"Rising" to Empire, Falling from Grace

The following article is adapted from my contribution to a forthcoming collection of essays addressing America's descent into imperialism.

“If we have to use force, it is because weare America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see furtherinto the future.”

This panegyric to what is commonly called“American Exceptionalism” could have been composed by any of a number ofGOP-aligned media figures, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, ortheir legions of local imitators. Those words were actually spoken by Madeleine Albright in 1998, when she was the Clinton administration’s Secretary of State. She was defending the U.S. role in enforcingan embargo on Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991.

Albright had memorably addressed that issue in a different fashion three years earlier during an interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes. 

“We have heard that a half million children have died,”observed interviewer Leslie Stahl. “I mean, that's more children than died inHiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Without challenging the statistics, or displaying even atremor of remorse, Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, butthe price--we think the price is worth it.”

By reconciling Albright’s statements we learn that when “we have to”impose policies that result in the avoidable death, through starvation anddisease, of hundreds of thousands of children, “it is because we areAmerica.... We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

For some reason, the self-styled seers and visionaries whodefended the Iraqi embargo didn’t foresee how that policy, coupled with decadesof U.S. meddling in the Middle East, would cultivate and nurture the seeds thatbore murderous fruit on September 11, 2001. 

To ordinary people not blessed withAlbright’s oracular insight, it seemed obvious that some variety of murderous blowback would be the inevitable product of a foreign policy thatfeatured deliberate mass starvation punctuated with bombing raids. However, the custodians of permissible opinion havedecreed that history began on the morning of 9/11 – that nothing the U.S.government did prior to that date has any organic connection to the motives andactions of those who carried out the attack (at least as that attack isdescribed in the officially sanctioned narrative). To suggest that Washington’spolicies had some relationship to anti-American sentiment in the Middle East isto commit a grave blasphemy against American Exceptionalism – the officialcreed of the ruling Establishment, irrespective of party.

What makes America exceptional, from this perspective, isnot the blessings we have been allotted by Providence, or the individualliberties promised by our country’s founding documents. America is exceptionalbecause of the power of the government that rules us, as manifest in itsability to kill people in distant lands. 

Death-dealing herald of empire: A Global Hawk drone.

That view, once again, is not limited to bellicose left-winginternationalists like Albright. On several occasions, Rush Limbaugh – who,like fellow late-blooming militarist Dick Cheney, had “other priorities” whenhe was of draft age during Vietnam – has related an anecdote about witnessing amilitary fly-over during a Super Bowl in the 1980. Aroused by the spectacle tothe point of rapture, Limbaugh (by his own account) was moved to exclaim, “Howcan you see something like that, andbe a liberal who hates your country?”

Offensive as it would be to both Limbaugh and Albright, acompelling case can be made that their reflexive militarism is a repudiation ofour country’s founding principles. The Framers of the Constitution, painfullyfamiliar with the uses to which large military establishments could be put,never intended for the united States of America (in Congress assembled) to havea standing, centralized army. While they did have the lamentable intention of creating a consolidated central government -- and pretty clear ambitions for territorial expansion to the West -- they did not entertain grandiose ambitions ofpolicing the world. 

The most admirable members of the Founding Generation understood that love of country was not measured by one’senthusiasm for government-inflicted bloodshed. That’s why Washington’s FarewellAddress emphasized both adequate provision for defense and thecompelling necessity to avoid entanglement in the affairs of other countries. 

Imperialism by joystick: A drone operator carries out an attack.

“Whereverthe standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, therewill her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be,” observed John QuincyAdams in his 1821 Independence Day Address. “But she goes not abroad, in searchof monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independenceof all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows thatby once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the bannersof foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power ofextrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice,envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy wouldinsensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatressof the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” (Emphasisadded.) 

Unlikethe supposedly far-seeing Madeleine Albright – who couldn’t foretell how herarrogant endorsement of genocide in 1995 would help catalyze the enmity thatled to the devastating 9/11 assault six years later – Adams displayed uncannyforesight in describing the degenerate state of American “patriotism” today,190 years after he delivered his warning against interventionism: “Patriots”today celebrate force, not liberty.

Today,what Adams and his generation called “Independence Day” is simply called the Fourthof July. Rather than being a celebration of individual liberty, the “Fourth”has become an annual orgy of militarism, often involving saturation-levelbarrages of propaganda in the form of televised war “movie marathons” andmilitary parades that wouldn’t be out of place in Pyongyang. 

Lestit be forgotten, Independence Day originally commemorated an act ofinsurrection against the “legitimate” government – an incomparably powerfulglobe-spanning empire on which the sun never set. The men who committed thatact of rebellion would probably consider it perverse that they are “honored” bypublic rituals extolling the imperial power of a government that is morecorrupt and oppressive – by several orders of magnitude – than that of GeorgeIII.

Americawas unique because of its origins in principled rebellion against lawless rule,and because of a set of founding political instruments that, while imperfect, did provide individuals some protection against government aggression. Those traits that are typicallycelebrated as tokens of “American Exceptionalism” – an interventionist foreignpolicy; a Chief Executive with unqualified power to kill, imprison, and torturepeople at whim; a badly overgrown military establishment – are, in a specificsense, un-American. 

A commercial republic in which both citizens and theirelected representatives are governed by law, and individual liberty is regarded asthe highest political good, would be truly exceptional. A sprawling empireruled by a corrupt oligarchy that plunders both the national treasury and theresources of distant lands is actually quite commonplace. 

 To catch a glimpse of the America that could have been, it's useful to pay a brief visit to the period between the end of the War for Independence and the mercantilist counter-revolution in Philadelphia that abolished the Articles of Confederation and created a more centralized constitutional Union.

 In 1782, a year after the British surrender at Yorktown andone year before the Treaty of Paris finalized American independence, a formerFrench Lieutenant named J. Hector Saint John de Crevecoeur composed a series ofessays entitled Letters from an AmericanFarmer. Six decades before Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America, Crevecoeur devotedhis considerable literary gifts to an examination of the question: “What, then,is the American, this new man?” 

