ARCHIVE 2/5/01 TO 2/10/01
Click. FEMA Nominee Joe Allbaugh Is a "Named Conspirator" in "Funeralgate" Lawsuit
Click. The Case Against Marin District Attorney Paula Kamena.
Click. REPORTERS WHO COVER STAYNER TRIAL FOR THE MURDER OF THE SUNDS & PELOSS0 MUST UNDERGO CRIMINAL CHECKS.
Click. WHILE TALKING PEACE, SHARON DEFIANT OVER JERUSALEM'S FATE.
Click. Dog Owners Belong in Jail, Roommate Says. Mauling victim's partner hires attorney to monitor probe.
Click. THE POLITICAL CONVENIENCE OF MAD COW DISEASE.
Click. SO RICH! BUSH, RICH AND SOROS JOINED AT THE HIPS! The Republicans want Congress to investigate Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich -- are they suicidal?
Click. Suspect Taken to Xiana Site. Investigators comb area where slain girl's skull was discovered.
Click. Midsi 'knew Xiana was in heaven'.
Click. No walking away from the Lockerbie mystery.
Click. RICHARD HELMS - A DOUBLE IDENTITY? by George LoBuono
Click.
MAE BRUSSELL RETURNS. DO YOU EVER NEED TO WATCH ABC - TV EVER AGAIN?
"AMERIKA" = STAR WARS. JOHN SINGLAUB,
REV. S. MOON, PHILIPPINE GOLD FOR INTERNATIONAL, PRIVATE ARMY. WASH. D.C.
LINKS OF COLUMBIAN COCAINE, NY SICILIAN PIZZA NETWORK. UP-DATE ON
CONTRA-COCAINE EVENTS THIS PAST WEEK. E.F. HUTTON, S. PIERCE.
NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON! Click.
Click.
EXPOSED AT LAST. THE REAL GEMSTONE FILE
by Martin Cannon.
Click. WHO WAS CHARLIE MANSON? by Mae Brussell
By the time of this printing, the date should be set for the recall election of Marin County District Attorney Paula Kamena.
According to recall proponents, Kamena has failed in her duties through conscious wrongdoing and by covering for county corruption. Kamena characterizes the recall as backed by sore losers and misguided medical marijuana advocates.
The following outlines main elements of the pro-recall argument.
Family Court Cover-Up
Former Marin Civil Grand Juror Martin Silverman was so affected by what he heard on the Grand Jury, and when he and other grand jurors were blocked from investigating Marin Family Law Court (FLC) matters by the County Counsel's office, that he felt he had to take action. Motivated by the same sense of civic duty that led to his Grand Jury service, but barred by Grand Jury rules from disclosing confidential Grand Jury evidence or deliberations, he took what many view as a commendable, inventive step, and arranged for an independent investigation. The result was the 'Winner Report,' a scathing evaluation of the Marin Family Law Court system that called for further investigation and immediate suspensions of Judge Michael Dufficy and Commissioner Sylvia Shapiro.
Rather than seek to evaluate the merits of the Winner Report, Kamena immediately launched a threatening probe of Martin Silverman. Once the recall commenced, Kamena dropped the potentially embarrassing probe by handing it off to state Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
The Winner Report is commonly viewed as having sparked the spate of recall efforts by citizens dismayed by FLC decisions. It was assailed on relatively technical points in a vigorously defensive media campaign by insiders of the County legal community, but raised many substantive issues-about bias favoring insider attorneys, and other issues-which might reasonably justify further investigation.
The Winner Report's criticisms of the Family Law Court system were given dramatic support by the open testimonial of a system insider, Larkspur attorney Kathryn Ballentine Shepherd. Shepherd, who admitted to being one of the attorneys likely to benefit from the biases of the Courts, criticized the FLC system in general and Judge Dufficy in particular.
Yet no independent investigation into wrongdoing was commissioned. Recall supporters say that the local sponsor for such an investigation would rightly be the DA.
Incidentally, both Silverman and Shepherd say they have had no personal involvement in the recalls.
Credit Card Cover-Up
Public code is clear on the matter of unauthorized use of public funds: any public servant who uses public funds and "makes any profit out of, or uses the same for any purpose not authorized by law is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years, and is disqualified from holding any public office in this state." State law would obviously supersede local policy.
When misuse of County credit cards by Supervisors Annette Rose and John Kress was discovered, Kamena's first reaction was not to look deeper, but to announce that nothing illegal had been done. Even recently, in explaining her reasons for not prosecuting, Kamena alternately insists that there was no intent of criminal activity, that there was no criminal activity, and that county policies were too ambiguous to establish wrongdoing. Critics insisted that Kamena was compelled by law to prosecute, even if the offense was minor.
Fielding Greaves, Secretary of the Marin United Taxpayer Association, writing to the Coastal Post (August 2000), said that he could find no record to back up County claims that County credit card rules apply to all County employees except Supervisors. He urged, "prompt investigation by Marin's reluctant DA Paula Kamena."
Assuming that there are ambiguous policies on the books, and-as challenging as it would be to believe-that the inappropriate credit card uses were not deliberate (which critics say is not, legally, a valid excuse from prosecution), the possibility that campaign finance funds were involved means potentially serious violations of FPPC regulations. Critics argue that such allegations should be thoroughly investigated and the results openly published.
Kamena chose to smooth the matter over rather than delve into it.
One might expect that Kress and Rose are indebted to Kamena for her continued inaction.
Kinsey Cover Ups
Supervisor Steve Kinsey is now an outspoken defender of Kamena against the recall effort. However, Kamena could cost Kinsey tens of thousands of dollars, and possibly his contractor's license, with very little effort.
On his own property, Kinsey allegedly performed illegal, not-to-code construction to install a second structure and an add-on, and illegally installed a not-to-code septic system. Even in the laissez-faire of West Marin under Kinsey, in which illegal and ill-advised developments have allegedly proliferated, it is not customary that the County will repeatedly grant extension after extension, without so much as proper requests, to multiple violators of County codes related to both public safety and environmental protection. But, as quietly as possible, that is exactly what Kamena has allowed for Kinsey.
When Forest Knolls resident Jerry Knight alleged that Kinsey was behind the destruction of private property by law enforcement personnel, and voiced suspicion that Kinsey may have been behind the subsequent raid of Knight's Forest Knolls home by over 10 law enforcement personnel (who just happened to be on hand, at night, when a household alarm just happened to go off) who ransacked the residence after claiming to see marijuana paraphernalia through the window, Kamena did not investigate Kinsey's role or the actions of law enforcement personnel. Instead, she proposed to charge Knight with felony possession of morphine and codeine because he had dried poppy stalks, found during the raid, such as those commonly sold by florists, a charge soon dropped. When the Knights sought legal redress, the County intimidated them into dropping their complaint with threats that they would lose both the properties they own if they lost their case.
Bolstering the argument that Kamena had cause investigate, an earlier, documented case of relatively minor harassment of a San Geronimo Valley resident adds indications that inappropriate retaliatory harassment tactics may be in Kinsey's nature.
