and LOBOCO "and publishing a letter that CCH [Coastal] is no longer affiliated with Heron Bay," the complaint says, "Wolfe has caused damages to CCH and loss of income to Finta in the amount in excess of $5 million."
Finta's complaint states, "Through an inherited trust fund, Wolfe has a personal net worth in the millions of dollars." In 1987, the Columbus Dispatch reported that an out-of-court settlement was reached in the division of Edgar T. Wolfe Jr.'s estate. Knowledgeable sources placed Andrew Wolfe's cut at around $30 million.
Columbus Alive's telephone calls seeking comment from Wolfe were not returned by press time.
9/21/2000
Freedom of speech vs. freedom to exploit?
Here's a moral dilemma: Say your six-year-old boy is taken away by children's services. And say he was taken away because, among other things, you allowed him to dress like a girl and planned to enroll him in school as a girl and legally change his name.
You allowed the boy to live as a girl because a licensed pediatrician diagnosed him with gender identity disorder. You thought his behavior as a female was in the child's best interests, and have gained the support of the transgendered community. Now you're in the middle of an ugly custody battle with children's services.
Do you want publicity, or do you want to keep the boy out of the spotlight?
These are the issues being raised in Franklin County Juvenile Courtrooms as Paul and Sherry Lipscomb fight to regain custody of their son. Rather than try to keep the child's plight out of the spotlight, the parents have enlisted the media as their ally.
When the couple was forced to turn the boy over to Franklin County Children's Services on August 23, they chose to do so at the offices of WCMH 4 TV. On later visits with the child, the parents were accompanied by a camera crew from CBS's 48 Hours, which is planning a segment on the case.
At a September 12 hearing in front of Judge Kay Lias, CBS attorneys grappled with children's services over whether cameras should be allowed in the courtroom. The county agency argued that it was in the young boy's best interest to keep him out of the spotlight. But after a little legal finagling, CBS won, and was able to record proceedings in Magistrate Lorenzo Sanchez's chambers.
After the hearing, children's services retained custody of the boy pending a November trial, but Sanchez said the parents could visit the boy as often as they'd like. Public Defender Rebecca Steele, who was appointed by the court to represent the child, asked that the media not be allowed on visits. Sanchez wouldn't go there. "We're not in Cuba just yet," he told the court, but later admitted he hoped that visits by the parents would be meaningful ones between the parents and child--not lawyers or camera crews. Children's services had the liberty to set their own restrictions, Sanchez said.
Before the hearing wrapped up, the Lipscombs asked if the court could promise they'd be allowed to take still photos of the child. Sanchez said they could, after the parents assured children's services they would be for sentimental value, not for lawyers or reporters.
The case has attracted the interest of Time magazine, German and British news crews as well as NBC. In fact, the national media has been running circles around local coverage of the case. The biggest scoop came from Time: Paul Lipscomb told the magazine that he has had a gender identity disorder since he was a child.
On Monday, September 18, media attorneys gathered in Lias' courtroom to contest children's services' request that further legal proceedings be closed to the public. Child psychologist Jolie Brams testified that media coverage could harm the child's mental state and development, the Columbus Dispatch reported on Tuesday.
Dispatch attorney Marion Little told Media Watch, "From the Columbus Dispatch view, we believe the potential for harm to the juvenile does not outweigh the benefit for public access." CBS attorneys were not present for the hearing, Little said. Lias was expected to rule on the issue on Wednesday.
The Lipscombs' attorneys, Mark Narens and Randi Barnabee, have removed themselves from the case, because the Lipscombs have expressed conflicting interests to both their attorneys and the media, Barnabee said. Barnabee had planned to file a federal suit against children's services on behalf of the family.
Governor's flak job still open
The search for a replacement for a lead spokesperson for Governor Bob Taft continues. Scott Milburn, who headed up the Republican governor's communications team, spent his last day at the governor's office September 8. He left to take a communications job with Ohio Senator George Voinovich. Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections spokesperson Joe Andrews is filling in as the governor's office looks to fill Milburn's shoes.
"Alive laments sensationalism"
Sensational crime coverage leads to an irrational fear of crime. This leads to tough-on-crime political candidates--stick with us here--which ultimately means more people end up in the slammer. Anyway, that's a big criticism of the media from those who like to decry saturation coverage of crimes like the Littleton tragedy or the O.J. Simpson case.
So when the Columbus Dispatch deems it necessary to run five stories--all on either page A1 or the Metro section front--on a murder-suicide in Ava, Media Watch couldn't help but get a little annoyed. Granted, a tragedy where a married couple and five kids wind up dead is going to be front-page news, even if it was almost 100 miles away.
But do we really need the newspaper to tell us "Deaths of Family Cast Pall at School" or "Relatives Left Numb By Seven Deaths"? How about "Mourners Lament Deaths of Neighbors"? These were three separate headlines from the paper's wall-to-wall coverage of the September 4 tragedy. Let's just hope the Ramseys never embark for the greener pastures of Ohio.
Get out the vote
Readers of the gay weekly Outlook received a surprise in the September 14 edition of the newspaper. Tucked into each paper was an Ohio voter registration form. The goal of the insert was to try to get as many gay or gay-friendly people registered to vote as possible.
According to Lisa Zellner, editor of Outlook, the paper went through the Ohio Secretary of State's office to obtain the forms; since the paper is now distributed throughout the state, not just in Columbus, Outlook didn't want to use Franklin County forms. A total of 12,000 forms were needed for that edition of the paper. Let's hope most of those are returned--the good guys could use the help in November.
Freudian slips
Looks like Columbus Alive's Jamie Pietras allowed a Freudian slip into his September 7 cover story on newly appointed Columbus City Councilmember Kevin Boyce. In the article, Pietras mistakenly referred to a book Boyce had recently read as All Politics is Evil. Anyone who's read Tip O'Neill's book knows the correct title is All Politics is Local. So what's been on your mind lately, Jamie?
And one more slip-up: On September 14, Alive theater critic Doug Hoehn raved about the work of Matt Slaybaugh, who directed the Central Park West one-act as part of Red Herring's Death Defying Acts. The problem is, Doug called Matt "Mark." While mistakes like this will happen, though not very often--sorry, Matt--the really embarrassing thing is that Matt's brother Stephen Slaybaugh is Alive's music columnist. You'd think we never talk to each other around here.
Drop us a line. You can e-mail your media news and observations to mediawatch@alivewired.com or fax (614) 221-2456. All correspondence will remain confidential, naturally.
9/28/2000
The new left
Ralph Nader's campaign is getting out the vote--for progressive activism
by Bob Fitrakis
One of the stated goals of Ralph Nader's candidacy for president is the resurrection of progressive activism. On Monday night, September 25, at Ohio State University's student union, 50 or so Nader supporters met under the banner of the Campus Greens, a great turnout for a brand-new student organization closely affiliated with the burgeoning Central Ohio Green Party. The student group's first meeting had seven people, the next had 30, now 50--and all but one signed up to work in the Nader campaign.
The best thing about the Campus Green Party is that it's not a party in the tired, status quo-ish way of the Campus Dems and Republicans. It's a movement inspired by last fall's heroic resistance to corporate globalization and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, and the massive demonstrations against the World Bank/International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., last spring.
The Campus Greens' literature shows the organization is not buying the argument that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush in Ohio. They quote from Nader's recent Rolling Stone interview where he rightly dismisses the suggestion as "a snare and a delusion." In Nader's analysis, "You've got military weapons proliferation, massive world hunger and starvation, global infectious diseases coming this way in drug-resistant form. You've got the majority of workers in this country making less money in real terms than they did in 1979, notwithstanding a booming economy. You've got 20 percent child poverty in this country, massive homelessness and inadequate housing. You've got $6.2 trillion in consumer debt, an epidemic of corporate crime, a labor movement that's weaker than it's ever been...[and] hundreds of billions of dollars going to corporate welfare every year, meaning that citizens are gouged not just as consumers but as taxpayers."
This is a powerful message, and may explain why 100 million eligible U.S. voters stay home on Election Day. As local Greens argue, a vote for Nader is a vote for democracy. It's a vote for change and it's a vote for activism and idealism rather than cynicism and apathy. Ten thousand people paid $7 apiece to see Nader speak in Portland, Oregon, last week and 12,000 did the same in Minneapolis. On October 27, Nader will be coming to the OSU campus. He should rock the joint.
Of course, much of this enthusiasm and grassroots activism goes unnoticed as the very serious corporate media types dutifully report how well the ne'er-do-well smirking frat-boy son of a former president is staying "on message." I like to think of it as "Simple-Simon Says." The media has long tried to convince us that the rhetorically afflicted Bush family are damn near geniuses when they string a noun and a verb together.
The mainstream media is also going out of its way to tell us the differences between Bush and Gore--despite the fact that there's no real difference on the burning issues of globalization, NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, the World Bank and the small group of global plutocrats who search the world for workers they can pay a buck a day. No wonder the Greens chanted at the Nader rally last Friday at the Statehouse, "Bush and Gore, what a bore!"
Nader is being excluded from the presidential debates on national television because he is not a "serious" candidate, when the truth is exactly the opposite. He poses a very serious challenge to the Siamese twins George W. and Al. The two major-party "C" students from the Ivy League we're told are the "serious" guys who need to debate. The magna cum laude graduate from Princeton with a Harvard Law degree, Nader, is excluded for not being serious despite polling four to seven percent in national polls.
While Bush is busy raising $100 million from wealthy donors, forcing Gore to shake down Buddhist monks fronting for Asian interests, the Campus Greens will be sending out "chalk brigades" to bring Nader's message to the community. They'll be canvassing door-to-door in the campus area and registering new voters amidst the largest pool of eligible non-voters in Columbus. They're also petitioning to have Nader included in the TV debates.
Currently, the Commission on Presidential Debates, a wholly owned subsidiary of the major-party duopoly, excludes any candidate who's not running 15 percent in the polls. Using this criteria, Jesse Ventura would have been barred from the debates that propelled him to victory as governor of Minnesota. But, of course, this is exactly what the major parties are afraid of, and exactly why they don't want to give Nader access to millions of voters on a debate podium.
Every other advanced democracy in the world has a mass democratic right party, a mass democratic center party and a mass democratic left party. We in the U.S. have the right--that's the Republicans with Bush--and a center--with the Democrats and Gore. What we don't have is a progressive left option. Why? Because anyone who directly challenges corporate domination of U.S. politics is excluded as not being "serious."
The Campus Greens are fed up with corporate-controlled politics, cheesy focus group soundbites and hollow promises. These new Greens are tired of the relentless unending commercialization of society and a culture where everything's for sale and nothing is sacred. They know that a vote for Nader is not a wasted vote, but one that affirms the very foundation of their morality, and the oneness of all people seeking justice.
NEWS BRIEF
10/05/2000
Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader visited the controversial WTI waste incinerator in East Liverpool last Wednesday morning, September 27, and called on Vice President Al Gore to honor a promise he made in the 1992 campaign to shut the facility down.
"Mr. Gore, after seven years of double talk and delays, the time has come to shut down this incinerator. Workers should be given two years full severance pay by their negligent employer, WTI," Nader said.
WTI burns 60,000 tons of hazardous material every year, making it one of the largest incinerators in the world. WTI is owned by Von Roll of Switzerland, a company best known for attempting to sell "Supergun" parts to Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
The waste incinerator sits on a floodplain less than 400 yards from an elementary school, releasing dioxins and metals such as mercury, arsenic, lead and chromium into the air. "Any incinerator that emits almost a pound of mercury into the air every day can't be good for our children's ability to learn," Nader noted.
WTI has been operating without a permit since 1995. Numerous allegations of irregularities emerged during Governor George Voinovich's administration regarding his brother Paul's role in securing the initial permits for the plant to operate. The continued operation of the incinerator enjoys bipartisan support from both Senator Voinovich, a Republican, and the Democratic Clinton-Gore administration. In 1992, the Columbus Free Press reported that one of the financiers of WTI was also one of Clinton's most important campaign contributors, the mysterious Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens.
Following the 1992 election, Gore initially called upon the General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate WTI, claiming, "A thorough investigation is urgently needed [because] too many questions remain unanswered about the impact of the incinerator and the process in which it was approved."
But on January 8, 1993, amidst promises from out-going President George Bush's EPA administrator William Reilly to cooperate with Clinton and Gore on environmental issues, a permit for a trial burn at WTI was issued after a meeting between Reilly and top Gore aide Katie McGinty. At his East Liverpool appearance last week, Nader challenged Gore to disclose whether he or McGinty had asked the Bush EPA to postpone the approval of the test burn in 1993 as promised.
A September 1994 GAO report documents that Gore requested that the toxic emission standards be altered in order to allow the WTI incinerator to keep operating despite dangerously high levels of mercury and dioxin. The report reads, "In each case [where toxic emissions exceeded allowable levels], EPA responded to the trial burn results by changing the operating conditions under which the incinerator could continue to operate." Three former officials of the North Ohio Valley Air Authority, which was responsible for monitoring the air emission at WTI, have since been convicted on various corruption charges.
Nader charged that Gore's well-known promise to close WTI "is just the sort of phony populist rhetoric that Mr. Gore's tried to sell the American public in this election year... If Gore can't stand up for the people against this outrageously dangerous polluter, should anyone believe that he will ever fight for the people, and not the powerful?"
Later Wednesday afternoon in Youngstown, Nader blasted the corporate prison industry and President Bill Clinton and Governor George W. Bush for encouraging its growth. Youngstown is the home of a 1,700-inmate facility owned by the private Correction Corporations of America (CCA). The company currently has plans to build two more facilities in the area to accommodate an additional 5,500 prisoners. In the past, CCA has imported violent felons from the Washington, D.C., to fill its cells, which it refers to as "profit units."
Nader called the for-profit prison industry "one of the most ill-conceived ventures corporations have ever entered into." He challenged Vice President Gore and Governor Bush to return the more than $100,000 in "soft money" that private prisons have contributed to both the Democratic and the Republican National Committees.
"By treating inmates as profitable commodities, corporate prisons obscure a public policy that should be aimed at reducing the incarceration rate through treatment and rehabilitation," Nader said.
Earlier this year, news reports uncovered that then-Governor Voinovich's brother Paul Voinovich played a vital role in securing the tax abatement that made CCA's Youngstown facility possible along with a key veto by the governor to save a $900,000 abatement for the company.
Sunday's Columbus Dispatch poll of Ohio's likely voters showed Nader at two percent. Ohio Green Party members claim that this, in part, stems from the fact that the Dispatch failed to cover both the East Liverpool and Youngstown events and the poll fails to reflect newly registered voters on Ohio's college campuses.
10/05/2000
Why Channel 10's Shumway cashed out
Anyone who wondered why Chris Shumway really left Channel 10 in July might want to pick up a copy of this month's Free Press.
In a stinging column, the former WBNS meteorologist explains how he was forced to resign from the company for violating a clause in his contract that forbade employees from making "statements or remarks" about the station or its sponsors that "tend to discredit or reflect unfavorably" on them.
The station's management was angry that Shumway had exposed how editorial content of a certain "news" segment on the station wasn't directed by journalists working at the station, but rather by a local bank that also sponsored the segment.
The bank, Shumway said, provided a list of questions for news anchors to ask the "expert" bank official during the "Your Money" portion of the local news. Shumway pointed out that the reports often referred directly to products and services offered by the bank, and were always portrayed in a context most favorable to the banking industry.
When Shumway exposed the sham on his personal web site, he was shown the door for breach of contract.
The disgruntled newsman sums it up best: "If news anchors and reporters often admit privately that the news they're broadcasting is distorted for financial reasons, and if news outlets are willing to fire those who say it publicly, can citizens even remotely expect the corporate news media to be the fierce watchdogs of the public interest they claim they are?"
Journalism students learn a PR lesson
Students who read the September 22 Lantern were probably dismayed at the Ohio State University Board of Regents' recommendation to lift the state-sanctioned six-percent annual cap on tuition increases. The school hoped to raise tuition 20 to 25 percent over a two-year period, according to a Lantern editorial railing against the proposal.
The article pointed out that the regents agreed to ask the state legislature for the tuition cap waiver at the board's meeting the day before.
But as the paper's student staff realized when they read the September 22 Columbus Dispatch, their editorial was based on a faulty presumption. As it turned out, the proposal never even came up at the board's meeting.
Was sloppy reporting to blame? Not necessarily.
As the Lantern explained in an article and editorial the following Monday, University Communications was the source of the bad information. The school's PR department sent out a press release detailing OSU's plan to raise tuition on Wednesday. They followed up with a Thursday e-mail, quoting President Brit Kirwan's "praise" for the recommendation. Of course the recommendation hadn't yet happened--nor did it. Apparently there was some miscommunication between the university PR staff and the regents.
An OSU spokesperson told the Lantern, "This type of thing happens all the time with press releases."
That wasn't enough to keep the student paper from lashing out against the PR professionals in their Monday editorial. "It's not that we're trying to blame anyone for trying to mislead us," the editorial stated. "We're simply concerned when our administration fails to follow the basic lessons we're taught in our first days of an introductory media class."
Dispatch endorsement flip-flop
The Dispatch has spoken. For Judges of the Common Pleas Court, they've endorsed white guy, white guy and white guy over white woman, white woman and black woman. No inconsistency here, except perhaps that problem with Carole Squire. In the Domestic Relations Division race between Squire and Harland H. Hale, the Dispatch endorsed Hale, who's quite literally a good ol' boy fond of telling that joke about the Hillary Clinton chicken special (you know, the one that gives you "two fat thighs and a dozen left wings").
But wait--didn't the Dispatch endorse Squire in 1994? Why the change of heart?
In 1994, the Dispatch was upset with Squire's opponent, Republican incumbent Judge Kay Lias. Both Susan Brown and Squire got the nod from the daily monopoly then because they were "the best hope to eliminate some inconsistencies that exist in the court."
OK, we'll bite--what inconsistencies?
Bob Ruth provided the answer in an October 25, 1994, article. In a major investigative revelation, Ruth revealed that Judge Ronald L. Solove and Judge Kay Lias "have been the only juvenile court jurists to deny requests to try juveniles as adults when the cases involve homicides, records show."
No doubt Hale will charge the young-uns as adults and maybe put a few of those femi-Nazis on trial for something too.
So who pays for campaign stops?
When the Dispatch tackled the issue of local authorities paying to protect visiting presidential candidates, it left readers with more questions than answers. It's another example of how the words omitted from an article are as important as the words that comprise it.
On October 2, the Dispatch reported that the Columbus police and fire departments have anted up more than $146,000 so far to protect candidates, with a few campaign visits remaining before November 7.
After detailing the costs associated with visits by President Clinton and the major party candidates, the article goes on to state that, according to Barb Seckler, assistant safety director for Columbus, city officials have not discussed billing the political parties for the visits. Some law enforcement agencies, we are told, try to recoup their costs.
Since the headline screamed "Taxpayers foot bill for candidates' visits," the reader may have expected an analysis of exactly how much of these costs are recovered and how much are incurred by taxpayers. But the supposed crux of the article, according to its attention-grabbing headline, is barely touched. How successful are agencies that attempt to recoup their costs? What percentage of the bill do taxpayer's actually foot? The answer could be 100, or it could be zero. The story gives no indication.
The hapless reader is also never told which agencies try to recoup their costs, which do not, and why any agency is permitted to spend taxpayer money when a viable alternative exits. The fact that Columbus apparently has no policy governing the recovery of such costs is exposed but not examined, leaving all of these questions unanswered.
An analysis of Cincinnati's billing practices is equally vague. The Dispatch reports that Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis billed the Bush campaign for one visit and received full payment. But the story fails to mention Leis' overall success in receiving payment for providing security to the candidates. If the Hamilton County sheriff generally collects on such bills, why doesn't Columbus do the same?
We are told that, in pointed contrast to the Bush campaign paying its bill in full, the Democratic National Committee never paid for Clinton's fundraising visit to Cincinnati. The Dispatch, however, does not report the most important fact: Local law enforcement agencies are never reimbursed for presidential visits, a fact recognized by Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen when he defied Leis and refused to file a suit to collect payment from Clinton.
News to them
Let's hope for John Ruch's sake that his recent move to Boston hasn't pushed him off The Other Paper's payroll. The departed film and arts writer is still the paper's only font of good story ideas, hence their timely coverage of the city's cinema closings last week.
Late last Tuesday, September 26, Studio 35 proprietor John Conti sent to his weekly e-mail list information about the closing of General Cinemas Northland 8 and AMC Westerville 6. A subscriber to the list since before the move, Ruch received the e-mail in Boston and tipped off TOP staffers, according to Conti. When writer Rob Harvila called the theater owner for a comment, he credited Ruch as the story's long-distance source.
10/12/2000
The white doughnut
Numbers don't lie: Race is a problem at Columbus schools
by Bob Fitrakis
The best history text I've read recently is the amended complaint charging racial discrimination against the Columbus Public Schools, titled Moss, et al, v. Columbus Board of Education, et al. Before dismissing the allegations raised by long-time Columbus School Board member Bill Moss, representing himself, and attorney Ambrose Moses III, representing more than two dozen plaintiffs, the tax assessment numbers need to be crunched to see if there's a factual basis for the charges.
Moss has both the weight of historical evidence on his side and statistics so persuasive not even a Klan member could distort them. Recall that in September 1999, after an extensive curriculum audit, Phi Delta Kappa informed the Columbus board that, "There is a giant monster in this district that is being ignored and enabled, and it is `race.'" Moss and his merry band of warriors, mostly parents of Columbus Public School children, with Moses on their side--always a good sign--are determined to slay the monster in its lair.
Who fed and enabled the white monster is outlined accurately in Moss' complaint: "Through 1955, the boundaries of the city of Columbus and the Columbus City School District were the same and covered 55 square miles. That year the Ohio General Assembly changed Ohio law to provide that school territory transfers no longer automatically followed land annexation agreements." So, in the aftermath of the historic Brown v. the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, case striking down educational apartheid in the U.S., Ohio legislatures were no longer willing to force the annexation of overwhelmingly white, previously rural districts into urban districts with significant black student populations.
"The purpose and effect of the State of Ohio's statutory changes in 1955 was to, at least in part, circumvent the letter and intent of the United States' Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown... by establishing a statutory and administrative scheme that appeared racially neutral on its face but which had the expected and/or intended effect of allowing cities, townships, boards of education, and other political subdivisions to facilitate continued racism and racial discrimination," the complaint reads.
Since the 1955 law, the Columbus school district added 55 additional square miles of city territory, doubling in size, while suburban school districts posted a much greater gain by acquiring 77 square miles of city territory. Prior to the Brown decision, kids who lived in Columbus went to Columbus schools. Now, more than 40 percent of Columbus students go to suburban schools, and last time I looked, 92 percent of those "commuters" were white. The Columbus school district is approximately 60 percent black. In 1986, the Columbus board entered into the Initial 1986 Land Transfer Agreement, otherwise known as the absurdly misnamed "Win/Win Agreement." This haphazard system promoting racial and economic apartheid became Ohio Revised Code in Senate Bill 298 that same year.
Readily available county auditor tax assessment documents reveal the problem of the big white doughnut with the dark hole in the middle. All of the dough is on the outskirts of the city and the surrounding suburbs.
Going back to 1984, just prior to the first Win/Win Agreement, we find that the Columbus Public Schools had a nearly $4.1 billion total tax base for levies. The suburban schools with Columbus city territory had a little less than $1.1 billion. Columbus Public Schools had almost 80 percent of the city's tax base in its district.
Over the last 15 years, the suburban schools have added some $3.4 billion in city property to their tax base, leaving the Columbus school district with less than 64 percent of Columbus' tax base in its area. The long-term trends suggest that the mostly minority district with disproportionately lower-income students will only grow poorer and add more minorities, in comparison to the suburban districts who are adding the city's most affluent upscale neighborhoods.
Contrast the Columbus Public Schools' average annual rate of growth of its tax base over the last 15 years, at 4.6 percent, to the suburban districts in the Win/Win Agreement and you get a disturbing trend: Upper Arlington, 16.3 percent growth; Canal Winchester, 45.4 percent; Dublin, 12.4 percent; Hilliard, 12.5 percent; and Olentangy, 47.7 percent.
The Moss complaint charges the obvious, that "In 1986, the State of Ohio knew or should have known that given the history of racism and discrimination in the State of Ohio, County of Franklin, City of Columbus, and the Columbus City School District, the terms of the `Win/Win Agreement' would likely promote and facilitate `White Flight' from the Columbus City School District."
Despite the Columbus Dispatch editorial board's best efforts to paint Moss as crazy in last year's school board election, the reality of racism weighs heavily in his favor on the scales of justice, as do the demographics that define race and class apartheid in Columbus education.
10/19/2000
Moon over Korea
A new report links a controversial cult leader to George W. Bush's family
by Bob Fitrakis
A controversial religious cult leader and conservative publisher may have directly violated the U.S. trade embargo aimed at containing North Korea's military build up, an independent news website reported last week. The disclosure of U.S. intelligence documents could prove embarrassing to Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush.
Consortiumnews.com published U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents disclosing that Unification Church leader Reverend Sun Myung Moon's business empire funneled millions of dollars in secret payments to North Korean Communist leaders during the early 1990s. At the time, North Korea was in desperate need of hard currency to advance its nuclear weapons program.
The DIA documents reveal that Moon surreptitiously traveled to North Korea "between 30NOV91 and 07DEC91" and "made donations to KN [North Korea] of 450 billion yen [$3.5 billion] in 1991 and $3 million in 1993." The $3 million, according to the documents, was a birthday present to the country's Communist dictator Kim Jong II.
Moon, a native South Korean, is a resident alien of the U.S. and subject to U.S. law.
"In January '94, a Japanese trading company `Touen Shoji' in Suginami-Ku, Tokyo, purchased 12 F- and G-class submarines from the Russian Pacific Fleet headquarters. These submarines were then sold to a KN trading company. Although this transaction garnered a great deal of coverage in the Japanese press, it was not disclosed at the time that Touen Shoji is an affiliate of the Unification Church," a DIA document reads.
The Bush family, particularly former President George Bush, has had long-standing political and financial ties to Reverend Moon, the self-proclaimed second coming of Christ.
In a Consortiumnews.com four-part series, one of the United States' foremost investigative reporters, Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, outlines the connections between the Bush family and Moon. After he left office in January 1993, the former president received hefty payments from Moon, reported in the seven-figure range, for speeches and other personal services. Parry reports a former "well-placed" Unification Church leader as saying that "$10 million" was earmarked for former President Bush.
The Bush-Moon connection caused considerable controversy in September 1995 when Bush, the former CIA director and president, announced he would be spending nearly a week in Japan on behalf of the Women's Federation for World Peace, an organization founded and led by Moon's wife. In November 1996, Bush emerged as the principal speaker at the opening of a Spanish-language Moon weekly newspaper, Tiempos del Mundo, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
During the 2000 presidential election, the Moon-owned Washington Times has championed the Republican candidacy of George W. Bush and mounted harsh attacks against Democratic candidate Al Gore. On December 7, 1999, the Washington Times accused Gore of being "delusional" and called the vice president "a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations."
Gore's supposed "delusions" have emerged as a key, and successful, attack theme, taking on a life of their own. Many voters now believe that Gore claimed to have "invented" the Internet. What Gore actually said was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Two actual Internet "inventors," Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, have vigorously defended Gore as the key politician in Washington who took the "initiative" to support the Internet in its infancy.
In 1988, when Republican presidential nominee George Bush was trailing significantly in the polls, the Washington Times printed an unconfirmed rumor that Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment.
Moon was convicted of income tax evasion in 1982 and spent more than a year in jail. That same year, he founded the Washington Times. Moon also owns the World and I journal, Insight magazine and earlier this year he purchased the UPI wire service. When the Washington Times appointed Wesley Pruden editor-in-chief in 1991, President Bush invited the new editor to a private White House lunch "just to tell you how valuable the Times has become in Washington, where we read it every day," the Washington Times reported.
The Times proved to be one of President Bush's staunchest defenders, launching several attacks against Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh during his investigation of Bush and high-ranking officials in his administration. During the '92 campaign, the Washington Times raised questions about Clinton's alleged ties to Communism, even going as far to suggest that the Rhodes scholar may have been recruited by the KGB during a college trip to Moscow.
The Times is the paper most responsible for breaking news on the so-called Whitewater scandal and the Lewinsky affair.
In the 1970s, Moon earned notoriety during the Koreagate scandal when female followers of the Unification Church were accused of entertaining and keeping confidential files on various U.S. Congressmen, whom they reportedly horizontally "lobbied" at the Washington Hilton hotel. The U.S. Senate investigated Moon's "programmatic bribery of U.S. officials, journalists and others as part of an operation by the Korean CIA to influence the course of U.S. foreign policy."
Ironically, Moon's newspaper has repeatedly attacked the Clinton-Gore administration for being soft on North Korea. As Parry puts it: "Moon helped deliver the means for the Communist state to advance exactly the strategic threat that Moon's newspaper now says will require billions of U.S. tax dollars to thwart."
10/19/2000
A Columbus radio revolution?
In most big cities, the best place to hear really alternative music is the local college radio station. With decidedly non-commercial formats and mind-bogglingly eclectic playlists, they spin music you'll never hear on commercial stations. Even for listeners with mainstream tastes, college radio is a good place to hear what's next. Bands like R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins, just to name a few, were "discovered" by college radio years before their commercial success.
But not in Columbus. Ohio State University is the biggest college in the country without a student radio station, leaving local listeners with an awful lot of AC/DC and Blink 182 but not much Mos Def or Legendary Pink Dots.
That could change within a month if the Underground, the five-year-old OSU station that's not heard off-campus, finally nabs the broadcast frequency it's long been hoping for.
The Federal Communications Commission will accept bids from Ohio applicants for a new class of low-power FM licenses in November. If the Underground can claim the rights to the available signal at 94.1 FM, the student station could begin broadcasting as soon as 30 days later.
"We're pretty much ready to go," said Underground Music Director Mike Finch.
The low-power broadcast signal would allow the Underground--the only radio station in Columbus that plays a steady dose of independent and local rock, hip-hop, punk, electronica and everything in-between--to be heard virtually anywhere within the outerbelt.
The student station currently broadcasts 24 hours a day through a campus cable system and over the Internet, in addition to the midnight to 2 a.m. nightly broadcasts it pre-records for WOSU-AM. Finch said the station plans to erect an antenna on the campus bio-sciences building.
Finch has heard rumors of other groups interested in the frequency, but nothing will be made public until the window opens in November. In the first two rounds of applications this year, the FCC received bids from more than 1,200 non-profit, community and education groups, vying for low-power signals in 22 states. If there are multiple applicants for the local signal, the FCC will decide who gets the license based on criteria like content and ability to broadcast.
Finch thinks the Underground's track record gives the station a pretty solid edge. The station currently has about 100 volunteer staffers, in addition to a handful of paid student managers.
Ballot watchers
The United States is quick to point out flaws in democratic elections in places like Yugoslavia and Peru. But what would happen if international observers were allowed to take a look at the way the U.S. handles its own electoral process? Mother Jones writer Garry Leech finds "little doubt" they'd deem the process undemocratic.
"One U.S. criticism of the recent Peruvian election was the ruling party's denial of media access to opposition parties. Meanwhile, however, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader and the Reform Party's Pat Buchanan have been barred from the media event that has proven to be the single most effective way to reach American voters: the debates," Leech writes in an article posted on Mother Jones' website this week.
Leech also points out that 14 states prohibit convicted felons from voting. As a result, 13 percent of the male black population has lost voting rights.
Indeed, the U.S. just might benefit from a little watchdogging from "international observers." Maybe then the mainstream media would pay attention to the real drama surrounding this year's election.
Judicial silence
An article-cum-editorial decrying the vow of silence taken by Ohio's Supreme Court justices filled the cover of The Other Paper on October 5. There, beside pictures of Justice Alice Resnick and Chief Justice Thomas Moyer with black tape over their mouths, reporter Dan Williamson did a fine job of examining the code of conduct that prohibits Ohio judges from engaging in politics.
Briefly, because the printing of such rules almost guarantees page-turning, judges are not allowed to publicly discuss their political views or to campaign for politicians or for other judges.
The article centered around Resnick and Moyer, both of whom are accused of violating these rules in recent months. The Columbus Dispatch has slammed Resnick on several occasions, including throwing their support to Terrence O'Donnell, her challenger in next month's election, for appearing with William Phillis at a school opening in Vinton County. The appearance, says the Dispatch, creates an aura of partiality, since Phillis led the coalition of school districts that won a controversial school funding decision from the high court earlier this year. Moyer sinned by conveying his support for O'Donnell at a Republican Party function.
In addition to laying the judicial code out in an interesting manner, not an easy task, Williamson includes quotes from heavy hitters on both sides of the issue--those who believe in the judicial code as written and those who wish to abolish it and let judges act as politicians.
It's Williamson's own ranting for this latter point of view that transforms his otherwise insightful article into a not-so-insightful editorial. The piece is littered with jeering, antagonistic phrases pointed directly at those who believe in judicial impartiality--"Oh come onêwhat's wrong with the Republican chief justice stating the obvious" and "OK, but let's be realisticêHuman beings come equipped with opinions."
Williamson, however, never discusses the dangers of allowing judges to campaign like politicians. Judges certainly have opinions, political and otherwise, but those opinions are not supposed to weigh in when they make decisions. The sole task of any judge is to take the law and apply it to the situation at hand. Period. The judge's personal and political opinions are, theoretically, irrelevant.
This is not to say that all judges shed their political beliefs as they put on black robes. Several years ago, a pro-life judge even prohibited a female inmate from having an abortion. But encouraging judges to sell themselves to voters based on their political ideologies will only encourage more such politicized judgments. The judicial code attempts to prevent judges from acting like political animals outside the courtroom so that such behavior will not bleed into the courtroom.
While Williamson briefly presented the idea of impartiality in his article, he portrayed it only as a vague and irrelevant concept, not a real-world issue with real-world implications. Unlike a judge and much like a politician, Williamson presented only those arguments that strengthened his own viewpoint, and to hell with the rest.
10/26/2000
Agit-prop
The truth behind the Dispatch's Bush endorsement
by Bob Fitrakis
As a supporter of Ralph Nader for president, longing for the five percent solution (if Nader gets five percent of the vote nationally, the Green Party gets millions in matching funds in the 2004 election), I couldn't help but marvel at the Soviet-style propaganda of the Columbus Dispatch endorsement of George W. Bush.
The Dispatch is fond of referring to Democrat Al Gore's supposed "embellishment and exaggeration," but the paper's delusional endorsement of Bush suffers from this same affliction.
We're told that "Bush is better-equipped to smooth over the bitter partisanship and frequent gridlock that characterized the eight years of the Clinton administration." What the Big D means is that when rabid right-wingers like Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott shut down the government in order to blackmail the president into cutting Social Security or Medicare, Bush will go along. Thus, no gridlock.
The most obvious Dr. Dispatch and Mr. Hyde portion of the endorsement occurs in the fifth and sixth paragraphs, when the Dispatch urges a vote for Bush because, "With the economy booming and government awash in cash, now is the time to act." In the next sentence we're told we should vote against Gore because he "cannot change this unproductive status quo."
Logically, the Dispatch is probably right. Bush will end the booming economy, much like his father who presided over the 1991-92 recession, the worst since the Great Depression. Instead of leaving the country "awash in cash," Daddy Bush left it with a record $330 billion fiscal deficit.
Its fangs dripping with venom, the Dispatch next tells us that Gore's "natural bent is to attack those who disagree with him." Gee, the Dispatch would never do that. Ask Bill Moss or Palmer McNeal. At least the Daily Monopoly is bipartisan.
Gore's election would mean "another four years of confrontation, demagoguery and impasse," and we'd miss out on the "golden moment of peace, [and] prosperity." Admittedly, there are a few people nostalgic for the good old days of the last Bush presidency, which brought us the Gulf War, recession and record debt. And I suppose it's not demagoguery when you show up in South Carolina and tell a roaring crowd of Confederate flag-waving crackers that it's their "state right" to wave the flag that stood for the destruction of the United States of America, as Bush did. It sure seems like Bush pandered to people's worst instincts when he showed up at Bob Jones University, which was known for its born-again apartheid, racism and anti-Catholic bigotry.
Bush, we're told, "favors across-the-board tax cuts that leave people free to keep and spend more of their own money as they wish." Particularly the multi-millionaire Bush and Wolfe families, who combined will get more tax relief under George W.'s plan than the entire inner-city of Columbus.
The Dispatch chides Gore for seeing "Americans [as]...the helpless victims of powerful political and economic interests," without a simple acknowledgment that the Wolfe family's Dispatch Publishing Company is precisely one of those politically and economically powerful interests that dominates the lives of citizens in central Ohio. Did I mention they love George W. Bush?
"Gore believes only the federal government can protect citizens from these shadowy forces and from themselves," the paper pontificates. I'm not worried about myself, but I am worried about the Ohio EPA's inability to stop mega-farm and mega-industrial polluters in the Buckeye State. Whatever the shortcomings of the federal government, it's Dispatch-endorsed state and local Republican politicians who allowed Anton Pohlmann to turn Licking County into a large chicken manure lagoon.
Gore is attacked for his educational policies as the Dispatch insists that "the nuts and bolts of education should be controlled by parents, school districts and state officials." Of course, the paper endorsed George Voinovich for governor twice and U.S. senator as he presided over a state school system that was declared "unconstitutional" by a Republican-dominated Supreme Court, due to the inequalities of state school funding and its lack of thoroughness and effectiveness in educating Ohio schoolchildren.
The weirdest portion of the editorial has to be the discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Dispatch claims that "Bush's appointments would be likely to maintain or strengthen the five-four majority that has gone some way towards adjusting the power between the states and the federal government." I guess that's a clever way to say Bush-appointed justices would be pro-corporation, anti-choice, opposed to affirmative action and similar to the low-caliber choice his father made in Clarence Thomas.
It's also a ringing endorsement of state's rights. Texas workers under the Bush administration employed in agriculture or domestic service are excluded from the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour and instead receive the Texas state minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. Governor Bush opposes a national minimum wage and believes that states ought to be able to opt out, according to the Dallas Morning News.
After reading the delusional Dispatch fawnings over George W., the best way to put it in perspective is to read Dispatch political editor Joe Hallett's thoughtful analysis titled "Either candidate is a good bet" on the next page: "Prosperity breeds contentedness breeds apathy breeds mediocrity. Hence, our next president will be Bush, the vacuous frat boy boosted by family name and money, or Gore, the beltway bully inbred with Washington's know-it-all demeanor." Amen.
ELECTION NEWS
11/02/2000
The most important race in Ohio this year is the re-election campaign of Justice Alice Robie Resnick. Corporate vampires smell blood and want to suck the last drop of fairness and decency out of Ohio's Supreme Court politics.
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce front group "Citizens for a Strong Ohio" (CSO) is leading the assault on Resnick with a series of attack ads under the guise of "educational information." The CSO ad features the traditional blindfolded Lady Justice who's peeking at a pile of money on her scales, delivered by the trial lawyers, and asks, "Is justice for sale in Ohio?"
The ads are so vicious and mean-spirited that even Republican Governor Bob Taft, who admits to raising money for them, has called the ads into question. Last Thursday, another chamber affiliate, the Institute for Legal Reform, weighed in with another 30-second spot depicting a black-robed Resnick switching her vote after someone dumps bags of money on her desk.
Resnick is being targeted by the wealthiest corporations and their spokespeople at the chamber primarily because she opposes the absurdly named "tort reform" movement. The goal of these so-called "tort reformers" is reactionary: They want to go back to the good old days when it was virtually impossible to sue a corporation after the corporation killed, harmed or maimed you. It's easy to see why, say, a company like Firestone Tires might want to bankroll such "reform."
Resnick authored the opinion in the 4-3 Ohio Supreme Court decision that overturned the 1996 Republican tort reform legislation, which limited Ohioans' ability to collect damages from businesses in civil lawsuits. She also wrote the DeRolph decision, another 4-3 vote, that declared the Ohio school funding system unconstitutional because of its heavy reliance on property tax.
An emboldened movement of plutocrats wants Resnick's head on a pike as a reminder to present and future Supreme Court candidates and justices as to who really rules in the Buckeye domain. Earlier this month in Cleveland, another corporate "astroturf" organization, Ohio Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, began airing radio ads depicting the Ohio court system as a feeding trough for pigs. As the Cleveland Scene put it, the message is simple: "Them crooked lawyers are gouging businesses, consumers, and taxpayers. Enough is enough." The American Tort Reform Association--a coalition of more than 300 well-heeled corporate and trade associations--have designed campaigns in 27 states to make corporations safe from lawsuits.
The era of tort reform was initiated in part by a $5.5 million contribution from Big Tobacco in 1995, according to Center for Justice and Democracy. Now they're in Ohio, bashing at the doors of the Supreme Court. All they want is the head of Resnick and the citizens will be subjugated.
ELECTION NEWS
11/02/2000
When Franklin County voters hit the ballots on Tuesday, they may wonder why all but one of the seven common pleas court judges--those are the ones who try felonies--are running unopposed. Why aren't voters given a choice when it comes to the most powerful local judicial positions?
The best answer is that virtually all the attorneys in the county, and they'll admit this "off the record," are scared to death of the elected judges. Words like "retaliation" come quickly to the lips of intimidated attorneys who wouldn't dare run a campaign against a sitting judge. Also, the most powerful families in this town seem to love the way the courts are presently being run and justice is being dispensed. As the adage goes, we've got one of the best justice systems that money can buy, and they don't want it changed.
Usually if a candidate musters the courage to run against a sitting judge, they need to be politically protected. Hence, when Democrat Lee Fisher ran the Ohio Attorney General's office, he could usually round up some staffers or supporters to run for judge.
Many local Democrats complain privately and bitterly that Columbus City Attorney Janet Jackson is not doing her duty by encouraging attorneys on her staff to run for judge. This is not a problem faced by the Republicans, since County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien does not prohibit his attorneys, nor should he, from seeking judgeships. So, Franklin County voters won't be burdened by Democratic choice for common pleas courts judges, and we'll all have a half-dozen fewer decisions to make in the voting booths.
11/02/2000
No one is shocked when politicians are caught dancing around the truth, shaping and molding their stories or even leaving out significant facts in order to shine a brighter light on themselves. "Lying politician" is an oxymoron in America, a part of our natural culture, a favorite punch line for our jokes.
Our only line of defense against such lies is the media. From Watergate to the Iran-Contra fiasco to Monica Lewinsky and George W.'s frat-boy indiscretions, curious and cynical reporters have reveled in exposing politicians' lies to the public.
But the Columbus Dispatch has repeatedly failed to expose the half-truths told by Ohio's legislators with regard to electric deregulation. In article after article, numerous Dispatch reporters have happily repeated Senator Bruce Johnson's claim that Ohio households will save five percent on their electric bills when the state's electric utility industry is deregulated this January.
In an October 25 article on the front of the Business section, Dispatch Statehouse reporter Alan Johnson writes, "Ohioans will be able to choose their electricity provider, saving at least five percent on their monthly bill, for the first time." To further emphasize these wonderful savings, a bar graph titled "Electricity Savings" appears just to the left of the article, with little dollar signs symbolizing the money that the customers of each of Ohio's electric companies can expect to save.
In truth, electric bills will not drop one penny for most residential electric consumers in Ohio and will probably increase for many.
The claim of a five-percent savings is based on a provision put into Senator Johnson's legislation specifically for that purpose, to allow lawmakers to claim that this business-friendly bill will save consumers money. The provision guarantees that one of the many components of the electric bills we receive, the electric generation component, will decrease when deregulation begins, giving consumers a five-percent savings on that one item.
Contrary to Alan Johnson's superficial analysis of the law, this five-percent savings will not be seen on the most important line of the bill--the bottom line. Since the legislation does not similarly curtail the other components of our electric bills, this five-percent reduction on one item will, in all likelihood, be offset by increases in other items.
Which leads to several questions. Does a five-percent savings on one part of a bill really matter if another part of that same bill can eat the savings up? No, but what can you expect from a politician?
More important, shouldn't a seasoned political reporter critically evaluate legislation instead of serving as a legislator's public relations arm? Undoubtedly, yes.
Furthermore, the "guaranteed" reduction that both Senator Johnson and reporter Johnson highlight with such glee may be waved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio after two-and-a-half years if it discourages new electric companies from entering the market.
If reporter Alan Johnson had delved into the legislation a little, he would have noticed that it does little for consumers. The deregulated portion of our electric bills will be capped at pre-deregulation levels for five years. But electric bills will contain still-regulated items that could increase, resulting in consumers paying more for electricity than before deregulation, even during the five-year transition period.
Secondly, even the overall cap on deregulated components of electric bills could disappear. If tax changes, designed to compensate for the loss of revenue to schools due to electric deregulation, adversely affect electric utilities, a surcharge could be added to consumers' bills "to avoid placing the financial responsibility for the difference upon the electric utility or its shareholders."
And one of the other items you'll be seeing on your electric bill is a new "transition charge" to recover bad investments made by electric companies in now-defunct nuclear reactors. Consumers may be hit with this fee for 10 years. Of course, when all the caps are removed in five years, customers could end up paying much more because of this additional transition charge.
With several reporters covering state politics, the Dispatch should have been able to uncover the truth about electric deregulation instead of lamely parroting a senator's half-truths.
Dispatch buries V report
You may have missed it in the October 26 Dispatch--buried on page C3 beneath the generic and innocuous headline "Businessman admits kickback scheme"--but the federal investigation is tightening around the V Group, the company owned by our senator's brother Paul Voinovich.
The bizarre headline and the structure of the Dispatch article suggest that Columbus' self-proclaimed "greatest home newspaper" is still running a flak campaign for George Voinovich. Contrast the headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "FBI links V Cos. to secret deal."
Better yet, look at the lead in the Dispatch story: "An eastern Ohio businessman told a federal judge yesterday that an executive of the V Group participated four years ago in an illegal kickback scheme to obtain dumping permits for a landfill." Note the absence of the V-word--Voinovich--which doesn't appear until the third paragraph.
The Plain Dealer led with the following: "The company owned by Paul Voinovich received secret payments from a Steubenville landfill owner seeking to win favors from state regulators who served under then-Governor George Voinovich, the FBI said in federal court yesterday."
The Plain Dealer worked the names of both Paul Voinovich and George Voinovich into the first sentence. The lead promises an exciting story about an FBI investigation and secret payments.
The Dispatch story reads like some boring business report about permits or something. Paul Voinovich's name doesn't appear until the end of the third paragraph. Talk about burying the lead. What's the Dispatch trying to hide here?
If you want the full V Group story, check out the Columbus Alive archives on the web. The FBI even referred to articles in this newspaper during the initial probe of the wide-ranging political corruption scandal. You might want to start with the September 17, 1997, Alive article "Arlene, Pauly and Frank," which linked former V Group Vice President Clark Miller's campaign contributions to County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker and the Franklin County Jail debacle.
Or read the November 5, 1997, Alive article questioning Miller's role in possible payoffs in Franklin County titled "Dewey's decimals."
The November 12, 1998, Alive article "Money Machine: Inside the V Group's pattern of alleged laundering and contract steering" was given to the FBI by Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern.
Finally, you might want to re-read the comprehensive "The V Report," from April 8, 1999. The Ohio Society of Professional Journalists named that story the best governmental reporting last year for all Ohio newspapers with circulations under 100,000.
TV gay baiting
Viewers of WBNS-TV were treated recently to a perfect example of how TV stations sensationalize "news" to attract eyeballs. Throughout the evening of October 24, anchor Dave Kaylor's promos for the 11 p.m. newscast, spoken with such ominous warnings one would think that perhaps Communists had invaded Grandview, warned viewers that "gay marriages!" were on their way to central Ohio.
Sure enough, the lead story--the story Channel 10 picked as the most important of the day--was about one church in Upper Arlington that was holding discussions for its members concerning same-sex "commitment ceremonies." Unfortunately for Channel 10, the nearly five minutes devoted to the story negated everything the menacing promos had promised. As the reporter of the story pointed out, "gay marriage!" is illegal in the United States; the church in question wasn't making a decision, merely holding discussions (and much to the congregation's credit, all of the participants refused to speak to the TV reporter); and that there are several churches in the Columbus area that already perform "commitment ceremonies."
In other words, there was no story. Channel 10 merely tried to sensationalize a gay topic to attract viewers.
It should also be noted that the next six stories on WBNS' news that evening (a serial rapist in Akron, update on a syringe attack, a missing woman, a state worker who misused state dollars, a bank robbery and a deadly accident) took just over five minutes to report. Besides making viewers question the station's priority of stories, it certainly proved that two of the letters in Channel 10's name are correct: B and S.
11/09/2000
Behind closed doors
The world's most powerful plutocrats are bringing their anti-democratic agenda to Cincinnati
by Bob Fitrakis
Their name is innocuous enough. The Transatlantic Business Dialogue's goal is almost Socialist-sounding: "[TABD] offers an effective framework for enhanced cooperation between the transatlantic business community and the governments of the European Union and the United States."
We're told "It is an informal process whereby European and American companies and business associations develop joint E.U.-U.S. trade policy recommendations, working together with the European Commission and U.S. Administration."
Despite the disarming rhetoric, the undemocratic practices of TABD will meet with major protests next weekend, November 16-18, in Cincinnati. The ongoing struggle between human rights advocates, environmental and labor activists and the world's Western corporate elite--the struggle that brought us last fall's protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle and this spring's demonstrations against the World Bank in Washington, D.C.--will continue in the Queen City.
Round three will be a showdown between TABD and CHE (The Coalition for a Humane Economy)--essentially a battle of guerrilla theater forces against 150 of the world's most prominent corporate executives. As usual, I'll be rooting for the guerrillas, and I'm willing to buy war bonds.
Founded in November 1995, TABD is a byproduct of the Clinton administration's fascination with "neo-liberal" (read "undemocratic, corporate capitalist") globalization. The late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown brought 100 corporate executives from the U.S. and Europe to Seville, Spain, that year to discuss "trade liberalization."
TABD defines "liberalization" differently than you and I: Liberalization is defined as the freedom of corporations from those pesky environmental and worker safety regulations that get in the way of clear-cutting tropical rainforests and hiring nine-year-old kids for 12 cents an hour to work in sweatshops in developing countries.
This exclusive, private club of plutocrats grew out of corporate frustration over opposition to the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Now these rich white guys are out to "deliver the positive messages of globalization." Contrary to its obvious role of setting the agenda for the World Trade Organization (WTO), TABD has no official structure and no formal legal existence. This serves the organization well, by allowing it to exclude the public and press from its "informal" meetings with top elected officials and bureaucrats from the wealthiest countries in the world.
England's Observer noted last May that "when presidents, prime ministers and other transitory heads of state meet at the WTO, this more permanent group [the TABD] provides the agenda." A key part of TABD's agenda is making sure middle-class union manufacturing jobs are shipped to desperate, indebted Third World nations where brutal dictators understand the need for massive and unconscionable corporate profits.
TABD's E.U. chair, Bertrand Cullomb, CEO of Lafarge, concedes that "more work needs to be done by both business and government to demonstrate the direct benefit of trade liberalization to consumers and employees." Of course it's hard to see the benefit of a system where a few hundred Western billionaires own more wealth than nearly half the people on the planet, but I'm sure Cullomb will be explaining it informally to a bunch of very important guys who do understand. And then, they can use the growing world media monopolies to explain the non-obvious benefits of a blatantly immoral and undemocratic New World Order to the rest of us.
TABD's extreme secrecy allows it to plot--sorry, I mean advise about--the world's economic future unencumbered by the participation of people affected by its decisions. Anyone who believes in that messy process we call democracy should question why TABD closes its door to the press when it meets with "invited business and government officials." Perhaps citizens would feel better about globalization if they were actually included in the process.
When you're making the world safe for plutocracy and fostering government of the CEOs, by the CEOs and for the CEOs, I guess it's OK to keep it all a secret.
If you don't share that sentiment, you might want to check out groups like N16--Cincinnati Direct Action Collective. "Our convergence upon Cincinnati will be a symbol that we want to totally eradicate and abolish the injustice of global economic control by a few," reads the group's website. They're calling for the creation of "affinity groups" to greet TABD delegates in the streets of Cincinnati. Demonstrators are planning a noon kickoff on Thursday, November 16, at Fountain Square. The following day, they'll assemble at Sawyer Point on Race Street to march to the Omni Netherlands Plaza Hotel where TABD's meeting.
A note of caution: the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in October that an extensive undercover police operation reminiscent of the FBI's CoIntelPro is targeting protesters. One undercover police officer drove a vanload of 18 activists heading for the Republican National Convention in August directly to jail.
Remember, none of you are planning to do anything illegal--that would be criminal conspiracy. You may, however, be moved by the spirit once there, with absolutely no forethought, to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Democracy is in the streets, but so are informants and undercover cops. Make a ruckus, rock on, and keep the faith.
