1. Political Prisoners within our Borders
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Copyright c 1997, The WINDS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
http://www.TheWinds.org
The idea of political prisoners and the abuse they suffer at
the hands of their government is not a new one to the majority of
the American public. When the concept is presented, it usually
brings forth visions of the old Soviet gulags or the horrors of
Southeast Asia. The possibility that America would have such a
thing as a "political prisoner" within its own borders would be,
to the majority of this nation's citizens, considered the
substance of right wing, militia or separatist paranoia.
A former twelve-term Republican congressman from Idaho,
however, has different ideas as to where one could find this
scenario being played out. Former GOP Congressman, George Hansen,
has been referred to on as many as 2,500 talk-radio stations
across the country as "America's most famous political prisoner",
according to the "U.S. Citizens Human Rights Commission."
"The odyssey of George Hansen in the nation's legal system,"
claims the Mission Statement of that organization, "is so brutal
that it makes him the natural spokesman to the nation and the
world of the terror experienced by thousands of Americans each
year as they are ground under the heel of a ruthless justice
system run amok."
The group, as its name implies, was established to provide
recourse to remedy against suspected or actual human rights
violations. Their Mission Statement, however, denotes a different
approach to the subject than most are familiar with. Instead of
the standard application to human rights, i.e., addressing
immigrants', minorities' or children's rights, etc., their
declared purpose is for "publicly exposing and eliminating
the wave of violence and killings of Americans everywhere at
the hands of government law enforcement officers and officials
of the judiciary."
Such claims would seem questionable, at best, were it not
for the fact that this fourteen-year veteran of Congress and
2. former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of
Agriculture under Nixon has himself been the focus of
"political retribution."
The newspaper,The Idaho Observer, stated that "Seven-term
U.S. Congressman, George Hansen (R. Idaho) was punished severely
for having the audacity to implement a plan which would make
Congress instantly accountable to the American public.
"Hansen, author of To Harass Our People, an indictment of the
IRS, was also the architect of the Congressional Accountability
Project (CAP) which was...to use national TV and a 1-900 number
to instantly post congressional floor votes and public response
to them."
This legislation met with a hostile congressional response
and began a series of events in the life of the congressman that
makes the term "bizarre" seem woefully inadequate.
The real substance of Rep. Hansen's nightmare began when
James Cole, special counsel to the House Ethics Committee (the
same special prosecutor assigned to deal with Newt Gingrich's
ethics case), went after Hansen on alleged violation of Title
18 sec. 1001 of the United States Code. He was accused of lying
to the government by omitting specific information on his
financial disclosure statement. Even after the Supreme Court
handed down its decision, years later, vacating Hansen's
conviction and calling the litigation a "wrongful prosecution",
Cole was still presenting his handling of the Hansen case as his
preeminent qualification in order to be assigned the Gingrich
matter. After successfully receiving the case, a story published
by Associated Press included a photograph of Cole with the
caption, "APPOINTED. Special counsel James M. Cole made a name
by prosecuting a congressman who falsified his disclosure forms,
"--the AP still apparently ignorant that Hansen was declared
innocent of the charge by the highest court in the land.
THE CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
In an extensive interview with The WINDS, Rep. Hansen
detailed the chronology of events, up to and including his
torture and incarceration by federal marshals. The following
is that chronology.
Congressman Hansen's trouble really began, he told this
reporter, about 1964. "I'd been in a running battle with the
Feds for years because I don't like what they do to people--so
they tried to take me down. The big part started in 1975.
3. "The IRS came after me with their criminal division." Other
congressmen, Hansen alleges, "had the IRS foil their re-election
bids claiming they evaded taxes, thus labeling them as 'scoff-
laws', a term used to imply that the legislators thought that
they were above the law, "something the American people don't
like". "In my case," Hansen says, "my people [his electorate]
knew better. They [the IRS] were after me with criminal
[proceedings] for three years and they finally had to give
me back $10,000 in overpaid taxes. Then they got their 'big
brother', the Department of Justice, to come after me on
campaign contributions. When that didn't work, they [pursued]
ethics violations like they did with Newt Gingrich which also
didn't work. Then they claimed I didn't report my wife for
[income] tax purposes."
