Posts Tagged ‘U.S. MARSHALS SERVICE’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2016 at 12:05 am
In 1971, Anthony C. Harris was arrested for second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
That was where he met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend–Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Jessie Cooks, Manuel Moore, J.C. Simon and Larry Craig Green
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November–as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims–including Simon, Cooks and Green–met at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
At a second meeting at Simon’s apartment, a large, velvet-lined case was prominently displayed. In it were two machetes, three pistols–a snubnose .38 revolver, a .357 Magnum and an automatic–and a shotgun.
“They asked me, how did I feel about white people? Did I feel they were my enemy? Was my mind together enough to destroy my enemy?
“And I just told them, ‘I don’t know what you mean by destroying my enemy.’” Harris told the other Muslims that he had no enemies.
“They wanted me to go out and kill some people, to show them I could be trusted among them. They told me I would have to make some kind of move sooner or later.”
Once again, Harris found himself under cross-examination: Was he ready to take his first step towards joining the elite of Allah, the Death Angels? Was he willing to assist his brethren in destroying the blue-eyed white devils?
To drive the point home, the Muslims showed Harris photographs of his brother, stepbrother, mother, sister and fiancee.
“They told me I knew too much about the organization, and something could happen” to Harris himself and his family unless he joined the group of future killers.
Still, Harris refused to commit himself to the coming plot to slaughter whites.
So his companions decided to enlist him in their cause in one dramatic–and lethal–move.
On the night of October 20, 1973, Americans were glued to their TV sets. President Richard Nixon had just fired Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox and disbanded the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office.
On that same evening, Harris stood at a bus stop, waiting to be taken home from his job at the Black Self-Help, when a panel truck driven by Larry Green pulled up in the bus zone.
Next to Green, in the passenger’s seat, sat Jessie Lee Cooks. Both men offered Harris a ride home, and he accepted.
The truck drove around for awhile, then parked in the shadows near Powell and Chestnut Streets, in a residential neighborhood.
A few minutes later, the three Muslims spotted a young–and white–married couple, Richard and Quite Hague, strolling nearby.
Hague, 30, worked as a mining engineer for the San Francisco office of Utah International. Quita, 28, was a reporter for the Industrial City Press in South San Francisco. The previous month they had celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary.
Cooks stopped the Hagues, asking for directions. Then he shoved a pistol into the back of Richard Hague and forced the couple into the rear of the panel truck.
The Hagues were bound, beaten and driven to a remote spot in the San Francisco industrial district. There they were yanked from the van. Larry Green seized a machete and, with one stroke, nearly decapitated Quita Hague.
“He got blood all over him,” Harris would later testify.
“Larry came over with the knife and said something about, ‘You ought to have seen all the blood gush out of her neck.’”
Green handed the machete to Cooks, who slashed Richard Hague about the face and back of the head. Left for dead, Hague would eventually recover–and testify against his wife’s killers.
Almost immediately after the two Black Muslims finished hacking their victims, flashbulbs began popping. Two other cars, driven by members of the Nation of Islam, had pulled up
Several camera-toting Muslims started taking pictures of the blood-soaked murder scene–as evidence of Larry Green’s and Jessie Lee Cooks’ worthiness as Death Angels.
A series of murders followed.
On October 30–ten days after the abduction of Richard and Quita Hague–Jessie Lee Cooks struck again.
He shot Frances Rose, a physical therapist, four times in the head and neck as she sat in her car at the entrance of the parking lot to the University of California Extension.
Cooks was arrested within a few minutes and only a short distance from the scene, still in possession of the murder weapon, a revolver. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on December 14, 1974.
He would be tried again and convicted of other murders, along with the other “Zebra” defendants on March 13, 1976.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 12, 2016 at 12:10 am
For many Americans, their country seems on the verge of an all-out racial war.
Blacks, charging police with brutality and racism, are increasingly strident in demanding an end to both. The events of July 5-7 encapsulate this growing divide between blacks and police.
On July 5, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was fatally shot several times after being tackled to the ground by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The shooting was captured on video and widely distributed over the Internet.
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile, also black, was fatally shot by a St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer after being pulled over, allegedly for a broken tail light. Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a concealed weapon and had one in the car.
According to his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, a passenger in the car: “The officer said don’t move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times.” This shooting was likewise captured on video and widely seen on the Internet.
On July 7, Michah Xavier Johnson, a black, ex-Army Reserve Afghan War veteran, snot and killed five Dallas, Texas, police officers. Another seven officers and two civilians were wounded before Johnson was killed by police.
The shootings erupted during a Black Lives Matter march in downtown Dallas to protest the killings of Sterling and Castile.
The attack on the Dallas officers has led to even greater polarization between blacks and whites–especially white law enforcement officers.
But this is not the first time that the United States has been threatened with the prospect of an all-out black-verses-white conflict.
Forty years ago, whites–not blacks–were the targets of blacks intent on waging a race war.
