Questions for Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

Until recently I thought that I might attempt to contact John Dean to see if he were interested in joining the Forum. However, in light of the destructive postings of Ashton Gray, I have decided that encouraging Dean or anyone else who has a direct knowledge to join the Forum is not a viable option.

Do you make John Dean's decisions for him about where to participate or not? (Now that's 64 questions. Ka-ching!)

Regardless of whether you answer or not, it's good to know that you and ol' John Wesley are in touch with each other. If you do talk to him, please pass on my regards, and let him know I'm doing a small series in the Watergate forum, growing his legend. Significantly.

By all means, I'd love for there to be two Watergate-related attornies here running from me.

Do you think you could get Liddy and Hunt to join the game? Hell, I'll type with only one hand if I could get all four of you here, and especially if Alfred Baldwin would come back out from under the porch. Come on, Doug. If you could drag Colson away from the pulpit long enough, bring him along, too! Let's all play Question-and-Evade! I'm ready. Six against one. You can't beat those odds!

Oh! While we're on the subject of Hunt and Baldwin, and since Baldwin has lost his voice, and since you apparently are close to him, too: I don't think Hunt came to your apartment at all on the morning of June 17, 1972, but instead followed Baldwin, who was driving the van to McCord's house, then took Baldwin where he needed to be taken after Baldwin had planted the "evidence" there. And I think you know, too. I think you were and are Hunt's alibi for being in knowing collusion with Baldwin on planting the "evidence" at McCord's house, after Hunt had planted his "evidence" in the White House, which is precisely why you're avoiding all my questions about that. Did I ring the bell, Doug? Do I win a kewpie doll?

Please see if you can round up all your Watergate pals. Bring 'em on.

Ashton Gray

UNITED STATES v. GEORGE GORDON LIDDY

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

509 F.2d 428

Before: BAZELON, Chief Judge, WRIGHT, McGOWAN, LEVENTHAL, ROBINSON, MacKINNON, and WILKEY, Circuit Judges, sitting en banc.

LEVENTHAL, Circuit Judge.

Appellant Liddy seeks reversal of his conviction on charges relating to the burglary and wiretapping of the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment-office building complex in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972. Appellant was named in six counts of an eight count indictment returned against seven defendants1 on September 15, 1972. On January 8, 1973, jury selection began before then Chief Judge John J. Sirica of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Shortly after the trial commenced, five defendants changed their pleas to guilty. On January 30, 1973, the remaining defendants, appellant Liddy and James W. McCord, Jr., were found guilty by the jury. Appellant was convicted of conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 (count 1), burglary in violation of 22 D.C. Code § 1801( (counts 2 and 3), and unlawful endeavor to intercept oral and wire communications and interception of communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2511(1)(a) (counts 4, 5, and 8). * * *

* * *

IV. INSTRUCTION REGARDING RETAINING OF COUNSEL

On direct examination, attorney Michael Douglas Caddy testified as follows: At approximately 3:40 a.m. Saturday morning, June 17, 1972, Howard Hunt arrived at his apartment and arranged with him to secure counsel for the five men arrested in the Democratic National Committee’s offices an hour and a half earlier.

At about 4:45 a.m. Hunt called Liddy and both Hunt and Caddy explained to Liddy the steps that had been taken to retain an attorney for those men. During this conversation, Liddy indicated that he desired to have Caddy represent him in this matter.

Appellant assigns as error the trial judge’s instruction that the jury could draw no adverse inferences from the fact that Liddy retained counsel but could consider the time and other surrounding circumstances at which Mr. Liddy retained Mr. Caddy with respect to the state of mind of Mr. Liddy only. Appellant claims that allowing the jury to draw inferences of guilty knowledge from his efforts to obtain counsel imposes a penalty on the exercise of his Sixth Amendment rights.40 Liddy cites the Government’s emphasis in closing argument on the unusual hour at which he retained counsel as evidence of the prejudicial nature of the alleged error.

Appellant bases his Sixth Amendment claim on Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965). In that case the Court held that comment on the defendant’s failure to testify was forbidden by the Fifth Amendment, because it was tantamount to a penalty for exercising a constitutional right. Id. at 614-15. A number of courts, including this court, have extended the principle announced in Griffin to prohibit comment on the defendant’s failure to make an exculpatory statement upon arrest.