Critics point to the firings of Marin Environmental Health Services employees Ed Stewart and Dave Mesagno, and allegation of improper actions by the County in accommodating the French Ranch development, as other issues related to Kinsey that should have been openly scrutinized by the DA but were not.
Maligning Mardeusz
Events surrounding the Carol Mardeusz child custody case for her daughter make for a roller coaster ride of complexity, with alleged wrongdoings by both the Sonoma and Marin Family Law Courts. But the most outrageous actions apparently took place in Marin, directly under the watch of Kamena.
Right now, Mardeusz is in jail, serving a sentence on allegations of attempted abduction and perjury, but according to Ron Mazzaferro, a private investigator and legalist who resides in Sonoma County and who has been working in a pro bono capacity to assist Mardeusz for the past three years, it would be more appropriate for Kamena to be in jail. The basic facts according to Mazzaferro follow.
When the first case began to fall apart, an indictment was obtained through appointment of a criminal grand jury, a process in which only the prosecution was heard. Mazzaferro says that the DA's office knowingly elicited and suborned pejurious testimony from grand jury witnesses Leo and Betty Magers to gain the indictment. To gain the conviction of Mardeusz, Kamena's office teamed up with FLC Judge Verna Adams to set up a 'kangaroo' proceeding.
The critical piece of evidence against Mardeusz was her application for a custody hearing in the Dufficy court. The copy of that petition produced by the prosecution did not match the certified copy from the County's own records - it was apparently altered by the prosecution. Yet Adams did not allow procedural determination of which version was valid, and without plausible justification ordered the jury to disregard all key arguments of the defense. The jury was essentially given no option under Adams's direction but to convict.
Normally a jury has tremendous powers, including recourses when it feel a judge's directions may be inappropriate; but the jury has to know of these rights in order to exercise them. Mazzaferro believes it to be unlikely that this jury was apprised of those powers. Members of a jury could also, normally, be approached by a defendant, or the defendant's counsel, to seek such recourses after a questionable verdict; but, in a highly unusual move, the judge ordered the names of the jurors to be sealed.
The argument that Mardeusz's treatment has been proper depends on the idea that virtually every person who has looked into the Mardeusz case is somehow imbalanced.
Mazzaferro, who primarily does legal technical work for attorneys, calls Mardeusz's treatment by Kamena's office blatantly illegal and "bizarre."
Mardeusz attorney Patricia Barry was so infuriated by the Adams courtroom that she could not restrain outbursts that landed her in a cell usually meant for prisoners.
Nedra Ruiz, an attorney with the renowned Tony Serra firm, and who is also working for Mardeusz, also criticized Adams for restricting volumes of relevant evidence, tactfully calling Adams's actions "errors," and predicted that the DA would jail Mardeusz for reasons of political animus.
County Public Defender Mark Davis also sides with Mardeusz. Former Mardeusz attorney,
Kate Dixon, who worked pro bono, openly accuses Kamena of destroying medical evidence in the Mardeusz case and dares Kamena to sue her over her saying so. Mardeusz herself worked for over 15 years as a court reporter and has impeccable character references.
Patient Persecution
Believing Kamena to be supportive of medical marijuana use, Lynnette Shaw, of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana (MAMM), originally endorsed Kamena in her race for DA. and was slow to believe Kamena's role in increased harassment of MAMM patients. Shaw's support, and the medical marijuana issue, tipped the scale that put Kamena's recall on the ballot. Because of her role in signature gathering, Shaw has become a central figure in the recall effort.
Shaw says that, while the Family Court critics have a case against the FLC judges, the recall effort against Kamena, which was added later, is the pivotal one. "The County offices of Marin have become a cottage industry of corruption. The DA has the ability and the responsibility to follow up, by investigation, on plausible citizen accusations, allegations and concerns, rather than do everything in her power to 'kill the messengers.'"
Shaw also maintains that Kamena's choice to ignore Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative, puts Kamena in direct violation of the California state constitution. While the issue is not fully resolved at the federal level, the state constitution orders state agents such as Kamena to adhere to the laws of the state unless specifically ordered to the contrary by the United States Supreme Court. Since the US Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the matter, Shaw says Kamena's standing orders are therefore spelled out by Proposition 215. Shaw points out that Oakland and San Francisco have worked out guidelines acceptable to patient advocacy groups-all Kamena would have to do adopt either of those guidelines-but Kamena's aggressively draconian guidelines continue to ignore 215 and criminalize legitimate medical marijuana patients. And, Shaw adds, Kamena offers the same treatment to registrants of the County version of a registration program, a pet project of Supervisor Kinsey, which Shaw says is deficient in patient privacy and numerous other patient protections.
Wasteful Ways
Shaw also contends that Kamena's guidelines on and investigations of medical marijuana users is a needless waste of public funds. She cites the recent Voelker case as an example.
Speaking of public waste, recall opponents have been seeking to raise animosity against recall proponents by saying that the recall election would have to be a special election and would cost $500,000. However, the cost may be largely in the hands of the board of Supervisors: state elections code demands that the recall election be combined with a normally scheduled election, if possible, and is usually flexible enough regarding timing that such a combination is possible. Look for ongoing coverage in the Coastal Post.
Concerned about security in the tiny old Mariposa County courthouse, court officials are requiring reporters to get a fingerprint analysis to make sure they have a clean record before they can report on Stayner's trial.
The measure is unusual in legal journalism and somehow managed to slip past the gaze of editors, news directors and First Amendment experts who usually make efforts to protect press freedom.
"This is the first thing I've heard about it," said Charlie Waters, executive editor of the Fresno Bee. "This is absurd."
Waters said Thursday that a reporter from the newspaper was credentialed because he covered Stayner's case in federal court, but he said he also plans to send other reporters, and they won't submit to criminal background checks.
Michael Berest, Mariposa County Superior Court executive officer, said he thought he was following the procedure used to issue press credentials in the federal case against Stayner.
But Carol Davis, a federal court official in Sacramento who was consulted by Mariposa County officials, said reporters only had to submit two photos and show their credentials to get a special pass for the case heard in Fresno federal court.
"This is way off from what they said when I spoke with them. Whoa," said Davis, an administrative analyst for the Eastern District of California.
Thirteen reporters who had photo identification from the federal case did not have to undergo the background check, said Lt. Brian Muller, spokesman for the sheriff. The remainder of the 61 journalists who applied for credentials were required to undergo the fingerprint analysis.
So far, checks performed for 16 applicants have not unearthed any criminal activity, Muller said. If a record of a crime is found, then law enforcement and court officials will discuss whether the reporter can cover the hearing.
The Associated Press reporter assigned to the case did not have federal court credentials and is the only reporter who has objected to the background check, Berest said.
Terry Francke, general counsel for the California First Amendment Coalition, said the fingerprinting appears to violate constitutionally guaranteed press freedoms.
"A background check may become relevant when the issuing agency has to provide security for people who are frequent targets," Francke said. "(Press passes) are certainly not issued to get you into a public trial or public school board meeting. That's a different issue entirely. I'm surprised that others aren't balking at it."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held in numerous cases that the press and the public have a right to attend criminal court proceedings, Francke said.