11/16/2000
What liberal media?
Especially during the weeks leading up to an election, conservative circles complain of the liberal media bias--that army of left-wing editors and reporters who slant the news to fit their own political ideology, and the newspaper publishers who apparently think just-this-side-of-Communism viewpoints will help increase profits.
Those liberals must be locked in the basement at the Columbus Dispatch, because they certainly had no say in the paper's endorsements.
On the contrary, the Dispatch's selections, with few exceptions, could have been made by Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. The Sunday before the election, November 5, just in case we missed any of the picks, the Dispatch laid them out in a spiffy capsule format--a Republican reference card, a Cliff's Notes of conservatism.
At the top of the list, of course, was George W. Bush, who the Dispatch claimed will "smooth over the bitter partisanship and frequent gridlock that have characterized the eight years of the Clinton administration." Nevermind that it takes two to gridlock and that a beaten Newt Gingrich, when tendering his resignation, admitted his role in creating the contentious relationship with the White House by saying that everything would run more smoothly once he was gone. Much of the partisan atmosphere in Congress was created by Gingrich and other bitter Republicans who could not stomach Bill Clinton's popularity.
Does Bush have some special magic that will bring the two parties together? Of course not. We didn't even have to wait for him to take office--much less get elected--to see the Dispatch's laughable claim of a bipartisan Bush proved wrong. His behavior this week--filing a lawsuit to prevent Florida from counting its votes, of all things--is evidence enough that the two-party system is alive and well in America.
If Al Gore is elected and the rival parties face off again (the Republicans held a slim majority in Congress), we will see, once again, the confrontational nature of politics. It seems--stop the presses!--that the Democrats and Republicans don't always agree with each other. Then again, maybe the Dispatch was simply advocating a gridlock-free one-party system.
The Dispatch threw its Supreme Court endorsements to Deborah Cook and Terrence O'Donnell. The paper praised both for their belief that judges should not make policy from the bench, somehow ignoring the fact that Cook did just that by excising the "thorough and efficient" education clause from Ohio's constitution. In her decision on school funding, Cook wrote that requiring Ohio's legislatures to adhere to this clause and actually provide a thorough and efficient education for Ohio's school children would be an "absurdity."
The daily monopoly also praised Cook and O'Donnell for their independence from special interest groups, despite the millions of dollars that each received from businesses and insurance companies and despite strong judicial histories of siding with those donors. Apparently, the Dispatch does not consider the business community to be a special interest group.
The rest of the Dispatch dance card was also filled with elephants. Republican Mike DeWine for U.S. senator, four Republicans for five U.S. representative slots, Republican Priscilla Mead for state senator, and Republican Bill Schuck for Franklin County commissioner. Democrats were able to nab three endorsements for state representative offices, but Republicans got six of the nine. At the county level, the Dispatch graciously approved Democrats for three of 11 offices.
Although they provided reasons for their selections, it is quite apparent that Dispatch editors voted the same way many citizens do--along party lines. Their puffy platitudes--Pat Tiberi's "professionalism" and DeWine's thoughtful consideration of the issues--carry little real weight and could easily be applied to any choice, Democrat or Republican.
The Dispatch's endorsees posted a respectable election-day record of 23-6-1. Staunch Republicans certainly nodded their heads and agreed wholeheartedly when reading the endorsements, but the paper's lack of objectivity and reason probably prevented them from making many converts.
Unanswered exit poll questions
The mainstream media's self-flagellation for calling the Florida election early--first for Gore, then for Bush--may be misplaced. Projections based on exit polls using advanced sampling methods have almost never failed before. Maybe the media's initial exit polls were correct this time too.
Suppose in the recent Yugoslavian election we learned that the exit polls predicted Slobodan Milosevich's opponent as the victor; there were massive voting irregularities in the one area of the country controlled by Milosevich's brother; it turns out that Milosevich's father was the former director of the secret police, who previously manipulated elections throughout the world; and Milosevich is suddenly winning by a few hundred votes.
What would we think?
We'd immediately suspect a coup d'™tat and a stolen election. We'd call for a United Nations-supervised recount and dispatch the U.S. secretary of state to oversee it.
Here in the U.S. election, we have a presidential candidate with the most votes--a clear plurality of 200,000 votes over his opponent--who's losing because of a few hundred votes in one state. The mainstream media drumbeat is trying to force, as we go to press, popular vote winner Al Gore to concede the race "for the good of the country" while spinning stories on how the early projections of a Gore victory were wrong. But it's entirely plausible that the exit polls in Florida were correct--people came out of the voting booths saying that they voted for Gore, not knowing that their votes would be counted otherwise.
Gore was leading in the exit polls in Florida, a state controlled by his opponent's brother, Governor Jeb Bush. It turns out their father is the former U.S. CIA director who had manipulated scores of elections throughout the Third World in the mid-'70s. George W. Bush appears to be ahead by a few hundred votes in Florida.
And two former U.S. secretary of states were dispatched to oversee the recount.
But it's the United States, not Yugoslavia. There couldn't be a coup d'™tat here. Could there?
Maybe there's a reason why it's so important to the Bush family that one of their own holds the power of the presidency next year. Long-awaited CIA files tying former CIA Director George Bush to human rights abuses and other potential crimes are to be released to the public next year--particularly the elder Bush's alleged role in the double homicide of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier and U.S. ally Ronnie Moffitt in a 1976 Washington, D.C., car bombing. The next President of the United States will be the one to decide if these files are released in a timely manner.
Senator Frank Church's 1975 congressional investigation of the CIA's covert activities found that the organization had run between 10,000 and 20,000 covert operations in its four decades. The most common of these operations was rigging elections, not surprisingly often by directing votes to obscure third-party candidates.
The question the American media doesn't want to ask is the most obvious: Did the Bushes bring their unique covert election-rigging skills to the Banana Republic of Florida?
It's an issue that the world press is not afraid to tackle, as seen in some excerpts collected by Newsweek this week. "U.S. Humiliated in Presidential Shambles," screamed the page-one headline on Britain's The Mirror. "The health certificate of the greatest democracy in the world includes, unquestionably, some serious black marks," wrote France's Le Monde. Italy's La Repubblica commented that the atmosphere in the U.S. is "not so much of a superpower but of a super banana republic."
Doesn't it make you proud to be an American?
11/23/2000
Mental capacity
If Governor Bush executes a retarded man as planned, it will put Texas in a despicable league all its own
by Bob Fitrakis
At least one positive thing has come from the closely contested presidential recount in Florida: the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the execution of Texas killer Johnny Paul Penry just hours before his state-sanctioned murder was to take place.
Penry is the poster person for the mentally retarded on death row. Educated at a home for the mentally retarded, his I.Q. test scores range between 50 and 63. His attorneys point out that this is the functional level of a six-year-old, that he still believes in Santa Claus, and that he was severely abused as a child.
In 1979, Penry raped and murdered a 22-year-old woman. Initially, a Texas court refused to let the jury even consider evidence of Penry's well-documented retardation in deciding his fate.
Not only have the usual death penalty opponents pleaded to stay the execution, so have the European Union, the American Bar Association and both the American Association on Mental Retardation and the Association for Retarded Citizens. Only a handful of "rogue" nations in the world openly execute the mentally retarded--putting the state of Texas in a league with Mauritius, Tonga and Tunisia. Ohio's Attorney General Betty Montgomery has carved out her own little niche with the execution of Wilford Berry last year, the "volunteer" with a long history of mental illness and brain damage from his beating during the Lucasville riot.
Locally, Ohio State University Law Professor Douglas Berman prepared a letter for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles claiming, among other things, that "society's `evolving standards of decency' precludes his [Penry's] execution."
"A `dynamic' interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Section 13 of the Texas Constitution, focusing upon `objective' factors evidencing an evolution of contemporary values over the last decade, leads to the conclusion that the execution of the mentally retarded is no longer tolerated by society's current `standard of decency,'" wrote Berman.
In the last decade, 13 state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have passed statutes against executing the mentally retarded. In the vast majority of U.S. jurisdictions, Penry would not be killed, according to Berman. Just within the last year, six additional states are considering bills to prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded.
While substantial majorities have continued to support capital punishment, even greater numbers are opposed to the death penalty for retarded people. Berman's letter points to a recent public opinion poll showing that 80 percent opposed the execution of the mentally retarded. Over a decade ago, before it became a hot-button issue, 73 percent of Texans polled opposed the execution of retarded inmates, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
Berman suggests that the U.S. Supreme Court likely stayed the Penry execution to allow Texas Governor George W. Bush more time to reflect on the matter. A Texas newspaper reported last week that the governor is busy "playing gentleman rancher at his Crawford spread" and "`enjoying the tranquillity of Central Texas,' according to a PR flak." The American-Statesman noted that Bush was "under...unprecedented pressure" from the presidential election recount.
Texas papers seem more than willing to forgive the preoccupied governor for overlooking the obvious moral dilemma posed by executing Penry. Thankfully the Supreme Court proved a little more thoughtful. Arguably, in the U.S., "pregnant chads" should take clear precedence over killing certified retarded people.
The executive director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union said that his state would "shame" itself by killing Penry. The "shame" of killing Penry neither stopped the governor from meeting with architects and builders working on his ranch home nor from grilling hamburgers and reading the new biography of baseball great Joe DiMaggio, according to Bush spokesperson Ray Sullivan.
Ironically, in 1991, Governor Bush's father's President's Committee on Mental Retardation issued a report which concluded that the death penalty was inappropriate for the mentally retarded. Then-President George H.W. Bush authorized the report advocating that "capital punishment be prohibited for persons with mental retardation." Berman cites the report in his letter to the board of pardons.
Perhaps Berman's most telling argument is that last August on Good Morning, America, Governor Bush had the following exchange with Jack Ford.
Ford: "Do you personally feel that it's morally repugnant to execute someone who is mentally retarded, regardless of what the legislature would do?"
Governor Bush: "I do--I do feel that way. Yes, I do feel that way."
State's rights aside, it's a good thing the federal Supreme Court justices were paying enough attention to justice at hand to save our possible future president from taking office as the killer of a man with the mental capacity of a six-year-old.
11/30/2000
You gotta have faith (values optional)
The front page of the Columbus Dispatch's November 17 "Faith and Values" section contained a curious account of Sir John Reiner, a 51-year-old Dublin City Councilmember and president of Oakland Nursery, being admitted into the Knights of Malta.
The Dispatch told us that "few Catholics win the distinction Reiner has and even fewer will talk about it." After all, "Modesty is a virtue valued by the order."
Or maybe that virtue is secrecy.
Dating back to the first Crusade in 1099, the order originally known as the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem were granted independence from Catholic Church control by Pope Pascal II in 1113. The order became military participants in later Crusades along with the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights.
Driven from Jerusalem in 1187, the order of St. John fled first to Acre, then Cyprus and finally Rhodes, where they were known as the Knights of Rhodes. There they established a military dictatorship and sovereign state status. In 1530, they were forced from Rhodes and re-established their headquarters in Malta, hence the Knights of Malta.
The Knights of Malta recruited primarily among the European aristocracy and soon amassed extensive estates throughout the continent. Their fortunes picked up dramatically during the first two decades of the 14th century when they helped crush the Knights Templar--Templar leaders were burned alive as heretics--and assimilated the Templars' holdings. The Knights of Malta were defeated by Napoleon in 1789 and given protection by the Russian emperor before moving their headquarters to Rome.
A better source than the Dispatch on the Knights of Malta is the Winter 1986 Covert Action Information Bulletin article by Francoise Hervet. He pointed out that the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (Knights of Malta SMOM) was founded in 1927. Entering World War II in 1941, Cardinal Francis Spellman was the American order's "Grand Protector" and "Spiritual Advisor." The Knight's treasurer was one John J. Raskob. Raskob, an admirer of the French fascist Croix de Feu, worked with Morgan banker John Davis as the principal financier in the infamous aborted fascist coup that failed because Major General Smedley Butler, the chosen military dictator, denounced it.
When the U.S. Army entered Rome in June 1944, General Mark Clark was made a Knight of Malta. Legendary CIA official James Angleton was awarded honors by the Knights of Malta in 1946. And in November 1948 the American Knights awarded the Grand Cross of Merit to Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. The CIA later installed Gehlen as the first chief of West Germany's CIA equivalent, the BND.
In 1998, the Jerusalem Post reported that Pope John Paul II met with Vienna diplomat Dr. Robert Prantner, "envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the Knights of Malta." Prantner argued that the Catholic Church shouldn't apologize to Jews for centuries of anti-semitism, rather Jews should apologize for "their deplorable crimes...against Catholic children...and for the blood of murdered Christians," according to the Austrian Zurziet.
According to Covert Action, recent members of the Knights of Malta included Franz von Pape, who persuaded German President Paul von Hindenburg to resign and make Hitler chancellor of Germany; Alexander Haig, President Reagan's secretary of state; and William Casey, Reagan's CIA director during the Iran-Contra scandal. Other news sources list as Knights Prescott Bush Jr., the former President's brother; William F. Buckley Jr.; former CIA Director John McCone; and former Treasury Secretary William Simon. (The Knights choose their own members and elect their own grand master.)
A 1998 Chronicle of Philanthropy article reported on Simon's membership in the Knights and also pointed out that Simon "was on the board of Covenant House in New York when its founder was accused of sexual and financial misconduct." Covenant House founder Father Bruce Ritter was involved in covert operations with the Knights of Malta and AmeriCares, a supposed charity run by a life-long acquaintance of ex-President George Bush, according to award-winning investigative reporter Charles M. Sennott.
Reiner did tell the Dispatch that when he was knighted in Washington, "It was an opportunity to see a lot of people who are sort of secretly doing good things. It's so uplifting." As Reiner put it, being a Knight means "a life of dedication to helping others."
Another of the Columbus-area Knights is Robert Morosky, whose name emerged in the controversial Shapiro murder file. Police Chief James Jackson was investigated and disciplined for attempting to destroy all copies of the document titled "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis." The report, written for the Columbus Police Organized Crime Bureau, noted, "Arthur Shapiro was reportedly in direct contact with Vice Chairman Robert Morosky (`Number Two') at the Limited." Prominent Columbus attorney Arthur Shapiro, who worked for Les Wexner and the Limited, was slain in an unsolved mob-style murder in 1985.
Alive honored by planning office
While Columbus Alive receives its share of local, state and national journalism awards each year, we aren't accustomed to being recognized by government agencies. The press is supposed to be the unblinking watchdog of government, and we don't expect a pat on the back in return.
So we have to give a lot of credit to the City of Columbus' Planning Office for its PlanIt Columbus 2000 awards, a celebration of planning and design excellence. Apparently, they aren't afraid to pat the watchdog on the back, even when its teeth are bared.
At a ceremony on November 9, Columbus Alive received the PlanIt Columbus 2000 Award for Excellence in Journalism for our "Sprawlburbia" series, the summer 1999 series that turned a critical eye to the state of urban planning in central Ohio. The award was accepted by Melinda M. White, the primary reporter of the series; editor Brian Lindamood and arts editor Melissa Starker also contributed to "Sprawlburbia."
The three-part series explored the causes and effects--both positive and negative--of central Ohio's phenomenal growth: the impact this has on employers, neighborhoods, roadways and public transportation; the problems faced by suburbs and outlying communities as Columbus creeps outside the outerbelt; and the cultural impact of migrating entertainment centers, as developments like Easton Town Center increasingly draw nightlife away from the city.
Ultimately, "Sprawlburbia" was hopeful, exploring possible solutions to the community's sprawl challenge. The best thing about Columbus' growth is it's still not too late to make changes for the better. We're grateful that the city's planning office and PlanIt Awards committee recognized the importance of this issue.
Other PlanIt Award recipients, in more traditional planning and design categories, included the Southern Theatre for historic preservation; the Italian Village Community Garden for public spaces-neighborhood focus; the Scioto Peninsula Riverfront Amphitheatre for public spaces-community focus; the Columbus Arts District Master Plan for excellence in planning; and the Nationwide Arena District deservedly won the M.D. Portman Award for overall excellence in contribution to the city.
FEATURED ARTICLE
12/07/2000
Uncovering River Valley Schools' atomic secrets
The Ohio EPA knew at least 22 years ago that the Marion public schools were built next to a toxic waste dump
Documents obtained by Columbus Alive show radioactive materials were also stored at the site, including Manhattan Project materials used to test the first atomic bomb
by Bob Fitrakis and Jamie Pietras
There's an untold story behind the almost $24 million Marion's River Valley School District will receive in the next three years. The U.S. government, through an act of Congress, promised $15 million to build a new high school and middle school, while the state enacted legislation kicking in an additional $8.9 million to the district, which also plans to build two elementary schools.
The $15 million from the armed services budget is explained easily enough, as one concerned Marion resident told Columbus Alive: at least 12 River Valley alumni with leukemia multiplied by an average settlement of $1.25 million equals $15 million. The state's $8.9 million payment might be better explained as hush money for the questionable handling of the polluted site the River Valley Schools were built upon.
Despite the site's toxic legacy--which dates as far back as the dawn of the atomic age in the 1940s, when the land was an Army engineers' depot--public officials are hesitant to jump to any conclusions about the leukemia cases and unusual cancer rates suffered by River Valley alumni. The Ohio Department of Health is examining case studies to see if there is a link between the contamination and disease. In the meantime, middle and high school students literally sit in the middle of the uncertainty--their parents knowing all too well of studies which have indicated abnormally high cancer rates among graduates.
To put it mildly, the recent years have been tense ones for Governor Bob Taft, Ohio EPA officials and state and federal legislators, as they scrambled to find a solution to the problems in the small city just an hour's drive north of Columbus. When federal and state officials cut a deal earlier this year that allowed the U.S. and Ohio governments to kick in money for relocation of the schools--provided Marion residents kick in almost $20 million with a property tax levy of their own--they breathed a sigh of relief.
"For months the state has been working with the [Army] Corps [of Engineers] and Senators [George] Voinovich and [Mike] DeWine to craft a solution to the very complex situation in Marion," Taft said in a May 19 Ohio Department of Health press release. "With this agreement, River Valley students and families will receive a new school facility and the community will have a significant tract of land available for industrial development."
But according to an extensive review of documents obtained by Columbus Alive, the schools' toxic problem isn't as new as the politicians would probably like to believe. The Ohio EPA knew of contamination on the site for more than two decades, and information on the site's role in the Manhattan Project was discovered by an environmental audit team in the late 1980s.
In three years the kids will be moved to new schools and the dump will be cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers so that it can be re-used for industrial purposes. Cleaning its former depot site to industrial standards will cost the Army Corps $5 million to $10 million. To move the children temporarily, clean the dump to residential standards, and move the students back into the schools would have cost substantially more--$44.5 million.
Clearly the armed services are smiling at the price tag. They're the ones responsible for the mess in the first place.
"The company was given permission to use the dump"
Despite claims to the contrary, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency knew at least 22 years ago that the River Valley Junior High and High School property was formerly an Army engineers' depot, with a contaminated dump directly next to the school property. Correspondence dating to 1978 between Plant City Steel, the Marion County Health Department and the Ohio EPA's district office in Bowling Green specifically addressed a toxic dump just south of the schools' fence line. At the time, Plant City Steel was dumping toxic waste on a site adjacent to the River Valley Schools property.
Earlier this year, Howard L. Jones, a 1978 River Valley graduate, wrote the Marion County Health Department requesting information related to the dumping of toxic waste near the River Valley Schools. Marion County Director of Environmental Health Lowell Lufkin responded in a May 1 letter: "Mr. Phil Case was the director of environmental health for the Marion County Health Department for many years. Shortly after Mr. Case left the department all the files for nuisance violations and solid waste violations were lost."
So Lufkin turned to the Ohio EPA's Northwest District Office for the requested information--material on toxic dumping at the school site that the Ohio EPA had long denied knowledge of--and the EPA office sent it.
Within the information Lufkin received and forwarded to Jones was a clear and disturbing photograph of an open waste dump dated July 26, 1978, with a handwritten note on the back: "Marion County Plant City Steel dump located on the old Marion Ordinance Depot."
Also included in the EPA material was a letter dated July 7, 1978, that Case sent William Walters, the Plant City Steel plant manager, demanding that the steel company "cease operation of your disposal site immediately." Case wrote, "You must either dig a trench and bury all waste or haul enough dirt in to cover the area with two (2) feet of dirt cover."
Ten days later, the steel company's attorney, Walter D. Moore, wrote promising that Plant City Steel would "henceforth refrain" from using the dump near the schools, but the company refused to "bury or cover the waste present" at the site since "the land on which the dump is located is owned by some segment of the government." Moreover, Moore insisted, "The company was given permission to use the dump...[and] that Plant City was only one of a number of users of the dump."
That same month, Moore again wrote Case, informing him that the Ohio EPA had made "demands of Plant City that it cannot fulfill." Moore claimed that the dump site land was owned by the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA), and was "immediately supervised by 83rd [U.S. Army] ARCOM, Ft. Hayes, Columbus, Ohio."
Case informed the Ohio EPA that he had "contacted Mr. James F. Lyons, GSA, and explained the Plant City dump problems." Case's letter also notes that "He [Lyons] is contacting his legal adviser and is getting some up-to-date maps from Chicago, then he will come up and look over the problem."
Ohio EPA District Chief R.J. Manson wrote Walters on August 4 that year informing him that the agency's investigation had found two violations: "Operating a solid waste facility without plan approval and an operating license" and "Operating an open dump and open burning."
By November 22, 1978, the Ohio EPA had apparently solved the problem of the toxic waste site. "The road leading into this area has been barricaded. The Ohio National Guard plans to cover the area with dirt," revealed an internal EPA letter. The letter did not explain how the dirt would keep the toxins from migrating onto the adjacent school property.
"Part of the depot was used for development of the first atomic bomb"
Environmental concerns with the Marion schools site emerged again a decade later, with even more ominous implications. On March 21, 1988, Benatec Associates Inc. issued an environmental audit report commissioned by the HARSCO Corporation regarding the sale of the company's Plant City Steel (PCS) operation in Marion. The steel company had purchased the audited property in 1966 from the U.S. government, and ceased operations in 1986.
In order to determine how the government had used the site prior to 1966, Benatec researchers contacted, among others, James F. Lyons, then the facility's manager for the U.S. GSA in Columbus. The Benatec report noted, "Mr. Lyons stated that to the best of his knowledge, part of the depot was used for storage, bomb production, and experiments regarding the development of the first atomic bomb."
Lyons suggested that Benatec researchers contact Charles Mosher, the author of a recent book titled The Scioto Ordnance Plant and the Marion Engineer Depot of Marion, Ohio: A Profile After Forty Years. Mosher claimed "that portions of `The Manhattan Project' for the development of the first atomic bomb were conducted exclusively in a building on the depot and off the now PCS property."
"Mr. Mosher stated that he was personally involved in `The Manhattan Project.' He suggested that Mr. Robert Ferguson of Marion, Ohio, former safety director of the Marion depot, be contacted," the Benatec report added. In a telephone interview with a Benatec investigator, Ferguson verified that he worked in the depot's fire department between 1948 and 1954, and served as the facility's safety director between 1954 and 1960. "According to Mr. Ferguson, a concrete building west of the water tower and south of Route 309 contained radioactive material utilized for `The Manhattan Project' during World War II. He felt that the building known as Building 517 may have been used for the storage of radioactive material. Building 517 is presently on the western end of the PCS property. He further stated that a storm sewer ran from Warehouse No. 4 south of Route 309 to Building 510 and then in open ditches towards the river."
When contacted by Columbus Alive this week, Ferguson said he had no knowledge of the Manhattan Project, and the 1988 report must have misquoted him. Ferguson did confirm to Alive that radioactive materials were stored at the depot.
A deed from World War II substantiates the government's lease of the drainage ditch in question. "Allegedly, cattle and sheep in the area drinking from the open ditches were impacted and lawsuits against the government with out-of-court settlements resulted," the Benatec report read.
Ferguson also claimed "that there was a dump for `nonsalvageable excess waste' which, prior to his personally stopping it, contained used solvent, paint, waste oil, etc."
The Benatec environmental audit found "five major areas of concern": three underground storage tanks near Building 510; "43 55-gallon drums stored on wooden pallets...full or partially filled" with what "may be lead and chromate enamel"; the storm drainage systems on the eastern and western ends of the property; the radioactive material storage areas, particularly Buildings 517 and 510; and "a general dump for waste material for the National Guard and the PCS operation."
In August 1988, Benatec issued a second report noting that "although the PCS operation and environmental records were destroyed, indications are that spray painting and storage of electric transformers containing PCBs may have occurred on the site."
"Forty-three barrels containing an oily substance had visibly spilled on the ground," the second report stated. In sampling the property for toxic and radioactive contamination, the Benatec investigators found "some level of volatile gases." As a result, "all involved personnel went to level C protection. This consists of oil resistant Tyvek suits, gloves, boots, and respirators." The meter reading for volatile organic compounds for environment sampling hole "D-4" was six times the limit that triggered level C protection.
The Benatec samples showed that "a great deal of oil remains in the soil due to a past oil spill on the property."
The Ohio EPA began another investigation of the depot site in July 1989, which resulted in the agency filing a 33-count civil action on February 28, 1994, against Plant City Steel parent HARSCO for violation of Ohio environmental laws. The counts included the illegal operation of a hazardous waste facility, unlawful burning of hazardous waste, failure to mark hazardous waste containers, failure to analyze hazardous waste and failure to keep written operating records, among other charges. The Ohio EPA asked for $10,000 a day in fines. Within a week, HARSCO had settled for $100,000 and an agreement to close the waste dump.
The initial closure plan submitted to the EPA by HARSCO subsidiary Getman Brothers Manufacturing Company included 11 of 12 hazardous waste storage units. Jeff Steers of the Ohio EPA's Northwest District Office signed off as the group leader on the closure plan, but the EPA refused to accept the closure plan for one unit, Area L. The closure plan submitted to the Ohio EPA during Governor George Voinovich's administration for Area L was not finally approved until five years later, during Governor Bob Taft's administration--two years into the current River Valley Schools controversy.
Beginning in 1996, the state fire marshal ordered the Ohio Army National Guard to take benzene samples from the ground water at the Marion Army Guard site located on the old depot property, abutting River Valley Junior High School. The River Valley Schools' contamination crisis began the next year, the same year that HARSCO paid the Ohio EPA more than half a million dollars in a settlement for violation of air pollution control laws at a Marysville manufacturing facility.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commissioned an Environmental Baseline Survey in 1996 of the Marion Outdoor Training Area, on the same former depot site near the school. The corps' study found "no definite hazardous waste or material...at the time of the site visit." The corps did find three empty drums "in the vicinity of a potential wetland area."
The brief report concluded, "After reviewing historical use documents of the site it is not known exactly what types of materials, if any, were stored at this location. According to existing data, facility records, and current conditions there is no documented or physical evidence indicating hazardous materials were ever used or stored at this site."
Of course the Army's investigators could have simply walked over to the Marion Historical Society and purchased a copy of Mosher's book to find out that material for the Manhattan Project was stored there along with radioactive infrared sniper scopes and radium disks through the 1950s. Nazi prisoners of war resided there as well.
"Hundreds of gallons of trichloroethylene were disposed of out there"
While state and federal officials tend to ignore, dismiss or downplay the Benatec report and Army Corps of Engineers findings in their ongoing investigation of the high rates of leukemia and cancers at River Valley's High School and Junior High, information continues to filter out suggesting a cover-up of the depot's past contamination.
A confidential letter arrived at the headquarters of the Ohio EPA, dated April 24, 1993. The author, Mary Prior, had worked at the depot from 1945 until it closed in 1961. She had a simple question: "Was there ever any effort made to determine what was buried at the site of the old Marion Engineer Depot?"
"It was part of my duty to order not only office supplies, but also items needed in the shop area, such as paint, paint thinner, paint remover, carbon tetrachloride (now a known carcinogen) and trichloroethylene (also now a known carcinogen)," Prior confessed. "Back then stuff was just buried somewhere on the post...It was poured on the ground near the building. The area must have been saturated...I know absolutely that it was disposed of because the drums always went back empty. Hundreds of gallons of trichloroethylene were disposed of out there because I used to order a drum several times a year."
"Several years ago I saw a 60 Minutes broadcast about a company...which had not properly disposed of some trichloroethylene and it resulted in a number of illnesses in the area... A businessman who used to work out there said I should let sleeping dogs lie," Prior's letter ended, "But there is already a school on that old depot property and the warehouses are being used."
The River Valley High School opened in 1962 and the adjacent Junior High in 1968. In 1997, a River Valley School nurse reported to the Ohio Department of Health that a disproportionate number of leukemia cases had struck students and graduates. Between 1966 and 1995, leukemia death rates rose by 122 percent in the city of Marion, and brain cancer death rates increased by 40 percent in the county.
Cases of esophageal cancer is 10 times the normal rate in Marion, according to a Ohio Department of Health survey. USA Today reported this year that a government study found a 40-percent increase in esophageal cancer among workers involved in early nuclear weapons production.
When the Ohio EPA checked the River Valley High School grounds in September 1997, the agency discovered a dime-sized radium disk in front of the school. The radioactive disks, stored at the former depot, were used as reflectors to highlight bridges and roadways during World War II. Between 50,000 and 80,000 of these disks were stored at the depot at one time, according to Charles Mosher's book and U.S. military documents. The military claimed the disks were moved, but can't provide the paperwork showing when or where the disks went. A few Marion parents suspect the radium disks were dumped and buried on the old depot site.
In the last week of June 1998, Army contractor Montgomery Watson conducted tests at various locations at the River Valley School property. The on-site laboratory picked up such a significant level of the carcinogenic chemical vinyl chloride that the testers dismissed it as "an apparent false detection." The report states, "The initial blank run and associated sample analytical results which displayed false positive vinyl chloride detections were rejected."
To eliminate these assumed "false" readings of a potent carcinogen, the Montgomery Watson testers adjusted the temperature and then detected carbon disulfide, a lesser toxin. However, in the investigative results from one of the two field samples of "water from hole," the vinyl chloride numbers tested in the range of 700,000 times the allowable risk standard.
The Ohio EPA now tests air inside the schools every three months. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tests air quality outside the site monthly. Those tests, along with the Ohio EPA's and Army's groundwater and soil tests, have shown toxin levels not to be dangerous to human health, according to the EPA.
"This is new information"
The Ohio EPA also attempted a more thorough historical evaluation after data from the Ohio Department of Health set off the current crisis. In October 1997, the EPA submitted a "Historical Aerial Photograph Analysis" between 1939 and 1966. The first photo submitted--dated August 31, 1961, just prior to the depot's closing by the Army--shows a strangely plowed triangle of land precisely where the junior high school now sits. Concerned parents fear this unexplained disturbed land may be a waste dump. The revealing photo was not made public by the EPA until January 1999.
That same month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers handed out status memos to the recently established citizens' Restoration Advisory Board for the Depot (RAB) recommending that no further action was necessary on the old Army dump site. RAB would later hire its own expert, Bruce Molholt, a Ph.D. in microbiology who recommended, with the "demonstrated high disease frequency," that the school be relocated and that a "prolonged excavation of the dump" was "required." Molholt pointed to the 1997 leukemia mortality study showing that deaths had increased by 122 percent in Marion in the past 30 years.
The Ohio EPA discredited Molholt's and co-researcher J.R. Kolmer's findings in a September 29, 2000, press release. "The consultants' epidemiology data inappropriately associated past cancer incidences of River Valley grads with current environmental conditions at the site," it said. The Ohio EPA also accused the researchers of having a limited understanding of the trichloroethylene breakdown process.
But when questioned about the 1961 photo, the Ohio EPA's Jeff Steers told the Columbus Dispatch, "This is new information... In earlier photos taken in the 1950s, it [the area under the school] wasn't disturbed at all."
Steers told the Marion Star in 1999 that the Ohio EPA came across the photo while digging through its Marion depot archives. He said, "I can't tell you when we actually got it [the 1961 aerial photo]."
The actual date the EPA received the photo, according to EPA's own files, is October 27, 1997. Steers explained to Columbus Alive that Lawhon and Associates, the company with which the Ohio EPA contracted, had found the photo during a records search, but Steers did not see it until 1999.
In 1998, Paul Jayko, of the Ohio EPA's Division of Emergency and Remedial Response, prepared a two-page analysis of an electromagnetic survey and seized upon two "anomalies." What Jayko saw were "buried metallic objects and possible waste materials having high electrical conductivity such as sludge of some type. The size and shape of the anomaly strongly suggests disposal of a waste material."
Jayko suggested the EPA move its testing directly to the other side of the River Valley School's chain-link fence, since "due to the limited mapping imposed by property boundaries, it is impossible to determine whether the mapped anomaly is shown in its entirety or is only the tip of the iceberg."
Jayko's January 8, 1998, internal memo was addressed to Steers. Whoever received the memo wrote the word "No" in felt pen and Xed out Jayko's recommendation to test the Army property next to the middle school.
Steers told Columbus Alive he was "not aware" of the memo.
Jayko's concerns were obvious. With students at the middle school and high school, he "suspected that any contaminant existing in this area has a direct pathway to the surface [due to the disruption of the clay soil by landfill activity] and there may be a dermal, ingestion, and inhalation pathway." Jayko's map showed what he thought was an obvious toxic waste site approximately 300-feet-by-200-feet in size just in back of the school's fence.
During the summer of 1998, Jayko lost his position as Marion Site Director because of alleged poor performance. Recently, Judge Thomas F. Phalen Jr. ruled that the Ohio EPA "wanted to do something graduated and far less effective" than a full investigation at the Marion site. Phalen ruled that the Ohio EPA had broken federal whistle blower laws by disciplining and reassigning Jayko.
"Keep the noise down"
A little over a month after the Paul Jayko memo to Jeff Steers, Steers wrote a curious memo to Ohio EPA Director Donald Schregardus regarding the "Marion investigation." Steers indicated that the decision to do ambient air monitoring at the site would be left up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the Department of Defense (DOD), which was responsible for the original pollution. Another goal would be to work with the Department of Energy (DOE), which was responsible for the radioactive contamination on the site. Steers added, "No Superfund money will be used since DOE and DOD are clearly the responsible parties and must pay for all associated costs of cleanup."
Montgomery Watson prepared a draft report for the Army Corps of Engineers in November 1998. In the brief four-page report, the contractor wrote: "The principal contaminant found was vinyl chloride, which is a breakdown product of trichloroethylene."
In February 1999, after concerned Marion residents charged the depot contamination was being covered up, a much larger Army Corps of Engineers report with the same November 1998 date mysteriously appeared in the public repository of the Marion Public Library. The Corps was clearly retreating from its earlier "three empty barrels" analysis.
Montgomery Watson's assessment in the expanded report was straightforward. The "Overall Relative Risk: High" and the status of the Army's dump in back of the school property posed "imminent threats." Soldiers would no longer train in the area, and the report noted "ecological receptors [living organisms like mammals] have not been evidenced at this phase, however, there's a nature preserve on this parcel of land alleged to have been a waste disposal area."
The report fails to mention the ecological receptors--that is, students--standing directly on the other side of the chain-link fence.
Steers told the Columbus Dispatch that the Montgomery Watson report "was an internal document to justify funding requests. It was not to be circulated publicly."
The Toledo Blade reported in October this year that "Two-thirds of that 1953 dump [shown in the aerial photo] is River Valley School property. The other third is on the Army reserve training site which has been closed since 1999 because of health risks."
River Valley School Superintendent Thomas G. Shade rode to the Ohio EPA's rescue with a 1999 "The Voice of the Valley Environmental Bulletin." Shade told Marion parents that newly discovered toxic waste barrels were 500 to 800 yards beyond the fence that separates the school from the reserve ground. A Columbus Alive analysis of Army Corps of Engineers maps and other public documents indicates that the superintendent mistook yards for feet in his apparent effort to calm parents. In fact, the dump was as close as 500 feet to school property.
When later asked about the mix-up, Shade told Alive, "I can't tell you if it was yards or feet."
Shade also told parents, "The school and local government officials found out about the barrels on the reserve grounds when the public did--two months after the U.S. Army Reserve learned about them."
Apparently the Ohio EPA or the federal government failed to tell Shade about the Benatec study or Prior's 1993 letter or even the 1978 dump investigation. Indeed, Shade told Alive that he hadn't read the Benatec report and that Prior's name simply "rings a bell."
Governor Bob Taft's new EPA director, Chris Jones, tried a different approach. In a memo to the governor, he wrote, "The contaminated area has been there for years, and the public knew it existed." Thankfully Jones knew the difference between yards and feet, noting that the area was "500-800 feet from the school fence line."
While Shade was publicly calming parents, albeit with shaky information, he was also submitting an application from the River Valley Local School District to Ohio's Extreme Environmental Contamination Program for funds to build new schools. In the 1999 application he wrote, "Surface soil contamination contains unacceptable levels of carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons including benzo a pyrene. The paths of exposure include inhalation, ingestion and dermal contact."
Publicly, the superintendent followed the government's line, telling the Marion Star in February 1999 "that the trenching in front of the middle school did not indicate the school was built on top of a dump site."
Shade's efforts did not go unnoticed. In a February 2000 "Privileged/Confidential" memo obtained by Alive, EPA Director Jones wrote to Superintendent Shade, "I appreciate the effort you are making to `keep the noise down.' I really believe that it will be to everyone's benefit in the long run."
Shade had written Jones a February 9, 2000, "heads up" on a possible story by Columbus Dispatch reporter Jill Ripenhoff. Shade told Jones: "Again, to the degree possible we are trying to be sensitive to the whole issue, keep the noise down and proceed accordingly."
Shade told Columbus Alive that these memos shouldn't be taken out of context. A time of sensitive negotiations is not the time to start venting in local newspapers, he said.
"You don't go into negotiations that had just started with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Ohio EPA," Shade said. "You don't go into negotiations in good faith and out the back door go out blasting people."
The superintendent added, "Those memos were in that vein...not trying to cover up anything or hide anything."
"Why are the students still attending this school?"
While politicians and school leaders are busy defending their actions, grassroots groups like Ohio Citizen Action and Concerned River Valley Families continue to pressure Governor Bob Taft to remove children to another location. Citizens and activists have presented the governor with thousands of letters and documentation of the problems in Marion. "His complete inaction speaks for itself," Citizen Action's Simona Vaclavikova said of the governor. The group is not satisfied with the promise of a better tomorrow--when new schools are built in three years--while kids sit in the schools today.
Taft spokesperson Troy Kirkpatrick said of those letters, only 14 actually came from residents of the River Valley. Many letters didn't supply a return address.
Just prior to the November election, Stephen Lester, the science director at the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, analyzed the data from the River Valley School property and concluded with a simple question: "I have to raise a common sense question that I cannot answer. Why are the students still attending this school? The RI [U.S. Army's Remedial Investigation] report, even with its limitations, still shows serious hot spots on the school site." The River Valley School officials had earlier taken action by not allowing students to use the back exits of the school.
Vaclavikova said the fact that the bond issue to raise money for new schools passed this November is evidence Marion residents fear for the safety of their children.
"Obviously there's chemicals on the property and that's well-publicized," the Ohio EPA's Jeff Steers said. But, he points out that all EPA tests have indicated that the levels are not dangerous to human health.
River Valley Superintendent Shade told Alive that until case studies are completed by the Ohio Department of Health, no one should jump to conclusions. "The concern is, is it safe now?" Shade asked. He said it's "irresponsible" to make linkages between the rate of leukemia among people who went to the schools 10 years ago and possible dangers today. "We've relied on safety and the scientific method from the inception of this problem."Shade pointed out that all but one of River Valley's school board members has children or grandchildren at the junior high school or high school--not to mention the fact that Shade roams the halls regularly.
"What ulterior motive could there be for me to work on a campus that I thought was unsafe?" Shade asked. "We absolutely, firmly, confidently maintain that this campus is safe."
Taft and others maintain that the unusual Marion bond issue with matching state and federal money was an all-encompassing package intended to deal with ailing elementary schools as well as environmental problems at the high school and junior high school. Taft spokesperson Kirkpatrick mentioned Taft's visit to Caledonia Elementary School: "Their computer center where they kept all their servers was in the bathroom."
But at the junior high and high schools, an unseen, more unsightly problem lurks deep underneath the soil.
With their funding locked up, officially all is well in Marion, despite the fact that River Valley Junior High School children will go to school on a toxic waste site for the next three years, while a new school is being built, and their nearby high school neighbors will continue to play on contaminated ground.
NO 12/07/2000
12/14/2000
The station barred the sex- and drug-laden visual collages of the foul-mouthed Angsto the Clown last year--a decision OK'd by a jury in a federal obscenity lawsuit last year. But when it comes to white supremacist propaganda, Community 21 loosens its reins.
Critics of the public access station's policy of prior review--which gives the station the power to pull videos it deems inappropriate--point to the irony that the station chose to allow the White Revolution video to air on December 7. Station listings show that the video, which is a half-hour white supremacist tirade from World Church of the Creator's Matt Hale, also aired on November 30.
The fight over prior review reared its head again at Columbus City Council's December 11 meeting. During the public speaking portion of council's meeting, video producer Praza O. Edwards took the podium and criticized station Executive Director Pat Williamsen for choosing to air his Hebrew Israelite Ministries Worldwide show at 10:30 p.m. He said the station didn't like his message, particularly that Jesus was black.
A source at Community 21 told Media Watch that Edwards' show depicted acts of graphic violence, and that a parent had called the station to complain.
Community 21 supporter Darlene Cheek took the podium next at the council meeting. First she wanted to clear the confusion. Jesus was a Jew, she said. "Jesus was a black Jew," a voice cried from the back of the room. The debate over public access television is always animated.
Cheek voiced concerns about the station's funding being cut. In the city's recently released budget, Community 21's funding was dropped from $400,000 to $219,000.
Each of Columbus' government and education stations--including government Channel 3 and education Channel 25--experienced budget cuts this year. The city chose to manage Channel 25 in-house, rather than contract with another company, to take advantage of digital production capabilities and staff availability in the city's technology department.
In March, Community 21's contract with the city will be up for renewal. The city has taken bids from at least five parties interested in the public access contract, but sources could not say if anyone has the inside track.
Council honors Williamson?
The usual suspects at Columbus City Council got a hearty laugh, and The Other Paper reporter Dan Williamson played it off like a sport. But if any of the other City Hall beat reporters ever considered quitting their jobs, this was bound to make them think twice.
Ever the yuckster, Mayor Michael Coleman announced during the December 11 council meeting that he was providing Williamson with a "citation of recognition" for all that he's done for the city. Asking Williamson to take the podium, Coleman proceeded to roast the reporter who, for five years, has found countless punchlines at the expense of City Hall.
Williamson's tenure at The Other Paper and Columbus Monthly is over. He's leaving Max Brown's mini media empire to take a job with Capitalgate.com, an electronic start-up covering Statehouse politics.
After a little ribbing from the mayor (Coleman said he asked everyone at City Hall for comment on Williamson's departure and all they could say was "Thank you"), Williamson was given his certificate.
With the threat of falling victim to Billy Crystal-style standup at the hands of the mayor, reporters are left wondering whether they'll be next if they dare to leave the City Hall beat. "Possibly, but not necessarily," said Coleman's press secretary Mike Brown. "Dan especially had been there for some time."
Suburban News Publications reporter Gary Seman played it safe. He waited until the end of the meeting to tell the mayor and council insiders he was moving on to a food review beat. "If he would have told us ahead of time, we could have given him a citation cookie," Brown said.
Reading, 'riting and radioactivity
One way to look at last week's Columbus Alive cover story on Marion's River Valley Schools' atomic secrets is that the kids and educators were simply collateral damage of the Cold War. For years, bits and pieces of Ohio's major role in the Manhattan Project and the thermonuclear arms race have been dribbling out in the media. Here's a quick refresher course.
The uranium processing plant in Fernald--18 miles northwest of Cincinnati--was so contaminated by radiation that state and federal agencies barred their inspectors from visiting the plant in 1989. The Fernald plant was opened in 1952 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to produce nuclear bomb-grade uranium. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in 1989, "Ohio officials say that in the 37 years it has been in operation, the plant has released 298,000 pounds of uranium waste into the air and 167,000 pounds of waste into the Greater Miami River. Another 12.7 million pounds of waste were put into pits, which may be leaking. And the plant's concrete storage tanks are cracked and leaking. Leaking radioactivity has contaminated the Greater Miami Aquifer, which supplies drinking water to about 2 million people in the Cincinnati area. The plant sits on the aquifer."
Of course, things could have been worse. In 1993, at the unrelated Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reported that scientists from Harvard University and MIT fed radioactive forms of iron and calcium to 19 mentally retarded boys in their breakfast milk to monitor the health effects. Their parents were told they were in a "science club."
In the January 1994 Columbus Free Press cover story "Battelle and the Banality of Evil," the then-monthly muckraking paper pointed out that the institute had played a key role in the U.S. atomic and nuclear programs and that the Department of Defense estimated it would take more than $100 million in radioactive clean-up costs alone at Battelle's facilities.
The next month, the Free Press interviewed a moon-suited environmental decontamination worker leaving Battelle's West Jefferson site and published that there was radioactive contamination from an experimental laboratory and reactor. Battelle refused to comment but soon categorically denied the charge to the defunct Columbus Guardian.
The Columbus Dispatch's Scott Powers, perhaps the state's best environmental reporter, managed to confirm the radioactive contamination in a June 26, 1994, story bizarrely headlined "Battelle to clean up soil; Lab dust may be responsible for contamination." Battelle's Vice President, Kenneth Brog, reassured central Ohio residents by noting, "We certainly don't want to give anyone the impression that this plutonium, which is trapped in soils, migrates readily."
Essential reading is Powers' October 1, 1995, Dispatch article reporting that Ohio has "around 50 documented radioactive sites," more than any other state. Along with Fernald, the Mound Laboratory in Miamisburg and the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon were part of the "Big Three" nasties. The estimated cost of cleaning up these sites is well over $20 billion.
Earlier this year, Dispatch reporter Randall Edwards wrote, "For nearly 40 years, Battelle scientists using the same mechanical arms unlocked the secrets of atomic energy, first for use in powerful bombs, then for more peaceful causes." The article also pointed out that "Fuel rods and equipment from these plants [nuclear power plants] were shipped to West Jefferson for three decades, and as a result, many of the buildings there became contaminated with radioactivity."
It's not uncommon to find Manhattan Project contamination in urban areas, even outside research facilities like Battelle. The Dispatch's Powers revealed, "For eight months in 1943, B&T Metals at 425 W. Town St. was one of numerous small machine shops secretly pressed into service to manufacture uranium pellets for the Manhattan Project." In 1996, the U.S. government undertook an estimated $2.3 million clean-up of radioactive dust at the plant site.
The discovery of radioactive contamination directly linked to the Manhattan Project at two Dayton Board of Education buildings, including the Green Jr. ROTC Academy, stirred controversy in Dayton in 1998.
During the Fernald cleanup, medical experts suggested that the radium, linked specifically to leukemia, be cleaned up first as a health threat. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials found a dime-sized radium-coated disk in front of Marion's River Valley Schools in September 1997.
Soon after, the Dispatch's Frank Hinchey raised the radium and radiation issue at the schools, pointing to the radioactive contamination in Building 517 at the Marion Engineering Depot and the "about 58,000 radium markers stored at the depot." Reportedly, the radium disks were shipped to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland after World War II, claimed the Army Corps of Engineers.
One of the reasons that military-related toxic and radioactive waste keeps showing up at schools results from the Federal Property and Administrative Service Act of 1949, enacted to sell off surplus government property, particularly for public use such as schools. A decade ago, parents of high school students in St. Charles County, Missouri, were shocked when the government attempted to open up an old uranium and thorium plant half a mile from the Francis Howell High School. So, whenever you find a school on an old military base or installation, public officials would be wise to check for toxic or radioactive contamination.
12/21/2000
Idiot bastard son
The Bush family staged the biggest demonstration election in the world
by Bob Fitrakis
Repeat the mantra: "George W. Bush is the legitimate President of the United States, the legitimate President of the United States, the legitimate President of the United States..."
Never has the mainstream media been more naked and desperate in its attempts to "manufacture consent," a term coined by brilliant linguist Noam Chomsky. Not since three separate lone gunmen just happened to shoot the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. have we witnessed such brazen Orwellian coersion. But as the mega-corporate pundits of America attempt to pressure every dissenting voice to repeat the legitimacy refrain, facts keep filtering out that suggest the exact opposite.
Let's take the word legitimacy. In Medieval times, it meant what it implies: the king or heir apparent was not literally a bastard, as in the movie Braveheart, but his royal parents were his actual biological parents. Under modern democracy, the term implies that you won the election legitimately, at a minimum: the adult population could vote, those votes were fairly counted, and you got the most votes.
We know legitimate voters were prevented from voting in Florida. Republican Secretary of State and Bush loyalist Katherine Harris hired the Republican company ChoicePoint, and their subsidiary Database Technologies, to ethnically and racially "cleanse" (their word) Florida's voter registration rolls. According to Bob Herbert of the New York Times, the companies now admit that they accidentally purged 8,000 voters from the rolls who weren't felons, overwhelmingly from poor and minority districts, who were eligible to vote.
Take the case of Dave Crawford of Broward County who showed up at the polls with his five-year-old daughter and was reportedly told by the kindly Southern election official, "Son, we've got a problem. You're not allowed to vote. Son, says here you're a convict. Convicts can't vote." Despite the fact Crawford had never been arrested in his life, the election official refused to show Crawford the felon list and turned him away from the poll, with his daughter crying.
We know all votes were not fairly counted. A one-vote majority of the Supreme Court stopped the counting of ballots at the state and local level for the first time in U.S. history. The absurdity of a 14th Amendment "equal protection" argument should not be lost. In a state where there are a variety of voting devices in different counties--and the minority and poor precincts get the worst machines, which fail to count four percent of the vote, while the rich precincts get optical scanners which count over 99 percent of all the vote--how can there be a single state standard?
The Florida Supreme Court has always interpreted Florida statute to mean a "reasonable" standard for each county. Bush's own expert witness, John Ahmann, conceded that the Votomatic machines used in the poorest county are prone to failure and can only be corrected through hand counting. For the five Bush-wackers on the Supreme Court to be concerned about the impossibility of setting a statewide standard of recounting--instead of being concerned about actually counting votes--is both surreal and hypocritical. That's why Justice John Paul Stevens' comments in his dissent are so important. "Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm," he said. What created irreparable harm was not counting every vote.
It's estimated that 187,000 votes went uncounted in Florida with more than half of them in black precincts. Even the pathetic Republican counter-argument that votes also weren't counted in Republican counties are blatant distortions. What they won't tell you about the 25,000 votes thrown out by the Duval County canvassing board is that 17,000 came from the black precincts. This would be akin to saying the Republican stronghold of Franklin County threw out 25,000 votes without telling you that 17,000 came from the Democratic black precincts on the Near East Side.
Also, in order to keep the votes from being counted, Bush essentially rented a riot of 150 Republican operatives who stormed the Miami Dade canvassing board to stop the recount. The Wall Street Journal reported that the plane tickets and hotel rooms for the demonstrators were paid for by Republican funders and that the president-select called and joked with the "Rent-A-Riot" crowd at an after-protest party where Las Vegas lounge lizard Wayne Newton serenaded them with Danke Schoen.
We know Gore won the popular vote. The exit polls on election night were right, regardless of Bush's cousin reversing the call on Fox TV. Most projections have Gore winning Florida if all the ballots were counted--by between 23,000 to 57,000 votes. That's why Bush loyalists are busy trying to seal those uncounted ballots "for the good of the country." Remember, they also sealed the JFK, MLK and RFK files to help the country. Thanks. Reality's a tough thing to deal with in a democracy.
The president-select, George W. Bush, has a huge "legitimacy gap." The words to the mid-'60s Zappa song keep coming to mind, "The idiot bastard son, his daddy's a Nazi in Congress today." The son grew up, and despite double-legacy Ivy League-style affirmative action--and even though his daddy is the former CIA director and President--the bastard appears to be as idiotic as ever.
It should strike people as odd that after apparently stealing an election through the state apparatus controlled by Bush's governor brother, his loyalists would immediately demand that everybody kiss the ring of legitimacy. I'll be first to admit that the Bush family stole it fair and square, and they might have been owed one after the Kennedy boys' handiwork in 1960. But to pretend that the Bushes didn't steal it through the systematic disenfranchisement of blacks, Jews, Hispanics and poor people in Florida--please, my brothers and sisters.
If Bush wants legitimacy, he's going to have to earn it the old-fashioned way, through real policy initiatives that are inclusive--and that doesn't mean wrapping himself in the Confederate flag as he did in the South Carolina primary.
