Do you remember the nursery rhyme that went: "For the want of the horseshoe nail ... the rider was lost ... the kingdom was lost"? Sometimes, it works the other way: one new piece of evidence, or one added judicial decision, added to the balance, could be the margin of difference that leads to a long-overdue clean-out of the corruption in the U.S. Department of Justice. A Feb. 28, 86-page decision against Justice Department misconduct, handed down by U.S. Federal District Judge Falcon Hawkins, could prove to be that one added decision that makes the crucial margin of difference.

At the close of August 1995, a "blue ribbon" commission was convened to investigate certain charges of misconduct by the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. That Commission, co-chaired by former South Carolina Congressman James Mann, and distinguished attorney J.L. Chestnut, reviewed testimony and evidence of racially and other politically motivated targetting of victims of prosecutorial misconduct in three types of cases.

The first group of cases was the evidence of racialist targetting of elected African-American officials in the FBI's Frühmenschen and analogous cases. In this category, the Commission heard evidence on the conduct of Hickman Ewing, presently chief assistant to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr in the "Whitewater" inquiries and prosecution, in the 1983-1993 case of Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford. Also heard, as part of the same category, were some of the same cases on which Judge Hawkins has just ruled.

In the second category, was the case of the politically-motivated targetting of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and his associates.

In the third category, charges of abuses by the Office of Special Investigation (OSI), there were two cases considered. The first of these two, was the knowing fraud by the Justice Department in setting up John Demjanjuk for trial in Israel. The Federal Sixth Circuit had already ruled, that the Justice Department had perpetrated a massive "fraud upon the court," in that case. The second case heard, was the fraudulent targetting of the President of Austria, Kurt Waldheim.

Now, mesh the Hawkins decision with the cases considered by the 1995 Mann-Chestnut Commission, noting the Federal Sixth Circuit decision in the Demjanjuk case, all examined in light of repeated instances of cover-ups for their predecessors and subordinates, such as Jack Keeney and Mark Richard, by Attorney-General Janet Reno and her FBI Director, Louis Freeh, and with the implications of the recent exposure of the FBI's Quantico scandals. The unaddressed issues of the Ruby Ridge and Waco cases, then also fall into place as showing the same set of corrupt officials, using the same repertoire of practices, as in the indicated cases considered by the Sixth Circuit, the Mann-Chestnut Commission, and Judge Hawkins. The Hawkins decision qualifies to become the critical added margin of difference added to the package of evidence, court decisions, and other qualified findings already on the record.

This package ought to be put high on the agenda of the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee. Clearly, there could be few issues more deserving of Congressional oversight than a long-standing pattern of massive corruption within the U.S. Department of Justice.

It is past time that both the Federal Executive and the Congress faced up to the political reality, that the richly earned lack of credibility of the U.S. Department of Justice, is the leading edge of that growing contempt for the Federal Government, the Congress, and the leadership of the parties, which prompts the profoundly disgusted, more than half the U.S. eligible voters, to stay away from elections. Washington must cease to delude itself; the recent elections gave no one a clear mandate for anything. Official Washington will regain popular confidence only when it begins to earn that confidence.

In today's collapsing world, the demoralized overwhelming majority of our people will not find their courage again, until they believe they have a new Franklin Roosevelt, who shapes public opinion, rather than merely following it. The people wish to see a strong United States, with a courageous and capable government, which can deliver solutions to otherwise terrifying problems, and which resolves to clean up the kind of hideous corruption to which Judge Hawkins's decision points.