Unlike Europe, a continent plagued by entrenched elites,there were “no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, noecclesiastical dominion, no invisiblepower giving to a few a very visibleone” in America, he wrote. The inhabitants of this new-born confederacy ofconstitutional republics were “a people of cultivators, scattered over animmense territory … united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreadingtheir power, because they are equitable.” (Emphasis added.) 

At its best, the "mild" government to which Crevecoeur referred was self-government; it was the spontaneous cooperation of productive people, rather than the imposed order of a parasitical elite. This state of affairs was hardly uniform throughout the confederation, of course, but that it existed at all was something truly inspiring.

On "Evacuation Day," November 25, 1783, British troops ended their occupation of New York. In comments recorded by the New York Packet newspaper, a departing British officer expressed a bemused admiration for the Americans, who distinguished themselves by their unwillingness to be ruled:

“Here,in this city, we have had an army for more than seven years, and yet we couldnot keep the peace of it. Scarcely a day or night passed without tumults. Nowwe are [leaving] everything is in quietness and safety. These Americans are acurious, original people; they know how to govern themselves, but nobody elsecan govern them.”

The promise of the War for Independence was the establishment of asystem of individual liberty protected by law – and, at least at that early stage, that promise was being kept. Thatgenuinely exceptional America earned the admiration of the world – not becauseits government possessed the power to murder people by remote control, orannihilate entire continents in a nuclear paroxysm, but rather becauseits people were free and independent, and its society -- although displayingall of the imperfections to which fallen man is heir – aspired to be governedby the Golden Rule. 

 

Tragically, "our" government’s rise to global power has meantour country’s fall from grace. 

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Steven Pinker's Statist Gospel

Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, who has saidthat he never “outgrew my conversion to atheism at thirteen,” has written atheodicy – a tract intended to validate the redemptive power of the LeviathanState. In his new book The Better Angelsof Our Nature, Pinkerinsists that humanity has “evolved to become less violent” through the ministryof elites who employ the State to evangelize on behalf of what he calls “enlightenmenthumanism.” 

According to Pinker, since the emergence of the modern secular state in the 18th century there has been a dramatic decline in primitive expressions ofaggressive violence. People who live in contemporary developed societies “no longer have to worry about abduction into sexualslavery; divinely commanded genocide; lethal circuses and tournaments;punishment on the cross, rack, wheel, stake, or strappado for holding unpopularbeliefs; decapitation for not bearing a son; disembowelment for having dated aroyal; pistol duels to defend their honor … or the prospect of a nuclear world warthat would put an end to civilization or to human life itself,” Pinker asserts. 

The precipitous decline in private violence,which Pinker heralds as “the most important thing that has ever happened in humanhistory,” is a triumph of the “social contract,” an arrangement in which political government asserts a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force. By over-awingthose inclined toward individual acts of violence, the State supposedly suppresses“demonic” impulses – such as greed and sadism – while emancipating the “betterangels of our nature” – empathy, self-discipline, and peaceful cooperation.

"Oh Divine State, protect us from the unenlightened...."

 As is the case with most religious doctrines, Pinker’stheology of the divine State is built on a paradox – in this case the idea thatthe human tendency toward violence can be eradicated through the scientificapplication of the same by enlightened people who have supposedly transcendedsuch primitive impulses. 

Given that Pinker is one of the leading exponents ofthe “box with wires” view of the human brain, there is also a rich vein ofirony in Pinker’s unabashed use of the terms “demons” and “angels” indescribing a conflict over competing visions of morality. 

In an interview given more than a decade ago, Pinker describedhuman beings as “nothing more than a collection of ricocheting molecules in thehead.” Like others who subscribe to that view, Pinker has yet to submit a schematic explaining how morality is produced through molecular reactions.And like theologians from other traditions, Pinker is content to leave such mattersundisturbed in the unfathomable depths of mystery. This would be a perfectlyacceptable arrangement – were it not for the fact that Pinker, like fundamentalists from other traditions, embraces the use of sanctified coercion as a meansof purifying those less enlightened than he.

As a child, Pinker, says, he thought as a child, embracinganarchism at about the same time he converted to atheism. But as an adult, hehas put away childish things: “I was a Rousseauan then; now I’m a Hobbesian.”What this means in practice is that he merely abandoned one sect of totalitarianstatism for another.

Rousseau, it should be remembered, was  wasthe author of whathe called "The CivilReligion" — a doctrine that would enable themasses, in Rousseau's phrase, to "bear with docility the yoke of thepublic good." 

The most important article of Rousseau's Civil Religion was the absolute divinity of the State; the gravest transgressionwas "intolerance," which was regarded as evil not because it injured therights of individuals, but because it challenged the State's authority.

According to Rousseau, the ideal social arrangement would be a "form of theocracy, in which there canbe no pontiff save the prince, and no priests save the magistrates.... [W]hoever dares to say, 'Outside the church is nosalvation,' ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church,and the prince the pontiff."

TheState would make belief in its dogmas compulsory, even as it denied it wasdoing so: "While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish fromthe state anyone who does not believe them…..” Apostasy would be a capital offense: "If any one, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if hedoes not believe them, let him be punished by death -- he has committed the worstof all crimes, that of lying before the law."

Rousseau believed that man --until corrupted by traditional institutions -- was intrinsically good. Thomas Hobbes– not to put too fine a point on the matter – didn’t share that opinion. He didagree that the State, as the embodiment of what could be called the “generalwill,” should combine the civil and ecclesial functions and exercise unlimitedpower to regiment the lives of its subjects. The objective wouldn’t be to savepeople’s souls, or elevate their morals, but merely to impose order.

Pinker claims to be “eclectically, non-dogmaticallylibertarian” in his political outlook. Given his unbuttoned embrace of Hobbesianabsolutism, that’s a bit like claiming to be an “eclectic, non-dogmatic vegan”while subsisting on a dietof steak tartare.  

Although Pinker began his academic career in a Montreal counter-culturalmilieu “dominated by hippies ... and US draft dodgers,” he has endorsed theexercise in State-inflicted violence called the “War on Drugs” in terms thatwould earn Hobbes’s approval:  “A regimethat trawls for drug users or other petty delinquents will get a certain numberof violent people as a by-catch, further thinning the ranks of the violentpeople who remain on the streets.”  