There is disagreement as to whether a defendant’s silence at the time of arrest can be used to impeach his testimony at trial. Compare United States v. Hale, 498 F.2d 1038 (D.C. Cir. 1974); Johnson v. Patterson, 475 F.2d 1066 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 878 (1973) with United States v. Ramirez, 441 F.2d 950 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 869 (1971). This disagreement appears to be grounded primarily on diverse conclusions reached in attempts to harmonize the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris v. New York, 401 U.S. 222 (1971), and Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966).

There is only scant law on the applicability of the penalty analysis employed in Griffin to the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Some courts have found reversible error in circumstances in which the prosecutor has commented on the defendant’s silence and request for counsel upon arrest. Those cases, though containing language referring generally to the right to counsel, appear to be bottomed on considerations involving the rights of an accused facing police interrogation - a context in which the right to counsel is intimately bound up with the privilege against self-incrimination. They are thus of marginal value in ascertaining the applicability of Griffin to the Sixth Amendment claim raised in the present case.

In the present case, the trial judge instructed the jury that no adverse inferences could be drawn from the fact that appellant Liddy exercised his constitutional right to counsel. The trial judge, however, drew a distinction between the fact of hiring counsel and the time and circumstances under which an attorney was retained by the defendant.

Although it is the latter action of the trial judge that is contested on this appeal, we may usefully begin our discussion by approval of his instruction prohibiting the drawing of an adverse inference from the mere fact of hiring an attorney, at least when the circumstances are such that admission of evidence of such a request provokes the possibility that it will be taken as self-incriminatory. This prohibition of adverse inference from the fact of hiring an attorney seems to us to be a fair corollary to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Griffin. We should, perhaps, refer to our opinion in Jones v. United States, 111 U.S.App.D.C. 276, 296 F.2d 398 (en banc 1961), cert. denied, 370 U.S. 913 (1962), although it was not cited by parties. Insofar as Jones, which rejects a Sixth Amendment claim, uses the broad principle that the expression of a desire to have a lawyer never impinges on the right to have one, we think it is superseded by the reasoning of Griffin. * * *

In view of the peculiarities of the fact situation in Jones, we see no point in speculating on the result that would and should have ensued if it had been decided after Griffin. Certainly, the broadside rejection of the Sixth Amendment contention was not sound.

The trial judge erred, however, in limiting the application of the principle of Griffin with a ruling that apparently considered that it is generally proper to take into account the time and circumstances of retaining an attorney, and to draw whatever inferences as seem appropriate. Such a distinction generally raises problems that hobble the right to seek counsel. To the extent that an inference of criminality is operative, it invites probing of the very process of selection of counsel - who, why, when and where - and pressing the defendant to come forward with evidence concerning this process. The mischief of the approach is underlined by its semantic subtleties, which opens the door to maneuver and misunderstanding. It would be a rare case indeed where the prosecutor could not point out that the incriminating feature of the employment of counsel - in the absence of explanation - rests not in the employment as such but in the time and circumstances surrounding that event, and inferences therefrom that reflect adversely on the defendant.45

The Third Circuit recently examined the application of Griffin to a Sixth Amendment contention in United States ex rel Macon v. Yeager, 476 F.2d 613 (3rd Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 855 (1973). In that case the prosecutor in his summation to the jury commented upon the fact that the defendant called an attorney the morning after the alleged crime and argued that this action cast doubt on the defendant’s claim that the shooting was an accident. Id. at 614. Although the defendant neither objected to the comment nor requested an instruction, the court held that there was plain error that required a reversal of the conviction. The court read Griffin as an absolute prohibition against the imposition of any penalty for the exercise of a constitutional right in a criminal law context. Id. at 615-16.

We agree with the Third Circuit’s analysis that the admission of a request for counsel raises Sixth Amendment problems under Griffin. We are not called upon in this case to determine whether the Third Circuit was correct in treating Griffin as a bar that is absolute - whether, for example, it would apply where the request for or retainer of counsel was part of the actions constituting the offense, sometimes called the res gestae, so that omission of the request or retainer would distort the underlying account of the witnesses or undercut the likelihood that it would be considered reasonable or natural.

