Who Protects Kids from Predatory Police and Prosecutors?

Raising teenage girls in the age of Snapchat exhibitionism is a challenging proposition – and it’s not made any easier by ambitious prosecutors seeking to criminalize unwise acts that fall within parental jurisdiction. 

Last April 6, two parents from Knoxville, Iowa were summoned to a meeting with Lt. Aaron Fuller and Sgt. Kyle Keller of the city police department. A few days earlier, they had been informed by Carolyn Johnson, a guidance counselor at Knoxville High School, that their 14-year-old girl had sent “inappropriate” pictures to a male friend. When confronted by the parents, the young woman sheepishly admitted that she had sent photos to the young man, but insisted that they didn’t involve nudity. 

She had deleted the photos from her cellphone. Her parents promptly – and properly – confiscated the teenager’s cellphone, until they could examine the photos for themselves and decide what restrictions, if any, would be appropriate. Their primary concern, most likely, was provoked by the girl’s statement that the male friend in question had sent unsolicited and unwanted sexually explicit pictures to her.

Lying in wait: Lt. Fuller.

In meeting with Fuller and Keller, the parents were chiefly interested in seeing the “inappropriate” pictures their daughter had sent. Earlier that day the police had called to inform the parents that officers were investigating a teen “sexting” ring, and that they intended to interview their daughter at school. The parents quite sensibly ordered the police and school administrators not to speak with their daughter, and told the officials to speak with them instead.

The parents were acting to protect their daughter, and discipline her, if necessary. The police were trying to build a case for a criminal prosecution. Those objectives were irreconcilable, which is why the parents should have either refused all cooperation, or insisted on being accompanied by an attorney during their meeting with the police. 

At police headquarters, the parents were shown two photos that had been printed by the girl’s classmates. In one, she was wearing shorts and a sports bra. In the second she was wearing shorts while using her hair to cover her chest. Neither of the pictures involved nudity or met the statutory definition of pornography.

The officers, exploiting the concerns of parents whom they were seeking to ensnare, asked them to identify the young woman depicted in the photos.

In response to that question, a reasonably perspicuous attorney (who should also have made an audio recording of the meeting) would have told the parents not to answer, and then told the officers: “Those photographs are not evidence of a criminal offense. Do you have any evidence that their daughter has committed an offense?”

When the officers failed to produce that evidence, the attorney should have responded, “Then we’re finished here,” and escorted the parents from police headquarters. The parents had no legal obligation to help two uniformed predators make a criminal offender out of their child.

Acting with the devious subtlety of a child molester grooming a potential victim, the officers beguiled the parents into incriminating their daughter. When the parents left, they later recalled, they were incredulous that the photos were the subject of a police investigation. Smugly satisfied that their deception had succeeded, the officers blithely assured the parents that they and their daughter didn’t have anything to worry about.

They lied, of course. That’s what police officers are trained to do.

On the following day, the parents were informed by email that school officials “were cooperating with law enforcement” in an ongoing investigation of students who had shared “inappropriate” photos. Since schools act as an intake mechanism for the carceral state, this development was hardly surprising. Twenty days later the parents were contacted by Kristi Dodson, the well-compensated Dolores Umbridge avatar who afflicts Marion County as a Juvenile Court Officer. She informed them that their daughter was the subject of a criminal complaint for “sexual exploitation of a minor.”

To be specific, the 14-year-old was accused of exploiting herself by sending two photos that do not meet the legal definition of pornography, but apparently made Marion County Prosecutor Ed Bull feel funny in long-dormant areas of his overfed anatomy. 

Dodson “requested” that a parent attend an “intake interview” along with several dozen other students and their parents on May 24. A “request” of that sort is akin to being asked on a date by a known serial rapist, so the parents sensibly decided not to attend. At this point they tardily contacted a criminal defense attorney. They later received a detailed account of the mass “intake meeting” conducted by Bull at the Marion County Courthouse. 