This process involves filling the streets with State-licensed“violent people” in military attire, and granting them a plenary indulgence to loot and terrorize the public. The “by-catch” gathered by thegovernment’s trawling net includes perfectly innocent people. But it is not ourplace to question the inscrutable wisdom of the divine State, which causes thepain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Leviathan's "by-catch": A 71-year-old victim of a wrong-door drug raid.

 There is also the matter of quo warranto: By what authority doesthe State assault and imprison people who peacefully ingest mind-alteringsubstances? 

This is where Pinker’s Rousseauist background comes into play: It’snot necessary for subjects to understand the logic of the State’s decrees; theysimply must have faith in its bottomless competence and unalloyed goodness – orsuffer the penalty for their apostasy. 

All religious belief requires the acceptance “of thingshoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Pinker’s dogma requires that weignore the evidence of things that are clearly visible in order to embrace hisvision of something yet to materialize. The most compelling argument againstPinker’s claim that humanity has evolved beyond violence is the systematic slaughter duringthe 20^th Century of at least 170 million people by governmentsclaiming and enforcing a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force. 

In The Better Angelsof Our Nature, Pinker – to his credit – does recognize R.J. Rummel’s pioneeringresearch into the phenomenon of "democide." Given the body count compiledthrough war and politicized mass murder during the 20^th century, andthe persistent bloodshed in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, the ideathat humanity has progressed beyond violence “seems illogical and obscene,” Pinkeradmits. This is something else we simply have to take on faith as well, itappears. 

The rampages carried out by totalitarian states were atragic prelude to the “Long Peace” that has prevailed since WWII, Pinker insists.We’ve reached a point at which mass violence only among those sub-populationsthat have resisted signing on to a “social contract that [gives] government amonopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” That heathen population, he pointsout, includes Americans who reside in the southern and western states, wherepeople “retain the right to bear arms [and] believe it is their responsibility,not the government’s, to deter harm-doers.” This means that “private citizens,flush with self-serving biases, [can act] as judge, jury, and executioner….”

Of all the impious nerve! Such power can only be exercisedby those duly anointed as emissaries of the divine State – beginning with the ExaltedOne in the Oval Office, who commands the power to imprison, torture, or execute anybody  on the face of theplanet. 

In a 2007 TED lecture, Dr. Pinker urged Leviathan’s subjectsto count their blessings: A mere century ago, he pointed out, some of them mayhave been “burned at the stake for criticizing the king, after a trial thatmaybe lasted ten minutes.” Today, by way of contrast, a U.S. citizen who condemns Washington’s imperial aggression can be summarily executed by way of adrone-fired missile without the benefit of a trial. The latter approach is acceptable to at least some peopleof Pinker’s persuasion because the State’s priestly caste possesses themystical power to transubstantiate violence into “policy.” 

Although he followed a different vector, Steven Pinker, a proudly irreligious cultural Jew, has arrived at the same destination as the reactionary 18th Century Catholic writer Joseph de Maistre, who insisted that "all greatness, all power, all social order dependson the executioner; he is the terror of human society and tie that holds ittogether. Take away this incontrovertible force from the world, and at thatvery moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, societydisappears." While Dr. Pinker criticizes the death penalty, his view of social order ultimately rests on the supposed authority of State functionaries to kill those who refuse to submit to them.

The modern material and ethical progress Pinker properly celebrates are not the product of State coercion. They are the result of private, mutually beneficial action based on reciprocal respect for individual rights -- in other words, the application of the Golden Rule, which Pinker acknowledges in passing while pointedly ignoring uncomfortable questions about its provenance and most notable Exponent. 

To use Pinker's categories: The impulses unleashed by the State are demonic, not angelic. 

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Framing Steele: A Case Study of Sovietized American "Justice"

Edgar Steele (r.) confers with political activist Paul Venable.

Yes, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law -- for my own safety's sake. 

-- Sir Thomas Moore, as depicted in A Man for All Seasons

When Edgar Steele was told on the morning ofJune 11, 2010, that his wife Cyndi had been killed when her SUV was run off the road inOregon, his first reaction, understandably, was shock. That reaction mutated into panic minutes later when FBI Agent Michael Sotka told Steele that his mother-in-law had also been shot and killed.

“He wanted to contact family members and find out if theywere okay,” testified State Trooper Jess Spike, who was at Steele’s home inSagle, Idaho when the dire tidings were delivered. Asked by Agent Sotka whomight have perpetrated those crimes and “who his enemies were,” Steele named “anumber of organizations that may have been against him,” Spike continued.“There was like the Anti-Defamation League, Southern Poverty – there were oneor two others. I don’t recall the acronyms or names of them.” 

Trooper Spike was referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC), which bankrupted the northern Idaho-based Aryan Nation whitesupremacist group in a 2000 lawsuit. Steele, a controversial lawyer who described himself as the "Attorney for the Damned," had represented the Aryan Nation incourt, thereby earning the abiding enmity of the SPLC and its allies, includingthe Anti-Defamation League -- both of which are quasi-private affiliates of the Homeland Security apparatus. 

In addition to his legal work, Steele was a polemicist on behalf of worldview that can fairly be characterized as white supremacist. The author of a book entitled Defensive Racism, Steele disavowed aggressive violence. This wasn't true of at least some of his detractors: Prior to June 11, 2010, EdgarSteele had received death threats that the FBI had traced back to the the so-called Jewish Defense League, which has been implicated in more than adozen domestic terrorist incidents in the United States. 

In the months leading up to June 11, Steele had endured a near-fatal heart attack. On the morning he received the news, he was still recuperating from a second health crisis, a nasal aneurysm that had left him hospitalized just a few weeks earlier. So he was in pretty fragile condition as horrible newsaccumulated suggesting that his enemies were laying siege to his family. But that wasn't the final shock he was to endure on that crowded morning: Agent Sotka suddenly announced, "Your wife is not dead ... you're under arrest."