In the present case, even if it be assumed that there was error in the admission of evidence, the prosecutor’s summation, or the instruction, or all of these, the error would be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. In Macon, where the Third Circuit found reversible error, the prosecutor’s comment was directed at the credibility of the accused’s story which was a central issue in the case. 476 F.2d at 616. Here, the time at which Liddy retained counsel was but one of a number of factors that linked him to Hunt and the five defendants apprehended a couple of hours earlier. Moreover, the effect of the error was mitigated by the fact that evidence of part of Liddy’s 5:00 a.m. conversation with Caddy was clearly admissible to show Liddy’s involvement in his action of retaining counsel for those arrested during the break-in. His assertion of a right to Sixth Amendment protection against any use of his statements to obtain counsel for himself certainly does not prohibit inquiry into portions of his conversation with Caddy relating to his action in obtaining counsel for others. This evidence of Liddy’s efforts on behalf of the five defendants only a few hours after their arrest was probative of his involvement in their venture.

The evidence against the appellant, summarized at the outset of the opinion, was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional error in the comment of the prosecutor and the instruction of the trial judge there is no reasonable possibility that it contributed to the conviction.

* * *

Affirmed.

--------------------------------------------

This 1998 article by me from the Wall Street Journal puts in perspective the 1974 U.S. Court of Appeals Decision in U.S. v. Liddy:

The Wall Street Journal

Editorial Page

March 24, 1998

WHAT IF JUDGE SIRICA WERE WITH US TODAY?

By Douglas Caddy

(Mr. Caddy is a Houston lawyer)

The Clinton scandals, with all the claims of coverup and executive privilege, are certainly reminiscent of Watergate. But there is a crucial difference: This case lacks a John Sirica, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia who played such a crucial role in Watergate. The untold historical record reveals that the early actions of Sirica, who assigned the Watergate case to himself, helped spur the subsequent coverup and obstruction of justice that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon and the criminal convictions of many Watergate figures.

The Watergate scandal began at 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, when Washington, D.C. police arrested five men on burglary charges at the Watergate office building. At 3:05 a.m. E. Howard Hunt phoned me from his White House office and asked if he could come immediately to my Washington residence. I had been Hunt’s personal attorney for several years.

Hunt arrived half an hour later and informed me what had transpired earlier at the Watergate. He retained me to represent him in the case and then called G. Gordon Liddy, who also hired me. At that time, about two hours after the burglary, both Hunt and Liddy requested I also represent the five people arrested, four Cuban-Americans and James McCord, who were then incarcerated in the D.C. jail.

On June 28 – 11 days later – while working on the case in the federal courthouse in Washington, I was served with a subpoena bearing the name of Chief Judge Sirica, to appear “forthwith” before the federal grand jury investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the grand jury room.

From June 28 until July 19 I was to appear before the grand jury on six occasions and answer hundreds of questions. I drew the line, however, on the advice of my own legal counsel, at answering 38 questions we felt invaded my clients’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the attorney-client privilege. A typical question: “Between the hours of Friday at midnight, June 16, and 8:30 a.m. Saturday, June 17, did you receive a visit from Mr. Everett Howard Hunt?” We believed answering such questions would incriminate Hunt and Liddy, who had not been arrested, and would violate their constitutional rights.

Judge Sirica, rejecting such arguments out of hand, threatened to jail me for contempt of court. When I went before the grand jury on July 13, I refused to answer the 38 questions. Within an hour I was back before Judge Sircia, who immediately held me in contempt of court and ordered me to jail. Five days later, on July 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the contempt citation and ordered me to testify under threat of being jailed again. The opinion, which I found gratuitously insulting, declared: “Even if such a relationship does exist, certain communications, such as consultation in furtherance of a crime, are not within the privilege.”

In his July 19, 1972, Oval Office tape, Nixon is recorded as expressing dismay to John Ehrlichman: “Do you mean the circuit court ordered an attorney to testify?”

Ehrlichman replied, “It [unintelligible] me, except that this damn circuit that we’ve got here, with

[Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me every time they do something.”

Nixon then asked, “Why didn’t he appeal to the Supreme Court?”

The answer is that my attorneys and I believe we had built a strong enough court record that if Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested individuals were found guilty, their convictions could be overturned on appeal because of Sirica’s and the appeals court’s abuse of me as their attorney.

