James Graf's Blog

Coverup is Impeachable.

James Henry Graf — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:47:28 EDT

Mr. President:

Impunity is the most grievous aspect of government-sanctioned abuse. How many torturers walk among us? How many faces we see every day once burned their images into the eyes of suffering persons in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Bosnia, and other places still kept secret?

War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity have stained every federal administration since at least the 1980s. Such atrocities as death squads, depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorus, the practice of "rendition," and deliberate targeting of civilian populations demand objective attention and elimination -- and there are other abuses rooted in the past that remain unacknowledged and unremedied.

The United States of America is a State Party to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Article 2, Clause 3 of this legally-binding treaty states: "3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

Should some claim that the abuses constitute merely cruel or degrading treatment, Article 16, Clause 1 reminds us: "1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. In particular, the obligations contained in articles 10, 11, 12 and 13 shall apply with the substitution for references to torture of references to other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Article 2, Section 3 of the US Constitution instructs the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Government-sanctioned cruelty and the coverup thereof are not minor issues. Are you part of the solution or part of the problem? I submit that by refusing to prosecute criminals, you are establishing a pernicious, and impeachable, precedent.

Mr. President, Dag Hammarskjold wrote: "He who would keep his garden tidy does not reserve a place for weeds." In a previous post here, I expressed the fear that yours might become just one more administration of torturers and cover-up artists. You have confirmed those fears, and I am very, very angry. Persons acting under color of law and "national security" have grievously and repeatedly violated my Fourth Amendment rights with impunity for at least a quarter century. These abuses have continued, and even intensified, since your inauguration. I demand that such acts cease immediately.

I voted for you in the hope that you might restore the Rule of Law and assure to all persons the equal protection of the laws. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I cannot continue to support a president who will not protect my Constitutional rights.

Proposal for a Human Rights Ombudsman

James Henry Graf — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:10:49 EDT

Whereas the securing of rights is the acknowledged purpose of a democratic republican government;

Whereas the Constitution of the United States provides, through its several Amendments, that government shall not abridge the rights of the people;

Whereas no need, consideration, goal, or policy supersedes these constitutional guarantees or is rightly sufficient to justify deprivation of individual rights;

Whereas grievous deprivations of these rights have nevertheless occurred under color of law or claims of "national security," without remedy or recourse;

Whereas the Executive Branch of government, charged with protection of the people's rights, has, by complicity, nonfeasance, or misfeasance, permitted the perpetrators of such violations to function with impunity;

It is here proposed that a Constitutional Amendment shall establish a National Human Rights Ombudsman, popularly elected and fully responsible to the Congress.

This official, and subordinates thereof, shall enjoy unlimited and unconditional access to all law enforcement agencies, prisons, military installations, research facilities, and the like, and shall have the authority and responsibility to reveal to the Congress and the public any violation of human or constitutional rights, state or federal, domestic or foreign, civilian or military, classified or unclassified, committed by or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of, public officials.

In the performance of these duties, the Ombudsman's authority shall supersede that of any other public official, including the President.

The Ombudsman shall enjoy full access to meetings of the President's Cabinet, any and all congressional meetings, and all meetings of the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and shall have the authority to instruct the Justice Department or the Judge Advocate General's Office to investigate and prosecute any human rights violations.

The Ombudsman shall have authority to recommend to the Congress the expeditious impeachment of any public official, up to and including the President, should such officials prove culpable or recalcitrant. The Congress shall consider the Ombudsman's charges as carefully as if they had originated within its own committees.

Congress shall provide adequate funding and staffing for the efficient and equitable performance of these duties.

Clear and Present Danger

James Henry Graf — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:36:05 EST

In his first press conference, President Obama stated the following: "My view is also that nobody's above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen. But that generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards."

Fine, but what about the situation that exists right now?

Mr. President, you have placed me in an unenviable position. Though, God knows, I'm no insider, I must, like a latter-day John Dean, inform you that there is a cancer growing on your presidency. It is rooted in the past, but it continues obscenely in the present and seriously jeopardizes the change that Americans want and need, presenting a clear and present danger to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

I can testify that for a quarter century at least, the military, intelligence, and law enforcement apparat has engaged in COINTELPRO-type political persecution. Acting under color of law and "national security," persons and agencies have employed secret technology in an orchestrated program of mental torture, as well as (in my case) chemical-biological attack and assault with ionizing radiation.

