Fitzgerald's court filings appear to have zeroed in on, not just the leak fact pattern, but the Niger document fraud as well.
This is massive.
...the greatest criminal conspiracy in American history:
The fraudulent case to bring our country to war that took the life of 2000 soliders and lined the pockets of Bush's "base". Fact.
The Caryle Group is in the business of war. No war, no billion $ contracts, ch ching ching ching.
[Attention Frank Carlucci, or should we call you "the architect." Rome is a beautiful city. Carlucci, Ledeen and Armitage. Sounds like a law firm or a" consulting group"? I digress...not really.]
In a previous article, we discussed a possible exception where Presidential pardons for crimes against the "United States" might be voided. [Again, the President's pardon power does not extend to state court convictions.] Unfortunately, this exception depends on the House impeaching followed by convictions in the Senate.
It's not impossible that Congress will do the right thing, considering...
- The body bags mount up as the blood of our soldiers mixes in the streets of Baghdad with innocent Iraqi citizens.
-Delay is in trial.
-Frist is being investigated by the SEC.
-AIPAC Espionage Indictments Are Ongoing.
The climate is ripe. And after Fitzgerald's category 9 indictment hurricane, our elected officials might actually be forced to do the right thing. We can only hope and pray it is so.
But even if the House and Senate lock down impeachment conviction and removal from office, the SCOTUS review is anybody's guess.
So let's not kid ourselves, the Presidential pardon power is not easy to nullify.
Still, despair not, justice has many faces.
The Presidential pardon power does not extend to criminal convictions in state courts.
Those are limited to "federal" crimes against the United States. The trick then, is to bring the T-gate offenders into state courts and convict them out of reach of the crony freedom factor pardon machine (...being tuned up as we speak).
I've been screaming for convictions under ****18 USC 793 and 794, the Espionage Act. But violations of the Espionage Act are not the only crimes that have been committed.
Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com discussed other laws Fitzgerald should be looking into:
There are plenty of violations of federal law to be found around the Niger uranium forgeries, and I expect Fitzgerald has found most if not all of them by now. When the president made his 2003 State of the Union address, and referred to Iraq's efforts to procure uranium in "an African country," the source of his allegation was a cache of documents that had been turned over to the American embassy in Rome under mysterious circumstances...
Whoever forged these documents and introduced them into the American intelligence stream is guilty of violating
[18 USC 1001]:
"Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully– (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."
[18 USC 371]
"If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
The only problem I have with Raimondo's analysis is that it shouldn't be limited to whoever forged the Niger documents.
The laws quoted above also cover Government officials who knew the documents were fake but represented the evidence contained in the forgeries as being legitimate which thereby caused Congress to approve the war resolution and appropriations for the Iraq war.
We don't yet know who created the fraudulent Niger documents, but we do know that Fitzgerald has been briefed on this issue by Italian authorities.
The laws cited above make it clear that both the "creation" and "use" of these documents was a felony.
The "cover up" of the documents' fraudulent nature was also a felony. Fraudulent statements about the veracity of the documents would also be a felony, i.e. Bush relying on them in his State of the Union address (the famous 16 words); and let's not forget Powell's reliance upon them at the UN as well as Condi's mushroom cloud speech.
If proved that government officials knew the documents were fraudulent then their criminal actions relating to such knowledge must be prosecuted.
It's undisputed that the Niger documents are frauds. But the truly wicked aspect of this tragedy, as it pertains to our legal analysis, is that the documents are BLATANTLY bogus.
BLATANTLY BOGUS....blatnatly bogus bogi bogushevits bogusly bogus. BLATANT TO the extreme so bogus they are laughably bogus so fake they are comically fake so bad they are OBVIOUSLY fake so FAKE they are obviously bogus. Did I mention that the Niger documents are utterly and completely bogus?
You understand...
The Nuralcubicle Blog has an interesting run down on the history of the documents:
"One letter, dated October 10, 2000 [The article’s editor at La Repubblica identifies this as the "memorandum of understanding" between Niger and Iraq] was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a [Niger] Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter [Editor’s note: dated 27 July 2000][...] had [...] a text with inaccuracies so egregious [...] that 'they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."
And this from The Cat Bird Seat
"How were the forgeries missed?...
[T]he discovery raises questions such as why the apparent forgeries were given to inspectors and why U.S. and British intelligence agents did not recognize that they were not authentic.
Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's.
Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said."
The New Yorker Magazine quotes a CIA official who said, "Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false—until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed."
The Pentagon didn't believe any such thing. Nor did they ever believe that Al Queda was truly in cahoots with Saddam. Lies...
- No real Niger documents.
- No money trail showing a yellow cake deal.
- No deal between Iraq and Niger.
- No connection between Iraq and Al Queda.
- No WMD in Iraq.