However, Judge Sirica’s actions had an unintended consequence. Hunt and Liddy, seeing their attorney falsely accused by Judge Sirica of being a participant in their crime, realized early on that they were not going to get a fair trail, so they embarked on a coverup involving “hush money.” As Hunt has written: “If Sirica was treating Caddy – an Officer of the Court – so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate – then those of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded, this conclusion became tragically accurate.”

Liddy appealed his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals, claiming that my being forced to testify denied him his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The court upheld his conviction: “The evidence against appellant...was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional error in the comment of the prosecutor and the instruction of the trial judge, there is no reasonable possibility it contributed to the conviction.” Neither Judge Sirica nor the appeals court acknowledged that their assault on the attorney-client privilege helped spur the ensuing coverup and obstruction of justice.

I was never indicted, named an unindicted co-conspirator, disciplined by the Bar or even contacted by the Senate Watergate Committee or the House Judiciary Committee, whose staff included a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham.

Now the issue of the attorney-client privilege is again being raised, this time by Monica Lewinsky’s first lawyer, Francis D. Carter, who has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury and bring the notes he took while representing Ms. Lewinsky. Mr. Carter got involved when Vernon Jordan referred Ms. Lewinsky to him in January. On March 4, Mr. Carter’s attorney, Charles Ogletree, argued before Chief Judge Norma Hollaway Johnson that the subpoena should be quashed: “Once you start to allow the government to intrude on the attorney-client relationship and allow them to pierce the attorney-client privilege, clients will no longer have a sense of confidence and respect that lawyers should have.”

Coming days will reveal how Mr. Carter fares in his fight to protect Ms. Lewinsky’s constitutional rights and what effect this will have on the case’s ultimate outcome. To date, at least, Judge Johnson has shown a restraint that her predecessor Judge Sirica did not.

[Douglas Caddy]

Mr. Caddy,

When Hunt came to my residence about an hour after the arrests, having a short time earlier telephoned me from his office in the Executive Office Building that adjoins the White House, I was amazed that he did not fully comprehend the significance of what had occurred at the Watergate complex and its potential grave impact.

From what you know, why was the Watergte broken into?

Steve Thomas

Liddy deposition on how the Watergate break-in came about:

On December 6, 1996, G. Gordon Liddy gave a sworn deposition in Washington, D.C. in which he described the origins of the Watergate scandal. The deposition was given in the following styled lawsuit:

In the United States District Court for the District of Columbia

Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean, Plaintiffs

v.

No. 92-1807

St. Martin’s Press, Inc., (HHG)(AK)

Len Colodny, Robert Gettlin,

G. Gordon Liddy, and

Phillip Mackin Bailley,

Defendants

The 148 page deposition presents an encompassing summary from the viewpoint of Mr. Liddy.

There are many highlights in the deposition. Attention is called especially to:

Pages 86 to 96: Planning and carrying out the first break-in on May 26, 27 and 28, 1972

Page 98: Planning the June 17, 1972 break-in upon instructions from Jeb Magruder.

These are Liddy’s words:

And that’s what he {Magruder] wanted. So that when I went back to Hunt and Hunt was upset. He said, “My God,” he said, “Do you know how much trouble it took us to get in there in the first place? All those three entries,” and this, that and the other thing, “And now this? With all the camera and all this film and all this exposure, I mean, the longer you are in there the more vulnerable you are.”

I said, “Howard, that’s what wanted, so we have to do it.” So we set up to do that.

Page 103: Describing the June 17, 1972 break-in

Page 105: Liddy’s words again:

But in any event, we held a council of war, so to speak. And the Cubans, they said, “Look, whatever the decision is, we are up to it.”

Question: Where was this council of war occurring?

Answer: This was in that – the room that Mr. Hunt and I had been in, the one with all the equipment that Mr. McCord had. And McCord, he was for doing it. Hunt was very, very loathe at first, but at any rate the decision was left up to me, because I was the operational chief. And I said, “Okay, we will go again.” And they went again. And the – they got in.

The two links below both lead to the 148 page transcript of the Liddy deposition. If one link does not work, try the other. If you have trouble making a link work, copy it and place it in your browser.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:x3l4K...clnk&cd=164

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:x3l4K...clnk&cd=165

[Douglas Caddy]

Douglas Caddy has agreed to answer questions on the Forum. Please post your questions on this thread and he will do his best to answer them.