Bull “informed all the students present that they could all be charged with child pornography … and/or sexual exploitation of a minor … and that such charges would require [each of] them to register as a sex offender for life,” recounts the lawsuit subsequently filed by the parents of the 14-year-old girl, who was designated “Nancy Doe.” 

The terrorized children and outraged parents were told that the only way to avoid the ineffaceable sex offender stigma was to agree to a “pre-trial diversion” program. This would require that they confess to their supposed crimes and accept punishment without the state taking the trouble to prove the charges against them. The youngsters would be forced to perform punitive “community service,” undergo “a reeducation class on the dangers and consequences of sexting,” surrender their laptops and cellphones for an unspecified period of time, and provide Dodson with “a confession of their conduct.”

Dodson distributed a questionnaire to the parents “that delved into the intimate details” of their stewardship regarding the accused teenagers. Although Nancy Doe’s parents weren’t at the meeting, they were given a copy of that invasive document, which they did not fill out.

In a subsequent meeting at the courthouse, Nancy’s parents asked Dodson’s supervisors if they had even seen the photos of their daughter. They were told that “such details don’t matter,” and that the girl “would be criminally charged just like the other students if she did not agree to the pre-trial diversion program offered by Bull.”

Child predator Ed Bull.

The family’s defense attorney, Matthew Lindholm, contacted Bull and pointed out that the photos of Nancy did not involve nudity or a sexual act, and thus were not a violation of the applicable statutes. Stolidly indifferent to the law he had dishonestly sworn to uphold, Bull parried that objection by saying that unless Nancy and her parents submitted to his demands the 14-year-old faced a felony prosecution and potential sex offender designation for life. 

Bull is aware that Iowa law at the time of Nancy Doe’s purported offense would not permit the prosecution of a voyeur who invaded her privacy unless she was nude. This is because he conducted a campaign to change the state’s Peeping Tom law to allow prosecution of people who, in the service of prurient interests, invade any space where people have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” 

If a heavy-breathing stranger – say, someone who resembles Ed Bull – had peered into Nancy’s bedroom window while she was taking her “inappropriate” selfies, the intruder could not have been prosecuted under the laws as they existed at the time. Yet Bull, in the service of an equally depraved appetite, is trying to turn the young lady into a felon for sharing photographs of herself in that state. 

By early September, all of the other teenagers subject to the extortion plot arranged by Bull and Dodson were told that they had finished their term of “probation.” This, too, was a lie: The “confessions” they were compelled to sign can still be used to prosecute them. 

Bull and Dodson are determined not to allow Nancy and her parents to escape punishment for their defiance. This must be particularly galling to Dodson, who is unaccustomed to displays of parental assertiveness in the face of the state’s demands. 

In an interview with the Pella Chronicle three years ago, Dodson insisted that the “majority” of the parents who fall beneath her Gorgon’s stare “side with law enforcement.” Very few, she continued,“are adamant about their child's innocence. Most are already aware that the child has done something wrong before receiving a knock on the door from law enforcement. Parents read the reports and, in some cases, parents complain more about [that the] consequences the State eventually imposes are `too mild.’”   

This, according to the Dolores Umbridge of Marion County, is the proper parental posture when the state seeks to make a criminal out of a child: They are to accept the claims of the police uncritically, and display eager approval of whatever punitive sanction is imposed on what, after all, is someone owned by the state. 

Apart from what can be inferred from her official actions, Dodson’s political views aren’t easy to discern. It should come as a surprise to nobody that Bull is a devout Christian Rightist, a former campaign adviser to Rick Santorum, who promotes an attenuated version of Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village” –style nanny state collectivism.  

When he was elected in 2010, Bull declared it was his intention to “plea bargain from a position of strength” in order to make Marion County the “safest county in Iowa.” No person upon whom rationality finds purchase can believe that by strong-arming the terrified teenagers and anxious parents of Knoxville High School – and pursuing his vindictive jihad against Nancy Doe and her parents – Bull is making Marion County safe for anything other than the indulgence of his moral vanity. 