The Mariposa County rule applies only to the media. A few entry passes will be issued to the public for hearings, and they won't have to submit to a background check, Berest said. Everyone in the court will have to pass through a security check for weapons.
Criminal background checks were required for reporters covering the Denver trial of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, but similar checks were not required in the high-profile case of convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski in Sacramento, Davis said.
"This isn't the McVeigh case, this isn't a terrorist who blew up a federal building," said Marcia A. Morrissey, Stayner's defense lawyer. She said the measure was very strange.
To understand what all the fuss is about, one need only take a look at Mariposa, a county of about 16,000 residents scattered among foothills that roll up to the rugged Sierra Nevada where Yosemite is.
The area has seen its share of crime, but nothing has brought the notoriety -- or a stampede of media -- like the killer who stalked Yosemite National Park two years ago.
Carole Sund; her daughter, Juli; and their friend, Silvina Pelosso, disappeared while staying on the outskirts of the park at the Cedar Lodge, where Stayner worked as a handyman. Their bodies were found a month later.
Stayner, who reportedly confessed to the killings, is already serving a federal life sentence for murdering Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong in July 1999. That case was heard in federal court because Armstrong was killed in a national park.
The stakes in the state case are high, and Stayner faces the possibility of execution if convicted, though prosecutors have not announced whether they will seek the death penalty.
The case made headlines around the world, where Yosemite is revered for its dramatic cliffs, tumbling waterfalls and granite domes. National and international reporters left footprints all over the area during the intense manhunt for the killer.
The trial scheduled in Mariposa County is probably the biggest thing to hit town in years, and officials want to make sure there are no security problems, Muller said.
After Stayner was booked, Sheriff C.A. "Pelk" Richards held a hastily scheduled news conference to announce that Stayner had been safely transferred to the county jail. After his arraignment, Richards praised the security at the 147-year-old courthouse.
The sheriff's Web site looks more like the Cary Stayner home page, with his mug shot beneath the words "Sheriff Mariposa, CA" and nary a sighting of the county's top cop.
Even the editor of the local weekly newspaper has pitched in to help out, volunteering as a media liaison for an overburdened court staff. Jill Ballinger, editor of the Mariposa Gazette, said she initially offered to help because she works with the court people every day.
"It's been nothing but a huge pain," she said.
While
Talking Peace, Sharon Defiant Over Jerusalem's Fate
Israel:
During visit to Western Wall, prime minister-elect says city is the Jewish
capital for 'eternity.'
JERUSALEM
But even as Sharon welcomed what an aide called a
"warm" message of congratulations from Palestinian Authority President
Yasser Arafat, the hawkish former general also paid a visit to Jerusalem's
Western Wall, where he promised that the city will remain the capital of the
Jewish people "for all eternity."
Sharon's visit to the sacred spot sent a strong message
that he will be unwilling to entertain the sort of compromises that Ehud Barak,
the man he defeated in a landslide Tuesday, offered the Palestinians. Barak had
proposed sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem, which both Israel and the
Palestinians claim as their capital.
Critics say Sharon's Sept. 28 visit to the Temple Mount,
a site holy to Muslims and Jews that abuts the Western Wall, triggered the
violence that derailed Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Muslims looked at the
visit as a heavy-handed assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the site.
Sharon's
day began with a sentimental visit to the grave of his wife, Lili, who died of
cancer in March. He then plunged into the daunting task of forming a coalition
government and reassuring Israelis and the international community that his
crushing defeat of Barak will not spell the end of the peace process or drive
the region to war.
"He wants to reassure everyone that he didn't
win this election by a landslide to make war, he won it by a landslide to make
peace," said Ranaan Gissin, a Sharon spokesman.
Sharon named a team to negotiate with potential
coalition partners and renewed his call for Barak's center-left Labor Party to
join him in building a broad-based government. He was said to be willing to
offer the job of foreign minister to Shimon Peres, the Nobel Peace Prize
laureate who is the Israeli statesman most closely identified with
Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking efforts.
"The prime minister-elect will invite to a
national unity government every Zionist party that is willing to participate in
a government that will be serious, responsible and strive for peace," Eyal
Arad, Sharon's strategic advisor, said at a Jerusalem news conference. Under
Israeli law, Sharon has 45 days after the election results are published Feb. 14
to form a new government.
Sharon asked former Defense Minister Moshe Arens,
former ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval and former U.N. Ambassador Dore Gold
to travel to Washington on his behalf, Arad said. "They will reiterate the
new government's commitment to a peace where the first condition should be full
security to the citizens of Israel," he said, and will "study together
the best way to achieve real peace" and strengthen U.S.-Israeli relations.
Arad refused to say whether Sharon will condition
the start of talks with the Palestinians on a cessation of violence in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, which has left nearly 400 people dead in the last four
months. Israeli troops and Palestinians shot at each other in the West Bank city
of Hebron on Wednesday, but no injuries were reported.
Arad told reporters that Sharon received what he
called "a very warm written message" from Arafat on Wednesday.
"Our hands will continue to be held out to
make peace, because both parties expect it," Arad quoted Arafat as writing.
"I hope that this year will be the year of building peace, peace of the
brave in the best interests of the people of the region." Arad said that
Sharon will reply soon to the message.
Arad's highlighting of the message seemed intended
to underscore that Sharon is prepared to build a relationship with the
Palestinian leader whom he recently called a "murderer" in an
interview. The two have met in the past, but Sharon has always refused to shake
hands with Arafat, saying that he has Jewish blood on his hands.
But it will take more than envoys to Washington
and the exchange of messages with Arafat for Sharon to get peace talks on track
with the Palestinians. Arab states and senior Palestinian officials already are
sounding the alarm that it could well be impossible for them to find enough
common ground with Sharon to advance the prospects for peace.
He has indicated that he would agree to the
eventual establishment of a Palestinian state but only in about 42% of the West
Bank and two-thirds of Gaza. The Palestinians insist on Israel returning nearly
all the lands it captured in the 1967 Middle East War, including East Jerusalem.
"I am visiting Jerusalem, the capital of the
Jewish people for the past 3,000 years and the united and indivisible capital of
Israel--with the Temple Mount at its center--for all eternity," Sharon said
as he stood with his hand on the ancient stone wall Wednesday.
Even as he talked tough, however, Sharon worked to
form a coalition from the badly divided parliament that will leave him some
diplomatic maneuvering room. Barak's resignation as head of the Labor Party
after his humiliating defeat Tuesday made it more likely that Labor will opt out
of joining with Sharon, analysts said Wednesday.
Without Labor as a partner, Sharon will be forced
to build a narrow, inherently unstable government that will include many
far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. In a narrow government, each small party
would have the power to extract concessions from Sharon.
Labor "should not slam the door" on
Sharon's offer to join him in building a coalition, said Barak's deputy defense
minister, Ephraim Sneh. But he said he doubts that Labor could accept Sharon's
approach to peacemaking as a basis for forming a government.