From October 20, 1973 to April 20, 1974, San Francisco was rocked by a series of random, brutal attacks against whites. The assailant was at first thought to be a lone black gunman.
The toll finally reached 16 murders, five woundings, one rape, and the attempted kidnapping of three children.
The rampage, however, was not limited to San Francisco. Throughout California–from Bakersfield to San Diego–at least 93 other whites were murdered, according to later police investigations.
What follows is an inside account of the “Zebra” death cult, as depicted through the grand jury testimony of the star witness against the killers: Anthony C. Harris.
At 28, Harris was a fifth-dan kung-fu expert who always dressed well and spoke softly. He also had firsthand knowledge of the “Zebra murders.”
Anthony Harris
Born in Long Beach, California, in 1946, Anthony Cornelius Harris got as far as the sixth grade. He clashed often with police and, on January 3, 1969, he was convicted for assaulting a policeman.
He was released from prison in May, 1970, when he won a reversal of his sentence at the California Supreme Court.
But he was once again arrested and convicted, in 1971, of second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
And he also met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
Cooks had been convicted of robbery; Moore had been sent to prison for burglary. Both wanted Harris, a fifth-dan kung-fu expert, to teach them the martial arts.
Cooks wanted to learn kung-fu so he could kill whites “because they had castrated and killed our ancestors and stomped our babies’ heads in.”
While an inmate at San Quentin prison, Harris became a devout member of the Nation of Islam.
At that time, the spiritual leader of the Nation was Elijah Muhammad, who preached a gospel of black separatism and superiority. Muhammad taught that whites were literally the incarnation of evil, a race of “blue-eyed devils.”
Elijah Muhammed
To test the worthiness of His Chosen Black People, proclaimed Muhammad, Allah had allowed their 400-year persecution by these “bleached-out, grafted snakes.”
But that great testing period would soon come to its end. Then would follow the literal, heaven-sent destruction of all whites. At the conclusion of this divine slaughter, Allah would create a paradise earth for His Chosen Black People.
Harris, Moore and Cooks had a conversation in the temporary Muslim temple in the prison–about “killing people and cutting their heads off–just white people,” Harris later testified in court.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend–Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November–as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims–including Simon, Cooks and Green–met at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 17, 2016 at 12:05 am
When President Barack Obama set out to provide healthcare for all Americans–-and not simply the wealthiest 1%–-Republicans tried to frighten voters with lies.
The most infamous of these was that healthcare reform would lead to wholesale murder by government “death panels,” as Sarah Palin put it.
Despite being the party of the extreme Right, Republicans delight in portraying Obama as the ultimate Fascist: Adolf Hitler.
At their rallies they brandish doctored photos of Obama sporting a Hitler forelock and toothbrush mustache.
And they claim he plans to set up concentration camps for those who disagree with him.
They also claim he intends to “take away our guns–just like Hitler.”
In fact:
- Rather than disarming Germans, Adolf Hitler armed his fellow citizens and created the mightiest war machine Western Europe had ever seen; and;
- Rather than confiscating Americans’ firearms, Obama has signed legislation allowing guns to be brought onto Amtrak and into national marks.
Even more ominously, heavily-armed Right-wingers have showed up at places where Obama was scheduled to speak.
In August, 2009, about a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside a Phoenix convention center where President Obama was giving a speech.
A week earlier, during Obama’s healthcare town hall in New Hampshire, a man carrying a sign reading “It is time to water the tree of liberty” stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.
On August 28, 2010, an armed Obama protester was arrested by police at the Alaska State Fair, where the President was scheduled to speak.
According to the Secret Service, Obama is the target of more than 30 death threats a day and is the most threatened President in history. The heightened danger he faces is stretching the Secret Service to its limits.
Secret Service agents guarding President Obama
Since Obama took office in 2009, the rate of threats against him has increased 400%.
Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.
“When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance,” Solop said. “It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication.”
The way to prevent such tragedies in the future is to hold fully accountable not just the shooters but those who deliberately point them toward their targets and repeatedly scream: “Kill the traitors!”
Americans must shed their naive belief that “America is exempt from the political corruption of other countries.” And they must see the Republicans’ lust for absolute power at any price as the danger it presents to the future of the Republic.
Among the steps that need to be taken:
First, the families and friends of the Tucson massacre victims should file civil lawsuits against Sarah Palin and every other Republican who created the firestorm of hate that consumed 19 victims.
And survivors of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church should do likewise against those Right-wing groups that influenced Dylann Roof to snuff out nine innocent lives because they were black.
A legal precedent for such lawsuits emerged 20 years ago, and still remains viable.
On November 13, 1988 in Portland, Oregon, three white supremacist members of East Side White Pride and White Aryan Resistance (WAR) beat to death Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college.
Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit (Berhanu v. Metzger) against Tom Metzger, founder of WAR. They argued that WAR influenced Seraw’s killers by encouraging their group, East Side White Pride, to commit violence.
Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or by another person who is taking instructions.
In October 1990, the jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR. The Metzgers’ house was seized, and most of WAR’s profits went to paying off the judgment.
Second, the FBI and Justice Department should launch an all-out investigation into not simply right-wing hate groups but those political leaders who openly or secretly encourage and support their activities.
Those who are found doing so should be indicted and prosecuted under the Patriot Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.
Third, the Secret Service should immediately adopt the policy that no one but sworn law enforcement officers will be allowed to carry firearms within the immediate vicinity of the President. And it should enforce that policy through its elite countersniper teams.
Finally, President Obama should do what President Clinton failed to do at the time of the 1995 Right-wing truck-bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building: He should publicly condemn those Republicans who give “aid and comfort” to the right-wing extremists whose support they openly court.
Unless such steps are taken, outrages such as the Tucson slaughter will continue to remain a needless “mystery.” And those outrages will continue until a Republican version of the swastika permanently flies over the capitol dome and the White House.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 16, 2016 at 12:01 am
The electoral success of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting treason slanders proved too alluring for other Republicans to resist.
Joseph McCarthy
Among those who have greatly profited from hurling similar charges are:
- President Richard Nixon
- His vice president, Spiro Agnew
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
- Former Congressman Dick Armey
- President George W. Bush
- Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin
- Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann
- Rush Limbaugh
- Glenn Beck
- Sean Hannity
- Bill O’Reilly.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
George H.W. Bush
After losing the White House to Clinton at the polls in 1992 and 1996, Republicans tried to oust him another way: By impeaching him over a tryst with a penis-loving intern named Monica Lewinsky.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach, but the effort was defeated in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.
Barack Obama
Almost immediately after Obama took office, he came under attack by an industry of Right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
The following titles vividly reveal the hates, fears and ambitions of their authors–and audience:
- Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity
- Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation by Jason Mattera
- How Barack Obama is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy by Stephen Moore
- Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism by Sean Hannity
- The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists,Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein
- The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency by Ken Blackwell
- Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies by Michelle Malkin
- Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer
- To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
- Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One by Joshua Muravchik
- How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections by John Fund
- Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policicies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by Christopher C. Horner
- The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warning Agenda by Roy W. Spencer
- America’s March to Socialism: Why We’re One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades by Glenn Beck
- Obama’s Betrayal of Israel by Michael Ledeen
- The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality by Jerome R. Corsi
- The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate by David Freddoso
- Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio by Brian Jennings
- The War On Success: How the Obama Agenda Is Shattering the American Dream by Tommy Newberry
- Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them by Steven Milloy
- Liberalism is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions by Michael Savage
- Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
- How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter
- Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter
- If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans by Ann Coulter
- Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter
- Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress and the Special Interests Are Transforming…a Slump into a Crash, Freedom Into Socialism and a Disaster into a Catastrophe….And How to Fight Back by Dick Morris
Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:
“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”
And while the Right lusts to constantly compare Obama to Adolf Hitler, its propaganda campaign draws heavily on the Nazi leader’s own advice.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
Among the lies most “persistently repeated” by Republicans about Obama:
Obama isn’t an American citizen. The reason: To “prove” that he is an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office.
Even the President’s releasing of the long-form version of his birth certificate in 2011–showing that he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya–didn’t end these falsehoods.
The long-form version of President Obama’s birth certificate
Oaama is a secret Muslim who intends to betray America to his Islamic masters.
In fact, Obama has eliminated far more Al Qaeda leaders than George W. Bush ever did–including the most sought-after one of all: Osama bin Laden.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 13, 2016 at 12:11 am
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.”
So wrote Rolling Stone writer in a blistering June 19, 2015 editorial. The touchstone was the slaughter of nine black worshipers by a white supremacist at a South Carolina black church.
But the proof of Republican culpability in political violence goes back much further.
Consider:
Gabrille Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly wins re-election in November, 2010, against a Republican Tea Party candidate.
Her support of President Obama’s health care reform law has made her a target for violent rhetoric–-especially from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
In March, 2010, Palin releases a map featuring 20 House Democrats that uses cross-hairs images to show their districts. In case her supporters don’t get the message, she later writes on Twitter: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”
Sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” Map
As the campaign continues, Giffords finds her Tucson office vandalized after the House passes the healthcare overhaul in March.
Giffords senses that she has become a target for removal–in more than political terms. In an interview after the vandalizing of her office, she refers to the animosity against her by conservatives.
She specifically cites Palin’s decision to list her seat as one of the top “targets” in the midterm elections.
“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords tells MSNBC.
At one of her rallies, her aides call the police after an attendee drops a gun.
Giffords may have seen the spectre of violence closing in on her. In April, 2010, she supported Rep. Raúl Grijalva after he had to close two offices when he and his staff received threats.
He had called for a boycott of Arizona businesses in opposition to the state’s controversial immigration law.