As Sotka hauled the stunned andshaken Steele from his home, the FBI Agent encountered Dr. Allen Banks, a local biochemist family friend who had arrived that morning to help Steele haula load of lumber from the Home Depot in nearby Coeur d’Alene. 

Brandishing a recorder, Sotka triumphantly told Banks:“We’ve got everything we need right here.” A few hours after being led to believethat his wife and mother-in-law had been murdered, Steele was charged with hiringa local handyman named Larry Fairfax to kill them. 

Trooper Spike would later admit incourt that there was nothing in the June 11 conversation that indicatedSteele’s guilt. The elaborate fiction created by Sotka was a “ruse” intended toget Steele to incriminate himself. Rather than reacting to a confession or a critical disclosure bySteele, Sotka arrested him when it became clear that he “wasn’t going tocrack,” Trooper Spike recounted on the witness stand. 

As it happens, within four days of arresting Steele, the FBI had a confession from a suspect who admitted to placing a pipe bomb on the automobile Cyndi Steele droveto Oregon City to visit her cancer-stricken mother: Larry Fairfax himself, who had reportedly carried out the plot with unnamed "accomplices." The bomb was accidentally discovered when Mrs. Steele took the van to a Jiffy Lube. Fairfax, who we're told approached the FBI on June 9 to report that Steele had hired him to murder his wife and mother-in-law, hadn't disclosed the existence of the pipe bomb.

It wouldn't have gone off -- but the jury wasn't told.

Fairfax, who had done some remodeling work on the Steele home, was supposedly asked to carry out the double murder for $25,000 that would come from an insurance pay-off.(Fairfax wasn’t aware that Steele had cancelled his wife’s insurance policy twoyears earlier.) This arrangement was supposedly made on May 27, just a fewweeks after Steele had been hospitalized for his second life-threatening aneurysm. 

Prior to Steele's arrest, Fairfax had cashed in roughly $10,000 in silver. Edgar and Cyndi claimed thatFairfax -- who knew where the family had cached precious metals on their property -- had stolen the silver. Fairfax insists it was part ofthe pay-off for his role in the murder plot. All that is known for certain isthat the silver had belonged to the Steeles before Fairfax cashed it in. 

It is likewise known for sure that Fairfax -- with the help of his still-unknown accomplices -- built the pipe bomb and placed it on the undercarriage of Cyndi Steele’s vehicle. EdgarSteele’s only connection to the pipe bomb was a recorded June 10conversation with Fairfax in which the phrase “car bomb” was spoken. Fairfax and the FBI insisted that the conversation made reference to an earlier, unrecorded agreement between the two of them that Fairfax would kill Cyndi Steele and her ailing mother. 

During his testimony in Edgar Steele's trial, Agent Sotka admitted that the FBI had given Fairfax and James Maher $500 and that "we decided to send Mr. Fairfax over to Portland in case Mr. Steele asked for a phone call from him." That call, according to AgentSotka, was intended to be Steele’s alibi, proving that he was nowhere near thescene of the crime when it occurred. 

A stronger case can be made that this call was designed to be the finishing touch on the frame the Feds had constructed to entrap Steele. Bycalling from Oregon, Fairfax would create an interstate “nexus” that supposedlyjustified federal charges against Steele. It's important to note that this element of the case against Steele involves something he didn't do -- namely, contacting Fairfax in Portland -- while Sotka admitted under oath that it was the FBI that sent Fairfax to Portland. 

Last May, following a trial that lasted less than a week, a federal jury convicted Steele on four counts, including conspiracy to commit murder. He faces a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison – which, owing tohis age and fragile health, is a life sentence. The prosecution case thatresulted in that sentence is miraculously untainted by reliable evidence. 

Thealleged victim, Cyndi Steele, has been her husband’s most consistent and vocaldefender, despite what she has described as intimidation by Agent Sotka. The so-called pipe bomb was little more than a stage prop incapable of exploding – a fact withheld by the Feds until the day after Steele’s trial ended, when it was introduced, without Government objections, during Larry Fairfax’s sentencing hearing. 

Fairfax, who manufactured a supposedly "lethal" weapon of mass destruction as part of a plot to murder two innocent people, was charged with possession of an "unregistered firearm" and given a sentence of 27 months in prison (with credit for time served), followed by three years of supervised release. He was ordered to pay Cyndi Steele -- his victim -- a total of $900 in compensation. That detail eloquently testifies of the contemptuous hostility the Feds have for the uncooperative "victim." 

As with so many other prosecutions of this kind, this case shouldn’t have been in federal court in thefirst place. 

Edgar Steele “did not `cause’ anyone to travel in interstatecommerce,” points out his attorney Wesley Hoyt in a motion for a new trial. “Governmentinformants Larry Fairfax and James Maher were dispatched from Idaho on June 11,2010 by the Government, not the defendant. They were paid $500 by the FBI totravel to Oregon … so that FBI Agent Sotka could have Fairfax call Mr. Steelefrom an Oregon prefix” – thereby creating a supposed “jurisdictional link” tojustify a federal prosecution.

This is a familiar FBI tactic: Where there is no clearfederal “nexus,” create one through a letter or an interstate telephone call.In the 1991 case U.S. v. Coats, theFourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an FBI-instigated interstate phonecall that “was contrived by the Government for that reason alone” did notprovide the desired “jurisdictional link.”

The FBI’s claim that Steele had actually hired Fairfax tokill his wife depends on two dubious pieces of evidence, neither of which issufficient alone but that supposedly validate each other: The ambiguous anddisputed recording of a conversation between Fairfax and Steele on June10,2010, and Fairfax’s testimony. 

Judge Winmill (l.) with Russian Judge Vladimir Soloyev in 2002.

During the trial in Boise, the defense repeatedly objected to theintroduction of the recording, and the Government-provided transcript, on thebasis that they were offered without “foundation.” 