During the Reagan-Bush era (1981-93), the CIA regularly rigged elections throughout the Third World, as in Nicaragua and El Salvador. There's a name political scientists use for these staged elections to create legitimacy: "demonstration elections." In Florida, the Bushes just showed us how to stage a demonstration election in the oldest democracy in the world.
FEATURED ARTICLE
12/28/2000
Clean air villain
by Bob Fitrakis
Last week's swap between U.S. Senate subcommittee chairs calls into question Ohio's junior senator and former governor George Voinovich's environmental record. Senator Voinovich assumes the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety. He exchanged gavels with Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who now chairs the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
While governor of Ohio from 1991-1999, Voinovich frequently clashed with New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman, President-elect George W. Bush's choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Whitman lobbied the U.S. EPA to crack down on air pollution blowing from Ohio into the northeastern states. The U.S. EPA cited Ohio as the single "largest source" of air pollution affecting the northeast.
Currently, the V Group of Cleveland, the company owned by the senator's brother Paul Voinovich, is under investigation by the U.S. EPA, the IRS and the FBI for allegations that a former company vice president participated in an illegal kickback scheme to obtain dumping permits from the Ohio EPA for a landfill when Voinovich was governor. The Ohio EPA originally investigated the V Group and cleared the company, while the federal probe has led to a half dozen felony convictions. The most recent conviction was Robert Vukelic, a Steubenville landfill owner who pleaded guilty to making more than $170,000 in secret payments to then-V Group Vice President Clark V. Miller. The V Group has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing.
Voinovich has earned a reputation among environmental groups as an ardent opponent of the Clean Air Act and the U.S. EPA. Commenting on the chairmanship swap, Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust called Voinovich "much smarter," "more effective" and "more dangerous than Inhofe." Earlier this year, the trust named Voinovich its "Clean Air Villain of the Month." Voinovich's attempts to force the U.S. EPA to factor in cost to polluters along with cost to human health drew criticism from Paul G. Billings, vice president of governmental relations for the American Lung Association: "With that bill, he wanted to rip the lungs out of the Clean Air Act."
In defense of the gavel swap, Voinovich's press secretary Scott Milburn stressed the senator's work on landmark legislation protecting Florida's Everglades. "I think that experience with him is going to cause a lot of people to re-evaluate," Milburn told the Associated Press.
Two days after switching chairmanships last week, Voinovich was once again echoing a familiar refrain from his gubernatorial days. According to the Columbus Dispatch, "U.S. Senator George Voinovich wants them [the U.S. EPA] to back off if they aren't willing to provide money to fix the problems [of sewage spills into rivers and streams]." Voinovich told the Dispatch, "We need to improve the qualities of our streams, but that shouldn't result in astronomical costs in sewer rates for homeowners and industry."
During his successful 1990 campaign for governor, Voinovich ran an ad of himself posing in a canoe, and touted himself as the "environmental governor." His eight-year tenure suggests this was the triumph of image over substance.
By May 1992, the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC) openly attacked the governor for his failure to live up to his campaign promises. The OEC suggested a "toxic tour" of Ohio. The governor blamed most of the pollution on his predecessor, Richard Celeste. A little over a month later, Governor Voinovich ordered a $2.9 million cut in the Ohio EPA budget, the Dispatch reported. Democratic Representative Patrick Sweeney claimed, "For nearly two-and-one-half years, Governor George Voinovich has paid lip service to the environment. Now, all of a sudden he has drawn a line in the dust over the pending budget for the Ohio EPA...The governor showed his priorities by hitting the EPA with a 19.5-percent cut."
In June 1992, opponents of the Waste Technologies Industries incinerator in East Liverpool attacked Governor Voinovich for failing to stop the operation of the toxic waste burner. Despite these early criticisms of Voinovich's environmental policies, the governor staunchly defended himself as an environmentalist. On August 27, 1993, Voinovich told the Dispatch, "We're doing the right thing," as he allowed Southern Ohio Coal to pump 600 million gallons of toxic waste from a flooded mine into the Leading and Raccoon Creeks and tributaries. The U.S. EPA challenged the governor's action in court, while the Dispatch reported that "all aquatic life in Leading Creek has been killed."
Following his defense of this environmental catastrophe, the governor quickly leaped into action. Within a week he spent two hours canoeing the Cuyahoga River with a 20-boat entourage of his administrators. The OEC called it a "hypocritical public relations stunt."
Environmental groups point to numerous other anti-environmental positions that mar the record of the U.S. Senate's new clean air and wetlands chair:
February 1994: OEC Director Richard Sahli called Voinovich's "brownfields" redevelopment plan for abandoned and contaminated industrial sites "the biggest environmental swindle in Ohio history." The plan, according to the Dispatch, "establishes a voluntary, privatized program" that allowed the polluters to determine if the cleanup was successful without public input.
June 1994: Voinovich lobbied successfully to have Dayton, Toledo and Columbus released from complying with major provisions of the Clean Air Act.
July 1994: Voinovich supported an amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act to ease regulations in Ohio, while the state ranked third nationally in toxic materials released into its waterways.
August 1994: Environmentalists denounce Voinovich's Ohio EPA when it announced 121 initiatives, including tax credits for polluters, if they voluntarily comply with environmental regulations.
November 1994: The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the Boich family, who owns numerous coal mines in southeast Ohio, are Voinovich's single largest contributor in his re-election campaign with $322,000.
February 1995: Voinovich worked behind the scenes to stop the U.S. EPA from listing two central Ohio sites as toxic "superfund" locations--Rickenbacker Air Industrial Park and the McDonnell Douglas Complex at Port Columbus.
March 1995: Voinovich battled 40 environmental groups over his lack of support for the U.S. EPA's Great Lakes Water Quality Initiative, which called for stricter standards for the discharge of toxic chemicals from factories, power plants and sewage treatment facilities along the lakes.
June 1995: Voinovich lobbied for and signed into law a bill volunteering Ohio to host a six-state radioactive waste dump.
January 1996: More than 60 Ohio EPA staff members signed a letter to Director Donald Schregardus objecting to the Voinovich-inspired rules regarding the cleanup of ground-water aquifers in old contaminated industrial sites.
July 1996: Voinovich led an attack on the Safe Drinking Water Act at the National Governor's Association in Puerto Rico, calling it "an arbitrary environmental statute in need of reform," instead advocating a "state by state approach."
October 1996: Voinovich's plan to base environmental law on his version of so-called "sound science" is denounced by the Ohio Sierra Club as "a policy that allows polluters to voluntarily comply with environmental law."November 1996: Voinovich attacked the U.S. EPA over clean air standards, demanding, instead of a human health measure, a cost-benefit analysis for businesses. The American Lung Association countered by pointing out that air pollution-related health problems affect 100 million Americans annually and cause 64,000 premature deaths each year.
December 1996: The Dispatch reported "Voinovich has signed legislation allowing companies to police their own environmental deficiencies and correct mistakes without administrative or civil penalties."
April 1997: Voinovich testified before the U.S. House against newly proposed clean air rules that would prevent an estimated 15,000 premature deaths annually.
August 1997: Voinovich led an attack against the northeastern states claiming they were unfairly scapegoating Ohio for air pollution and acid rain caused by burning high-sulfur Ohio coal.
July 1998: Voinovich's Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamation allowed mining in the watershed of the state's last ancient Appalachian forest, Dysart Woods.
In 1998, Voinovich ran for Senate on his environmental record while his opponent, Mary O. Boyle, attacked him for making Ohio a haven for mega-farm polluters like Buckeye Egg Farm.
NO 12/28/2000
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01/04/2001
Good old days
Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft will set civil rights back 40 years
by Bob Fitrakis
President-select George W. Bush's nomination of former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft as Attorney General is a major coup for the radical right and white supremacists. NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond said of the choice, "Any pretense of unifying the nation has ended with this nomination. This confirms the correctness of blacks voting nine-to-one against Governor Bush."
Bush's selection is a logical one for a presidential candidate who refused to speak out against the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina Statehouse during that state's primary. Our next president told us it was simply a question of "state's rights."
As it was a question of individual morality when Bush spoke at Bob Jones University, a Pentecostal college most famous for quoting the Bible to justify its practice of apartheid at the time. Ashcroft received an honorary doctorate from Bob Jones in 1999, a university renowned for its racist policies and bigoted denunciation of the Catholic and Mormon churches.
As the nominee for the highest law enforcement position in the United States, Ashcroft has pledged "to be a guardian of liberty and equal justice." The key is understanding what he means by this.
In 1998, Ashcroft gave a revealing interview to the leading journal of the neo-Confederate movement, Southern Partisan. Ashcroft lauded the journal since it "helps set the record straight" on the Civil War by "defending Southern patriots" like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. He feared without Confederate apologist publications, people would get the idea that his Southern heroes had a "perverted agenda."
Ashcroft no doubt thanks his version of a bigoted and racist God for the Partisan's ability to tell us fascinating tidbits, such as that slave owners "encouraged strong slave families to further the slave's peace and happiness." The journal was also one of the first publications to portray former Klan leader David Duke as "a populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal."
As usual, the foreign press covered the Ashcroft nomination far more accurately than the U.S. mass media. Note the headline in the December 23 Independent of London: "Bush Selects Right-Winger As Law Chief." The British paper remarked matter-of-factly, "Mr. Ashcroft can be expected to take the Justice Department sharply to the right." So much for Bush understanding that he lost the popular election by more than 500,000 votes.
Ashcroft is the son of a Pentecostal preacher who moved his family to Springfield, Missouri, so they could be close to the Assembly of God church headquarters. One of his favorite quotes is that there's only "two things you find in the middle of the road, a moderate and a dead skunk." That's why Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum gave Ashcroft a 100-percent rating last year before he lost to a dead man, Governor Mel Carnahan, in his Senate re-election bid.
Right-wing syndicated religious zealot Cal Thomas offers an extensive interview with Ashcroft in his book, Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? From what, you might ask. "Moral decline," of course.
There's a clear yearning by Ashcroft for the good old days, when women were ladies and blacks were Negroes. Ashcroft told Thomas that the decline of America, "this reversal in value flow, I think, can be clearly traced to the Great Society era." During this devilish period, the Kennedy-Johnson War on Poverty caused poverty to fall from 22 percent of the population in 1960 to 11 percent by 1966. A variety of Satanic programs were put in place, like Head Start for disadvantaged children, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandating equal rights for women and blacks in hiring and promotion, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guaranteed every U.S. citizen--until the Bush brothers' Florida debacle--the right to vote.
Ashcroft has his own version of the Great Society, it's called "charitable choice." Separation of church and state aside, under his plan, federal money should go directly to churches to save America's soul.
"Moral choices are primarily shaped by the culture, and culture shapes behavior in an anticipatory or preventative way," Ashcroft holds. That's why he's offended by any mention that George Washington was a slave owner. He dismisses this as "malicious attacks" and "revisionist nonsense." He loves Washington, the Southern slaveowner, but detests Washington, D.C., the black city.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson said, "He [Ashcroft] is a very real threat to the years of civil rights and social justice progress." Ashcroft is also fiercely anti-abortion.
Ashcroft opposed the confirmation of Bill Lann Lee as U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division because Lee was against California's Proposition 209, which eliminated affirmative action in that state.
Ashcroft scuttled the appointment of African-American Ronnie White as a federal judge, attacking White as "pro-criminal" while on the Missouri Supreme Court. White's great offenses: he only supported the death penalty in 41 out of 59 cases and he once challenged the legality of a Missouri police drug check point--a practice later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If Ashcroft manages to squeak through, he'll owe Bush heavily. Maybe he can do the same kind of favor that Attorney General William French Smith did for the Reagan-Bush administration in 1982. You remember, CIA Director William J. Casey negotiated a secret "memorandum of understanding" with Smith, agreeing that the CIA was not legally responsible for reporting drug trafficking into the U.S. by CIA "assets."
NO 01/11/2000
01/18/2001
The South rises again
Think the Confederacy is dead? Not according to Bush's cabinet appointments
by Bob Fitrakis
Can that Bush boy pick 'em or what? First, there was former Senator "I Lost to a Dead Guy" John Ashcroft--armed with an honorary Ph.D. from Bob Jones University--for Attorney General. Now there's Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior.
Bypassing the usual polite gibberish that masquerades as mainstream "journalism" in this country, let's turn quickly to the British press, where the Observer of London ran this headline on January 14: "Unrepentant South mounts new assault on Washington." Cutting to the heart of the matter, the Observer correctly noted: "At the core of both nominees' [Ashcroft and Norton] objections to the federal offices they now assume is their shared, openly declared admiration for the old Southern Confederacy--declarations which have themselves provoked outrage as each comes forward for nomination."
Ashcroft's a great fan of "southern patriots" like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis; Norton apparently shares these sentiments. Last week, President-select George W. Bush had to explain to the New York Times a speech Norton made in 1996. Surely it would be unfair to quote Norton out of context or fail to put her speech in some personal political-historical perspective. You can find the speech at the Independence Institute's web site where she's listed as one of the "Heroes of Devolution" (code word for states' rights).
Then the Attorney General of Colorado, Norton pumped up the audience in the opening of the 1996 speech by pointing out, "We'll have the opportunity to do battle once again on the issue of the state being able to make its own decision." She went on to list some hideous examples of federal government oppression: "the wheelchair ramp required by the Americans with Disabilities Act" at the Colorado State Capitol; "auto emissions" testing; the "Fair Labor Standards Act"; and, of course, the notorious "Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)."
Norton went so far as to suggest that there's no constitutional ground for the VAWA, conveniently ignoring the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. She demanded that Congress quit meddling and "shift that power back to where it belongs," to the states.
In Norton's rigid ideology, the federal government is always bad and meddlesome whether it's protecting women from violence or ensuring overtime pay after eight hours of work in a day. On the other hand, all those who fight for "state sovereignty" are good.
Norton related an emotional revelation she had while tramping through a Civil War graveyard in Virginia: "I had just gone through this massive battle with the EPA on state sovereignty and states' rights," she said. "I remember seeing this column that was erected in one of those graveyards. It said in memory of all the Virginia soldiers who died in defense of the sovereignty of their state. It really took me aback. Sure, I had been filing briefs and I thought that was pretty brave... Again, we certainly had bad facts in that case [the Civil War] where we were defending state sovereignty by defending slavery. But we lost too much. We lost the idea that the states were to stand against the federal government gaining too much power over our lives. This is the point I think we need to reappreciate."
Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP, chided Norton for "wanton insensitivity against slavery and its descendants."
Bush saw it differently. He told the New York Times that his Secretary of the Interior nominee "was talking about states' rights, the ability of states to run their business... She was in no way, shape or form embracing slavery, and neither was John Ashcroft." Bush and the Republican spinmeisters challenged reporters to look at his nominees' entire records.
Fair enough.
As Colorado's Attorney General, Norton's political record is a testament to the reappreciation of states' rights. In 1993, Norton fought valiantly to preserve Colorado's first-in-the-nation anti-gay legislation. She argued and lost before the conservative U.S. Supreme Court that civil rights shouldn't apply to gay people. "Such safeguards apply only to `traditional suspect classes,' such as racial minorities, while other `identifiable groups' including homosexuals have no fundamental right to seek enactment of legislation to benefit them," Norton maintained, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In August 1995, Norton, ever an admirer of Alabama, called for Colorado to reinstate the chain gangs in order to "combine hard work with humiliation."
In the middle of a campaign for U.S. Senate, Norton also routinely denounced the evils of Occupational Safety and Health Administration laws, the Denver Post reported. After her loss in the 1996 Senate race (to a live candidate), she recovered quickly enough to issue a statewide legal opinion banning all race-based scholarships at Colorado State University. Denver's NAACP accused her of pandering "to the extremist anti-affirmative action crowd." She told Denver's Rocky Mountain News, "It is dangerous for the government to be categorizing people on the basis of race for any reason."
The next year, she emerged as a major spokesperson for the New Citizenship Project Council on Crime in America's reactionary report promoting massive incarceration. The South Bend Tribune summarized the study this way: "Americans face a frightening future in which teenage `wolf packs' roam the streets, inner-city gangsters spread into the suburbs, and hardened criminals waltz out of the prisons to prey on innocents."
Some of the highlights of the council's study were the fact that jails and prisons worked and that a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by blacks in the United States, reflecting the sad state of African-American families. Norton told the Tribune, "Any social group that does not have a predominance of stable families is going to have serious crime problems... Incarceration works." The report was issued amid a steady drop in crime and academic studies indicating that black family problems may be the direct result of over-incarceration of black males for nonviolent minor drug offenses.
Norton crusaded to end Medicaid-funded abortions for women impregnated by rape or incest and fought against the mainstreaming of the physically disabled as excessive federal interference. She, of course, favored allowing industrial polluters to police themselves. Norton's political mentor is former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who said the goal of his department should be to utilize natural resources as quickly as possible before the eminent return of Jesus Christ. Utilizing the parable of the Talents, the Watt thesis held that Jesus would be really pissed off if he returned and found some redwoods still standing.
Let's turn to the Brits' Observer for our closing summary: "Both Ashcroft and Norton are figureheads in a revived, neo-Confederate movement which blends the libertarian, anti-Washington and `anti-bureaucrat' message of the Bush campaign with more militant sentiments that flirt with the Confederate and militia movements on the extreme right wing that reject the very notion of federal authority over `States' Rights'--the battle cry of the old South."
Can the general make peace?
The unasked question about Colin Powell, nominated as Secretary of State by George W. Bush, is an obvious one: Why would you appoint the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a war-maker, as your chief diplomat, supposedly a negotiator in peace-making?
Perhaps the best single source for reflecting on Powell's career is the five-part series "Behind Colin Powell's Legend," published by the sterling investigative web site ConsortiumNews.com. The series traces the development of Powell mania following the publishing of a Horatio Alger-like tale in his mid-1990s autobiography My American Journey. On tour in 1995 to promote the book, Powell's preference for using the U.S. military as the global Robocop clearly came through. Powell liked to brag about the "superb performance of the armed forces of the United States in recent conflicts, beginning with the...Panama invasion and then through Desert Shield and Storm."
What Powell fails to address is why three-quarters of the nations in the United Nations voted to condemn the U.S. operation in Panama as a flagrant violation of international law. You remember Operation Just Cause, an illegal armed intrusion into Panama to serve a warrant on Panamanian Manuel Noriega, who had recently been on the CIA payroll. Given President-elect Bush's obvious inexperience in foreign policy, Powell's past performance is essential in understanding what we might expect from another Bush administration.
Both ConsortiumNews.com and In These Times have raised the issue of Powell's actions in Vietnam, where the general describes burning peasants out of their hut in 1963, "starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters."
Headquartered in the Americal division, Major Powell in 1968 was involved in whitewashing initial allegations that U.S. troops has committed atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. It's well-established in the public record that Tom Glen, a member of an Americal platoon, wrote to General Creighton Abrahms charging that "for mere pleasure, [U.S. soldiers] fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." Powell, in a reoccurring pattern in his rise to power, declined to interview Glen, but instead went to the superior officer who claimed Glen had no actual knowledge of atrocities. As In These Times reminds us in a January editorial, Powell concluded, "In direct refutation of [Glen's] portrayal, is the fact that relationships between American soldiers and the Vietnam people are excellent." Within seven months, uninvestigated Americal troops would slaughter 347 Vietnamese civilians, including infants, in the village of My Lai.
As a lieutenant colonel, Powell received a Richard Nixon White House fellowship which allowed him to ally himself with Nixon aides Caspar Weinberger and Frank Carlucci. When Weinberger and Carlucci took over the Defense Department as Defense Secretary and Assistant Defense Secretary respectively, under Reagan, they had a friend in Colonel Powell at the Pentagon. By 1983, Powell was a general. He emerged as Weinberger's gatekeeper at the Pentagon and a key operative in the coverup of the notorious Iran-Contra scandal. In September 1983, Powell, Weinberger and a young Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North went on an inspection tour of Central America together where they met with the CIA's "man in Panama," Noriega, who had well-known ties to Colombia drug traffickers. In November 1983, the Defense Department hosted a Washington lunch honoring their ally, Noriega.
Carlucci went on to be Reagan's National Security Advisor and by December 1986, Powell became Deputy National Security Advisor primarily, ConsortiumNews suggests, because "Powell had played a crucial role in skirting the Pentagon's stringent internal controls over missile shipments to get the weapons out of Defense warehouses and into the CIA pipeline."
Powell officially claims that he knew nothing about the illegal shipment of missiles to Iran prior to their formal authorization on January 17, 1986. Oliver North testified, however, that "my original point of contact was General Colin Powell, who was going directly to his immediate superior, Secretary Weinberger." Powell helped draft Reagan's infamous March 4, 1987, speech admitting that there'd been a simultaneous release of arms to the Iranians for hostages in violation of stated U.S. policy.
As the administration hung North out to dry as the "cowboy" fall guy, Powell lobbied journalists behind the scenes to limit the investigation. By the time Reagan left office, Powell was a four-star general.
On October 2, 1989, Powell became the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and on December 17 recommended the massive invasion of Panama to serve a warrant on Noriega. While the U.S. Army was there, they managed to destroy the Panamanian Defense Force and install a pro-U.S. government. The independent documentary Panama Deception remains required viewing for those who want the truth about Powell and the Panama invasion.
Powell has already pledged to work with U.S. allies to sanction rogue regimes like Iraq, where more than 1.5 million civilians died due to the embargo in the 1990s, and he'll have his hands full with the continuing imbroglio in the Middle East. Will the former war-maker have the diplomatic tact needed to peacefully cool these volatile situations? Powell's legacy from My Lai to Iran-Contra to Panama suggests only a policy of secrecy, cover-ups and illegal military activities.
1/25/2001
Imagine Columbus Alive's surprise last week when Nigel Rosser, a British journalist and reported confidant of the royal family, contacted us to inquire about Prince Andrew's central Ohio connection. Rosser had read two award-winning Alive stories--"The Shapiro Murder File" and "Spook Air"--and wanted to chat about our own Leslie Wexner and his top aide, the mysterious Jeffrey E. Epstein.
Rosser's article, published in the London Evening Standard on January 22, described Prince Andrew's recent behavior as "erratic" and "greatly upset[ing]" the royal family. The Prince has been so busy partying with his new American pals, even his ex-wife Fergie is complaining.
Who's to blame for Andrew's failure to babysit for his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, according to Rosser's article? None other than Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been spotted in the Prince's company at hotspots-of-the-rich-and-famous around the world. Ghislaine is the daughter of the infamous financier Robert Maxwell, who died after falling overboard from his yacht in 1991.
The late tycoon's daughter fled Britain and now resides in Manhattan, where the Columbus connection emerges. Rosser reported that Ghislaine is a one-time partner of Epstein, "an immensely powerful New York property developer and financier." Other newspaper reports have described Epstein as everything from a concert pianist, corporate spy, math teacher, stockbroker, merchant banker, and globe-trotting businessman. He has steadfastly denied rumors of links to the Israeli Mossad. Maxwell denied similar connections just prior to his accident at sea.
Whatever Epstein does, Rosser's article pointed out that he and Prince Andrew "now appear to have evolved a curious symbiotic relationship--whenever Ghislaine is seen with Andrew, Epstein is never far behind." Rosser cited an unnamed friend of the Prince saying that Andrew's a "very poor judge of character." Last May, Andrew went on a vacation with Epstein and Ghislaine in Florida. Rosser claimed he also attended a "hookers and pimps" Halloween party in New York with Ghislaine.
Epstein "has a license to carry a concealed weapon, once claimed to have worked for the CIA--although he now denies it--and owns properties all over America," Rosser noted. When he's not globe-trotting, Epstein has the choice of many places to call home, including a fortress-like mansion in New Mexico, a $40 million New York townhouse, and the second most expensive residence in central Ohio. Of course, the mansion is located in New Albany, near his close friend and mentor, billionaire Wexner.
"Epstein began working for Mr. Wexner in 1985 and by the late 1980s had become wealthy, through, among other things, handling his worldwide air freight concerns and his fabulous collection of art, which includes a $45 million Picasso," the Evening Standard reported. Epstein also serves as a trustee of the Columbus-based Wexner Foundation.
"Ghislaine is now employed by Epstein as a `consultant' at his elegant Madison Avenue offices. She stays at his house several nights a week and organizes his parties in New York," the Evening Standard reported. "She also acts as his interior designer and has sold property on his behalf. Ghislaine, it is said by friends, remains desperate to marry Epstein. He refuses, but enjoys the social stature that she can bring him."
One friend of Andrew and Ghislaine told Rosser that "the whole Andrew thing is probably being done for Epstein. Epstein will not marry her and it is incredibly likely she's doing it to keep in with him." Meanwhile, the article continued, Andrew has managed to meet a whole new crowd of people, including "sex entrepreneur Christine Drangsholt" on a trip with Epstein and Ghislaine to Mar A Largo.
Dispatch was weary of Clinton
Bill Clinton is out of public office, and it seems that no one is happier to see him leave than the folks at the Columbus Dispatch. In his January 21 analysis of the Bush inauguration--which readers were able to differentiate from an editorial mainly because the paper helpfully labeled it "ANALYSIS" in large, black letters--Dispatch reporter Jack Torry took a few parting pot shots at the former president. On the same front page, reporter Jonathan Riskind piled on with a few anti-Clinton quips of his own.
With the same sense of relief that American POWs in Germany must have felt as the gates were opened and their victorious countrymen marched in, Torry wrote that Bush's "address was clearly designed to reassure weary Americans that the tumultuous years of his predecessor...have come to an end." This sentence sums up the tone of Torry's article so well that Dispatch editors reprinted it in bold letters above the piece.
Echoing this theme of exhaustion, Riskind also referred to "a nation weary of Clinton's personal foibles" in his reporting on the inaugural address.
So where are all these exhausted, haggard refugees from the Clinton years? Judging only by Torry's and Riskind's words, a reader might think that they are all around us, that most Americans are breathing a collective sigh of relief now that Clinton has headed up the road to Manhattan. Yet, according to nearly every major poll conducted in this country, most Americans heartily approve of the manner in which Bill Clinton performed his job.
The Gallup Organization, for example, asked Americans 226 times over the course of Clinton's tenure, "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as president?" Clinton's job approval ratings, as determined from the answers to that question, soared from a low of 37 percent during the summer immediately following his inauguration to a heady 73 percent during the Monica Lewinsky mess before settling at 66 percent in December 2000 polling. Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a higher approval rating upon leaving the White House. Republican icon Ronald Reagan, whose name has been plastered on nearly every unclaimed edifice in Washington, trailed Clinton by three percentage points.
Let's make that clear: Clinton was more popular than Reagan, according to independent polling. This is the kind of inconvenient fact that Dispatch writers just can't wrap their partisan minds around.
Reinforcing the validity of Gallup's results, 66 percent of the respondents in a December 2000 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll approved of Clinton's job performance, as did 68 percent of the participants in a CBS News poll and 65 percent of those in a Los Angeles Times poll, both from December 2000. While some may not have liked the way Clinton conducted his personal life, most very much approved of his job performance.
These polls paint a picture of a satisfied, not weary, America. Without term limits, we would undoubtedly still be referring to President Clinton and Governor Bush.
Only the Dispatch, not the country, is weary from the Clinton years. Not just in their editorials, but in the daily monopoly's "analysis" and political reporting, the paper's reporters and editors have consistently and repeatedly projected their own feelings about Clinton onto readers. Their derogatory comments concerning then-president Clinton were generally made in an offhand manner, matter-of-factly, and without supporting data or logic.
One unfortunate effect of this targeted bias is that Dispatch reporters, because they are so focused on slamming Clinton, often miss the real story. Torry correctly pointed out that Bush bashed his popular predecessor for not repairing Social Security and Medicare. Bush's words were, "We must show courage in a time of blessing by confronting problems instead of passing them on to future generations."
But Torry then failed to question the accuracy of this statement. The Congressional record, readily available to reporters, clearly shows that Clinton repeatedly attempted to reform both programs. Torry never raised this fact, nor did he examine the possibility that the politically motivated persecution of Clinton thwarted his efforts at reforming these programs just as they ground the workings of Washington to a halt on nearly every other important program.
Torry and Riskind also failed to question Bush's sincerity in asking for healing and cooperation. Except for the words he has uttered, the new president shows no intention of working towards common ground. He is pushing his partisan agenda aggressively, from controversial, uncompromising cabinet appointments to private investment of Social Security and a missile defense system. While stalwartly pursuing an agenda is not necessarily bad, doing so while begging for cooperation, healing, bipartisanship, civility--pick your Bush buzzword of the day--is the height of hypocrisy.
Riskind failed at another vital point in his piece. He dutifully relayed the following portion of Bush's address: "[W]hile many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise--even the justice--of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudices, and the circumstances of their birth."
However, his reportage stopped with the mere transcription of Bush's words. Riskind did not mention the irony of these comments being made by the man who, as governor of Texas, did little to improve the state's education system and who refused to even slow down Texas death row killings in the midst of strong evidence that innocent people are sitting on death row in many states around the country. With their anti-Clinton agenda out of the way, perhaps the weary Dispatch reporters will start delivering such news to their readers.
02/01/2001
True confession
Another man says he committed the murder that sent John Byrd to Death Row
by Bob Fitrakis
John W. Byrd Jr. is fighting for his life. Sent to Ohio's Death Row for a 1983 murder he says he didn't commit, Byrd is next in line to sit in the state's electric chair. Now, Byrd's last, best hope for escaping the ultimate irrevocable punishment is an affidavit from another man who says he is the real killer.
Last August, six federal judges on the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dissented from the majority and supported a petition for rehearing Byrd's case.
The facts laid out starkly and precisely by Judge Nathaniel R. Jones in the dissent underscore the grave injustice of the pending execution of John Byrd: "No eyewitness or other physical evidence identifies the particular robbers responsible for the murder, and the only evidence distinguishing the assailants are the representations of a jailhouse `snitch.' After a trial featuring the snitch's testimony in which the jury inaccurately believed the snitch did not have any jail time or other criminal punishment pending, the person identified by the snitch is found guilty and sentenced to death. The other two perpetrators receive life sentences."
Ronald Armstead, the "snitch," was freed from prison soon after his ludicrous testimony helped send Byrd to death row.
Last week's release of a nearly 13-year-old affidavit, in which one of the men serving a life term actually confessed to the killing, should come as no surprise to Columbus Alive readers. (The August 2000 story "Convicted by a Snitch" is available at www.alive wired.com/2000/20000803/death_row1. html)
Public Defender David A. Bodiker told Alive that Armstead, who now floats between San Diego and Las Vegas working as a cook among other things, had previously told authorities another inmate, Billy Joe Sowell, allegedly confessed to him about a killing as well. The fortuitous Armstead was facing up to 15 years in prison for a parole violation after assaulting a nurse and prison guard with a hospital bed crank, when murderers seemed to select him at random to confess for death row crimes. Armstead's testimony, the only direct evidence against Byrd, allowed Armstead to conveniently escape re-incarceration.
During Byrd's trial, Armstead, the former junkie, sex offender and robber, was portrayed as a model citizen whose only motive was to tell the truth in the slaying of Monte Tewksbury, a Cincinnati convenience store clerk. Unbelievably, Armstead, who is black, somehow miraculously managed to win the confidence of Byrd, a white 19-year-old, in the highly racially polarized atmosphere of the Hamilton County Jail.
Judge Jones saw it a little differently: "The government led the jury to believe that jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead faced an eminent release from prison, and therefore had no reason to fabricate testimony against Byrd. Indeed, pursuant to government questioning, Armstead repeatedly told the jury that he had `no time pending.'" Armstead lied; and the prosecutor vouched for him.
"Nevertheless, after his [Armstead's] testimony, the prosecutor's office informed the state parole board that it did not object to an early release and shortly thereafter, Armstead went home. The government knew the truth, and so did Armstead. The jury did not," Jones succinctly explained.
The appeals court's dissent also points out, "Without any evidentiary predicate, the prosecutor theorized on topics as diverse as the location of the murder weapon, the whereabouts of other unrecovered key evidence."
The prosecutor did this, in part, because the circumstantial evidence pointed to John Brewer, who has now sworn twice that he killed Tewksbury. Minus the snitch, Byrd would have been sentenced to life in prison for being present at the murder scene, rather than death for committing the murder. Byrd has steadfastly claimed that he was drunk and on downers in the robbery van at the time of the crime and never killed anybody.
Bodiker maintains that the nature of death penalty cases and the post-conviction process left no appropriate legal place for Brewer's confession to be admitted. If a majority of the Sixth Circuit bench had supported a rehearing, new evidence may well have come forward. Bodiker describes Byrd's original trial attorney's behavior as "atrocious." The public defender rightly notes that there was a "tremendous amount of prosecutory misconduct" at the original trial, a fact not lost on the six dissenting judges.
"This case also raises whether a capital defendant has received constitutionally effective representation when his counsel fails to challenge prejudicial prosecutory misconduct," the dissent reads.
"In the face of...wrongful vouching for Armstead's credibility, and speculation as to facts not in evidence, there cannot be a reasonable norm of capital defense practice that suggests it is strategically appropriate to remain mute in the face of such an assault on the defendant's right to a fair trial," the dissenters correctly conclude.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Brewer affidavit appeared so late in the Byrd proceeding is the outrageous, but often overlooked, incompetence and internal mismanagement in the public defender's office in the mid-1990s. (See the January 1995 Columbus Free Press story "Death row be not proud.")
The bizarre nature of the scandal can be found in the report by Highway Patrol Trooper Mark Rogols. Former Ohio Public Defender Death Row Investigative Supervisor Chester "Briss" Craig listed the names of 15 Death Row inmates who had been denied due process as a result of botched and forged investigations by investigators for the public defender's office. Byrd's name was prominent on that list. The Rogols report substantially documents this dirty little secret of Ohio's Death Row.
Attorney General Betty Montgomery attacked the re-organized and more effective public defender's office for releasing the Brewer affidavit. If she is truly concerned with justice, she would have welcomed the evidence and demanded a new trial for Byrd. Siding with snitches, encouraging cover-ups and railroading people into the death chamber cannot be tolerated.
NEWS BRIEFS
02/08/2001
State to bounty hunters: Happy trails
Ohio's bounty hunters should be warned: This town's not big enough for you and a new state law.
"There's really no such thing as a bounty hunter in Ohio after this bill," State Representative David Goodman explained. "The days of the Old West are finally gone."
In essence, Goodman's House Bill 730--which unanimously passed both houses of the legislature and was recently signed into law by Governor Bob Taft--regulates the bounty hunters out of existence by requiring them to be licensed bondsmen, private investigators or off-duty police officers. Bondsmen are licensed through the Ohio Insurance Department and private investigators are licensed through the Ohio Commerce Department.
Another section of the bill ends all solicitation by bondsmen in state courthouses. Goodman said he started with the approach that courthouses "should be sacred" and, speaking "as a practicing attorney and officer of the court, private business solicitation has no place in the courthouse."
Beginning in 1997, Columbus Alive has repeatedly investigated and reported on the abuses of bail bonding practices in Franklin County. In 1998, Alive's award-winning investigative story "Money for Nothing" revealed more than a year-long surveillance by the Columbus Division of Police Intelligence Bureau regarding open and allegedly illegal activities in the Franklin County Courthouse. The police investigation recommended criminal charges be brought against various bondsmen, but City Attorney Janet Jackson contended the law was unenforceable as written and promised to produce a new enforceable law for City Council's consideration. The slow pace of change at the city level allowed Goodman and the state legislature to remedy the problem.
Goodman admitted that local bondsmen lobbied hard to keep the right to solicit in the courthouse, but Goodman says that bonding companies will do just fine under the new law. "My basic orientation is towards local control and free enterprise, but this was appropriate regulation and creates the proper atmosphere in our courts," said Goodman.
Goodman's bill is the latest in a series of measures taken by public officials to rein in the bonding business. In 1998, Franklin County Municipal Court Clerk Paul M. Herbert added a new section to the bondwriter's application that prohibited convicted criminals from doing business with local courts. Herbert proceeded by requiring mandatory background checks, based on an advisory opinion of the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien cracked down heavily on bounty hunters in the last few years by bringing felony charges--including abduction and kidnapping--in several high-profile cases.
Under Goodman's new law, bounty hunters must notify local police authorities that they're pursuing a bail skip in their jurisdiction. "What this law gives us is more informed police and more professional and informed bond agents," Goodman said.
Goodman contends there will be little nostalgia for the endangered and vanishing breed of Old West-style bounty hunters, noting that, after all, "we're now in the 21st century."
02/08/2001
Hannibal, the highly anticipated sequel to 1991's hit Silence of the Lambs, arrives in theaters on Friday, February 9. Does it live up to the original? Does Julianne Moore fill Jodie Foster's practical pumps?
We know, but we can't tell you.
On January 24, Columbus Alive and other local weekly publications were informed by a regional publicity representative for MGM that the location and time of a critics' screening would be withheld unless the publications agreed not to run a review before Hannibal's opening date. Fear that writers would reveal the film's surprise ending was given as a reason. Apparently, weekly film critics pose more of a threat than the many people who read the best-selling novel and movie insider web sites such as Ain't it Cool News, which has had details on the film posted for at least two months.
Or, MGM's concern may be more banal. Usually, a tight-lipped attitude arises when a studio has a dog on its hands, and they don't want bad reviews to scare away opening weekend crowds. Could this film be an exception? We'll share our take on Hannibal in next week's issue.
Coleman passes on video cameo
Michael Coleman could have been playing the wall, bobbing his head and sipping a fine glass of merlot--all in front of a national television audience. Tupac and Ed Lover got their first taste of fame in music video cameos, but Columbus' mayor opted instead to, well, just be the mayor.
Producers for Hawaiian R&B artist Justin Young invited the mayor to appear in Young's Sip Your Wine video, which was filmed in Columbus the weekend of February 3 and 4. But Coleman declined, instead offering his support through a "proclamation" he gave to Young and Black Entertainment Television host Malonda when they were in town for the shoot.
Shilling for oil
Last Sunday, February 4, 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl presented a front-line analysis of the battle being waged between environmentalists and oil companies over the future of a section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Ice and snow blanketing this disputed strip of land, tucked away in the frigid, barren northeast corner of Alaska, may be hiding up to 16 billion barrels of oil and natural gas. But treading thousands of feet above the oil are polar bears, caribou, and other cold-weather creatures who inhabit the area and have chosen it as the ideal place to bed down and give birth. The building of roads, the rumbling of tankers, the not infrequent spills from pipelines, and the belching of gas and smoke into the air present grave challenges to these species.
But, even though 60 Minutes is often accused of left-wing biased reporting, Stahl did not focus primarily on environmental concerns. She truthfully pointed out that, although the disputed piece of land is very important to certain species, it comprises only 10 percent of the entire refuge, the rest of which is permanently protected by Congress.
And after showing the ecological damage of a nearby oil field constructed more than two decades ago, Stahl revealed that technological advances in oil exploration and drilling have dramatically reduced the destruction associated with such activities. Oil seekers can now more accurately locate underground reserves, cutting the need to punch hundreds of holes into the earth, bulldozing new roads and erecting new derricks each time, until crude finally springs forth. Directional drilling allows companies to suck oil out of thousands of acres of earth from one lone hole and rig.
After spending a minute or two on the environmentalists' argument concerning irrecoverable loss of wilderness, Stahl then proceeded to ask Alaska Governor Tony Knowles why this oil is so important. Knowles proudly offered the refuge's oil and gas deposits as a solution to a host of problems, including America's dependence on foreign oil, and our consequent susceptibility to war-, disaster- and whim-driven market forces.
The governor, whose state budget is nearly wholly dependent on the oil industry, then goes on to say--with Stahl prodding him along--that the oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could rescue California from its current problems and provide them with oil for the next 20 to 50 years. Stahl not only fails to challenge the numerous logical and economic errors that comprise this statement, she also later reinforces Knowles' claims by telling viewers that this new oil field may help our national energy situation eventually, but that it will not hit the market for at least 10 years.
Such statements, particularly when issued forth from the governor of Alaska and from a veteran news reporter, are either intentional and preposterous lies or inexcusable ignorance. The refuge's oil treasures will help no one but oil company stockholders and, perhaps, a few men who like the cold enough to work in the northern reaches.
America, like all oil-consuming countries, participates in a global oil market heavily dominated by the Middle East. In this market, the Arctic refuge will never produce enough oil to drive down the price by substantially increasing supply. Even the most optimistic, shoot-for-the-moon predictions of the quantity of oil in the disputed section of the refuge call for 16 billion barrels--a trickle compared to any single Middle Eastern oil-producing country, let alone the cumulative supply of that entire region and the rest of the world.
This oil will not empower America to control market forces, nor will it shield America from these forces, forces strengthened by computerized exchanges and sophisticated traders, forces that tick the price of a barrel of Texan or Alaskan oil up one nickel if the price of Saudi oil creeps up one nickel.
Will oil companies agree to hold this new oil out of this global market and sell it to American refineries at special prices? Of course not. They will sell their products to the highest bidder. We are reminded by NAFTA, by the Daimler-Chrysler merger, by the Internet, and by nearly everything we buy, that we live in a tightly-knit global economy. Yet oil interests now wave a wand before our eyes and make it all disappear in a fog of sickeningly sweet America-against-the-world mumbo-jumbo. And one of the country's most popular news sources, wearing a stupid, gee-whiz grin, helps them do it.
02/15/2001
Bush-whacked
Hundreds of the nation's law professors are challenging the Supreme Court's presidential appointment
by Bob Fitrakis
While his Fraudulence George W. Bush continues to masquerade as U.S. President--proposing that one percent of the wealthiest Americans get 42 percent of the tax cut--facts are flooding in documenting an Al Gore victory in Florida.
Ongoing investigations into Florida's 180,000 undercounted ballots document the predictable: The votes were intended for Gore. In an analysis by the Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel, Gore picked up at least an additional 366 votes that were clearly marked, but discarded in rural Republican counties. Apparently, Republican county officials had a hard time discerning the voter's intent, as prescribed by Florida law, when one voter wrote the word "Gore" in the write-in slot. The preliminary analysis by the Washington Post and the Miami Herald in eight counties, four of which went to Bush, indicate that Gore was preferred on 46,000 undercounted ballots, while Bush was preferred on only 17,000.
As the newspapers continue to tabulate the overwhelming Gore victory in Florida, other disturbing evidence reveals the extent of the Bush hoax. As this column reported just after the election, the Republican-connected ChoicePoint electronic data firm, hired through the office of Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, "erroneously" eliminated 8,000 Florida voters on the grounds that they were felons. Since then, the Albion Monitor and other news sources have reported that Harris and ChoicePoint misidenitified an additional 15 percent of voters in 10 Florida counties as felons, who also lost their right to vote. Fifty-four percent of those on the Hillsborough County ChoicePoint list were black. This is not a big surprise, since 93 percent of African-Americans nationwide voted for Gore.
Harris and ChoicePoint further shrunk the Democratic voter base by including on the felon list an additional 1,704 names of Florida residents who had been convicted of felonies in Ohio and Illinois--two states that restore citizenship and voting rights to people after they have served their time in prison. While only 13 states in the nation decline to restore voting privileges to felons, the vast majority of these are in the deep South, heart of the old Confederacy.
Adding to Bush's problem is the growing attack by law professors on the Supreme Court's 5-4 Bush v. Gore decision that stopped the Florida recount just as Gore was pulling ahead. On December 14, 280 law professors issued a statement charging that "The five justices were acting as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges."
"By stopping the recount in the middle, the five justices acted to suppress the facts. Judge Scalia argued that the justices had to interfere even before the Supreme Court heard the Bush team's argument because the recount might `cast a cloud upon what [Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election,'" the law professors asserted. "Suppressing the facts to make the Bush government seem more legitimate is the job of propagandists, not judges."
The statement concludes: "By taking power from the voters, the Supreme Court has tarnished its own legitimacy. As teachers whose lives have been dedicated to the rule of law, we protest." By January 9, 554 law professors from 120 law schools signed the statement in a full-page New York Times ad. As of February 1, the number had risen to 660, including Ohio State University law Professor Charles Wilson.
Increasingly, legal scholars are suggesting that Chief Justice William Rehnquist devised a classic Catch-22 to defeat Gore. First, the Supreme Court ruled that the voting standards in Florida could not be changed and made clearer after the election, because that would constitute a "new law," which violates a federal statute. Then, in their second decision, the Supreme Court halted the recount because the voting standards were not clear and violated constitutional guarantees of "equal protection," because the votes would be counted under different standards in different counties.
Conveniently, the court neglected to find that not counting a vote at all, when the intention of the voter was clear, also violates "equal protection" or a fundamental right. Thus, not counting votes is not only OK, but apparently constitutional, particularly in black and poor Democratic districts. Counting votes in slightly different ways from county to county--which is necessitated by the reality of different voting machines--is a violation of the Constitution.
Equally bizarre is the Supreme Court majority's insistence that they had to intervene because of an old federal law that gives "safe harbor" to electoral college members, guaranteeing that they can't be challenged if selected by December 12. The real reason they used the excuse of the December 12 date was to end the Florida recount before Gore pulled ahead.
Instead of looking to an old federal law, Rehnquist plus his Gang of Four might have consulted the 12th and 20th Amendments to the Constitution, where no such fetish with obscure dates exists: "The terms of President and Vice-President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January...and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice-President shall have qualified."
The Constitution is much more concerned with electing a legitimate President, and not rushing to judgment. Rehnquist's five-justice majority prefers the role of propagandists, with Rehnquist as the great and powerful Oz in a black robe.
02/22/2001
On February 12, the Columbus Dispatch made a public records request to the Columbus Public Schools. Reporter Bill Bush is looking into the facts concerning the transfer of Columbus School Board President Stephanie Hightower's son from Eastgate Elementary to Devonshire Alternative Elementary last year. "Please include any memos or e-mails--if they exist--between building and downtown administrators, and/or President Hightower, on the topic. Also include the date of the transfer," Bush wrote schools spokesperson Sharon Kornegay.
Bush's request appears to be aimed at the question of whether Hightower used personal influence to expedite her son's transfer. Eastgate staffers claim Hightower disliked the school and dismissed it as "Bill Moss Academy." The sister-in-law of school board member and Hightower archrival Bill Moss works at Eastgate.
Bush requested "the number of alternative-school openings at Devonshire at the start of the 1999-2000 school year for all grades, listed by grade, and the same for the previous year."
School administrative sources point out that even if the principals of Eastgate and Devonshire agreed to transfer Hightower's son, it would violate district policy if there was a waiting list for the alternative school. This issue did not escape Bush's request: "The number of applicants who were vying for those openings through the lottery, the number who were accepted and the number that were rejected due to a lack of vacancies for the above three school years. Also, the number that remained on the late-wait list for Devonshire at the time it expired in the fall of those years."
If there was a waiting list at the time and Hightower jumped the queue, it could prove embarrassing. That's why Bush wants "The date the wait list for that school [Devonshire] did expire, and the policies and/or procedures--written or otherwise--for transferring into an alternative school without going through the lottery."
This is not the first time Hightower's son has emerged as a political issue. During Hightower's campaign for school board in 1999, the Dispatch reported that the candidate was busy trying to solve the problem posed by her son's attendance at the private Mansion School. Hightower told the Dispatch, "We had, like many people, never done our research on the Columbus schools."
"We really liked what we saw in our neighborhood school [Columbus' Eastgate Elementary]. That made it easy," candidate Hightower explained.
Dispatch columnist Barbara Carmen reported a different version at the time: "Her [Hightower's] move is drawing gasps from friends, who say she has a young son who likely would have to attend public school."
Lanterngate fall-out
The fiasco known to OSU journalism students as "Lanterngate" had all the elements of a high-stakes political drama. A news leak on government misspending, a plot to suppress the info from getting out, stolen newspapers, a cover-up and, finally, the resignation of top elected officials.
The six students involved in a plot that left 10,000 Lantern newspapers at the bottom of university Dumpsters--the largest college newspaper trashing in university history, according to Lantern adviser Rose Hume's best estimates--will get 20 hours of community service painting Lantern offices. They'll also have to take out an ad in the Lantern as a public apology and pay back about $3,000 in lost advertising, according to OSU Student Affairs head Bill Hall.
But Hume wonders why the students aren't being prosecuted downtown.
Hall said City Attorney Janet Jackson advised university officials to handle the matter strictly through the university. Hume would rather see Ohio State University and Columbus set a legal precedent against the theft of student papers--not a smaller university like Kent State or Bowling Green. "It's going to come out of some small courtroom," she said.
Kathy Lawrence, director of student publications at the University of Texas, faced a similar situation five years ago, when a student trashed 5,800 copies of the Daily Texan. The student was booked on theft charges in a criminal court and sentenced to community service. Lawrence didn't pursue any discipline through the university, but said Ohio State's decision was supportive of the student press.
But Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Virginia, worries about the message OSU is sending. "In terms of solving this immediate situation, [OSU's discipline] is a remedy. But the whole idea of criminal prosecution is to prevent others," he said. "The message it's sending is, `If you don't like someone's message on campus, just silence them and the consequences will be minimal.'"
Where are you coming from, Bobbie Hall?
First the Cleveland Plain Dealer's capital bureau came out with an article from left field about Franklin County Treasurer Bobbie Hall and the "odd behavior" she's been exhibiting lately. Then The Other Paper slapped the Plain Dealer's scoop on its front page, along with Hall's response (Hall's office declined to comment on the Plain Dealer story).
But not a peep from the Columbus Dispatch.
Finally, on February 16, two days after the Cleveland paper broke the Columbus news item, the Dispatch ran an article on the Hall controversy. Was the Daily Monopoly prodded by the competition?
Despite the one, two, three timing of the news stories, Dispatch editor Ben Marrison said the other papers were "non-players" in the Dispatch decision. "We didn't have the story nailed down--nothing more, nothing less," Marrison said.
The Plain Dealer's original article addressed concerns about Hall's forgetfulness, and her firing of chief investment officer Nicole O'Reilly. It was a strange story for the Plain Dealer, and strangely timed. After all, Hall doesn't balance books in Cuyahoga County. O'Reilly was fired in January, and hasn't yet filed a lawsuit (O'Reilly's attorney is John Marshall, a writer for Other Paper parent Columbus Monthly). And, according to The Other Paper, Franklin County Democratic Party Chairman Denny White had been trying to leak the story since last year.
The more plausible explanation for the Cleveland paper's scoop is that they couldn't wait to one-up the Dispatch, which had recently stolen the Plain Dealer's thunder by scooping them on an explosive story regarding unbid contracts in the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.
The Other Paper quoted Marrison as saying the Dispatch was aware of the Hall situation, and had a reporter look into it. "We have looked into it, and will continue to look at it. The only issue is, when do we have enough to run with?" he told The Other Paper.
As it turned out, that came the next day.
Still, Marrison denies any connection. He told Columbus Alive that the Dispatch plans to follow up on the story as it develops. "We don't let other organizations dictate whether we run stories."
03/01/2001
Is the big chill over?
Activism and politics in Ohio may be thawing out for spring
by Bob Fitrakis
Signs of a political thaw are everywhere. The nearly packed house at Studio 35 last Saturday, showing their solidarity with the Zapatista revolutionary struggle of Chiapas, Mexico, served as a healthy dose of sunshine. The award-winning film A Place Called Chiapas depicted the current caste system in Mexico rooted in the conquistadors and fostered by the North American Free Trade Agreement.
As you read this, Subcommandante Marcos is making his way to Mexico City with a historic caravan escorting Zapatista delegates to negotiate the end of 509 years of oppression of indigenous people.
Father Roy Bourgeois' planned visit to Columbus March 6-8 underscores our nation's complicity in the atrocities against the native population of Central America. Bourgeois has dedicated his life to closing down the notorious School of the Americas, located in Fort Benning, Georgia, where Central and South American military officers are taught torture techniques under the code phrase "counterinsurgency." A graduate diploma from the renowned "School of the Assassins" usually gets you on the A-list as one of the worst human rights abusers in the Americas. Bourgeois recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Colombia and will be speaking at Indianola Presbyterian Church Tuesday night, Capital University and the Newman Center on Wednesday and at the OSU Law School on Thursday at noon.
That same Wednesday, Julia Butterfly Hill will speak at Independence Hall at Ohio State University. Hill, you may recall, staged a legendary "tree-in" to save a 2,000-year-old redwood called Luna in California. She spent nearly two years living on a small platform 180 feet in the air, but now her feet are firmly planted on the soil and she's building a coalition with labor leaders called The Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment.
Shades of Seattle 1999, it's the return of the World Trade Organization protest coalition as representatives of the United Steelworkers share the platform with the Butterfly woman at Independence Hall. Back then it was the "Turtles and Teamsters," as environmentalists joined with labor activists to oppose the New World Corporate Order. You know, the guys that measure progress by the number of golden arches erected worldwide. The steelworkers are targeting Ohio's AK Steel, infamous for its lock-out of Mansfield workers, and are trying to educate people concerning the way the company's anti-labor activities have devastated community life. All these events give new meaning to the old phrase, "one struggle, many fronts."