“I am deeply troubled about reports that Congressman Grijalva and members of his staff have been subjected to death threats,” Giffords said.
“This is not how we, as Americans, express our political differences. Intimidation has no place in our representative democracy. Such acts only make it more difficult for us to resolve our differences.”
But intimidation–-and worse–-does have a place among the tactics used by influential Republicans in the pursuit of absolute power.
Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent–-and violence-arousing–-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like Sarah Palin fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs–and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked–-shocked!–-that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful–-as the January 8, 2011 Tucson shootings did–-then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
The difference is that, in this case, they rejoice in knowing that Democratic ranks have been thinned and their opponents are even more on the defensive, for fear of the same happening to them.
Consider the following:
- Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Tex.) yelled “baby killer” at Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) on the House floor.
- Florida GOP Congressional candidate Allen West, referring to his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ron Klein, told Tea Party activists: You’ve got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention.”
- Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said Tea Partiers had “every right” to use racist and homophobic slurs against Democrats, justifying it via Democrats’ “totalitarian tactics.”
- Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she wanted her constituents “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration.
- Sarah Palin told her supporters: “Get in their face and argue with them. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!”
- Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
- Senator Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) “We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
- Rep. Louisa M. Slauter (D-NY) received a phone message threatening sniper attacks against lawmakers and their families.
Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence–by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetiAL me.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 12, 2016 at 12:28 am
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
At 21, Roof was unemployed, dividing his time between playing video games and taking drugs.
Dylann Roof
The signs of Roof’s malignant racism were evident long before he turned mass murderer:
- He had posed for a photo sitting on the hood of his parents’ car–whose license plate bore a Confederate flag.
- He had posed for pictures wearing a jacket sporting the white supremacist flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa.
- He told a friend that he hoped “to start a civil war” between the black and white races.
- Roof reportedly told friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people.
- In the midst of his massacre of unarmed worshippers, he told one of his victims: “You’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country.” Then Roof shot him.
The evidence makes clear that Roof’s slaughter was racially motivated. Yet one Republican Presidential candidate after another has refused to acknowledge it.
Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida: “I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes.”
Rick Santorum, former United States Senator from Pennsylvania: “You talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we’re now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we’ve never seen before. It’s a time for deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation.”
Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana: “I don’t think we’ll ever know what was going on in his mind.”
But Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund left no doubt as to what–and who–was ultimately responsible for this crime: Racism and Republicans.
In a June 19, 2015 editorial–published two days after the massacre–Lund noted: “This [crime] is political because American movement conservatism has already made these kinds of killings political.
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, racialized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it.
“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
Click here: The Charleston Shooter: Racist, Violent, and Yes – Political | Rolling Stone
Lund is absolutely right. And the evidence for this was on display long before Dylann Roof opened fire on “uppity blacks” praying in their own church.
Consider:
On January 8, 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. After a miraculous recovery, she continues to struggle with language and has lost 50% of her vision in both eyes.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
She vowed to return to her former Congressional duties, but was forced to resign for health reasons in 2012.
Giffords was only one victim of a shooting spree that claimed the lives of six people and left 13 others wounded.
Also killed was Arizona’s chief U.S. District judge, John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after celebrating Mass.
Although the actual shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was immediately arrested, those who fanned the flames of political violence that consumed 19 people that day have remained unpunished.
Consider the circumstances behind the shootings:
John Roll is Arizona’s chief federal judge. Appointed in 2006, he wins acclaim as a respected jurist and leader who pushes to beef up the court’s strained bench to handle a growing number of border crime-related cases.
In 2009, he becomes a target for threats after allowing a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit by illegal aliens to proceed against a local rancher. The case arouses the fury of local talk radio hosts, who encourage their audiences to threaten Roll’s life.
In one afternoon, Roll logs more than 200 threatening phone calls. Callers threaten the judge and his family. They post personal information about Roll online.
Roll and his wife are placed under fulltime protection by deputy U.S. marshals. Roll finds living under security “unnerving and invasive.”
Authorities identify four men believed responsible for the threats. But Roll declines to press charges on the advice of the Marshals Service.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on January 8, 2016 at 10:42 am
Until recently, only organized crime witnesses with a price on their head could obtain falsified job histories. But no more.
Thousands–if not millions–of job-seeking Americans are now able to obtain stellar job references to impress potential employer. And they’re doing it the old-fashioned way: They’re hiring companies to create them.
One such company is CareerExcuse.
CareerExcuse runs 200 fictional companies that don’t exist, have staffs or make money.
But for a fee, you can say you worked at one of them, and they’ll confirm you were an outstanding employee.
For between $100 and $200, you’ll get:
- One to three false–and positive–references from a company or companies you’ve never worked for.
- A fake company address.
- Local phone numbers to give to prospective employers.
- A guarantee that those employers will receive positive vouchers for you.
- “Instant” degrees.
- Landlord reference
- A “completely legitimate” resume-writing service.
