George & Martha  - A Modern Twist On The Same Old Story

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that governmental officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen." -- U.S. Supreme Court, in Meachum vs. Fano (1976)

By Dom Stasi
ResponDS1@aol.com

03/13/04 "ICH" - One juror in the Martha Stewart trial was everywhere evident on the public airwaves this week. Not content to quietly endure his fifteen minutes of fame, the juror, a 47 year old computer technician by the name of Chappell Hartridge, chose instead to regale us with his homey wisdom. Lucky us. He did this immediately after rendering the guilty verdict heard round the world. Not hobbled by any vestige of pretense toward representing a jury of this defendant's peers, Chappell wasted no time in informing us all that Stewart's conviction was, as he put it, "…a victory for the little guy."1 

Now, while blind (and lately clothed) justice might be as fictitious a concept as Gulliver's Travels, I object! to a juror citing the latter as relevant in any way to his validation of a verdict. There are not supposed to be little guys (and thus it follows, big guys) in an American court of law. Neither should such perceptions exist in the minds of its jurors. That's the whole point of Anglo-American jurisprudence. This jury was briefed by an objective presiding judge who looks and acts nothing at all like a kangaroo. Yet the only juror to be heard from offers this "victory for the little guy" remark? What makes a juror think or say such a thing? Where did our America go? Has anyone seen America lately?

Pardon me, while I become nauseated. Because I think we just have seen America. I think we've just seen a very clear example of a new America, an America that snuck up on us while we weren't looking. It's an America that's becoming ever more difficult for fair minded people both at home and abroad to accept. Seen many car flags lately?

Nowhere is that sense of unfairness more evident than in the disposition of an American citizen named Martha Stewart. Whatever your opinion of Martha Stewart, and whatever your opinion of the verdict in her trial, I find it nothing short of vulgar that a vast number of our countrymen and their government's media stooges take and stoke a perverse glee in the tragedy that will befall this woman and her innocent employees. I know she made her own bed (figuratively speaking, not from raw lumber and nails, though of course that might also be so). But until the same standards of evidence and legal discourse are applied to all Americans, please spare me your letters to that effect. Because I'm not speaking of Martha Stewart's guilt. That's been decided for now. I'm speaking of our guilt. Yours and mine. We are all of us guilty of being less than worthy trustees to this greatest of all nations, this nation of, by, and for its people. We are those people. And we-the-people are being duped. 

I'm speaking of the travesty of commerce that willfully threatens to devastate an American company, its innocent employees, and its stockholders. I'm speaking of the public travesty few dare call a double standard of American equality, a perversion of truth that we the people have allowed to both stand and to be handsomely rewarded. And I will speak loudest about the travesty of justice that puts a woman behind bars for an infraction the vast majority of Americans cannot even identify: section 1001 of the federal code.2 Yet, that same majority if asked, would quickly cite insider trading, or more legally and specifically "securities fraud" as the crime for which Stewart was convicted. Wrong! Call it what you will, she was never even formally tried for securities fraud or criminal insider trading. Fraud charges might have been brought against her by ambitious federal prosecutors, but were thrown out, dismissed by the presiding judge. Securities fraud continued to be implied and the perception of such charges, sustained only by a ratings-crazed corporate media more intent on pleasing a deregulation-prone Bush administration than in conveying facts to the public. The only crime for which Martha Stewart has been tried and now convicted is that of lying to a federal investigator. 

Had she been neither interrogated for, nor charged with a crime she never committed , the implicating lie would not have been told. 

Let's look at the record.

But first let's set the stage. Martha Stewart is a woman. Martha Stewart is also a very wealthy self-made woman who has contributed handsomely (in excess of $150,000.00) to the Democratic party, while offering nothing, zero, nada, to the demonstrably more grateful Republicans. So based upon such disregard for the virtually guaranteed and immediate perversely high ROI (return-on-investment) big Republican donors enjoy, let's presume that, despite her wealth, Martha Stewart has questionable talent for personal investing. Further, Stewart is a woman whom a recent opinion poll found to be fully as annoying to a majority of the American public as is Osama bin Laden. 3 Simply stated, a Gallup Poll found Ms Stewart to be disliked by 55% of Americans. 3 That's the identical number of Americans who at that same time considered George W. Bush to be an excellent president and a very likeable guy. 

I'll leave the reasons for these public perceptions to those better qualified at their determination. The point I will endeavor to make here, is that public perception influences our government's behavior in ways the Constitution never intended. 

Stewart did lie to a federal investigator. No wiggle room. But she was not under oath and through a little known law, the investigator was not compelled to inform Stewart that she had the right to remain silent. Stewart did not commit securities fraud. Therefore, having committed no crime, Stewart would not have been questioned by the federal investigator without specific instructions from Justice Department superiors to do so. If she had committed no crime, why then was she being questioned? 

There are of course several reasons why she might have been questioned, some even justifiable. Thus the 1001 rule. None, however, are protected under the Miranda statute -also unique to the 1001 rule. So the disturbing implications here are that you, me or anyone else can be questioned by a federal investigator for no apparent reason. Let's take an absurd example. Suppose you're about to have lunch with your boss. While waiting in the restaurant's lobby for your boss to arrive, you strike up a conversation with the guy in front of you. He tells you he's a federal investigator. He goes on to tell you that his boss is a fathead with whom he'd never have lunch. You in turn tell him that your boss is a fathead too, but you're having lunch with him anyway. You're brought to your table, even though the guy to whom you were talking - the fed - was at the restaurant first. Later, he comes up to your table and in front of your boss asks you: "Is this the guy you called a fathead?" 