Addressing that objection, Federal District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled that “if he [Fairfax] testifies thathe has listened to it and it accurately sets forth what was said at the time,then that is the foundation.” In its closing arguments, the prosecution heavilyemphasized the claim that the recordings likewise “corroborated” Fairfax’saccount. The problem here is that both of those pieces of “evidence”are terminally flawed – and since each of them is thoroughly impeachable, theycan’t be used to validate each other. 

The chain of custody necessary toauthenticate the recordings breaks down at the very first link. Fairfax’sdemonstrated dishonesty (the Feds were forced to admit that he was "not completely forthcoming" about the pipe bomb) makes him unsuitable as a corroborative witnessregarding their reliability. “In order to authenticate the records, the Governmentpresented the testimony of an admitted liar … who during trial stated that onJune 9, 2010 he lied to the FBI when he did not tell them about the existenceof a bomb on Mrs. Steele’s car,” notes the motion for a new trial. 

FBI Agent Sotka claimed that Fairfax and Steele wereunder constant surveillance on the Steele family’s property while the recordedconversations took place. However, the  discussion took place in abarn, while the two of them were concealed from view. Since the deviceconcealed on Fairfax was a recorder rather than a “wire,” nobody heard theconversations as they actually occurred. 

On the witness stand Agent Sotka described how he downloadedthe digital audio file from the recording device onto an FBI computer in Coeurd’Alene with a special proprietary software program. From there, the file wasreportedly uploaded to a database at an FBI lab in Virginia. Sotka did thiswithout listening to the recorded conversation. He then copied the file onto acompact disc, from which the file was re-copied onto a second disc. At thatpoint, according to Sotka, he purged the original digital file from therecording device, since “part of the procedure is to delete the conversationand have the recorder clear for the next time you need to use it.” 

Sotka appears to be selectively fastidious about followingFBI procedures, since he did all of this by himself, without having a secondAgent present, as dictated by Bureau policy. What this means is that therecordings heard by the court – and that had been played to Cyndi Steele byAgent Sotka prior to the trial – were, at the very best, a third-generationcopy of the original digital file, which was destroyed by Sotka without beingheard by himself or anybody else.

When the version of the recording was played for CyndiSteele, the alleged victim and target of the purported murder-for-hire plot was not convinced that what she heard was an actual conversation involving her husband. Furthermore, the version of the recording played in court contained anodd repetitive clicking noise, which the prosecution insisted was the sound of“Tic-Tacs” rattling in Fairfax’spocket. That noise, which wasn’t present on the pre-trial version, is the kind of audio artifact that can result when a recording is digitally assembled from several different sources.

Dr. George Papcun, a forensic scientist who has served as anexpert witness and law enforcement consultant for several decades, detectednumerous “transients” and other anomalies – by one count, roughly 300 of them-- in the pre-trial version of the FBI recordings. Dr.Papcun concluded that there was “a reasonable degree of scientificprobability that [the recordings] do not represent a true and valid representation ofreality and they are unreliable.” That assessment provides ample, if notunassailable, grounds for reasonable doubt, especially in light of Dr. Papcun’scredentials. 

After finishing his undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Arizona, Papcun went on to earn a Master’s Degree in FormalLinguistics and a Ph.D. in Linguistics (with a specialization in AcousticPhonetics) from UCLA. As a graduate student, Papcun was awarded Ford Foundationand National Defense education fellowships; his professional work earned anaward from Johns Hopkins University and a place on the R&D-100 list of topachievers in “Technological Innovation.” He has been an advisor to local,state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including the Department ofHomeland Security, and an expert forensic witness in numerous high-profilecases.

Not surprisingly, theprosecution attempted to exclude both Dr. Papcun’s report and his testimonyfrom the trial. On May 2, Judge Winmill held a hearing to determine whether thedefense would be permitted to present Papcun’s testimony. At the time, Papcunwas vacationing in Bora Bora, and Winmill initially ruled that he could testify via video conference on the following day.However, the prosecution complained that this arrangement would beunacceptable, since it wouldn’t permit them to “confront” the witness – a right that is guaranteed to the defendant, not the prosecution, by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

On May 3, Judge Winmill, exhibiting his habitual, undisguised bias infavor of the prosecution, dutifully reversed hisruling and issued an entirely whimsical demand that Dr. Papcun be physicallypresent in Boise, Idaho no later than 8:30 a.m. the following morning –Wednesday, May 4 – in order to testify at the trial. 

Since neitherteleportation nor sub-orbital commercial flight is presently available, the earliest Papcun could be available was Thursday, May 5.Papcun was willing to interrupt his vacation, and the defense was willing topay the expense. However, Judge Winmill – who was consistently flexible inmeeting the prosecution’s demands – maintained that there wasn’t sufficientwiggle room in his schedule to permit Papcun to testify on Thursday. None ofthis would have been necessary, of course, if Winmill had simply stuck to hisinitial ruling and permitted Dr. Papcun to offer fully interactive testimony byway of a video conference held at the nearest U.S. consulate.

Judge Winmill’s earnest concern for the supposed right ofthe prosecution to “confront” Dr. Papcun stands in stark contrast to hisindifference to Edgar Steele’s constitutionally protected right to confront a key prosecution witness, Ukrainian resident Tatyana Loginova – whom Steele hadcontacted as part of what he and his wife Cyndi both described as his researchinto the Russian “mail-0rder bride” scam.

 

Steele's daughter Kesley testified under oath that both she and her mother were aware of that research, and often joked about it. That account was confirmed from the witness stand by family friend Allan Banks, who said that Steele had told him about contacting several women from the former Soviet Union as "part of a legal case."

 The question of motive was probably the biggest of thenumerous weaknesses in the prosecution’s case: Why would a man who had justrecovered from a near-fatal aortic aneurysm seek to murder the wife whose personal care had been indispensable to his recovery? 

The prosecution confected astory in which Steele – a senior citizen in fragile health – was secretlytrolling the Web in search of a nubile young girlfriend, and had developed aschoolboy crush on Miss Loginova. 

Loginova’s testimony was critical to the prosecution’s case,and the “right to confront” protected by the Sixth Amendment required thatSteele and his counsel be given an opportunity to cross-examine her. However,Winmill permitted the prosecution to enter into evidence a videotapeddeposition conducted via video conference with the aid of a Russian language translator.Loginova’s story included aclaim that Steele had promised to visit her in Ukraine in August 2010. 