Unlike the Federal Witness Security Program (WITSEC) the clients of CareerExcuse aren’t hardened criminals.
They are legitimate citizens trying to erase gaps in their resumes. Or they have worked for a long series of short-term employers and want to appear a stable employee.
Click here: CareerExcuse Job References
Or they’ve acquired–deservedly or not–a series of bad job references
“Some people see it as unethical,” Jennifer Hatton, senior partner at CareerExcuse, said in a 2015 interview with Business Insider.
But, said Hatten, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t deserve a shot, just like the next person” if you do have the skills and experience required.
“There are many things that happen in people’s lives, with [employers] going out of business, being laid off, managers just unrightfully firing you, sexual harassment suits–you name it, it happens in the workforce.”
And it’s true.
An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.
Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it reveals such truths as:
- After you’re unemployed more than six months, employers consider you unemployable–no matter your skills/experience.
- It’s not what but who you know that counts.
- Cover letters are often ignored, going directly into “the round file.”
- Many employers illegally try to screen out parents–such as by checking cars for child safety seats.
- You’re not protected against age discrimination. Many employers regularly ignore the law. If you are in your 50s or 60s, leave your year of graduation off your resume.
And in its June 8, 2011 cover-story on “What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths,” Time magazine warned that profit-seeking corporations can’t be relied on to ”make it all better.”
Wrote Rana Foroohar, Time‘s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business:
“There may be $2 trillion sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations globally, but firms show no signs of wanting to spend it in order to hire workers at home.”
Meanwhile, CareerExcuse claims to have more than 2,000 job-seeking clients.
“Our main clientele right now is IT executives, and they’re pretty high-level,” Hatton claimed. The average customer seeks a salary of $60,000 to $80,000.
There are areas of employment that CareerExcuse refuses to fill–medicine, government, law enforcement or government. Jobs where your employment would “put other people in danger,” said Hatten.
Hatton claimed that during the almost two years she had been with CareerExcuse, no one had ever discovered a faked background.
But William Schmidt, who founded the company, admitted to Motherboard that a fake reference could easily be punctured: “All it would take is one person to drive to that address and go to that office.”
And the inevitable result would be immediate termination.
For some users of CareerExcuse, the company has proven an infuriating disappointment.
Click here: 17 CAREER EXCUSE complaints and reports @ Pissed Consumer
Like many clients of the Federal Witness Security Program, they complain of promises not kept. Among their complaints on Pissed Consumer, a consumer-complaint website:
- “When a serious job opportunity came recently, I realized alot of loop holes in their services, address of company on the website was different, email addresses weren’t valid or active.”
- “They took my $ and never returned my calls or emails.What a joke!”
- “Their phone go to voice mail and they dont reply back to calls after a voice mail is left for them to reply …It is easy for the employer to know that the reference is fake.”
- “When the prospective employers called, Career excuse answered the phone with ‘Career Excuse, how can I help you.’ They were supposed to answer the phone in the name of the fake company they put together.”
- “They only gave me a cheap looking web page and they don’t even answer the phones to GIVE the service I payed for. They are a scam and complete rip-off.”
Throughout the United States, countless numbers of lazy, greedy, arrogant and/or incompetent employers are refusing to hire. And millions of willing-to-work Americans remain trapped in unemployment or under-employment as a result.
Until this situation changes, companies like CareerExcuse will continue to function–and proliferate.
Such a change isn’t going to happen tomorrow.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law Enforcement, Social commentary on January 7, 2016 at 1:07 am
In 1966, the U.S. Department of Justice did something it had never before done: Protect a witness against the Mafia during trial, and then relocate him (and his family) to safety under a new identity.
That witness was Joseph “The Animal” Barboza. Once the most-feared enforcer for the New England Mafia family of Raymond Patriarca, Barboza had run afoul of his boss.
With a mob contract out on him, Barboza felt he had nothing to lose by telling FBI agents and Federal prosecutors everything they wanted to know about the Boston Mafia.
Joseph Barboza
A 16-man security detail of deputy U.S. marshals was immediately assigned to Barboza. The marshals relocated him to Thatcher’s Island, off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. There they foiled two attempts by the mob to kill Barboza with a telescopic-sighted rifle.
Through a series of trials, Barboza sent the top echelons of the Patriarca family–including Patriarca himself–to prison. Then he and his wife and daughter were outfitted with new names and shipped out of New England to begin life over in safety.
The success of the Barboza detail led other Mafia witnesses to come forward. And this, in turn, led to the official creation of the Witness Security Program (WITSEC) by the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970.
To date, the U.S. Marshals Service–which runs WITSEC–has successfully protected, relocated and given new identities to more than 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 of their family members.
Click here: U.S. Marshals Service, Witness Security Program.
It’s been the “new identities” part of the Program that has always attracted the most attention from the press and movie-makers.