The method the government used that finally resulted in a
"successful" prosecution, the congressman told The WINDS, was
when they took him to downtown Washington, D.C. "where," Hansen
says, "you could indict a ham sandwich," and was indeed indicted
for "failure to report" under the previously stated U.S. Code.
"As a result of this I ended up in and out of jail for a ten-year
period--four years solid time behind prison bars. Finally the
Supreme Court" handed down a decision in May of 1995 claiming
that the case was a "wrongful prosecution"--translation: it
should never have been brought to court.
During his incarceration Rep. Hansen was subjected to what
federal inmates refer to as "Diesel Therapy," so named because
of the continuous transport by diesel-powered vehicles. This
takes place in transit to or from whatever detention facility
to which the prisoner is ultimately assigned. The congressman
detailed this form of "institutionalized torture" for The WINDS.
The reader should be advised that the incidents described therein
depict graphic details that some may find extremely disturbing.
Also in the following account it is well to remember that this
treatment was being perpetrated upon a 63 year-old man.
"When they chain you up, legs and wrists, they put a thing
called a stiffener on those they don't like. That's a small black
box slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes. This is placed on
the chains between the handcuffs and makes them rigid so your
arms can't move. Then they run a chain from your arms and fasten
it to your waist. When they do that it pulls your arms from a
normal 180-degree angle to 90 degrees, putting your arms in a
bind which cuts into the nerves of your wrists so badly that,
the result is, after an extended period of time like that, it
requires weeks and sometimes months to get feeling and
4. circulation back to your hands--and pretty much the same
for your feet."
After placing these manacles on hands and feet, "they strap
you into a seat and you're so bound up with chains that if you
have to go to the bathroom, you can't do anything about it. You
can't pull your pants down or do anything to relieve yourself."
According to Hansen, the vehicles he was transported in
reeked of urine and feces because the prisoners were chained
in that position for twenty hours a day, forcing them to
accommodate their bodily functions without access to sanitation
facilities.
"The best thing you could do," Hansen advised others, "is the
Biblical act of fasting. If you don't eat and don't drink, you
don't have to go to the bathroom. Theydo this to you for four or
five weeks at a time; they put you in chains about two in the
morning, you get out about ten at night. And when you're bigger
than average [Rep. Hansen is 6'6"], you're wedged in, sitting
there twenty hours a day and you can't move your legs. Because
the shackles cut off the return blood flow from your lower
extremities, soon your legs fill with blood, especially when
you're 63 years-old as I was then. Then you get to walk around
with two barrels full of blood where your calves and lower legs
should be.
"The result of this is that your feet swell and become two to
three sizes too large for your shoes. [Hansen claims that the
marshals intentionally provided him with shoes several sizes too
small]. This causes your toes to jam into the ends of your shoes
and blood blisters form underneath your toenails. They then start
growing straight up and to the side in the most grotesque manner.
You can't believe what happens under those conditions. Your toes
turn to knobs, becoming very disfigured, making it impossible to
wear shoes. The only way I could get shoes on was to pull my
toenails out by the roots, myself, with pliers. I now have ten
toes without nails.
"Because of the blood pooling in my shins for such extended
`periods of time, if I just skinned them, on the back of a seat
or something, it formed open sores that didn't heal for as long
as a year and a half. I couldn't get any medical attention
because of their attitude toward me. They were trying to send
me a message.
"I found a foil container in the garbage with a couple of,
what used to be, iodine swabs all dried out. I put some water on
5. it to try to activate what was left of the iodine and applied
that to the sores. It did cause somecoagulating and eventually,
after some time, healed over.
"My legs looked like they were beaten with two-by-fours.
When I went to Iran several years before, I was the only public
official to get into the country during the hostage crisis, and
that's what they showed me the Shah had been doing to his people.
If they didn't like what you were doing, they would smash your
shins with boards and pull your nails out and break your teeth.
I went to Congress recently and detailed what happened in Iran
and told them I didn't even have to leave the country--I got the
job done down the road about a hundred miles--right here in the
United States of America. It shook them up pretty badly.
"The way they smashed my teeth out is they isolated me,
arbitrarily, to a place where I had no communication with the
outside world. They placed me where I had to do chemical testing
on extremely hazardous substances with absolutely no protection.