"Our attitudes, our concepts are
contradictory," Sneh said. "Sharon cannot reconcile his call to Labor
with the demands of the hard-liners who brought him to power." Even if
Labor were willing to forget the concessions that Barak's government offered to
the Palestinians last summer during the failed Camp David summit and last month
during talks in Egypt, Sneh said, it cannot abandon the Oslo peace process
launched in 1993 by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed in 1995. Sharon
has declared the Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians dead.
Labor on Wednesday was consumed by the power
struggle unleashed by Barak when he announced after the polls closed a day
earlier that he was quitting as head of the party. One of his allies, lawmaker
Elie Goldschmidt, announced Wednesday that he was so disgusted by his Labor
colleagues' abandonment of Barak during the campaign that he is resigning from
parliament and quitting politics. Labor is led, Goldschmidt said, by a "den
of knifers" who had betrayed Barak.
Dog
Owners Belong in Jail, Roommate Says. Mauling victim's partner hires attorney to
monitor probe.
Lance Williams, San Francisco
Chronicle Staff Writer © 2001
Since the sudden death of the love of her life, Sharon Smith has been overcome with shock, numbed by grief.
But in recent days she says another emotion has also taken hold: the fierce desire to see her neighbors thrown in jail.
Smith, a vice president at the Charles Schwab investment firm, was the life partner of Diane Alexis Whipple, the rangy, athletic lacrosse coach who on Jan. 26 was mauled to death by her neighbors' 120-pound Presa Canario dog in the doorway of her Pacific Heights apartment.
In an interview yesterday with The Chronicle, Smith said that even as she grappled with the terrible sadness of her partner's death, she had hired a former prosecutor to make sure that the the dog's owners, lawyers Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, were prosecuted to the fullest extent.
"I want to see the two of them locked up," Smith said. "This isn't a car accident, where it happens, and you grieve and then move on. To me, this isn't,
'They're my nice neighbors down the hall, and it's a terrible tragedy, and we'll get through it.'
"I believe they knew exactly what they had -- what the dogs were capable of
--and they let this happen."
Smith said she had hired San Francisco attorney Michael Cardoza, a former Alameda County prosecutor, to monitor the district attorney's investigation.
Cardoza said he was optimistic that the couple would eventually face criminal prosecution for what he called their "wanton and willful" failure to control a dog that was "as dangerous as a loaded gun."
Noel and Knoller could not be reached for comment yesterday, but they have repeatedly called their dogs gentle. Noel has said Whipple could have saved herself by retreating into her apartment after the initial encounter with Bane, the dog that killed her. And he recently drew widespread scorn for suggesting Whipple might have provoked the attack by wearing perfume or using steroids, which could have attracted the animals to her.
Smith said she had directed her attorney to sue Noel and Knoller. Any payout will go to fund college scholarships for female lacrosse players, she said.
Smith doesn't consider herself a vengeful person, she said, but she believes Noel and Knoller have been so irresponsible that something has to be done.
Smith is from St. Mary's County, Maryland, where she grew up "a huge dog lover," she said. Her dad raised dachshunds, as many as 16 at a time, at a kennel by their house.
She played lacrosse and field hockey at tiny Longwood College, and then went into the investment business in Washington, D.C. In 1994, after she moved to the West Coast, she was introduced to Whipple, a former All-America lacrosse player at Pennsylvania State University who at the time was training in an unsuccessful bid to make the 1996 U.S. Olympic team in the 800-meter run.
The meeting changed their lives. Smith says Whipple was a delightful partner: caring, generous, full of energy and fun. And when she began coaching women's lacrosse, she seemed to have found her true calling.
"Things were going great," Smith recalled.
Smith said she had never really met Noel and Knoller, the couple who lived down the hall, but you couldn't miss their giant dogs. Smith said her encounter with one of the Presa Canarios had come last year, when she met Noel in the hallway and reached down to pat the dog's head.
"Robert screamed out 'No!' " she recalled. "He told me the dog had been in a fight in the park and was spooked. It made me scared of the dogs."
Smith said she had kept her distance from his dogs after that. Whipple tried to stay away from them as well. But last month, in the foyer, Whipple was jumped by one of the dogs and bitten on the wrist. Afterward, Whipple told Smith she felt lucky she was wearing her big sports watch: the dog's jaws had closed on the watch face, sparing a really serious injury.
Whipple was terrified of the dogs after that, Smith said. Whipple would caution Smith to open the door of the apartment slowly to make certain that the dogs weren't in the hallway before they walked to the elevator.
It hadn't occurred to them to complain to the landlord, she said. Like most other people in the building, their plan was simply to keep out of the animals' way.
Smith learned of the fatal attack when she drove onto Pacific Avenue that Friday after work and found ambulances and police cars in front of her house. Instantly, she said, she feared something had happened to Whipple.
But after she learned the truth, a sense of disbelief descended on her, and in a way it still hasn't left.
"I just can't believe it," she said. "I just went out for a walk, and I find myself thinking she's going to show up. It really hasn't hit me."
Despite her pain, she has begun watching television and reading the newspaper about the case, and she said she was convinced that Noel and Knoller were trying to "spin" their way out of trouble.
She said their remarks at a press conference outside the Pelican Bay State Prison last week were offensive. Noel's suggestion that Whipple had somehow threatened or provoked the dogs into attacking was ridiculous, she said.
"She was terrified of the dogs," Smith said.
Noel's claim in a letter to the district attorney that Whipple was using steroids was contemptible and false, she said.
"They're just two attorneys, conniving and trying to manipulate things to save themselves," she said.
Neither lawyer has spoken to her, or tried to contact her, since the attack, she said. Instead, when she ran into them the building's parking garage, they glared at her in a way that she thought was meant to be intimidating.
"These are not normal people," Smith said. "I have nothing to say to them, anyway. I just want to see them in prison."
E-mail Lance Williams at lwilliams@sfchronicle.com
HOW
RICH! BUSH, RICH AND SOROS JOINED AT THE HIPS.
The Republicans want Congress to investigate Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich --
are they suicidal?
Republicans are pushing for a Congressional investigation of Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich. An investigation will lead directly to George Herbert Walker Bush and BCCI. Why are certain Republicans trying to hurt Dubya in the name of taming the Big Dog? An Investigation of the Marc Rich Pardon Is Imminent. Click.
FREE FORUM
Subject: The Secret Financial Network Behind "Wizard"
George
Soros - Part 2 of 2
From: stefanl@direct.ca (stefan
lemieszewski) © 2001
Date of posting: 12 Nov 1996 09:36:05 GMT
*
The following text has been sent to the following newsgroups on
the Internet: soc.culture.ukrainian,soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.polish,
soc.culture.magyar,soc.culture.croatia, soc.culture.slovenia,
soc.culture.yugoslavia,
soc.culture.swiss,alt.conspiracy,soc.culture.usa
Source URL: http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/mar99/0128.html
But, what has never been identified in a single major Western press
investigation, was that the Rothschild-group was at the heart of
the
vast illegal web of BCCI. The key figure was Dr. Alfred Hartmann,
the managing director of the BCCI Swiss subsidiary, Banque de
Commerce et de Placement SA; at the same time, he ran the Zurich
Rothschild Bank AG, and sat in London as a member of the board of
N.M. Rothschild and Sons, Hartmann was also a business partner
of Helmut Raiser, friend of de Picciotto, and linked to Nordex.