Mr. President, there is only one agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, mandated to investigate violations of such federal laws as 18 USC 241, 18 USC 242, and 18 USC 245. For at least two decades, it has refused to do so. Complaints from citizens are routinely rejected out of hand, sometimes most outrageously. No effective remedy is provided. Victimized and outraged persons have no recourse under law. That's why I tried three times to escape from the USA.

Indeed, even the US Senate has proved complicit, attaching "understandings" to the definition of mental torture that provide convenient loopholes for the forms of abuse employed. Victims who complain are presumed to be mentally ill. I am sane and very articulate. What I write is the truth, so help me God.

When my own victimization began, I was 40 years old. Next month, I'll turn 67. I may not last much longer. I've got to "tell it like it is," lest yours prove just one more administration of torturers and cover-up artists. I must inform you of a technology that jeopardizes the very existence of human civilization in any acceptable form.

There is something new under the sun. Since the 1980s, technology has existed that subjects the victim to the unrelenting palaver of depraved psychopaths, forcing their voices into his personal space. There is no escape, night or day. There is no solitude.

That’s not the worst of it. In the past, thought was always free, thought was always private. Even in the deepest dungeon, one’s thoughts were one’s own.

This is no longer so. The sanctity and privacy of one’s home, one’s bathroom, one’s bedroom, one’s very brain, are and can be violated with impunity. Shrouded in secrecy, probably classified, this technology has made possible the perfect crime. The victim who tries to complain is presumed insane.

The military and intelligence agencies of the United States have no right to keep this awful secret from the world. Congress must address this issue, must hold these criminals against humanity accountable. Let them explain why they have seen fit all these years to wage war against an American citizen in his own home -- and I am not the only victim. Let them explain why this technology is not used to find Osama Bin Laden, to rescue hostages or kidnapping victims, to find out where bodies are buried. Let them explain why they have subverted the Rule of Law and made a mockery of the Bill of Rights.

Additionally, executive nonfeasance, misfeasance, and malfeasance demand an effective remedy. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Refusal of a president or any of his subordinates to enforce the laws should admit of some penalty short of impeachment. Given the Supreme Court’s precedent in Marbury v. Madison, this would require a constitutional amendment. I submit that full revelation of the truth will establish that the matter is sufficiently grave to warrant such a radical solution.

I have taken to describing myself as a survivor of human rights crimes. That I have managed to survive, managed to preserve my sanity and articulate intelligence, does not mitigate in any way the gravity of these crimes. Other victims have not survived, but their suffering and my own compel me to speak truth to power. Let the truth at last be known. Let justice at last be done, that the concepts of human rights and human dignity may survive in this millennium.

To Forgive, We Must First Refuse To Forget.

James Henry Graf — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:57:55 EST

The Inauguration will mark a new beginning in the political life of the United States. President Obama has suggested that we look toward the future.

Accentuating the positive, however, is meaningless until we eliminate the negative. Past and continuing outrages deserve attention and correction, lest the new beginning prove an illusion, a shiny gloss that masks years of rot beneath.

This is certainly true regarding the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Bush Administration. It is true as well for domestic crimes against humanity, committed under color of "national security" and shrouded in secrecy, that have spanned the administrations of the last four presidents. As the victim of one such series of crimes, I must speak out and remind the new Administration that it has some very painful work to do, some hard realities to acknowledge. I make bold to present one here.

My other blog posts here have noted the persecution and state terrorism that forced me to seek political asylum three times between 1991 and 1993, as well as the corruption and discrimination that thwarted those efforts. This post concerns Brussels 07789, a document dated May 30, 1993 in the files of the American Embassy in Brussels supplied to me by the US State Department in 1998 pursuant to my request under the Privacy Act. It is the unclassified (declassified) portion of a larger text, the remainder of which is still secret. Since the document called my sanity into question merely because I claimed to have been persecuted by US authorities, I submitted corrections, some, but not all, of which found their way into the record.