Given Bull’s affinity for Bible-derived authoritarianism, he might be interested to learn that the term “Satan,” as used in the Old Testament, actually refers to the office he presently occupies. Theologian and linguist Michael Heiser writes that the Hebrew expression is more accurately rendered into English as “the satan,” and “means something like `adversary,’ `prosecutor,’ or `challenger.’ It speaks of an official legal function” carried out by “an anonymous prosecutor” who gathers evidence of the failings of others.

This puts non-believers in a rather interesting position: Whatever their opinion regarding a Supreme Being, Satan's existence is indisputable.

Shakespeare’s caricature of Richard III gave voice to the kind of satanic sanctimony displayed by Bull and his ilk: “[T]hus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ, and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

The only indecent exposure in this matter is Ed Bull’s shameless moral exhibitionism, and the prosecutor’s unfettered libido dominandi is an immeasurably greater threat to public decency than the misbehavior of hormonally undisciplined teenagers. 

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast offers further reflections on Ed Bull -- the Satan of Marion County: 

Dum spiro, pugno!

“Let’s Convict Him and Get It Over With”: The Framing of Lanny Smith

A picturesque landmark in a troubled county: The Idaho Falls LDS Temple

James Swogger was a terrified 25-year-old awaiting trial on a charge of sexual misconduct with a child when he contacted Detective Victor Rodriguez of the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office with an offer to testify against a former cellmate, Idaho Falls resident Lanny Smith. Rodriguez headed the investigation into the murder of Leo and Mary Downard, an elderly couple who lived next door to Lanny, a mentally handicapped 24-year-old man with no prior criminal record or known penchant for violence. 

Swogger had been arrested before on relatively minor charges, but he now faced the prospect of a lengthy prison term. In his cell at Burley’s Mini-Cassia Jail, Swogger told Rodriguez and Bonneville County Prosecutor Tom Moss that in exchange for “considerations,” he was willing to testify that Lanny Smith had confessed to the murders, thereby supplying the prosecution with a piece of evidence it otherwise couldn’t find. 

The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office had originally arrested Lanny’s adopted brother, Jeffrey Lynn Smith, as a suspect in the murder. Jeff, as he was commonly known, had a lengthy history of violent crime, including rape, kidnapping, theft, and several documented murder threats. The charges against Jeff were quickly dropped, however, leaving the BCSO without a credible suspect. 

 

Former Bonneville County DA -- and Federal Prosecutor -- Moss.

No physical evidence connected Lanny Smith to the murders, and he had no known motive to murder a couple he regarded as friends. For reasons that remain elusive, Rodriguez devised a bizarre theory that Lanny was sexually attracted to elderly, heavy-set women like Mary, and that this fixation eventually found expression in murderous jealousy after Mrs. Downard rebuffed the younger man’s attentions. 

The detective was able to recruit a neighbor named Beverly Huffaker who was willing to share gossipy speculation under oath, and testify that on the night of the murder Lanny was distraught over “something bad” that had happened to the Downards. She was not a direct witness to the killing, however, nor did Lanny make a confession to her. Huffaker’s recollection of an anguished conversation on the night of the murder would later be impeached in court. She claimed that it happened just after she and her son had returned to Idaho from a trip to Nevada that actually happened six weeks prior to the killings. 

Roughly two years had passed by the time Swogger contacted Det. Rodriguez. He had read about the Downard murders in the newspapers, and discussed the case with both Lanny and his sister Viki. 

“I took what he [Lanny] had told me and kinda turned it as if he was confessing instead of someone who was confiding in me and was scared,” Swogger would later explain. “He just kinda broke down because they were accusing him.” Lanny was heartsick over what had been done to his friends, and horrified by the prospect of a life sentence or perhaps the death penalty – but he never confessed to his cellmate. 

This didn’t trouble Rodriguez and his comrades, Swogger recalled. For his part, the prisoner – accused of molesting his daughter – was willing to say anything expected of him in exchange for promises of protection.  Convicted child molesters are particularly vulnerable targets in the Regime’s rape academy, and Swogger was both a “short eyes” and a snitch.

