Newsgroups: misc.legal
From: [t h f 2] at [ellis.uchicago.edu] (Ted Frank)
Subject: Koresh and Miranda (LONG)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 02:05:38 GMT

Found in another group, had relevance to thread discussed here.
>Linda Thompson is an attorney from Indianapolis.
>===Forwarded from Fidonet===
>* Original: FROM: Linda Thompson
>* Original: TO:   All
>* Original: AREA: AEN NEWS
>
>Well, John Baird and I went down to Waco last Friday, March 19.  We filed a
>petition to allow David Koresh to have access to an
>attorney or for an attorney to have access to David
>Koresh, citing a lot of Supreme Court law that says a
>person is in custody when they are no longer free to leave
>the presence of police and that the person has a 5th
>Amendment (Miranda v. Arizona) right to counsel when in
>custody.
>
>The Judge, Walter Smith, Jr., of the U.S. District Court,
>Western District, Waco Division, would not read or hear
>the motion on Friday or over the weekend and finally, at
>close of business Monday, gave us an order that literally
>had pages that were xeroxed from another order in it.
>
>He had previously denied seven petitions filed on behalf of Koresh and 6
>others by other attorneys -- using the SAME order.
>
>We petitioned for an expedited appeal to the 5th Circuit
>Court of Appeals in Louisiana and got turned down three
>times by Thursday.
>
>While we were there, we saw a lot of interesting things.
>
>The ONLY news coming out of Waco comes from two places:
>
>(1)  Every day at 10:30, the FBI, by a guy named Ricks, holds a "press
>conference" at the convention center.  Whatever the FBI
>wants told, that's what gets told and that's ALL that is
>reported across the country, period.
>
>(2)  The only other source of "news" comes from reporters
>who are living in RV's alongside one of the roads coming
>out of the retreat area.  If anyone leaves the area (i.e.,
>the people who have left in the past few weeks), they are
>paraded in open cars past this string of reporters by the
>FBI on their way to the FBI command post center, so
>reporters sometimes can take a picture of it.  That's all.
>
>HOWEVER, interestingly enough, CNN seems to be able to get in or at least
>get film footage up close of the compound, though no one
>else can.
>
>Also, I know for a fact that CNN made at least two false
>reports the week we were down there and the reports were
>directly from the FBI itself.
>
>===
>
>Walter Smith, Jr., the judge who used the same order to
>deny 8 different petitions on behalf of people inside the
>retreat has also done the following:
>
>(1)  Allowed arraignments of people coming out of the compound to be held in
>secret.  At least one woman, Schroeder, was arraigned and
>then held as a material witness. This means they didn't
>have enough evidence on her to charge her with anything,
>but they kept her in jail anyway.  Everyone else coming
>out of the compound is in jail as a "material witness",
>too, and they aren't allowed to talk to anyone.
>
>(2)  Sealed the probable cause affidavits and search warrants that were
>supposedly the ones the BATF was serving on day one. He is
>very likely the same judge, or his magistrate, Green, who
>signed the order. There are no other federal judges in
>Waco and Green is the only magistrate (sort of a semi-
>judge who is picked by and works for the judge).
>
>===
>
>The FBI took out the entire lawfirm of Thompson and Baird
>for about 2 hours Saturday night, March 20th and the saga
>goes like this:
>
>Gary Hunt, who we now know to be a paid government informant but didn't know
>at the time, John (Baird, my partner) and I decided to go
>into the press area at Waco.  We also had decided that
>Hunt would cross the second road block inside the press
>area.  He would promptly be arrested and we would take
>pictures of his arrest and challenge it on a First and
>Fourth Amendment basis, along with violation of state law
>and the 10th Amendment.
>
>Our AEN press passes and driver's licenses were checked and passed at the
>first road block.  The guards there, mostly state police,
>were pretty nice, friendly, etc. and even posed for
>pictures.  They trotted out the BATF "bomb dog", a golden
>labrador retreiver that had a sign on his back that said
>"ATF Agent."  The dog was quite friendly, complacent, and
>sleepy.  I got a few pictures of all this. As I was taking
>pictures, the State Police repeatedly said to the dog
>(just kidding) "FBI agent, boy, sic 'em!!!" and laughed.
>
>We went down into the press area, which was a major bore.  There was
>absolutely nothing going on except press RV's parked up and
>down the road and a few cameras on tripods, taking
>pictures of every car coming out of the retreat.
>
>Interestingly, the government cars often had no tags.
>
>We passed out three copies of a press release that
>announced what we were doing to a couple of reporters.