Hartmann was also chairman of the Swiss affiliate of the Italian
BNL
bank, which was implicated in the Bush administration illegal
transfers to Iraq prior to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The
Atlanta branch of BNL, with the knowledge of George Bush when he
was vice-president, conduited funds to Helmut Raiser's Zug,
Switzerland company, Consen, for development of the CondorII
missile program by Iraq, Egypt, and Argentina, during the Iran-Iraq
War. Hartmann was vice-chairman of another secretive private
Geneva bank, the Bank of NY-Inter-Maritime Bank, a bank whose
chairman, Bruce Rappaport, was one of the illegal financial
conduits
for Col. Oliver North's Contra drugs-for-weapons network during
the late 1980. North also used the BCCI as one of his preferred
banks to hide his illegal funds.
Rich's, Reichmann's, and Soros's Israeli links
According to reports of former U.S. State Department intelligence
officers familiar with the Soros-case, Soros's Quantum Fund
amassed a war chest of well over $10 billion, with the help of a
powerful group of "silent" investors who let Soros deploy
the capital
to demolish European monetary stability in September 1992.
Among Soros's silent investors, these sources say, are the fugitive
metals and oil trader Marc Rich, based in Zug, Switzerland; and
Shaul Eisenberg, a decades-long member of Israeli Mossad
intelligence, who functions as a major arms merchant throughout
Asia and the Near East. Eisenberg was recently banned from doing
business in Uzbekistan, where he had been accused by the
government of massive fraud and corruption. A third Soros partner
is Israel's "Dirty Rafi" Eytan, who served in London
previously as
Mossad liaison to British intelligence.
Rich was one of the most active western traders in oil, aluminum,
and other commodities in the Soviet Union and Russia between
1989 and 1993. This, not coincidentally, is just the period when
Grigori Luchansky's Nordex Group became a multibillion-dollar
company selling Russian oil, aluminum, and other commodities.
Canadian real estate entrepreneur Paul Reichmann, formerly of
Olympia and York notoriety, born in Hungary, Jew like Soros, is a
business partner in Soros's Quantum Realty, a $525-million real
estate investment fund.
The Reichmann tie links Soros as well with Henry Kissinger and
former Tory Foreign Minister Lord Carrington (who is also a
member of Kissinger Associates, Inc. of New York). Reichmann sits
with both Kissinger and Carrington on the board of the influential
British-Canadian publishing group, Hollinger, Inc. Hollinger owns a
large number of newspapers in Canada and the United States, the
London Daily Telegraph, and the largest English-language daily in
Israel, the Jerusalem Post. Hollinger has been attacking President
Clinton and the Middle East peace process ever since Clinton's
election in November 1992.
Soros and geopolitics
Soros is little more than one of several significant vehicles for
economic and financial warfare by the Club of the Isles faction.
Because his affiliations to these interests have not previously
been
spotlighted, he serves extremely useful functions for the
oligarchy,
as in 1992 and 1993, when he launched his attack on the European
Rate Mechanism.
Although Soros's speculation played a role in finally taking the
British pound out of the ERM currency group entirely, it would be a
mistake to view that action as "anti-British." Soros went
for the
first
time to London, where he studied under Karl Popper and Friedrich
von Hayek at the London School of Economics.
Soros's business ties to Sir James Goldsmith and Lord Rothschild
place him in the inner circles of the Thatcher wing of the British
establishment. By helping the "anti-Europe" Thatcherites
pull
Britain out of the ERM in September 1992 (and making more than
$1 billion in the process at British taxpayer expense), Soros
helped
the long-term goal of the Thatcherites in weakening continental
Europe's economic stability. Since 1904 , it has been British
geopolitical strategy to prevent by all means any successful
economic linkage between western continental European
economies, especially that of Germany, with Russia and the
countries of eastern Europe.
Soros's personal outlook is consonant with that of the Thatcher
wing of the Tory Party, those who three years ago launched the
"Germany, the Fourth Reich" hate campaign against unified
Germany, comparing Chancellor Helmut Kohl with Adolf Hitler.
Soros is personally extremely anti-German. In his 191
autobiography, Underwriting Democracy, Soros warned that a
reunited Germany would "upset the balance of Europe .... It is
easy
to see how the interwar scenario could be replayed. A united
Germany becomes the strongest economic power and develops
Eastern Europe as its Lebensraum ... a potent witches' brew."
Soros's recent public attacks on the German economy and the
deutsche mark are fundamentally motivated by this geopolitical
view.
Soros is quite close to the circles of George Bush in the U.S.
intelligence community and finance. His principal bank custodian,
and reputed major lender in the 1992 assault on Europe's ERM, is
Citicorp NA, the nation's largest bank. Citicorp is more than a
lending institution; it is a core part of the American liberal
establishment. In 1989, as it became clear that German unification
was a real possibility, a senior official at Citicorp, a former
adviser to
Michael Dukakis's Presidential campaign, told a European business
associate that "German unity will be a disaster for our
interests; we
must take measures to ensure a sharp D-Mark collapse on the
order of 30%, so that she will not have the capability to
reconstruct
East Germany into the economic engine of a new Europe."
While Soros was calling on world investors to pull down the
deutsche mark in 1993, he had been making a strong play in the
French media, since late 1992, to portray himself as a "friend
of
French interests." Soros is reported to be close to senior
figures of
the French establishment, the Treasury, and in particular, Bank of
France head Jean-Claude Trichet. In effect, Soros is echoing the
old
Entente Cordiale alliance against Germany, which helped precipitate
World War 1.
Soros admits that he "survived in Nazi Hungary" during
the war, as
a Jew, by adopting what he calls a double personality. "I have
lived
with a double personality practically all my life," Soros
recently
stated. "It started at age fourteen in Hungary, when I assumed
a
false identity in order to escape persecution as a Jew." Soros
admitted in a radio interview that his father gave him Nazi
credentials in Hungary during the war, and he looted wealthy
Jewish estates. Further research showed that this operation was
probably run by the SS.
Soros did not leave the country until two years after the war.
Though he and his friends in the media are quick to attack any
policy opponent of Soros, especially in eastern Europe, as being
"anti-Semitic," Soros's Jewish identity apparently has
only
utilitarian value for him, rather than providing moral foundations.
In
short, the young Soros was a cynical, ambitious person, the ideal
recruit for the British postwar intelligence network.
Soros savages eastern Europe
Soros has established no fewer than 19 "charitable"
foundations
across eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has
sponsored "peace" concerts in former Yugoslavia with such
performers as Joan Baez. He is helping send young east Europeans
to Oxford University. A model citizen, is the image he broadcasts.