2000 soldiers dead.
2000 soldiers never coming back.
Probably more than 100,000 Iraqi's are dead. Children have been slaughtered, their hands blown off, their parents exploding in front of them, toddlers eyes gauged out by shrapnel. We've all seen the pictures.
Am I being overly dramatic? I don't think so. The 16 words and Condi’s mushroom cloud were over dramatic. The bloody drama on the ground in Iraq really happened. The B-grade horror movie Bush screened for us about WMD was a lie...
- a criminal fraud under 18 USC 1001
- a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud under 18 USC 371.
The Felony Murder Rule.
FUTURE STATE COURT CONVICTIONS OF THE BUSH CABAL FOR MURDER OF US SOLDIERS UNDER THE FELONY MURDER RULE CANNOT BE PARDONED BY THE PRESIDENT.
The President's pardon authority is only applicable to crimes against the United States, not state court convictions. State Governors can pardon state convictions, but it's not as likely to happen... especially in blue states.
From Wikipedia:
The felony murder rule... is a legal doctrine according to which anyone who commits, or is found to be involved in, a serious crime (a felony), during which any person dies, is guilty of murder.This applies even if one does not personally or directly cause the person's death. For example, a getaway driver for an armed robbery can be convicted of murder if one of the robbers killed someone -- or got killed in some jurisdictions -- in the process of the robbery, even though the driver was not present at and did not expect the killing. In jurisdictions that also have the death penalty, felony murder usually qualifies as a capital crime...
To "qualify" for the felony murder rule, the felony must present a foreseeable danger to life, and the link between the underlying felony and the death must not be too remote. If the receiver of a forged check has a fatal allergic reaction to the ink, most courts will not hold the defendant guilty of murder.
There are two schools of thought concerning whose actions can cause the defendant to be guilty of felony murder. Jurisdictions that hold to the "agency theory" admit only deaths caused by the agents of the crime. Jurisdictions that use the "proximate cause theory" include any death, even if caused by a bystander or the police, provided that it would not have occurred but for the felony.
Apply the felony murder rule to the Niger forgeries:
The Bush administration makes a premeditated decision to fix the intelligence around the policy to scam war support from:
- the American people
- elected representatives
- the military
Congress votes to approve the war resolution and appropriations are granted to fund the war, all based on a fraudulent pack of lies.
Over 2000 soldiers are now dead.
The Niger documents have no credibility whatsoever and nobody in our intelligence divisions, State Department or the Pentagon ever really believed these were real.
How could they? They can read. The documents are a sick horrific joke.
Under 18 USC 1001 and 18 USC 371, the Bush administration is guilty of fraud and conspiracy to deceive the country, military and elected representatives into supporting the war with money and manpower.
Each of the 50 states has lost men and women because of this fraud. Many of those states use the "proximate cause theory" of the felony murder rule. Under the Niger fraud fact pattern, Bush administration officials who fraudulently made the case for war in Iraq had the direct intention of putting soldiers in peril knowing many would be killed in battle.
If they are guilty of felony fraud and conspiracy, district attorneys in those states which follow the "proximate cause theory" of the "felony murder rule" could indict those Bush administration officials who are guilty of violating 18 USC 1001 and 371 for the deaths of soldiers who were residents in each respective state.
Furthermore, each soldier's death is a different crime and no double jeopardy would apply from state to state because each death is a separate felony murder. If the neocons are found not guilty in one state, that does not stop any other state from bringing a separate indictment for the loss of their own residents.
STATE CRIMINAL JURISDICTION?
Since the murders did not occur in any of the states, for a state court to have authority to prosecute Bush administration officials, each state would have to show that they have "State Criminal Jurisdiction" over the defendants. The controlling Supreme Court precedent for establishing "State Criminal Jurisdiction" is STRASSHEIM v. DAILY, 221 U.S. 280 (1911).
The following Michigan Bar Association publication discusses Oliver Wendell Holmes' decisive opinion in that case:
THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS TEST
In 1911, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the opinion for the Supreme Court in Strassheim v Daily, a case that arose in Michigan and is still cited today as authority for the proposition that a state may exercise criminal jurisdiction over acts committed outside the territorial boundaries of a state. In Strassheim, the Supreme Court stated:
"[A]cts done outside a jurisdiction, but intended to produce and producing detrimental effects within it, justify a state in punishing the cause of the harm as if he had been present at the effect, if the state should succeed in getting him within its power."
To satisfy the minimum requirements for an exercise of criminal jurisdiction over out-of-state conduct, there must be (1) an act occurring outside the state, which is (2) intended to produce detrimental effects within the state, and (3) is the cause of detrimental effects within the state. Unlike the jurisdictional analysis in civil cases, the "minimum contacts" analysis does not apply when determining criminal jurisdiction. In criminal cases, the analysis focuses on the intent of the defendant and the effects within the forum state.