>One reporter who knew me walked up and said, "Oh so we
>have legal counsel tonight."  I told him, no, I was there
>as a press member at that time and briefly mentioned AEN.
>
>Gary, unbeknownst to us, had faxxed press releases BEFORE we went there, all
>over the place.  The reporter who spoke to me also trotted
>over to the police and, kind of like the teacher's pet
>suck-up at school, informed the police at the roadblock
>that I was an attorney.  Soon thereafter, lots more (6)
>state troopers arrives.
>
>Gary, however, decided he didn't want to be arrested
>afterall, so we left. I would have done it but for the
>pending petition in Federal Court.
>
>Anyway, as we were leaving, back at the first roadblock 5
>miles outside the retreat, the same nice friendly guards
>had turned surly.
>
>We were stopped and asked to show our press badges on the way out.  They
>snatched them from our hands.  We were asked to show
>driver's licenses and they took those, too.  The officer
>was overheard to say that he was going to "run these
>through NCIC."  We were told to stay in the car until the
>FBI got there.  So we did.
>
>In  the meantime, most of the police were hanging out at
>various distances around the car, none too worried.  A
>real stoopid neanderthal-type BATF agent was nearby.
>
>I had two rolls of film in my purse and another roll in a small instamatic-
>type camera.  I was looking for places to hide the film,
>figuring what was coming.  I noticed John looked a little
>pale and looked out the window to see that the BATF agent
>was pointing an MP5 with a flashlight on it right at us
>(never at Gary, though).  At first, I thought maybe it was
>accidental because I saw it pointed at us, then he turned
>it away a little, then he pointed it back at us, so I
>thought maybe he was just too stupid to realize he was
>moving it in our direction, then he stood and REALLY
>pointed it at us, at which time I observantly remarked to
>John, "Shit, he's pointing that machine gun at us!" to
>which John astutely replied, "NO SHIT!!" (he'd been
>watching it longer than I had).
>
>Not being the brightest person in the world, I was absolutely astonished.
>Fear didn't enter my mind (too stupid/astonished/whatever,
>I guess), but I was FURIOUS.  I wanted a picture for
>evidence.  So as he moved the gun again so it wasn't quite
>pointed at my head, I snapped a picture.
>
>As he ran around the car at me, I rolled up the window and locked the door.
>He yelled in that if I took another picture, he'd break my camera.
>
>The camera had an auto rewind on it and it was rewinding it's little wheels
>off.  He couldn't see what I was doing because it was too
>dark inside the car and I got the film out and put it and
>the other two rolls behind the glove box in the dash --
>not IN the glove box, BEHIND it.
>
>Shortly, the state policeman-in-charge came back and told
>us to step out of the car and put our hands on the car.
>They searched Gary and John . . . but NOT ME.  Snort.  Of
>all the people likely to be carrying . . .well, nevermind.
>
>So then we had to stand around in the 35 degree weather for
>another half-hour or so, waiting on "The FBI" to arrive.
>
>After we got out of the car, the police started shining flashlights in.
>The short, dumpy neanderthal kgBATF agent went around to
>the passenger door of the car and opened it.  I repeatedly
>stated that he did NOT have my permission to search the
>car, LOUDLY.   He picked up my purse off the floor and
>dumped it in the seat and then he got Gary's camera from
>the backseat and opened it and took the film out.
>
>Gary called out to him repeatedly, "That's the wrong
>camera, that's not the film."  Ahem.
>
>So then he found my camera and opened it and said, "Where's
>the film." To which I replied that there wasn't any
>(anyone could see that).  So then he told Gary to quit
>lying.  hahaha.  Told you he was stoopid.
>
>So I asked the Texas state policeman bringing up my rear (we all had a
>triage of our own personal police, front, back and side) if
>he had sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution.  He
>crossed his arms and looked far away, and nodded
>imperceptably.  So then I asked him if he had ever READ it,
>to which he didn't reply.
>
>About two minutes later, as I put out a cigarette on the
>ground, the state policeman pointed to it and said,
>loudly, "YOU'RE LITTERING IN TEXAS!" (Oh, shit, big
>trouble now, fer sure.)  So I picked it up.  I gave it to
>Gary. I asked the nice policeman if his name was Ody or if
>he'd ever been to Alice's Restaurant and wasn't that in
>Texas?
>
>So then the state-policeman-in-charge says the FBI has
>arrived and tells us to pull the car off to the side of
>the road by the big tent.  All this time, we've been quite
>a spectacle in the middle of the road.  Remember, this is a
>PRESS exit and plenty of press had passed by . . . and
>stopped, and we now, thankfully, had lots of film rolling
>in our direction.