Perhaps the best sign that the current Bush dynasty is more farce than tragedy is the clear shift in people's attitudes toward the death penalty. A Columbus Dispatch poll last year showed that 46 percent of Ohioans favored life imprisonment without the possibility of parole over the death penalty for first-degree murderers. Sixty-eight percent thought it was likely or very likely that an innocent person would be wrongly convicted and executed in an Ohio State University poll in 1999. With nearly 98 percent of chief district attorneys being white and approximately 90 percent of death penalty charges being brought against African-Americans or Latinos, the racist nature of state-sponsored murder is overwhelming. The average American grasps the fact that the only place Republicans support affirmative action is in death penalty cases, where 42 percent of the Death Row population is African-American while they comprise only 13 percent of the general population.
Still there's a growing list of prominent Republicans who are demanding a moratorium on executions, from Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson and the late Paul Mifsud, former Governor Voinovich's Chief of Staff, to conservative columnist George Will. The Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, made national news when he halted all executions in his state.
Our Buckeye Republicans are bucking the national trend, but are making news for their cynical uses of the death penalty for political purposes. Ohio's Attorney General Betty Montgomery served as a pin-up girl for "Killing for Votes: The Dangers of Politicizing the Death Penalty Process," the 1996 study issued by the Death Penalty Information Center. Montgomery's attempt to execute inmate Robert Buell in January 1996--before he'd filed his first federal appeal--is a textbook case of political opportunism.
Virtually all Death Row inmates file a federal appeal, but Montgomery set a quick execution date in hopes of terminating Buell before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals could stay the execution. The stay was granted two days before Buell's scheduled death. Then, to maximize publicity, Montgomery had Buell sent to the death house anyway and had him prepped for execution. She waited until just a few hours prior to Buell's scheduled execution in order to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to kill him anyway despite the stay. All of this created an artificial 11th-hour crisis and a media frenzy for our preening attorney general.
To be fair, we must point out that Ohio's previous attorney general, the Democrat Lee Fisher, pioneered the game of Death Row chicken with John Byrd Jr. in March 1994. The only direct evidence against Byrd is the word of a lying, violence-prone jailhouse snitch named Ronald Armstead. One of Byrd's co-defendants signed an affidavit admitting that he actually killed the man Byrd is charged with killing.
There's far more mileage in staging bread-and-circus executions than in seeking justice. Anti-death penalty advocates know this, and that's why they'll demonstrate at the Riffe Center today, March 1, from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., calling for a moratorium on executions in the Buckeye State.
03/08/2001
"Four people across the street from the school protested Bush's plans to increase standardized testing," Joe Hallett wrote in the February 21 Columbus Dispatch. The only mention of demonstrators at President George W. Bush's appearance at Columbus' Sullivant Elementary School conveniently ignored a group of anti-Bush demonstrators at least 10 times as large shouting slogans like "Gore Got More" and "Hail to the thief." But don't take our word for it. Take a look at this photo from the February 20 protest: We count a few more than four people.
Alive story led to bounty hunter indictments
Recently, the Franklin County Grand Jury called Columbus Alive investigative reporter Bob Fitrakis and his research associate Bill Neill to testify concerning the June 22, 2000, cover story "Hunted."
The Alive article depicted the plight of Glenda Fravel and Jeremy Murray, a couple living in the North Linden neighborhood; the couple was terrorized by two, then-unknown gun-toting bounty hunters who had the wrong address. Alive later found and interviewed George Pardos, one of the overzealous bounty hunters, for the July 13 follow-up story "The Hunter." While Fravel's frantic midnight call to police failed to initially generate even a police report, on February 23 the Franklin County prosecutor's office filed a seven-count felony indictment against bounty hunter Gerald L. Redmond and a five-count indictment against Pardos.
Redmond's indictments include four first-degree felonies for kidnapping and aggravated burglary, with three additional felony indictments for abduction. Pardos received three first-degree felony indictments and two lesser felony indictments involving the same charges. There is also a civil case against Redmond and Pardos.
Following the Alive cover story, Detective Carl Covey of the Columbus Division of Police's Burglary Squad led the investigation. Covey told Alive that the bounty hunters, who were operating in Ohio virtually without regulation, often didn't know the law. "But what they can't do once they ascertain that the person that they're looking for isn't there, is abduct people, hold them against their will and take things from them," Covey said.
For more than four years, Columbus Alive has investigated the practices of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters in central Ohio. An October 1997 cover story, "Bounty booty: Taking the law into their own hands--on our behalf," revealed a number of ex-felons working as bondsmen and bounty hunters. Recently, State Representative David Goodman cited Alive's work as an important source of information in the debate over bail bond reform in the state of Ohio. "The articles made it easier for legislators to understand the problems with the bail bond system in Ohio," Goodman told Alive after the passage of his recent bill outlawing bounty hunters in the state. His bill also banned solicitation by bondsmen in courthouses throughout Ohio. The problem with solicitation was covered in various Alive articles, including two award-winning investigative pieces, 1997's "The Gatekeepers: Striking it rich in the bail bond business" and 1998's "Money for Nothing."
Oddly, while Alive led the way with its investigation of bounty hunters, and the Columbus Dispatch consistently covered abuses, Columbus Monthly, running recycled stories from the Alive and the Dispatch, attempted to take credit for the new bounty hunter law in its March 2001 issue: "A year ago, Columbus Monthly detailed a rash of startling and, according to Columbus police, illegal acts committed by a handful of area bounty hunters..." The most startling part of the Columbus Monthly story was the magazine's blatant borrowing from other news sources.
We'll be the first to concede that the Alive failed to break any stories on the most expensive greens fees in central Ohio or on whether "shabby chic" or "echo deco" d™cor is in vogue among the rich and over-fed. After all, that's a specialty of Columbus Monthly. We just hope the magazine doesn't injure a delicate, manicured hand trying to pat itself on the back for other people's work.
Hightower in hot water
Seems not everybody is buying Stephanie Hightower's characterization of the Near East Side's Eastgate Elementary School. Fourteen staff members from the school, including the Columbus Educational Association building representative, wrote a letter requesting to meet with the Columbus School Board members in executive session on Tuesday, March 6.
All of this stems from Bill Bush's excellent front-page story "Principals let Hightower bypass school lottery" in the February 26 Columbus Dispatch, which detailed the transfer of Hightower's son from Eastgate to Devonshire Alternative Elementary near Worthington. After Bush cornered Hightower with the facts, he got her to concede, "I guess it does look as if I was getting preferential treatment."
Hightower then offered the I-had-to-save-my-son defense, which may work for most parents fleeing city schools, but usually isn't used by Columbus School Board presidents. "I had to do what I had to do in the best interest of my child...I didn't make this up," she explained.
The Dispatch reported, "But one day as she was giving her son and one of his friends a ride home from Eastgate, the friend showed her a cut that had been inflicted by a classmate. `He's got an open wound with a pencil,' she [Hightower] said. `He's got at least a three-inch gash in his arm, and his grandmother wasn't called, and there wasn't a Band-Aid or anything.'"
Hightower told the Dispatch, "I don't know about you, but I don't want my child in that kind of environment."
Eastgate staffers take issue with Hightower's opinion of their learning "environment," with good reason. Student attendance is above both the state and district's target at the school. The district certifies Eastgate as a "peaceful schools model." Eastgate received an academic improvement Exemplary Award last school year. The governor gave the elementary a $25,000 academic award. The school is designated a "School of Excellence for Science and Math" and it served as a site for President Clinton's visit and educational reform roundtable discussion last year. Also, Police Officers for Equal Rights selected Eastgate Principal Barbara Blake as its "Educator of the Year," while the United Negro College Fund designated her an exemplar.
In her first year on the board, Hightower made it difficult for desperate parents to complain at school board meetings by reducing the number of meetings per month. This year, as board president, she's ended the open public comment period at regular board meetings and moved the meetings back to 3 p.m., furthering burdening working parents and hindering their ability to speak out. Apparently, though, parents can ignore district rules to do what's in the "best interest" of their children.
Happy Birthday, Melissa! Love, Mike Curtin
In a strange bit of synchronicity, five Columbus Alive staffers found that their birthdays each fell within the last week of February. But only arts editor Melissa Starker was singled out for birthday wishes from the Columbus Dispatch.
On February 28, Starker received a bright yellow envelope in her home mailbox that contained a card featuring a mock Dispatch front page with the banner headline "Happy Birthday to You!" Included in the card was a subscription offer, along with coupons for several area businesses, and a well-wishing birthday greeting signed by Dispatch president Mike Curtin. Well, all right, it was a reproduction signature.
Starker didn't fault the sentiment, but being a skeptical (maybe even paranoid) journalist for an alternative weekly, Starker couldn't help but wonder: How did the Columbus Dispatch know it was her birthday?
A call to the circulation contact number listed on page three of the daily monopoly was referred to the circulation marketing department. Department manager Craig Foglietti was very helpful, but couldn't answer the central question. The Dispatch is only an advertiser with the direct mail service that sent the card, he said, offering the number of the Birthday Club of America as the next place to try.
Birthday Club sales associate Dave Bowen was ready and willing to remove Starker's name from the mailing list but could not explain how she had gotten on it in the first place. "That's not for me to understand or know," he said genially. He also stated that most people appreciate the company's unbidden birthday greetings, and that one mail recipient contacted him to say her card was the only one she received that year. He suggested that the next call be placed to Pat McNeil in Chillicothe.
Two calls were made to McNeil's office, where a receptionist confirmed that he should be able to provide answers to the question posed. The calls were not returned by presstime, but it was discerned through online information that McNeil is part owner of McNeil Enterprises, a local advertising and PR firm best known for the cover design of the 1969 Rolling Stones compilation Through the Past Darkly. It's a neat factoid to be sure, but how Starker's birthdate was obtained by the Dispatch for marketing purposes is still a mystery.
03/15/2001
The real Rhodes
The late Ohio governor was hardly a political Colossus
by Bob Fitrakis
Now there's five dead in Ohio.
Last week, Ohio politicians reached new heights in myth-making and hypocrisy by blathering on about the greatness of deceased former Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes.
Current Governor Bob Taft told us that "he [Rhodes] left us a rich legacy to preserve." Mmm. Never thought of the massacre of unarmed demonstrators in that light.
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell proclaimed "he is a genuine Ohio icon. What he did as governor, his leadership, will remain the standard for 50 years to come." Since Blackwell's unbridled ambition to serve as governor is so well known, perhaps we should merely dismiss this as an attempt to set the bar really, really low so we won't expect much of him if he gets elected.
The best way to understand the Rhodes legacy is not to read any mainstream Ohio newspapers. If you do, you might fall for the Rhodes BS that still spews forth. Take, for example, the Dayton Daily News' standard account that Rhodes "came up from poverty, and he knew what it meant to struggle."
Contrast this with the more accurate Guardian newspaper from London, England: "He liked to portray himself as a man of the people, risen from humble origins...but his account of his background was not [true]."
"Rhodes' father was a miner of Welsh ancestry, who had risen to become a mine superintendent able to provide his family with a comfortable middle-class living. That was certainly curtailed when Rhodes Sr. died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, but the family was not quite as penurious as his son liked to suggest," the Guardian reported.
Ohio's newspapers also conveniently ignored Rhodes' reputed ties to mobsters. As London's Daily Telegraph acknowledged, "In 1969 he shrugged off accusations of corruption--which were made after he had commuted the life sentence of a gangster with alleged Mafia connections--as `politically motivated.'"
For a fuller appreciation of Rhodes' legacy, Life magazine's May 2, 1969, "The Governor... and the Mobster" is essential reading. The article depicted how Rhodes used his campaign funds for personal gain, "intervened" to secure government loans to pay back money to cronies, and granted a pardon to mob boss Thomas "Yonnie" Licavoli. Yeah, yeah, I know he promoted the hell out of the State Fair.
The Dayton Daily News attempted to portray the dichotomy between Rhodes-the-builder-of-buildings-and-roads and Rhodes-the-anti-tax-fiscal-conservative. In the Dayton paper's incorrect analysis, it was not "pork-barrel politics run amok." Nah, more likely contract-steering to questionable construction firms. Now there's a legacy he left Ohioans.
Rhodes always argued that the Kent State massacre was the fault of protesters: "It was people who thought something was wrong with America." He's right, and there was something wrong with America at the time, besides governors associated with mobsters.
We need to remember the circumstances surrounding the law-and-order Richard Nixon/Ronald Reagan/Jim Rhodes cabal. On April 9, 1970, California Governor Reagan, an FBI snitch during the 1950s' McCarthyism, said of student demonstrators, "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement."
Despite running as a peace candidate in 1968, President Nixon announced in 1970 that he was ordering U.S. combat troops into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese guerrilla sanctuaries. Campus demonstrations erupted throughout the country. On Saturday, May 2, an old wooden ROTC building at Kent State was torched while the campus police looked on. Later, declassified documents suggest that an FBI infiltrator instigated the burning. William Gordon's book Four Dead in Ohio turned up a confession by a then-18-year-old high school student, George Walter Harrington, who worked with a man on a motorcycle who dipped rags in gasoline to start the ROTC building fire. Numerous sources hold that Harrington was never prosecuted because the motorcyclist was on the FBI payroll.
Instead of attempting to defuse the explosive events at Kent State, on May 3, 1970, Rhodes chose to exploit it for political gain, with the Ohio primary two days away. The politically desperate Rhodes, a candidate for U.S. Senate, altered his campaign schedule and flew by helicopter into Kent. There he posed for a picture next to the burned-out ruins of the ROTC building. Next, Governor Rhodes met privately with Ohio Adjutant General Sylvester Del Corso, commander of the state's National Guard.
What occurred at this secret meeting at the Kent Fire Station is a mystery that Rhodes took to his grave. But afterwards, Rhodes staged a provocative and deadly press conference. The governor charged that "We are up against the strongest, well-trained militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America... They're worse than the brown shirts and the Communist element and the night riders and the vigilantes. They are the worst type of people that we harbor in America... [They intend] to destroy higher education in Ohio."
Ohio Highway Patrol Chief Robert Chiarmonte promised "they can expect us to return fire." Kent Police Chief Roy Thompson warned that he would "use any force that is necessary, even to the point of shooting."
The rest is Rhodes' legacy. The next day, the Ohio National Guard fired their military assault rifles for 13 seconds at unarmed students. In the shootings, four people died--Sandra Lee Scheur, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison Krause and William Knox Schroeder--and nine others were wounded.
Last week, the London Times reported: "A subsequent FBI investigation concluded that at the time of the shooting, the dissenters were neither violent nor threatening to the Guard." A fact left out by every major newspaper in Ohio.
3/22/2001
Fasting behind bars
Inmates at Ohio's supermax prison issue a silent "cry for help"
by Bob Fitrakis
At least 25 prisoners began a hunger strike last Thursday, March 15, at the Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) in an on-going struggle to improve conditions at the state's "supermax" prison. In January, both the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Cleveland contending the OSP is unconstitutional.
The suit claims that inmates are locked down for 23 hours a day in spartan seven-foot-by-14-foot cells. At the time of the lawsuit, the supermax housed some 450 inmates, according to Raymond Vasvari, legal director of the Ohio ACLU.
Attorney Staughton Lynd, a well-known civil rights activist who directed the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in the 1960s, is assisting in the lawsuit. He concedes that "some conditions have improved" since the lawsuit was filed, but the current hunger strike was prompted by six long-standing "major problems."
Prisoners' concerns include the procedures by which inmates are designated for supermax and released from it; the lack of an education and treatment plan for hepatitis C cases; the lack of hygiene products and access to postage and writing materials; the fact that "two-thirds of the supermax prisoners are black or Hispanic" and the prison refuses religious and cultural accommodations; the lack of any outdoor recreation program; and the fact that the prison's "mental health counseling program is conducted with the prisoner sitting on a concrete stool in a locked room, handcuffed behind his back and chained to the floor, and yelling to a counselor outside the cell," according to Lynd.
At a January 9 news conference, attorney Alice Lynd charged that prison officials use deliberate cruelty that goes beyond any legal sentence.
OSP and Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections spokespersons have declined comment thus far, citing the pending litigation.
Warden Todd Ishee has called the OSP inmates "the worst of the worst." He told the Dayton Daily News that prisoners are placed in the supermax after an administrative "due process hearing," because of assault on prison staff or other inmates, if they're gang leaders, or if they've tried to escape.
"There are four privilege levels, and inmates can work their way up through the levels--and eventually back to a less-secure prison--through good behavior and by participating in close-circuit television self-help programs," the Daily News reported.
Lynd contends that "a number of prisoners had been recommended for a decrease in security status [but] these recommendations by officials at the supermax, who are familiar with the prisoner, and his record at the facility are often vetoed" by corrections officials in Columbus.
Vasvari also denies there are any "meaningful hearings." He told the Daily News, "It's supposed to be for the worst of the worst, but it turns out you have some people there for minor rules infractions."
Other critics of the supermax--and some inmates--contend that prisoners are placed there for asserting their rights or offending a prison official. Lynd reports that at least one mentally disturbed inmate was transferred out of the supermax, but that medical and mental health care remains a concern. At the time of the lawsuit, Vasvari pointed to three suicides at the facility and denounced a "systematic deprivation of sensory stimuli, tailor-made to breed mental illness where it doesn't exist and exacerbate it where it does."
In their lawsuit, the prisoners declined to seek monetary damages, requesting instead a complete overhaul of the procedures used at the prison.
The so-called outdoor recreational program continues to come under fire; it consists of an empty cell with a graded slit in the wall to let in fresh air. It's this air flow from the "outside" that makes it officially an outdoor recreation area.
Many prisoners have complained that their cells are abnormally cold in winter and they're given fewer clothes and blankets to keep warm as a deliberate policy of cruelty. The Associated Press reported that inmates are shackled and strip-searched each time they leave their cell.
According to Lynd, there's currently no Imam for Muslim prisoners, and Muslim prisoners who have special diet needs and request religious books and prayer apparatuses are neglected and ignored.
Lynd concedes that "the extent of the spreading hunger strike is difficult to determine," but says that inmate John Perotti "has consistently gone without food since the first of the month."
In a statement issued by Lynd, he noted, "I understand their frustration, a lawsuit takes a long time. When a prisoner cannot meet with other prisoners, cannot visit with reporters, cannot in most cases leave the prison to appear in person in court, he may come to feel that the only way he can call attention to his problem is to deprive himself of food. A fast is really a cry for help."
03/29/2001
Snitch vs. snitch
John Byrd is tangled in a web of jailhouse lies and the courts have 167 days to unravel the truth before he dies in Ohio's electric chair
by Bob Fitrakis and Jamie Pietras
"My name is Johnny WM. Byrd Jr., and I may very well be the next man murdered by the state of Ohio. I strongly use the word `murder' and its complete definition, for if my execution is permitted to be carried out--it is nothing less!" John Byrd recently wrote in a letter to Cleveland-area state Representative Shirley A. Smith.
Byrd, who was sentenced to death for the murder of Cincinnati convenience store clerk Monte Tewksbury nearly 18 years ago, has steadfastly maintained his innocence while on Death Row. In 1994, he came within 30 minutes of being executed, before the Ohio Supreme Court granted him a last-minute reprieve. Now he hopes that previously ignored evidence of perjury will win him a new trial and spare his life.
A slew of affidavits gathered by the Ohio Office of the Public Defender suggest that while Byrd was at the crime scene in 1983, he was not the killer. The evidence includes two sworn statements from convicted accomplice John Brewer, who actually confessed it was he, not Byrd, who murdered Tewksbury.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery's office remains skeptical, though, questioning why it took so long for the affidavits to surface in the two-decades-old case.
And while the public defender's reliance on the word of cons and ex-cons raises doubts in the eyes of prosecutors, Byrd's attorneys point a finger back at them--Byrd was convicted through the testimony of a jailhouse informant Public Defender David Bodiker calls a "liar" and a "snitch."
Now the clock is ticking on Byrd's life. The final guaranteed appeal to stop his execution was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 8. On March 20, the Ohio Supreme Court set Byrd's execution date for September 12 and, in the same decision, referred Byrd's persistent claim of actual innocence back to the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court for a hearing. With a hearing date yet to be set, the case is back in the county where the complicated drama Byrd calls a "nightmare" began.
"Man, I stabbed a guy"
During the afternoon and evening of April 17, 1983, John Byrd admits to consuming "large quantities of alcohol, barbiturates and marijuana," which caused him to black out. When he woke up the next day in A-Block of the Hamilton County Workhouse, he contends that he thought he was jailed on a drinking-related charge.
Rather, Byrd had been arrested in a van with two accomplices, John Brewer and William "Danny" Woodall, for the robbery of a Cincinnati King Kwik convenience store and the stabbing death of store clerk Monte Tewksbury, a Procter and Gamble employee who worked nights at the store. It was an unfortunate and unusual death--a single stab wound pierced his liver.
No direct physical evidence linked Byrd to Tewksbury's stabbing. Nevertheless, accomplices Woodall and Brewer were sentenced to life in prison and Byrd got the death penalty. Byrd's jury sentenced him to death primarily on the increasingly suspect testimony of a jailhouse snitch, Ronald Armstead, an inmate who claimed that Byrd confessed the murder to him. The Cincinnati Enquirer portrayed Armstead's testimony as dramatic and enthralling: "Observers in the packed courthouse appeared captivated by Armstead and a stunned silence fell over the courtroom."
Documents obtained by Columbus Alive shed new light on what happened the night of April 17 and the four subsequent months that Byrd spent in jail prior to his conviction on August 12, 1983.
More than five years after Byrd's conviction, Brewer signed a notarized affidavit substantiating Byrd's story. "I observed John Byrd Jr. drinking large quantities of beer and screwdrivers and taking narcotic drugs during the late afternoon and evening of April 17, 1983," Brewer stated. He described Byrd as "highly intoxicated" and recalled that Byrd "staggered as he walked into the store and was having a hard time standing upê John was so drunk and stoned that he leaned against the wall in the front of the store to stand up."
Brewer's sworn account of what happened next is as follows: "I ran to the front of the store where I leaped onto the front counter and then off the front counter in order to subdue the store clerk, Monte Tewksbury." Crime scene evidence revealed Brewer's footprint on the store's front counter.
Brewer, then described as an agile, five-feet, eight-inches tall and 135 pounds, claimed, "I grabbed Tewksbury by the arm and ordered him to give me all the money contained in the store's register." Tewksbury's autopsy listed bruises on his arm, possibly consistent with being forcibly grabbed.
Brewer said he "became distracted by lights which flashed through the front window in the store," creating the opportunity for the much heavier Tewksbury (approximately five-feet, six-inches, 240 pounds) to "grab" at Brewer.
"I reacted to Tewksbury's action by stabbing him," Brewer confessed in the 1989 affidavit.
He described the murder weapon as a "hunting knife with a five-inch, highly polished blade and bone handle." Brewer said that he later "threw the knife I used to stab Tewksbury out of the van." The police were never able to find the murder weapon, although during Byrd's trial the prosecutors dramatically waved around a work knife found in the van that allegedly belonged to Byrd, without ever attempting to establish it as the murder weapon.
On January 26 this year, in a controversial and dramatic 11th-hour move, the Ohio Public Defender's Office released John Brewer's 1989 affidavit and submitted an updated affidavit dated January 24, 2001.
Brewer tells essentially the same tale, albeit in more colorful language, in the new, hand-written statement. He described John Byrd as "highly intoxicated and generally fucked up" during the evening of the murder. Brewer went into more detail about his confrontation with Tewksbury: "Tewksbury slung me to the side. I freed my left arm and got my knife from my waist and stabbed him in the side. I didn't think that he was seriously hurt because I did not see any blood."
"When I got back in the van, I said to Danny Woodall, `Man, I stabbed a guy, take off,'" added Brewer.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen dismissed Brewer's sworn confession. "What does he have to lose? It's a story a couple of convicted felons sitting around in their jail cells decided to concoct. It's worthless," he told the Associated Press.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery responded in writing to the Ohio Supreme Court by claiming that "Brewer now has nothing to lose. He cannot be sentenced to death for Monte Tewksbury's murder."
But, as the Columbus Dispatch reported prior to Montgomery's arguments to the state's highest court, "His [Brewer's] admission, if found to be true, could prevent his possible parole in 2015. In fact, Brewer had noted in his most recent affidavit that `I am eligible for parole in 2015 and realize that I have a lot to lose by signing this affidavit,'" a detail ignored by Montgomery in her efforts to sustain Byrd's death sentence.
Still, the question of why the public defender's office would wait so long to release the 1989 affidavit remains. Public Defender David Bodiker said it has nothing to do with the merits of the claim. "I think that at the time I got it, there was an uncertainty how to use it," Bodiker said. "There was never a time where there was the ability to insert that claim [in court proceedings]ê I feel that everybody here anticipated judicial relief for Mr. Byrd at some point."
The public defender's position has long been that Byrd should get a new trial, and the affidavit of actual innocence was viewed as a tactic of last resort that might save Byrd from the death penalty but wouldn't get him released from prison.
Timing is everything in death penalty cases. Had the public defender released the single Brewer affidavit more than a decade ago, it probably would have had very little impact, said some sources in the public defender's office.
Joe Case, spokesperson for Attorney General Montgomery, said the motion for actual innocence is based on "flimsy" evidence because it was held for more than a decade. "You would think that if they had information that could have gotten Mr. Byrd off of Death Row 12 years ago, they would have done it before now. In 1994, he was within hours of execution and the affidavit was never produced," Case said. "If there is credible information that could clear Mr. Byrd, that information should be laid on the table now and allow for the courts to decide."
"The attorney general sees this as nothing more than delay tactics to buy time for a man who has gone all the way through the system. He has exhausted all of his appeals and now they are grasping at straws to delay the inevitable," Case continued. "We will strongly oppose introduction of new evidence because what the court ordered was a hearing and ruling on the specific actual innocence claim that has been brought forward here."
When asked how the attorney general's office could both want the public defender to come forward with evidence, but oppose the introduction of new evidence, Case clarified: "If they have evidence that would clear their man, then it needs to be dealt with through the proper channels. We can't be asking the trial court on this level to go beyond its orders from the Supreme Court and deal with the Brewer affidavit."
Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer said it will be up to the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge to decide which evidence will be admissible at the hearing. "I would think it would be an evidentiary hearing limited to that issue," he told Columbus Alive.
"They got the wrong one on Death Row"
Earlier this year, Columbus Alive contacted Prison Advocacy Network activist Dan Cahill about the Byrd case. A 24-year veteran of Ohio prisons who was incarcerated for drug trafficking, aggravated robbery and burglary, Cahill said he served time in prisons where John Brewer, John Byrd and Danny Woodall were inmates, and that all three confirmed that it was Brewer, not Byrd, who killed Tewksbury.
Cahill later went public with his story, and the Ohio Public Defender's office recently obtained a notarized affidavit from Cahill that supports Byrd's claims.
While at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in the mid-1980s, Cahill, a Death Row porter, met Byrd. The convicted Death Row inmate "adamantly" maintained his innocence, Cahill said. He claimed Byrd told him "he was really drunk at the time."
Cahill swore that Brewer "said he was the one who killed the guyê [and he] also said that Byrd was really messed up at the time of the crime." Cahill later met Woodall at Orient Correctional Institute and swears that "Woodall told me that Brewer did the killingê He just said they got the wrong one on Death Row."
With the release of the new affidavits this year, and with media scrutiny on the Byrd case mounting, the attorney general's office and Hamilton County prosecutors dispatched State Trooper Howard Hudson and Special Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier to see Woodall in order to get him to sign an affidavit implicating Byrd. While the pair could not produce a signed affidavit from Woodall, Hudson and Piepmeier provided their own affidavits, based on January 29 and January 31 visits at London Correctional Institution and the Ohio State University Hospital respectively, claiming the terminally ill Woodall told them Byrd did it.
Woodall told Hudson and Piepmeier that in 1989, Brewer asked him to conspire with Brewer to clear Byrd, according to attorney general spokesperson Case. "So we have evidence that even back in 1989, we have another co-defendant saying that he was asked by Mr. Brewer to concoct a lie to clear Mr. Byrd," Case said.
Although the Hudson and Piepmeier affidavits are of little evidential value, they may publicly strengthen the case of Montgomery and Hamilton County prosecutors. According to attorneys in the public defender's office, Hudson and Piepmeier are high-profile witnesses who lend credibility to the case against Byrd. Both men played key roles in the investigation into the April 1993 Lucasville prison riot; Hudson was an on-scene negotiator and post-riot investigator; Piepmeier was a special prosecutor who convicted the rioting inmates.
When the public defender's office requested access to Woodall to discuss the Byrd case, according to attorneys in the office, prison officials said Woodall was not available and, because he is suffering from cancer, had a tube down his throat. Prison sources reported that a day after Piepmeier, Hudson and Hamilton County Prosecutor William Breyer first visited Woodall in prison, Woodall was transferred to OSU Hospital.
"Armstead was out to get Byrd"
John Brewer's most recent affidavit also addresses John Byrd's alleged jailhouse confession. "At our initial appearance on this case in Municipal Court, my attorney Mr. Blackmore advised all three of us not to talk about the case with anybody. I would not talk to a black guy about anything serious. That is ridiculous that I would talk to a black guy about a serious matter," Brewer wrote in reference to informant Ronald Armstead, who is black.
Additional affidavits obtained during the Columbus Alive investigation call into question the truthfulness of Armstead's key testimony. Denver Nicely Jr., a friend of Byrd's father, was in A-Block of the Hamilton County jail in the spring of 1983. He swears there was no way that Byrd talked to Armstead because, "At the time John Byrd Jr. and I did not like black people. We did not talk with black people about anything. Ronald Armstead, Marvin Randolph and Vernon Jordan are black." The three inmates mentioned by Nicely had reputations as jailhouse snitches.
Another black inmate, Lester Early, confirms in a sworn affidavit, "It was known by everyone in A-Block that Armstead, Jordan, and others were out to get Byrd to get themselves some play on their casesê Byrd kept to himself. He and his co-defendants were new guys on A-Block. Byrd did not go around running his mouth about his case."
Moreover, Early dismisses Armstead's trial testimony alleging that Byrd confessed to him on May 26, 1983, while the two were watching a TV show portraying the tragic death of Tewksbury and showing home video of the happy Tewksbury family. Since Byrd supposedly confessed during the TV show, the jury was able to watch the heart-wrenching family videotape under the guise of "evidence."
"There was only one television in A-Block. I never heard Byrd say anything about his case while watching television. I never had anyone say they heard Byrd say anything about his case," Early said. Early also claims that police and Hamilton County prosecutors regularly talked with the three snitches under the pretext that they were going to court.
Keith Wieland, who was also serving time in the jail, says that the three snitches met with him, and that Randolph said, "I have a great idea on how to get us out of our separate problems."
"`Bull' [Armstead] suggested that we say we overheard or we were told by John Byrd Jr. and his co-defendants that they had committed this murder/robbery. I was approached specifically by `Bull' because he and the other individuals were black and I was white. `Bull' stated that it would be more believable that three white guys would talk to another white person, not just four black guys," Wieland said.
Wieland turned them down. His affidavit states that the three snitches then wrote a letter to the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office anyway, and drew attention to themselves by discussing how to spell Prosecutor Arthur M. Ney Jr.'s last name.
Two other affidavits, from inmates Abdul Mughni and Robert Ashbrook, both cast doubt on the likelihood of a Byrd confession to Armstead. Mughni's affidavit noted, "I never saw John Byrd speak with Ronald Armstead or Vernon Jordan. Generally, blacks and whites did not want to be seen associating with each otherê After Armstead and Jordan testified, I overheard them bragging about what they had done. Armstead and Jordan said they were going to be back on the street soon because of the deals they got for testifying against Byrd, Brewer and Woodall."
Ashbrook asserted, "John Byrd did not go around the workhouse talking about his case. In 1983 in the workhouse blacks and whites did not associate with each other."
As reported by Columbus Alive in August 2000, Armstead's crucial testimony--where a weeping Armstead portrayed Byrd as a calculated, cold-blooded killer--raises concern. Armstead failed to tell the jury that he faced up to 15 years in prison for a parole violation and escaping from jail after assaulting a nurse in the sick ward and beating a guard with a metal bed crank. Armstead portrayed to the jury that he had no jail time pending and was testifying as part of his civic duty. The Hamilton County prosecutors vouched for Armstead's testimony and failed to disclose his incorrect and possibly perjured testimony regarding the sentence hanging over his head.
Daniel J. Breyer, the Hamilton County prosecutor who prosecuted the Byrd case, sent a letter to the parole board praising Armstead's cooperation in the case. As the Columbus Dispatch reported, "A few hours later, Armstead was on a plane headed to San Diego," despite the initial adamant objections of the parole board.
During proceedings away from the jury in Byrd's original trial, Byrd attorney Hollis Moore raised concerns about the disclosure of Armstead's criminal past. Byrd's trial judge, Donald Schott, said, "It is within the sound discretion of the court as to the extent of the exploration of the criminal records." The judge continued, "I did not feel that it was necessary that we go into them unless it was something that touched upon the area of perjury."
Byrd's attorneys believe Armstead may have perjured himself when asked if he had any charges pending against him. The star witness testified, "I don't have no time pending or nothing else pendingê I don't have no more cases pending and I come to testify against Byrd because he was wrong."
The defense tried to ask Armstead to divulge information about his criminal past no fewer than five times. First the defense attorney asked if he was serving time and for what charges. The prosecutors objected to this question and the judge sustained the objection. The defense asked if Armstead was convicted of a federal or state offense or had served more than a year in prison. The judge again sustained the prosecutors' objection. The interrogation continued as such until Armstead made the infamous claim that he had "no time pending."
Hamilton County attorney Fred Hoefle, who represented Byrd on appeal, failed to raise the issue on appeal--a mistake, said Public Defender David Bodiker. "First of all, they didn't get into what a culprit Armstead was."
In April 2000, Sixth Circuit Court Judge Nathaniel R. Jones stated, "At best, these [Armstead's] statements were misleading and left the jury with a material mis-impression of fact. At worst, these statements were patently false, which the prosecution knew, or should have known." Jones dissented from the two-judge majority in the appeals court ruling, which upheld Byrd's conviction.
A comparison of the Woodall, Brewer and Byrd murder trials reveals differences in the way Armstead was presented as a witness. In Brewer's trial, Armstead testified that Brewer said things strikingly similar to what Byrd supposedly said. Armstead told the jury that Byrd confessed: "Fuck him [Tewksbury], he deserved to die." Armstead told another jury that Brewer confessed: "Fuck him. He need to be dead."
In the Byrd trial, Armstead testified that prison guards were present when Byrd was said to have confessed to the crime. No guards testified to back up this claim.
In Woodall's case, Armstead admitted that he was serving six months for assault. In Brewer's case, Armstead admitted to the court, "I had a trafficking case I went to the penitentiary on, and felonious assault that I went to the penitentiary on."
But in Byrd's case, the jury had no idea that Armstead was in jail on a parole violation and faced a possible return to state prison. "What they did do, of course, was allow misconceptions about his record go to the jury unchallenged," Bodiker said.
Of Armstead's testimony, Joe Case countered, "That issue has been looked at and scrutinized by numerous levels of judicial review and it has been upheld."
As for concerns about the jury being unaware of Armstead's pending sentence, the attorney general's spokesperson continued, "For them to say that they did not have a venue to present this at this point is surprising, given the creativity demonstrated by the public defender's office in the past."
As it turns out, Hamilton County's star witness, with a long criminal history in Ohio, has been less than a good citizen since the Byrd trial. Armstead now drifts between Las Vegas and San Diego. Court records indicate he has at least two Social Security numbers and has been charged with various crimes.
Las Vegas Township court records list a 1990 felony assault and drug trafficking conviction for Armstead. His rap sheet also shows a 1991 battery with a deadly weapon charge, an obstructing a police officer charge, a resisting arrest charge, and a 1994 citation for battery. An October 24, 1995, police report states that Armstead attacked a highly intoxicated individual and left "the victim bleeding from his nose" and with blood all over his jacket. Armstead was charged with strong armed robbery for allegedly stealing $145 from the individual. Charges were later dropped when the victim refused to testify against Armstead.
On December 11, 1996, a Las Vegas Township police report alleged that Armstead robbed a woman of $12,000 in jewelry by "grab[bing] her around the neck." He was charged with a felony count of robbery and resisting arrest. The victim, who resides in New York, failed to return and testify against Armstead and the charges were dropped. Prison records indicate that Armstead is of "below average" intelligence with an IQ between 80 and 89 and a long history of violence and drug addiction.
"They tried everything"
Those in the Ohio Public Defender's Office familiar with the Byrd case are struck by Hamilton County's pursuit and defense of the Death Row conviction. Sure, prosecutors are there to seek convictions for the criminally indicted, and public defenders try to get their clients off the hook, or at least a reduced sentence, but something about the Byrd case is remarkable, they say. "They tried everything," Public Defender David Bodiker said. "When they're questioned, they try to do a lot of things."
William Breyer, who's responsible for prosecuting Byrd's post conviction appeals and bringing about his execution (and who's also the brother of original trial prosecutor Daniel Breyer), even sued Byrd and the Public Defender's Office in 1990, demanding attorney's fees at the rate of $75 an hour for having to defend against Byrd's legal claims of innocence. He lost.
William Breyer also wrote the Director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association and the State Public Defender's Office accusing Byrd's post-conviction attorney, Richard Vickers, of misconduct. The public defender's office says Vickers was trying to locate a victim impact statement in which Tewksbury's widow Sharon said Byrd told her he wanted to know what murder "felt like"; prosecutors claimed Vickers should have contacted them before retrieving the statement.
A call to Breyer seeking comment was forwarded to John Ester, spokesperson for the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office; Ester did not return a telephone message for the sake of this story.
Attorneys in the public defender's office also believe Attorney General Betty Montgomery and the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office continue to insist on Byrd's guilt because of what it says about the death penalty in general. If Byrd is not guilty of the crime that sent him to Death Row, then the system in Ohio, just like elsewhere, is imperfect, makes mistakes, and sometimes might kill the wrong person.
The attorney general's office remains steadfast that justice was upheld. "We'll be there and we'll vigorously defend our position," spokesperson Joe Case said of the pending Byrd hearing.
Byrd, while lobbying for his innocence and his life, said he does feel sorry for Sharon Tewksbury, who has made statements to the press supporting Byrd's death sentence. "I have sympathy for Ms. Tewksbury," Byrd wrote in a February 3 letter to Columbus Alive. "She lost her husband. She has also been used and manipulated by the prosecutor's office to no end."
For Bodiker, the case boils down to one simple fact: Another man has confessed to the murder for which John Byrd is to be executed. "The bottom line for us is, John Brewer said `I did it.' He continues to say `I did it.'"
04/05/2001
Cracking down on citizen complaints
Four days before Christmas last year, the Ohio legislature gave the state's "peace officers," another term for cops, a generous Christmas present. Added to a bill initially introduced to "Establish the qualifications and authority of the House Sergeant at Arms and the Assistant House Sergeant at Arms" was an amendment that "Prohibits a person from knowingly filing a complaint against a peace officer that alleges that the peace officer engaged in misconduct in the performance of the officer's duties if the person knows the allegation to be false." The law when into effect on March 22.
Which agency will investigate citizens' complaints against the police and recommend the filing of first-degree misdemeanor charges--and up to six months in jail--for citizens who "falsely" complain about cops?
Reggie Hayes, spokesperson for State Senator Ben Espy, confirmed that the police could investigate themselves and set up their own policies. "That was one of the Senator's concerns," Hayes said. "But more important was the message the bill would send if those filing complaints had to sign a form that warned them of possible criminal prosecution." Espy's concern for the chilling effect that such a form would have on citizens' complaints led him to cast the sole vote against the bill.
James Moss, president of Police Officers for Equal Rights, also fears the police will be drafting their own policies and procedures, since the law does not forbid it, and he's worried about the virtual nonexistence of civilian review panels, meaning it's most likely that police internal affairs bureaus will investigate citizens' complaints against fellow officers.
"This is real scary. Imagine you're harassed by a police officer and you file a complaint. Do you want police internal affairs conducting a criminal investigation of you because a police officer tells them you filed false charges?" asked Moss. "Internal affairs routinely find that citizen complaints lack merit or are baseless or fabricated, usually on the word of another police officer."
"Maybe the bill wouldn't have been so bad if there had been an independent investigation body and criminal charges went both ways--against police who lie about their conduct and citizens who make false complaints," Moss added.
The law requires that police departments give "specific notice regarding the complaint and the possibility of criminal prosecution if it's false," according to the Statehouse's bill summary. The summary leaves out the term "knowingly," giving rise to the potential that citizens will be prosecuted for providing reports that are considered merely "false" by a police agency or police-friendly prosecutor.
The bill "require[s] the complainant to read and sign a notice that is in the following form and is in boldface type." It reads in part: "It is against the law to knowingly make a complaint against a peace officer alleging that the officer engaged in misconduct, if you know that the allegation is false. If you make a complaint against a peace officer in violation of this prohibition you can be prosecuted for a misdemeanor of the first degree."
Witnesses must also sign the form and are subject to criminal prosecution as well.
04/5/2002
There's a retired U.S. Army brigadier general seeking a new assignment in Columbus. Samuel L. Kindred of Westerville confirmed to Columbus Alive on Monday, April 2, that he is a candidate to replace Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith.
Kindred calls the late General John Sanford--the superintendent credited with turning around the Seattle Public School system--"a mentor and good friend."
"I saw what he did in Seattle prior to his untimely demise. I believe I could bring many of the same qualities to the Columbus Public School district. The schools need good leadership, and good managers, if all kids are to achieve success," Kindred said.
Prior to retiring from the Army in July 1998, General Kindred was vice president of staffing, in charge of recruiting in 16 western states where he managed $85 million advertising and $100 million operating budgets. He points out that he also supervised recruiting in central Ohio for three years. As a result of recruiting young people into the Army, he insists "all kids can learn."
"What they need is individual attention, a structured program and to know what is expected of them," Kindred explained. "It's really about setting standards, and the kids will rise to them."
When asked to outline his philosophy of education, Kindred said he believes there's been perhaps an undue emphasis on proficiency testing. Although he's not opposed to testing, he said the question remains, "What are we testing for?" He also said when parents complain about their children doing too much homework, educators have an obligation to ask, "What purpose do the homework assignments serve?"
"Often educators can't answer these questions and tend to avoid them. What Columbus needs is someone to bring the community and factions together. I believe with my leadership skills I can accomplish this," he added.
Kindred said he's been spending time reading the last four years of press coverage surrounding Columbus Public Schools' controversies. His conclusion: "Very little positive press attention was focused on the kids' accomplishments. No matter what the disputes and distractions are within the district, the adults owe it to themselves to focus on the kids, their accomplishments, and that they're doing great things."
Kindred has a master's degree in management and supervision from Central Michigan University and a bachelor's degree in business management from Hampton University as well as advanced management training from Stanford University. After retiring from the Army, Kindred spent two years as vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer at Washington State University.
The name of Columbus Public Schools' deputy superintendent, Jean Harris, has also emerged as a candidate for the superintendent position.
Perhaps Kindred's biggest plus is not spelled out on his impressive resume: The brigadier general will probably never ask Columbus taxpayers to pay for bodyguards.
04/05/2001
As expected, Nationwide LLC--the partnership between Nationwide Realty Investors and the Dispatch Printing Company--is disputing the valuation of Nationwide Arena.
Also as expected, the Columbus Dispatch has not yet reported on the tax debate surrounding its corporate cousin.
Columbus Alive reported on March 8 that Nationwide was expected to request a $30 million valuation on an arena that cost more than $150 million to build. Just before the March 31 deadline, Nationwide did in fact notify Franklin County Auditor Joe Testa that it was contesting his $65 million partial valuation. The challenge Nationwide filed stated that they'd be asking for at least a $50,000 reduction in the auditor's final assessment--maybe more. Now it's up to the school district to contest Nationwide's contesting.
It's a tough call for the Dispatch. If Nationwide Arena receives a low valuation, the struggling Columbus Public Schools could lose as much as $1.5 million a year in revenue. If the arena receives a high valuation, it would mean a big fat tax bill for Nationwide Realty and John F. Wolfe's Dispatch Printing. So maybe it's better if the Dispatch continues to ignore the issue altogether.
Students take on David Horowitz
Columbus Alive columnist Carl Upchurch argued virtually the same thing in a January 18 column and nobody accused him of being racist. But when conservative white columnist David Horowitz placed a paid advertisement in college newspapers asserting that reparations shouldn't be paid to African-Americans for slavery, liberal groups on campuses nationwide wanted to have his head.
Granted, Upchurch questioned the criteria for which reparations would be paid, and Horowitz argued that reparations are by nature oppressive and divisive. But the protests against college newspapers that carried Horowitz's ad give more fodder to conservatives accusing campus lefties of being reactionary.
"Only eight college papers have been able to print it without incident," Horowitz wrote in an April 2 column for Salon. "Six editors who published it have been visited by howling mobs." More than twice as many editors have refused the ad as have agreed to publish it, Horowitz wrote. The actual score at that point was 34-14.
How Ohio State University's Lantern will weigh in on the situation is still up in the air. The paper's publication committee is currently deciding whether it will print the ad.
She's sexy, but not 17
Who's that cute little subversive slipping her way into the April issue of Seventeen magazine? Why it's Jonna Vallance of Columbus Anti-Racist Action!
Donning a sporty fall gas mask, Vallance discusses what it's like to be a teenage activist. She talked at length to a reporter about her involvement in ARA and her thoughts on everything from hate groups like the World Church of the Creator and National Alliance to George W. Bush and the threat he poses to abortion rights.
While she's pleased with the exposure given to her "national anti-racist group in the Midwest that was founded by punk rockers," the magazine did tone down a few of her comments. They didn't touch the abortion issue. The aforementioned hate groups were changed to the "Ku Klux Klan."
But, Vallance herself was guilty of slightly bending the truth. This "16-year-old" is actually 21. No sweat, she still got her message out. "It's Seventeen magazine, but maybe some young girl or boy would open it up and say `Oh cool,'" Vallance told Columbus Alive.
Reporters aren't the enemy!
Who says an alternative newsweekly can't side with the conservatives now and again? Media Watch recently stumbled upon the inaugural issue of "Working With The Media," an advice sheet provided by the Ohio House Republican Caucus communications department to its Statehouse employees.
Kudos to Director of Communications Jennifer Detwiler for putting such a manual together. While we admit we were skeptical at first, it turns out that Detwiler hit the nail right on the head: The newsletter is full of great advice. We were so delighted we were half-tempted to fax a copy to the Dems.
The newsletter opens with an intro about differences in editorial duties (reporters don't write headlines--a fact that pissed-off sources often overlook), then goes into savvy and honest "rules to live by."
* Never lie
* Reporters aren't the enemy
* When you don't know, say so
* When you can't talk, say so
* Avoid speculative conversation
* Remember the "front page" test (don't say anything you wouldn't mind seeing on the front page of the next day's newspaper)
* Understand the job of a reporter
* A thick skin and sense of humor will protect you
By the way, we think the same rules should apply to journalists.
04/12/2001
Nazis in Newark
A particularly vicious strain of white supremacists plans to “begin guerrilla operations”
by Bob Fitrakis
The day after Adolf Hitler’s birthday, April 21, the November 9th Society plans to march through Newark and hold a 3 p.m. rally at Everett Park. The organization draws its name from Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” when Hitler’s Nazi thugs attacked Jewish-owned businesses throughout Germany, breaking windows and terrorizing Jewish families.
These neo-Nazi stormtroopers are on an organizing and recruiting campaign with a clear agenda—to target and attack blacks, Jews and anyone to the left of Mussolini. Their slogan is simple: “Taking National Socialism into the 21st Century.” Their elaborate website goes into great detail on how to “organize a resistance movement,” and the society’s ties to Hitler are clear: “Like the heroes and heroines of the Third Reich, you may choose to answer the call to idealism and sacrifice.”
Here’s their advice for getting involved: “If you love your country but fear your government, becoming an underground activist may give you the mechanism you need to start making a difference.”
“Freedom is sustained by three boxes—the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box. Unfortunately, more and more concerned citizens are becoming increasingly alarmed by what they see as the dangerously weakened condition of the ballot box and the jury box,” the November 9th Society argues.
The organization offers “information” from “official counter-insurgency training manuals” in order to bring about the Fourth Reich in the United States. The neo-Nazi society’s website includes step-by-step instructions for creating a terrorist underground organization. Of course they run a disclaimer, after providing the information, noting that the “November 9th Society does not endorse, condone, or encourage any illegal act,” and the how-to manuals for fostering race war in the United States are “presented for information, research, entertainment and educational purposes only.”
The November 9th Society is part of a growing, global neo-Nazi network and boasts ties with British, German, Irish, Scottish and Romanian counterparts that are organizing terrorism in hopes of ushering in a Fourth Reich and a Third World War. I’m not kidding. Take a look at their own words: “Only Adolf Hitler and his devoted legions stood against the whole world in order to destroy the culture-destroying Marxist communism, and brought about a cultural renaissance the likes that have never been seen before nor since.”
Despite their bad grammar, their message can’t be mistaken: “He [Hitler] may have lost the war, but the battle has just begun, and any straight-minded white person can just look around and see that he was right.”
“His [Hitler’s] book Mein Kampf has only been outsold by the Holy Bible and is a political testament and partial autobiography. It has been described as a ‘beacon of light in a stormy sea of doubt,’” the society’s website offers.
As I’ve written in the past, it’s my belief that white supremacists and neo-Nazis are targeting the state of Ohio with the goal of fostering a race war. They’re here to recruit members and form separatist armed compounds leading directly to guerrilla warfare.
But you needn’t trust my opinions, since the November 9th Society spells out “Step 3” on its website as: “BEGIN GUERRILLA OPERATIONS.”
“A resistance movement will often need to use counterterror to intimidate traitors, collaborators, and informers,” the society claims. As a known race traitor—that is, somebody who believes in universal human rights for all people—I plan to cover the rally and report on these terrorists. The best way to deal with Nazi terrorists is to confront them directly and not wait for their numbers to grow.
Their agenda is defined in their own words. They are urging their membership to move from “passive resistance, [to] active resistance, [to] guerrilla warfare, [to] open insurrection, and civil war.”
For right-wing fans of school vouchers and government support for faith-based schools, the neo-Nazis boast that they’ve already got in place “a heritage-based school curriculum for ages preschool up to grade seven, which promotes European culture and values, as well as teaching the history of our great [Aryan] people.” Perhaps our best hope is that whoever is writing for the website also serves as a teacher, since we’ll be able to identify November 9th Society members by their inability to speak or write standard English.
Anti-Racist Action activists say they’re organizing a counter-demonstration for the Newark rally, but point out that many of their members will be in Quebec City between April 18-22 demonstrating against the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting. One local ARA member who investigated the November 9th Society says they’re a particularly repugnant and vicious strain of neo-Nazi, linked to the Outlaw Hammerskins, who in turn worship The Order, the most violent neo-Nazi organization in U.S. history.
Whether or not they take hold in Ohio may well depend on what happens on April 21 in Newark. In a press release, Newark Police Chief H. Darrel Pennington acknowledged that the November 9th Society has “extended invitations to other [white supremacist] organizations to attend.” A spokesperson for the Newark Police Department says that a call for additional aid has been sent out to other law enforcement agencies.
MEDIA WATCH
04/19/2001
By now most readers are familiar with the misleading banner headlines proclaiming George W. Bush the winner of the popular vote in Florida after a media recount. The Columbus Dispatch dutifully ran the headline above the fold on April 4, as did USA Today, a partner with the Miami Herald in the recount effort.
The oft-cited and incredibly propagandistic Herald story also appeared on April 4. In order to manufacture a victory for Bush, the paper had to first subtract Gore’s known previous gains in four counties—Palm Beach, Broward, Volusia and Miami-Dade. After the election, but before the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling, some of the uncounted votes had been tabulated in those four counties, adding hundreds of votes to Gore. Then the Florida Supreme Court ruled that all of the state’s uncounted votes must be counted. The blatant political intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court ended the Florida recount.
The Herald/USA Today spin is that if all the votes in the state had been counted under the Florida Supreme Court ruling, Bush would have still won. But all of those hundreds of documented but uncertified Gore votes in the four counties were thrown out of the newspapers’ investigation, based on the Herald/USA Today’s assumption that they couldn’t be included.
One day after the Orwellian headlines roared across America, the Miami Herald, with little fanfare, published a story saying that Gore would have won under a “clear intent of the voters” standard. How did the paper come to the opposite conclusion? Duh. They counted the uncounted votes, or “undervote,” in all 67 counties. Hence, the little-referenced second-day story had Gore picking up an additional 1,475 votes in Palm Beach County and 1,081 more in Broward County.