Staged photograph of a WITSEC detail
In the early days of WITSEC, a handful of security Inspectors created these in a totally haphazard fashion. These included legal name-changes, Social Security card, driver’s licenses and falsified job histories.
In some cases, marshals would tell prospective employers, “We can vouch for this man’s skills as a(n) ———-, but that’s all we can tell you.”
Witnesses’ children were provided with fictitious school records. The names of schools would be changed, but the actual grades earned by the children would be retained.
These records would be “backstopped”–supported with documentation placed at those institutions where the witness (or his family) was alleged to have worked or attended school.
Similarly, medical records for witnesses and their children would be partially falsified. That is, names of hospitals they had obtained care in would be changed, but their actual medical histories would be accurately charted.
Since the 1990s, the Marshals Service has centralized its “re-documentation” program. Parents, spouses, children, siblings and even mistresses are all taken to an orientation center in a Washington suburb
There, witnesses are debriefed by Federal agents and prosecutors. They–and their families–are also prepared for the new lives they’ll take on under new identities.
In the early years of the program, witnesses were provided with flimsy aliases that quickly collapsed under even light scrutiny.
In 1973, Gerald Martin Zelmanowitz, a convicted stock swindler, found his new identity of Paul J. Maris easily punctured.
He got into a legal dispute with Creative Capitol, an investment firm that had loaned $2 million to his struggling new business,”The Paul Maris Company.”
Creative Capitol’s president, Milton Stewart, ordered a quiet investigation into Maris’ background.
This quickly turned up the following:
- Maris and all five members of his family had been issued sequential Social Security numbers.
- There was no record of Maris’ birth certificate.
- Maris had claimed a background in Army Intelligence, but his Army service number had never been issued.
- Maris’ resume said he had attended John Bartram High School in Philadelphia and Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. But officials at both schools denied that he had ever been one of their students.
- Maris’ alleged home address in Philadelphia turned out to be a vacant lot in an all-black neighborhood.
Finally, the private investigator discovered that Maris had testified against a Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, a notorious New Jersey Mafia chieftain. His testimony had convicted DeCarlo for murder conspiracy.
Fearing for his life, Maris fled with his family from San Francisco. All of them were readmitted to the Witness Security Program and relocated under identities.
Until recently, only organized crime witnesses with a price on their head could obtain falsified job histories. But no more.
Thousands–if not millions–of job-seeking Americans are now able to obtain stellar job references to impress potential employers.
CareerExcuse runs 200 fictional companies that don’t exist, have staffs or make money.
But for a fee, you can say you worked at one of them, and they’ll confirm you were a stellar employee while you were there.
For between $100 and $200, you’ll get
- One to three false–and positive–references from a company or companies you’ve never worked for.
- A fake company address.
- Local phone numbers to give to prospective employers.
- A guarantee that those employers will receive positive vouchers for you.
- A “completely legitimate” resume-writing service.
Unlike WITSEC, the clients of CareerExcuse aren’t hardened criminals. They are legitimate citizens trying to erase gaps in their resumes. Or they have worked for a long series of short-term employers and want to appear a stable employee.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, Self-Help on August 3, 2015 at 10:33 am
It’s the height of the summer vacation season. A time when air travel–and airline arrogance–are at their annual height.
Consider the following real-life scenario:
- You’re vacationing in Denver and must return to San Francisco for an urgent-care medical appointment
- You’re disabled but nevertheless arrive at the airport on time.
- The airport–in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act–doesn’t have anyone assigned to help disabled passengers get onto departing planes.
- As a result, you arrive at the gate–just as the plane takes off.
- The airline informs you that if you want to board a plane, you’ll have to pay for another ticket.
- You can’t afford to buy another ticket–and your urgent-care appointment is tomorrow.
What do you do?
In this case, the stranded passenger–a friend of mine–called me: Bureaucracybuster.
First, I instinctively called the airline company. And that meant starting at the top–the president’s office.
I punched the name of the airline–and the words, “Board of Directors”–into Google. This gave me several websites to click on to obtain the information I needed.
I started dialing–and quickly hung up: I had just remembered the day was a Sunday. Nobody but cleaning crews would be occupying the airline’s executive offices that day.
I had to start all over.
Next, I decided to call Denver Airport and find an official who would help Rachel onto another flight–without charging her for it.
I didn’t know where to start, so I decided that starting anywhere was just fine. As I was routed from one person to another, I would develop a sense of who I needed to reach.
Some of those I reached seemed genuinely concerned with Rachel’s plight. Others gave me the “that’s-life-in-the-big-city” attitude.
One of the latter felt I wasn’t deferential enough in my tone. He threatened to notify the chief of airport security.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I once worked for the United States Attorney’s Office. I’ll be glad to talk with him.”
He backed off–just as I had assumed he would.
Usually the best way to deal with threats is to directly confront the person making them.
(A friend of mine, Richard St. Germain, spent part of his 11 years with the U.S. Marshals Service protecting Mafia witnesses.