>
>The state-policeman-in-charge says, "They're going to
>question you one at a time, who wants to go first?" So I
>said I did.
>
>Before we had embarked on this adventure, John and I had discussed whether
>or not the night's planned events might bring the FBI out
>of the woodwork, because we had not been able to serve a
>copy of the legal papers on the head FBI agent (they were
>avoiding us, but that's another story).  So I had taken a
>copy of the paperwork from the Court with me, just in case
>we happened to actually run into an FBI agent.  I took
>that in with me for my "questioning."
>
>The tent was off to the side of the roadblock.  Inside, it was warm.  There
>were four metal chairs in a semi-circle, with an FBI agent
>on each end of the semi-circle.  I sat down in the middle.
> A bunch of state policemen came in.  The atmosphere was
>clearly one of "We're the big boys and we're gonna show
>you how it's done, fellas" (from the FBI side) and the
>State Troopers were dead-pan but smirking as things
>progressed.
>
>First, the agents both stuck their ID badges RIGHT in my
>face and said they were FBI (deep tone of voice, for
>effect).  Gee, was I ever intimidated (not).
>
>So I asked Agent Callaghan (it said so on his ID) if he was
>going to see Jeff Jamar, the officer in charge of FBI
>operations, later in the day.  He said he was, so I handed
>him the envelope with the legal papers in it.  He opened
>it and looked at the court documents and said, "Where'd you
>get this official seal?"
>
>Duh.
>
>So I patiently explained that the good clerks at the
>federal district courts often seem compelled to stamp
>legal pleadings with an official looking seal that they
>apparently have on hand for whenever the mood hits them,
>and that it seemed to happen most regularly whenever I
>filed a LAWSUIT against somebody.
>
>Duh.
>
>So then Agent Caballo, who had been steadily writing down all the
>information from my Avis rent-a-car paperwork, my AEN press
>badge, and my driver's license, said, "How come your
>driver's license number doesn't match the Avis car
>paperwork?" I didn't have a clue, honestly.  So I told him
>to ask Avis, I didn't have a clue.  So he said my Avis
>paperwork was phoney.
>
>So next, Callaghan says our press badges were phoney, too, to which I
>replied they were not, that I was a member of a legitimate
>electronic news service.  So he wanted to know where I got
>the badge and I said the same place CBS, NBC and every-
>other-body gets theirs.  To which he said, "Where?" And I
>said, "That's your job, you find out."
>
>So about that time, I figured it was time for Doc
>Thompson's Constitutional Law Search and Seizure 101 short
>course for these fellows.
>
>I asked them if I was under arrest.  Callaghan said, "No,
>we just want to ask you some questions."
>
>[If you are not free to leave, you are under arrest.
>Edwards v. Arizona and Mendell v. U.S. and recently, U.S.
>v. Nachtigal.]
>
>I gave him a few pointers on this subject.  He said, "We
>aren't here to discuss the legalities of the situation."
>To which I replied, "THAT's been rather obvious from the
>beginning, hasn't it?"
>
>Then I launched into a tirade about the BATF screwing it
>up, the FBI coming in to cover it up, and there were
>people like me who knew EXACTLY what was going on and that
>whitebread America wasn't going to put up with this kind
>of thing any longer and that every one of them would be
>made to answer for these crimes.  By this time, I was
>shaking my finger in his face.  I was almost old enough to
>be his mother and he reacted as if I was, too.
>
>He sort of ducked a little, looked pale and didn't say
>anything.  So I said, "If I'm not under arrest, then I'm
>free to go.  I need my property back." They gave it to me
>and I left.
>
>Next, Gary was going in and I went in with him.  On the way in, one of the
>troopers stopped me and said, "You wait in the car" and I
>said, "No, I'm his ATTORNEY."  They made me prove it, so I
>showed them a few bar cards, like a poker hand, and said,
>"Pick one."  Then I went in with Gary.  His interview was
>MUCH shorter.  Along the lines of "Is this your attorney?"
>"Yes." "Where'd you get this ID?"  "I'd advise you not to
>answer that." "My attorney says not to answer."  "Is he
>under arrest?" "No." "No? Then he's free to leave."  "This
>passport picture looks phoney." "Fine, prove it, charge
>him, or give it back and we're leaving."  They gave it
>back, we left.