As the ConsortiumNews.com investigative website points out: “Wednesday’s misleading ‘Bush won’ story—pushed by the Herald and its recount partner USA Today—was widely embraced by the national press corps and applauded by Bush partisans in the White House. The new Herald story, entitled ‘Recounts could have given Gore the edge,’ received only a fraction of the national attention.”
In a related bizarre twist, the New York Times reported that hundreds of uncounted ballots in Florida disappeared before the newspapers could count them. “In Orange County, for example, officials reported in November that they had found 966 ballots with no discernable vote for President,” the Times noted on April 5. When the newspapers went back to discern the vote, 327 uncounted ballots were missing.
With even less fanfare, the third story in the Herald series found “a net gain of at least 210 votes for Gore in Orange and St. Lucia County where optical scanners were used.”
In the aftermath of last week’s Cincinnati riots, it’s interesting that the Herald/USA Today investigation found that in majority African-American precincts, where the vote went more than 90 percent for Gore, 8.9 percent of votes were uncounted, compared to 2.4 percent uncounted votes in majority white precincts.
The structure and conclusion of the Herald/USA Today investigative series strongly suggests that they came to the conclusion that it was best for the country to believe that “Bush wins,” even if it’s supported only by the strangest hypothetical assumptions. By not counting the Gore votes in the four counties and then dribbling out information about the additional Gore votes, the papers effectively created a stampede that the national mainstream press willingly followed. Thus, a misleading interpretation has now become conventional wisdom, which will be routinely repeated by pompous journalists and right-wing talk show hosts. Big Brother would be proud.
Top 10 censored stories
Do you remember reading about corporate efforts to privatize the world water supply last year? Did you see the TV story about low wages paid to immigrant engineers in Silicon Valley? Or hear the radio report about the America’s failure to prevent genocide in Africa?
Yeah, we didn’t either.
Last week, the media watchdog group Project Censored released its annual report of the most important news stories not covered by the country’s corporate media. How corporate? Take, for instance, NBC and its myriad web and cable siblings, which are owned by General Electric, which benefited from taxpayer-funded efforts to export nuclear power plants. We could go on, but we don’t want to depress you.
Project Censored is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and has released a companion book including all of the top-10 censored stories since 1976. Students and staff at Sonoma State University screen thousands of stories each year—which come from alternative weeklies, monthlies, journals and other independent watchdogs—selecting about 700 to pass on to faculty and community evaluators, who are experts in various fields. The stories are rated for credibility and national importance, accuracy is checked in relation to other news articles on the same stories, and the students examine the corporate media’s coverage of the stories. After the field is narrowed to 60, the Project Censored community and faculty evaluators, students, staff and national judges vote on the year’s top censored stories.
So, according to Project Censored, here are the top-10 headlines you probably didn’t see in your daily paper or on TV in 2000:
World Bank and multinational corporations seek to privatize water: Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years and multinational corporations are trying to monopolize water supplies around the world (This, In These Times, Canadian Dimension, San Francisco Bay Guardian).
OSHA Fails to protect U.S. workers: Each year, about 6,000 workers die on the job from accidents and another 50,000 to 70,000 workers die annually from “occupationally acquired” diseases, and OSHA is not capable of effectively overseeing U.S. workplaces (The Progressive).
U.S. Army’s psychological operations personnel worked at CNN: From June 1999 to March 2000, military specialists in “psychological operations” worked in CNN’s Southeast TV bureau and radio division (Counterpunch).
Did the U.S. deliberately bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade?: Elements within the CIA may have deliberately targeted the embassy, without NATO approval (In These Times, Pacific News, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).
U.S. taxpayers underwrite global nuclear power plant sales: The U.S. tax-supported Export-Import Bank is backing the overseas activities of U.S. nuclear contractors such as Westinghouse, Bechtel and General Electric (The Progressive).
International report blames U.S. and others for genocide in Rwanda: A report released by a panel affiliated with the Organization for African Unity charged that Bill Clinton and his administration allowed the genocide of 500,000 to 800,000 people in Rwanda in 1994 (Alternet, Covert Action Quarterly).
Independent study points to dangers of genetically altered foods: The actual process of genetic alteration itself may cause damage to mammalian digestive and immune systems (In These Times, Extra!, Multinational Monitor).
Drug companies influence doctors and health organizations to push meds: Pharmaceutical companies are reaping big profits by promoting forced drug use through programs at the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (Washington Monthly, Mojo Wire, Dendron, Networker).
EPA plans to disburse toxic/radioactive wastes: The Environmental Protection Agency plans to pump toxic wastewater into Denver’s sewer system (The Progressive).
Silicon Valley uses immigrant engineers to keep salaries low: High-skilled immigrant workers are being exploited by Silicon Valley employers (Labor Notes, Washington Free Press).
Click to projectcensored.org for more.
04/26/2001
Judicious procedures
Death Row’s Jay D. Scott and other inmates report on the treatment of Ohio's mentally ill prisoners
by Bob Fitrakis
Executing people pays off politically. State Treasurer Joe Deters knows this. He’s parlayed his “kill at any cost” rent-a-snitch approach in Hamilton County into a recent announcement that he wants to replace the legendary Bloody Mama herself, current Attorney General Betty Montgomery.
Governor Bob Taft, meanwhile, is too busy conjuring up the spirit of Richard Nixon—invoking “executive privilege” to prevent scrutiny of secret backroom meetings concerning the state’s budget—to be bothered with life-or-death questions about justice.
This leaves, perhaps, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer as the lone voice of sanity suggesting, despite campaign plans by his Republican cohorts, that we should proceed judiciously when it comes to state-sanctioned murder.
Before the state kills Jay D. Scott, we ought to consider that information about his well-documented mental illness was withheld from the jury that condemned him to death. But it wasn’t withheld from the prison guards who routinely brutalize him, as they do other mentally ill inmates in Ohio’s prison system, according to a 13-year-old report from six Ohio inmates.
In perusing my Scott file, after he was within an hour of being killed last Tuesday, I came across a complaint filed by Scott and five other Lucasville inmates dated June 17, 1988. The complaint is titled “Regarding human rights violations at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility” and it’s addressed to Amnesty International. The document is a savage indictment of the Ohio prison system—not that any statewide politicians would care.
Scott and others—and I believe they are far closer to the truth than the Ma Montgomery Gang running the state—complained that they were “being systematically victimized by some of the most barbaric and inhumane methods ever devised by man.” The inmates wrote, “Men are being literally tortured by Ohio prison officials.” But isn’t that what prisons are for in the post-Reagan Reich? The inmates’ long list of abuse allegations are captured in 31 pages of fascinating reading.
As part of the rehabilitation process, “Prisoners in J1 Super Max are subjected to routine ‘strip searches’ before leaving their cell for any reason and before being put back in the cell. A ‘strip search’ consists of forcing the prisoner to get naked, open his mouth and pull his lips down, run his fingers through his hair, lift his arms, raise his penis and testicles and skin his penis back, then turn around and show the bottom of his feet one at a time, and then bend over and spread the cheeks of his buttocks. This practice is often accompanied by sexual comments from guards and is degrading and humiliating,” the inmates wrote. This no doubt improved the mental health of Scott, who was first incarcerated at age nine and had spent nearly a decade in adult prison prior to killing Vinney Prince in 1983.
The inmates’ report documents in detail the standard practices at Lucasville: the chainings, the use of “high pressure fire hoses,” the rampant and capricious use of “chemical mace and tear gas,” the sleeping on concrete floors, and brutal beatings by “sadistic guards.” All of this should be old news to those who have studied the Ohio prison system and are familiar with the Lucasville riots.
A section of the complaint that caught my attention is called “Prisoners who are mentally ill are placed in J1 because of their mental illness.” It begins: “Ohio prison officials frequently place prisoners who are mentally ill [and] under psychiatric care or who have long histories of mental problems in J1 Super Max for behavior which is a product of the mental illness.” Scott, for example, with his long history of abuse and schizophrenia, could be better tortured prior to his politically celebrated murder.
The prisoners documented how Cornellius Pernel, confined to a Mississippi State Psychiatric Hospital when he was 10 years old, was beaten by Lucasville guards in 1987. After the beating, the guards had him transferred to the J1 Super Max where, despite ingesting “powerful psychotropic drugs four times each day,” he managed to cut his wrists and rant and rave endlessly while throwing feces and urine at the guards “for no reason.”
The complaint documents the case of Alonzo Taylor, who was confined in various mental institutions between the ages of nine and 20 as a result of being forced to perform oral sex on his father. As part of his therapy at Lucasville, the complaint alleged, the guards placed a “restraining belt around his wrists and pulled him backwards to the first flight of stairs where he fell down.” The guards then provided incentive for Taylor to walk back up by beating and kicking him.
Hank Rimmers received similar treatment as a mentally ill inmate when “a guard broke his wrist and arm with a billy club.” The inmates in their complaint likened Lucasville to the Nazi camps “Treblinka and Dachau.”
Another part of the complaint well worth reading involves mentally ill patients in two other sections of the prison who were allegedly abused by guards. The case of James Richards is illustrative. He was found dead in his cell on November 4, 1987. Richards, a manic-depressive with suicidal tendencies, never received the treatment required to keep him sane and with little supervision “ingested a fatal dose of his own, and others,’ medication.”
I’ve been working on a song with my friend Ed, called The Bob Taft Death House Blues, in honor of a skilled politician who managed to pop out of the right womb with the right name. I need the readers’ help to complete it. So far I’ve just got a few lines:
His granddaddy was fat
His morals are thin
If you’re on Death Row
He’ll do you in.
If you’re retarded
He’s real cold-hearted
Mentally ill?
He’s still got to kill.
If you’re a juvenile
He’s in denial.
Like Bonnie and Clyde
He’s got a Bloody Mama
Right by his side.
Betty’s her name
Murder’s her fame.
And they won’t stop killin’
Unless the voters make them lose—
We’ve got the Bob Taft death house blues…
5/3/2001
Did we tell you he sent 22 killers to death row?
We don’t know if it was intentional or not, but Joe Deters’ editorial-writing spree on the eve of Jay D. Scott’s Death Row execution couldn’t have come at a better time politically for the Ohio State Treasurer. In the week leading up to Scott’s death, Deters wrote opinion columns in both the Akron Beacon Journal and the Columbus Dispatch calling for Scott’s execution and chastising defense lawyers and death penalty opponents.
“People who oppose the death penalty point the finger of blame everywhere except where it belongs,” he wrote in the April 16 Dispatch, just a day before Scott’s scheduled execution. Four days later, Deters fired off a letter to Ohio Republican Party Chair Robert Bennett announcing his intent to run for Attorney General.
Being soft on crime—and particularly on capital punishment—never put a prosecutor in office. So as Deters gears up for what’s promises to be a cutthroat Republican primary battle with state Auditor Jim Petro, voters will be sure to hear about the former Hamilton County Prosecutor’s death penalty record.
In case you missed the Dispatch column, Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Weaver echoed the message again in an April 27 article by Joe Hallett: “Joe Deters is the only candidate who has been a career prosecutor and sent 22 killers to Death Row.”
Ohio’s 21st century city: Akron?
Somewhere between the cow pastures, a technological metropolis booms in the state of Ohio. Soaring venture capital, 30,000 tech jobs, 400 high-tech firms—the numbers paint a grandiose picture.
But sorry Mayor Coleman, once again Columbus gets snubbed.
Apparently the former rubber capital of the world is chartering geekier territory these days. Newsweek named Akron one of 10 “Tech Cities” for the next frontier in business and technology, the only Buckeye State settlement to get the nod.
But what about Columbus? For months the Chamber of Commerce, OSU President Brit Kirwan and members of Michael Coleman’s administration have gone to great lengths to promote their plans for tech development locally. Why no love from the national press?
In the case of Columbus, it’s not that the city’s not on the right track, it just needs to do a better job promoting ourselves, said Greater Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce Economic Analysis Manager Bill LaFayette. “They’re very, very subjective,” LaFayette said of reports like Newsweek’s. “Certainly there’s as much to simply letting those editors and people like that know that you exist. Believe it or not, we’re working on projects like that.”
Newsweek reported a jump in Akron’s venture capital investment from $17 million in 1999 to $215 million in 2000 for the 217,000-population city. Columbus, with a population of 700,000, went from $108.4 million in venture capital to $464 million over the same period of time. While selection criteria might be slightly different, Lafayette reports 737 information technology companies working in the city.
Mike Brown, spokesperson for Coleman, said Columbus is doing fine on the tech end. “Did Newsweek go to Akron or Columbus?” he asked. “I invite them to come down and check out Columbus.”
Free speech crackdown in Seattle
The latest world trade summit brought more protests from those concerned with unchecked (and undemocratic) globalization. But coverage of the mêlée hardly went beyond shrill headlines in the mainstream press. The best coverage of the protests at last week’s Free Trade Areas of the Americas meeting in Quebec City came from the worldwide Independent Media Centers.
This loose network of independent journalists and activists posted breaking news, photos, audio and video that gave a grassroots view of the demonstrators and their motivation. With at least a dozen of its 60 affiliates participating, the centers documented well their analysis that, “As anti-globalization protests continue to grow around the world, the use of police-state enforcement tactics has also stepped up, increasingly denying the basic democratic rights of those who speak out.”
Indy Media reporters recorded the hundreds of injuries, many serious, as a result of police and military use of tear gas, fire hoses and batons. The corporate press did not report on the injuries to a seven-month-old baby who suffered tear gas exposure and a demonstrator in serious condition from a rubber bullet shot to the neck. (The April-June issue of Covert Action Quarterly includes a definitive list of the increasingly high-tech non-lethal weapons being used against civilian demonstrators in an article titled “Taxonomy of Terror: What they’ll be firing this season.”)
While the mainstream media focused on the 2000 or so “black bloc” protesters trying to tear down the fence that quarantined Quebec City, they did little to explain why protestors wanted to unlock the secrecy beyond the fence. The fence served to protect the trade ministers of 34 Western Hemisphere countries who were meeting with 500 multi-national corporate honchos, and to keep out the representatives of non-governmental faith-based organizations, unions, environmental groups, human rights organizations and consumer advocates, who were all excluded from the talks.
Lori Wallach of Public Citizen said the agenda of the Summit of the Americas was “trade uber alles.” The Independent Media Centers, by reporting live from the streets, were able to capture the democratic nature of the anti-corporate globalization coalition, as opposed to the violent 30-second images framed on corporate TV.
International media conglomerates routinely ignored three key points stressed by the Indy Media crowd. First, that the Free Trade Areas of the Americas agreement will likely establish judicial legislative powers for the Hemispheric Free Trade Zone which will override local, state and national sovereignty. Both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization already have such powers and utilize un-elected so-called “tribunals” to overrule national environmental, safety and health laws and regulations.
William Greider, one of the foremost authorities on globalization, wrote in the April 30 Nation, “Chapter 11 in the trade and investment agreement…established a new system of private arbitration for foreign investors to bring injury claims against governments… NAFTA has enabled multinational corporations to usurp the sovereign powers of government, not to mention the rights of citizens and communities.”
Second, the agenda of the trade summit was designed and driven by the largest business and financial interests in the Western Hemisphere. Despite the mainstream media’s lack of coverage, their goals were clear: to privatize as many government services as possible, to deregulate business and to pretend that “free trade” is equivalent to democracy.
Third, the corporate media obscured the undemocratic nature of allowing 500-plus corporate representatives full access to the negotiations while excluding every other interest from having any input. Seattle’s Independent Media Center portrayed this in the lead to its story “Breaking the Barricades.”
“While the heads of state met with their corporate allies to move toward implementation of the FTAA by 2005, activists outside this 400-year-old walled city staged militant protests condemning the secrecy of the negotiations and the erosion of democracy they claim is the result of surrendering governmental power to transnational corporations.”
Soon after that report, Seattle’s IMC was served a sealed court order by two FBI agents and an agent of the U.S. Secret Service and was gagged from reporting on documents that it had published on its website. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that on Saturday, April 21, “FBI agents raided the offices of the Independent Media Center in downtown Seattle and the Center’s staff was told not to discuss the incident ‘under threat of being held in contempt of court.’” The Seattle IMC reportedly had posted security documents regarding Quebec City. Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the FBI-Secret Service raid “a threat to free speech, free association and privacy.”
The excessive police repression resulted in widespread defiance by demonstrators. Buffalo’s IMC captured the grim reality of posted snipers facing off against unarmed students peacefully demonstrating. Most media stories ignored a series of border clashes between anti-FTAA activists and joint U.S.-Canadian police and military units.
By focusing on the reputed and exaggerated acts of violence by a small minority of the demonstrators, mainstream news coverage missed the more obvious story—the systematic thwarting of grassroots movements opposed to top-down corporate planning for the entire Western Hemisphere. Perhaps it’s to be expected when your bosses are the ones inside schmoozing the trade ministers and cutting backroom deals.
Click to the Independent Media Center at indymedia.org.
5/10/2001
Business as usual?
A new wrinkle in the Columbus Public Schools purchasing scandal
by Bob Fitrakis
Word is leaking out that certain members of the Columbus School Board are very unhappy with the school district’s treasurer, Jerry Buccilla.
It seems the board was originally told by Buccilla that there was only $60,000 worth of alleged misconduct on the part of former Director of Instructional Technology Sherry Bird Long. Imagine their displeasure when the Columbus Dispatch disclosed the figure in question was more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Bird Long allegedly improperly steered work to her husband’s firm, E-Z Enterprises, and expedited payments to the family business. She resigned on April 25, while a state auditor’s investigation is ongoing.
On May 2, Columbus School Board member Bill Moss sent a memo to Buccilla regarding “Rumors about the Treasurer.” The memo begins, “Mr. Buccilla, rumors are afloat that Sherry Bird Long is/was an agent/downline in your and/or your wife’s health supplement business. It is rumored that other CPS employees are sales agents or downlines in your family’s health products business.”
Buccilla wrote back to Moss the next day, disclosing that “There are four individuals who, after being introduced to the Starlight supplements, requested information on becoming an independent distributor for the company. My wife and I assisted them with their distributorships. As a result of their independent distributorships, we have received commissions on their product purchases totaling approximately $200. This is an approximate cumulative total of commissions for all four distributorships from January 1999 to present.”
Besides Bird Long, Buccilla listed three other current or former Columbus Public Schools employees who distributed the health supplements, including an account clerk in the Treasurer’s Department.
Buccilla defended the practice in his response to Moss by pointing out, “The Columbus Board of Education has not adopted a ‘no solicitation’ policy; therefore, many employees who are distributors of Amway, Avon, Herbalife, Longaberger, Mary Kay, Starlight, Tupperware and other products may offer these items to fellow employees. Should the Board of Education wish to implement a no solicitation policy, or direct me to develop regulations for solicitation in the workplace, I would be happy to provide information to the Policy Committee at an upcoming meeting.”
Bird Long’s involvement with Buccilla’s Starlight distributorship began when she saw the treasurer using wellness supplements at a meeting, Buccilla explained to Columbus Alive. “She was already using [the supplements] and getting them from a distributor in Virginia, so I put her in touch with my wife so [Bird Long] could become an independent distributor,” he said.
Still, Moss wonders whether Buccilla in some way compromised the treasurer’s office when he allowed Bird Long to sell products for his family business.
“Not at all,” Buccilla countered. “I was not aware” of Bird Long’s alleged improprieties, the treasurer told Alive. “I would have had to have been aware in order to be compromised. When I was aware, I acted promptly.” Buccilla stressed that it was he who referred the Bird Long matter to the Ohio State Auditor and the Ohio Ethics Commission, though Moss says the referral came only after Moss brought the allegations to the district’s attention.
Also of concern to Moss is the fact that at least some of the checks that were paid to Bird Long’s husband’s business were manually written. This was one of the practices that State Auditor James Petro cited as a defective practice when he audited the district during the tenure of the previous treasurer.
Buccilla was hired with the clear understanding that he would fix such obvious and dubious problems. So, for this practice to come from somebody doing business with him raises a whole spectrum of questions, going to the core of safeguards in the treasurer’s office.
“I still want to know, and so do the people in the Columbus School District, just how Ms. Bird Long’s activities went undetected and how was she able to get away with a practice that Mr. Buccilla had promised to stop,” Moss stated.
Buccilla indicated that there needs to be additional controls and safeguards in the district’s purchasing policies, but, he said, there will always be a chance that somebody will abuse the system. “She [Bird Long] followed the rules under the current system. It was her place and level of trust within the system which allowed her to do what she did,” Buccilla told Columbus Alive.
Buccilla specifically denied a rumor that his family and the family of Sherry Bird Long were scheduled to go on a cruise together before the allegations against Bird Long were made public. “The cruise rumor is false,” Buccilla wrote to Moss.
“In the meanwhile, if you need further explanation, please contact me,” Buccilla concluded.
I’m sure, along with the state auditor’s office and the ethics commission, the Alive and many other newspapers will want to know about business as usual and unusual in the Columbus Public Schools treasurer’s office.
05/17/2001
Death vs. life (sentence)
Five jurors say they didn’t understand the law when they sent Jay D. Scott to Death Row
by Bob Fitrakis
Jay D. Scott might not have been sent to Death Row had his jury been properly informed of the law, according to statements obtained by Scott’s attorneys. A fifth juror who sentenced Scott to death is now questioning the fairness of that verdict, and he claims that Scott may have received life in prison had the jury been aware of that option.
“I wish we could go back in time and be informed of what we needed to know at Mr. Scott’s sentencing. We would have come up with a different result—I’m sure of it,” said juror John Patten in a statement released by Scott’s attorney, John Pyle, on Friday, May 11, four days before Scott’s scheduled execution.
Scott was convicted of the 1983 murder of 74-year-old Cleveland delicatessen owner Vinney Prince. Scott was to be executed on May 15—his third scheduled date with death—despite protestations from his attorney that, as a diagnosed schizophrenic, Scott was unfit to understand the punishment. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped Tuesday’s execution three minutes before Scott was to be killed so the court can review the case.
Pyle charges that Scott “grew up in a nightmare that his jurors never learned about at trial.” He cites Scott’s “horrific childhood and the unimaginable suffering he experienced at the hands of abusive, alcoholic and drug dependent parents.”
While there’s little doubt that Scott is afflicted with serious mental illness, Pyle raises the question of whether or not Scott “may also have been suffering from some degree of mental illness at the time of trial.” Under Ohio law, Scott’s present mental illness is not a factor in his execution as long as he’s aware that he’s being killed for a crime he committed.
“As it was, we [the jury] were not aware of what we needed to know to make a good decision,” Patten said. “Mr. Scott was represented by appointed attorneys who were not well prepared. The picture we were left with was that Jay D. Scott was as bad a person as you could find.”
Patten claims, “All of us [jurors] were called into the trial judge’s chambers right after it was all over and told that Jay D. Scott was a career criminal. We were also told about his being guilty of another murder that had occurred around the same time as the one in our case. So any juror who recently signed a declaration was aware of this.”
In his April 10 statement denying clemency for Scott, Ohio Governor Bob Taft concluded, “There is no indication that the jurors, from whom Scott’s attorneys obtained statements, were told about Mr. Scott’s prior violent criminal behavior or asked how such information may have impacted their decision.”
Five Scott jurors have signed a sworn declaration saying that they have “grave doubts” about executing Scott.
On March 31, juror Verlene S. Estremera stated: “I find it troubling that the defense attorneys failed to represent any mitigating or extenuating circumstances regarding Mr. Scott and his life and background. I now understand that there was information about Mr. Scott’s upbringing that was not presented to us that would have been useful to know; it would have been useful as a juror to know, for example, that Mr. Scott grew up in circumstances of neglect, abuse, and severe poverty, and that he was exposed to extreme violence as a child; it would have been very useful to know that he suffered from a history of mental illness as serious as schizophrenia.”
Estremera said that she couldn’t speak for the other jurors, but “had I known this information it would have made a difference with respect to Mr. Scott’s sentence.”
Patten also claims that he seriously misunderstood Ohio law, as did the rest of the jury, which would allow one juror to veto the death sentence and move on to consider life in prison as an alternative.
Patten alleged that there was a “holdout juror in Scott’s case during the sentencing.”
“It was clear that this juror did not want to vote for a death sentence. She felt a lot of pressure to change her vote, and probably ultimately gave in only because she thought that if she couldn’t convince anyone else to change their vote, that she had to change hers. Had we known that under the law her holding out did not mean we would be a hung jury, but instead meant we were then to consider the alternative life sentences before us, we would have ended up with a life sentence for Mr. Scott. I’m sure of it,” Patten said.
Juror Bernice Williams also alleges that the jurors did not adequately understand the law at the time of Scott’s sentencing. In a March 27 statement, she asserted, “I find it troubling to be informed that the law in Ohio is such that in a death penalty case the vote of a single juror is sufficient to prevent a death sentence; we were not instructed of this and I did not understand this.”
Scott’s attorneys’ appeals claimed that their client’s execution would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment,” and that the “evolving standards” of justice in the U.S. bar the execution of the mentally ill. If Scott is executed, despite jurors’ admissions that they did not understand the law when they sentenced him to death, it will prove just how fickle those standards are.
05/17/2001
MEDIA WATCH
Indicting Cincinnati coverage
The riots in Cincinnati resulted in headlines all over the country—indeed, all over the world. Just the kind of publicity Ohio needs, right? Unfortunately, coverage of the indictment of the police officer who, in part, sparked the imbroglio left a little to be desired closer to home.
Let’s look at the Columbus Dispatch’s reporting last week on the misdemeanor indictments against white Cincinnati police officer Stephen Roach, who fatally shot Timothy Thomas, an unarmed black man. On May 7, Roach was indicted for negligent homicide and obstructing official business.
The next day, the Dispatch’s page-one, above-the-fold headline screamed, “Cincinnati Officer Indicted.”
The Independent of London ran the more accurate: “Cincinnati policeman faces minor charge over killing.”
The Guardian of London ran: “Policeman escapes race murder charge.” Negligent homicide is not murder.
The Dispatch headline seems designed to send a placating message to the citizens of Columbus, particularly the black community, that somehow justice had been done.
The graphics accompanying the Dispatch story pointed out that Thomas was wanted on 14 warrants. This editorial decision gives the impression that Thomas was a bad kid, perhaps worthy of his fate.
Readers are far more likely to quickly grasp the headlines and the graphics then they are to make their way down to the 12th paragraph, where the writer, Rita Price, correctly pointed out that “Roach pursued Thomas and used deadly force over a series of 14 traffic warrants.”
In the seventh paragraph of its story, the Independent noted, “Mr. Thomas was shot after fleeing officers who were trying to arrest him on 14 outstanding warrants—all of which were for relatively minor charges.”
In the Dispatch article, we learn that “the 19-year-old [Thomas] was killed one month ago yesterday after he ran from Roach down a dark, litter-strewn alley in Over-the-Rhine, an impoverished, mostly black neighborhood north of downtown.”
Perhaps an explanation of the patterns of tax abatements and capital investment and disinvestments in different areas of downtown Cincinnati would have been in order. Who’s responsible for the conditions in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood? The scary black kids who lurk in the alleys of the deepest, darkest inner-city, or the white politicians who spent tens of millions of dollars subsidizing football and baseball stadiums which are also litter-strewn, and one of the few places likely to hire an impoverished black kid temporarily to pick up trash?
A few days later, the Dispatch ran an AP report under the headline: “Cincinnati Police Officer’s Parents Agonize Over Ordeal.” The lead tells us of the terrible plight of Roach’s parents, who found it “difficult to hear strangers speak poorly of their son.” We also learn that Roach was an honor-roll student and a football player in high school, and in contrast, “Thomas was wanted on 14 pending charges and was fleeing police when Roach fatally shot him in a dark alley in Cincinnati.”
This propagandistic coverage echoes the most vulgar stereotypes of the pre-civil rights movement media descriptions of “dark” town. With a little research, the Dispatch might have been able to find the well-known case of Tennessee v. Garner (1985). The Supreme Court is clear that a police officer can only shoot a fleeing felon if the officer “has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” Being young and black with 14 misdemeanor traffic violations doesn’t meet that standard no matter how much the media slants its coverage.
When will public access TV return to the air?
The standoff between the city of Columbus and former public access television provider Columbus Community Cable Access Inc., better known as Community 21, has come to a peaceful end. The station, which turned down a public access contract offer from the city last month, finally agreed to give the city back $90,000 worth of equipment which was bought and paid for with city money.
For weeks, the station wrangled with City Attorney Janet Jackson’s office, whose “we paid for it” argument seems to have convinced the station to turn over the goods. City officials are allowing Community 21 staffers some time to clean up their former equipment.
In the meantime, members of Columbus City Council have complained about the lack of a public medium for amateur TV producers for the last month; Community 21 has been off the air since turning down the contract offer in April. So City Technology Director Jesse Jones announced at the May 14 council meeting that the city was working on an interim solution—specifically an interim person to collect tapes and make sure they get on the air. Jones hoped to brief council by the end of the week as to who the temporary public access curator would be. Commercial broadcast station Channel 19 is rumored to be among the candidates.
Jones is currently putting together a task force to make recommendations about the future of public access in Columbus.
05/24/2001
Short fuses
Routine fireworks safety legislation has launched explosive new charges in the Statehouse
by Bob Fitrakis
Every year about this time there’s a push to improve Ohio’s fireworks safety laws, lest any local amateurs hurt themselves or others trying to recreate Red, White & Boom in their backyards. There’s also a certain irony, overlooked by these safety efforts, that we celebrate our July Fourth Independence Day with fireworks produced in Communist China.
So it’s not surprising that last week, Ohio House Bill 161, which continues a moratorium on new fireworks licenses, was forwarded to the state Senate.
But with the legislation, there are some explosive allegations flying around the Statehouse concerning the tragic events of July 3, 1996, when the Flying Dragon fireworks store exploded and burned in Scottown, Ohio, leaving nine dead and 11 seriously injured.
Larry Lomaz, who owns Midwest Fireworks Manufacturing Company in Deerfield, Ohio, released court records related to that tragedy. The documents are likely to set off their own political explosion. The court records reveal that Barbara Hess, the State Fire Marshal supervisor “responsible for conducting the normal seasonal fire safety inspection of the Flying Dragon in June 1996,” swore that she was “ordered not to do so.”
Lomaz has long contended that Bruce Zoldan, of Youngstown’s B.J. Alan Co. and owner of the Flying Dragon, is using his political connections to dominate Ohio’s fireworks market. A July 22, 1997, “Confidential” letter from Cincinnati attorney Robert A. Steinberg to William C. Becker of the Ohio State Court of Claims Defense Section noted that “Mrs. Hess revealed that her supervisor, Chief Fire Marshal Billy Phillips, inappropriately ordered her to perform assessments of six prospective fireworks premises for Bruce Zoldan on state time.”
The six assessments, Hess swore, were to help Zoldan obtain new fireworks licenses despite the moratorium, due to loopholes in the law. Hess also said “that Zoldan, in Phillips’ presence, threatened her with physical violence if she discussed this matter. Howard Ellison [Zoldan’s attorney] made a similar threat. Phillips neither objected to nor reported this activity.”
Zoldan’s in-house counsel, Bill Weimer, dismissed Hess’ claim as “old news.”
Zoldan told Columbus Alive the charge is “absolutely untrue.” He asserts that he’s caught up in an old feud between Phillips and Hess. “I’m willing to take a polygraph test at any time if she would do the same,” Zoldan offered.
In 1995, Phillips was cleared after a five-month investigation by Inspector General Richard Ward concerning use of state files, improper processing of fireworks applications and misuse of Ohio State Fair passes. Phillips left the State Fire Marshal’s office soon after and was replaced by Dan Lehman. “Mr. Lehman refused to allow her [Hess] to conduct a seasonal safety inspection of the Flying Dragon in June of 1996,” according to Steinberg’s letter.
In the civil suit that resulted from the Flying Dragon explosion, attorneys for plaintiff John Wallace entered a motion to disqualify the Fire Marshal’s state counsel from representing Hess. They argued, “Plaintiffs believe…that a corrupt relationship between Bruce Zoldan, the Ohio Pyrotechnics Association (a public relations organ Zoldan formed), and Defendant Fire Marshal Division resulted in the Fire Marshal intentionally failing to make its normal seasonal inspection of the Flying Dragon.”
“Additionally unusual events occurred on July 28, 1996. Although the three Fire Marshals present [at the Flying Dragon] had observed a building full of illegal Class B fireworks… they did not follow their normal procedure of seizing the entire inventory of illegal fireworks. Nor did they follow their normal procedure of referring the seller for criminal prosecution. Nor did they make any efforts to shut down the Flying Dragon facility, as Ms. Hess would have done had she conducted an inspection. Instead they left an entire building containing illegal Class B fireworks untouched as well as other illegal fireworks that were inside the store and in nearby trailers,” the plaintiff’s memorandum reads.
Zoldan argues that Lomaz has unclean hands himself. A December 31, 1991, Associated Press story reported that U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin “issued a permanent injunction against Midwest Fireworks Manufacturing Co. Inc. of Deerfield” and “ordered the company to stop distributing fireworks that are banned under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act.”
Lomaz counters that this is just Zoldan, who holds approximately half the state’s fireworks licenses, flexing his muscle through the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Zoldan also told Alive that his dispute with Hess centers around his not giving her son-in-law a fireworks license and facility. Hess’ deposition in the Flying Dragon case asserts that Zoldan and Phillips pressured her to perform unlawful acts and promised her that “if I would do inspections on sites and assist them with their loophole that they would allow my son-in-law who was a bootlegger fireworks person to open a facility…and Billy Phillips knew what was taking place here. And if I discussed this, that I would pay the consequences. They would either break my legs—start breaking my legs…”
Zoldan adamantly denies Hess’ account and claims that he did meet with her and Phillips, but the event was “friendly” from start to finish. Hess’ deposition raises an old charge leveled against imported fireworks from China—that it’s a front for broader criminal activity. “Because the bottom line here is not fireworks. It’s processing of drugs and laundering money,” Hess swore in the court document.
06/07/2001
Full Moon rising
Shrub is continuing to repay the Messiah dubbed “the man with the vision” by Bush Sr.
by Bob Fitrakis
The Reverend Sun Myung Moon continued his lunacy last week with another mass wedding—this time in Midtown Manhattan, where he hitched Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milango to a Korean acupuncturist. But that’s just the sideshow duly reported by the Columbus Dispatch.
The Christian Science Monitor provided a much better look at Moon’s recent public prominence under Bush the Younger’s administration. Last fall, Moon raised his profile by joining with Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam to co-sponsor the Million Family March in Washington. In April, the eightysomething Moon completed a 52-city tour in 52 days dedicated to “strengthening family values in America.” Does the rhetoric sound familiar? The tour drew “backers ranging from a former director of Operation Push to a founding member of the Christian Coalition…[and] as many a 3,000 local ministers, politicians and church members to some venues,” the Monitor reported.
A Moon-sponsored AIDS/HIV school curriculum centered around abstinence has been adopted by a few schools. Perhaps they should adopt a political science curriculum that requires students to read the 1978 Congressional report on “Koreagate,” which linked Moon’s Unification Church to covert operations of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.
Moon, an ardent foe of democracy and pitchman for a worldwide theology, controls both the Washington Times and United Press International, along with dozens of other newspapers and magazines. News reports place Moon’s subsidy to the money-losing Washington Times at $100 million a year. Not too high a price for Ronald Reagan’s “favorite” newspaper and the Bush family’s biggest political promoter.
In 1995, a Moon organization paid former President George Bush and his wife Barbara Bush a large sum of money to speak at Moon-sponsored events. London’s Daily Mail puts the figure at $1 million; Consortiumnews.com puts it between $3 million and $10 million for speeches in Japan, Argentina and the U.S.
Of course, the Bushes and Moons have covert activities in common, with Bush Sr. as former CIA Director and longtime Moon associate Kim Jong Pil working for the South Korean CIA and assisting the Unification Church’s influence-building in both the U.S. and Japan.
Moon’s gospel is that humans are the children of Satan because the serpent seduced Eve in the Garden. The only way people can find their “true lineage with God” is through Moon and his wife—“the true parents.”
The Monitor quotes Moon at a New Hampshire speech: “If a woman deliberately avoids having children, she is a substandard animal.” He has also suggested that American women are descended from a “line of prostitutes.”
Ironically, one of Moon’s key early backers was Ryoichi Sasakawa, a leading figure in Japan’s Yakuza organized crime family, according to the definitive tome Yakuza by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro. Maybe Sasakawa tutored Moon on the prostitution racket, making the self-proclaimed Messiah an expert.
In January 1995, Moon’s Women’s Federation for World Peace, the one that paid Bush Sr. for the speeches, also bailed out Jerry Falwell’s debt-ridden Liberty University. According to IRS documents, the Moon front funneled $3.5 million through an “educational grant” to the Christian Heritage Foundation, which in turn bought up a big chunk of Liberty’s debt.
Critics have long charged that Moon is systematically buying well-known religious, cultural and political figures with his mysterious sources of money. His agenda is not hidden—a worldwide theocracy where he and his wife reign. Moon openly declares, in speeches to his followers, that his goal is “the natural subjugation of the U.S. and its people under theocratic rule.”
Bush Sr. called Moon “the man with the vision.” Through his ubiquitous front groups, with innocuous names like the American Freedom Coalition, the cult leader is using his ties and influence with the new Bush administration for a last-gasp attempt to align the forces of a new American fascism.
From the outset, it was clear that Shrub would continue repaying the support first granted to Bush the Elder. According to the Boston Globe, Moon’s Washington Times won a reserved front-row seat between the prized stations of Reuters and the New York Times in the press room at Bush-Cheney transition headquarters. “The warm reception for the Washington Times… surprised even its staff at the first press briefing at the Bush-Cheney headquarters,” the Globe reported on January 7.
If you’re interested in reading about the Messiah and his actual family values, the memoir of ex-daughter-in-law Nansook Hong, In the Shadow of the Moons, is a good starting point. She portrays the “true family” and their kids as spoiled brats doted on hand and foot by brainwashed American cult members.
Hong writes: “No one knows the pain of a straying husband like True Mother, she [Mrs. Moon] assured me. I was stunned. We had all heard rumors for years about Sun Myung Moon’s affairs and the children he sired out of wedlock, but here was True Mother confirming the truth of these stories.”
“What Father did was in God’s plan,” Hong explained. Apparently it’s also God’s plan for Reverend Moon to own Kahr Arms, which recently acquired Auto-Ordnance Corp, maker of the legendary “Tommy gun.”
After all, Jesus owes Moon a lot. Just ask the reverend. Since, according to Moon’s theology, only married individuals can enter the kingdom of heaven, Moon had to match Jesus up with an “elderly Korean woman” retroactively in order to get Christ in to see God the Father, Hong tells us. Not as hard to get the hook-up with Bush the Father and his Only Befuddled Son.
06/14/2001
Columbus media historians should consult the inside back page of this year’s Community Festival program. A paid advertisement from Mimi Morris, the former editor of the Columbus Guardian, and Michael Weber, the paper’s award-winning investigative reporter, offers new insight on the demise of the alternative newsweekly.
When the Guardian folded four-and-a-half years ago, Alternative Media Inc. (AMI) owned it and two other newsweeklies, including its flagship, the Detroit Metro Times.
In the fall of 1979, Metro Times co-founders Ron Williams and Laura Markham moved to Detroit and wooed the large progressive community there. At the time, Williams was representing In These Times out of Chicago, but quickly saw the potential for funding a progressive alternative in Detroit, one of the nation’s most liberal cities.
Throughout the 1980s, Metro Times, under Williams’ and Markham’s direction, lobbed broadsides at the politics of President Ronald Reagan and the greed of Reaganomics. But the way Williams closed down the Guardian in the 1990s would have made any Reaganite robber baron proud.
In 1996, Weber and Morris, who Williams had originally recruited to move to Columbus from New York City, were reportedly asked to meet Williams at Port Columbus airport, where the reporter and editor were fired to save costs. Williams’ cost saving did not save the paper. Staffers report that they put the Guardian to bed right before the Christmas holidays that year and, without prior notification, Williams had a termination insert added to the finished paper. Thus, the legend of “Chainsaw” Ron Williams was born: alternative socialist hipster in style, just another ruthless CEO in practice.
Williams’ next move was to sell Alternative Media Inc., built with anti-corporate sweat equity and massive left-wing community support in Detroit, to a Scranton, Pennsylvania, media conglomerate for a reported $21 million. Sightings had Williams at both his new London apartment and Virgin Island home, where he was supposedly contemplating his next alternative media contributions.
Perhaps the most shocking line in the Morris-Weber ad reads as follows: “AMI also has long since destroyed the entire archive of [the] Columbus Guardian, leaving almost no trace of the award-winning work produced by the sweat and tears of dozens of devoted staffers over the paper’s four-year life.” Some current Columbus Alive staffers wrote for the Guardian, and the best continuous coverage of the battle waged by Columbus activists to shut down the trash-burning power plant appeared in the paper—coverage that is now, apparently, lost.
The Comfest program ad notes that Morris and Weber received a settlement after suing AMI. They are to be congratulated for their long struggle on behalf of workers’ rights and Media Watch concurs in their opinion that: “The issues raised in this case were important ones: the erosion of civil rights and worker protection laws in the news industry being transformed by the excessive profit demands of ever-larger corporate conglomerates.”
Media treatment of an execution is usually pretty predictable. Tough-on-crime prosecutors breath a sigh of relief, defense attorneys concede humble defeat, while pro- and anti-death penalty advocates give their usual quotes about “closure” or “cruel and unusual punishment,” depending on what side of the fence they sit.
But Media Watch can’t remember ever seeing so much interest in hell—that is, whether or not the mythical conception of divine punishment would be the condemned’s ultimate fate.
Media coverage of the Timothy McVeigh execution seems to indicate Americans didn’t just want the most heinous domestic terrorist of all time to simply die, they wanted to assure themselves he was stoking the flames below. The Washington Post and New York Times both included quotes from people who were sure McVeigh would be confined to hell. In a letter to the Buffalo News, McVeigh stated, “If I am going to hell, I am going to have a lot of company.”
For those who were unsure what McVeigh’s ultimate destination would be, the Columbus Dispatch printed an Associated Press story on Sunday, June 10, that offered a progressive array of viewpoints. Christians, Jews, Muslims and a Hindu all weighed in on whether the Oklahoma City bomber was headed for eternal damnation as he waited for his lethal injection.
Repentance is the key in Christianity and Islam, the AP reported—repent or go to hell. Much the same for Judaism, though its conception of the afterlife is less clear. Hinduism takes a slightly different approach, claiming McVeigh would experience many rebirths before he understood his proper earthly role.
It’s an interesting philosophical debate, if a somewhat strange one for newspapers to sink their teeth into. Imagine the outrage if the Associated Press framed an article around pundits pondering whether abortion doctors were headed for the devil.
Perhaps the AP could have also questioned religious leaders as to whether President George W. Bush—who sent more than 130 convicted killers to Death Row when he was Texas governor—was headed for hell too. Granted, that’s fewer than the 168 innocent victims whose lives were lost in the Oklahoma City tragedy, but God’s the ultimate judge, right?
Follow up stories have been few—no one’s been able to confirm where McVeigh’s soul now rests. It will be interesting to see if the media fascination with divine punishment rests with him.
06/21/2001
Right makes might
Progressives shouldn’t let the politics of division splinter their fight for democracy
by Bob Fitrakis
One of my favorite writers and researchers was in town last Thursday. Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, lectured on his new book, co-written with historian Matthew Lyons, titled Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close For Comfort (Guilford Press). The book is an essential guide for sorting out the political octopus we call the “right” in the United States.
Berlet and Lyons, in their thick tome, ask a critical question: Why can such blatantly anti-democratic political forces thrive in our country? While the mainstream media briefly focused on the rise of right-wing militias and other anti-federal groups after the Oklahoma City bombing, the press conspicuously avoided Timothy McVeigh’s neo-Nazi sentiments prior to his recent execution.
Berlet and Lyons document how McVeigh “moved from conspiracist anti-government beliefs into neo-Nazi ideology” before he blew up the Oklahoma City federal building on April 19, 1995. McVeigh’s affection for neo-Nazi William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries is well known. What Berlet and Lyons managed to do is place that primer for a race war within “its central apocalyptic theme, the cleansing nature of ritual violence—a theme reminiscent of German Nazi ideology, which also sought a millenarian Thousand-Year Reich.”
In his Columbus lecture, Berlet warned that it’s too easy and incorrect to dismiss McVeigh as insane. The tendency to disparage McVeigh and his ilk as a lunatic fringe creates a political atmosphere that allows the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to repress the democratic left as well as the anti-democratic right. It also tends to ignore the values often espoused in mainstream politics and culture by the right that are similar to McVeigh’s.
Berlet and Lyons argue that a powerful combination of anti-elitist rhetoric, conspiracy theories and ethnic scapegoating propels myriad right-wing movements. And it’s been this way throughout U.S. history. They spell out, in an insightful chart, a long-standing “Proceduralist narrative used in repressive right-wing populism.” In layman’s terms, they suggest that right-wing populists create a caricature of “elite parasites.” (The fact that our current president fits this category so nicely is unfortunate.)
So the right-wing populists direct their anger toward these—you name them—“secret elites,” “insiders,” “international bankers,” “liberal secular humanists,” “government bureaucrats,” “globalists,” “Freemasons,” “Illuminati” or Jews. But these enemies, mostly imagined, cause the right-wingers not to attack visible corporate power in the U.S.; while they are angry at the people at the top, they take their anger out on the people at the bottom. They turn their scapegoating and repressive and destructive actions against the poorest and most powerless. Why do they go after welfare mothers, blacks, immigrants and gays rather than real corporate welfare mothers with their tax abatements and subsidies?
Part of the answer is that it’s the path of least resistance; the same reason water flows downhill. Another part of the answer is that progressive activists have not developed essential ground rules for countering right-wing populists.
Berlet forcefully argues that right-wing populism is driven by real, not imaginary, economic grievances. He stresses that it’s important for the left to allow the right “an absolute right to seek redress of their grievances.” He argues that it’s a mistake to rely on the corporate-dominated state to limit the free speech rights of racists, sexists or homophobes. Ultimately, this just reinforces the right-wing’s paranoia and conspiracy theories.
He also suggests that the progressive community has to do a much better job of distinguishing between right-wing leadership and their followers. Research often shows that followers are ill-informed and aren’t drawn to a group because of its anti-democratic ideology but because they are “angry.”
While it’s important to criticize and counter the arguments of right-wing leaders, Berlet points out that it’s equally important to listen to the grievances of their followers and not assume they are “sophisticated political agents.”
Berlet believes that progressives have often been sloppy in refuting right-wing populism and resorted to simple anti-right slogans. This does little to counter the right’s rhetoric that’s often couched in American cultural imagery. Calling right-wing populists “racist, sexist bigots” doesn’t refute their beliefs that affirmative action plans allow women and blacks to take their jobs away or that gays are out to establish “special rights” for themselves.
Part of this nonsense is actually fed to them by mainstream Republican politicians through orchestrated strategies and campaigns, from Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” where he denounced “the Northeastern liberal elite,” and Ronald Reagan’s opening of his 1980 campaign in New Philadelphia, Mississippi, birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan, to Bush Senior’s Willie Horton commercial and Bush Junior’s wrapping himself in the Confederate flag during the South Carolina primary.
Berlet argues that progressives must build the broadest possible coalition in seeking to advance human rights and social justice. Recently he wrote, “Don’t let your critics or establishment figures divide your coalition by targeting people or groups with unpopular ideas. The following familiar refrain is old and tired: If only your group didn’t include [fill in the blank: anarchists, communists, feminists, gays and lesbians, vegans, witches, atheists] you would be more effective. Baloney. It’s a trick. Allow one slice and the blade of division keeps cutting. Set your group’s principles of unity in a democratic fashion and then welcome as participants all who abide by those rules.”
Good thoughts and advice this Community Festival weekend. Keep the faith.
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07/05/2001
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07/05/2001
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07/12/2001 : by Bob Fitrakis
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07/12/2001 : by Bob Fitrakis
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07/19/2001
Costly closing
Columbus schools COO Don Haydon lives in Bexley, not Columbus, thanks in part to a $32,000 deal from the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce
by Bob Fitrakis
It’s not clear yet if Columbus Public Schools will ask taxpayers to foot part of the bill for its planned $1 billion building and renovation project. But if a bond levy is passed, at least one man won’t see the increase on his own tax bill: The man leading the building plan.
Columbus Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Don Haydon lives in Bexley—not in the Columbus school district—where he pays $7,054 in yearly property taxes, most of which goes to the Bexley school district, according to public records.
Haydon, who relocated here from Minnesota last year, had a strong financial incentive for moving into his $515,000 Bexley home: The local chamber of commerce offered him $32,000 if he lived outside of Columbus.
Documents obtained by Columbus Alive indicate that Sally Jackson, president and CEO of the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce, paid the closing fees for Haydon’s home last November.
The agreement is outlined in a May 17, 2000, fax from Jackson to then-Superintendent Rosa Smith. It begins: “Based on our conversation today, it is my understanding that you have identified an excellent candidate to serve as Chief Operating Officer of Columbus Public Schools. In order to finalize the employment agreement, this person is requiring compensation for closing costs (to include Realtors’ fees and any other incidental fees) which may total $25,000 to $30,000 out of pocket, and which you are unable to provide through Columbus Public Schools if he establishes his primary residence outside the school district boundaries.”
“Should the candidate choose to reside outside the district, you have my commitment that the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce will cover the closing costs,” Jackson pledged.
Also, Jackson wrote that a local Realtor “has agreed to waive all real estate fees through King Thompson and all mortgage origination fees through King Thompson Mortgage Company if they represent your candidate in these transactions on the purchase of a home in Columbus. In addition, through their network they may be able to represent him in the sale of his Minneapolis home with significant reduction in fees.”
Haydon, who administered a $200 million school renovation project in Minneapolis, is currently touting a decade-long, $1 billion renovation project for Columbus Public Schools.
Columbus Alive’s calls to Haydon seeking comment for this story were referred to a Columbus Public Schools spokesperson, who provided Alive with additional documents related to the COO’s hiring.
One document, an employment offer signed by Haydon on May 28, 2000, and “subject to Columbus Public Schools Board of Education’s approval on Tuesday, June 6, 2000,” spells out various incentives in addition to Haydon’s $104,780 annual salary, including the residency incentive: “The board shall pay actual, reasonable and necessary closing costs, including real estate fees, on a primary residence the Chief Operating Officer sells in order to establish his primary residence in the Columbus Public School District. This provision is void if the Chief Operating Officer buys a primary residence outside the Columbus Public School District.”
The employment offer does not indicate the chamber of commerce’s involvement should Haydon purchase a home outside the Columbus school district.
Another document provided by Columbus Public Schools lists the “Relocation Costs for Don Haydon,” including $32,028 for “closing cost on home,” paid by the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce on November 29, 2000. Columbus Public Schools paid an additional $69,469 for Haydon’s placement and relocation, including moving costs, meals, hotel, airfare, “U-Haul trailer for classic car move” and five months of rent (at $965 per month) listed under “temporary living expenses.”
School board member Bill Moss has long contended that the chamber of commerce is trying to take control of the school district. When asked about the chamber’s arrangement with Haydon, Moss quipped, “Looks like they’ve bought the district. The real story is that this is the first time that they’ve ever done this.”
Paul Erwin, vice president of marketing for the chamber, disagreed with Moss. Erwin argues that paying Haydon’s closing costs “fits into the mission of the chamber to create a stronger community and stronger region.”
“We’ve aided before, working with the teacher’s union in publishing recruitment ads, supplying experts to the district,” Erwin explained.
Moss suggested that a statute reading “No such bequest, gift, or endowment shall be accepted by the board if the conditions remove any portion of the public schools from the control of the board” may apply to the Haydon situation. The board should have approved the compensation agreement, Moss insisted.
“Look, this is a secret, behind-the-scenes deal that should have been brought before the board and done in the full light of day, not in the darkness. If the chamber is giving our COO over $32,000 to live outside our district, I want to vote on it. Nobody elected Sally Jackson to make decisions for the Columbus School Board,” Moss remarked.
Board member David Dobos, who was board president at the time of Haydon’s hiring, contended that it was not a secret deal. “It was communicated to the entire board, I believe in a memo form, from Dr. Smith,” he said. “It may have been on the board agenda, in the consent agenda, and the language, as it often is, may not have been specific. It may have said, ‘provision made for payment of closing costs.’”
“If board members read their memos and board packets, they would have been aware of the chamber’s involvement,” Dobos added.
He said the chamber’s payment to Haydon was neither discussed in private executive session nor at a public meeting. But, Dobos stressed his presidency’s reputation for being “very open” and that he wouldn’t have opposed discussing the issue.