I believe that the public good demands full disclosure of the file that contains Brussels 07789, embarrassing though it be. Accordingly, I make a public request that Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama prevail upon the Intelligence Community to clean up its act and acknowledge the abuses of the past, starting with the scandalous events of 1992-3 in the Netherlands and Belgium. Please don't let the sordid past stain and undermine the bright future for which we all hope. Let this be the Administration that acknowledges the difficult truths, confronts the hard realities, and and lays the foundation for an America that is truly "safe" for all its people, even whistleblowers.

Is the USA a "safe country of origin?"

James Henry Graf — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:05:20 EST

Between 1991 and 1993, I attempted three times to escape from the United States. The Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium all coerced my return to these shores. "Hard Realities" on my web site presents an acccount of these experiences.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. A tourist is mugged in the park -- knocked down, glasses broken, watch and camera stolen. The police stand by and do nothing. When he goes to the station house to make a complaint, the desk sergeant says "Don't be silly. That's a very safe park. The police there are very efficient and conscientious. You must be crazy. Get out of here!"

That is precisely the simplistic sophistry encountered by many asylum-seekers in European states if they came from, or passed through, a country regarded as "safe." Their claims are presumed to be "manifestly unfounded." They are forced to leave their chosen country of asylum, often returned involuntarily to the country through which they have traveled or from which they have fled. It happened to me, three times, before the "safe country" doctrines even became official policy.

Ms. Judith Coelewij-Kolk of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Department calls that nation's asylum policies "humane and justified." They are not, nor are, in my experience, the policies of Denmark and Belgium.

Common sense and documented human experience indicate that no country is safe for everyone, all the time. Persons in every land have been denied the equal protection of the law, deprived of due process, victimized by corruption, subjected to irremediable persecution.

A history of persecution, group or individual, validates a fear of persecution. Such persons are refugees, as defined in international law and in the laws of European nations. Objective investigation of the facts may well confirm their claims, yet they face in Europe a knee-jerk judgment of "manifestly unfounded" and the degrading horror of forced repatriation.

Article 3 of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees forbids discrimination as to race, religion, or country of origin. Article 33 forbids the return "refoulement" of a refugee "in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion."

Articles 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights likewise forbid discrimination on the basis of national or social origin.

Article 3 of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment forbids the return of a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

In its Resolution on the Asylum Policy of Certain Member States, dated 19 June, 1987, the European Parliament decried "the flagrant violations of human rights and international law perpetrated by border officials who, in particular at Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, and London airports, are forcibly returning ever increasing numbers of asylum-seekers to the countries through which they have passed previously or even those countries from which they have had to flee," and called upon Member States to desist from such practices. Amnesty International likewise speaks out in strong opposition to the forced repatriation of asylum-seekers.

European countries nevertheless persist in discriminating against, and forcibly repatriating, asylum-seekers from countries they arbitrarily consider "safe." Until recently, the Dutch-based organization United had on its web site a list of more than two thousand individuals who have died since 1993 trying to obtain political asylum in "Fortress Europe." Most of these are persons -- men, women, and children -- who tried to reach Europe and died along the way.

The saddest cases of all, though, are those caught up in the asylum procedures of European States who were murdered by racists, committed suicide in utter despair, died during deportation, or were killed in their own countries after coerced repatriation. For these, the asylum process itself must take grim responsibility.

The case that I can't forget is this one:

"June 94, 1, N.N., Macedonia, tortured to death in Macedonia after his expulsion from the Netherlands, AD/MNS"

Had sick criminals not obstructed processing of my 1991 complaint against Denmark and the Netherlands before the UN Committee Against Torture, that man and others might still be alive.

I nearly made the list myself. In 1993, the Belgian authorities threw me into prison for three weeks in order to coerce me into returning to the USA. A couple of days after my "voluntary" repatriation, I tried to kill myself.

Such discrimination is unjustifiable. Asylum cases must be judged compassionately on their own merits. An act or policy cannot be a flagrant human rights violation in one decade and perfectly all right in the next. This is illogical.

