LAROUCHE CASE REDUX
DOJ, FBI Caught in Railroad of Stevens
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Feb. 26—FBI agent Chad Joy has come forward with detailed allegations that Federal prosecutors and FBI agents concealed evidence and took other illegal actions to win the Oct. 27, 2008 conviction of then-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on corruption charges. In an eight-page complaint submitted to the court, Joy wrote, "I have witnessed or learned of serious violations of policy, rules, and procedures as well as possible criminal violations." Among the illegal actions documented in the Joy affidavit and other previously concealed documents are: violation of grand jury rules, withholding of exculpatory evidence, and interfering with the testimony of a crucial defense witness.
Special Agent Joy was part of the FBI/Department of Justice team that ran the "Get Stevens" campaign. Judge Emmet Sullivan is now considering further sanctions against government prosecutors, as the Stevens case awaits other appeals. The Stevens trial occurred during the final months of the senior Alaska Senator's reelection campaign. His October conviction and the mass media coverage were key factors in his electoral defeat.
The lengths to which Federal prosecutors (including the head of the U.S. Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, William Welch) went to obtain the Stevens conviction, have cast new light on a longstanding, deep corruption in the DOJ and FBI, that mushroomed out of control during the Bush-Cheney era. The new revelations of corruption are reminiscent of both the Federal government's 1988 railroad conviction of Lyndon LaRouche, and the earlier DOJ/FBI political targetting of elected officials in "Operation Fruehmenschen" and "Abscam."
In the LaRouche case, prosecutors in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., relied exclusively on perjured testimony from one crucial witness, Molly Kronberg, whose false statements under oath were the basis for the illegal conviction of LaRouche on false allegations of tax fraud conspiracy. LaRouche was sentenced to 15 years in Federal prison on the fabricated charges, and colleagues were sentenced to 3-5 years, all on the basis of the fraudulent Kronberg testimony, which centered on her own criminal uttering of a false check.
An earlier 1987-88 trial of LaRouche and a score of co-defendants in Boston ended in a mistrial, but jurors told the Boston Herald that they would have acquitted LaRouche and his co-defendants on all 125 counts, and that they were convinced, after more than 80 days of trial, that if any crimes were committed, they were committed by the U.S. government, not the defendants. The Boston Herald editorialized, that the government had wasted $11 million in taxpayers' money on a thoroughly unjustified prosecution.
After the Boston mistrial, the DOJ brought new, fraudulent charges in Alexandria, knowing that any attempt to retry the Boston case would have resulted in an acquittal, and an exposé of deep government corruption.
On April 26, 1995, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsay Clark wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno about the LaRouche case, accusing Federal prosecutors of "a broader range of deliberate and systematic misconduct and abuse of power over a longer period of time in an effort to destroy a political movement and leader, than any other federal prosecution in my time or to my knowledge." At the time, Clark was one of LaRouche's appellate attorneys.
Political Hit List
Senator Stevens was one of the longest-serving members of the U.S. Senate, and sources close to the Justice Department and the FBI confirm that other senior members of Congress, including Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), are on an FBI/DOJ target list. These ranking Congressmen are targetted, these sources said, not because of any wrongdoing, but because of their seniority, and because they represent a core leadership that will orient towards Franklin Roosevelt solutions to the grave crises facing the nation and the world.
In contrast to such figures as Stevens, Rangel, and Murtha, the ostensible leadership of the Congress, typified by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), are seen as totally compromised, and "in the pockets" of leading Wall Street circles.