Dobos could not specifically recall whether the chamber had ever paid anyone else’s closing costs, yet noted that the “chamber had been involved in the district in one form or another” in helping to recruit various individual employees for the district.
07/26/2001
They don’t want him to fry
Why sanitize John Byrd’s execution? Because there’s no direct evidence against the Death Row inmate, other than the testimony of a jailhouse snitch
by Bob Fitrakis
Ohio prison Director Reginald A. Wilkinson yearns for John W. Byrd Jr. to go quietly into the dark abyss of death by lethal injection. Wilkinson, Governor Bob Taft and Attorney General Betty Montgomery want Byrd to roll over and play—I mean, be—dead.
Wilkinson announced last week that he wants a moratorium on using Old Sparky, Ohio’s official electric chair; a bill pending in the Statehouse would also end electrocution as one of two ways Ohio kills its Death Row convicts.
Byrd wants to die in the electric chair with no hood covering his face—basically, he wants his execution to be as gruesome and public as possible, and to stare his accusers in the eyes as his flesh fries. But the captains of the death penalty are scrambling to take that choice away from him before Byrd’s September 12 execution.
They hope to obscure the fact that they’re killing a man without any direct evidence against him, other than the word of a felon and a jailhouse snitch working on behalf of the Hamilton County prosecutors. They’re killing the wrong man and he refuses to cooperate.
Montgomery and Taft have always preferred to execute those who don’t fight back, like a documented mentally retarded volunteer. The hypocrisy of the right-wing Republican crowd is staggering as they joyously suck up to the Christian Right and wear their WWJD bracelets while forgetting the Ten Commandments.
I absolutely support Byrd’s choice of death by the electric chair with no hood. Byrd recently told me that, if the execution is carried out, he hopes his death “helps to bring down this barbaric system, brings down the pillars in the temple.”
“They want to ignore the fact that the first two guys who basically surrendered were paralyzed by drugs and then suffocated,” Byrd said, referring to first two executed in Ohio since the reinstatement of the death penalty, Wilford Berry and Jay D. Scott, who died by lethal injection. “I’m not going to surrender to this.” Nor should he.
Byrd has been on Death Row since he was 18 years old. He’s now 37. On April 18, 1983, Byrd woke up in a Hamilton County jail thinking he’d been arrested for public intoxication. He was alone in a cell when law enforcement officers told him he was incarcerated for murder. They asked him to “roll over” on the two guys he’d been riding around with in a van the night before—John Brewer and William Woodall. Byrd refused, saying he had blacked out and didn’t know a murder had taken place. He couldn’t recall any of the details from his booze- and drug-filled night.
On the night of April 17, 1983, King Kwik convenience store clerk Monte Tewksbury died from a single stab wound. Byrd, Brewer and Woodall were all charged with aggravated murder. But only Byrd was charged with killing Tewksbury, though Hamilton County prosecutors had no direct evidence against him. Brewer and Woodall received life in prison; Byrd got a death sentence.
The following facts emerged at the trials. Tewksbury, who did not die instantly, identified the man who stabbed him as wearing a plaid shirt. When Byrd was arrested two hours later in the van, he was not wearing a plaid shirt. The prosecution could never link Byrd to the murder weapon. And, most important, all the physical evidence pointed to Brewer, not Byrd.
Police found Brewer’s shoe print on the store counter near the spot Tewksbury was stabbed. Police also found Tewksbury’s personal possessions in the area under and behind Brewer’s seat in the van. Both Brewer and Woodall had lots of small bills in their pockets, which matched the contents of the cash register at the store. Byrd had just $5.
The only direct evidence the state could muster against Byrd was the testimony of jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead, a black man, who claimed that Byrd, a white man, had confessed to him in the Cincinnati jail—not a likely scenario in a mostly racially divided jail in one of the U.S.’s most racially divided cities. Armstead perjured himself on the stand by failing to tell the jury he was in jail on a parole violation after violently beating a nurse and a prison guard and that he was facing up to 15 years in prison. The Hamilton County prosecutor vouched for Armstead’s character.
Armstead, who had a long career of criminal convictions, made the absurd claim that he was simply doing his duty and testifying as a good citizen—a lie of monumental proportion, that the prosecution let stand before the jury. Armstead later acknowledged he had a deal with the prosecution, which freed him soon after the trial. This was curious, since the same prosecutor’s office had vehemently opposed Armstead’s parole the year before, citing evidence that he was a career criminal with prior convictions for sodomy, assault and drug offenses. Armstead is now in Las Vegas where he was charged with robberies in 1995 and 1999.
Since the mid-1980s, Brewer has been telling fellow prisoners that they’ve got the wrong man on Death Row. He first signed an affidavit in 1989 admitting that he killed Tewksbury. He reaffirmed that affidavit just this year. Attorney General Betty Montgomery will tell you that Brewer had nothing to lose by signing the affidavit. That’s a lie. By signing the affidavit, Brewer sacrificed any chance that he might be released on parole.
Another standard lie Montgomery’s peddling is that “over 50 judges” had reviewed Byrd’s case. The fact is, Byrd has been asking judges to grant him an evidentiary hearing since 1988 so he could present his evidence and witnesses to prove that he didn’t kill Tewksbury. Not one judge has ever allowed Byrd to present his evidence in court with a hearing as to his actual claim of innocence.
Don’t believe Montgomery and Taft’s politically motivated assurance that it couldn’t happen, that an innocent man couldn’t be convicted in Ohio. Between 1927 and 1986, the state of Ohio released six men who had been condemned to death for murder, based on evidence of actual innocence. Add another 12 innocent men who were released after being convicted of murder, without death penalty specifications. This averages one innocent man being released every four years during that 60-year period.
Montgomery and Taft want Byrd to die quietly because the facts surrounding his death penalty conviction are so unsettling. Stay strong, Johnny Byrd. Rage on against the injustice.
On Sunday, July 29, an anti-death penalty benefit concert and teach-in at Little Brother’s will highlight the Byrd case and raise money to help investigate his claims of innocence. It begins at 6 p.m. and features speakers such as Tom Luken, former Congressman from Cincinnati, Columbus Alive columnist Carl Upchurch and yours truly. There may also be live phone calls from prisoners on Death Row. Bands taking the stage are Great American, 13 0’Clock, Dan Dougan and Ukulele Man. Call 253-2571 for info.
08/02/2001
MEDIA WATCH
Dispatchfollows Alive’s lead on Haydon story
There’s an apocryphal story that’s thrown around newsrooms and j-schools to warn young reporters against burying their leads (one of the rules of standard journalism is to put the most important information at the top of the story):
A cub reporter, covering his first town council meeting, dutifully and accurately wrote about the highlights of the meeting in chronological order. The town clerk read important correspondence, the council members introduced and argued about and voted on important legislation, the mayor discussed some big plans for the future, and, at the of the meeting (and at the end of the reporter’s story), a woman stood up with a gun and started shooting.
The lesson learned is, put the bit about the gun up front with a nice big headline.
The Columbus Dispatch must have forgotten this lesson with the brewing scandal over the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce’s $32,000 payment to Columbus Public Schools COO Don Haydon.
On July 18, the day after school board member Bill Moss first questioned the Haydon deal at a board meeting, the Dispatch briefly mentioned the chamber controversy in the 13th paragraph of a 20-paragraph story on page two of the Metro section. Education reporter Bill Bush seems to have dismissed the scandal out of hand because the complaint came from the firebrand Moss.
“Moss also used the meeting to launch attacks against board President Stephanie Hightower and Don Haydon, district chief operations officer,” Bush wrote. “…he attacked Haydon, saying he allowed the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce to pay the $32,000 closing costs to sell his house in Minneapolis in spring 2000, when he moved to Bexley to begin his job with Columbus schools.”
Sounds like Moss’ usual stump speech—all fire and no brimstone. You wouldn’t know from the Dispatch’s initial coverage that this is a really big deal.
Columbus Alive set the record straight the next day, July 19.
In a three-quarter page, in-depth article titled “Costly closing,” Alive’s Bob Fitrakis was the first to report the details of the scandal: That the chamber paid the closing costs so Haydon could buy a $515,000 house in Bexley (the school district would have paid the costs for him to live in Columbus); that a local Realtor agreed, through the chamber, to waive even more fees; that the deal was not mentioned in Haydon’s employment contract with the board; and that board members claimed to have not heard about or voted on the deal, which was brokered by chamber President Sally Jackson and former schools Superintendent Rosa Smith.
Oops! Looks like it really was scandal!
The Dispatch’s Bush was forced to follow up the next day. His July 20 article echoed many of the details Alive broke the day before.
As usual, The Other Paper followed up a week late. The weekly’s July 26 cover story rehashed much of the story uncovered by Alive on July 19.
The Dispatch followed this with another story the next day, this time finally giving the scandal prominent placement with a banner headline at the top of Metro’s page one. The Dispatch’s July 27 story first reported that the Franklin County Prosecutor and Ohio Ethics Commission are investigating the case.
Well, sorta first reported it. Curiously, the Toledo Blade wrote—on July 21—that the Ohio Ethics Commission is examining the case.
The Dispatch is always quick to pat itself on the back when it breaks a story. In his July 18 story about Moss’ complaints about Haydon and Hightower, Bush wrote, “The Dispatch broke the Hightower story in February.”
So why haven’t Bush’s follow-up stories about the chamber scandal included the phrase: “Columbus Alive broke the Haydon story…”
The latest People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign proves that someone somewhere certainly has his head up his ass. But is it the activist group’s latest meat-peddling target or the group’s own marketing strategists?
Monday, the first Wendy’s restaurant on Broad Street and the corporation’s Dublin headquarters were visited by a truck-mounted traveling billboard that depicts a contortionist disappearing into his own nether regions. The cryptic text reads, “No One Told Dave That ‘Where’s The Beef?’ Was A Rhetorical Question.”
So what the hell is that supposed to mean?
According to PETA, meat takes much longer than plant foods to digest, and therefore it may be a major factor in such diseases as colon cancer. “While Dave’s up there, he might as well look and see what beef’s doing to his colon,” said Andrew Butler, a PETA campaign coordinator.
PETA hopes people will be intrigued by the ad and check out the activists’ website for more info. While a quick trip to wickedwendys.com doesn’t clear up the billboard’s message, you can play the “Have I Got My Head Up My Ass?” game, featuring Dave Thomas’ head on the contortionist’s body, lots of gross squishing and popping noises, and enough puns to make it seem like 12-year-old boys on the schoolyard were PETA’s intended audience with this lower than lowbrow campaign.
08/02/2001
Vendor relations
The Chamber of Commerce’s $32,000 deal with a school official may violate state law
by Bob Fitrakis
The scandal involving the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce’s $32,000 deal with a high-level public schools administrator is thickening. New information obtained by Columbus Alive indicates that, as a school district vendor, the chamber’s payment may violate state law.
On July 23, the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office requested copies of all “documents, communications, or employment contracts relating to the employment of Don Haydon by the Columbus School District.”
Three days earlier, a complaint was filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission alleging that Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce President and Chief Executive Officer Sally Jackson improperly spent $32,028 in chamber money to pay the closing costs for the home of Haydon, chief operating officer of Columbus Public Schools.
A memo from the school district’s general counsel, Giselle Johnson, to Superintendent Gene Harris states, “At this time, we do not know the complete focus of this investigation, nor is the prosecutor obliged to tell us. We have gathered the requested documents and will forward them to the prosecutor in the next several days. We have also been informed of a complaint filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission, but have not received any requests for records.”
As Alive first reported on July 19, the chamber paid more than $32,000 to Haydon, to cover closing costs on his Minnesota home, so the new Columbus schools COO could buy a $515,000 house in Bexley (where he pays more than $7,000 in yearly property taxes to the Bexley school district). If Haydon had purchased a home within the Columbus district, the public schools would have paid the closing fees.
Haydon didn’t return a phone message by presstime seeking comment for this story.
Jim Phillips, the chamber’s attorney, told Alive this week that the chamber didn’t know the deal wasn’t approved by the school board—and it wasn’t the chamber’s job to see that the superintendent got the board’s approval.
“There was obviously a failure to communicate,” Phillips said. “We didn’t know that they didn’t go through proper channels. How would we know?”
But questions now being raised go beyond who knew what and when. School records obtained by Columbus Alive document that in the last fiscal year, from July 1, 2000, to June 30, 2001, the chamber was paid $63,527 as a Columbus Public Schools vendor.
On July 14, 2000, Columbus Public Schools paid the chamber $30,000 under the description “Professional and Technical.” On February 14, 2001, the school district paid the chamber another $30,000 for the “Continuation of [the] Adopt-A-School” program. Also, in the 1996-97 fiscal year, the school district paid the chamber $31,760, including two separate $15,000 checks.
This may establish a history of vendor-vendee relationships between the chamber and the school district, compounding the chamber’s legal problems; it shifts the chamber’s touted role as benevolent outside benefactor to just another vendor of services.
School board member Bill Moss, who originally raised the issue of the chamber’s payment to Haydon, said, “Most people think that the chamber is operating out of good will in pushing businesses to adopt a school. That’s the story that they tell. But in reality, we’ve been paying them coercion money to get them to do what they should be doing in the first place, if they really cared about the economic growth and vitality of Columbus.”
Moss said he was also surprised to learn that the school district reimbursed the chamber $1,907 for former Superintendent Rosa Smith’s trip to Scotland in 1999. “I was led to believe they were picking up the expenses on that junket,” he said.
Additionally, according to Moss, chamber President Jackson chairs the school district’s Business Advisory Council, set up to recommend personnel development and help recruit top talent in the tight labor market.
“We’re paying them money as a vendor while they’re providing incentives for people to live outside our district,” Moss said. “We give them $30,000 to adopt a school, and they give $32,000 to our COO to move out of our district. We’d be better off if we just sent Bexley $7,000 directly in school taxes and pocketed the remaining $25,000.”
The chamber’s role as a paid service provider to the school district raises legal and ethical questions. A March 2000 Auditor of State Bulletin warned, “School districts also should be aware that an individual district official’s or employee’s receipt of compensation from private vendors doing business with the district may raise serious issues under one or more of Ohio’s ethics laws.”
Ohio law states, “No public servant shall knowingly solicit or accept and no person shall knowingly promise or give to a public servant…any compensation…as a supplement to the public servant’s compensation.” Ohio law also provides that “No person shall promise or give to a public official or employee anything that is of value that is of such a character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence upon the public official or employee with respect to that person’s duties.”
State ethics law violations are generally first-degree misdemeanors, providing penalties up to six months in jail and fines up to $1,000; the emergence of the chamber as a vendor for the school district may raise the felony specter of “unlawful interest in a public contract.”
The Columbus Public Schools hired Haydon last year with the understanding that he would oversee a rebuilding project estimated at $1 billion over 10 years. Many of the city’s leading builders, developers and financiers sit on the chamber’s board and are Jackson’s bosses.
When asked by Alive, on Tuesday morning, about the vendor relationship with the district, the chamber’s Phillips said he couldn’t respond. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.
But, Phillips added of the Haydon deal, “The only thing the chamber gets out of this is a better school district, which is the same thing that everybody gets out of this.” The scrutiny this case is receiving could chill future relationships between the schools and the chamber, he said. “To discourage public-private partnerships isn’t going to benefit Columbus.”
08/09/2001
Undercover Air
Is the CIA back in business at Rickenbacker International?
by Bob Fitrakis
Are we a big ol’ lucky dog of a city, or what? I couldn’t be more excited about Saturday’s Business section front-page story in the Dispatch. The lead told us: “Rickenbacker International Airport will begin receiving cargo shipments from Malaysia as a result of service added by Evergreen International Airlines.”
Thank God we finally got somebody to replace the former Southern Air Transport (SAT) after the company went bankrupt amidst allegations that its pilots and planes were used in CIA drug-running operations.
Evergreen began racing “time-sensitive cargo” from Kuala Lumpur to Rickenbacker on Sunday. They’re aiding some of our best corporate citizens “…such as The Limited and Eddie Bauer,” according to the Dispatch, where no doubt garments are made in state-of-the-art cheery facilities by well-paid Third World employees. I was so excited I took a few minutes to research Evergreen’s history.
Evergreen, originally based in McMinnville, Oregon, expanded from a small helicopter in the 1960s “to a major international airline with secret government contracts” according to the Portland, Oregon Free Press. The Oregonian reported that “Evergreen Airline Company, Evergreen International Airlines, Inc., was built on remnants of two older airlines—one a wholly owned CIA proprietary, or front company, and the other a virtual branch of the U.S. Forest Service that for years secretly had helped the CIA recruit paramilitary personnel.”
In 1975, after a series of embarrassing revelations during Senator Frank Church’s investigation of the CIA, the “company” liquidated Intermountain Aviation Inc. of Marana, Arizona near Tucson. Intermountain’s assets were purchased by two Oregon companies that the CIA selected: Evergreen and Rosenbalm Aviation Inc. But Evergreen was the big winner. One of the CIA’s top aviation officers, the legendary covert ops expert George Doole worked for Evergreen as a director. Prior to this, Doole managed all of the CIA’s proprietary airlines. The CIA selected Evergreen to take over the agency’s airbase at Marana. An investigation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian documented that “The CIA offered Intermountain’s substantial Arizona assets only to Evergreen.”
What followed was a decade of privileged treatment and government contracts to the airline. Evergreen purchased the CIA’s Arizona assets at a fraction of their real worth. An Arthur Andersen and Co. financial statement indicates that Evergreen’s assets nearly doubled from $25 million to more than $45 million one year after the deal. Evergreen’s revenues rose from $8-10 million range in 1975 to $77.9 million by 1979, according to U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board documents.
The Washington Post reported on Evergreen’s CIA connection in 1980 after it was chosen to fly the former Shah of Iran from Panama to Cairo.
In 1984, CBS News reported that the CIA was using a “network of private companies” to fly military weapons to Central America to support the Contra rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. CBS named both Southern Air and Evergreen Air as involved in the arms shipments. The day after the broadcast, the Washington Post reported that “Private airlines, including Evergreen, were owned by the CIA during the Vietnam War, but the agency has said that the airline has since been sold.”
The New York Times jumped in a day later with the following lead: “The Central Intelligence Agency is using small private airlines to fly guns and other military supplies to United States-backed forces in Central America, and false flight plans are sometimes filed to cover up the shipments….” The Times mentioned Evergreen Air by name.
When Doole died on March 9, 1985, the Times reported that Evergreen International Aviation in Marana placed a bronze plaque on the wall acknowledging Doole’s more than 20-year service with the CIA. Like Rickenbacker, the huge airfield formerly operated by the CIA was now owned by the county government (Pinal County, AZ). The plaque noted that Doole was “founder, chief executive officer & board of directors of Air America, Inc., Air Asia Company Ltd., Civil Air Transport Company Ltd.” Air America’s planes were used, according to U.S. Intelligence documents, to facilitate the transportation of opium from Laos to U.S. military bases in the Philippines and Thailand during the Vietnam War. The airline’s nickname was “Opium Air.”
Following the incident when Sandinistas shot down a Southern Air Transport C-123K cargo plane that led to the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running scandal, the Washington Post reported that SAT President William G. Langton had been previously associated with Evergreen International Airlines. The Oregonian investigative report came out in 1988 revealing how well Evergreen Airlines was doing. But by 1994, the airline had defaulted on $125 million in junk bonds, according to the Portland Free Press.
In 1997, Evergreen was caught up in a huge scandal when scores of former military planes were diverted to covert CIA operations under the guise of “firefighting.” The Free Press reported that Evergreen International Airlines was involved in the covert activities. Gary Eitel, a decorated Vietnam combat pilot and law-enforcement officer, found employment at Evergreen and “observed that card-carrying CIA personnel were on Evergreen property acting as Evergreen employees.”
In last Saturday’s paper, the Dispatch’s last sentence stated that: “Still, Rickenbacker officials are hoping for even more cargo activity, and [Jeff] Clark said Evergreen is in the process of determining whether it will operate additional flights from Columbus to South America.”
Columbia may be a good place to start for those “time-sensitive” deliveries, eh?
08/23/2001
Ten percent scrape
A breakfast held for the man in charge of the schools’ billion-dollar building campaign raises questions about school officials’ coziness with developers
by Bob Fitrakis
What should we make of Columbus Board of Education President Stephanie Hightower’s breakfast soiree on September 26, 2000, where she introduced now-embattled school district Chief Operations Officer Don Haydon to local minority contractors?
Hightower’s fellow board member Bill Moss is calling the event a “smoking gun” for a potential rip-off of the school district’s planned billion-dollar capital rebuilding campaign. As evidence, Moss points to the breakfast’s sponsorship by former City Council President and Les Wexner’s current political “fixer” extraordinaire, Jerry Hammond, through his business, Hammond and Associates.
The September breakfast surely falls somewhere between the mere “appearance of impropriety” and evidence of a cozy relationship between school officials and developers when a billion dollars’ worth of public contracts is at stake.
With Haydon now under investigation for accepting more than $32,000 from the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce to aid him in purchasing his half-million dollar Bexley mansion outside the Columbus school district, the new revelation about Hammond’s and Hightower’s roles in bringing minority contractors and Haydon together in the absence of other board members is sure to spark a new wave of media investigation and speculation.
Board member Loretta Heard, who is black, confirms she “wasn’t invited” to the minority contractor breakfast. Heard’s assessment was, “It’s Stephanie bringing together the minority contractors with Haydon to enhance her own power so that the contractors will owe her.”
“She’s been interested and requesting information about the school’s property holdings ever since she’s been on the board. People are going to watch her more closely to see what she does with the school’s property,” Heard said.
Moss said that people he’s talked to told him that in addition to Hammond, then-Superintendent Rosa Smith was at the Hightower gathering, as well as controversial minority builder T.G. Banks. Banks spent a few months behind bars during a major contract-steering scandal that rocked George Voinovich’s gubernatorial administration and led to the resignation and imprisonment of the governor’s chief of staff, Paul Mifsud.
“Anyone who claims to be doing an investigation of the Haydon/Chamber matter and does not look at this breakfast sponsored by Jerry Hammond at Hightower’s house, and look at the fact that her husband is a developer, is not really conducting a proper investigation,” Moss said. “And certainly one of the areas of inquiry should be what lands are being purchased and sold and who is doing the buying and selling. We should keep in mind that Don Haydon will be making recommendations about which buildings to close and property to sell.”
Hightower’s husband, David Baker, serves as president of the Urban Growth Corporation.
What Moss and others fear is the old “10 percent scrape off” or “golden crumbs” scam—organized crime’s mantra that 10 percent of any public contract can be stolen without raising suspicion.
Here’s how it works: Columbus school district taxpayers will be asked to pass a levy for the rebuilding effort. The higher taxes will be sold under the guise of doing noble things for poor inner-city schoolchildren. Meanwhile, the wealthy developers, builders and bondwriters make out like bandits on the deal.
Here’s what to look for: Overpriced bonds a tick or two over market rates that will make the major banks and money lenders happy; a few school board officials will help steer contracts for political and financial reasons to minority “fronts” for wealthy white builders and developers; the school board will give away prime real estate at bargain-basement prices to developers while the mainstream media brags about how lucky we are to be rid of the property; and over-priced and politically connected law firms and PR companies will make a fortune covering up the systematic rip-off.
The sale of desirable school property to developers has been questioned before. Moss recalls, “They would have given away Central High School [current site of COSI] if I hadn’t fought them and made them pay what it’s really worth.”
In August 1998, Columbus Alive reported the interest of Jerry Hammond and other prominent businessmen in acquiring and developing the athletic track and field property of the Mohawk Africentric School on the corner of Grant and Livingston avenues. The project was not educational in nature, but reportedly involved building high-priced high-rise apartments.
In Youngstown, you’d just pay the 10 percent up front for the deal directly to a mob-controlled politician. In Columbus, we’re much more refined. We do it through so-called civic leaders, their business cohorts and elected officials.
The sheer beauty of Columbus’ version of insider information and unlawful interest in a public contract is something to behold. After they steal the $100 million over 10 years, they’ll probably stage a huge rally to celebrate the community’s accomplishments with the requisite ministers and self-proclaimed community do-gooders patting each other on the back and giving each other awards for their altruism.
Make no mistake, the plans are already in place for the 10 percent scrape. This latest revelation will simply mean more PR funding needed to put a happy face on it.
As you read this, Hightower is busy shaking down wealthy Chamber types to run her own “slate” of candidates for this year’s school board race. Hightower, endorsed by the Democratic Party, reportedly is soliciting money for a slate that includes two Republicans, Jeff Cabot and Ruth McNeil, and two Democrats, Andrew Ginther and Betty Drummond.
Why Hightower, a black Democrat, is promoting Cabot, a well-connected white guy who came under heavy fire from the black community for the perception that he ran a racist campaign on behalf of Dorothy Teater against the city’s first black mayor, Michael Coleman, is another mystery.
Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Denny White said he was aware of Hightower’s puzzling behavior and said he plans to meet with her and tell her that “she shouldn’t be doing it” and that it will have “negative repercussions when she comes to the party for endorsements in the future.”
“She shouldn’t be feeding the little monsters like Cabot because they grow up to be big monsters. If I was the chair of the Republican Party and Cabot does well in the school board race, I would be thinking of him as a future mayoral candidate,” White added, and warned, “If [Hightower] creates that monster, she’ll be held politically responsible for it.”
There’s also the possibility that Hightower, who’s own campaign received a reported $150,000 in donations from wealthy supporters, many Republicans, could taint the entire ticket with the recent news of the Hammond-sponsored gathering at her house.
08/30/2001
13 DAYS TO DIE
Less than two weeks before John Byrd’s scheduled execution, much of the evidence against him still doesn’t add up
by Bob Fitrakis
John W. Byrd is scheduled to be executed on September 12 for a crime he insists he did not commit. It may not be unusual to hear protestations of innocence coming from Death Row, but Byrd’s case raises so many questions that even some death penalty proponents are concerned about the fallibility of the ultimate, irrevocable punishment: Byrd was convicted based only on flimsy circumstantial evidence and the perjured testimony of a jailhouse snitch. No physical evidence was introduced at trial that links Byrd to the crime for which he was sentenced to die.
Now, prominent politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties—including death penalty foes like former Governor Jack Gilligan, former U.S. Congressman Tom Luken and conservative State Representative Tom Brinkman—are urging Governor Bob Taft not to execute Byrd.
Byrd is adamant that he did not kill Monte Tewksbury on the night of April 17, 1983. Prosecutors in Hamilton County, where Byrd was convicted, are just as adamant that Byrd is the actual killer. At an August 12 pro-execution rally in Cincinnati, current Prosecutor Michael Allen called Byrd a “heathen killer” and denounced Gilligan, Luken and Brinkman as “dishonest” for suggesting that Byrd wasn’t the murderer.
Included in almost every TV news story on Byrd is the victim’s widow, Sharon Tewksbury, usually clutching her late husband’s photo and demanding “closure” for her family. Appearing less frequently in the news are Byrd’s mother, in a wheelchair, and his sister pleading for his life.
In Cincinnati and Columbus, death penalty opponents have recently squared off against pro-execution forces, Hamilton County prosecutors and the Tewksbury clan in a series of highly publicized demonstrations. Emotional public arguments about Byrd’s impending execution have often obscured the facts, but Columbus Alive reporters have spent more than a year sifting through the voluminous public documents generated by the Byrd case. The following is a summation of the investigation.
John Byrd and two friends, John Brewer and William “Danny” Woodall, were arrested at approximately 1 a.m. on April 18, 1983, in a red work truck. The truck matched the description of the vehicle seen fleeing the scene of the King Kwik convenience store where Tewksbury, the store clerk, had been robbed and stabbed.
Items from the King Kwik robbery were found in the truck; the three men were arrested and later charged with robbery and aggravated murder—but only Byrd was charged with stabbing and killing Tewksbury. For Byrd to be eligible for the death penalty under Ohio law, the prosecution had to prove that he purposely killed Tewksbury and that he was the principal offender.
Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against either Brewer or Woodall, who were convicted of lesser crimes, despite physical evidence linking Brewer to the murder scene. Following their trials, both Brewer and Woodall signed affidavits stating Brewer delivered the death blow to Tewksbury—evidence that courts have refused to consider as grounds for a new evidentiary hearing for Byrd.
Meanwhile, Byrd is preparing to take his final 17 steps from the death house holding cell to be strapped into the electric chair. While he wants to live, Byrd has chosen death by electrocution—Ohio’s most brutal form of capital punishment—to protest what he feels is an unjust system that railroaded him onto Death Row.
Prosecution or persecution?
Ohio Public Defender David Bodiker calls Byrd’s trial “a debacle. A disaster.” The Public Defender’s office has represented Byrd only after his conviction, and has been cleaning up after what it sees as a shoddy trial defense ever since.
Bodiker points out that Byrd went to trial on August 1, 1983—less than 90 days after his indictment. The rush to court left Byrd virtually defenseless.
“As of July 21, 10 days before trial, the prosecution had not responded to the defendant’s request for a bill of particulars, or for basic discovery. The requests for these had been filed in early June. The items were officially provided on July 26, five days before trial… At a pre-trial hearing on July 21, defense counsel complained that they had no information as to why Byrd was the principal offender,” Bodiker stressed in an August debate with State Treasurer Joe Deters, the former Hamilton County Prosecutor, at the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
Bodiker emphasized, “There is no evidence that they [Byrd’s court-appointed private attorneys] conducted any investigation, that they talked to any witnesses, or that they hired or consulted any experts regarding the blood, the scene of the crime, the weapon used, or how the fatal wound was inflicted on the victim. Before the trial, they informed the prosecution that they had no discovery to provide to them and that they were calling no witnesses.”
Court records do not reveal any objections made regarding the hasty nature of the trial. Bodiker says, “The defense counsel in fact seemed eager to accommodate the judge’s schedule and to get the trial over with quickly.”
Critics of the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s office, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, argue that the aggressive nature of the prosecutor’s office, and prosecutors’ cozy relationships with common pleas court judges (who all come out of the prosecutor’s office), makes Hamilton County defense attorneys the most compliant of Ohio’s largest cities.
Deters counters the charge that the trial was unfair, as quoted in a Cincinnati Post article: “It’s been 18 years and 70 judges—that’s seven-zero. Seventy judges have looked at this case and decided he’s guilty.”
Such hyperbole has been par for the course as the rhetoric on both sides of the Byrd debate has reached a fevered pitch this summer. The ACLU, for instance, easily disputed Deters’ exaggerated claim at an August 21 press conference.
“The way they count is, if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case four times, they count that as 36 judges,” explained Jeff Gamso, ACLU vice president. “Since John Byrd began his post-conviction proceedings in 1988, he has never been afforded discovery of evidence from the prosecutor’s files to prove his claims… All courts have summarily denied Byrd’s claims on the basis of ‘paper hearings,’ without benefit of any actual testimony.”
The ACLU press statement noted, “The Ohio Supreme Court has never granted review in over 120 death penalty cases that have been all the way through post-conviction proceedings in this state. The trial and appellate courts in Hamilton County have never granted relief in a single post-conviction case since the inception of Ohio’s death penalty in 1981.”
Gamso said, “There’s never been an evidentiary hearing, it’s so misleading to imply fairness. It’s always denied.”
It’s common practice in Hamilton County, and elsewhere, for the post-conviction prosecutor—in this case William Breyer, the brother of Woody Breyer, who prosecuted Byrd at the original trial—to write the trial judge’s findings of fact and conclusions of law dismissing defendants’ post-conviction petitions. Ostensibly, the judge reviews the prosecutor’s findings before issuing them.
In a letter dated March 29, 1991, William Breyer wrote to Judge J. Howard Sundermann of Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, “Since I drafted the proposed entry which resulted in reversal, I must apologize, though I confess that I am still astounded by the interpretation the Court of Appeals reached regarding the language in the entry.” The court temporarily reversed Byrd’s conviction because Breyer’s written record failed to mention that the judge had independently reviewed the prosecutor’s findings. Breyer added a new entry to the records stating that the judge had “considered the ‘entire record’” in reaching the conclusions written by the prosecutor. The appeals court quickly sided with the prosecutor.
The evidence
With his August 26 article “Revisiting the Byrd case,” the Columbus Dispatch’s Alan Johnson included a chart that listed the five “strongest arguments for Byrd’s guilt” from Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery’s office. That Montgomery’s “strongest arguments” are so weak precisely underscores why so many death penalty opponents are rallying behind Byrd—and why even some death penalty supporters question the fairness of Byrd’s execution. Court records include ample evidence to refute the state’s case for the death penalty.
Montgomery’s argument: “Blood drops on Byrd’s pants and the van seat—near where Byrd was crouching—were Type O, the same as Tewksbury’s. Brewer had no blood on him.”
The evidence: The blood in question consisted of two small specks on Byrd’s work pants and a blood stain on the side of the driver’s seat; it was inconclusive whether the blood was Tewksbury’s. Woodall was sitting in the driver’s seat where the blood was found and Brewer was in the passenger seat next to him. Woodall had been bleeding that night from a cut above his eye and has the same blood type as Tewksbury.
In an August 17, 1989, motion of summary judgment submitted by William Breyer and then-Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Arthur M. Ney Jr., the prosecutors conceded: “The jury was aware that the knife was not identified as the murder weapon, that the blood stains could not be shown to be the victim’s, and that the shoe prints were not those of defendant Byrd. These matters simply are not central to the issue of defendant’s guilt.”
Judge Sundermann’s official finding of fact denying Byrd an evidentiary hearing stated, “The source of the blood in the van or on the defendant’s pants was not a crucial issue at trial… the blood stains could not be shown to be the victim’s.”
The state’s own admissions about the weakness of the blood evidence has not deterred Montgomery nor the Cincinnati Post from championing Byrd’s execution based on “blood-stained clothes.” Byrd, in previous court proceedings, has asked that the blood evidence and other physical evidence be further tested; prosecutors have fought these motions. In an 1993 affidavit, Woodall claimed that the blood on the van seat resulted from Brewer wiping off the knife blade on the side of the seat after Brewer, not Byrd, stabbed Tewksbury.
Montgomery’s argument: “Byrd was wearing Tewksbury’s Pulsar watch when arrested.”
The evidence: Tewksbury may have been wearing a Pulsar watch when robbed, but the watch was never produced as evidence at trial and its whereabouts, like the murder weapon, are unknown. The Dispatch wrote, “Police mistakenly thought it [the Pulsar watch] was Byrd’s watch and later gave it to his mother. A police property-room card listing the Pulsar watch was lost; a photocopy showed up the day before Byrd’s trial began.”
Public defender Dick Vickers told Columbus Alive, “There was no watch at trial. It was never introduced into evidence. You have to wonder about the police investigators if they would lose the original evidence log-in card and then mistakenly send evidence in a capital murder case to the mother of the defendant. It’s like keystone cops.”
Byrd’s mother acknowledges that the sheriff’s department sent her a watch, but it was a Timex, not a Pulsar. Byrd claims he was wearing a Timex watch, not a gold Pulsar.
Montgomery’s argument: “At the U-Tote-M convenience store robbery a man identified as Byrd used a knife to attack a door behind which a store clerk was hiding. Dennis Nitz, a customer, testified that Byrd’s size and hair color were consistent with the stabber’s.”
The evidence: After leaving the King Kwik, Woodall later allegedly drove Byrd and Brewer to the U-Tote-M. Byrd was never tried for the U-Tote-M robbery, but investigative records exist.
In a crime lab report dated April 21, 1983, William Dean of the Institute for Forensic Medicine, Toxicology and Criminalistics in Hamilton County, compared the knife, Specimen Q-1, shown in Sunday’s Dispatch and relied on by Montgomery, to the wooden door at the U-Tote-M, Specimen Q-27, and concluded: “The hole in the door, Q-27, was not made by the point of the knife, Q-1.”
Also, police found a hair from a single caucasian in a nylon stocking mask worn during the robbery and concluded: “Comparisons of the hair from Q-8 to hairs from Byrd and Brewer were inconclusive.” Dennis Nitz, the witness, told police that the man with the knife was wearing “tan pants”; Byrd’s pants were blue.
Gregory W. Meyers, chief counsel of the Public Defender’s Death Penalty Division, appealed for Byrd’s clemency by stressing that Nitz “unequivocally said that the masked man who had the knife wore tan pants. When arrested a short time later, John Byrd wore blue pants. Tan and blue are too far apart on the color spectrum to create any kind of circumstantial bridge strong enough to prove John Byrd stabbed Monte Tewksbury.”
Yet it’s precisely that flimsy circumstantial bridge that the Ohio Supreme Court is relying on to condemn Byrd to death.
Montgomery’s argument: “The knife recovered in the truck was identified by Nitz as consistent with the knife he saw in Byrd’s hand. Hamilton County Coroner Leonard Parrott said the dimensions of the knife were consistent with Tewksbury’s wounds.”
The evidence: Prosecutors took a weapon from another crime, the U-Tote-M robbery, that Byrd was never tried for, and theorized that it was the murder weapon in the King Kwik robbery. This is inconsistent with the state’s own admissions, since the state concedes “that the knife was not identified as the murder weapon” at Byrd’s trial.
The state admitted again it wasn’t the murder weapon when the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court wrote in its October 2, 1989, finding of fact: “the knife, could not be shown to be the murder weapon.”
Deters and others stress how important the U-Tote-M evidence was in sending Byrd to the electric chair. Deters said, “The [Ohio] Supreme Court itself said the most probative part was the same and similar crime he committed just minutes later in the exact same fashion and Byrd can’t deny it.”
Montgomery’s argument: “Inmate Ronald Armstead testified that Byrd, while in the Hamilton County Jail, bragged to him that he killed Tewksbury. Prison records also indicate Woodall stated Byrd bragged about stabbing Tewksbury.”
The evidence: After Columbus Alive first reported on jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead’s extensive record of violent felony convictions, the Attorney General and Hamilton County prosecutors have de-emphasized the role of their undisputable star witness. State officials are now pushing the physical evidence they earlier conceded was inconclusive, even though they previously argued at trial and at state and federal appeals courts over the years that Armstead’s testimony was the sole factor in Byrd’s capital conviction and death sentence.
In 1995, Federal Judge James Graham concluded: “The principal evidence presented at trial to suggest that Byrd was the person who stabbed Monte Tewksbury came from Ronald Armstead, who, at the time of trial, was serving a sentence at the Cincinnati workhouse.”
Last year, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stated, “All agree that Armstead’s testimony was vitally important to the jury’s determination that petitioner was the principal offender in the aggravated murder of Monte Tewksbury.”
There’s a good reason why the state now wants to distance itself from the Byrd trial’s most important testimony: It was perjured. Affidavits from eight former workhouse inmates swear that Armstead, a well-known informant and drug addict, manufactured the confession to obtain parole. He was facing up to 15 years in prison for parole violations, and not only failed to disclose that to the jury, but the prosecutor falsely vouched for his truthfulness (see sidebar).
Byrd’s supposed bragging to Woodall comes not from Woodall’s testimony, but from Armstead’s. Prior to his death this year, Woodall, an admitted white supremacist, consistently denied that he ever admitted anything to Ronald Armstead, who is black. In 1993, Woodall signed an affidavit stating that John Brewer was the person who stabbed Monte Tewksbury. In 1989 and 2001, Brewer signed similar affidavits admitting that he, Brewer, murdered Tewksbury.
Hostile witness
Byrd, who has consistently denied that he stabbed Tewksbury, has long claimed to Columbus Alive and the Columbus Free Press, and in a recent WBNS-TV interview, that prosecutors initially approached him about a deal if he testified against Brewer and Woodall. Byrd said he declined since he had no memory of the night. Several witnesses said he had been drinking, smoking pot and taking Quaaludes.
For 15 years, co-defendant John Brewer has admitted that he killed Tewksbury. Robert Pottinger, who was with Byrd, Brewer and Woodall on the day of Tewksbury’s slaying and who later served time in the same prison as Woodall on another charge, said, “I talked to Danny Woodall… All the indications I got was it was Johnny Brewer that killed him [Tewksbury].”
Like Byrd, Pottinger says he was offered a deal in exchange for testimony in the Tewksbury case. “They tried to offer me deals, offer me immunity, everything. The man wanted me to say what he wanted me to say,” Pottinger told Columbus Alive. “When I wouldn’t do that, they treated me as a hostile witness.”
Pottinger also alleges that before his testimony at Byrd’s and Brewer’s trials, he was coached by a prosecutor in the prosecutor’s office. He recalled, “[During a trial], I said, ‘Hey man, he just told me the answers to the questions up there in his office that he’s asking me right now.’ Everybody ignored it. I said that in the courtroom, on the stand.”
Ohio’s battle over the life and death of John Byrd is also a question about whether our government makes mistakes. Since 1973, 92 wrongly convicted Death Row inmates have been released from other government jurisdictions. And there have been plenty of mistakes made in the Byrd case. The prosecutors admit they couldn’t produce the murder weapon, the watch, or any other physical evidence linking Byrd to the actual killing of Tewksbury. They never did a DNA test on the blood on Byrd’s pants.
Despite misleading news accounts suggesting Governor Bob Taft’s choice is either to kill Byrd or set him free, the public defenders representing Byrd have never asked for his release. At Byrd’s August 20 clemency hearing, Greg W. Meyers told the Ohio Parole Board, “[Byrd] will never walk the street, nor should he,” but that the circumstances surrounding Byrd’s death sentence “ought to leave you feeling queasy about whether we should kill John Byrd.”
Ironically, one person who appears to agree with Meyers’ call for life in prison without parole is Monte Tewksbury’s widow, Sharon, who told the Columbus Dispatch that neither she nor her husband were “strong supporters of the death penalty.”
The Dispatch quoted Mrs. Tewksbury as saying, “I would be fine with prison for life without parole. But I can’t feel confident he would be in prison for life.”
The final decision is up to Governor Taft, who has the power to commute Byrd’s death sentence to life in prison without parole. Howard Tolley Jr., a human rights expert and professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, told Alive, “Ohio must not dehumanize the condemned. John Byrd is a dangerous criminal who should suffer the retribution of a life term. His execution would be a gross miscarriage of justice—the trial was egregiously tainted by perjured testimony and there are substantial doubts that the actual killer was sentenced to death.”
09/06/2001
“Byrd never left the van”
“Byrd never left the van”
by Martin Yant and Bob Fitrakis
John W. Byrd Jr. was not the knife-wielding man in a robbery committed later the same night Monte Tewksbury was murdered, according to a sworn statement signed last week by Robert E. Pottinger Jr. Pottinger claims he was with Byrd and two others at the second robbery the night of April 17, 1983.
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Byrd’s identification as the knife wielder in the U-Tote-M convenience store robbery was “highly probative” evidence that he stabbed Tewksbury to death at a King Kwik store, a crime for which Byrd is scheduled to be executed September 12.
But in an August 31 affidavit obtained by Columbus Alive, Pottinger—who says he was picked up by Byrd, John Brewer and William Woodall after Tewksbury’s murder—states that Byrd “was heavily intoxicated that night, had passed out and did not participate in the U-Tote-M robbery.”
“The witnesses who identified Byrd as the masked man who stabbed at the door of the restroom in which the store’s clerk had hidden were wrong,” Pottinger’s affidavit states. “Byrd never left the van during this robbery.”
Pottinger’s affidavit conforms with two statements signed by Brewer in which Brewer says that he, not Byrd, killed Tewksbury. In a 1989 affidavit, Brewer says that when he and Byrd entered the King Kwik store, Byrd “staggered…and was having a hard time standing up.” In an affidavit signed this year, Brewer says Byrd “appeared to be highly intoxicated” the night of the murder.
In 1993, Woodall also signed an affidavit swearing Brewer was the killer. “John Byrd Jr. appeared highly intoxicated and was almost unable to walk,” Woodall stated. “When John E. Brewer exited the King Kwik store and entered the vehicle in which we were riding, the knife he was carrying was covered with blood… Brewer attempted to wipe the knife blade on the right-hand side of the driver’s seat in the vehicle.”
Both Byrd’s co-defendants, and now Pottinger, say Brewer stabbed Tewksbury. “I talked to Danny Woodall. I was in the same prison with him for awhile… All the indications I got was it was Johnny Brewer that killed him,” Pottinger told Alive.
At both the King Kwik and U-Tote-M robberies, Brewer’s footprint was found on the store counters.
Pottinger, whose possible involvement in one or both of the robberies was revealed in the August 30 issue of Columbus Alive, does not say in his affidavit who entered the King Kwik with Brewer.
But Kim Hamer, Byrd’s sister, says Pottinger admitted to her in a telephone conversation on August 29 that he was the man who stabbed at the restroom door in an attempt to get at the U-Tote-M store clerk who had hidden inside.
Jim Henneberry, a U-Tote-M employee, described the man with the knife as wearing “tan pants” and a “jacket” that was “red and black.” A U-Tote-M customer, Dennis Nitz, also told police that the man with the knife was wearing “tan pants.” The witnesses described both U-Tote-M robbers as wearing masks.
When Byrd, Brewer and Woodall were arrested shortly after the second robbery, Byrd was wearing blue slacks and a sweater with wide blue, yellow and black stripes. Brewer and Woodall were wearing blue jeans.
Prosecutor Woody Breyer conceded to the jury that, despite the eyewitness identification of a knife wielder in a black and red jacket and tan pants, that Byrd was wearing the “same sweater he was wearing when he left Northside, [the] striped sweater.”
In order to explain away two eyewitness accounts of a robber with “tan pants,” prosecutor Breyer offered the jury his own theory that Nitz must have been wearing the tan pants: “You have seen them all that they were all blue. I speculate that that tan he wore he [Nitz] had tan pants. I will tell you this, Nitz wasn’t concerned with what color pants he had on, and he is trying to help the police. He made a mistake. He’s a kid, lucky to be alive today, given that one fault, that faulty recall.”
The prosecutors’ forensic reports determined that a knife found in the red work van when Byrd, Brewer and Woodall were arrested was not, in fact, the knife wielded at the U-Tote-M scene. Pottinger was not in the van when the three were arrested.
Pottinger previously told Alive that, following the arrest of the three co-defendants, he was detained in a juvenile facility on pending murder charges but ultimately was never charged with anything. A major reason why, Pottinger says in his affidavit, is that “Byrd, Brewer and Woodall later told me that they had agreed to keep my name out of the case because I was only 17.”
Pottinger was convicted in 1987 of receiving stolen property and was placed on parole. He was convicted of robbery in 1989 and spent nearly 11 years in prison. He is now on parole in Tennessee.
With Pottinger’s affidavit discrediting the claim that Byrd was the man with the knife in both robberies the night of April 17, 1983, the only remaining evidence that Byrd killed Tewksbury is the testimony of Ronald Armstead, who claimed that Byrd confessed to the crime while both were in the Hamilton County Jail.
Armstead had been arrested 22 times before his testimony at Byrd’s trial. He has been arrested at least four times since, most recently in 1996.
A concerted effort by Columbus Alive to locate Armstead for comment has determined that he is working on an Alaskan cruise ship. Members of Armstead’s own family said they were unable to get word to him that one of his sisters died on August 10.
Judging from the comments of a rental agent at the Las Vegas apartment complex at which Armstead lived until recently, Armstead is apparently a good liar. The agent told Thomas W. Casler, an investigator with the Office of the Nevada Federal Public Defender, that she decided not to sue Armstead for the five weeks’ rent he owed when he left because he claimed he had just been diagnosed with cancer. The rental agent said she later learned from a family member that this was not true.
09/13/2001
FEATURED ARTICLE
The fifth man in the van
Another witness has come forward to accuse John Brewer of the King Kwik murder
by Bob Fitrakis
and Martin Yant
He had a large knife, with which he had stabbed someone before. It was his idea to rob the King Kwik store in suburban Cincinnati, during which clerk Monte Tewksbury was fatally stabbed. He later bragged that he was the killer.
His name was John Brewer, not John Byrd Jr., whose execution for killing Tewksbury was postponed by a federal appeals court on Monday, the same day Governor Bob Taft denied Byrd clemency. Brewer has admitted to the slaying in two affidavits, but the courts that have considered appeals so far didn’t find Brewer’s confessions credible.
John Lee Fryman does. Unlike the judges, Fryman says, he was with Brewer, Byrd and their co-defendant, William Woodall, as they planned the King Kwik robbery on April 17, 1983. In fact, Brewer tried to get Fryman to go along. He declined, Fryman says, because he had plans for another robbery that night.
Fryman, who is serving a life sentence for murder at Warren Correctional Institution, says prosecutors will point to his record and attack his credibility the same way they have desperately tried to discredit Robert E. Pottinger Jr.’s claim in last week’s Columbus Alive that he was with Brewer, Byrd and Woodall during the robbery at U-Tote-M convenience store about an hour after the robbery in which Tewksbury was killed.
Pottinger told Alive that Byrd was so drunk at that time he had passed out and did not leave their van at the U-Tote-M. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that Byrd’s identification as the knife wielder in the U-Tote-M robbery was “highly probative” evidence that he stabbed Tewksbury to death at the King Kwik store.
Fryman said he spent the morning and early afternoon of April 17, 1983, driving around the Northside area of Cincinnati with Brewer, Byrd and another man. Fryman said the four of them drove around “drinking, getting high and other good stuff” until early in the afternoon. “It doesn’t surprise me that [Pottinger says] Bird Dog [Byrd] was passed out, because he had had a fifth of Daniels before noon,” Fryman said.
“I was up front with John Brewer, who was begging me to be the driver for them that night,” Fryman said. “We went and he showed me the place they were going to rob.”
Fryman said he turned down Brewer and eventually dropped them off at Brewer’s house. “Brewer talked Woodall into being the driver later that day,” Fryman said. “The only reason Woodall was involved is because I turned them down.”
Fryman said it was clear that Brewer was the mastermind of the robberies. “He was the one giving the orders. He was the one who cased the place. He was the one who tried to get me to be the driver,” Fryman said. “He turned the radio up as I was driving so the two in the back couldn’t hear what he was telling me,” Fryman said. “He acted like the guys in the back were flunkies.”
Brewer was definitely not a flunky. Fryman said Brewer once had stabbed someone during a fight with the same eight- or nine-inch knife Brewer had with him the day Tewksbury was stabbed to death. In addition, Fryman said, Brewer bragged to him and many others when they were in prison together in Lucasville that he, not Byrd, had killed Tewksbury.
Fryman said that when he heard about the arrest of Brewer, Byrd and Woodall on the radio the next day, he went to Pottinger’s house, packed him up and drove Pottinger to Florida because he had heard that police were looking for a fourth suspect.
When Pottinger was told about Fyrman’s comments, he said: “He’s telling the truth.”
Columbus Alive broke the story concerning Pottinger’s role in the U-Tote-M robbery on August 30 in an article titled “The man in the plaid shirt?” The story documented evidence in police files linking Pottinger to both the King Kwik robbery, where Tewksbury was killed, and the U-Tote-M robbery. Pottinger, then 17 years old, confirmed to Alive in an interview that he had been jailed as a “murder suspect” in the Training Institute of Central Ohio, a juvenile facility.
The next day, at the request of Columbus Alive, Pottinger signed an affidavit notarized in Tennessee. On Tuesday, September 4, John Byrd’s sister, Kim Hamer, turned over a copy of the affidavit to Governor Taft’s office along with a tape of a conversation she had recorded with Pottinger.
On Thursday, September 6, Alive published a story on Pottinger’s affidavit and the new evidence establishing him as a fourth man and murder suspect in the Tewksbury case. As Alive hit the streets, two members of the Ohio Attorney General’s office and a law enforcement officer flew to Tennessee for what appeared to be an old-fashioned rousting and interrogation of Pottinger. The Attorney General’s office confirmed the trip to the Columbus Dispatch.
“I just got released from the TBI [Tennessee Bureau of Investigation] about five minutes ago,” Pottinger told Alive. “There were some people from the [Ohio] Attorney General’s office up there… They come and got me from work this morning.”
The focus of the Attorney General’s questioning concerned the affidavit. Pottinger said, “I told them it’s valid.”
Pottinger recounted his interrogation and exchange with an unidentified man from Ohio: “The man was standing there telling me, you know, that paper you signed doesn’t mean shit,” and Pottinger replied, “Yeah, you flew down here from Cincinnati, or from Columbus, to tell me that, didn’t ya… He couldn’t say nothing.”
“They asked me about the U-Tote-M. They asked me if Johnny was passed out, and I told them exactly this: Johnny Byrd was not in the U-Tote-M store… I was very clear.
“That’s the exact words: ‘Johnny Byrd was never in the U-Tote-M store, never,’” Pottinger explained. “They asked me how I knew and I told them I was in the van… and they was arrested a couple hours later. And I told them they let me out of the van.