That caused my bones and teeth to go soft. I ended up with
twenty-four teeth breaking off at the gum line. For three years
I was not allowed to see a dentist. So far, it has cost me about
$14,000 to try to repair my mouth. My dentist says I'm a dental
cripple for life because the chemicals eroded not only my teeth,
but my jawbone and gums. I went through about the same thing they
do in a foreign prison. I got it done a little differently, but
the results were the same."
The actual "diesel therapy", Hansen says, is for the purpose
of isolating a prisoner from the rest of the world for extended
periods of time by keeping him in transit. This is a form of
physical and emotional torture somewhat akin to sleep deprivation
and brainwashing, but with much more serious physiological
consequences.
"I saw the U.S.A. in a different way," he continued, "I
surrendered to custody in Pocatello, went to Blackfoot [Idaho],
down to Salt Lake City, Davis County jail, was put on an
airplane, went to Seattle, down to Sacramento, to Phoenix,
over to Lompoc, down to Los Angeles, back to Phoenix then to
Lompoc again then to Los Angeles and San Diego--all at taxpayer
expense- -then up to Denver and down to Oklahoma City to El Reno
[detention facility] then to Atlanta, then hopscotched up the
coast by bus to several jails and prisons till I reached
Petersburg Federal Correctional Institution in Virginia where
I stayed. That was one "diesel therapy" trip," which, Hansen
said, took over a month.
6. When later released, the process was done in reverse, the
congressman told this office, to transport him to a parole
hearing in Boise.
Upon presentation of the requirements and restrictions of his
parole, Rep. Hansen informed the parole board he would not accept
the terms of financial reporting because it would reveal the
names of people he was representing who were experiencing
difficulties with the government. This would result in the
betrayal of those people, Hansen claimed, and he told them if
they didn't like it, "I'll just stay here and serve more time
"The parole board acceded to his demands in writing then,
according to Hansen, "ten days later they told me, 'we can't
do that.' I said, 'You already did'. I was already released. I
told them that if they didn't like it, to put me back in prison.
They said they couldn't unless I violated the terms of my parole.
'I'll tell you what,'"he informed the parole board, "'I will live
up the terms I signed out on and you do what you want to do.
'"When asked what they would do if he violated their version
of his parole--whether they would notify him so he could present
himself and surrender, or if they would send the marshals after
him with guns and chains, they told him they would notify him to
surrender. "That was a lie," Hansen said.
HANSON GETS ARRESTED FOR GOING TO CHURCH
"I went to my own church on a Sunday morning and sat right beside
a federal marshal who was also a member of the congregation. That
became my parole violation--going to my own church in my own home
town--because they didn't approve my travel, even though they
signed an agreement that said they wouldn't restrict my travel.
They just make up the rules as they go along," he said.
While addressing a church congregation in Omaha, Nebraska,
Hansen claims black cars began prowling the parking lot,
helicopters appeared overhead, "the next thing I knew," he
said, "I was in chains and they had changed my name to Fredrick
Smith, heisted me off in the dead of night in a Lear jet, all at
the expense of the taxpayer. They took me to an abandoned jail
where I spent Good Friday and Easter Sunday. My wife couldn't
find me, Congress couldn't find me, my attorney couldn'tfind me
and the media couldn't find me. I was just a lost soul for
several days while they had me strapped to a wall in an old
jail."
"That's our government," the congressman added with a note
7. of sadness.
The purpose of the aforementioned treatment, he claims, was
to send him a message not to mess with their system. "They take
you out on the road where you have no communication with anybody.
You can't write, you can't call, you can't be called--you're
lost" where no legal process can intervene. "They get away with
it because it is also a form of transferring prisoners."
It could be effectively argued that "diesel therapy" is an
ingenious method of blowing a very large hole in Article 1,
Section 9 of the Constitution which says, "The privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in
cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may requireit."
When a legal system does what Rep. Hansen claims was done to him,
it has effectively abolished the "privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus" which historically extends through the U.S. Constitution
back in time to the Magna Carta, A.D. 1215.
"When they kill people out there, and they do, " Hansen
continued, "and there are instances I'm thoroughly familiar
with where they've killed people while they've been in
transit--what they will do then is to take everyone who
has witnessed the killing and scatter them throughout the
huge jail system they run around the country so they
can't communicate with one another. They then give themselves
enough time for a court hearing to substantiate that the death
was accidental."