What's your response? Deny it, and under Federal Code Section 1001 you can go to prison just like Martha Stewart. That's what she was charged with - lying to a federal investigator. The fed can lie to you all he wants, but you can't lie to him. Welcome to New America. Seem a bit like Nazi Germany?

Specifically, and more seriously, Martha Stewart was questioned because she sold her stock in ImClone. Shortly thereafter the stock temporarily tanked. She was apparently a stockholder who received information that the company - ImClone - was about to get bad news. The Government was about to reject one of their products. That news would doubtless affect the stock price. She sold her stock suspiciously close to its decline. She was a friend of ImClone's CEO. Now, infer what you might, there is nothing illegal here. If Stewart's actions were verifiably illegal, do you think the charge of securities fraud would have been dropped? If the feds could have made a case for securities fraud they would have not only brought those charges, but been mandated to press those charges in federal court. Instead the charges were thrown out by the presiding judge. 

Okay, that's the Martha part of the story. Let's now take a look at someone else who was never convicted of securities fraud or criminal insider trading. His name is George. Of course George was never convicted. How could he have been? He was never even charged. But he was questioned by federal investigators in 1991. They determined that despite his position on the company's audit committee, and his Harvard MBA, he did not know enough to be charged with criminal insider trading. He sold the Harken stock at $4.00 a share. Following the disclosure it dropped to $2.97, then collapsed to $1.00 per share. 

Did he lie to federal investigators? Of course not. Did he commit fraud? Of course not. We can all be certain of that, because this paragon of truth is named is George W. Bush. 

Bush is alleged to have committed an infraction whose commission, magnitude, evidentiary support, clandestine efforts to deceive, and degree of intent, serve to further obviate the unsustainable allegations made against Stewart. If true, the allegations of criminal insider trading levied against George W. Bush, are far more blatant, characteristically specific, lucrative, damaging to the innocent, and wholly disregarded by the press. These allegations of securities fraud surround the very deal whose spoils elevated the dismally failed oilman George W. Bush to the status of multimillionaire. Governor. President. War President. 

The Harken Energy incident I speak of is somewhat familiar to most Americans. What is less known is that Harken Energy's board member and paid Director on its auditing committee, George W. Bush, dumped nearly one million dollars worth of his stock in that company one month to the day before the company disclosed for the first time that it was hemorrhaging money. During his tenure, Harken failed to disclose - some would say concealed - massive losses while artificially inflating its revenues with borrowed cash to keep the stock prices high. Harken was borrowing money and putting it against its bottom line to fabricate profits. Meantime, directors like Bush, who keep in mind also sat on Harken's audit committee, could sell off their shares to a public who thought the company was in good shape. Coincidence? Possibly. 

But, I ask you, if Bush knew of the forthcoming disclosure before he sold as one might assume a member of the auditing committee - the auditing committee! - should, is that not criminal insider trading? If he knew of the accounting practices that artificially inflated the stock's value, as any brain-conscious member of the company's auditing committee would, does that qualify as securities fraud? 

Well, George sold his Harken stock prior to the disclosure and used the proceeds to buy a chunk of the Texas Rangers baseball team which catapulted him to the big money ranks. 

Illegal? We'll never know because - thought their boss might be a fathead - no federal investigators are asking any questions any more. 

So that, dear reader, is the later day American story of George and Martha. A sad tale to be sure. But a story whose end is yet to be written. 

A more detailed analysis can be found at sites referenced in the footnotes (below). 4, 5 

In the meantime, behold the new America. Behold the America of self-proclaimed flag weaving simplistically patriotic little guys and their reviled big guy nemeses. Whether it's the jackass with the persecution complex who disdains of other people's successes, or the billionaire populist tyrant who feeds off of that jackass's prejudices by proclaiming himself a little guy too, the America of all men are created equal is dead. If it ain't dead, then it's sure as hell dying. We've let the self-proclaimed "little guys" and their billionaire seducers strike her a fatal blow while we weren't looking. Well, we'd better start looking now, and damned fast. Because every day Americans - big, little, and everything in between - are watching our precious freedoms stolen while we disregard injustice heaped upon outrageous injustice. The Lilliputians are doing their masters' bidding as they have throughout history. That's right. Just as they did in an equally well-educated, equally enlightened, equally sophisticated mid-century Europe they're about to pin us to the ground. By US, I mean every American of tolerance, moderation, and rational ambitions. I mean every American possessed of a fairness of mind and spirit. By THEM I mean every neurotic who longs to be a big guy. And once American equality goes down, it's down for the count. They ain't ever gonna let us up. They never have in all the history of our kind. They won't this time. 

What makes it all so unbelievable is, this time it's happening here. 

The Author <Responds1@aol.com>
An engineer, Dom Stasi is Chief Technology Officer for a national television network in Los Angeles. He was the original chief engineer who helped develop both HBO and MTV's satellite-based networks. An Air Force veteran, he has been a member of the Project Apollo technical team, and is a widely published science and technology writer.


Footnotes:

1. Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Newswire, March 4, 2004

2. New York Times on Section 1001, Federal Code. http://gsdc.blogspot.com/

3. Democracy Now, March 11, 2004. "Was Martha Stewart Targeted?" http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/11/1538249

4. Bush's Insider Connections Preceded Huge Profit On Stock Deal, by Knute Royce, The Center for Public Integrity: http://www.public-i.org/story_01_040400.htm

5. National Review, June, 2002, Larry Kudlow, "Martha's A Good Thing." http://www.nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow062002.asp

© 2004 Dom Stasi