“Dude, I’m positive, 100 percent without a doubt, John William Byrd Jr. was not in the U-Tote-M… I’m standing by the affidavit and, whatever happens, you know, I guess it’s time for me to pay the piper, huh?” Pottinger said, “I’m not going to fight them or nothing. I’m not going to argue with ’em. I’m gonna go. I even gave the guy my phone number, you know, my pager number. Page me, and I’ll turn myself in.”
When Brewer signed two affidavits stating that he did the stabbing at the King Kwik, the Attorney General’s office and Hamilton County prosecutors claimed Brewer had nothing to lose, despite the parole implications. Brewer is serving a life sentence for his role in the King Kwik robbery.
But the state has had a harder time explaining Pottinger’s affidavit, which Hamilton County Prosecutor Michael Allen dismissed as “nonsense.”
When asked why he was coming forward now, Pottinger said, “I think I’m doing everything I can do to help me clear my conscience… Of course I’m afraid. Of course I am, man, you know? I’m afraid I’m facing some years in prison again. I’ve gotten out, I’ve worked, I’ve not been in any trouble, I go to see my parole officer regularly… I have a nice girlfriend, I’ve had a job.”
“Dude, I take my girlfriend’s little boy to karate practice and stuff man, I take him to school and pick him up in the afternoons,” Pottinger continued. “Do you know how much I’m losing? I’m losing my whole life by putting this out there. I had to. I mean, I wouldn’t even be a man if I didn’t.”
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09/20/2001 by Martin Yant and Bob Fitrakis
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09/27/2001
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and a report that one of the terrorists trained on a crop-dusting plane, the media has increasingly turned its speculation of future horror to chemical and biological warfare.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote last Wednesday, September 19: “With a dusting of anthrax spores from a helicopter or a mist of nerve gas in a subway ventilation system, terrorists could carry out a stealthy chemical or biological strike as lethal as the World Trade Center suicide mission.”
Fortunately, in central Ohio, we have the Battelle Memorial Institute here to protect us.
On September 4, the New York Times reported that since 1979, Battelle has increased its employees involved in chemical and biological warfare research from 500 to 800 at its King Avenue and West Jefferson laboratories.
In order to keep us safe from “terrorist attacks,” Battelle is involved in manufacturing a more deadly strain of anthrax, the Times reported. As Battelle explained to the Columbus Dispatch, you have to develop the more deadly lethal strain so that a vaccine can be found. It’s termed “defensive” work.
The Times also reported that to keep us safe from terrorism, the Central Intelligence Agency once replicated a Soviet-era biological bomb to study how well it would disperse biological agents like anthrax under varying atmospheric conditions. The Times said two sets of tests were conducted at Battelle.
The United States is reported to have the largest inventory of biological and chemical agents in the world. All are officially for defensive purposes. Assisting Battelle in its “defensive” biological weapons program is Dr. Kenneth Alibek, described in a 1998 Dispatch article as a former “top official in a massive Soviet effort to develop biological weapons for possible use against American forces.”
The Dispatch reported that “Alibek was first Deputy Director Biopreparat, the civilian arm of the Soviet biological-weapons program.” He supervised 3,200 workers in over 40 facilities. Following World War II, various former Nazi scientists reportedly worked at Battelle as a byproduct of Operation Paper Clip, a Cold War operation to secure Hitler’s best and brightest before the Soviets snatched them.
The Russian government has charged that Battelle’s activity violates a 1972 global treaty banning secret research on biological weapons. The 1972 protocol specifically forbids nations from developing or acquiring weapons that spread disease, but allows work on vaccines and other “protective measures.” Since the CIA bomb was built and tested for purely “defensive” measures, the military denies it’s violating the treaty.
The Jefferson Township Fire Department has assured West Jefferson and central Ohio residents that everything is safe. Fire Lieutenant Timothy Stainer told the Dayton Daily News, “We have had training specific to anthrax.” The training drills occur four times a year.
Battelle’s website notes, “The United States Department of Defense openly acknowledges the capacity of both potential adversaries and terrorists to employ weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical and biological (CB) weapons… Battelle’s CB defense product line is organized to support these programs.”
I haven’t felt this reassured about my safety since Ronald Reagan named our nuclear missiles “Peacekeepers.” If Americans can’t tell the difference between freedom-loving defensive anthrax and evil terroristic bin Laden-type anthrax, then they ought to just get the hell out of central Ohio.
—Bob Fitrakis
with research by Marty Yant
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10/04/2001 by Bob Fitrakis
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NO 10/11/2001
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10/18/2001 by Bob Fitrakis and Martin Yant
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NO 10/25/2001
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11/01/2001
by Bob Fitrakis
The CIA’s famous word for unintended consequences—“blowback”—explains it all: bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban.
It’s a good thing Americans are notoriously ahistorical. Otherwise they might remember how the U.S. installed Pakistani military dictator General Zia ul-Haq in 1977. They might also remember President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski—wearing a bizarre turban that looked like it was borrowed from an Indian Sikh rather than an Afghan warrior—standing on the border of the Soviet Union and shouting to the Mujaheddin to “wage a jihad!” against the Communists. In the summer of 1979, Brzezinski advised Carter to sign a secret directive to support the fledgling Mujaheddin movement. That was six months before Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul.
In a series of articles and books, Brzezinski, a former Columbia University professor, analyzed how the multi-ethnic Soviet Union could be destroyed through inflaming the religious passions of 50 million to 60 million Central Asian Muslims.
The Mujaheddin took the message to heart. They’re now waging a jihad against us.
Soon after the anti-Soviet jihad began, Dan Rather, in more authentic headgear, broadcast live alongside what he called “Afghan freedom fighters…who were engaged in a deeply patriotic fight to the death for home and hearth.”
Rather made heroes of Afghan opium runners like Yunas Khalis, who fought to control Afghanistan’s poppy fields more than he fought the Soviets. Seven heroin labs near Khalis’ headquarters in Ribat helped fund the jihad. U.S. taxpayers kicked in too, through the construction of an irrigation system in the Helmand Valley, where 60 percent of Afghanistan’s opium grows.
The Reagan-Bush administration enthusiastically joined the jihad against the Soviets. The concomitant drugs and arms bazaar flourished in the northwest Pakistan town of Darra with America’s loyal allies, the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), regulating both the opium and arms trades to the Mujaheddin.
The U.S. government pressured China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to support the covert operation. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat remarked shortly before his assassination by the Mujaheddin network that “The U.S. contacted me, they told me, ‘Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghans the arms they need to fight.’” Sadat was the first famous casualty of the blowback.
The Saudi royal family, despite pressure, declined direct participation. Instead they sent Osama bin Laden—the son of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest citizens—to Afghanistan. Government records indicate the CIA’s covert action in creating the Mujaheddin and bin Laden’s terrorist apparatus cost $3.2 billion, the most expensive covert operation in the CIA’s history.
So lucrative was the opium and drug business in the Golden Crescent—where Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran meet—the off-shore accounts in Pakistan’s largest bank, Habib, overflowed. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), founded by Agha Hasan Abedi, pitched in to help with the money laundering and became notorious as the most corrupt bank in world history. BCCI now stands for the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International, after going belly-up in 1991 with a reported $20 billion missing.
Well there’s bound to be some wealth generated when, according to DEA documents, 40 heroin syndicates were operating in Pakistan in the mid-1980s through an estimated 200 heroin manufacturing facilities. In May 1984, Vice President George Bush traveled to Pakistan to confer with our dictator, General Zia. Bush the Elder, the former CIA director, handed the drug problem over to the CIA, despite its notorious history of involvement with cocaine traffickers in Central America and heroin trafficking in Central Asia. Bush granted the CIA primary responsibility for controlling drug informants and other “assets” in the Golden Crescent.
By 1989, the Soviets were in full retreat from Afghanistan while bin Laden and his Mujaheddin and Taliban allies were firmly in control of heroin traffic in Central Asia. Bin Laden’s biographer, Yossef Bodansky, envisioned BCCI as a “world bank for fundamentalists” before its collapse.
In 1992, the United States Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee issued a massive report on the BCCI scandal. If you want to understand where bin Laden’s money came from—though the media originally reported he inherited $300 million from his father, they’ve now correctly adjusted that to $20 million—you need to know of BCCI’s role in the world of guns and drugs. You might want to start with Section 13 of the Senate report, titled “BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence.”
Caught up in the scandal were Jimmy Carter’s ethically challenged former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and other infamous individuals. The Senate’s BCCI report recommended further investigation was needed into “international criminal financier Mark Rich.” Remember Rich—the guy pardoned by Bill Clinton? The report states, “Rich’s commodities firms were used by BCCI in connection with BCCI’s involve[ment] in U.S. guaranteed programs through the Department of Agriculture.”
Cincinnati’s Charles Keating was included in two of the Senate committee’s 20 recommendations for further investigation. The report noted, “The financial dealings of BCCI directors with Charles Keating and several Keating affiliates and front-companies, including the possibility that BCCI-related entities may have laundered funds for Keating to move them outside the United States.”
BCCI funds also allegedly financed the controversial WTI incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, with the Swiss firm Von Roll. Four of Von Roll’s top officials were convicted for selling material for the Iraqi “Supergun.” Government documents also link WTI to Mafia families in the U.S. and the incinerator was involved in a political money-laundering scandal connected to Governor George Voinovich’s administration.
The Times of London reported on September 20 that Deloitte and Touche, the accounting firm, was being dragged into the hunt for Osama bin Laden’s terror network. The Times reported that BCCI was used to launder terrorist money and as the chief depository for CIA covert funds paid to bin Laden during the Afghan war with the Soviets.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also noted that day, “Before it [BCCI] was shut down in 1991, it was used to fund the Mujaheddin, then fighting the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. The money came from U.S. and Saudi intelligence.”
It’s blowback time indeed.
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NO 11/08/2001
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11/15/2001 by Bob Fitrakis and Martin Yant
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11/29/2001 by Bob Fitrakis
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12/06/2001
FEATURED ARTICLE
Stormy Weather
The government’s top-secret efforts to control Mother Nature
by Bob Fitrakis and Fritz Chess
With the grounding of virtually all civilian air flights in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the bizarre speculation about what’s happening in North American air space heightened. Columbus Alive received numerous citizen reports concerning airplanes “spraying” or leaving behind mysterious “chemtrails” or “contrail grids” in the sky. Some feared we were under biochemical attack while others postulated we were being inoculated against anthrax or some other biochemical hazard.
During a flight to Phoenix in early October, a Columbus Alive reporter noted that air traffic was like a nest of hornets over southwest Ohio and Indiana, with jets spraying everywhere. One plane appeared to be a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, a refueling plane.
What’s the difference between a “chemtrail” and a normal contrail (or vapor trail), the wisps of condensation you expect to see in a jet’s wake? Typically contrails can only form at temperatures below negative-76 degrees Fahrenheit and at humidity levels of 70 percent or more at high altitudes, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Thomas Schlattes. Even in most ideal conditions, a jet contrail lasts no more than 30 minutes.
So what are the big, bilious trails that seem to hang indefinitely and slowly feather out and appear to turn into cirrus clouds? Or the contrails seemingly purposely splayed over cities in geometrically precise grid patterns? These are “chemtrails,” and the mystery of their source and purpose has been fueling increasing speculation among government skeptics and on watchdog websites like chemtrailcentral.com, chemtrail.com and carnicom.com.
For the past decade, the official government response to inquiries about the jet contrails appearing across the continent is to attribute the phenomenon to increased commercial air traffic. In 1997, the Christian Science Monitor reported the government’s claim that the jet contrails were actually causing clouds to form.
Yet, in the month after the attack on the World Trade Center, there was very little commercial airline traffic and virtually no private civilian air flights. Still, white jets billowing lingering plumes frequently appeared in the skies over Columbus. An Alive reporter, using high-quality binoculars, could see that some of the white planes had orange markings. In addition to Stratotankers, KC-10 Extenders, another refueling plane, appeared to be used for spraying.
There’s nothing new about these sightings. It may seem to be the stuff of X-Files-style paranoia or grist for conspiracy theorists (and skeptics like Jay Reynolds, writing at goodsky.homestead.com, have made thorough attempts to debunk the theories). But as chemtrail sightings become more common, mainstream scientists (and the mainstream press) are taking note. One scientist familiar with chemtrail experiments even agreed to speak with Columbus Alive (though he refused to allow his name to be used), saying that public disclosure of the experiments is inevitable and maybe imminent.
The Canadian Ottawa Citizen reported a “fervor over chemtrails” on May 16: “What one sees here reflects sightings across North America.” The Citizen noted, “West Quebec Post publisher Fred Ryan reports that his readers have been photographing and comparing them [pictures of chemtrails], and such manifestations are listed on the web.”
“Ground fallout [from the chemtrails] analyzed in the United States contained carcinogens and bacteria. Coincidentally in the past decade, most jet fuel was re-engineered to reduce fire hazards by adding a long-banned pesticide, which was reportedly also found in gel samples from chemtrails. Also found were toxic micro-fibers, much finer than asbestos,” the Citizen wrote.
Chemtrail sightings have been reported in 14 NATO nations. Investigative reporter William Thomas notes that “Croatian chemtrails began the day after that country joined NATO.”
Which begs one simple question: Why?
Explanations range from chemtrails’ use in military communications applications to scientific experiments designed to control the weather, thwarting global warming or relieving droughts.
A scientist working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, who insisted on anonymity, told Columbus Alive that two different secret projects have been conducted. One involved cloud creation experiments to lessen the effect of global warming. The other involved radiation reflection off clouds in conjunction with the military’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska.
The scientist claims that the two most common substances being sprayed into chemtrails are aluminum oxide and barium stearate. When you see planes flying back and forth marking parallel lines, X-patterns and grids in a clear sky, that’s aluminum oxide, according to the scientist. The goal is to create an artificial sunscreen to reflect solar radiation back into space to alleviate global warming.
In some cases, barium may be sprayed in a similar manner for the purpose of “high-tech 3-D radar imaging. The barium can be used for a ‘wire’ to shoot an electromagnetic beam through to take 3-D images of the ground far over the horizon,” according to the scientist.
Thomas, writing in the November-December 2001 issue of NEXUS New Times magazine, essentially confirmed this assessment of the activities at the Dayton air base. “The barium spread in exercises conducted out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base acts as an electrolyte, enhancing conductivity of radar and radio waves,” Thomas reported. “Wright-Pat has also long been deeply engaged in HAARP’s electromagnetic warfare program.”
Ken Caldeira, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs and one of the country’s leading experts on weather modification, conducted the original computer modeling for the use of aluminum oxide to fight global warming. He told Columbus Alive, “We originally did this study to show that this program [using massive spraying for weather modification] shouldn’t be done,” due to negative health effects. Caldeira said there are persistent rumors that the Bush administration will announce geo-engineering weather modification projects this spring. Caldeira sees this as “political suicide.”
Patenting Mother Nature
The amount of information available on weather modification and defense applications surrounding the HAARP project proves that chemtrails aren’t so secret after all. Public documents have trickled out of government offices and committees for the last 50 years. And the most valuable cache of data about weather-control efforts is freely available from a very reliable source: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Throughout the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union actively investigated the military use of weather modification. In 1958, Captain Howard T. Orville served as the White House’s chief advisor on weather modification. He publicly admitted that the military was studying “ways to manipulate the charges of the earth and sky and so affect the weather through electronic beams to ionize and de-ionize the atmosphere.”
Professor Gordon J.F. MacDonald, serving on the President’s Science Advisory Committee in 1966, frequently published papers on the military use of weather modification. In the book Unless Peace Comes, MacDonald titled a chapter “How To Wreck The Environment.” He described the military applications of weather modification including climate change, melting the polar ice caps, techniques for depleting the ozone layer over the enemy, engineering earthquakes, manipulating ocean waves and using the earth’s energy fields for brain wave manipulation.
“The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy,” MacDonald commented.
In the early 1970s, the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Oceans and International Environment held investigative hearings on the military’s research into weather and climate modification. The committee’s findings were shocking at the time, including detailed plans for creating tidal waves through the coordinated use of nuclear weapons.
A 1977 United Nations treaty, The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of the Environmental Modification Techniques, prohibited “the use of techniques that would have widespread, long-lasting or severe effects through deliberate manipulation of natural processes and cause such phenomena as earthquakes, tidal waves and changes in climate and weather patterns.”
The revival of the Cold War during the Reagan years produced a slew of new inventions in the area of weather modification. Presumably to cool off the earth, an August 1982 patent, number 4347284, outlined plans to produce a “White covered sheet material capable of reflecting ultraviolet rays” from the sun.
Numerous other patents attempted to perfect “aerial spraying of liquids,” like patent number 4412654, registered in November 1983: “A laminar microjet atomizer and method of aerial spraying involved the use of a streamlined body having a slot in the trailing edge thereof to afford a quiescent zone within the [airplane] wing and into which liquid for spraying is introduced.”
Not to be outdone, a patent was filed in July 1986 detailing a “Liquid propane generator for cloud-seeding apparatus.” The abstract reads: “Apparatus is provided for release of liquid propane from the holding chamber of a cloud-seeding rocket.” A new and improved “liquid atomizing apparatus for aerial spraying” was patented in August 1990. “The generator is driven from a power take-off from the engine of the spraying aircraft, a drive assembly includes a device for controlling the speed of the generator relative to speed of the engine,” reads patent number 4948050.
The breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s ushered in brave new opportunities in weather modification. The New York Times reported on September 24, 1992, that a Russian company was openly selling electronic equipment to manipulate the weather in a specific area. The Times noted that certain Russian farmers used the weather-control technology to alter the climate for better crop yields.
A little over a month later, the Wall Street Journal reported that Russian company Elate Intelligence Technologies Inc. was selling weather-control equipment using the slogan “Weather made to order.” The Journal quoted Igor Pirogoff as saying that Hurricane Andrew, which did an estimated $17 billion in damage, could have been turned “into a wimpy little squall” by his company.
South Africa’s Water Resource Commission admitted to being involved in the actual testing of “hygroscopic seeding particles from a seeding flare” in an October 1994 patent: “In a confidential technical trial which was conducted on a small isolated cloud formation above the Nelspriut area in the Transvaal province of the Republic of South Africa, two flares were ignited electrically from inside the aircraft…to produce rain.”
Russia’s open selling of former Soviet military weather modification devices often made for interesting news stories. “Malaysia to battle smog with cyclones” is a headline in the November 13, 1997, Wall Street Journal. “The plan calls for the use of new Russian technology to create cyclones—the giant storms also known as typhoons and hurricanes—to cause torrential rains washing the smoke out of the air,” the Journal reported.
By 1997, the great global reinsurance firms—the companies that insure the insurers, like the Swiss Reinsurance Company and Lloyd’s of London—were complaining publicly of global warming and the added risk of climate-related insurance losses. Beating the drum in the U.S. for weather-modification technology to combat global warming was none other than the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller. His public interest in the issue coincided with the December 1997 Kyoto Conference on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
In April this year, the New York Times described Teller as director emeritus of the Livermore Weapons Laboratory and “an ardent advocate of the Reagan administration’s Star Wars anti-missile plan and, more recently, has promoted the idea of manipulating the earth’s atmosphere to counteract global warming.”
The U.S. Air Force admitted to CNN in July that it had broken up a storm over the Atlantic using products made by a company called Dyn-O-Mat. The company’s website, dynomat.com, lists “environmental absorbent products” such as Dyn-O-Drought and Dyn-O-Storm.
As recently as November 13, another patent was filed outlining a “method of modifying weather.” The abstract reads: “The polymer is dispersed into the cloud and the wind of the storm agitates the mixture causing the polymer to absorb the rain. This reaction forms a gelatinous substance which precipitate to the surface below. Thus, diminishing the cloud’s ability to rain.”
Sunbury resident Dan King remembers a stormy day in July when he was driving on a newly resurfaced section of I-71 and “the rainwater looked like dish soap water on the highway. I thought it was just from the resurfacing,” he said, “but when I got out in the country I saw the same thing. Piles of suds at the side of the road.”
The scientist who works at Wright-Patterson told Alive that barium stearate is basically a soap bonded to a metal and could have produced the soapy rain.
It’s impossible to know which chemicals are being sprayed or for what reason since, according to the government, chemtrails don’t exist. But, increasingly, government skeptics and other watchdogs are demanding to know if chemtrail spraying poses any health risks.
In his NEXUS New Times article, William Thomas wrote, “Chemtrails can cause drought by soaking up all available moisture, and drooping chemical curtains fall through vast colonies of UV-mutated bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the upper atmosphere. Could these malevolent micro-organisms be piggy-backing on the plumes?”
Thomas suggests that the spraying following September 11 has nothing to do with a deliberate biological attack or the inoculation of the American public. Rather, it’s simply an ongoing attempt by humans to fool with Mother Nature.
12/06/2001
Request denied
A federal magistrate recommends that John Byrd be sent back to Death Row, despite the lack of evidence against him
by Bob Fitrakis and Martin Yant
Federal Magistrate Michael R. Merz’s 169-page Report and Recommendations regarding John W. Byrd Jr.’s claim of actual innocence was released last Friday, following an unprecedented evidentiary hearing ordered by a federal appeals court. Merz concluded that Byrd “has not proven to the level of clear and convincing evidence that he is actually innocent of the principal offender death specification of which he was convicted. Therefore his request to file a second federal habeas corpus petition should be denied.”
Byrd—who was convicted of the 1983 murder of Cincinnati convenience store clerk Monte Tewksbury—is running out of possible ways to leave Death Row alive. “I’m probably screwed, but I’m going to keep fighting to the end,” Byrd said during a telephone interview after Merz’s opinion was released.
Byrd said he wasn’t surprised by Merz’s opinion. “Merz made it clear from the very beginning that he didn’t view our case favorably,” Byrd said. “He orchestrated the whole hearing to come out the way it did.”
Merz may not believe there is “clear and convincing evidence” of Byrd’s innocence, but there’s never been any physical evidence of Byrd’s guilt. He was convicted on the testimony of violent felon and jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead, who was freed after an alleged deal with the prosecutors soon after Byrd’s trial. At Byrd’s hearing, jail inmate after jail inmate testified that Armstead told them he deliberately set Byrd up. This testimony was routinely dismissed by Merz in his report.
Merz got upset that the Ohio Public Defender’s office failed to turn over three repetitious affidavits signed by John Brewer (in all the affidavits, two of which were properly turned over, Brewer repeatedly claimed that he, not Byrd, stabbed Tewksbury), but the magistrate accepts without question the prosecution’s failure to turn over far more important documents.
The most important missing document, Byrd said, was the transcript of Armstead’s grand jury testimony, which the defense believed would show Armstead was acting as an agent of the state (something he denied at trial). Merz noted, “If permitted to file his new petition, Byrd intends to argue that the informers were planted by the prosecutors as forbidden in Messiah v. United States.” Merz accepted the Hamilton County prosecutors’ explanation that the missing documents were either destroyed, lost or never existed in the first place.
“I’ve been told by someone in the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office, who is disgusted with what is going on there, that the missing Armstead transcript was just recently destroyed,” Byrd claimed.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Daniel Breyer conceded under oath that he brought Armstead and three other snitches from the jail to his office. Merz accepts Breyer’s claim that Armstead, who was facing up to 15 years in prison on a parole revocation, was the only snitch who didn’t ask for a deal. The prosecutor said he independently acted as a good Samaritan when, after Armstead’s testimony, Breyer quickly wrote a letter to the parole board which helped free Armstead.
Merz also cited Breyer’s testimony as proof that Byrd stabbed Tewksbury. Breyer claims that Byrd’s original trial attorney told the prosecutor he didn’t want to put Byrd on the stand because the defendant might lie. The defense attorney says that conversation never took place. But Merz cites William Breyer’s appellate briefs as evidence that Daniel Breyer is telling the truth. (William Breyer, who is handling the Byrd appeals for Hamilton County, is Daniel Breyer’s brother.)
Merz’s methodology is best displayed on page 70 of the report in the matter of the Pulsar watch. Allegedly, Byrd and his accomplices took a Pulsar watch from Tewksbury. But no Pulsar watch was produced by the prosecution at Byrd’s original trial, nor has the prosecution produced an original copy of a police logbook showing Byrd wore such a watch.
Merz accepts without question the last-minute recollection of a deputy sheriff that Byrd was wearing a Pulsar watch. The prosecution didn’t produce the Pulsar watch because it was “lost.” That didn’t stop Merz from writing in his opinion: “A Pulsar watch was taken from Byrd when he was booked into the jail and there is no testimony that Byrd usually wore such a watch.”
Merz dismissed the testimony of defense witness Bobby Pottinger, who signed an affidavit claiming that Byrd was not the knife-wielder at a second robbery later the night of Tewksbury’s murder. The Ohio Supreme Court has deemed the circumstantial evidence suggesting that Byrd was the knife-wielder as “highly probative” and has used it to uphold his death sentence.
Pottinger’s story, Merz said, “is not in the slightest bit credible,” in part because Pottinger was drinking and had sex with Byrd’s sister, Kim Hamer, and another woman the night before he signed an affidavit this summer.
According to the Associated Press, Pottinger acknowledged that he signed the affidavits shortly after he had sex with Hamer and another woman but was not promised sex in exchange for signing the documents.
More important, Pottinger was interviewed by Columbus Alive on August 28—before Hamer even talked to him—and Pottinger admitted to the same information later sworn to in the affidavit.
Byrd said the case against him has been corrupted “from Governor [Bob] Taft on down, because they want me to die. Taft’s office was in almost constant contact with the assistant attorney generals handling the hearing.”
WAR CORRESPONDENCE
11/20/2001
“Owning the weather”
More documents prove the Pentagon’s interest in manipulating Mother Nature
by Bob Fitrakis
Humans have long sought to control the weather. Early people learned how to make fire and modify their micro-environments; rain dances and other rituals to alleviate droughts are part of our folklore. So Columbus Alive’s December 6 cover story reporting that the government is engaged in secret experiments to control the weather should come as no surprise after a long history of “cloud seeding,” “atom splitting” and cloning revelations.
Many readers asked me for more information on chemtrails and weather modification. The first thing to realize is that this technology is an orphan of the Cold War. As the U.S. and former Soviet Union spent trillions of dollars on their militaries, their commitment to mutually assured destruction led to extensive experimentation with the use of weather as a weapon. In 1977, the Saturday Review cited a CIA report hinting that the U.S. government already had the power to massively manipulate the weather for war purposes.
As the Soviet Union disintegrated, a 1993 Isvestia article suggested the U.S. might want to partner with the Russians in peddling their top-secret technology to the world. Oleg Klugin, a high-ranking KGB officer, bragged of his involvement in geophysical weapons research to a London newspaper. The grid patterns of jet chemtrails now spotted throughout the Western world are likely the application of these technologies to new military and civilian uses.
The military is not attempting to hide its long-term goals. “Weather is a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” is a white paper that can be found on a Pentagon-sponsored website. The paper’s abstract reads: “In 2025, U.S. aerospace forces can ‘own the weather’ by capitalizing on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies towards fighting applications. Such a capability offers the war fighters tools to shape the battle space in ways never before possible… In the U.S., weather modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications.”
Wired magazine wrote about the paper and extensively quoted physicist Bernard Eastlund in its January 2000 article “Activate Cloud Shield! Zap a Twister!” The article detailed the military’s plan for “made-to-order thunderstorms” and “lightning strikes on demand.”
Eastlund managed programs for Controlled Thermal Nuclear Research for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1966 to 1974, and he was a key researcher in the 1980s’ Strategic Space Initiative (aka Star Wars). Since 1996, Eastlund served as CEO and president of Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation. The company boasts on its website, www.eastlundscience.com, that it specializes in “weather modification” and “tornado modification” among other high-tech services.
Eastlund considers the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska a smaller version of what he envisions for weather modification. In response to Michael Theroux of Borderland Sciences—who asked Eastlund whether the HAARP station could affect the weather—Eastlund replied: “Significant experiments could be performed… The HAARP antenna as it is now configured modulates the auroral electrojet to induce ELF waves and thus could have an effect on the zonal winds.”
At the Space 2000 Conference and Exposition on Engineering, Construction, Operations and Business in Space, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Eastlund outlined his plan for zapping tornados with an electromagnetic radiation beam from the proposed Thunderstorm Solar Powered Satellite he’s developing with the help of the European Space Agency and Jenkins Enterprises.
U.S. patent number 6315213, filed on November 13, is described as a method of modifying weather and should concern the public. The scientist from Wright Patterson Air Force Base who’s been talking to Columbus Alive acknowledges that planes are spraying barium salt, polymer fibers, aluminum oxide and other chemicals in the atmosphere to both modify the weather and for military communications purposes. The patent abstract specifically states: “The polymer is dispersed into the cloud and the wind of the storm agitates the mixture causing the polymer to absorb the rain. This reaction forms a gelatinous substance which precipitate to the surface below. Thus, diminishing the cloud’s ability to rain.”
Answering the age-old question, Who’ll stop the rain?: Apparently our government and a few of their closest friends in the military industrial-complex. The emergence of Edward Teller promoting this startling technology is more than scary. (Teller was the father of the H-Bomb and grand promoter of Readi Kilowatt, our perky little radiation friend from the ’50s; one of his bright ideas from the ’50s was to create harbors by nuking our own coastline.) The April 24 New York Times reported that Teller “has promoted the idea of manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere to counteract global warming.” The computer simulations on the use of aluminum oxide to counter global warming come from the Lawrence Livermore Weapons Laboratory, where Teller serves as director emeritus.
There should be little doubt that this would be a priority for the government—or for for-profit military contractors. The Columbus Dispatch reported this week that 2001 might be the second-hottest year on record (1998 holds the record as the hottest year); the eight hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. But why would the government conduct anti-global warming experiments in secret?
Investigative reporter William Thomas holds that there’s a link between the recent increase in asthma, allergies and upper respiratory ailments and the chemtrail spraying. Sound crazy? Remember, it sounded absurd when reports first came out that the government had conducted radioactivity experiments on U.S. citizens and released radiation from nuclear plants to test the effect on civilian populations. It sounded bizarre when news first filtered out that the government was engaged in the MK-Ultra mind-control experiments using LSD. The CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency admit they were responsible for many of the UFO sightings in the 1950s in order the explain away experimental military technology.
From public documents to mainstream news accounts, the record is filled with reports of weather-modifying technology left over from the Cold War. Now we have a right to know what, if anything, the government plans to do with it.
NEWS BRIEF
12/27/2001
Execution showdown
One well-known convict escapes Death Row while another awaits the electric chair
by Bob Fitrakis and Martin Yant
A week before Christmas, the anti-death penalty movement received a huge present when a federal judge threw out the death penalty in a controversial case from the early 1980s; an affidavit signed by another man claimed he did the killing. The sentence of the Death Row inmate was commuted to life in prison.
No, we’re not talking about Ohio’s John W. Byrd Jr., but the internationally known Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The startling contrast between U.S. District Judge William Yohn’s decision to remove Abu-Jamal from Death Row and federal Magistrate Michael R. Merz’s bizarre opinion that Byrd’s execution should proceed embodies everything that’s wrong with the death penalty in the United States.
Abu-Jamal admitted being at the scene of the Philadelphia murder with a pistol; Hamilton County prosecutors admitted they had no murder weapon and no physical evidence tying Byrd to the Cincinnati convenience store murder scene.
In Abu-Jamal’s case, his then-lawyers did not believe the confession of the other man; while in Byrd’s case, his lawyers believed adamantly that John Brewer, not Byrd, was the killer. After all, the prosecutors and public defenders agreed that Brewer’s footprint was on the store counter and the contents of the cash register were in his pocket. And Brewer confessed to the killing in no fewer than five affidavits dating back to the mid-’80s. Still, the vagaries of justice hold Abu-Jamal as a winner in the Death Row lottery, and Byrd’s still praying for the justice jackpot.
In reality there were no winners and a lot of losers at Merz’s hearing on Byrd’s claim of actual innocence, a dispassionate review of Merz’s report shows. It’s just the kind of report you’d expect from a Merz—Fred and Ethel Merz, that is.
The biggest loser of all in the case, the report makes clear, was Merz himself. The magistrate showed a clear bias against Byrd and the anti-death penalty contingent that opposes Byrd’s execution. On page 58 of the report, Merz wrote: “Yesterday it was brought to my attention that a person claiming to be a press representative was in the courtroom, purporting to represent the Columbus Free Press. The only thing I could find about the Columbus Free Press on the web was something on a Romanian website this morning. When challenged by the marshal for press credentials, she could not produce press credentials.”
Merz mentions in a footnote that the person in question, Ida Strong, later “faxed the marshal what purported to be Columbus Free Press credentials signed on behalf of that paper by Bob Fitrakis, a person heavily involved in covering this case for Columbus Alive,” as if this was some kind of sin.
Of course, Strong was covering the trial for the Free Press, a newspaper published since 1970 and one of the first alternative papers to establish a website in 1996. A Google search for “Columbus Free Press” turned up 1,190 hits. The very first hit stated, “The Columbus Free Press is a progressive newspaper and website devoted to reporting on social justice issues.” The level of Merz’s Internet research skills are on par with his legal analysis. Romania, indeed.
Based on these foolish, off-the-record allegations and erroneous-to-the-point-of-absurdity web searches, Merz stated that Strong might be cited for contempt of court for unspecified reasons. Merz went on to state, “Several courtroom personnel observed her visibly signaling to Mr. Hall [a witness] when he was on the stand before she was removed from the jury box.” Merz also stated that Dan Cahill, a listed Byrd witness, probably would not be permitted to testify because he was seen having lunch with Strong.
Strong sent the Free Press reports from the first two days of the trial before she was threatened with contempt of court. She wrote: “During the hearing, Roger Hall was called as a witness. He was one of the prisoners who I campaigned for his release from the supermax [prison] months before. Roger must have recognized me from one of my pictures, which had appeared either in a newsletter or on the news. After testifying…he looked over at me and held his hand up… I in return held my hand up in a show of acknowledgement to him. That’s all I did was acknowledge Roger Hall.”
Cahill claims that Alan Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch talked to him for over a half hour and the judge didn’t threaten Johnson with contempt. Merz’s approach to the First Amendment appears as misguided as his handling of death penalty cases.
The Ohio Public Defender’s office also came off poorly—and not just because of the last-minute surfacing of three additional affidavits signed by Brewer, who claims he committed the 1983 murder for which Byrd was sentenced to die.
Merz noted that the public defenders made a major argument out of Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor William Breyer’s statement that jailhouse snitch Ronald Armstead had testified before the grand jury even though a transcript of his testimony could not be located. “Despite the inflated rhetoric” about compelling Breyer to testify, Merz noted, Byrd’s attorney never called him to the stand.
That seemed typical of the public defenders’ mishandling of Byrd’s case over the years, as Merz demonstrated with other examples. The public defenders also seemed to have done a bad job preparing their witnesses. Brewer, by far the most crucial, clearly irritated Merz with his arrogant demeanor as a result. Although what actual influence the public defenders had over Brewer, linked in government documents to the leadership of the racist Aryan Brotherhood, is another issue.
The assistant state attorney generals performed no better, as they diverted attention from the lack of evidence of Byrd’s guilt by creating a sideshow over the public defenders’ gaffes.
Still, as we celebrate the holidays, there are some small wins for anti-death penalty advocates in Ohio. On December 12, 50 central Ohio ministers and religious leaders called for a moratorium on capital punishment at an Interfaith Coalition to Stop Executions press conference. Seven days later, Cincinnati City Council, by a 7-2 vote, passed a resolution calling for a death penalty moratorium. While the resolution isn’t legally binding, it at least sends a strong pro-justice signal from Ohio’s most death penalty-happy county.
A rally opposing Byrd’s execution is slated for high noon on January 7 at Cincinnati’s Fountain Square. The best way to start off the new year is with a showdown on the death penalty in Ohio.
invludes jan 2001 article wexner/epstein that refernced uk newspaper...
2002
NO 01/03/2002
01/10/2002
FEATURED ARTICLE
Tobacco Row
Ohio leads the nation in 18- to 24-year-old tobacco users, and the Buckeye State’s two million adult smokers put us at number three in the country. Tobacco costs Ohioans $3.4 billion a year in related medical expenses
A $10 billion settlement from Big Tobacco was supposed to help control the health crisis, by funding smoking prevention and cessation programs. But the budget-strapped Statehouse and Governor Taft couldn’t keep their hands out of the anti-tobacco kitty, burning Ohio’s health advocates
by Bob Fitrakis
In this new year, more than 65,000 Ohio children will become tobacco addicts. More than a third of them will die premature deaths.
Back in 1998, it seemed like hope was on the horizon for those who want to reverse this deadly health crisis. Thanks to Ohio’s $10 billion out-of-court settlement with the big tobacco companies, lots of money would be available for smoking prevention and cessation programs.
Anti-tobacco ads begin airing this month, for instance, highlighting the hazards of smoking on unborn babies and those exposed to second-hand smoke. The public service announcements will run as part of a $50 million, four-year anti-tobacco campaign financed by the settlement.
Ohio’s Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation (TUPAC) board also kicked off the first week of the new year by hiring Michael J. Renner, former chief counsel to Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery, to serve as its executive director. Renner is intimately familiar with the politics of tobacco; he was Ohio’s lead attorney in the 46-state lawsuit against U.S. tobacco producers. TUPAC board member Dr. Rob Crane touts Renner as a “passionate anti-tobacco advocate.”
But a political row is smoldering within the state’s anti-tobacco movement. With $10 billion at stake—a too-tempting pile of cash considering the Statehouse’s budget deficit—perhaps it’s no surprise that those who want to curb smoking in Ohio are feeling burned by legislators and the governor. Crane told Columbus Alive that Renner is assuming the foundation’s directorship at a time when the state legislature just “broke their promise to Ohio’s kids and addicted smokers.”
In November 2001, the Ohio legislature raided the tobacco use prevention fund. House Bill 405 “deferred” $240 million dollars earmarked for TUPAC under the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, the lawsuit settlement between the state and the tobacco companies.
While the cash grab comes at a time when the Statehouse can’t balance its budget, critics also charge that the raiding of smoking prevention money marks the insidious return of the Big Tobacco lobby in Ohio. During litigation between the state and the tobacco industry, the Attorney General’s office obtained a list of 32 Ohio tobacco lobbyists working to keep tobacco revenues high. Technically, lobbying on behalf of tobacco use is now banned under the Agreement.
In 1999, the governor and the legislature agreed on a law that established TUPAC and endowed it with 10 percent of the monies coming directly from the Agreement. The creation of TUPAC as a billion-dollar foundation in February 2000 was hailed as a victory for the Ohio State Medical Association and more than 150 statewide healthcare organizations. The focus of TUPAC is clear: preventing teens from smoking and aiding adults in quitting the use of tobacco.
Public officials generally agreed that there was a need for tobacco use prevention in Ohio when Attorney General Montgomery joined the lawsuit in May 1997. Ohio signed the Agreement in November of the next year and it was thought to be a good deal—the $10 billion dollars spread over 25 years, averaging an estimated $365 million per year, was the fourth highest of the states signing the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
A study by Tobacco-Free Ohio in 2000 noted that 41 percent of Ohio school students reported smoking cigarettes during the previous month. A 1994 study estimated that Ohio’s kids illegally purchased $21 million worth of cigarettes in a year.
While the illegal activities of Ohio schoolchildren were a shock to some, the statistics on the legal use of tobacco by Ohio’s adults was perhaps more staggering. Ohio had some two million adult smokers, ranking it percentage-wise third in the nation, trailing only Kentucky and Nevada. Almost 20,000 Ohioans are dying every year from tobacco-related diseases, according to Tobacco-Free Ohio. Crane (who’s the cousin of Alive publisher Sally Crane) says that the current tobacco-related medical costs are $3.4 billion a year, with $600 million coming directly out of taxpayers’ pockets in Medicaid payments.
Other states have shown startling success with tobacco prevention and control programs. California launched a very successful $100 million-a-year prevention campaign sponsored by a 25-cents-per-pack state sales tax on cigarettes in 1989; adult smoking declined by 32 percent there. Teen smoking is down 24 percent in Florida and down 10 percent in Mississippi because of similar programs funded by the Settlement Agreement, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Dr. Scott Frank, public health director at Case Western Reserve University, told the Plain Dealer, “The lack of progressive beliefs in tobacco-control policies is a major contributor to the high smoking rates in Ohio… The other states are five years ahead of us.”
Crane points out that Toledo is the top per-capita consumer of tobacco in the country, and Cleveland is third in the country. Ohio ranks first in the country among 18- to 24-year-old tobacco users.
So the decision by the Ohio legislature to tap $240 million from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement and apply it to the state’s projected $1.5 billion budget shortfall could cost the state far more in the long run.
What went wrong in Ohio?
The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement offered the state the resources to directly fight tobacco addiction. But the 150 member organizations of the Coalition for a Healthier Ohio now see their vision of a less-smoky Buckeye State foundering on the shoals of the massive budget deficit.
The Coalition’s original proposal was to set aside a third of the $10 billion tobacco settlement for tobacco use prevention and control. The Columbus Dispatch editorial board championed the prevention program in hard-hitting editorials like “Protect Kids with Tobacco Cash.” The editors urged, “Let Ohio give such a plan a chance and maybe we can prevent some addictions and, consequently, save some lives.”
The Coalition offered “A Blueprint for a Tobacco-Free Ohio,” a detailed 50-page policy and planning document. Using the “Blueprint” as their starting point, the Coalition engaged in a heated political struggle to carve out an endowment dedicated to tobacco prevention in Ohio. That vision eventually became the 20-member Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation board.
The dreams of a healthier Ohio were not shared by Governor Bob Taft. Politically plagued by the Ohio Supreme Court’s DeRolf decision, which declared Ohio’s public school funding system unconstitutional—and with the usual Republican urge to give away any surplus in the form of a “tax cut” coupled with an unwillingness to ever raise taxes—Taft insisted that half of the Settlement Agreement money go toward upgrading public schools facilities. Thus, the governor’s standing rule will allow Ohio’s nation-leading schoolchildren smokers to have better buildings to sneak out of when catching a quick cigarette.
Taft appointed a 15-member Tobacco Settlement Task Force in the spring of 1999. The Task Force gruelingly crafted a 25-year spending plan with half the money going to the schools. Attorney General Montgomery supported the plan. As part of a painstaking political compromise, roughly a third of each of the first seven yearly installments would go to endow TUPAC.
The Ohio legislature approved a version of the Task Force’s work as Senate Bill 192. Five other trust funds were created with the remainder of the settlement money: Public Health Priorities, Biomedical Research and Technology Transfer, Educational Technology, Law Enforcement Improvements and Southern Ohio Agricultural and Community Development.
Only the school facilities money survived the 25-year Settlement Agreement period. Conservative opponents cut the tobacco use prevention and control money back to 13 years, but left in the seven-year “frontloading” of TUPAC as a spending formula “plan.” The legislation designated that tobacco use prevention and control money would first be placed in a trust fund and later into TUPAC’s foundation endowment fund.
The legislature also sent a stern warning about the limited future of the state’s tobacco use prevention efforts, according to a TUPAC document titled “Ohio’s Approach to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement Monies and Tobacco Control”: “The legislation strongly suggests that the board not look towards any further state funding for the Foundation. Rather the board is to treat the designated funds as an endowment, with project funding to come from the fund’s earnings.”
Thus, like the state retirement funds, TUPAC was to make safe investments of the funds and cautiously use the earnings to finance its ambitious prevention programs.
The structure of TUPAC as legislated in Senate Bill 192 documents a deliberate attempt to keep the money safe from Ohio politics and tobacco lobbyists. “This [structure] moves decisions away from the scramble of the biennial state budget appropriations process undertaken in odd years. The next review of the plan will be in 2002. The TUPAC fund would therefore have to survive reviews in 2002, 2004 and 2006 to receive the vast bulk of its endowment—which with even conservatively adjusted estimates should approach $1 billion,” a TUPAC document states.
“After appropriation,” the document continues, “the money exists in a semi-private foundation which, barring very serious legislative redirection, would be reasonably insulated from the powerful, political influence of tobacco interests.”
But something went wrong. As Dr. Crane complained in a Business First article last month, “The Ohio legislature did what even the most brazen of tobacco lobbyists would hardly dare to suggest: They passed legislation cutting off future funding for youth tobacco prevention in order to balance the state budget. They did this despite the fact that prevention monies come directly from the Master Settlement Agreement funded by the tobacco companies.”
Crane’s comments stood in stark contrast to those written a little more than a year earlier in a document he prepared for the American Medical Association: “Further good news is that other states like California and Massachusetts [with more than a 20 percent adult smoking decline] already have years of experience with well-funded comprehensive tobacco-control programs. Their experience has already shown what works and what does not. It will be the job of the TUPAC board to carefully apply those lessons to Ohio and our citizens. In any case, things are going to change for tobacco control in Ohio. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, We’ve come to the fork in the road and we’re going to take it!”
TUPAC members had not anticipated that the legislature would renege on its commitment to tobacco prevention programs and race backwards from the fork in the road. But the lure of tobacco road dies hard in Ohio. The promise of prevention echoed in the words of Dr. Douglas Teske of the American Heart Association at the time of Senate Bill 192’s passage. “Ohio can now work toward joining the success stories of other states where the declines in youth smoking are dramatic,” Teske said.
The battle between the status quo and prevention advocates clearly emerged in the testimony this past November as the legislature “borrowed” the tobacco use prevention money until the year 2013 to fix the budget deficit. Lisa Vanvalkenburg Rankin, an Ohio lobbyist for the American Heart and American Lung Associations and American Cancer Society, suggested to the legislature that a better approach would be “to simply suspend for the next year or two the payments to all of the trust funds created in SB 192, with the possible exception of the school facilities, and then resume the blueprint” two years later.
But, Rankin argued, “The most favored option by the tri-agencies [she represented] would be to increase the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 50 cents.” Rankin supplied data consistent with national polling statistics that suggested that sin taxes are one of the few forms of taxes supported by the public and not likely to affect a legislator’s re-election.
Larry McAlister, the CEO of the American Lung Association, told legislators, “We understand that Ohio faces budget shortfalls, but it is a disservice to kids facing daily tobacco temptation and a disservice to the lawsuit’s purpose to single out the [TUPAC] foundation as being the entity from which to take $240 million.” McAlister strongly opposed the “borrowing [of the] prevention fund with the promise to pay them in 12 years.” He also urged a two-year suspension of the fund until the temporary budget crisis passed.
Crane told legislators that “the tax on cigarettes has stayed stagnant at 24 cents [per pack] for the last decade, despite absolutely astounding and record tobacco-company profits in Ohio. Yesterday, the citizens of Washington state handily approved a 60-cent increase to a total of $1.42 per pack… Michigan has a tax of 75 cents per pack,” Crane said. “If Ohio increased its tax by 50 cents, the state would raise $400 million annually—$600 million over the biennium, even discounting for decreased demand. More importantly, youth smoking would drop instantly by 10 to 20 percent. Five thousand Ohio kids would avoid addiction each year.”
The Ohio legislature didn’t buy the proposals offered by the tobacco use prevention advocates. Director Renner assumes the leadership of a de-funded TUPAC, whose strategy must be unclear beyond the current $50 million anti-tobacco advertising campaign. Perhaps the 150 organizations of the Coalition for a Healthier Ohio will find that what the legislature takes away, the people would be willing to restore via a 50-cents-per-pack ballot initiative. Meanwhile, Ohio’s 24-cents-per-pack cigarette tax remains the 33rd lowest in the nation.
01/10/2002
Following the anthrax trail
The FBI investigation has led to connections between Battelle, the CIA, a former Soviet bio-warrior and an alleged bin Laden business associate
by Bob Fitrakis
While the national and international media has been busy exploring Battelle’s possible connection to the anthrax scare, the local media has been eerily quiet when it comes to Battelle’s ties to intelligence agencies and companies linked to an alleged bin Laden family business associate. Here’s what they’re not telling you:
The spooky Dr. Strangelove Institute headquartered in Columbus may be ground zero in the domestic military-industrial anthrax scare. With five people dead and 18 ill, Battelle’s role in directing the U.S. Defense Department’s “joint vaccine acquisition program” is now coming under heavy scrutiny—just not in Columbus.
Battelle, in partnership with BioPort of Lansing, Michigan, has a virtual monopoly on military anthrax vaccine production in the United States. BioPort is partly owned by a top-secret British bio-warfare consortium, Porton International. The New York Times reported in July 1998 that BioPort’s owners included Admiral William Crowe Jr., a former chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and ambassador to Britain during the Clinton years. One of Crowe’s partners is the mysterious Fuad El-Habri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent and a reported business associate of the bin Laden family.
Laura Rozen pointed out in an October 13, 2001, Salon.com article that El-Habri, BioPort’s CEO, “made a fortune” working for “Porton International” during the Gulf War a decade ago. Porton had a virtual monopoly on the anthrax vaccine in Britain in partnership with Battelle. Porton International’s for-profit arm, the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research (CAMR), announced last March it was putting together a joint proposal with Battelle to supply the U.K. with an anthrax vaccine.
What’s Porton International, you might ask? Well, they’re the Battelle, so to speak, of the U.K. In the weeks immediately preceding the September 11 attacks, the consortium’s laboratories located at Porton Down made national news in Britain when the BBC reported that Porton Down scientists had conducted biological and chemical experiments on “about 20,000 so-called human guinea pigs… between 1939 and the 1960s.”
On August 27, Britain’s Independent newspaper reported that Porton’s chemical and biological defense branch “tested LSD on soldiers to investigate its ‘tactical battlefield usefulness’” in the ’60s. Two days later, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the experiments included dripping liquid sarin, the deadly nerve gas, onto a patch taped to a soldier’s arm. The British police were investigating between 45 and 70 deaths linked to the experiments.
As I reported in Columbus Alive immediately after the anthrax scare began, Battelle is involved in developing a new and stronger strain of anthrax at its West Jefferson labs. Don’t be deceived by the fake farmland facades of the West Jefferson complex: It’s the center of an unclassified defense project going under the name “Project Jefferson,” according to the New York Times.
The Times also confirmed that the CIA is involved with its own top-secret anthrax project, code-named “Clear Vision.” The presence of the CIA and specter of “national security” is thwarting the current FBI investigation into the mailed anthrax, sources say.
More than any other organization, Battelle controlled access to the Ames strain of anthrax used in various secret projects—and the strain found in last fall’s deadly letters. The Baltimore Sun reported that the Ames strain was also being produced at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, but this is a red herring. Battelle’s involved in that program as well.
A Battelle press release dated December 18, 2001, reads: “Battelle is expanding… with the opening of a suite of offices in West Valley City, Utah. The office will house existing business operation from Battelle’s Dugway, Hill Air Force Base, and Toole, Utah, locations.” Battelle co-manages many labs and projects including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, well known for its role in the nuclear weapons industry.
As I previously noted in Alive, the number-two man in the former Soviet biochemical warfare operation, Kanatjan Alibekov, now going by the alias Ken Alibek, is a classified consultant with both the CIA and Battelle. A 1998 New Yorker article pointed to work on the anthrax project Alibek conducted with William C. Patrick III. Patrick, now president of Biothreat Assessments, has 48 years of biological warfare experience with the U.S. military, including a stint as the chief of the Army’s Product Development Division (which weaponizes biological agents).
The current FBI investigation has led toward the Patrick/Alibek/Battelle/CIA connection. But whether the feds have the will, or the authority, to investigate spook central in Columbus is another question. The New York Times, on November 9, reported that the FBI already made an error in the “anthrax probe” by allowing the “destruction of university” samples that “may have caused clues to be lost.”
On December 17, London’s Telegraph ran the headline: “CIA links Porton Down to anthrax attacks.” The newspaper reported, “Sources in the FBI said the CIA was under investigation because of the bureau’s ‘interest’ in a contractor which used to work for the agency in its anthrax program.” Sources at Battelle and in law enforcement say the contractor in question was Alibek, not the unnamed former Battelle scientist in Milwaukee the Columbus Dispatch has referred to.
Alibek, who arrived in the U.S. in 1992, needs to be looked at very closely; news reports suggest he had possible financial stakes in a biochemical scare. On October 29, the Washington Post reported that Alibek “has hooked up with an Alexandria, Virginia, company, and, supported by federal grants, opened a laboratory of 35 people.” The article notes the former Soviet bio-warfare scientist is “learning to be a capitalist.”
“Hadron Advanced Biosystems Inc., Alibek’s company, sports an unusual provenance for a biotechnical venture. No other company, doing any kind of work, can claim to be headed by a former number-two man in a vast program aimed at turning anthrax, plague, smallpox, tularemia and many other germs into weapons of war,” noted the Post. “Alibek’s venture is a subsidiary of Hadron Inc…. a publicly traded 37-year-old government contractor specializing in defense and espionage work.”