While the Edgar Steele jury was permitted to hear Loginova’s videotaped testimony, it was not permitted to hear thetestimony of Dr. Robert Stoll, who had spent several hours in Steele’s companyon June 10 – the day he supposedly planned to murder his wife. Dr. Stoll, alocal veterinarian, has filed an affidavit recounting how he had discussedSteele’s health problems and how he was impressed by “the manner of Edgar’stender affection for his wife and family. I believe that this man’s intent …when I visited him was not to kill anyone, especially his wife.” 

Cyndi Steele and attorney Wesley Hoyt.

To understand the deeply prejudicial nature of Winmill's rulings in this regard it’s necessary to take into account the composition of the jury: In acase involving an alleged plot by a husband to murder his middle-aged wife, thejury consisted of eleven women and one man. 

The panel that emerged from voir dire was ideal for theprosecution’s theory of the case, which could have been the plot from any ofseveral dozen made-for-TV movies of the kind broadcast incessantly on the “Lifetime” cablenetwork: The scheming, unfaithful husband, driven by ego and what remains of his mid-life libido, plots to murder his long-suffering wife in order to take up with apneumatic trophy bimbo. 

Edgar Steele is a widely despised figure. His legal practice was devoted to defending the rights of similarly marginalized and disreputable people out of the conviction that "it is the ... politically incorrect whose rights are first infringed and then eliminated," as he pointed out in a speech he delivered in Jekyll Island, Georgia almost exactly two years before his Stalinist show trial in Boise. 

Actually, the comparison to the Soviet-era Russian legal system is unfair, given that a defendant hauled before a Soviet criminal tribunal actually enjoyed a small but measurable chance of acquittal.


After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, the jury system -- which had been established under Alexander II in 1864 -- was abolished and replaced with"People's Courts" composed of a judge and a panel of two to six Party-appointed "assessors" who heard all of the evidence and decided all questions of both fact and law. The assessors "became known as `nodders' for simply nodding in agreement with the judge," wrote federal Judge John C. Coughenour in an article published by the Seattle University Law Review. "People's assessors virtually always agreed with judges; acquittals were virtually nonexistent.... [U]nlike our adversarial system, the Soviet inquisitorial criminal justice system neither prioritized nor emphasized the rights of individual defendants, but instead paid homage to the interests of the state."

What Judge Coughenour describes as a contrast between the Soviet and American legal systems is actually one of the strongest points of similarity. Lew Rockwell recently pointed out that in the pseudo-legal proceedings referred to as "trials" by the federal Leviathan, the defendant "wins once every 212 times" -- a respectable approximation of "never." During the late Stalin era, Soviet procurators were ordered to achieve a 100 percent conviction rate; their counterparts in contemporary U.S. federal courts have essentially accomplished that feat. This is because the federal system, like its Soviet predecessor, is designed to serve the interests of the State -- and federal juries are typically purged of anyone unwilling to play the role of "nodder" in a show trial. 

During jury selection in the Edgar Steele "trial," Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan, who presided over the prosecution, carefully scrutinized potential jurors for what she called "hidden biases" against "the United States Government." Neither Whelan nor Judge Winmill was willing to abide the presence of any juror who understood that the jury's role is to force the government to overcome the constitutionally prescribed "bias" in favor of the defendant. They needn't have worried.

In Idaho, the most "anti-government" state in the Soyuz, the Feds were able to win a murder conspiracy conviction in a case without a victim, a murder weapon, or a motive, using only a doctored audio recording and the self-exculpating testimony of an admitted liar who confessed to manufacturing and planting the non-functional bomb. Andrei Vyshinsky would be suitably impressed.

(Note: In the original version of this essay, I mistakenly reported that Dr. George Papcun had offered to fly to Boise for the "pre-trial hearing"; in fact, he had attended a pre-trial hearing, but was prevented by Judge Winmill from testifying at the trial. My thanks to Violet Harris, who attended the trial and took comprehensive notes, for that very important correction. I likewise erred in referring to Dr. Allen Banks as a veterinarian, rather than a research scientist who specializes in chemistry and biochemistry; my thanks as well to Robert Magnuson for correcting that mistake.)

 Thank you so much for helping to keep Pro Libertate on-line. Your donations are vital and very much appreciated. God bless!

 Dum spiro, pugno!

The Awlaki Sanction: Who's Next on the List?

The links connecting Anwar al-Awlaki to anti-American terrorismwere entirely suppositious, forged through unsubstantiated official assertion. Hewas, at most, a clericalpropagandist who never exercised command authority. For that matter, noevidence has been presented that he ever had an operational role in a militaryforce of any kind. 

Awlaki -- an American-born cleric who was once courted by the Pentagon -- was accused of expressing support for armed attacksagainst U.S. military personnel and government interests. It is not terrorismto employ lethal violence against an invading and occupying army, nor is it acrime to express support for armed self-defense -- including armed interposition against the aggressive designs of the U.S. government.  

The administration asserted– without providing evidence – that Awlaki had an “operational” role inplanning terroristattacks against U.S. citizens. If evidence supporting that charge existed,the administration had the unconditional constitutional duty to indict Awlakiand put him on trial. 

Intelligence officials knew Awlaki’s location. Thegovernment of Yemen, which is headed by a pliant thug named Ali Abdullah Saleh,is a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington and would have eagerly cooperated inan effort to track down and extradite Awlaki. But this would not have validatedthe claim – madeby the Bush administration, and embraced by its successor – that thePresident of the United States isn’t bound by the Constitution, but rather is the Living Constitution. 

As a guarantee of individual liberty, a politicalconstitution is about as intrinsically valuable as a paper currency. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are irredeemable unless they are backed by a noble metal –lead, in the form of privately owned ammunition. Nonetheless, and for therecord, this must be said: 

There is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the UnitedStates of America that permits a president to order the summary execution ofany human being. Only Congress can declare war. Only a jury can find someoneguilty of a crime. Only a judge can impose a death sentence. Or such would bethe case, were we still living in a constitutional republic, rather than themilitarist empire into which that republic inevitably degenerated. 