The reality is something else. Soros has been personally
responsible for introducing shock therapy into the emerging
economies of eastern Europe since 1989. He has deliberately
fostered on fragile new governments in the east the most draconian
economic madness, policies which have allowed Soros and his
financial predator friends, such as Marc Rich and Shaul Eisenberg,
to loot the resources of large parts of eastern Europe at
dirt-cheap
prices. Here are illustrative case histories of Soros's eastern
"charity".
Poland: In late 1989, Soros organized a secret meeting between the
"reform" communist government of Prime Minister
Mieczyslaw
Rakowski and the leaders of the then-illegal Solidarnosc trade
union organization. According to well-informed Polish sources, at
that 1989 meeting, Soros unveiled his "plan" for Poland:
The
communists must let Solidarnosc take over the government, so as
to gain the confidence of the population. Then, said Soros, the
state
must act to bankrupt its own industrial and agricultural
enterprises, using astronomical interest rates, withholding state
credits, and burdening firms with unpayable debt. Once thie were
done, Soros promised that he would encourage his wealthy
international business friends to come into Poland, as prospective
buyers of the privatized state enterprises. A recent example of
this
privatization plan is the case of the large steel facility Huta Warsawa. According to steel experts, this modern complex would
cost $3-4 billion for a western company to build new. Several
months ago, the Polish government agreed to assume the debts of
Huta Warsawa, and to sell the debt-free enterprise to a Milan
company, Lucchini, for $30 million!.
Soros recruited his friend, Harvard University economist Jeffery
Sachs, who had previously advised the Bolivian government in
economic policy, leading to the takeover of that nation's economy
by
the cocaine trade. To further his plan in Poland, Soros set up one
of
his numerous foundations, the Stefan Batory Foundation, the
official sponsor of Sach's work in Poland in 1989-90.
Soros boasts, "I established close personal contact with
Walesa's
chief adviser, Bronislaw Geremek. I was also received by [President
Gen Wojciech] Jaruzelski, the head of State, to obtain his blessing
for my foundation." He worked closely with the eminence gris
of
Polish shock therapy, Witold Trzeciakowski, a shadow adviser to
Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. Soros also cultivated
relations
with Balcerowicz, the man who would first impose Sach's shock
therapy on Poland. Soros says when Walesa was elected President,
that "largely because of western pressure, Walesa retained
Balcerowicz as minister." Balcerowicz imposed a freeze on
wages
while industry was to be bankrupted by a cutoff of state credits.
Industrial output fell by more than 30% over two years.
Soros admits he knew in advance that his shock therapy would
cause huge unemployment, closing of factories, and social unrest.
For this reason, he insisted that Solidarnosc be brought into the
government, to help deal with the unrest. Through the Batory
Foundation, Soros coopted key media opinion makers such as Adam Michnik, and through cooperation with the U.S. Embassy in
Warsaw, imposed a media censorship favorable to Soros's shock
therapy, and hostile to all critics.
Russia and the Community of Independent States (CIS): Soros
headed a delegation to Russia, where he had worked together with
Raisa Gorbachova since the late 1980s, to establish the Cultural
Initiative Foundation. As with his other "charitable
foundations,"
this was a tax-free vehicle for Soros and his influential Western
friends to enter the top policymaking levels of the country, and
for
tiny sums of scarce hard currency, but up important political and
intellectual figures. After a false start under Mikhail Gorbachov
in
1988-91, Soros shifted to the new Yeltsin circle. It was Soros who
introduced Jeffery Sachs and shock therapy into Russia, in late
1991. Soros describes his effort: "I started mobilizing a
group of
economists to take to the Soviet Union (July 1990). Professor
Jeffery Sachs, with whom I had worked in Poland, was ready and
eager to participate. He suggested a number of other participants:
Romano Prodi from Italy; David Finch, a retired official from the
IMF
[International Monetary Fund]. I wanted to include Stanley Fischer
and Jacob Frenkel, heads of research of the World Bank and IMF,
respectively; Larry Summers from Harvard and Michael Bruno of
the Central Bank of Israel."
Since Jan. 2, 1992, shock therapy has introduced chaos and
hyperinflation into Russia. Irreplaceable groups from advanced
scientific research institutes have fled in pursuit of jobs in the
West. Yegor Gaidar and the Yeltsin government imposed draconian
cuts in state spending to industry and agriculture, even though the
entire economy was state-owned. A goal of a zero deficit budget
within three months was announced. Credit to industry was ended,
and enterprises piled up astronomical debts, as inflation of the
ruble went out of control.
The friends of Soros lost no time in capitalizing on this
situation.
Marc Rich began buying Russian aluminum at absurdly cheap
prices, with his hard currency. Rich then dumped the aluminum
onto western industrial markets last year, causing a 30% collapse
in the price of the metal, as western industry had no way to
compete. There was such an outflow of aluminum last year from
Russia, that there were shortages of aluminum for Russian fish
canneries. At the same time, Rich reportedly moved in to secure
export control over the supply of most West Siberian crude oil to
western markets. Rich's companies have been under investigation
for fraud in Russia, according to a report in the Wall Street
Journal
of May 13, 1993.
Another Soros silent partner who has moved in to exploit the chaos
in the former Soviet Union, is Shaul Eisenberg. Eisenberg,
reportedly with a letter of introduction from then-European Bank
chief Jacques Attali, managed to secure an exclusive concession for
textiles and other trade in Uzbekistan. When Uzbek officials
confirmed defrauding of the government by Eisenberg, his
concessions were summarily abrogated. The incident has reportedly
caused a major loss for Israeli Mossad strategic interests
throughout the Central Asian republics.
Soros has extensive influence in Hungary. When nationalist
opposition parliamentarian Istvan Csurka tried to protest what was
being done to ruin the Hungarian economy, under the policies of
Soros and friends, Csurka was labeled an "anti-Semite,"
and in
June 1993, he was forced out of the governing Democratic Forum,
as a result of pressure from Soros-linked circles in Hungary and
abroad, including Soros's close friend, U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos.
Lighting the Balkan Fuse
In early 1990, in what was then still Yugoslavia, Soros's
intervention with shock therapy, in cooperation with the IMF,
helped light the economic fuse that led to the outbreak of war in
June 1991. Soros boasted at that time, "Yugoslavia is a
particularly
interesting case. Even as national rivalries have brought the
country to the verge of a breakup, a radical monetary stabilization
program, which was introduced on the same date as in
Poland---January 1, 1990-----has begun to change the political
landscape. The program is very much along the Polish lines, and it
had greater initial success. By the middle of the year, people were
beginning to think Yugoslav again."
Soros is friends with former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, the former U.S. ambassador to Belgrade and the
patron of Serbian Communist leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Eagleburger is a past president of Kissinger Associates, on whose
board sits Lord Carrington, whose Balkan mediations supported
Serbian aggression into Croatia and Bosnia.