Therefore, as a victim subjected without recourse to the absurdity of "safe country" assumptions and the horror of forced repatriation, condemned in 1987 by the European Parliament itself, I call upon Europe to abandon such practices and to compensate all those so abused, including myself, for this deplorable treatment. Invite those of us who have survived back to your shores to live in liberty and security. If you cannot take us in, help us find a free country that will. Common decency and law both dictate that you try to help people who are fleeing persecution, not concoct specious excuses for throwing us away like garbage.

The UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee Agaist Torture will not address this issue. My complaints agaist Denmark and the Netherlands have remained unacknowledged and unprocessed for many years. The coverup is grievous and intractable.

If nations will not fulfill their human rights commitments -- refuse to keep the promises they make to the rest of humankind -- they surrender their honor and undermine the very Rule of Law, without which civilization will surely collapse in a heap of lies and arrogant evasions. The time for honor, decency, and due process is now.

Here's How It All Came About.

James Henry Graf — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:02:26 EST

The following is an article from James Henry Graf's Angelfire Home. What is past is prologue. What continues, absent remedy or relief, presents grave danger to humanity.

Here's How It All Came About

Most of us grew up thinking of the United States as a nation of honor and decency. Confronted with the unethical bio-chemical and radiation experiments of earlier decades, we ascribe their inhumanity to prevailing racism and Cold War anxiety that we must surely have outgrown. An apology from the President (the former President, at least) creates an illusion of reform, then it's business as usual. Present practices, especially those occurring under color of "national security," go undisclosed and unexamined.

Like the People's Republic of China, the United States stands, in fact, on what former President Clinton called "the wrong side of history." This nation does nothing to comply with -- and contumaciously violates -- the international human rights treaties to which it has become a state party.

Here's how it happened. In the early years of the Reagan Administration, when "fighting terrorism" (1) and the "war on drugs" superseded human rights as priorities in both foreign and domestic policy, personnel were shifted among agencies, blurring the boundaries of authority and accountability. This permitted domestic law enforcement agents to exercise powers not constitutionally theirs in the name of "national security." Police, on or off duty, within or outside their jurisdictions, began to think and act like intelligence agents on a secret spy mission or a military operation. Conversely, military and intelligence agents were able to carry out illegitimate "covert ops," justified as "police business," against civilian Americans. Citizens became subjects. Subjects became suspects. Suspects became enemies.

The most abusive, anti-democratic elements in the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities came to the fore. Outrageous violations of individual rights (2) reminiscent of earlier COINTELPRO oppression (3) were the inevitable, and intentional, result. The age of "any old excuse will do" was born, and has continued to this day.

Privatization and community mobilization, moreover, provided a degree of deniability, relieving the perpetrators of government repression -- in their own minds, at least -- of any sense of responsibility under the Constitution. Suddenly, two-bit private investigators were dropping names and claiming "national security" as they violated the privacy, dignity, and constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. High-tech surveillance devices and secret files fell into the hands of vigilante lynch-mob fanatics bent on "social cleansing," determined to "get something on" people they didn't like.

Though participation and coverup are bipartisan, the Republican Party's involvement in America's persecution-and-torture agenda is deep and deplorable. The problem seems to have begun with "Nixon's Nazis," East-European fascists, many of them active Third Reich collaborators, whom the Republican Party imported during the 1950s and 1960s as political organizers in the "ethnic community" to counteract the heavily Democratic Jewish vote (4). This was just one aspect of a larger phenomenon that included the use of Nazi intelligence agents and scientists by the US military and the fledgling CIA (5). For many years, some of the most powerful persons in America, exercising authority and possessing knowledge inaccessible to the average citizen, or even the average congressman, have displayed an ideology and code of conduct directly descended from Nazi Germany.

What we have here is semi-privatized state-terrorism, just as practiced in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia, and elsewhere. The United States of America, the world's oldest democracy, the world's pre-eminent military and economic power, is waging war against its own people.

An Agency With a Secret Agenda

My own personal experience is illustrative. In March, 1975, I became an employee of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. A year later, partly in response to scandals regarding events at Willowbrook State School, the State reorganized my department, separating the Office of Mental Health, dealing with psychiatric patients, from the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, for which I worked.