Ironically appropriate floor design at the Bonneville Co. Courthouse.

During Swogger’s subsequent visit with Detective Rodriguez and deputy prosecutor Jay Rosenthal, they reconfigured his story by “basically leading me through what they wanted me to say. I had several conversations from the prison afterwards and I think one before they took me down to Idaho Falls telling me not to worry [and] that you will be safe....”

That invitation to commit perjury was coupled with a threat in the event Swogger succumbed to the entreaties of his conscience:

“After I had originally talked to Victor [Rodriguez] and [Tom] Moss, that is when I told them … I wanted to get out of it, and they said no. If you back out now, we will prosecute you along with Lanny.” The detective and county prosecutor warned Swogger that “if I didn’t go through with it [perjuring himself on the witness stand], and not cooperating, and that I knew about this capital murder case and basically told me that if I don’t go through with it, I was through.”

This tactic -- "solving" a murder by using a combination of threats and promises to elicit perjury -- could be called the "Chris Tapp Interrogation Strategy," and it seems to be something of a Bonneville County law enforcement tradition. Unlike the hapless Chris Tapp, however, Swogger was able to tag someone else before the game ended, and there was enough residual decency in him to make him regret what he did.

“I was young and scared and if I knew then what I know now, I would have said to find someone else and do what you need to do,” Swogger disclosed in a lengthy September 12, 2011 statement to Elisa Massoth, the attorney representing Lanny Smith in his ongoing federal appeal. Unlike his jailhouse conversations with Det. Rodriguez and the prosecuting attorneys, Swogger had nothing to gain by speaking with Massoth, apart from reclaiming a measure of self-respect. 

Swogger had returned to his native Oregon, remarried, and was trying to build something akin to a normal life. As he pointed out to Massoth, by speaking out he left himself vulnerable to potential reprisals. There is no evidence that his subsequent conviction on drug and theft charges was the result of official retaliation – nor does it invalidate his admissions against interest in 2011.

A stolen life: Lanny Smith in court.

“I was trying to make things better for myself and not considering someone else’s life,” Swogger lamented.  “I know what it is like to be in a prison and having to live with that as a result of self-centeredness and selfishness,” Swogger elaborated, acknowledging that he had been punished for “the sexual assault on my daughter.” Now he was out of prison, he wanted to make restitution to an innocent man whom he had helped put there “for no apparent reason.”

“I cannot imagine Lanny and what he is going through [after] being convicted for something he never did,” Swogger explained to Massoth. “I really want my integrity all intact. I want some integrity in doing this.” 

Swogger’s years of incarceration had left him with a functioning conscience burdened with the knowledge of what he had done to Lanny Smith. The same isn’t true of former Detective Rodriguez, who is now drawing a tax-plundered pension after retiring from the Nampa Police Department He currently serves on that city’s planning and zoning commission and is occasionally called on by the media to offer “expert” justification for controversial fatal police shootings. 

“James who?” Rodriguez asked by way of a reply to a question about Swogger during a May 2010 deposition. A moment later the former detective dimly recalled that “I know that he testified in trial – I think he was in a cell with him, with Lanny, I believe, but I don’t know how we elicited his information or if we did.”

 

Untroubled conscience: Rodriguez.

Rodriguez didn’t respond to a recent email seeking a response to Swogger’s disclosures. He may soon be required to respond to them under oath. On August 23, a habeas corpus petition was filed on behalf of Lanny Smith that describes, at some length and in great detail, the suppression of exculpatory evidence during his 1995 trial, the chaotic chain-of-custody regarding that evidence, the use of speculative and unreliable “expert” testimony regarding a solitary shoeprint found at the murder scene, and several other due process violations.

Among the major topics in that petition is the bizarre solicitude shown by Rodriguez and the prosecution toward original murder suspect Jeff Smith, a habitual violent criminal who terrorized nearly everybody in his family -- including his ex-wives, the first of whom was forced to marry him against her will at age 15 after he impregnated her through rape.