The vertically integrated murder apparatus that killedAwlaki and fellowU.S. citizen Samir Khan is entirely autonomous – and increasingly automated.Awlaki was addedto a “kill list,” and hisexecution “sanctioned” by a secret legal memorandum, on the basis of thingshe had said in public. Within a few years, the machinery of mass murder will berefined to the point where people – including U.S. citizens – may findthemselves targeted for execution on the basis of behavior “patterns” thatsuggest unexpressed by impermissible thoughts. 

 As Thomas Englehardt points out:

“In 2007, [then-] CIA director Michael Hayden beganlobbying the White House for `permission to carry out strikes againsthouses or cars merely on the basis of behavior that matched a “pattern of life”associated with al-Qaeda or other groups.’ And next thing you knew, they weremoving from a few attempted targeted assassinations toward a larger air war of annihilationagainst types and `behaviors.’”

Unmanned, automated drones are an ideal instrument for this variety ofall-encompassing warfare against dissent. “They are capable of roaming theworld,” Englehardt continues. “Someday, they will land on the decks of aircraftcarriers or, tiny as hummingbirds, drop onto a windowsill, maybe even yours, orin their hundreds, the size of bees, swarm to targets and, if all goes well,coordinate their actions using the artificial intelligence version of `hiveminds.’”

Accordingto retired General Wesley Clark, the murder – or, to use his term, “takedown”-- of Anwar al-Awlaki heralds a “transformation” of the Regime’s strategy inwaging open-ended warfare. Awlaki’s death “makes his final legacy a proof ofthe effectiveness of America’s active defense against terrorists,” enthuses Clark. 

He goes on to emit one of the purest specimens of totalitarian agitprop everrecorded:

“For the United States, the journey continues: Awlaki’sdeath … moves us closer to the time when we must transition, psychologicallyand practically, from being a nation under threat to a nation that once againchampions its openness and welcome to the whole world.”

Mere acceptance of the presidential power to execute anybodyon a whim isn’t sufficient. It must be celebrated openly – nay, it must be extolledas a selling point to the rest of the world: Come visit this uniquely blessedland of killer drones and murder by executive decree! 

Inspired by Clark’s exhortation, and eager to display mypatriotic zeal to eradicate those who have aided and supported terrorism, Iwould like to submit two nominees for the next drone-inflicted counter-terrorist“takedown”: Retired Generals Wesley Clark and Michael Hayden. 

Clark (l.) with KLA chieftain Hashim Thaci (r).

As noted above, there is no evidence that Anwar al-Awlakiever actively collaborated in armed violence by Jihadists. Wesley Clark,however, was the commanding general during the NATO’s 78-day terror bombing ofSerbia. 

Hundreds of civilians were murdered in that act of internationalterrorism, which resulted in the installation of a criminal syndicate calledthe Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as the government of that Serbian province. 

The KLA has a remarkable pedigree: It is descended on one side from thenotorious WWII-era Skanderbeg militia organized by the Nazi SS; the other halfof its heritage is Stalinist. It received material and technical assistancefrom the CIA , and financial aid from Osama bin Laden -- who were partners in supporting jihadist elements during the wars of Balkan secession.

As CIA director under George W. Bush, Michael Hayden wasdeeply involved in recruiting, arming, and supporting a large number ofunreconstructed jihadist, among them an enchanting Somali warlord named IndhaAdde, who now refers to himself as Gen. Yusuf Mohammad Siad.

In an on-the-sceneaccount, Jeremy Scahill of The Nationobserves that Siad has “pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda” and “openly admits tohaving sheltered some of the most notorious Al Qaeda figures—including FazulAbdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the USEmbassies in Kenya and Tanzania….”

Stipulating that the term “al-Qaeda” is, in effect,shorthand for “any group of Muslims Washington has not succeeded in bribingyet,” the critical point here is that Siad openly admits doing the kinds of thingsAwlaki was accused of doing. Hayden and Clark, on the other hand, have committedcrimes well beyond Awlaki’s capacity: As heads of military and intelligencebureaucracies, they offered material aid and support to terrorists. In fact,they – and a number of other veterans of the military-intelligenceestablishment – continue to do so in retirement.

Retired Generals Clark and Hayden are among the War Partyluminaries who are on the payroll of the Iranian Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), orthe so-called “People’s Mujahadeen,” which is listed as a terrorist group bythe State Department. Clark and Hayden, along with former chairmen of the JointChiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton and Peter Pace, former NATO commander James L.Jones, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General MichaelMukasey, former 9-11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, Rudolph Giuliani, Michele Bachmann, andseveral other luminaries have been hired by the MEK to lobby the StateDepartment to remove the group from its list of Foreign TerroristOrganizations. 

MEK Flag.

The MEK was created in 1965 as part of a Soviet-sponsoredinternational terrorist network that waged wars of "nationalliberation" throughout the developing world. Human Rights Watch, whichdescribes the MEK as an "urban guerrilla group," points out that thegroup's ideology is a Muslim variation on "liberation theology." 

In his July 7 testimony before the House Committee on ForeignAffairs, Ray Takeyh, who is (of all things) a Senior Fellow at the Council onForeign Relations, pointed out that the MEK “sought to … amalgamate Islam andMarxism. Islam was supposed to provide the values while Marxism offered apathway for organizing the society and defeating the forces of capitalism,imperialism, and feudalism…. [F]rom Lenin they embraced the importance of avanguard party committed to mass mobilization, and from Third World revolutionariesthey took the primacy of guerilla warfare as indispensable agents of politicalchange.” 

In 1970, 13 members of the MEK received training (mostlikely under Soviet supervision) at PLO campsin Jordan and Lebanon. Upon their return, the PLO-trained MEK cadres sharedtheir newly acquired skills with their comrades, and the group embarked on awave of attacks and bombings intended to bring down the Shah. During onerampage, MEK terrorists killed several U.S. military personnel – including ColonelLewis Hawkins, the Deputy Chief of Military Mission in Tehran. 