The State of New York has a long history of experimenting on human subjects under conditions that fall short of informed consent, with results that are sometimes painful and occasionally fatal. In 1953, under a classified contract with the Department of Defense, my agency administered a mescaline derivative to a man named Harold Blauer, who had entered the New York State Psychiatric Institute for depression following a divorce. His doctors told him that the treatment was experimental. They did not inform him that he was a guinea pig in a government experiment designed to test hallucinogenic drugs as weapons of war. The last injection killed him. His former wife settled with the state, but their offspring filed a lawsuit, which came before the late Judge Constance Baker Motley in 1987. Judge Motley awarded the plaintiffs more than $700,000 in a decision that documented a "20-year conspiracy" to conceal the real cause of Harold Blauer's death (6). One may rightly wonder how many other conspiracies might have existed that never came to light.

The 1970s saw the scandal at Willowbrook, which involved, along with reprehensible neglect and warehousing of retarded clients, deliberate infection of incoming developmentally-disabled individuals with Hepatitis B antigen, ostensibly to conduct controlled studies of the disease (7). Experiments with inadequate consent procedures, such as allowing relatives or close friends to give consent for painful or dangerous treatment of mental patients, continued at least until the mid-1990s (8). The experimentation frequently has sinister overtones. Constitution, laws, and rules notwithstanding, those who conduct these experiments seem often to consider the "mentally incompetent" devoid of any rights that they are bound to respect. Though I have no access, God knows, to the records, I suspect multiple atrocities, involving chemical, bacteriological, and electromagnetic weapons testing.

A Humanitarian Workplace Becomes a Nest of Spies

Over the years, my former employers enjoyed frequent contact with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the military. My workplace in the 1980s became a hotbed of covert intelligence activity. In alignment with Reagan Administration policies, these forces concerned themselves primarily with "fighting terrorism" and the "war on drugs." Their definition of "terrorism" was loose, to say the least (9). The broad umbrella of "terrorism" covered peaceful, humanitarian activities like those of the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). The Sanctuary Movement, who tried to save El Salvadoran refugees from involuntary repatriation and almost certain death, likewise fell under suspicion.

The Reagan Administration's persecution of persons and organizations opposing its policies in Central America involved considerable scrutiny of Catholic University of America graduates (I am a member of the Class of 1964). Senator Tom Harkin, who earned his law degree at C.U.A.'s Columbus School of Law in 1972, was the subject of an FBI investigation (10). Jack Elder of the Sanctuary Movement, who had been a friend and Sigma Pi Delta fraternity brother of mine, was among those prosecuted for trying to help refugees (11).

A right-wing private investigator and former CIA agent from Texas, Philip Mabry, kept files on people opposed to American policies in Central America. His organization was named (note the irony) Americans for Human Rights and Social Justice! In 1984, at the suggestion of Colonel Oliver North (of Contragate notoriety), Mabry wrote a letter to FBI Director William Webster in which he accused a number of groups and individuals of having Communist connections. Among those named in this McCarthyite witch hunt were the actresses Susan Anspach (a classmate of mine whom I knew) and Susan Sarandon (who went to Catholic University after we graduated, but who had grown up in my home state of New Jersey).

The letter was taken seriously. On December 27, 1984, Mabry received a reply from Assistant FBI Director Buck Revell that assured him "your concerns and comments will be carefully reviewed" (12).

In 1982, I had participated in a Jersey City, New Jersey demonstration opposing US military aid to El Salvador sponsored by CISPES (13). I had signed a petition opposing US policy against Nicaragua. I was also on the mailing list of the All Peoples Congress, an organization that Philip Mabry wouldn't like very much at all. When that demonstration took place, I was a member of a Hudson County, New Jersey grand jury that heard charges against at least two New York police officers apprehended in my state. Thomas Duffy, New York State Special Prosecutor, presented these police misconduct cases to my panel.

Though I never succeeded in obtaining access to any of the pertinent government files, I am reasonably certain that I was under surveillance during that time. I was also the victim of stalking and "set-ups" on the highway that could have been government-instigated.