In a 2011 letter to Lanny Smith, Julie Woodall – formerly Julie Smith – recalled an incident from 1986 in which Lanny intervened to protect his brother from beating, and perhaps killing, his ex-wife.

“I looked out the window and saw you running up to my front door with your brother, Jeff, right behind you,” Woodall wrote. “I saw you stand in front of my door when Jeff caught you, pushed you in front of my window and began beating you viciously…. I will always remember … that you tried your best to keep me from being hurt by your brother, all at the cost of being assaulted yourself. I have always been touched by the fact that you were willing to do this, even though you didn’t even know who I was.”

The man who took that beating is now in prison, convicted of a double-murder most likely committed by the man who assaulted him – and who was later called as a prosecution witness at the trial. Julie Woodall, the woman who was saved from that beating, reported more than a half-dozen crimes of violence committed against her by that witness. She was not called to testify at Lanny’s trial.

Viki Smith, Lanny’s biological sister and sister to Jeff by adoption, was likewise not called as a witness during Lanny’s trial, or during his post-conviction hearing. In a subsequent affidavit she testified that Jeff had been “sexually inappropriate” with her as a teenager, and that he attempted to rape her when she was 16 years old.

Lanny, by her account, was entirely unlike Jeff, a “kind, caring, gentle and soft-spoken” young man who “would always come to the defense of others.” This included, as mentioned previously, Lanny’s ex-sister-in-law, Julie. Contrary to the prosecution’s insinuations about a deviant sexual preoccupation with elderly women, Lanny had “crushes on my friends that were my age,” Viki recounted.

Like nearly everybody else who knew Lanny and Jeff, Viki Smith was perplexed by the BCSO’s determination to see Lanny prosecuted for the Downard murders.

“Victor Rodriguez, the primary investigating detective in Lanny’s case, hounded me and hounded me to make a statement,” Viki declares in her affidavit. “Victor Rodriguez told me that Lanny would go down for the Donward murders no matter what anyone said or did.”

Jeff Smith’s second ex-wife, Robbin, likewise described Lanny as “the opposite of Jeff Smith.” As had happened with Jeff’s first wife, Lanny became aware that Robbin was being abused and tried to help and protect he when he could. This didn’t prevent Jeff from repeatedly threatening to murder Robbin. This included several explicit threats made during Lanny’s trial that should have led to charges of witness intimidation – if Lanny’s defense attorney had the presence of mind to call Robbin as a witness.

Detective Rodriguez, who perjured himself on the witness stand during the trial by claiming that Jeff Smith was no longer considered a threat, was aware of the fact that Smith was abusing and threatening his wife.

 

Predatory psychopath: Jeff Smith

“In late June 1995, I witnessed an argument between Jeff and Robyn [sic] Smith,” testified former co-worker Heidi Libert in a 2004 affidavit. “Jeff had asked Robyn for her paycheck, supposedly to pay the bills. Robyn knew that he would not pay the bills, so she refused to give him the paycheck…. Jeff then slapped her on the face and said `You will pay for this.’”

“I advised Robyn to call the police, but she told me that the police would not believe her,” Liebert continued (emphasis added). 

Concerned that her husband would kill her, Liebert urged Robyn to divorce him “because of the abuse she was going through.” Eventually Jeff learned of that advice and “came to my residence and threatened me. He told me that `if you ever tell my wife [Robyn] to divorce me, I will kill you and your husband.’”

Leibert’s husband confronted Smith and ordered him to leave. Understandably concerned, they called the sheriff’s office to report the threat.

That call was routed to Det. Rodriguez.

Not content to ignore Jeff Smith’s ongoing crime rampage, Det. Rodriguez and Tom Moss (who a few years later was appointed by George W. Bush to be US Attorney for Idaho) actively protected him after he had offered what was tantamount to a confession before the grand jury.

The only scrap of potentially useful physical evidence at the murder scene was a shoeprint left on the dusty hardwood floor of the Downards’ master bedroom. Rodriguez photographed the print, but did so at an angle, and neglected to place a ruler next to it in order to define its size. 