Although the group suffered some attrition in its conflictwith the SAVAK, the Shah’s hideous secret police, it survived long enough toparticipate in Khomeini revolution. MEK cadres were involved in the seizure of Americanhostages in October 1979. But the MEK’s ambitions and ideology made it a poorfit for Khomeini regime, so the group was purged from the ruling coalition in1981 and much of its leadership was driven into exile in Iraq. There it was, inTakeyh’s words, used “as Saddam’s Praetorian Guard.”

Following Saddam’s U.S. supported invasion of Iran, the MEK began a hit-and-runguerrilla war against the Iranian regime in the hope of triggering a popularuprising. When that proved unsuccessful, the group set up a political frontgroup called the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) in Paris. In1985, notes Human Rights Watch, the MEK's "leadership was transformed whenMasoud Rajavi announced his marriage to Maryam Uzdanlu.... The husband and wifeteam became co-leaders" of the MEK and announced an "ideologicalrevolution." 

Everyday life in Camp Ashraf.

All of the group's members were required to undertake an individual"ideological revolution" by engaging in Maoist-style"self-criticism" sessions. Adherents were expected to listen raptly"to radio messages and explanations provided by [their] commanders"in order to "gain a deep insight into the greatness of our new leadership,meaning the leadership of Masoud and Maryam.... To believe in them as well asto show ideological and revolutionary obedience to them." 

By 1987, the MEK had acquired "all the main attributesof a cult," writes Iranian scholar Ervand Abrahamian, with Masoud Rajaviclaiming the titles Rahbar (leader) and Imam-i hal (the Present Imam), and theforerunner to the impending second advent of the Mahdi. In 1994, the HouseForeign Relations Committee described the group as a violent,Marxist-influenced cult. The Committee Chairman at the time was Congressman LeeHamilton (D-Indiana), who is now on the group’s payroll.

“Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden” to those recruitedinto the MEK, writes Elizabeth Rubin of the NewYork Times magazine, who has spent time at the group’s headquarters at Camp Ashraf, 40 miles north of Baghdad. “From the time they are toddlers, boys andgirls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you hadto report your dreams and thoughts.” Maoist “struggle sessions” and severepunishment for “deviationism” are commonplace. 

Expelled from France in 1986, Masoud Rajavi was welcomed inBaghdad, where he and his followers built a "NationalLiberation Army" that joined the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam'sside. The MEK's plan was to recruit a huge army of suicide commandos whosesacrifice would inspire the “liberation” of Iran.

“We will not be fighting alone; we will have the people onour side,” proclaimed Rajavi. “They are tired of this regime, and ... they haveevery incentive to get rid of it forever. We will only have to act as theirshields, protecting them from being easy targets for the [revolutionary]guards. Wherever we go there will be masses of citizens joining us, and theprisoners we liberate from jails will help us lead them towards victory. Itwill be like an avalanche, growing as it progresses.”

When the war ended in 1988 without victory for Iraq or the"National Liberation Army," the MEK leadership imposed yet another"ideological revolution" on its followers, this one including compelledmass divorces and widespread torture of those suspected of espionage or ideologicaldeviation. Following the first Gulf War, the MEK collaborated in Saddam'scrackdown on Shi'ites and Kurds.

In its campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq, the Bushadministration mentioned MEK camps in Iraq as evidence of Saddam’s support forinternational terrorism. Following the invasion, U.S. forces disarmed MEKfighters who operated several camps within 60 miles of the Iranian border.Rather than treating them as terrorists, the Bush administration designated theMEK fighters as "protected" persons under the GenevaConvention. 

In fact, the Bush administration was so intent on shelteringthe MEK – which, recall had killed Americans and taken part in the seizure ofAmerican hostages – that it rebuffed an offer from Iran to exchange MEK leadersfor al-Qaeda suspects being held in Tehran. In exchange for protection, the MEKbegan to produce a series of lurid – and entirely fabricated – “intelligence”reports regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The MEK has no support among reform-minded Iranians; in fact, the group is immensely useful to the incumbent regime as a way of discrediting its opposition, which in official propaganda is depicted as allies of the bizarre Islamo-Leninist cult. The current Iranian government is awful; if it were to seize power, the MEK -- which is the Persian equivalent of the Khmer Rouge -- would be dramatically worse. 

As the redoubtable Glenn Greenwald has observed, the retired U.S. officials who have become paid propagandists for the MEK are providing material support for an international terrorist organization. Staten Island resident Javed Iqbal, who operated a cable TV company, was recently convicted of that charge and sentenced to 69 months in federal prison for the supposed offense of carrying programs produced by a television network owned by Hezbollah. And of course, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were summarily executed without trial for allegedly rendering the same service to al-Qaeda. 

Clark, Hayden, and the MEK's other American courtesans are members of the American nomenklatura, which means that they are on the "who" side of Lenin's "who does what to whom" formula. The murder of Anwar al-Awlaki was intended as an object lesson to those of us on the other side of that dichotomy, demonstrating what can and will be done to anyone who is identified by the Regime as what the Soviets used to call a "socially dangerous person." 

An Update, and an Urgent Appeal 

"For the second time this year, Americans can celebrate the elimination of another enemy of the state," proclaims columnist Mark Paredes in Utah's Deseret News. No, seriously -- he really wrote those words. See the blog at LewRockwell.com for my reaction to that Stalinoid screed.

During the past couple of months, I've been doing some editorial work and writing for Republic magazine (and some related properties); this explains why my output here at Pro Libertate has declined during that period. This is very much a full-time job -- but, in all candor, it pays next to nothing, which is pretty typical of activist-oriented publications. It is the first regular paying work I've had since getting thrown under the bus by TNA five years ago today, and I'm certainly grateful for it -- but it's not enough to support a family of eight. 

I recognize that there is nothing unique about our predicament, and that many of you are in similar straits. I would be deeply and abidingly grateful for any help you can provide. 

Thanks so much for your help in keeping Pro Libertate on-line! God bless. 

Dum spiro, pugno!