After the Supreme Court declared Congressman Hansen
innocent of any wrongdoing and that his case should never
have been prosecuted, it still took the former legislator
eight months to be released. When he applied to the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for the vacating
of his sentence, and his release was imminent, the Justice
Department, Hansen asserts, in one more bid to harass the
former Congressman claimed, "'we think there are some
technicalities you haven't looked at', and kept it going
from May to Christmas. Then, the lower court judge decided,
rather than to release me to travel on my own across the
country to be present at a release hearing, which was nothing
more than a proforma matter [administrative technicality], he
had to jerk me around, put me back on "diesel therapy" and go
back through the whole system again."
That lower court judge that Rep. Hansen claims made this
final jab at him was Edward Lodge, the same judge against whom
petitions for malfeasance of office are being presented to the
8. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for, among other things, his
alleged judicial mishandling of the Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge
affair.
This "odyssey" of former U.S. Representative George Hansen
is apparently not an isolated instance of abuse by federal
authorities of those to whom theydesire to "send a message."
Recently, such a case has come to light concerning Whitewater
defendant, Susan McDougal.
SUSAN MCDOUGAL GETS THE TREATMENT
Whether or not one agrees with McDougal's refusal to testify
before the Whitewater investigators or whether Special
Prosecutor, Kenneth Starr was justified in pressing contempt
of court charges on her, McDougal's situationcan certainly be
scrutinized and cited as a likely example of, as Rep. Hansen
puts it, "a legal system run amok."
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
(McDougal v. Ramon) charges that:
Since December 1996, [McDougal] has been held in isolation,
under lock-down up to 23 hours per day, while other inmates,
even those charged with serious violent crimes, are allowed
12 hours a day outside their cells; [she is] consistently
kept in handcuffs when other inmates have not been;
variously denied visitation, medical visits, worship
services, reading materials, and even a Bible; forced
to wear a red jail uniform reserved for despised informants
and baby killers; forced to endure the spectacle of male
prisoners taunting her, exposing themselves and masturbating
in front of her without intervention from guards.
"The abusive treatment of Ms. McDougal by Mr. Starr's
office," said Mark Rosenbaum, Legal Director of the ACLU
Foundation of Southern California, "must be the subject of
a congressional investigation to ensure that, in the future,
no federal prosecutor be permitted to wield authority in so
brutish and inhuman a manner."
In July of this year, "the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit
charging that the United States Government was holding McDougal
illegally in the L.A. jail topunish her for refusing to testify
to investigators in the Whitewater affair. U.S. Marshall Michael
Ramon was named in the lawsuit because he had technical custody
over McDougal."
9. Quoting from an ACLU press release, "McDougal's continued
confinement in the L.A. County jail, despite the state court
order releasing her, was designed to break her spirit and force
her to testify before the WhitewaterSpecial Prosecutor."
Could it not be logically reasoned that all that kept Susan
McDougal from receiving the "diesel therapy" to which Hansen was
subjected was that she was a much higher profile figure, being
more closely scrutinized by the public? This certainly would make
the degree of abuse Congressman Hansen experienced impractical
in McDougal's case, from the point of view of the federal
marshals.
When Rep. Hansen was asked if he had any future plans to
regain his congressional seat, the veteran legislator, who not
once displayed a note of bitterness over his ordeal, simply
replied, "My wife says if I ever run for anything again it had
better be the border."
If one looks objectively at these instances, would it not
seem to stretch the fabric of statistical probabilities to the
breaking point to suggest that theseoccurrences are the only
ones, and that they just, by chance, came to public attention?
Perhaps no more unlikely than one viewing an iceberg and
concluding that it stops at the waterline, merely because
the remainder of it is lost to view.
The description of Congressman Hansen's ordeal and that
of Susan McDougal as they were "ground under the heel of a
ruthless justice system run amok", most clearly depicts the
methods of those charting the course of the New World Order.
They will brook no departure from their purposes nor obstruction
to them. They are startlingly reminiscent of the biblical
description from the pen of the prophet Daniel when he
described such a "ruthless" power:
After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a
fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong
exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured
and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with
the feet of it. Daniel 7:7
Copyright c 1997, The WINDS.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
http://www.TheWinds.org