Today, Soros has established his Foundation centers in Bosnia,
Croatia, Slovenia, and a Soros Yugoslavia Foundation in Belgrade,
Serbia. In Croatia, he has tried to use his foundation monies to
woo
influential journalists or to slander opponents of his shock
therapy,
by labeling them variously "anti-Semitic" or
"neo-Nazi." The head of
Soros's Open Society Fund---Croatia, Prof. Zarko Puhovski, is a
man who has reportedly made a recent dramatic conversion from
orthodox Marxism to Soros's radical free market. Only seven years
ago, according to one of his former students, as professor of
philosophy at the University of Zagreb, Puhovski attacked students
trying to articulate a critique of communism, by insisting,
"It is
unprincipled to criticize Marxism from a liberal standpoint."
His
work for the Soros Foundation in Zagreb has promoted an
anti-nationalist "global culture," hiring a network of
anti-Croatian
journalists to propagandize, in effect, for the Serbian cause.
These examples can be elaborated for each of the other 19 locations
across eastern Europe where George Soros operates. The political
agenda of Soros and this group of financial "globalists"
will create
the conditions for a new outbreak of war, even world war, if it
continues to be tolerated.
NO
WALKING AWAY FROM THE LOCKERBIE MYSTERY. THE PUBLIC DOESN'T BUY SHOW
TRIALS ANYMORE, WHEN IT IS KNOWN EVIDENCE AND WITNESSES ARE EXCLUDED OR
OTHERWISE GAGGED.
04/02/01 SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY A prosecution witness in the Lockerbie trial is set to receive a reward of $5m for his part in last week’s verdict, even though the judges condemned his testimony as untrue. Abdul Majid Giaka, a Libyan intelligence officer who defected to the US, provided information that proved crucial in bringing the case to court but most of his evidence in the witness box was described by the judges as "at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue".
Giaka’s testimony against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of bombing Pan Am 103, was expected to be crucial but turned out to be worthless. However, the US government confirmed last night it was still considering a payment of up to $5m to Giaka who has been living under a new identity in the US for more than 10 years. "In general, we have paid reward money to individuals who have provided information used in a trial and who have been witnesses in a trial," a State department spokesman said. "Now that a verdict has been reached, we will be reviewing whether any information received in this case merits a payment under the rewards program."
Click. The Lockerbie judgment has failed to establish the truth of flight 103.
Click. In their 82-page written judgment, the judges said there was no evidence that anyone other than Libyans was involved in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Click. Palestinian links remain unexplained. Intelligence reports rejected as unreliable.
Click. The theory of the Lockerbie bombing that has not been refuted.
LOCKERBIE - A TEXTBOOK LESSON IN REALPOLITIK. Click.
LOCKERBIE - THE LINGERING LEGACY OF DOUBT. Click.
LOCKERBIE - THE FIGHT FOR TRUTH. Click.
THANKS TO TOP PAM AM 103 WEBSITE: Click.
Suspect
Taken to Xiana Site. Investigators comb area where slain girl's skull was
discovered
Kevin
Fagan, Stacy Finz, Matthew B. Stannard, Michael McCabe, Chronicle Staff Writers
Monday, February 5, 2001
©2001 San Francisco
Chronicle
Investigators scoured a square mile of rugged terrain in the Santa Cruz Mountains yesterday where an alleged child molester, brought to the spot by police, indicated Xiana Fairchild's body might have been dumped.
The search came a day after officials identified a skull found on the winding Soda Springs Road as belonging to Xiana, who disappeared from her Vallejo home nearly 14 months ago. Until Saturday, the 7-year-old was listed as a missing child. Now, she is the victim of a killing, and police say they are looking more closely at a man charged with kidnapping another Vallejo girl last August: Curtis Dean Anderson.
While never directly implicating himself during the unusual Saturday field trip to the rural spot, the 39-year-old Anderson pointed out a steep area for investigators to search. The developments may seem promising, but investigators and Xiana's family are wary of every word Anderson speaks, believing that he knows key information about the case but is being deliberately vague.
"He seems familiar with the area," Sgt. Mark Eastus, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, said of Anderson. "(But) he was coy. He didn't really give us any information. He seemed to enjoy the ride down, though."
Authorities said that his elliptical statements alone were not enough to make an arrest. They are now trying to find physical evidence to link him to Xiana's death.
"We have no confession and nothing to connect him to this crime," Eastus said.
But nonetheless, Vallejo police say Anderson is a prime suspect in Xiana's disappearance.
Anderson's trip to the mountain road came hours after the Santa Clara County medical examiner positively identified the skull parts, found Jan. 19 by two landscapers, as belonging to Xiana. Yesterday, 50 Vallejo police officers and Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies combed the heavy brush in the Santa Cruz Mountains with cadaver dogs, searching for more body remains, clothing, weapons or anything they could tie to Xiana's disappearance. But they found nothing.
Anderson is currently in custody in Solano County on charges that he kidnapped and molested another Vallejo girl last summer. After being held captive for two days in an industrial part of Santa Clara, the girl broke free and ran to safety. Since Anderson's arrest, Xiana's great-aunt has said, she has visited Anderson 10 times in jail and that he has told her that he had taken Xiana 14 months ago and passed her off, still alive, to someone else.
"He's jerked a lot of other people around before," said Eastus.
Meanwhile, friends and family gathered in Vallejo to weep and share their grief at the most awful of endings they could have imagined.
Nearly 100 volunteers and members of Xiana's family gathered in front of their Vallejo search center yesterday to bid the little girl a tearful farewell, attaching notes of love to hundreds of purple and yellow balloons that were then sent into the sky. Purple and yellow were Xiana's favorite colors, said her great-aunt, Stephanie Kahalekulu.
Kahalekulu stood in the middle of the crowd watching the balloons disappear into the blue sky. Dressed in black jeans and a somber gray sweater, Kahalekulu stared up before speaking, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Little girls are supposed to laugh and play and run and giggle at the silliest little things," she said. "They're supposed to smile and twirl and chase pretty butterflies. One thing we can rest assured now is that Xiana is doing all these things and that she is safe and warm in heaven.
"It's not the outcome we had hoped for," she said. "Our family wanted her back alive and well. But these were our plans, and God had a different plan for her. . . . He saw his beautiful child being hurt and said enough is enough and brought her home where she is safe."
After Xiana's bones -- a portion of her skull and two pieces of jaw -- were found, investigators immediately suspected that the remains were those of the missing girl. But it wasn't until Saturday that they were able to positively identify the skull through DNA testing.
Until then, Kahalekulu said, she had held out hope that Anderson was telling her the truth about Xiana still being alive. Yesterday she was convinced more than ever that Anderson was connected to Xiana's death.
Unofficially, police sources say he's their most promising suspect, although a "cloud of suspicion" still remains around Xiana's birth mother and her boyfriend.
Xiana's mother, Antoinette Robinson, took custody of the child, who had been raised by Kahalekulu, six months before Xiana vanished in December 1999. Robinson's boyfriend, Robert Turnbough, initially told police that he had walked Xiana to the bus stop on the day she vanished, but later changed his story. He also described the clothes she was wearing on the day she disappeared, but the garments showed up in the couple's closet a few days later.