Witness being protected by deputy U.S. marshals
(Many of them didn’t like the places where they were to be relocated under new identities. “I’m going to complain to the Attorney General,” some of them would threaten.
(St. Germain would reach for his office phone, plant it before the witness, and say, “Call him. I’ll give you his number.” The witness always backed off.)
Eventually I reached the Chief of Airport Operations.
I outlined what had happened. He didn’t seem very sympathetic. So I decided to transfer the problem from Rachel to the airport.
Without raising my voice, I said: “It isn’t her fault that your airport was in non-compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and she missed her flight because there wasn’t anyone to assist her.”
Suddenly his tone changed–and I could tell I had definitely reached him.
No doubt visions of federal investigations, private lawsuits and truly bad publicity for his airport flashed across his mind. And all this had been achieved without my making an overt threat of any kind.
He said he would see to it that she got onto another flight without having to buy a second ticket.
I called Rachel to give her the good news. But a few minutes later she called me back, almost in tears.
The airline official at the departure gate was giving her a bad time: “If we have to choose between you and another passenger who has a ticket for this flight, he’ll go, not you.”
She laid out a series of other scenarios under which Rachel would remain stranded in Denver.
So once again I called the Chief of Airport Operations: “I just got a call from Rachel. She’s being hassled by an official at the gate. Can you please send someone over there and put a stop to this nonsense?”
A few minutes later, I got another call from Rachel–this one totally upbeat. She said that a man who identified himself only as an airport official–but wearing an expensive suit–had visited her at the gate.
When the ticket-taking airline official had protested, he had cut her off. The official had then walked Rachel and her baggage onto an otherwise fully-loaded 777 jet bound for San Francisco.
Soon she was en route to San Francisco for her urgent-care medical appointment the next day.
So if you’re having troubles with an airline:
- Start by calling the highest-ranking airline official you can reach.
- You may be able to find this out by punching the name of the airline in Google
- If the official isn’t available or sympathetic, call the airport.
- Be persistent–but businesslike.
- Don’t let yourself be bullied.
- If you can cite a legal violation by the airline and/or airport, don’t hesitate to do so.
- But don’t make overt threats: the official will get the message
- Don’t hesitate to play for sympathy: “This is a woman has an urgent-care doctor’s appointment….”
Then cross your fingers and hope for the best.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on June 26, 2015 at 12:01 am
When President Barack Obama set out to provide healthcare for all Americans–-and not simply the wealthiest 1%–-Republicans tried to frighten voters with lies.
The most infamous of these was that healthcare reform would lead to wholesale murder by government “death panels,” as Sarah Palin put it.
Despite being the party of the extreme Right, Republicans delight in portraying Obama as the ultimate Fascist: Adolf Hitler.
At their rallies they brandish doctored photos of Obama sporting a Hitler forelock and toothbrush mustache.
And they claim he plans to set up concentration camps for those who disagree with him.
They also claim he intends to “take away our guns–just like Hitler.”
In fact:
- Rather than disarming Germans, Adolf Hitler armed his fellow citizens and created the mightiest war machine Western Europe had ever seen; and
- Rather than confiscating Americans’ firearms, Barack Obama has signed legislation allowing guns to be brought onto Amtrack and into national parks.
Even more ominously, heavily-armed Right-wingers have showed up at places where Obama was scheduled to speak.
In August, 2009, about a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside a Phoenix convention center where President Obama was giving a speech.
A week earlier, during Obama’s healthcare town hall in New Hampshire, a man carrying a sign reading “It is time to water the tree of liberty” stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.
On August 28, 2010, an armed Obama protester was arrested by police at the Alaska State Fair, where the President was scheduled to speak.
According to the Secret Service, Obama is the target of more than 30 death threats a day and is the most threatened President in history. The heightened danger he faces is stretching the Secret Service to its limits.
Secret Service emblem
Since Obama took office in 2009, the rate of threats against him has increased 400%.
Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.
“When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance,” Solop said. “It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication.”
The way to prevent such tragedies in the future is to hold fully accountable not just the shooters but those who deliberately point them toward their targets and repeatedly scream: “Kill the traitors!”
Americans must shed their naive belief that “America is exempt from the political corruption of other countries.” And they must see the Republicans’ lust for absolute power at any price as the danger it presents to the future of the Republic.
Among the steps that need to be taken:
First, the families and friends of the Tucson massacre victims should file civil lawsuits against Sarah Palin and every other Republican who created the firestorm of hate that consumed 19 victims.
And survivors of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church should do likewise against those Right-wing groups that influenced Dylann Roof to snuff out nine innocent lives because they were black.
A legal precedent for such lawsuits emerged 20 years ago, and still remains viable.
On November 13, 1988 in Portland, Oregon, three white supremacist members of East Side White Pride and White Aryan Resistance (WAR) beat to death Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man who came to the United States to attend college.
Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a civil suit (Berhanu v. Metzger) against Tom Metzger, founder of WAR. They argued that WAR influenced Seraw’s killers by encouraging their group, East Side White Pride, to commit violence.
Tom and John Metzger were found civilly liable under the doctrine of vicarious liability, in which one can be liable for a tort committed by a subordinate or by another person who is taking instructions.
In October 1990, the jury returned the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR. The Metzgers’ house was seized, and most of WAR’s profits went to paying off the judgment.
Second, the FBI and Justice Department should launch an all-out investigation into not simply right-wing hate groups but those political leaders who openly or secretly encourage and support their activities.
Those who are found doing so should be indicted and prosecuted under the Patriot Act and the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act.
Third, the Secret Service should immediately adopt the policy that no one but sworn law enforcement officers will be allowed to carry firearms within the immediate vicinity of the President. And it should enforce that policy through its elite countersniper teams.
Finally, President Obama should do what President Clinton failed to do at the time of the 1995 Right-wing truck-bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building: He should publicly condemn those Republicans who give “aid and comfort” to the right-wing extremists whose support they openly court.
Unless such steps are taken, outrages such as the Tucson slaughter will continue to remain a needless “mystery.” And those outrages will continue until a Republican version of the swastika permanently flies over the capitol dome and the White House.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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WHEN WHITES WERE TARGETS: PART TWO (OF FIVE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2016 at 12:05 amIn 1971, Anthony C. Harris was arrested for second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
That was where he met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend–Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Jessie Cooks, Manuel Moore, J.C. Simon and Larry Craig Green
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November–as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims–including Simon, Cooks and Green–met at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
At a second meeting at Simon’s apartment, a large, velvet-lined case was prominently displayed. In it were two machetes, three pistols–a snubnose .38 revolver, a .357 Magnum and an automatic–and a shotgun.
“They asked me, how did I feel about white people? Did I feel they were my enemy? Was my mind together enough to destroy my enemy?
“And I just told them, ‘I don’t know what you mean by destroying my enemy.’” Harris told the other Muslims that he had no enemies.
“They wanted me to go out and kill some people, to show them I could be trusted among them. They told me I would have to make some kind of move sooner or later.”
Once again, Harris found himself under cross-examination: Was he ready to take his first step towards joining the elite of Allah, the Death Angels? Was he willing to assist his brethren in destroying the blue-eyed white devils?
To drive the point home, the Muslims showed Harris photographs of his brother, stepbrother, mother, sister and fiancee.
“They told me I knew too much about the organization, and something could happen” to Harris himself and his family unless he joined the group of future killers.
Still, Harris refused to commit himself to the coming plot to slaughter whites.
So his companions decided to enlist him in their cause in one dramatic–and lethal–move.
On the night of October 20, 1973, Americans were glued to their TV sets. President Richard Nixon had just fired Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox and disbanded the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office.
On that same evening, Harris stood at a bus stop, waiting to be taken home from his job at the Black Self-Help, when a panel truck driven by Larry Green pulled up in the bus zone.
Next to Green, in the passenger’s seat, sat Jessie Lee Cooks. Both men offered Harris a ride home, and he accepted.
The truck drove around for awhile, then parked in the shadows near Powell and Chestnut Streets, in a residential neighborhood.
A few minutes later, the three Muslims spotted a young–and white–married couple, Richard and Quite Hague, strolling nearby.
Hague, 30, worked as a mining engineer for the San Francisco office of Utah International. Quita, 28, was a reporter for the Industrial City Press in South San Francisco. The previous month they had celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary.
Cooks stopped the Hagues, asking for directions. Then he shoved a pistol into the back of Richard Hague and forced the couple into the rear of the panel truck.
The Hagues were bound, beaten and driven to a remote spot in the San Francisco industrial district. There they were yanked from the van. Larry Green seized a machete and, with one stroke, nearly decapitated Quita Hague.
“He got blood all over him,” Harris would later testify.
“Larry came over with the knife and said something about, ‘You ought to have seen all the blood gush out of her neck.’”
Green handed the machete to Cooks, who slashed Richard Hague about the face and back of the head. Left for dead, Hague would eventually recover–and testify against his wife’s killers.
Almost immediately after the two Black Muslims finished hacking their victims, flashbulbs began popping. Two other cars, driven by members of the Nation of Islam, had pulled up
Several camera-toting Muslims started taking pictures of the blood-soaked murder scene–as evidence of Larry Green’s and Jessie Lee Cooks’ worthiness as Death Angels.
A series of murders followed.
On October 30–ten days after the abduction of Richard and Quita Hague–Jessie Lee Cooks struck again.
He shot Frances Rose, a physical therapist, four times in the head and neck as she sat in her car at the entrance of the parking lot to the University of California Extension.
Cooks was arrested within a few minutes and only a short distance from the scene, still in possession of the murder weapon, a revolver. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on December 14, 1974.
He would be tried again and convicted of other murders, along with the other “Zebra” defendants on March 13, 1976.
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