(1) In September, 1960, you joined forces with Marvin Liebman and William F. Buckley to establish the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). Do you still hold right-wing views?

My views coincide one-hundred percent with those of Paul Craig Roberts as expressed below:

The Conservative Movement: From Failure to Threat

by Paul Craig Roberts

May 19, 2008

Find this article at:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts247.html

UC Berkeley tenured law professor John Yoo epitomizes the failure of the conservative movement in America. Known as "the torture professor," Yoo penned the Department of Justice (sic) memos that gave a blank check to sadistic Americans to torture detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The human rights violations that John Yoo sanctioned destroyed America’s reputation and exposed the Bush Regime as more inhumane than the Muslim terrorists. The acts that Yoo justified are felonies under US law and war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.

Yoo’s torture memos are so devoid of legal basis that his close friend and fellow conservative member of the Federalist Society, Jack Goldsmith, rescinded the memos when he was appointed head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Yoo’s extremely shoddy legal work and the fervor with which he served the evil intentions of the Bush Regime have led to calls from distinguished legal scholars for Yoo’s dismissal from Berkeley’s Boalt Hall.

I sympathize with the calls for Yoo’s dismissal. In the new edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, my coauthor and I write: "Liberty has no future in America if law schools provide legitimacy to those who would subvert the US Constitution."

However, John Yoo is but the tip of the iceberg. Scapegoating Yoo diverts attention from a neoconservative movement that has become the greatest enemy of the US Constitution.

In theory conservatives adore the Constitution and seek to protect it with appeals to "original intent." In practice conservatives hate the Constitution as the protector of homosexuals and abortionists. Conservatives regard civil liberties as coddling devices for criminals and terrorists. They see the First Amendment as a foolish protection for sedition. The neoconservative magazine, Commentary, has called for the New York Times to be prosecuted for informing Americans that President Bush was illegally spying on them without warrants.

The conservative assault on the US Constitution is deeply entrenched. The Federalist Society, an organization of Republican attorneys from which the Republican Party chooses its Justice Department appointees and nominees to the federal bench, was organized as an assault on the checks and balances in the Constitution.

The battle cry of the Federalist Society is "energy in the executive." The society has its origin in Republican frustrations from the days when Republicans had a "lock on the presidency," but had their agenda blocked by a Democratic Congress. The Federalist Society set about producing rationales for elevating the powers of the executive in order to evade the checks and balances the Founding Fathers wrote into the political system.

With the Bush Regime we have seen President Nixon’s claim that "it’s not illegal if the President does it" carried to new heights. With the complicity of Democrats, Bush and Cheney have appointed attorneys general who have elevated the presidency above the law.

Just as liberals used judicial activism in the federal courts to achieve their agenda, the conservatives are using the Department of Justice to concentrate power in the executive branch in order to achieve their agenda. In America the Constitution has no friends. It is always in the way of one agenda or the other and, thus, always under threat.

For now, however, the threat is from the right. Conservatives have confused loyalty to country, which is loyalty to the Constitution, with loyalty to the Bush Regime. It is purely a partisan loyalty based in emotion--"you are with us or against us."

When I was a young man conservatives were frustrated that facts, reason and analysis could not penetrate liberal emotion. Today facts, reason and analysis cannot penetrate conservative emotions. When I write a factual column describing how we have been deceived into wars that are clearly not in our interest, self-described conservatives indignantly write to me: "If you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Cuba!" Conservatives have become so intellectually pathetic that they regard my defense of civil liberties as an anti-American act.

Today’s conservatives are so poorly informed that they cannot understand that to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.

John Yoo was a willing accomplice of inhumane and illegal acts. But his greatest crime is that he was a willing participant in the Bush Regime’s assault on the Constitution, which protects us all. If Yoo is to be held accountable, what about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and his aides, attorneys general Gonzalles and Mukasey, Yoo’s Justice Department boss, now federal judge Bybee, Rumsfeld, Rice, Hadley, and the legion of neocon brownshirts that comprise the regime’s subcabinet? Is Yoo any more culpable than anyone else who served the corrupt, evil, and anti-American Bush Regime?

The ease with which the Bush Regime has run roughshod over the law and Constitution indicates that the brownshirt mentality to which many Americans have succumbed has sufficient attractive power to cause a professor from one of the country’s great liberal institutions to serve the cause of tyranny. The conservative movement has produced a cadre of brownshirts that might yet succeed in destroying the American Constitution.