The FBI’s investigation initially focused on who stood to gain financially from the deadly anthrax letters (as in, who has a stake in increased sales of the anthrax vaccine, for instance). Sources close to the investigation say that El-Habri’s possible ties to the bin Laden family also caused the FBI some concern—not to mention his role as CEO of the only laboratory in the U.S. licensed to sell the anthrax vaccine. But the convergence of the Strangelovian Battelle with BioPort, the British Porton Down consortium and the role of prominent individuals like Alibek, Crowe and El-Habri suggests that much of this is likely to be covered up.
Ironically, this summer, George W. Bush renounced long-standing calls by the Russians for mutual inspections of biochemical weapons sites like Battelle. Bush claimed that mutual inspection of U.S. biochemical technology sites by foreign scientists could risk revealing commercial trade secrets—secrets that would be worth a fortune if a few people controlled the commercial rights to them.
06/24/2002
Chemtrails outlaw
The government says they don’t exist, but Kucinich wants Congress to take action
by Bob Fitrakis
The debate surrounding the federal government’s alleged weather modification experiments has landed in the U.S. Capitol, thanks to Cleveland Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Representative Kucinich introduced the Space Preservation Act of 2001 on October 2 last year, seeking a “permanent ban on [the] basing of weapons in space.”
The bill, HR 2977, specifically outlaws a variety of weapons detailed in the December 6, 2001, Columbus Alive article “Stormy Weather,” which exposed allegations of secret government aerial spraying activities. Kucinich’s bill explicitly outlaws “chemtrails.”
Alive asked Kucinich why he would introduce a bill banning so-called chemtrails when the U.S. government routinely denies such things exist and the U.S. Air Force has routinely called chemtrail sightings “a hoax.”
“The truth is there’s an entire program in the Department of Defense, ‘Vision for 2020,’ that’s developing these weapons,” Kucinich responded. Kucinich says he plans to reintroduce a broader version of the bill later this month. “Plasma, electromagnetics, sonic or ultrasonic weapons [and] laser weapons systems” were among those banned by HR 2977.
Two scientists working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base informed Alive of the ongoing secret experiments, one involving weather modification and the other involving the creation of an aerial antenna using a barium stearate chemical trail. The scientists referred to the work of legendary inventor Nikola Tesla. Before Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (or “Star Wars”), there was Tesla’s vision of high-tech space-based warfare and weather modification.
According to Tesla biographer Margaret Cheney, federal agents seized Tesla’s papers after his death in 1943. “[At] least one set of Tesla’s papers had reached Wright Field [now Wright Patterson Air Force Base],” Cheney wrote. The Aeronautic Systems Division at Wright Patterson admitted it had the Tesla papers but claim they were “destroyed.”
However, Tesla’s dream is embodied in a glossy brochure titled “Vision for 2020” released by the U.S. Space Command in 1998. The brochure states, “The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea and air superiority will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance.”
The Space Command spells out its purpose pretty plainly: “Dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment.”
There’s nothing new here, for those who have been paying attention. In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, bluntly stated in his book Between Two Ages, “Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need to be appraised… [T]echniques of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.”
On January 4 this year, Canadian Professor Michel Chossudovsky, of the Center for Research on Globalization at the University of Ottawa, issued a report noting that weapons have the ability to trigger climate changes. “Both the Americans and the Russians have developed capabilities to manipulate the world’s climate. In the U.S., the technology is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Aural Research Program (HAARP) as part of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI),” Chossudovsky wrote. “Recent scientific evidence suggests that HAARP is fully operational and has the ability of potentially triggering floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction.”
Doubters of the military’s secret plans should refer to George and Meredith Friedman’s The Future of War, Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the 21st Century. The Friedmans, government-touted “arms experts” and favorites of the military-industrial complex, assert that “The American experience of power will rest on the domination of space.”
The U.S. Air Force giddily embraced the Friedmans’ thesis in the 1996 report “New World Vistas: Air And Space Power For The 21st Century.” The Air Force report notes, “In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict.”
State University of New York Professor of Journalism Karl Grossman, writing in 1999, revealed how the mainstream corporate press virtually ignores the government’s pronouncements while trade journals like Space News, Defense News, Aviation Week, Space Technology and Electronic Engineering Times routinely report on the military-industrial complex’s high-tech breakthroughs.
As for chemtrail skeptics, they might want to consult Rutgers University Political Science Professor Leonard Cole’s book Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Test Over Populated Areas. Chemtrail deniers are apparently happy with the thought that their beloved paternalistic government would engage in aerial spraying over densely populated areas.
U.S. Representative Marty Sabo, a Democrat from Minnesota, denounced “the secret Army program to spray Minneapolis and other cities with chemicals in the 1950s and ’60s,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in September 1994. “The idea that the government would use its own citizens as guinea pigs is appalling, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms,” Sabo told a House subcommittee investigating the secret spraying, which used fluorescent tracers to mark wind patterns.
As for the Army, it argues that the secret Cold War-era spraying was not “human experimentation” since it didn’t target any specific individuals and the zinc cadmium sulfide used was harmless. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists all cadmium compounds as known cancer-causing agents.
Former students of Clinton Elementary in south Minneapolis told an investigating panel from the National Research Council that the Army’s secret chemical spraying adversely affected their health, according to the Star Tribune.
Skeptics who continue to insist the government would never be involved in secret aerial spraying, particularly in Ohio, may want to address their questions to the C-130 aircrews from the 910th Airlift Wing stationed at Youngstown’s Air Reserve Station. In July 2000, an Air Force press release bragged, “Fifteen service members from military installations in Germany and England were at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, 8-12 May, learning how to use chemicals to destroy the enemy… The seven airmen and eight soldiers learned how to plan, execute and oversee the entire process of applying pesticides by air.” The press release said the Youngstown air unit will only be used against “insects with their deadly diseases.”
Apparently insects take many forms. During the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in November 1999, CNN reported that a military air unit with pathogen capacity to induce sickness in humans was deployed against the demonstrators.
NEWS BRIEF
1/31/2002
Still looking for “the truth”
Questions still linger in the Byrd case regarding Robert Pottinger and the testimony of two jailhouse snitches
by Bob Fitrakis and Martin Yant
“You know the truth.”
That’s what Robert Pottinger told Kim Hamer, John W. Byrd’s sister, in a tape recorded conversation as she pleaded with Pottinger to help keep her brother from being executed for the 1983 murder of Monte Tewksbury.
Pottinger later agreed to sign an affidavit that said he, not Byrd, participated in a second robbery the night of Tewksbury’s death. Hamilton County prosecutors claimed Byrd’s use of a knife at the second robbery was proof that he was used the knife to kill Tewksbury during the first robbery. But both witnesses at the second robbery said the man with the knife wore tan pants and a red-and-black jacket. Byrd was wearing blue pants and a blue-and-white sweater when he was arrested a short time later.
Byrd is scheduled to be executed for Tewksbury’s murder on February 19.
Pottinger testified at an October 2001 hearing before Federal Magistrate Michael R. Merz that he committed the second robbery because Byrd had passed out in the truck they were using. In his opinion denying Byrd’s claim of “actual innocence,” based on the testimony of Pottinger and others, Merz said Pottinger’s story “is not in the slightest bit credible” and that “he hints at such an admission in his taped conversation with Kim Hamer when he tells her she knows what the truth is.”
You might add judges to the saying that the only time most cops get exercise is when they jump to conclusions. Merz clearly jumped to the wrong conclusion that “the truth” Pottinger spoke of was that Byrd killed Tewksbury.
The truth Pottinger actually referred to was the admission he made to Hamer that he, not Byrd, participated in the first robbery as well as the second, according to Hamer.
Pottinger admitted to Columbus Alive that, while partying with friends in the 1980s, he bragged about being the killer. But Pottinger specifically told Alive he did not murder Tewksbury and he expressed concern about being charged with the crime.
Byrd has always avoided talking about Pottinger’s full role in the robberies. Byrd, John Brewer (who claims he killed Tewksbury) and Danny Woodall—the three accomplices arrested and charged with Tewksbury’s murder after Pottinger had run from the truck—allegedly agreed not to discuss Pottinger’s involvement, and they always kept their word.
Byrd remained circumspect when he was asked about Pottinger in an interview last week, less than a month before his scheduled execution.
“You know what the truth is,” Byrd said, echoing Pottinger. “Just look at the evidence. Tewksbury said the guy who stabbed him was wearing a plaid shirt, and the investigator’s notes say who always wore plaid shirts [Pottinger].”
Pottinger testified that Byrd was passed out in the truck during the second robbery. Asked if he was passed out in the truck during the first robbery as well, Byrd said: “I imagine.” He added, however, that it was hard for him to remember when he was awake and when he wasn’t because he was so drunk that night.
Did you go into the first store? he was asked.
“I never went in any store,” Byrd replied. “That’s what people have to look at. There’s never been [any] evidence to place me at this crime—never.”
A source in the Ohio Public Defender’s office disclosed to Alive prior to the Merz hearing that John Brewer alluded to Pottinger’s involvement and the crucial “plaid shirt” in the first robbery. According to the source, “Brewer said, ‘Who do the police say was wearing the plaid shirts? What did the guy who was killed say about the plaid shirt? How stupid are people?’”
With so many questions remaining in the Byrd case and no physical evidence linking him to the murder, Byrd asked the governor in a January 22 letter not “to grant me clemency” but “to grant a reprieve and request for a federal investigation into my conviction.”
No eyewitnesses have ever identified Byrd as the actual killer; the physical evidence points to Brewer, who has admitted in five affidavits since 1988 that he stabbed Tewksbury. Brewer’s shoeprint is on the store counter behind which Tewksbury was assaulted. Brewer had the apparent cash from the register in his pocket, while Byrd had less than $5.
The sole direct evidence against Byrd is the testimony of Ronald Armstead, a notorious Hamilton County snitch, and fellow inmate Virgil Jordan. In an October 24, 2001, court order, Merz greatly limited Byrd’s request for documents from the Cincinnati Police Department and the Hamilton County Sheriff. Merz refused to consider any documents from 1983, the actual time period when Byrd, Armstead and Jordan were in the Hamilton County workhouse together and when Byrd’s confession allegedly took place.
Oddly, Merz reasoned that “All documents related to Virgil Jordan and Ronald Armstead” need not be produced because the documents were too voluminous.
The Public Defender’s office was unable to obtain records that would show whether or not Armstead testified before the Hamilton County grand jury that indicted Byrd; Jordan did testify before the grand jury and at Brewer’s trial. Merz’s ruling thwarted the exploration of the possibility that Jordan and Armstead conspired to fabricate testimony against Byrd.
Neither Armstead nor Jordan testified at the Merz hearing. Armstead could not be located, though he was last reported to be working on an Alaskan cruise ship; Jordan died last summer of a drug overdose.
Merz declined to review Jordan’s Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections records as part of the hearing, ruling they were “Too remote from the central controversy before the court.” While Armstead played the key role of Byrd’s accuser in court, the record establishes that it was Jordan’s grand jury testimony that resulted in capital charges being brought against Byrd.
Moreover, Merz shielded from scrutiny police documents showing Armstead’s and Jordan’s roles as law enforcement informers. Carl Vollman, Byrd’s lead prosecutor, had previously utilized Jordan as an informant and grand jury witness in a murder trial. There are 10 people on Ohio’s Death Row convicted primarily or solely on the word of a snitch—all 10 are from Hamilton County.
Merz also denied requests for subpoenas revealing Jordan’s and Armstead’s roles as informants for the FBI, the DEA and the defunct Regional Enforcement Narcotics Unit. Merz ruled once again that Armstead’s and Jordan’s long histories as snitches were “too remote from the central controversy.”
Jordan’s brother Watson and his sister Doris both acknowledge in signed affidavits that their brother is a well-known “snitch.” Watson Jordan stated in his affidavit, “He [Virgil] usually gets out of his legal trouble by snitching on people. In the past, Virgil would get arrested and be put in jail. Soon after, he would return home. I thought it was strange that he got out so soon and figured he’d snitched for the police… In the early 1980s, Virgil went undercover as a city trash collector. He used the alias Michael Stokes. The city used him to catch city workers using and selling drugs.”
Doris Jordan swears that “Virgil is a big liar. When he gets into legal trouble, he’ll lie to get out of it. He would set you up in a minute if it helped him.”
02/07/2002
Last-minute pleas
With 12 days left on Death Row, John Byrd begs the governor for a reprieve
by Bob Fitrakis
John W. Byrd continues to fight for his life as his February 19 execution date rapidly approaches. On Friday, February 1, Byrd managed to telephone this reporter to explain the mounting tension and bizarre rituals brewing inside the Mansfield Correctional Institution.
Byrd is under a suicide watch to make sure he doesn’t cheat the state of its well-scripted execution. Social workers and medical personnel are working with Byrd to ensure he’ll be healthy when he’s put to death.
Byrd, who was convicted of the 1983 murder of Cincinnati store clerk Monte Tewksbury, told Alive he believes he should get a “reprieve” until there’s a federal investigation into his allegations of widespread corruption in the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s office. “They’re trying to kill me, brother, before anyone can take a close look at what they do,” Byrd said.
On Monday, Byrd sent to Alive an audio tape of a phone call he made from Death Row alleging that anytime “I speak about the governor [with reporters], interviews will be terminated.” Byrd made an appeal to Ohio voters to remember his case in November, and asked that they support his “First Amendment rights” prior to his execution.
Byrd’s desperate pleas for a reprieve appear to be falling upon the deaf ears of Bob Taft. But the emotions stirred by the case remain indelibly etched in court records.
In a ringing dissent, joined by four other Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges, Judge Nathaniel R. Jones wrote: “The Court majority certifies a death sentence that the state of Ohio secured in contravention of the fundamental imperatives of our constitutional order.”
Judge Jones summed up the facts of the Byrd case this way: “No eyewitness or other physical evidence identifies the particular robber responsible for the murder, and the only evidence distinguishing the assailants are the representations of a jailhouse ‘snitch.’”
Jones argued in his dissent that the only reason anyone believed Ronald Armstead, the “snitch,” is because the prosecutor “vouched” for his credibility: “Such prosecutory testimony on the credibility of a witness is undoubtedly unconstitutional, and in a case that turns on the veracity of that witness—a jailhouse snitch no less—the error is prejudicial.”
Byrd hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will closely consider Jones’ dissent in his expected last-minute appeal. In a January 22 letter to Governor Taft, Byrd raised a variety of concerns that he wanted a federal investigation to probe.
“There is no evidence that places me inside the crime scene. [Neither] my fingerprints nor shoeprints were found at [the] scene nor on anything. My hair was not found in any of the masks. I don’t fit any of the descriptions given. My conviction is based on perjured testimony the prosecution knew was perjured and have been doing a[n] effective job of concealing ever since,” Byrd wrote the governor.
In his Alive interview last week, Byrd said, “It must be hard on you knowing I’m telling the truth about the evidence.”
In both his letter to the governor, Byrd pointed to the strange role of the Breyer brothers in his case. Byrd vehemently complained about the fact that Daniel Breyer was the trial prosecutor in his case and his brother William Breyer remains the Hamilton County post-conviction prosecutor in his case.
“William Breyer has been covering up for his brother for many years now. It must be a wonderful thing to be from a county where it is common practice for the post-conviction prosecutor to author the finding of facts and the conclusions of law for the post-conviction judge to accept in toto, knowing full well all other following courts will accept this finding as well,” Byrd wrote.
Byrd’s letter urges the governor to look at “the evidence.” Byrd stresses the following facts in his request for a reprieve:
• “The two supposed specks of blood found on my pant leg was not that of Mr. Tewksbury… Mr. Tewksbury’s blood did not contain the H antigen! Nineteen years ago this finding would have been [treated] as any DNA testing performed today.”
• “The only physical evidence the state tried to use was that I had a watch that could have been Mr. Tewksbury’s. However at trial this [watch] couldn’t be produced.”
• “Breyer and [Carl] Vollman knowingly solicited perjured testimony from Armstead and in turn vouched for his credibility.”
• “Not only did Armstead [who was facing up to 15 years on a parole violation for assaulting a prison guard and nurse] get out, but he was flown to [California]. Prosecutors have said that Armstead’s mother had paid for this plane ticket...This simply is not true. Mrs. Armstead has denied paying for any such ticket.”
“Once I am murdered life cannot be placed back into my body. The system shouldn’t be permitted to protect itself against what it has done to me at the expense of my life,” Byrd wrote. “Murdering me will not make this ugly chapter in Ohio’s history go away.”
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02/14/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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02/28/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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NO 03/07/2002
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03/14/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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03/21/2002
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03/28/2002
Into thin air
How Kucinich’s “chemtrails” disappeared… from right under Congress’ nose!
by Bob Fitrakis
U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich’s Space Preservation Act of 2001, introduced last October seeking a “permanent ban on basing of weapons in space,” specifically banned chemtrails as weapons. Now, in a new version of the bill, the “chemtrails” language has disappeared. The missing words are part of an eyes-wide-open denial that says as much about the cover-up as it does about the spraying that’s plainly visible in the sky.
On March 16, in a front-page story titled “Conspiracy theorists look up,” the Akron Beacon Journal noted that Kucinich’s bill “had been rewritten…and the references to chemtrails and the other types of weapons were quietly eliminated.” The Beacon Journal article, linking chemtrails to conspiracies, resulted from massive local pressure. Michel Massullo of Akron provided Columbus Alive with rolls of photos of plane trails and a sworn affidavit attesting to extensive aerial activity over that city on February 18 and February 24.
Sources close to Kucinich’s new bill, HR 3616, which has been endorsed by some 254 community groups throughout the nation, say the term “chemtrail” was dropped because Kucinich, a Democrat from Lakewood, couldn’t get the Union of Concerned Scientists or the Federation of American Scientists to sign on.
Previously explaining the government’s position, Lieutenant Colonel Michael K. Gibson of the U.S. Air Force wrote U.S. Representative Mark Green in August 2000 and stated, “The term ‘chemtrail’ is a hoax that began circulating approximately three years ago which asserts the government is involved in a joint federal program of covert spraying of the public.”
It’s a classic non-denial denial: Gibson is denying that the Air Force is secretly spraying U.S. citizens. The reality is the U.S. Space Command and other government agencies are involved in ongoing experiments for military and environmental purposes that involve aerial spraying, and the microfibers and other sprayed chemicals inevitably fall to earth, putting the public at risk.
Before you believe Gibson’s and the government’s “denial,” do an Internet search for the following terms: Joint Vision for 2020; weather as a force modifer; owning the weather by 2025; Eastlund; and Edward Teller. Two scientists working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base confirmed to Alive that they were involved in aerial spraying experiments. One involved aluminum oxide spraying related to global warming and the other involved barium stearate and had to do with high-tech military communications.
The U.S. government has a long history of denying inexcusable covert operations. These are the people who told you about the joys of nuclear radiation and Readi Kilowatt, that Agent Orange could defoliate a tropical jungle overnight but was harmless to humans. This is the same government that secretly experimented on its citizens with everything from syphilis to LSD.
The Pentagon would now have you believe that the mass sightings of chemtrails all over North America are collective hallucinations, even though the boys at the government’s Lawrence Livermore experimental lab admit that they’ve discussed all this aerial spraying and run computer simulations on the effects of weather modification for military and peacetime purposes.
A brief history of the chemtrail phenomenon can be traced to a Washington state man who told award-winning investigative reporter William Thomas that he’d become ill on New Year’s Day 1999 after watching several jets make strange lines in the sky. Within six months, Thomas, writing primarily for the Environmental News Service, had detailed over 700 eyewitness reports of chemtrails from 40 states.
Mainstream newspapers have gone out of their way to dismiss these eyewitness accounts. Thomas told the New Mexican newspaper in June 1999, “It’s easier to sell UFOs to major media than a phenomena as close in many cities as the nearest window.”
The New Mexican took a skeptical view of the local Skywatchers group and their account of “unmarked government planes puffing strange white smoke, making cryptic Xs and tic-tac-toe designs, covering the air above as the puzzled populace looks up in fear and confusion.” The photos from Akron that arrived last week show the same patterns in the sky.
A news database search showed that 24 local TV stations from around the country have reported on and dismissed the same phenomenon in the last few years. On January 14, Baltimore’s WJZ-TV report included a visual of “last Thursday morning’s chemtrails seen in the sky.” The story was almost identical to one broadcast by Orlando station WOFL in July 2000.
Last May, the West-Quebec Post spread chemtrails photographs across its front page (the Canadian press has been much more open to investigating the phenomenon). Fred Ryan, the Post’s publisher, reported that his readers had been photographing and comparing the aerial activity for some time.
While the U.S. government is busy with the latest in a long series of covert experiments, and contemptuously attempts to convince eyewitnesses that they’re crazy, non-governmental organizations are quietly circulating a proposed UN treaty titled Permanent Ban on Basing of Weapons in Space; listed under the heading “Exotic weapons” is the term “chemtrails.” This treaty is a direct outgrowth of UN General Assembly Resolution 55/32, passed 138-0 with three nations abstaining (the United States, Israel and Micronesia).
Sooner or later the government will declassify documents, as it inevitably does, showing that it engaged in aerial spraying for military and environmental purposes. Until then, the government will continue to tell us we don’t see what we obviously see.
NO 04/04/2002
04/11/2002
OSU vs. bin Laden
Ohio universities volunteer to join the endless war against terrorism
by Bob Fitrakis
Prior to the campus unrest in the late ’60s and early ’70s, colleges were a comfy spot to spy on people, conduct mind-control experiments and plot coups in the Third World. Midwest football coaches like Woody Hayes could teach military science and encourage their “best boys” to join elite military units like the Navy SEALS or work for the CIA.
All that was shattered when radical campus activists stormed administration buildings and looked through universities’ top-secret files. It turns out Ohio State University was one of a dozen or so campuses that took part in the MK Ultra mind-control experiments in the early to mid ’60s through the university’s psychology department.
Once the jig was up, social scientists began to refuse contracts for research that could lead to covert operations against Third World countries and their citizens; CIA spooks slunk off to research institutes and hid their connections to universities; and the House Un-American Activities Committee was disbanded and most of the Red Squads that spied on dissidents were renamed, downsized or destroyed.
But in the aftermath of September 11, the “war on terrorism” will be the excuse to settle an old score between the liberal campuses and military-industrial complex aficionados.
OSU announced last Thursday, April 4, that it’s forming a “new multi-disciplinary research program designed to assist federal and state officials in better understanding the causes of international terrorism and finding appropriate solutions.”
The man in command is retired Air Force Major General Todd I. Stewart. He comes to Ohio State straight from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. You know, the place where they paid white airmen to breed prior to World War II in the nation’s only acknowledged eugenics test; where Project Paperclip warmly welcomed Nazi scientists; a base shrouded in secrecy and rumors of strange high-tech military programs.
The OSU press release acknowledged that “The new program also represents a collaboration with the Battelle Memorial Institute.” Great, the Dr. Strangelove Institute reunited on campus with the Wright-Pat guys. Perhaps they can reminisce about old Nazi scientists or Soviet defectors who were lab buddies in creating weapons of mass destruction and genetically altered silica-impregnated anthrax strains.
According to the OSU press release, “Stewart said his role initially will be to facilitate the process of identifying research efforts within the university that could influence national and international security and connect them with outside development entities such as Battelle.”
Since Stewart’s Program for International and Homeland Security is dedicated to understanding “the source of terrorism and solutions,” perhaps it could start by studying the history of Battelle and Wright-Pat. Here’s my suggestion for a model curriculum: Chemical and Biological Warfare 101; a seminar on How to Redirect the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal to Punish Rogue Nations; a lab on Hands-on Mind Control Techniques; and extra credit for taking some LSD. The program could also publish its own newspaper to practice mass propaganda techniques. Come to think of it, somebody’s got to do surveillance on all the faculty e-mails as part of the newly passed U.S. Patriot Act. Who better than the major general and his fatherland security students?
Unfortunately, I think Stewart’s too much of a traditionalist to offer such a cutting-edge and honest curriculum. Stewart is a member of the Christian Embassy, a nondenominational ministry established in 1975 that focuses on bringing the word of Jesus to government officials. He led prayers last September 27 for the group. Stewart also presided over a halftime military ceremony that included two Air Force flyovers where 150 young people were sworn into the Air Force. Ah, bringing back the ’50s.
Not to be outdone, Kent State University Professor Mitch Fadem pre-empted OSU’s announcement by telling the Akron Beacon Journal on April 3 that he’s working “to attract $1 million in federal funding” to pursue his dream of spraying people with an anthrax vaccine.
The Beacon Journal conceded that Fadem’s idea “sounds like the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel,” but “the 50-year-old toxicologist envisions tests with a military transport airplane flying over a remote area of southern Canada and spraying a chemical compound on simulated anthrax.”
Fadem stressed that he’s already worked with the Air Force Reserve’s 910th Airlift Wing at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station. The 910th is the U.S. military’s only solely dedicated aerial spraying unit. Fadem, a captain in the reserve, hopes to use the “big tanks and nozzles attached to the C-130s to decontaminate an area exposed to chemical or biological agents,” according to the Beacon Journal.
The Beacon Journal quotes Fadem as saying: “I’ve been telling people for a long time [bioterrorism] is going to happen here. The climate was right. I knew how open the United States was and how easy it would be to get the materials.” Fadem has already conducted spraying tests in his labs “to determine the concentration that would kill the anthrax spores without harming people or damaging buildings.” Two other Kent State professors are competing with Fadem by concentrating on killing anthrax via irradiation.
Fadem and his colleagues, like Stewart, are interested in the $2.8 billion earmarked for counter-terrorism research in the federal government’s next budget. Well, at least a conservative president is finally funding higher education. This April 15, you might as well write your tax payment check directly to “Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security.”
NO 04/18/2002
04/25/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
Wonder what’s up with the anthrax investigation? While President Bush and his administration scour the world in search of terrorists, the FBI appears determined not to look at the biochemical terrorists right here in the homeland. Wayne Madsen’s article “Thinking the Unthinkable,” recently published on Counterpunch.org, nicely summed up the government’s foot dragging (or cover up) in the anthrax case.
As usual, the article refers to our own Battelle Memorial Institute. I know, I know—you read the copyrighted story in the Columbus Dispatch that insisted Battelle had nothing to do with the military-grade anthrax unleashed on the U.S. media and Democratic Congressional leadership. Who are you going to believe? The Dispatch or the BBC, which reported that Battelle conducted secret biological warfare tests in the Nevada desert last September with genetically modified anthrax? Coincidentally, according to the BBC, Battelle’s anthrax tests occurred just prior to the terrorist attacks on September 11.
The BBC also reported that William Capers Patrick III, part of the U.S. military’s anthrax development program at Fort Detrick, which officially ended in 1972, was working as a contractor for Battelle. Patrick’s claim to fame was that, while working for Battelle, he produced a paper on sending anthrax through the mail.
Madsen calls Battelle “a favorite Pentagon and CIA contractor” in his article. But who are you going to believe? Madsen and the best investigative reporting website in the U.S. and the BBC, or that powerhouse of journalistic integrity, the Columbus Dispatch?
You might have missed the significance of the miniscule AP article printed in the Dispatch on the acquittal of Wouter Basson, aka “Dr. Death,” but the British and South African media have reported in great detail on the biological and chemical warfare program of South Africa’s former apartheid government. The program was code-named Project Coast; Dr. Death ran the biochemical program at the Roodeplat Research Laboratories, north of Pretoria. The usual details emerged: The racist government and its top-secret lab maintained ties to the U.S. biowarfare facility at Fort Detrick and the British company Porten Down, which is under investigation for allegedly murdering 75 U.K. citizens in biochemical experiments.
Basson’s prosecutors claimed that Dr. Death concocted drugs designed to kill only black people, developed techniques to contaminate envelope flaps with anthrax and worked on using ecstasy as a form of crowd control. Basson, of course, countered that he was fighting the spread of “communism and godlessness” in Africa, according to the London Guardian.
Basson professed, in his fight against the atheistic forces of Marxism and Leninism, that he worked with the CIA in a project called Operation Banana based in El Paso, Texas. Dr. Death claims that the CIA allowed him to transport cocaine from Peru through Texas to South Africa to develop a new drug that would incapacitate anti-apartheid activists.
And, by the way, he was charged with being involved in a project to send anthrax through the mail, working with a U.S. research institute. Wonder who that might be?
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04/25/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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05/02/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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NO 05/09/2002
05/16/2002
Weather warfare
Controlling Mother Nature is a key part of the military’s “Full Spectrum Dominance” plan
by Bob Fitrakis
In 1996, the U.S. Air Force’s best and brightest minds and their civilian advisors imagined six alternative futures. Here’s one of the predicted scenarios, according to an Air Force document: “The American world view became more global following a major terrorist attack on the U.S. early in the 21st century. This event, along with increasing concern for the global environment, was postulated to help produce a consensus that the U.S. should act vigorously to promote stability abroad despite the frustration of a dispersed world power grid.”
With a goal later described as “Full Spectrum Dominance” by the year 2025, the Air Force “backcasted” (as opposed to forecasted) what “determines the willingness and capability of the U.S. to take the lead in international affairs.” This scenario was called “Gulliver’s Travails.”
This chilling theme was echoed the next year by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor, in his book The Grand Chessboard. Brzezinski argued that the key to world power is in Central Asia, with its vast oil deposits. But short of a galvanizing attack by foreigners or terrorists on the scale of Pearl Harbor, Brzezinski postulated four years ago, Americans lacked the imperial will to seize world dominance.
In March 1997, Arnold A. Barnes Jr., of John Hopkins University and Phillips Laboratory, described a key element of Full Spectrum Dominance at the U.S. Army’s Tecom Test Technology Symposium. In his address, Barnes, a consultant on the Air Force study, calmly outlined the history of the U.S. military’s weather modification programs and what would be needed for future “integrated weather modification capabilities.”
The good doctor referred to the document “Spacecast 2020,” later updated in “Weather As A Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” which noted, “Atmospheric scientists have pursued terrestrial weather modification in earnest since the 1940s… Space presents us with a new arena, technology provides new opportunities.”
While “Spacecast 2020” analyzed “the difficulty, cost and risk of developing a weather control system for military applications” as “extremely high,” Barnes offered a different perspective. He saw “opportunities to capitalize on investment militarily [as] medium/high” while the “political implications/health hazards [were] medium/low.”
In Barnes’ scenario, there had already been a long history of U.S. military weather modification. In fact, the U.S. Air Force History Office boasts on its website that “for meteorologists, a major consequence of World War II was the development of a world weather network utilizing new equipment and techniques.”
The British Royal Air Force and Western scientists engaged in Operation Cumulus in 1952, which, according to an August 2001 BBC broadcast, was a rainmaking project that led to 35 flood-related deaths in Devon. Declassified documents show that in 1953 the British military and their allies experimented with increasing rain and snow by artificial means in hopes of “bogging down enemy movement.”
Perhaps more shocking, the documents contemplate the possibility of “explod[ing] an atomic weapon in a seeded storm system or cloud.” This would produce a far wider area of radioactive contamination than a normal atomic explosion.
Between 1955 and 1956, the U.S. Air Force participated in Project 119-L, which resulted in a worldwide meteorological survey. If you’re going to artificially modify the weather, you have to be able to predict it first. Barnes referred to the Air Force’s ability to create “cloud holes” using the chemical “Carbon Black” in the ’50s and ’60s and, later, using silver iodide.
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance created a Defense Environmental Services study group in 1966 “to review the full spectrum of environmental services and R&D within the Department of Defense.”
By early 1967, Operation Popeye was underway. The 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron took off, in the words of one military official, to “make mud, not war.” The military seeded the clouds over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to create floods and wash out North Vietnamese supply routes. Barnes noted, “Operation Popeye [was] run by people from our lab.”
Columnist Jack Anderson broke the story about the politically sensitive operation in 1971, paving the way for a Congressional investigation that documented these and other secret weather modification warfare programs.
As public anger grew, Senator Clayborn Pell of Rhode Island, who originally believed it was better to be rained on with water than bombs, wrote an editorial in the Providence Journal Bulletin in 1975 titled “United States and Other World Powers Should Outlaw Tampering With Weather for Use as War Weapon.”
That year, the U.S. and the Soviets began negotiations to ban weather modification as a military weapon. In October 1976, the U.N. produced the treaty “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification” (ENMOD). It went into effect two years later, a fact lamented by Barnes. “Since 1978, the official Air Force position has been that weather modification has little utility or military payoff as a weapon of war.”
Barnes argued at the Tecom symposium, “The official Air Force position needs to be reevaluated,” especially “in the light of 19 years of scientific advances.”
While the U.S. and Soviet military had officially turned away from weather modification as a weapon, their partners in the private sector filled the gap for the next two decades. ENMOD had a huge loophole that allowed for the peaceful commercial use of weather modification.
In his paper “Progress in planned weather modification research: 1991-1994,” Robert Czys of the Atmospheric Science Division of the Illinois State Water Survey reports, “A randomized hail experiment, Grossversuch IV, was conducted in central Switzerland during 1977-1981. Research groups from France, Italy and Switzerland participated in the experiment to test the Soviet hail suppression method.” Meanwhile, back at home between 1987 and 1993, the North Dakota Cloud Modification Program was underway.
As Barnes noted, “operational and modeling information” from a 1976 scientific paper showed how “to achieve precipitation enhancement, create cirrus clouds and to dissipate fog and low clouds.” There were, however, “risks and limitations,” particularly the problem of the “creation of optimum submicron particles” which would pose a danger to health as they fell through the atmosphere.
But Barnes argued that the new “advanced weapons systems” were “more environmentally sensitive” and, once again, the military should be exploring weather modification weapons. After all, the uses were obvious. You could “deny fresh water” to the enemy, “induce drought,” “increase concealment” and “decrease [the enemy’s] comfort level/morale.”
Moreover, Barnes insisted that the weaponization of space is the key to warfare in the 21st century. The U.S. government would later produce a document named “Joint Vision for 2020” under the auspices of the U.S. Space Command outlining plan for “Full Spectrum Dominance.” In the years following Barnes’ presentation on fully integrating high-tech weather modification into the U.S. military, so-called “chemtrail” sightings have occurred throughout the United States and its Western allies.
Brzezinski predicted: “Technology will make available, to the leaders of major nations, techniques for conducting secret warfare, of which only a bare minimum of the security forces need be appraised… Technology of weather modification could be employed to produce prolonged periods of drought or storm.”
Meanwhile, the commercial applications of the technology are apparently paying off. Weather Modification Inc. signed a contract with Thailand in 1996 to help “the southeast Asian country get a better grip on its weather” through “cloud modification.” In 1997, the Wall Street Journal reported that the government of Malaysia signed a contract with a Russian-owned company to create cyclones to blow pollution out to sea.
The BBC reported in 1998 that Canadian scientist Graeme Mather “believes he has found the Holy Grail of weather science in the skies over Mexico,” where he was trying to produce more water from available clouds. Also in 1998, an American Meteorological Society report conceded that over the past 20 years, “experiments had been carried out on lightning suppression.”
And this year, the Korean Times reported on January 27 that the South Korean “government is checking up on the possibility of using weather modification techniques” to prevent monsoon rains from interrupting the 2002 World Cup matches, which will be held there May 30-31. The paper reports, “Both the U.S. and Russia have commercialized rain and hailstorm prevention programs.” Meanwhile, North Korea continues to suffer the aftereffects of a decade-long drought.
05/23/2002
Blindfolded intelligence
What did the government know about September 11, and when did it know it?
by Bob Fitrakis
So U.S. leaders have finally decided to ask the obvious questions about the September 11 terrorist attacks. Since those events represent the most catastrophic intelligence failure in our nation’s history, and since such incompetence invites charges of conspiracy or complicity by some, a thorough Congressional investigation is essential.
Let’s go over the key facts one more time: Various other countries—including Israel, Russia, Germany and Egypt—warned the U.S. of an impending terrorist attack in the months prior to September 11. While lacking specific details, these warnings focused on the hijacking of commercial aircraft by terrorists.
For example, the German Intelligence Service (BND) told U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies in June 2001 that terrorists were “planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture,” according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. Moreover, the Zeitung reported that the U.S. knew of this information through its top-secret Echelon system of 120 satellites that monitors virtually all electronic data transmissions worldwide.
According to MSNBC and Russian news reports, Russian intelligence notified the CIA during the summer of 2001 that 25 terrorist pilots had been specifically training for suicide missions. In August, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he warned the U.S. government “in the strongest possible terms” of impending attacks against government buildings and airports.
Despite disingenuous denials by the Bush administration, U.S. intelligence agencies and the military have been well aware of the possibility that planes could be used to bomb buildings. In 1993, the Defense Department’s Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict issued a report about just such a scenario.
That same year, renown futurist Marvin J. Cetron told military officials and terrorist experts at a Langley Air Force Base conference, “Coming down the Potomac, you could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House, or you could take a right turn and take out the Pentagon.” The next year, Cetron wrote, “Targets such as the World Trade Center not only provide the requisite casualties, but, because of their symbolic nature, provide more bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for success, terrorist groups will likely consider mounting multiple simultaneous operations.”
Or if the terrorists couldn’t go to Cetron’s military briefing or read his article, they could simply buy American videogames and learn how to fly commercial jetliners into skyscrapers. The U.S. media is currently awash with talk of FBI agent Kenneth Williams’ July 2001 memo warning that bin Laden’s followers might be training in American flight schools and the CIA’s 1999 analysis that bin Laden loyalists might crash a plane into the Pentagon or the White House.
Fueling the debate are a couple of curious written works published in the mid-’90s: former National Security Advisor Zbiginew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard and the U.S. Air Force’s methodological chapter on “Alternative Futures” assessment. Both essentially outline how a terrorist attack on the U.S. could be a catalyst to rally the American people to achieve U.S. military world dominance. The Air Force called its scenario “Gulliver’s Travails.”
Thus, some are wondering how perhaps the most technologically advanced nation in the world—with the National Security Agency’s Echelon, the FBI’s Carnivore and Magic Lantern electronic eavesdropping systems and technology like Tempest that reportedly can detect a computer monitor display from over a block away—could have been so incompetent.
Former German Minister of Technology Andreas von Buelow raised a series of provocative questions in a January 13 Tagesspiegel newspaper interview. Von Buelow places the September 11 events within the context of 26 U.S. intelligence services with a budget of $30 billion, and we can add to that another $13 billion or so in counter-terrorism money. As von Buelow sees it, “With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-Communism doesn’t work anymore; it is to be replaced by people of Islamic belief.”
Von Buelow points to Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, the author of The Clash of Cultures, as advocates of those wishing to create an “enemy image.” He calls Brzezinski a “mad dog” who believes it’s the “exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world, especially oil and gas.”
Brzezinski’s book The Grand Chessboard articulates the need for the U.S. to take control of Central Asian oil in the former Soviet republics. In von Buelow’s assessment, “The CIA, in the state interest of the U.S., does not have to abide by any law in interventions abroad, is not bound by international law.”
“For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground; 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers,” von Buelow continued. “Within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive… they made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fall into the hands of the FBI, because they [the terrorists] were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left behind like in a child’s game.”
His advice to the American people: “Search for the truth!”
05/30/2002
Central Ohio residents may occupy Ground Zero in the United States’ secret bio-chemical war experiments. While you’d be hard-pressed to find details in the Columbus Dispatch, the national and international press have documented the Battelle Memorial Institute’s connection to anthrax experiments and the Ames strain of the bug linked to last fall’s mailings.
Last year, in their book Germs, New York Times writers Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg and William Broad described the key role of Battelle in both the military’s and the CIA’s Ames-strain anthrax projects: “Battelle, a military contractor in Columbus, Ohio, with sophisticated laboratories, conducted at least two sets of tests on a model of the biobomblet that measured, among other things, its dissemination characteristics and how it would perform in different atmospheric conditions.”
The CIA did not seek the White House’s blessing for its anthrax “bomb” project, called “Clear Vision,” the Times writers noted. The tests were completed in mid-2000.
Germs informs us that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was working on Project Jefferson to manufacture a war-grade super-strain of anthrax. “To make the genetically modified anthrax, the DIA turned to Battelle, its contractor in Columbus which had also worked on Clear Vision,” according to the book.
Battelle reportedly conducted the CIA anthrax tests at West Jefferson and the DIA’s tests at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. A December 18, 2001, Battelle news release issued from their Columbus headquarters refers to “Battelle’s Dugway, Hill Air Force Base and Toole, Utah locations.”
A BBC News Night investigation on March 14 “raised the possibility that there was a secret CIA project to investigate methods of sending anthrax through the mail which went madly out of control.”
“The shocking assertion is that a key member of the covert operation may have removed, refined and eventually posted weapons-grade anthrax which killed five people,” according to the BBC.
While President Bush initially hinted that the anthrax unleashed in the U.S. was possibly linked to al Qaeda, Iraq or, more recently, Cuba, Barbara Rosenberg of the Federation of American Scientists claims that the FBI is dragging its feet in the investigation because an arrest would prove embarrassing to the U.S. government.
The FBI questioned both William Patrick III and Ken Alibek, who worked for Battelle and the CIA as either employees or consultants. Last December, the New York Times asserted that Patrick authored a secret paper on the implications of sending anthrax through the mail. Patrick denies this, but the BBC made a similar assertion and noted that Patrick “had been a suspect” in the mailed-anthrax deaths.
BBC Science Editor Susan Watts asked Patrick, “Did you perpetrate these attacks?”
Patrick responded, “My goodness. I did not… I did not… I’m an American patriot.”
A September 7, 2001, Associated Press report noted a “new strain” of extremely lethal anthrax had been recently developed. The BBC and New York Times claimed that Patrick’s report had the U.S. anthrax program achieving an unprecedented anthrax concentration of one trillion spores per gram, twice that of the Russian anthrax program, which Alibeck earlier headed.
The BBC also reported that Battelle, where Alibeck served as biological warfare program manager in 1998, conducted a secret biological warfare test involving genetically modified anthrax early last September in Nevada.
06/06/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
The collapse of high-flying energy trader Enron, whose financial hubris was outdone only by its spectacular downfall, left a lot of high-profile losers crying on TV: Wall Street investors, laid-off Houston employees, even Linda Lay, wife of company founder Kenny Boy, who was forced to open her own consignment shop to hawk the furniture left over when the Lays sold several of their homes.
But there are a million faces who weren’t publicly consoled as victims, but who quietly had a lot at stake: Ohio teachers and public workers, whose pension funds lost hundreds of millions in the meltdown of Enron and Global Crossing, a California telecommunication company.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery recently conceded to the U.S. Congress that the bankruptcies of Enron and the less well-known Global Crossing have had an “enormous impact” on two of Ohio’s largest pension funds.
Montgomery’s May 2 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government-Sponsored Enterprise outlined the estimated $231 million in losses to the Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio (PERS) and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS).
The two systems, which contain more than one million members, lost $116 million when Global Crossing went bankrupt and $115 million when Enron went belly up.
Montgomery recently attempted to have Ohio named as the lead plaintiff in a civil suit against Enron, but lost out to California attorneys. The under-reported Global Crossing collapse was slightly worse for Ohio pensioners. The Attorney General’s spokesperson Joe Case told the Columbus Dispatch, “Ohio’s pension funds appear to be the largest financial losers in Global Crossing.”
Global Crossing, operating in a manner similar to Enron’s energy swaps, engaged in questionable trades of communication capacity using an elaborate worldwide fiber optic network. The Ohio pension funds have not adequately explained why they purchased so much stock in the Bermuda-based company. Both the SEC and the FBI are investigating the over-inflated stock and executives’ selling of stock and severance packages prior to Global Crossing’s bankruptcy.
One thing the two companies have in common is Arthur Andersen as their accounting firm. Enron paid Arthur Anderson $27 million in consulting contracts and another $25 million in auditing fees for what the U.S. government charges was a criminal conspiracy to cook the books. Arthur Andersen was indicted on March 14 for obstruction of justice. The trial is currently ongoing.
Lesser known than Canton’s Football Hall of Fame, the Accounting Hall of Fame housed at Ohio State University recently inducted two of Andersen’s founders, the original Arthur Andersen and Leonard P. Spacek. While accounting professor and chair of the hall of fame David L. Jenkins described Andersen and Spacek as men of principle, the new generation of Andersen executives has run into problems in Ohio during the last couple decades.
In 1988, Andersen paid the state of Ohio $5.5 million to cover taxpayers’ losses resulting from the Home State Savings scandal, the largest banking failure in Ohio since the Great Depression. State and federal law enforcement investigators raised allegations of Andersen’s fraudulent accounting practices.
Four years later, Andersen paid more than $22 million to settle a lawsuit claiming that it misrepresented the financial health of the American Continental Corporation and its subsidiaries, including Lincoln Savings and Loan, owned by the controversial Charles Keating, formerly of Cincinnati. In both instances, allegations were made of a pattern or practice of organized white collar crime.
Andersen paid $75 million to Waste Management shareholders after the sewage and sanitation company inflated its earnings by more than a billion dollars to lure investors. Columbus FBI investigators called Waste Management’s disappearing value a classic “pump and dump,” where stock is artificially and illegally inflated so insiders can cash in and bail out before the real value of the company is known.
Waste Management, also with alleged organized crime ties, was involved in a huge sewer contract scandal during the early Lashutka administration in Columbus. A year ago, Andersen agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $7 million to settle a fraud complaint for issuing “knowingly or recklessly” false and misleading audit reports concerning Waste Management’s financial health between 1992 and 1996.
Fear of the economic fallout may cause political repercussions this fall in Ohio. Enron made a number of political contributions to Ohio politicians. Central Ohio’s State Senator Priscilla Mead, a champion of utility deregulation, received $1,500 from Enron in 1999. The same year, Enron gave Bob Taft $2,500 and Montgomery $750.
Other Columbus-area reps who received Enron contributions that year were U.S. Representative Pat Tiberi and State Representatives Amy Salerno and David Goodman. Salerno, Mead and Goodman received additional Enron money the next year and Representative Jim Hughes joined the list with a $250 donation. State Auditor Jim Petro and House Speaker Larry Householder each received $1,000 from Enron in 2000.
The National Institute on Money in State Politics pointed out that Enron targeted “winning candidates,” with 83 percent of the company’s 2,064 contributions going to election winners. Overall, Enron, technically an oil and gas company, contributed $32,325 in 2000 from its geographically diverse corporate PACs, making the company the second largest electric power utility contributor in the Buckeye State. Enron contributed more than American Electric Power and was only surpassed by FirstEnergy’s political action committee, according to the Institute. Most of the money came from Enron’s Houston PACs, followed by the company’s Chicago and Dublin, Ohio, offices.
On May 17, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Enron shareholders filed what’s believed to be the first lawsuit against the company in U.S. District Court in northern Ohio. Other power-generating companies are scrambling to disclose questionable business practices. CMS Energy Corp., based in Dearborn, Michigan, disclosed $4.4 billion in “sham electricity transactions” and “phantom deals” over the last two years, according to the Plain Dealer.
Ohio-based AEP disclosed that an AEP energy trader had made a mistake in dealing with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and had corrected it and lost money. Records reveal SMUD was having discussions with Enron traders on how to profit during the California energy crisis by working together. The Houston Chronicle reported that AEP “admitted to being investigated” and “plans to credit about $4 million in fuel costs paid by its Texas customers.”
Montgomery downplayed the nearly quarter of a billion dollar loss to the Ohio pension funds, noting the overall health of the retirement funds. Others don’t buy it. Former PERS board member John W. Maurer wrote a letter to the Dispatch complaining, “There were numerous signs of trouble at Enron: operating margins shrank from 1998 to 2000; the return on capital, the most important performance measure, was low (in the T-bill range but with higher risk); anyone who looked could see that senior executive were dumping stock; and 3,000 ‘off-shore partnerships’?”
Montgomery assured Congress that the $231 million in losses was only a fraction, around one percent, of the large pension funds. Maurer warns, “Don’t fall for that old line that it’s only a small percentage of our large, well-managed system and will have no lasting effect.” He concluded, “We lost a lot of money.”
NO 06/13/2002
06/20/2002
Halting hurricanes
This summer, a Florida company plans to slow down a storm and rein in the weather
by Bob Fitrakis
Like any good R&D effort, the private sector may be taking over from the government in the quest to develop (and market) technology that controls the weather. Dyn-O-Mat, the “environmental absorbent products” company based in Riviera Beach, Florida, wants, as part of its corporate mission, “to protect humanity worldwide from hurricanes and typhoons.”
Dyn-O-Mat spokesperson Louis Heidelmeier told Columbus Alive that “in a 10-day window in late July through early August” his company plans to lessen the winds of a hurricane from “135 miles an hour to 110 miles an hour.” Heidelmeier believes his company will succeed where the U.S. government’s 20-year project Storm Fury, launched between 1961 and 1980, failed.
On June 4, Dyn-O-Mat showcased an AeroGroup fleet of planes that will drop the company’s Dyn-O-Gel into a mid-summer hurricane. The man behind Dyn-O-Mat, Peter Cordani, claims each grain of Dyn-O-Gel powder “is capable of absorbing 2,000 times its weight in moisture, condensation and air.”
As Heidelmeier explains it, “The U.S. EPA has approved the two polymers we’ve combined in the powder. They don’t need to approve Dyn-O-Gel. We’ve come up with a Reese’s Cup—we’ve simply combined chocolate and peanut butter. Once the polymer absorbs the moisture, it turns into a gel and falls to earth.”
On July 16, 2001, Cordani and company loaded 20,000 pounds of Dyn-O-Gel into a C-130 jet at Palm Beach International Airport and, according to TechTV, “removed a building thunderstorm completely from the atmosphere, a first-ever feat documented by Doppler radar.”
As BBC science reporter Julian Siddle noted: “Dyn-O-Mat used a military aircraft to drop four tons of its powder onto a developing storm cloud. The cloud disappeared from radar screens.” The BBC says, “The U.S. government has already expressed interest in the new product.”
Heidelmeier says this summer’s tests will be conducted 15 miles off Florida’s shores in “international waters.” He told Alive, “We know the U.S. government is watching with interest and they haven’t done anything to stop us.”
The spokesperson dismisses environmental critics, admitting that he saw an attack on Dyn-O-Gel on the web linking the product to the unexplained “black water” mystery in the Gulf of Mexico. “It can’t be us,” Heidelmeier insists, “we were on the Atlantic side.”
Heidelmeier stresses that the unused powder either “burns up or dissolves when it hits salt water.” The powder is biodegradable and not hazardous to the environment, he claims.
Margareta-Erminia Cassani, writing on the environmental website Moonbow Media, reported, “On July 19, 2001, ABC news reported a similar story of a gelatinous ‘goo’ again washing up on beaches in West Palm Beach, Florida. This time it turns out the substance was identified as Dyn-O-Gel, a substance created for the purpose of modifying the weather… It has the ability to suck the moisture out of a hurricane and let it fall to the ground. It works on much the same principle as the ‘gel’ substance in babies’ diapers.”
Environmental reporter and watchdog Will Thomas understands why Dyn-O-Mat wants to “dial down” the catastrophic winds of hurricanes and typhoons by “sucking the moisture-fueled energy out of giant revolving storms.” Thomas points out that most of the Earth’s human population occupies coastlines within reach of ocean storms.
“This is a battle between the insurance companies that are bigger than the big oil companies driving global warming,” he said, “but such grandiose geo-engineering schemes make me nervous.”
A hurricane is the most powerful heat-venting force on the planet, according to Thomas, dissipating 25-degree Celsius surface waters. “Because no one really knows what will happen if this safety-valve is wired shut and ocean regions made even hotter, Dyn-O-Mat’s innovative storm-killing technology may prove to be dyn-o-mite in unexpected and unpleasant ways.”
“Physics teaches that energy is never destroyed—only displaced,” Thomas said. “The awesome heat-pumps disabled by Dyn-O-Mat have to go somewhere… What kind of storms will this produce? Do we really want to risk making the oceans hotter by dissipating their hurricane thermostats?”
A Dyn-O-Mat press release from Heidelmeier explains the motivation behind the company’s weather-control efforts: “Ten years ago this August, Hurricane Andrew struck Florida and Louisiana, costing over $40 billion while killing 26 and damaging or destroying over 125,000 homes (source: NOAA). Hurricane Mitch killed 15,000 in Honduras in ’98 and a typhoon in the early ’70s claimed 300,000 (!) in Bangladesh (source: National Geographic). Add the chemicals under your sink, the petroleum-based products in your garage and sewage/waste from each home and then multiply that by the number of homes destroyed by a major storm and you get an idea of the long-term environmental damage a major storm can create. NOAA has predicted nine to 13 tropical storms for 2002 with six to eight possibly becoming hurricanes and two to three could be major, (winds 111-plus mph). ...Hurricane season starts June 1.”
Heidelmeier concludes, “There is no downside.”
NO 06/27/2002
07/04/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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07/18/2002 by Bob Fitrakis
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08/15/2002 / by Bob Fitrakis
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