Robinson's attorney, Dan Healy, said he hoped the latest development eliminated any attention to Robinson and Turnbough, who have been grilled by the grand jury and investigators for a year.
"I think the presence of the body in (the Santa Cruz Mountains) all but totally exonerates them," Healy said, "but the cops just can't live with what they've done to these two, so they won't let them be."
Robinson, who mourned in private yesterday, said she and Turnbough have been homeless for weeks, sleeping on friends' couches, and that the news of her daughter's death "just about destroyed me."
She said she would be helping Kahalekulu plan a funeral, "and then Bobby and I are going to move somewhere far, far away, where nobody will know us, the East Coast maybe."
"I hope we can all get closure now," Robinson said. "The cops and this whole thing have basically ruined our name and our reputation. We can't even get a job in this town."
Turnbough said that the police had not asked him anything since the skull was found, but that he hoped they could stop focusing on him now.
Like Robinson, he said he was heartbroken: "We were hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. It's awful."
Kahalekulu said she planned to bury Xiana in Hawaii, where the girl grew up,
on a hill overlooking the ocean. But first -- within the next two weeks -- she hopes to hold a memorial service in Vallejo. She said she intended to keep the search center open to hunt for Xiana's killer.
"We need resolution to this, we need answers," she told the group of loyal volunteers.
Anderson, according to Kahalekulu, most likely holds the answers. She said there were too many coincidences between the 8-year-old girl Anderson is accused of abducting and Xiana. Both were about the same age, had dark skin and dark hair, and lived in Vallejo. Both were eventually taken to Santa Clara County.
For months Kahalekulu has visited Anderson at the Fairfield jail begging for answers. She said that eventually Anderson admitted to her that he had snatched Xiana, but promised that she was still alive. Later, he asked her for money, she said.
Anderson's attorney, Carl Spieckerman, said he was baffled about why his client continued to talk to Kahalekulu and members of the media. A few weeks ago, Anderson told The Chronicle during a jailhouse interview that he had once given Xiana a ride to school, but declined to discuss her disappearance.
"I have a forensic psychologist I want to assist me to interview Mr. Anderson to figure out why he might make these false confessions," Spieckerman said. "I don't have any particular clue (why Anderson talks). It could be to entertain himself, it could be to gain a technical advantage, it could be to gain a few bucks on his book -- that's not pleasant, but it's not kidnapping and murder either."
As an indication of how much Anderson likes to talk to the press, before he agreed to accompany police to the crime scene in the Santa Cruz mountains, he insisted that a reporter from the Fairfield Daily Republic come along with him.
Investigators were so eager to make the trip that they granted the unusual request. Despite the public forum, Anderson did not make any startling revelations to the Fairfield reporter.
Chronicle reporter Elizabeth Bell contributed to this report. / E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com; Stacy Finz at sfinz@sfchronicle.com; Matthew B. Stannard at mstannard@sfchronicle.com; and Michael McCabe at mmccabe@sfchronicle.com.
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle Page A1
Vallejo Times-Herald staff writer © 2001
Midsi 'knew Xiana was in heaven'
By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen,
FEMA Nominee Joe Allbaugh Is a "Named Conspirator" in "Funeralgate" Lawsuit
For Immediate Release: February 10, 2001 For More Information: Bob Fertik bob@d... 212-396-3457 Charles Herring Jr. cherring@h... 512-320-0665 or 473-2375 Web site: www.democrats.com – click on "Funeralgate" logo
FEMA Nominee Joe Allbaugh Is a "Named Conspirator" in "Funeralgate" Lawsuit; Democrats.com Publishes Key Documents on its Web Site
Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has been revealed to be a "Named Conspirator" in "Funeralgate", a Texas whistleblower lawsuit against George W. Bush, according to documents published on the Internet by Democrats.com, the largest independent news and community website for Democrats.
Allbaugh was campaign manager of Bush's Presidential campaign, and is widely regarded as one of Bush's most powerful aides, along with strategist Karl Rove and spokeswoman Karen Hughes. Together, the three are known as the "Iron Triangle."
Allbaugh is scheduled to testify before the Senate Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday, February 13 at 10:30 a.m.
The "Funeralgate" lawsuit was filed by Eliza May, who was Executive Director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission (TFSC) while George W. Bush was Governor of Texas.
May alleges she was fired from her job in retaliation for her investigation of Service Corporation International (SCI), the world's largest funeral services company, which is owned by Robert Waltrip, a major Bush contributor. She alleges "improper and illegal pressure and conspiracy" by the governor and his staff "in attempting to impede and subvert the TFSC investigation of SCI."
Allbaugh is a "Named Conspirator" in this case, according to Eliza May's complaint. He is named on the second page of a 149-page document filed on July 10, 2000.
"Joe Allbaugh is a key player in the 'Funeralgate' scandal," according to Bob Fertik, co-founder of Democrats.com. "Allbaugh was personally involved in efforts to thwart the investigation by Eliza May's office. He did everything in his power to help a major Bush donor avoid a large fine and to prevent Texas citizens from receiving justice."
The "Funeralgate" lawsuit was filed in 1998. Then-governor Bush filed a sworn affidavit denying any knowledge of, or conversations about, the investigation. This affidavit was contradicted by the testimony of other witnesses, and Bush was added as a defendant in 2000. According the document released by Democrats.com (page 89), "multiple witnesses have testified or otherwise indicated that Governor Bush gave a false sworn statement in this case."
The defendants have fought the lawsuit every step of the way, and persuaded Texas district judge John Dietz to delay any depositions of Bush and Allbaugh until after the 2000 election. Eliza May plans to seek depositions from both Allbaugh and Bush later this year following depositions by other key witnesses, according to May's attorney Charles Herring Jr.
According to the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling in the Paula Jones lawsuit, a President can be forced to testify under oath in a civil case stemming from actions taken before becoming President. President Clinton's evasive testimony in the Paula Jones deposition was the basis for subsequent testimony before a grand jury convened by Independent Counsel Ken Starr, and his eventual impeachment by the Republican Congress in 1998.
At the time, Joe Allbaugh was Governor Bush's Chief of Staff. Allbaugh has acknowledged his involvement in the events that are the subject of the lawsuit, but he has denied any wrongdoing. He provided a written response to the Senate Government Oversight Committee last week, and brushed aside May's allegations.
Allbaugh was asked, "The allegations include claims that TFSC staff members were pressured during the meeting(s) and in conversations afterward to terminate an ongoing investigation into SCI." Allbaugh replied, "The reported allegations... are not grounded in fact, nor are they credible." Allbaugh says he merely "facilitated" the meetings, and did not exercise "pressure." May's lawsuit alleges that he did.
"Joe Allbaugh appears to have lied to the Senate Government Oversight Committee in response to its question about 'Funeralgate,'" said Fertik. "In the coming days, Democratic and Republican members of the committee should carefully examine Allbaugh's evasive answer - and pose additional detailed questions - to get to the truth about Allbaugh's involvement in this scandal, which reaches all the way up to the President of the United States," Fertik concluded.
WHO IS ELIZA MAY? Click.
THE DYING GIANT. Click.