May 19, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail] a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has just been released by Random House.

[Michael Hogan]

In the article referenced by Doug Caddy, Paul Craig Roberts writes:

The ease with which the Bush Regime has run roughshod over the law and Constitution indicates that the brownshirt mentality to which many Americans have succumbed has sufficient attractive power to cause a professor from one of the country’s great liberal institutions to serve the cause of tyranny. The conservative movement has produced a cadre of brownshirts that might yet succeed in destroying the American Constitution.

In 2000 Roberts wrote about the Democratic Party's attempts to get a recount in the State of Florida for Gore. Excerpts from two of his articles:

Massive Democratic vote fraud has made this election a close one. Having sized up Republicans as cowardly and timid, Democrats decided that they could steal the election behind a barrage of lies and propaganda laid down by their faithful allies at CNN and the TV networks. These Nazi-style propaganda machines are playing a decisive role in the destruction of American constitutional democracy....

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris has been demonized by the Democratic Party’s Propaganda Ministry (the TV networks and CNN). Adolf Hitler best described the tactic that Democrats are using against Harris. Success, Hitler says, comes from unleashing "a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked person break down." This tactic, Hitler says, is most successful against "the bourgeoisie [Republicans], which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks."

Once Bush assumes the office to which he has been elected, Republicans must turn their attention to dismantling the Democratic Party’s Propaganda Ministry that masquerades as a news media. The most obvious solution is nationalization. Give the corrupt media the socialism it wants, and run the organizations as strict news outlets with all editorializing and opinion banned.

Once Americans can get the facts, they will realize that a Nazi Party (a k a the Democratic Party) has grown up in their midst.

Six years later Roberts would write:

Former vice president Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts....

Gore challenged the American people to step up to the task of defending the Constitution, a task abandoned by the media, the law schools, and the Democratic and Republican parties. If we fail, darkness will close around us.

[Douglas Caddy]

In the article referenced by Doug Caddy, Paul Craig Roberts writes:

The ease with which the Bush Regime has run roughshod over the law and Constitution indicates that the brownshirt mentality to which many Americans have succumbed has sufficient attractive power to cause a professor from one of the country’s great liberal institutions to serve the cause of tyranny. The conservative movement has produced a cadre of brownshirts that might yet succeed in destroying the American Constitution.

In 2000 Roberts wrote about the Democratic Party's attempts to get a recount in the State of Florida for Gore. Excerpts from two of his articles:

Massive Democratic vote fraud has made this election a close one. Having sized up Republicans as cowardly and timid, Democrats decided that they could steal the election behind a barrage of lies and propaganda laid down by their faithful allies at CNN and the TV networks. These Nazi-style propaganda machines are playing a decisive role in the destruction of American constitutional democracy....

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris has been demonized by the Democratic Party’s Propaganda Ministry (the TV networks and CNN). Adolf Hitler best described the tactic that Democrats are using against Harris. Success, Hitler says, comes from unleashing "a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked person break down." This tactic, Hitler says, is most successful against "the bourgeoisie [Republicans], which is neither morally nor mentally equal to such attacks."

Once Bush assumes the office to which he has been elected, Republicans must turn their attention to dismantling the Democratic Party’s Propaganda Ministry that masquerades as a news media. The most obvious solution is nationalization. Give the corrupt media the socialism it wants, and run the organizations as strict news outlets with all editorializing and opinion banned.

Once Americans can get the facts, they will realize that a Nazi Party (a k a the Democratic Party) has grown up in their midst.

Six years later Roberts would write:

Former vice president Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts....

Gore challenged the American people to step up to the task of defending the Constitution, a task abandoned by the media, the law schools, and the Democratic and Republican parties. If we fail, darkness will close around us.

Paul Craig Roberts served in the Reagan Administration. The disillusionment among members of the conservative movement since Bush was elected President in 2000 has become rampant. The last time I voted for a republican for president was in 1984. My guess is it was about that time that John Dean, a former republican and conservative, also started to be appalled at what we were witnessing. Mr. Roberts, a talented and influential columnist, just took a bit longer to reach our conclusion that the sociopaths and opportunists who had hijacked the conservative movement pose a threat to the whole world.