Under the Iraq war fact pattern, "the act" was the fraudulent use of fake intelligence by a conspiracy of neocons to "trick" Congress into approving the war resolution and providing appropriations for the war.
"The act" also caused thousands of patriotic young men and women to enlist in the military to protect their country.
"The act" was "intended" to produce the "detrimental effect" of taking soldiers form the states they were residing in and putting them on a battlefield in Iraq. Can you think of a more detrimental effect? The "fraud" to bring the country to war was "the cause of the detrimental effect".
"But for" the fraudulent intelligence conspiracy, the funds and other approval of our elected representatives would not have been granted. No money, no war, no deaths in Iraq. It's really a very simple analysis.
Many people are sitting in prison for convictions under the felony murder rule. It's not obscure. And being a rich white collar criminal neocon fascist millionaire hawk does not protect you from prosecution as far as the law is concerned.
Soldiers are dead from every state in the union.
The intelligence used to get them into Iraq, in this case the Niger documents and various ancillary intelligence, was clearly bogus, so bogus that anyone reading this and having no experience with WMD Intel knows beyond any doubt, not just that the Niger documents were bogus, but why they were bogus.
Our Pentagon, State Department and White House was duped?
Tell it to Fitz. Tell it to the jury. Get the f**k out of here. This is just insulting.
The officials in Niger who had the power to make the deal with Iraq were not the signatories to the fake memorandum. There was no money trail, and Niger didn't have the goods to begin with, "it had all been pre-sold to Niger’s Japanese and European consortium partners."
This wasn't incompetence, it was malicious fraud.
We have 50 jurisdictions. We have 50 shots at justice. We can't let these crimes go unpunished or they will happen again.
2000 soldiers are dead. 2000 felony murders. 2000 trials in the states of this nation.
Presidential pardons are not available to convictions attained in these states.
Indictments under 18 USC 371, and 1001 are just as important (perhaps more so) as indictments under the Espionage Act because those indictments will lay the groundwork for state court "felony murder" prosecutions.
Pardons of the underlying federal felonies will not shield the perps from prosecution in the state courts.
Before you start to believe ****'s gone off the deep side here, I suggest you review the provisions of the Patriot Act which allow for prosecutions and the death penalty for those found guilty of nebulous forms of terrorism even though the so called "terrorists" don't intend to kill or even hurt anyone.
This was clipped from the ACLU Web Site:
Even more troubling, the draft bill is not content to create fifteen new death penalties, but also contains language that sweeps in any violation of state or federal law that is committed under the definition of domestic or international terrorism contained in 18 U.S.C. § 2331. As a result, activities that (1) involve “acts dangerous to human life,” (2) are a violation of any state or federal law, and (3) are committed in order to influence government or the population by intimidation or coercion become death-penalty eligible if death results. Arguably, this definition could fit some protest activities, such as those used by Operation Rescue, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or Greenpeace. For example:
* If protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, a military bombing range unpopular with local residents, cut a fence to trespass on the military’s bombing range, and a bomb killed one of the demonstrators, a prosecutor could charge the survivors with an eligible crime for which the sentence could be death.
* If Greenpeace activists attempted to block an oil tanker entering a port to protest the company’s safety record, and a member of the tanker’s crew drowned attempting to ward off the activists’ boat, the protesters could be charged with a crime for which the sentence could be death...
Under this provision, protesters could be charged with the death penalty as the result of a tragedy.
For every draconian repression these bastards have installed to make us more docile, there exists an equal and opposite opportunity to use their stuff against them.
It's very encouraging to see the Espionage Act take precedence over the IIPA in both the main stream media and blogospehere, and the fourth estate now seems up to speed on the plenary authority Fitzgerald wields over t-gate offenses.
Our next chore is to bring the felony murder rule to the attention of the blogosphere. This is best done by comparing it to the provisions of the Patriot Act which are cited above. It will be very hard for the neocons to attack this theory of prosecution since the relevant provisions of their precious Patriot Act were inherited directly from the felony murder rule concept.
There are 50 states.
50 shots at justice.
2000 felony murders.
Spread the law.
COMING SOON
Analysis of Joe Wilson's statements and actions leading up to his July 2003 Op Ed piece. When put under the microscope, Wilson's actions are suspect.
AND THIS...
Analysis of the coming Bush 41 influenced take over to "cleanse" 43's adminstration.
As selected members of the military industrial complex come in to faux "scold" the neocons and replace them, don't be fooled (...by Scowcroft and Poppy).
It's fall now (i.e., time for some to take the fall.) And they turn (on each other) together because they're roots are connected.
They're playing to a script. We'll get you ready for the final act.
