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Independent Hearings Investigate U.S. Department of Justice Misconduct

ndependent hearings, facilitated by Ithe Schiller Institute, to investigate allegations of gross misconduct by the United States Department of Justice, were convened Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 in Northern Virginia. The hearings were prompted by the refusal this past summer by the House Judiciary Committee probe of the inci- dent at Waco, to hear evidence of ram- pant corruption inside the permanent bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Justice. Initially, those Congressional hearings seemed to be driven by broad- based, bipartisan concern that the Waco case, along with other pertinent cases,

was a predicate of a continuing pattern EIRNS/Stuart Lewis of behavior by certain elements attached Panel members hear witness testimony at Independent Hearings. to the Justice Department. But, once those hearings were hijacked by a group of Republican Con- gressmen whose only objective was to LaRouche Exoneration Drive Expands pillory President Clinton, the result was a massive coverup of the flagrant Justice s of November 15, the number New Mexico (15), North Carolina Department corruption the Congress Aof current and former U.S. and (19), North Dakota (35), Oklahoma had promised to investigate. Puerto Rican state legislators who (14), Pennsylvania (13), Puerto Rico have endorsed an Open Letter to the (15), South Carolina (22), South Members of the Panel President of the United States, call- Dakota (22), Tennessee (31), Utah The independent panel, which declared ing for the exoneration of Lyndon (16), Vermont (17), West Virginia that it would investigate what the House LaRouche, has grown to five hun- (12), and Wyoming (12). subcommittees refused to hear, included dred and ninety-seven (597). The text of the Open Letter former Congressman James Mann of The Open Letter has also been stresses that, while Lyndon South Carolina (who, while in Congress, signed by twenty-nine former U.S. LaRouche is currently free on parole, served as a prominent member of the congressmen and such leading Civil “a terrible crime still goes unan- House Judiciary Committee); Senators Rights activists as Amelia Boynton swered. Not only was an innocent Robert Ford and Maggie Wallace Robinson, Rev. Hosea L. Williams, man framed, convicted, and wrong- Glover of the South Carolina State Sen- Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, Rev. James fully imprisoned for five years, but it ate; Reps. William Clark and John L. Bevel, Rosa L. Parks, Rev. Fred L. is now clearly the case, documented Hilliard of the Alabama House of Rep- Shuttlesworth, Benjamin F. Chavis, by six volumes of unchallengeable resentatives; Reps. Toby Fitch and Jr., Dick Gregory, Dr. Dorothy I. evidence, consisting chiefly of gov- Howard Hunter of the North Carolina Height, and Mamie Till. ernment documents and admissions House of Representatives; Rep. Ulysses States in which more than ten leg- of government-led ‘task force’ offi- Jones, Jr., of the Tennessee House of islators have endorsed the Open Let- cials, that the U.S. government knew Representatives; Rep. Percy Watson of ter include: Alabama (26), Arkansas at all relevant times, from 1979 to the the Mississippi House of Representa- (17), Idaho (19), Kansas (20), Ken- present day, that Lyndon H. tives; attorney J.L. Chestnut, one of the tucky (11), Louisiana (11), Michigan LaRouche and his co-defendants foremost Civil Rights lawyers in Ameri- (20), Mississippi (36), Missouri (10), were innocent of the false charges ca today; and Msgr. Elias El Hayek, Montana (35), New Hampshire (40), for which they were convicted.” Chor Bishop of the Maronite Church

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© 1995 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. and professor of law. in the battle against “Operation Früh- prosecutorial misconduct, withholding International observers included menschen.” He was forty-seven years old of exculpatory evidence, and conscious Dr. Josef Miklosˇko, former Vice Pre- at the time of his death. perjury and fraud upon the court, politi- mier of the post-communist Republic of cally motivated and designed to deprive Czecho-Slovakia; Dr. Kofi Awoonor, The Presenters the American citizen of effective repre- former Permanent Ambassador to the Testimony on “Operation Frühmenschen sentation, was presented, not merely by United Nations from the Republic of was presented by Sen. Theo Walker the good word of the witnesses, but by Ghana; Marino Elseviff, a prominent Mitchell (former), Sen. Herb Fielding government documents, records, and attorney from the Dominican Republic; (f), Judge Tee Ferguson (f), and Rep. memoranda, first suppressed and later and Amelia Boynton Robinson, of the Frank McBride (f), all of South Caroli- obtained by FOIA and other legal Schiller Institute. na; Judge Ira Murphy (f) of Tennessee; actions. The panel focussed on cases where Councilman Roosevelt Bell of Alabama; At the close of testimony, the panel, there was evidence of politically moti- and Patricia Moore and attorney Ollie under the joint chairmanship of Rep. vated targetting of groups and individu- Manago, of California. Testimony on Mann and J.L. Chestnut, ruled that no als by a concert of private organizations the O.S.I. was presented by Yoram summary statement could capture the outside the U.S. government, working Sheftel of Tel Aviv, Israel, the attorney shocking and dramatic nature of the tes- in tandem with corrupt officials inside who represented John Demjanjuk in the timony itself. By unanimous decision, Federal governmental law enforcement latter’s death-penalty trial before the the panel is now preparing a series of agencies. Israeli Supreme Court; Dr. Hans written and videotaped presentations of Koechler, of the International Progress the proceedings that will be produced The Testimony Organization, Vienna, Austria; and for broad, international circulation, as The testimony was organized around William Nezowy, of the American well as submission to every member of three panels: the harassment of African- Ukrainian Political Action Council of the United States Congress. American elected and public officials— the United States. One by one, the panelists expressed the FBI’s “Operation Frühmenschen”; the Testimony on the LaRouche case their confidence, given that the nature conduct of the Justice Department’s so- was presented by Odin Anderson of of the evidence they had compiled was called Office of Special Investigations Boston, who has served as LaRouche’s so compelling and so indicting, that (O.S.I.), particularly the cases of John attorney for over a decade; by Lyndon Congressional oversight hearings into Demjanjuk and former U.N. Secretary LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche; the matter, as well as other governmen- General and President of Austria Kurt and finally, by former U.S. Attorney tal action, would soon be forthcoming. Waldheim; and the Lyndon LaRouche General Ramsey Clark. “Justice,” said Congressman Mann, case, the largest-scale single case involv- In case after case, decisive evidence of “must finally be returned to the Depart- ing the same corrupt Justice Department rampant Justice Department corruption, ment of Justice.” apparatus that operated in the O.S.I. and “Operation Frühmenschen” cases. Congressman Mann also read into the record a request he had received from Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama, who is currently incarcerated in a Federal prison in Miami, that the panel, at some future date, also consider evidence of Justice Department miscon- duct and human rights violations that pervaded his American trial. The proceedings opened with a Memorial Tribute and moment of silence in memory of Rep. David P. Richardson, of Pennsylvania. Richardson, who was to have served on the panel, died suddenly just a week prior to the formal opening of the hearings. He was the youngest per- son ever elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature, and, during twenty-four years EIRNS/Stuart Lewis of distinguished public service, was a Noted Civil Rights attorney J.L. Chestnut, who co-chaired the Independent Hearings, national leader, and one of the pioneers, questions a witness.

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