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Nixon, Mitchell Power Conspiracy Foiled!

Nixon, Mitchell Power Conspiracy Foiled! image Nixon, Mitchell Power Conspiracy Foiled! image
Parent Issue
Day
4
Month
August
Year
1972
OCR Text

NIXON, MITCHELL POWER CONSPIRACY FOILED!

WANTED!  JOHN MITCHELL  RICHARD M. NIXON for CONSPIRACY  KIDNAPPING  FRAUD

The Ann Arbor CIA bombing case, allegedly pieced together by federal officials from secret grand jury testimony and illegal wiretap evidence, was quietly dropped late on the Friday afternoon of July 28.

U.S. Justice Department officials were clearly embarrassed. The Friday date was chosen to minimize media publicity. In a written statement. District Attorney Ralph Guy Jr. in Detroit weakly explained the case was dismissed "in the interest of national security."

And so ended the government's celebrated three-year vendetta to pin the bombing on three brothers from the Rainbow Peoples Party- Pun Plamondon, John Sinclair and Jack Forrest- who now stand exonerated.

Charges against other revolutionaries were also dropped or are expected to be Abbie Hoffman was also cut loose from his case for the May Day demonstrations. Bombing raps against some Weathermen and Weatherwomen, though not yet officially announced, are probably also defunct.

The government's red-faced reversals resulted from a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down June 20 in the CIA bombing case. The Supreme Court ruled that the government had to disclose its wiretap logs.

Rather than do that, and open itself for a close look at its surveillance tactics, the government let the case slide.

At first, the government contended it would prosecute the case anyway, using the testimony of David Valler, who originally concocted the bombing charges.

Valler told a Detroit federal grand jury in 1969 that Pun helped him bomb a CIA office in downtown Ann Arbor and that Jack and John helped plan the blast. At the time Valler was already serving a sentence in Jackson Prison for pulling several bombings in Detroit. He agreed to "cooperate" with federal authorities in return for an early parole. The CIA indictments against Pun, John and Jack were the result. Although Valler admitted the bombing, he was not charged.

"We didn't even know there was a CIA office in Ann Arbor," Pun exploded. "The whole caper was a fantasy in the mind of David Valler. That chomp has taken so many acid trips his brains have turned to toothpaste."

Valler has bragged about dropping acid more than 100 times. During one trip in 1968, he hallucinated that he received a message telling him to run for President. For months he ran around the country asking people to call him "President Dave" and elect him President.

When people scoffed at him, he became psychotic and determined to frighten people by blowing up things randomly. Eventually he was caught and imprisoned.

While there he became "converted" to the ideology of the later J. Edgar Hoover. Now he is out and working as a full time reporter for the Detroit News, the only metropolitan newspaper in the country to editorially criticize the publishing of the Pentagon Papers.

Pun and John are now free, too. So is Skip Taube, who was arrested with Pun in July of 1970 for helping a fugitive. Pun had gone underground for 10 months and made the FBI's most wanted list before he was captured. Jack, who was also busted with Pun and Skip, is still in Milan Prison but should be home soon.

So all the chains are, or soon will be, broken.

But the government has leeched more than a pint of blood from these brothers.

All four, who are now deemed completely innocent in the eyes of the law and the people, have spent time in jail, days and months of being caged alive, separated from their brothers and sisters.

Pun spent 23 months, from July of 1970 to June of 1972, for being a federal fugitive from a crime that now no longer even exists.

Skip spent the same amount of time for helping a fugitive who wasn't, it turns out now, really a fugitive at all. Jack is going on his 25th month for the same offense.

And John, who was jacked up for possessing two joints, was denied appeal bond for 29 months, partly as a result of the erroneous bombing indictment.

John was finally released from prison last December after the Michigan State Legislature, conceding a little to new young voters, reduced penalties for pot. Then in March of 1972 John won a landmark decision from the Michigan Supreme Court tossing out the entire old marijuana law as unconstitutional. However, the legislature's new liberalized law went into effect on April 1.

Still, all in all, the Rainbow People Party has beaten the Detroit Police Department and the Justice Department in several successive legal fights.

And these legal victories are now paving the way for other people to win back their freedom, too.

One of the things about the fact that the government has dropped the CIA Conspiracy case is that the government has seen that its strategy of smearing, and attempting to smear, the entire movement with the brush of violence and bombings, and this and that, and taking people who are well known and are involved in political organizing, and other efforts, and bring conspiracy cases on them. I think that they are beginning to see that it isn't working, that they have an ineffective strategy. People aren't just going to believe it, and that in our case, particularly, I think they've seen if they even dare to bring a case of this nature into court, which we've always said was an entirely fabricated and phony case, that they would be totally embarrassed. And with the election approaching I think that they decided to drop it rather than have to go to trial with it this summer - the Nixon administration would have suffered another crushing defeat in their strategy - just like in the Angela Davis case, and a whole lot of others.