After bungling what should have been a rudimentary crime scene investigation, Rodriguez sought out a mathematician employed by the Idaho Nuclear Energy Laboratory, who devised an exotic computer program that supposedly corrected the distortions in the image and found that the print had been made with a size eight and a half “Footjoy” tennis shoe.

Both Lanny and Jeff owned Footjoy shoes that were seized as evidence. Lanny’s shoes were reportedly size eight and a half, but they were disassembled by police investigators prior to the grand jury hearing. When called to testify, Jeff Smith stated four times under oath that “I usually wear an eight and a half” and that to the best of his knowledge, Lanny’s shoes were a size nine and a half.

According to the prosecution’s theory of the case, Jeff Smith was admitting that he was the one who left the incriminating shoe print at the scene of the murder.

A brief recess was called, during which Rodriguez held a brief, furtive conference with Jeff. When the hearing resumed, Bonneville County Prosecutor Tom Moss asked four additional questions about Jeff Smith’s shoes – and in reply to each of those questions, Smith invoked the Fifth Amendment.

If the State’s expert witness was correct, Jeff Smith had identified himself as the murderer. Yet the BCSO and the Bonneville County Prosecutor’s Office remained perversely determined to prosecute Jeff’s mentally challenged and apparently benevolent adopted brother for the crime.

James Swogger knew the participants in what was a conspiracy to obstruct justice by protecting a murderer and framing an innocent man. He had played a key role in that conspiracy himself. In his 2011 statement to Elisa Massoth, Swogger said that the attitude of his co-conspirators was, “We found somebody, let’s convict him and get it over with.”

To his credit, Swogger – notwithstanding his admitted acts of criminal indecency – is trying to make amends for his crimes against Lanny Smith. Tragically, neither retired Detective Rodriguez, nor his former colleagues in Bonneville County, can summon the strength of character displayed by an admitted child molester.

 Listen to Carol Dodge, mother of Idaho Falls murder victim Angie Dodge, describe how the IFPD has impeded her efforts to find the killer -- on this week's Freedom Zealot Podcast:

 

Dum spiro, pugno!

Rather than Indulging the Reparations Racket, Why Not Abolish Enslavement to the State?

Forty-five years have elapsed since the passing of Sylvester McGee, the last black American citizen who had been claimed by another American as property. Eighty-one years have elapsed since the death of Cudjoe Lewis, the last black American who had been born in Africa, captured by African slave traders, survived the often fatal middle passage in a slave ship, then vended to people who claimed him as property.

No living American for at least two generations has lived under the long-dead and universally reviled system of chattel slavery. No living American has ever been a slave owner, a title reflecting the abhorrent proposition that it is possible for one human being to own another. Notwithstanding all of these facts, the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, which reports to Prince Zeid bid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the world body’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, has published a report contending that white Americans who have never participated in chattel slavery owe reparations to black Americans who have never experienced it. 

 

Sylvester McGee

“Past injustices and crimes against African Americans need to be addressed with reparatory justice,” the report asserts. This would supposedly require passage of HR 40, which calls for creation of a commission that would examine “Whether African-Americans still suffer from the lingering effects” of slavery, and whether “any form of compensation to the descendants of African slaves is warranted,” and, if so, “what should be the amount of compensation, what form of compensation should be awarded, and who should be eligible for such compensation.”

That august commission would be a shakedown soviet with the power to dictate how much the “who” is supposedly entitled to extract from the “whom” – with both parties in this redistribution scheme defined in purely racial terms. 

"The reparations could come in a variety of forms,” the UN panel pontificates, including "a formal apology, health initiatives, educational opportunities ... psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and financial support, and debt cancellation."

The “legal framework” for this monumental program of plunder, the report contends, is provided by a series of UN treaties and conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The UN panel demands that those agreements, and several that have not been ratified by the US Senate, be integrated in both federal and state policy. 

Nothing less than full implementation of the UN’s “human rights” framework would be sufficient, the panel asserts, because even if the elaborate federal “civil rights” program were “fully implemented,” this would be “insufficient to overcome and transform the institutional and structural racial discrimination and racism against people of African descent.”

