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Spence: $2M settlement underscores loss of freedom
Jackson attorney battles FBI, big
government, Patriot Act.
http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=1205
By Angus M. Thuermer Jr.
December 6, 2006
Fresh from winning a $2 million settlement in a suit against the FBI for
wrongly tying an Oregon lawyer to the Madrid bombing case, Jackson Hole
attorney Gerry Spence warned Tuesday of growing fascism in America.
Spence was the lead attorney in a case brought by Oregon lawyer Brandon
Mayfield against the FBI for his arrest in the case that saw 191 people
killed in Spain. The FBI began investigating Mayfield after computers said
his fingerprints came close to matching a print found on a bag containing
explosive detonators connected to the March 11, 2004, bombing.
Mayfield announced the settlement last week in Portland, Ore., but the
flamboyant Spence has been missing from many of the news reports of the
incident. He spoke in a telephone interview from his home in Jackson Hole,
cautioning against the government and corporations consolidating increasing
power.
“It’s a very frightening time in our country,” said Spence, who has made a
career championing the cases of the common man and underdogs. “What happens
is that the corporate king, or the government-corporate king, the two
combined, [are] leading us into fascism.”
As part of the settlement, Spence secured an apology from the FBI and will
be able to continue a case challenging the Patriot Act. He said, however,
that the mainstream media is shunning his warnings and that even a
Congressional committee dis-invited him from testifying about the Patriot
Act once majority members learned what he would say.
Spence said the Mayfield story begins when the FBI received a copy of the
print through Interpol, the international police agency, and used a computer
to compare it to those it had on file. Among the prints in its database were
Mayfield’s, on file since his service in the military.
“Out popped 20 potential matches that now need to be viewed individually by
the expert,” Spence said of the computer’s work. Mayfield’s was the
fourth-best match, but he shot to the top of the list, Spence said.
“What we have here is a Muslim card that was played,” Spence said.
He characterized Mayfield as “a Kansas farm boy who married an Egyptian
woman.” Mayfield converted to Islam.
“In their papers for the arrest of Mayfield, they allege he had represented
a known Muslim terrorist,” Spence said. “In fact, his representation was
only on a child custody matter. They arrested him primarily because he was a
Muslim.”
Before the arrest, however, the FBI investigated the lawyer secretly.
“They got a secret warrant and secretly came to Mayfield’s house and broke
in like common burglars,” Spence said.
Those famous FBI shoes were the giveaway.
“In this case they didn’t realize in the Mayfield family – they take their
shoes off before they go into the house,” Spence said. “There were shoe
prints in the carpet. Locks were locked that weren’t usually.
“They knew they were invaded but they didn’t know by whom,” Spence said of
the Mayfield family, which includes three children.
“Under the Patriot Act they have the power to install secret microphones and
to bug the telephones and to put microphones under the kitchen table and
under the bed,” Spence said. “One is never given the opportunity to
determine what they have done, what they have taken and where they have
disseminated this information.
“They went into his papers, copied his computers, took his DNA,” Spence
said. On one occasion, Mayfield’s son was terrified when he saw a stranger
trying to break into his home, Spence said.
The FBI also suspected Mayfield because he went to a mosque and advertised
in a Muslim Yellow Pages directory. Ford and GM use the same advertising
venue, Spence said.
“And they claimed he must have had false papers because they couldn’t find
any evidence he had left the U.S.” to take part in the bombings, Spence
said. “If you have stayed at home and minded your own business, you’re also
a criminal because you have fooled the FBI.”
FBI denies role of religion
The FBI has rejected allegations religion played a role in the
investigation. In a statement issued earlier this year, the agency noted
that it had cooperated with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector
General in a probe into the botched investigation.
“The OIG report concluded that religion played no improper role in the
identification or investigation of Mr. Mayfield,” the FBI said.
But once the investigation was under way, religion did weigh in, according
to the probe.
“FBI fingerprint experts probably were more resistant to re-examining their
conclusion that Brandon Mayfield’s fingerprint matched one on a bag
containing detonators like those used in the attacks in Spain because of his
religion, Inspector General Glenn Fine said in the executive summary of a
273-page report that otherwise remains classified,” the Associated Press
reported earlier this year.
Spence said that when it came time to arrest the lawyer, the media got a
tip.
“The press was at hand when the FBI came in to arrest him, including a
reporter from a national magazine,” Spence said. “Which means that they had
notice of the arrest and of the case and what the government was going to do
some time prior to the arrest. And it was leaked by the government to the
press so the press could be on hand, which may be in violation of federal
criminal laws that deal with privacy.”
Spence said the settlement precludes him from pursuing that potential
violation. Being jailed hurt Mayfield, he said.
“He did suffer some injury – some physical injury being handcuffed and
shoved in cells,” Spence said. “It was an experience that would be a
nightmare for you and me as it was for him.”