>
>John's interrogation was faster still.  He was about twice
>as tall as either of them (he's 6'4", 220).  We went in,
>sat down, they said, "Is this your attorney?" He said,
>"When it's NECESSARY.  Is it NECESSARY?"  "Is he under
>arrest? No? Then he's free to leave, right?" He got his
>driver's license, we left.
>
>Now that's not the end of it.  The next day, at the press
>conference, the FBI announced that we had been arrested
>for having phoney press credentials.
>This was a flat lie.  We were never charged with anything
>and the credentials were not phoney.
>
>This whole thing had been done solely to discredit John and I because we
>were representing David Koresh.  And the FBI putting out
>this false information was more propoganda, to get the
>press to discredit us, just like they have Koresh.  It
>didn't work, except for one asshole TV reporter here in
>Indianapolis and CNN.  CNN apparently had news footage of
>someone in a paddy-wagon (it most assuredly was NOT me or
>John or any of us, there was no paddy wagon anywhere
>around, either), along with the story.
>
>So much for CNN's credibility in my book.  And so much for
>channel 59 here in Indianapolis, too.
>
>===
>
>After John and I were "detained for questioning", the next day, we got the
>film developed and lo and behold, my picture of the kgBATF
>agent pointing his MP5 machine gun at us, his finger
>plainly on the trigger, the safety off, was good as gold.
>We got it blown up to an 11" x 14" and we've been showing
>it to all the news media who will film it, which is quite a
>few so far.  It shows up REALLY well on camera, too.
>
>And I also tried to file criminal charges against him with
>the local sheriff's office.  The lower ranking officers
>wanted to do it and said what happened was illegal, but
>the report taking was assigned to a Lt. Larry Lynch who
>refused to take a report and told me to see the DA
>personally on Monday if I wanted to do that.
>
>So we're filing a lawsuit instead for the illegal search and seizure.
>
>===
>
>The BATF and FBI each have their own command-headquarters
>building, about three buildings apart from one another,
>over on a small airstrip owned by:
>
>CHRYSLER TECHNOLOGIES.
>
>Chrysler technologies is a defense contractor and it led John to speculate
>that perhaps the Chrysler buyout was even more of a sellout
>than it appeared.
>
>The FBI's building was surrounded by a chain link fence,
>with one driveway into it, with a guard post and two-three
>guards manning it at all times.
>The guards at the guard post all looked like rent-a-cops or national guard.
>The FBI set up was on the edge of the runway.
>
>There's a big airplane hangar and sticking out of the door
>of the hangar was the tail end of a camouflaged C5A
>transport plane.  We also saw two plain white, absolutely
>no markings, small jets, along with two Move-Cargo (blue
>star on the tail) jets (Move-cargo, I think, is supposed to
>be a freight service, but it sure smells a lot like "Air
>America".  Oh well).
>
>Back into the area a long ways (we couldn't get close) there was a very
>pretentious, foreboding looking building, one story, with a
>LOT of lights around the outside of it, that was probably
>where they have been taking all the people that came out
>of the Waco retreat for "questioning" before taking them
>to jail.
>
>We saw two BLACK helicopters on three different days, flying, landing, and
>landed.  They *do* reflect light funny and they show up on
>a movie camera film as sort of a dull black-green, but
>they most definitely are a flat black in person. There is
>small red printing back on the tail section that I
>couldn't read and on the top of the very front, there is a
>very bright, almost flourescently bright, green patch with
>a bit of white swirled in it. I haven't a clue what that
>is or what it means or why it's there.  One of the
>helicopters was flying map-of-the-earth and practicing
>strafing patterns when we saw it flying.
>
>The kgBATF didn't rate the fancy digs.  Their building is a
>cement block one-story building up the road, no fence
>around it.  All they have is two kgBATF agents in their
>private cars hanging out at the driveway coming in off the
>road.  We didn't even know they were guards and drove right
>by them.
>
>On Friday, there were no other vehicles other than POV's (privately owned
>vehicles) or obviously military or fed unmarked cars.  On
>Saturday, though, there was a "US Department of the
>Treasury" BOMB truck at the BATF headquarters and a large
>firetruck at the FBI headquarters.  We thought sure the
>shit was going to hit the fan then but it didn't.
>
>I got a few pictures of all of this, including the black helicopters.
>
>===

I've deleted the request for money.  People can find the original
article if they care.
-- 
ted frank               | "Why do axe murderers only attack when you're
[t h f 2] at [ellis.uchicago.edu] |     partially nude /
the u of c law school   |  Or taking a bath?" 
standard disclaimers    |                           -- Camper Van Beethoven