Article 16722 of alt.conspiracy: Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa Path: cbnewsl!jad From: jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (John DiNardo) Subject: Part XV, The Casolaro Murder --> The Feds' Theft of Inslaw Software Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Distribution: North America Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1992 16:02:39 GMT Message-ID: <1992Oct23.160239.25115@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> Followup-To: alt.conspiracy Keywords: CIA = Murder Inc., CIA desecrates the People's Constitution Lines: 107 The following excerpts are from IN THESE TIMES, May 29 - June 11, 1991. Back issues and subscriptions can be ordered by calling (312) 772-0100. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * (continuation) Inslaw claims, and two federal judges have agreed, that the Justice Department stole the software, tried to push Inslaw into bankruptcy and thus force a PROMIS fire sale, and attempted to acquire Inslaw by takeover, friendly and otherwise. INSLAW ONSLAUGHT: In 1986, Inslaw took its case to a federal bankruptcy court and filed a suit against the Justice Department. On Sept. 28, 1987, federal bankruptcy Judge [George] Bason ruled from the bench in Inslaw's favor, finding: "The failure [of the Justice Department] even to begin to investigate [these charges] is outrageous and indefensible and constitutes an institutional decision by the Department of Justice, at the highest level, simply to ignore charges of impropriety. .... It is obvious to me ... that the entire Department of Justice was in a circle-the-wagons defensive attitude. .... The Department of Justice took, converted, stole Inslaw's enhanced PROMIS by trickery, fraud and deceit." Judge Bason further wrote that the Government did not attempt to settle the dispute honorably with Inslaw, but: "engaged in an outrageous, deceitful, fraudulent game of cat- and-mouse, demonstrating contempt for the law and any principle of fair dealing." In February 1988, Judge Bason awarded Inslaw $6.8 million in license fees for the 42 copies of the company's software that he determined had been stolen. He also ordered the Justice Department to pay Inslaw $1.2 million in legal fees. That was the last month that Bason served as a judge. He was denied reappointment without explanation by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. On Dec. 5, 1990, Bason testified before the House Judiciary Committee: "I have come to believe that my non-reappointment as bankruptcy judge was the result of improper influence from within the Justice Department which the current appointment process failed to prevent. The judicial opinions that I rendered reflected my sense of moral outrage that, as the evidence showed and as I held, the Justice Department stole Inslaw's valuable property and tried to drive Inslaw out of business. .... I don't have knowledge as to how it might have been done, but we do have a dead body, and we do have a strong motive. Such retaliation is the mark of a police state, not of a democratic America." SPECIAL PROSECUTOR? In December 1989, Inslaw attorney Elliot Richardson submitted a writ of mandamus to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., calling for a formal Government investigation. Coming from Richardson, this writ carried special weight. Richardson is the former U.S. attorney general who, at the start of the Watergate Investigation, resigned his post rather than fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, as President Richard Nixon had ordered. Richardson wants the court to order U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to appoint a prosecutor, not already tainted by the Inslaw scandal, to conduct a fair and thorough investigation of the Government misconduct. "I've long believed that there should be a special prosecutor [in this case]," Richardson told IN THESE TIMES in a recent interview. "I have never been able to understand why they have so strenuously resisted any suggestion that they should seek to correct what two courts have found to be seriously wrong, and what additional evidence has reinforced or extended." In his writ, Richardson wrote, in part: "The combination of high-level hostility and lower-level vindictiveness does not sufficiently account for the persistence and tenacity of the attempts to wrest control of PROMIS from Inslaw. .... Attempts to acquire control of Inslaw were linked by a conspiracy among friends of Attorney General [Edwin] Meese to take advantage of their relationship with him for the purpose of obtaining a lucrative contract for the automation of the [Justice] Department's litigating divisions." (to be continued) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government. This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the mindless support of the Government, just because it happens to be ours. You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it. Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's freedom. So please post the installments of this ongoing series to other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. That would be a truly patriotic deed. John DiNardo The episodes of this series can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from the sites: ftp.css.itd.umich.edu and red.css.itd.umich.edu Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your email address as the password. The files are kept in the directory /poli/essays.d/conspiracy.d (Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the user is on. On a UNIX machine, one would do, at the command prompt: ftp ftp.css.itd.umich.edu This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems.)