We must always keep in mind the extent of the wiretapping that the government was asking to have the rights to do. According to the government - according to Nixon, Mitchell, on down - what they were saying is that they had the right to tap phones without a search warrant in order to protect national security. And, as our lawyers very brilliantly and beautifully explained in our brief that went before the Supreme Court, the Nixon doctrine about wiretaps was the same doctrine that the King of England used in searching ships, and searching people's homes during, and prior to, the "Amerikan Revolution". Out of which came the Bill of Rights, which guarantees that people wouldn't be subjected to this.  

The decision is a much further reaching decision than our case just being dropped. The decision, in fact, is a landmark decision. It was a Supreme Court check, to a certain degree, of the power and control apparatus the Nixon regime was developing and hoping to get authorization for under color of law. But the court said that no, you're overstepping the bounds of the executive branch, that the judicial branch, that issues warrants, has the right to check and balance the executive government, and we can't just give you unlimited right behind some vague notion of national security, or threat to national security, or whatever vague or elusive term that they might use.

That's what's so funny about it. We thought that they would use this as an excuse to try and get out of trying this case. We were looking forward to trying the case, we have been looking forward to trying the case since January 1971 when we were down there in court ready to go with our files on their witnesses, and their stories, and our proof that, in fact, it was a conspiracy on the part of the government to smear us and not any conspiracy on our part to do anything!

Our Comrade, Jack Forrest, is still in the penitentiary, and this decision, we think, has a lot of legal ramifications - for instance, in terms of Jack Forrest and Skip Taube, who were both sentenced for five years in the penitentiary for allegedly harboring Pun (saying that he was a fugitive.) But, in fact, Pun was not a fugitive at all, he was resisting an illegal arrest, and, in fact, the law breakers were John Mitchell and Nixon for tapping the phone without a search warrant. And this has been upheld in the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court. So, we're calling for the immediate release of Jack Forrest, and the immediate release of Skip Taube from parole - and the immediate arrest of Richard Nixon and John Mitchell for busting into someone's house. It's the same as kicking in someone's door at shotgun point, you know, and just taking private effects and personal effects of a citizen.

The Nixon regime is developing machinery and strategy and a structure by which it can completely snuff any progressive movement in the United States.  They are going so far as to tap the campaign headquarters of the Democratic Party. So certainly they are developing neo-fascist machinery.

They try to crush the spirit of resistance among people who don't want to go along with this. And, we see that because people have been struggling, and we been struggling, and whole lots of other people have been struggling and resisting these kinds of incursions and cultures by the government, that it has created a situation where more "dissent" and resistance is possible. The government hasn't backed down because all of a sudden they got a change of heart and realized they were wrong, they backed down because they were forced to back down. They didn't want to back down in this case, anymore than they want to back down in Vietnam, you see, but when they are faced with resistance by the people they have to back down. That creates a climate wherein the people have more freedom, and more room to try and develop alternatives to this system.

We've said from the beginning, we've said as publicly as we could, that it was a phony case, and that the government was bringing it just as an attempt to smear us, to smear what we do, what we're all about. But, now the government, after woofing and running off at their mouths, and calling us all kinds of names, has in the end dropped the case. They have in the end said we have no case, and I think, that the people are saying that again, the people were right! Five years ago, when we started talking about the marijuana laws, we were "crazy", you know. Now, five years later the marijuana laws are changed, it isn't a narcotic anymore. We said the government had no right to wiretap, and finally after three years, in that case, the Supreme Court of the United Stated slaps them down, and says that they're the ones that are in the wrong!

We see this as a definite defeat for the Justice Department, we see it as one of a string of defeats that will continue as long as you have a Justice Department that is set up to try and suppress people who are engaged in work that is unpopular to the government.

Power to the People's Victories!

John Sinclair, Pun Plamondon, Jack Forrest and the Rainbow People's Party

 

We would like to salute all the dedicated lawyers, law students, friends and people that have supported our efforts in exposing the CIA Conspiracy charge for the ruse it was, and especially for guaranteeing our basic right to privacy under the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Specifically we would like to put out a special salute to our attorneys: Hugh (Buck) Davis, William Kunstler, Lenny Weinglass, Arthur Kinoy William Bender, Mark Stickgold, Neil Bush, their legal staff, esp. sister Liz Gaines, Linda Huber, Dr. John Anthony, and the legal workers and staff of the Rutgers University, the Rainbow People's Party for their undying dedication, all the brothers and sisters that spent long sleepless nights working on this case, and last, but not of least consequence, the people, who have been subjected to harassment and violation of their rights over the years, for their perseverance and capability in seeing through the charges for the ruse that they were. ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!