My workplace at 75 Morton Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village served as a staging area for early actions in the "war on drugs." Administrators there consorted frequently with law enforcement officials. In 1985, Sergeant Richard Pike and Officer Jeffrey Gilbert of New York's 106th Precinct in Queens were charged with having used electric stun-guns to torture a marijuana suspect twelve years earlier (14). Hearing that Special Prosecutor William Dowling was planning to look into the matter, I wrote him a letter on May 15, 1985, reporting that I had seen both of the suspects outside their own precinct at my workplace, associating with Director of Education and Training Rocco Menta. Mssrs. Pike and Gilbert were later convicted of assault and coercion.

Staff Reduction Via Blackmail and Persecution

All this occurred in the context of "downsizing." In 1983, my name was on a list of New York State employees slated for layoff. Then, on April 1, 1983, my facility's Director, Maurice D. Halifi, wrote me a letter informing me that, as a result of "discussions between the Governor [Mario M. Cuomo] and the Legislature," there would be "changes in the methods to be used in carrying out the staff reductions," including "increased reliance on attrition." His letter of April 27, 1983 then stated: "The revised plan still affects you but the result is different from that in our previous letter. This is to notify you that under the revised plan, it will be necessary to re-evaluate your potential rights and benefits if you wish to maintain your employment with the State." My continued employment, then, was contingent upon my willingness to relinquish certain unspecified rights and benefits! In retrospect, it seems that the right of privacy in my own home was one such right. I never relinquished that or any other right.

Throughout the 1980s, my agency's egregiously unscrupulous administrators used all the power and influence at their disposal to eliminate employees they didn't like. Obscenely intrusive, unbelievably extensive "lifestyle" investigations became a powerful administrative tool for staff reduction through intimidation -- blackmailing, blackballing, and blacklisting. At least one of my colleagues was blackmailed out of her job. Though I was not a member of CISPES or Sanctuary, my employers, wishing to rid themselves of this troublesome "left-leaning" speech therapist, used their contacts in federal, state, and municipal agencies to focus increased attention on me. Though this constituted illegal retaliation for my whistleblowing and my having filed a federal civil rights complaint with the US Department of Health and Human Services, no authority ever brought the perpetrators to justice. Ruthlessly corrupting persons, agencies, and organizations, they enjoyed absolute impunity.

When they could not unearth real evidence, the "investigators" simply invented it. Claims of "national security" and "police business" assured universal cooperation and secrecy. The process is practically identical to the system of psychiatric discreditation that prevailed in the last days of the Soviet Union (15). In secret, non-adversarial "evaluations," personal information, usually contrived or criminally-obtained, is presented to a panel of "authorities" by way of building a case for mental incompetency or moral turpitude.

These "Star Chamber" proceedings are not merely extrajudicial. They are criminally malicious. There is no semblance of due process. Planted evidence, falsified documents, morphed photographs, and perjured testimony are more the rule than the exception. The "subjects" of such "evaluations" are not informed, before or after the fact, get no opportunity to present evidence, question witnesses, or make a statement, and cannot examine, obtain, or correct the records, which are nevertheless indiscriminately and illegally disclosed to many persons and agencies for malicious purposes.

Those who participate in this process are supremely sanctimonious -- smug, arrogant hypocrites. To them, our rights are crimes, their crimes are rights. They display a satanic consciousness that revels in obscene injustice and strives for maximum possible evil, setting about deliberately to punish the innocent, reward the guilty, make fools of the wise, corrupt the upright, and turn the very law itself into an instrument of criminality. Like a tripartite "process" cult from the 1960s (16), they seem to be synthetic multiple personalities, capable of anything, contemptuously lording it over those they consider inferior while themselves immersed in perversion. Though their technology is twenty-first century, they would be more at home in the thirteenth. I have called them The Ultimate Medieval.