Mayfield spent approximately 11 days in jail.
Spence said it also was upsetting that the investigation violated
attorney-client privilege.
“They looked at his client’s papers,” Spence said. “This is a horrible
thing.
“If we give the attorney information, it is secret,” he said. “It can’t be
obtained by the court or anybody else. It’s as sacred as the
parishioner-priest privilege.”
Spence said arrogance of the FBI was key to its shortcomings.
“The thing that makes this thing so bad, so very bad, is that the FBI was
instructed by the Spanish police that they had made a mistake – even before
they arrested Mayfield – and that this was not Mayfield’s fingerprint,” he
said. “When you talk to the infallible FBI and tell them they’ve made a
mistake – that’s heresy.”
Spence said the FBI flew a crew to Spain to convince investigators there
that they were wrong, the FBI was right. The Europeans would not budge.
The FBI characterized the excursion differently, saying in a statement that
it sent two fingerprint examiners to Madrid to compare an image of the
fingerprint to the original in possession of Spanish authorities.
The incident is troubling because the charge Mayfield potentially faced
carried the death penalty, Spence said.
“Consider what would have happened if the Spanish National Police had not
remained solid in their position,” Spence said. “You then go into court with
the average jury who has been told by the FBI it doesn’t make mistakes and
that fingerprints are an absolute science.”
He criticized the FBI culture, and prosecutors in general. “You have people
in the organization, like in any government prosecutor’s office, who want to
be able to put the big trophy on the wall and to be able to say, ‘I solved
the train in Spain case,’” Spence said.
The FBI contested that its agents were power hungry. “The OIG also found no
evidence of misconduct on the part of any FBI employees involved in this
investigation,” the agency said in a statement.
The FBI’s most recent apology, published on Washingtonpost.com, said the
agency was sorry “for the suffering caused by the FBI’s misidentification of
Mr. Mayfield’s fingerprint and the resulting investigation of Mr. Mayfield,
including his arrest as a material witness in connection with the 2004
Madrid train bombings and the execution of search warrants and other court
orders in the Mayfield home and in Mr. Mayfield’s law office.
“The United States acknowledges that the investigation and arrest were
deeply upsetting to Mr. Mayfield, to Mrs. Mayfield, and to their three young
children, and the United States regrets that it mistakenly linked Mr.
Mayfield to this terrorist attack,” the statement said. “The FBI has
implemented a number of measures in an effort to ensure that what happened
to Mr. Mayfield and the Mayfield family does not happen again.”
Abusing authority
Spence said the issue goes beyond a botched investigation or the
misidentification of fingerprints. He said those in power are abusing events
to gain more authority.
“Fear is a powerful motivation,” Spence said. “Nobody has been better of
making us afraid, of terrorizing us, than the power structure. By
terrorizing us they can pass such acts as the Patriot Act.”
The FBI said the act was not misused.
“The OIG report concludes that there was no evidence of misuse of the
Patriot Act,” the FBI said in a statement. “The report finds, ‘contrary to
public speculation,’ the FBI did not use certain provisions of the Patriot
Act and that the Act did not affect the scope of the FBI’s use of FISA
surveillance or searches. Instead, the OIG report found that the effect of
the Patriot Act on this investigation was to enable the FBI to share lawful
information with other members of the law enforcement and intelligence
communities.”
Spence said the act is undemocratic and that he was stifled when asked to
testify to Congress about it.
“The sad part of it is the American citizen doesn’t know, has no idea, what
this Patriot Act permits the government to do,” Spence said. “And so when
the Patriot Act came up for renewal, a minority in Congress, then the
Democrats, [U.S. Rep. John] Conyers asked me to come testify about the
Mayfield case so the public could have some idea of what’s going on.
“He says, ‘You have to write up a statement – would you submit it and then
we’ll have you testify?’” Spence said about Conyers’ request. “So I sent the
statement in.
“The day before I was to appear I got a call from the lawyer representing
the minority,” Spence said. “‘I’m sorry, Mr. Spence, but the Republican
majority has read what you are going to testify to,” the lawyer told him.
The message from Republicans was: “If you testify, all communication between
us [Republicans and Democrats] is forever lost – we will never cooperate
with you,” Spence said.
“When I got that response I prepared a press release and sent it out to
every major news force in the country,” Spence said. “There was not one that
picked that news story up.”
Spence said the loss of rights in this country inspired him to write his
latest book, Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power. He said he can’t
get on a talk show to promote it.
“And so we have a very precarious condition which can lead us into what I
call the Fourth Reich,” Spence said. Mussolini predicted the Fourth Reich
would occur when “government and corporations became indistinguishable.”
“That’s what we really have today,” he said. “Because we are afraid, we are
angry. The average person feels helpless – ‘What can I do?’”
“Freedom,” Spence said, “requires a little bit of danger. You have to agree
to a little bit of danger to be free.”
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