Blue Berets' burden: UN "Peacekeepers" in Somalia.

It is bad enough that US tax victims pay for the United Nations; it is intolerable for us to be expected to pay attention to it, and indulge the preposterous pretense that it is our moral tutor.

Regarding the well-being of “people of African descent,” the UN’s most notable accomplishment in that continent was to facilitate genocide in Rwanda by disarming a targeted ethnic sub-group. For six decades the UN has been an aid conduit for African kleptocracies while organizing“peacekeeping” forces that have provided full employment – with benefits– for sexual predators.

Following its tour of the United States, the Working Group expressed entirely justified alarm over the “levels of police brutality” and the official impunity enjoyed by abusive police officers in the United States. In their visits to Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Jackson, Mississippi, the panel heard many black Americans complain that “from an early age they are treated by the State as a dangerous criminal group and face a presumption of guilt rather than of innocence.”

Panel members were frequently told that “the `War on Drugs has had a devastating impact on African Americans and that mass incarceration was considered a system of racial control that operated in a similar way to howJim Crow laws once operated.”

In its recommendations, however, the panel didn’t call for an end to what was insistently described to it as system of “enslavement.”Rather than calling for an end to the War on Drugs – that is, abolishing the direct institutional heir to chattel slavery – this troupe of globe-trotting moralists emitted pious piffle to the effect that prosecutors, judges, and legislators should consider “the costs of mass incarceration practices” while perpetuating this system of human bondage.

Nowhere in the 22-page report is there even an oblique acknowledgement of the role played by the United Nations in cultivating the misery experienced by millions of Americans of African descent. While theframework of Prohibition was erected by American progressives a century ago,the contemporary War on Drugs is a UN-promoted enterprise.

The UN’s 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the enabling document for the global anti-drug jihad. The U.S. government didn't fully embrace that campaign until ten years later, when Congress – at the urging of the Nixon administration – passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, which was a literal declaration of war on the American people. That legislation conspicuously noted that the U.S. government “is a party to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs … and other conventions designed to establish effective control over international and domestic traffic in controlled substances.”

We have more to fear from the JBTs than from the Blue Helmets.

A few months later, Richard Nixon created the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE) through an executive order. This agency amalgamated several agencies – including the IRS, the ATF, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the direct ancestor of the DEA) and was given permission to “bypass normal channels” to prosecute the war.

ODALE quickly drew up a thirty-city target list (which included every stop on the UN panel's recent tour), created multi-jurisdictional task forces with state and local police, and unleashed newly created SWAT teams to begin the blitzkrieg.  That UN-authorized domestic war, which has relentlessly escalated over the past 45 years, consciously targeted America’s black population.

“You want to know what this was really all about?” an exasperated John Ehlirchman admitted in a 1994 interview with investigative author Dan Baum. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”

 

Ehrlichman attempts a Spock eyebrow -raise.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs?” concluded the Nixon confidante and co-conspirator. “Of course we did.”

The UN-facilitated drug war is largely responsible for the fact – noted in the UN panel’s report – that “one out of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.” At least half of those held in the federal gulag, and more than half of those in state-level rape cages, are being punished for drug-related offenses.

Once again, the UN panel’s report offers a satisfactory description of the irreparable economic and social harm resulting from a criminal conviction. A paroled convict, or one who has been given a term of probation, remains the property of the State, subject to the invasive supervision of a parole officer who can consign him to a cage again on a whim. As the UN’s “experts” were repeatedly told, this condition doesn’t differ dramatically from that of an antebellum slave.

Those who seek to destroy slavery root and branch must support an end to Prohibition in all its forms, as part of a larger campaign to reclaim the principle of self-ownership -- which, in an ultimate sense, would require abolition of the State. Of course, this wouldn’t occur to “experts” in the employ of an institution that sees the State in all its malignant variations as the center of human society.

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast continues the series of exposes of pervasive corruption in Bonneville County, Idaho:

Dum spiro, pugno!