My resistance to, and whistleblowing regarding, these unconstitutional practices raised my status from "nuisance" to "enemy" in the eyes of my employers. At the instigation of New York State officials and their associates, the United States of America has waged war against me -- "low-intensity conflict," if you will -- since at least 1984. A surveillance device that emits ionizing radiation has become a weapon for destruction of my immune and reproductive systems (17). Subject to innumerable break-ins for which no legal recourse is available, I appear to have been poisoned over the years with chemical and biological weapons. Persons associated with my employers stabbed my dog in my own back yard in 1987. The next year, the State discharged me from my job after an improper ex parte disciplinary arbitration hearing that I was too sick to attend and that my union refused to attend on my behalf. On the same day, the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Health and Human Services dismissed my complaint of illegal retaliation (Docket Number 02-86-3057), blaming everything on my alleged negative attitude toward my superiors. OCR denied my appeal of this decision.

In 1989, the New York State Public Employment Relations Board dismissed without a formal hearing my Improper Practice charge against the State and the union (Case Number U-10571), then dismissed my appeal, also without a hearing. In October of that year, a suspicious "accident" destroyed my car while it sat in a legal parking space. The insurance adjuster tried to coerce my signature on a "power of attorney" form that incorrectly stated the car's serial number. Doing so could have sent me to jail for two years. When I provided him with the correct number, the adjuster sent me a second form with the same incorrect serial number. I continued to refuse. Then he sent a third form, with a different incorrect serial number. The New Jersey Department of Insurance found nothing improper in this.

Sporadically since 1985, and continuously since September, 1987, government agents and their associates have subjected me to the hell on earth of "Marlin Fitzwater's Private Purgatory" -- electromagnetic tracking, surveillance, and mind-reading technologies. Repulsive, anonymous "voices" torment and degrade me incessantly. Bio-chemical poisons weaken me and "biological process control" weapons disrupt somatic functions.

There is no recourse under law -- no escape, no rescue, no relief. My own Democratic Party has done nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to help. New Jersey officials of both parties have repeatedly denied me the equal protection of my native state's laws and will do nothing to secure my rights under federal law. Senator (formerly Congressman) Robert Menendez, who went to school with my nephew and knew my late sister by her first name, will not even answer my letters! Non-governmental organizations ignore or insult me. This is a nation in denial, where hypocrisy and insouciance reign supreme.

This is intolerable. Human rights, based on the inherent dignity of the human person, apply to all individuals, without distinction. There's a Nigerian saying: "Not to know is bad; not to want to know is worse; not to hope is unthinkable; not to care is unforgivable."

Let's all be willing to know.

Let's all dare to hope.

Let's all care -- about everyone.

Notes

In his very first press conference as President Reagan's Secretary of State on January 28, 1981, Alexander Haig stated unequivocally that "international terrorism will take the place of human rights."
Ross Gelbspan, Break-ins, Death Threats, and the FBI (Boston: South End Press, 1991).
Brian Glick, War At Home (Boston: South End Press, 1989).
John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews (St. Martin's Press, 1994).
Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).
"Judge finds Army caused patient's death in secret chemical-warfare test," Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ, Wednesday, May 6, 1987, p. 5.
I first learned of this via a departmental newsletter in 1975 or early 1976. Other sources have amply documented it since then.
"New York Court Order Halts Some Research in Psychiatry," The New York Times, December 27, 1996, p. A1.
Gelbspan, pp. 87-95.
Gelbspan, p. 152.
Robert Tomsho, The American Sanctuary Movement (Austin Texas: Texas Monthly Press, Inc., 1987), pp. 137-143.
Gelbspan, pp. 185-188.
"Protest slated Saturday on El Salvador," The Dispatch, Hudson and Bergen Counties, NJ, Monday, February 22, 1982, p. 3.
"Two N.Y. cops arrested in stun gun torture of teenager," Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ, April 23, 1985, p. 10.
"When Justice Is Just Another Form of Insanity: Case Histories in Soviet Psychiatry," The New York Times, January 24, 1988.
Maury Terry, The Ultimate Evil (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1987).
My most recent attempt to obtain the equal protection of federal law in the matter of this atrocious assault was my letter of January 30, 2005 to the Department of Justice. Though mailed from my local post office, it never reached its destination. Instead, somebody slipped it under my door at 3:00 AM on February 26, 2005. Copies sent to the US Attorney's office in Newark, NJ and to the Perth Amboy, NJ police have not prompted any response.