Posted by
Rob on Saturday, February 02, 2008 1:43:57 PM
I am going to be posting on issues as I see them. If you don't agree that is fine. Feel free to comment. The first thing I want to Post is a letter from an attorney named Spence. It is from his book From Freedom to Slavery, The Rebirth of Tyranny in America. Most people remember the standoff at Ruby Ridge at which Randy Weaver lost his son of 14 to a shot in the back by a Federal Marshal who the boy had fired in the direction of when Marshalls shot his dog. Mr. Weavers wife was assasinated by an FBI sniper soon after. Here is a letter from Mr. Spence to a friend about why he was defending Weaver. First They Came For The Fascists....
by Gerry Spence
Randy Weaver's wife was dead, shot through the head while she clutched her
child to her breast. His son was shot, twice. First they shot the child's
arm, probably destroyed the arm. The child cried out. Then, as the child
was running they shot him in the back. Randy Weaver himself had been shot
and wounded and Kevin Harris, a kid the Weavers had all but adopted was
dying of a chest wound. The blood hadn't cooled on Ruby Hill before the
national media announced that I had taken the defense of Randy Weaver. Then
all hell broke loose. My sister wrote me decrying my defense of this
"racist". There were letters to the editors in several papers that
expressed their disappointment that I would lend my services to a person
with Weaver's beliefs. And I received a letter from my close friend Alan
Hirschfield, the former chairman of chief executive officer of Columbia
Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox, Imploring me to withdraw.
He Wrote:
"After much thought I decided to write this letter to you. It represents a
very profound concern on my part regarding your decision to represent Randy
Weaver. While I applaud and fully understand your motives in taking such a
case, I nonetheless find this individual defense troubling. It is so
because of the respectability and credibility your involvement imparts to a
cause which I find despicable.
.(....remainder of letter deleted for brevity, but wanted Gerry to not
defend Weaver, as it would support the militant groups......)
The next morning I delivered the following letter by carrier to Mr
Hirschfield
"I cherish your letter. It reminds me once again of our friendship, for
only friends can speak and hear each other in matters so deeply a part of
the soul. And your letter reminds me as well, as we must all be reminded,
of the unspeakable pain every Jew has suffered from the horrors of the
Holocaust. No better evidence of our friendship could be shown than your
intense caring concerning what I do and what I stand for.
I met Randy Weaver in jail on the evening of his surrender. His eyes had no
light in them. He was unshaven and dirty. He was naked except for yellow
plastic prison coveralls, and he was cold. His small feet were clad in
rubber prison sandals. In the stark setting of the prison conference room
he seemed diminutive and fragile. He had spent 11 days and nights in a
standoff against the government and he had lost. His wife was dead. His son
was dead. His friend was near death. Weaver himself had been wounded. He
had lost his freedom. He had lost it all. And now he stood face to face
with a stranger who towered over him and whose words were not words of
comfort. When I spoke, you, Alan, were on my mind.
"My name is Gerry Spence" I began. "I'm the lawyer you've been told about.
Before we begin to talk I want you to understand that I do not share any of
your political or religious beliefs. Many of my dearest friends are Jews.
My daughter is married to a Jew. My sister is married to a black man. She
has adopted a black child. I deplore what the Nazis stand for. If I defend
you I will not defend your political beliefs or your religious beliefs, but
your right as an American citizen to a fair trial." His quiet answer was,
"That is all I ask." Then I motioned him to a red plastic chair and I took
a similar one. And as the guards marched by and from time to time peered
in, he told his story.
Alan, you are a good and fair man. That I know. Were it otherwise we would
not be such friends. Yet it is your pain I hear most clearly--exacerbated,
I know, by the fact that your friend should represent your enemy. Yet what
drew me to this case was my own pain. Let me tell you the facts.
Randy Weaver's principal crime against the government had been his failure
to appear in court on a charge of possessing illegal firearms. The first
crime was not his. He had been entrapped--intentionally, systematically,
patiently, purposefully entrapped--by a federal agent who solicited him to
cut off, contrary to Federal law, the barrels of a couple of shotguns.
Randy Weaver never owned an illegal weapon in his life. He was not engaged
in the manufacture of illegal weapons. The idea of selling an illegal
firearm had never entered his mind until the government agent suggested it
and encouraged him to act illegally. The government knew he needed the
money. He is as poor as an empty cupboard. He had three daughters, a son
and a wife to support. He lived in a small house in the woods without
electricity or running water. Although he is a small, frail man, with tiny,
delicate hands who probably weighs no more than a hundred and twenty
pounds, he made an honest living by chopping firewood and by seasonal work
as a logger.
This man is wrong, his beliefs are wrong. His relationship to mankind is
wrong. He was perhaps legally wrong when he failed to appear and defend
himself in court. But the first wrong was not his. Nor was the first wrong
the government's. The first wrong was ours.
In this country we embrace the myth that we are still a democracy when we
know that we are not a democracy, that we are not free, that the government
does not serve us but subjugates us. Although we give lip service to the
notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the
people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like
timid sheep while the wolf killed, first the weak, then the strays, then
those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock
belonged to the wolf. We did not care about the weak or about the strays.
they were not a part of the flock. We did not care about those on the outer
edges. They had chosen to be there. But as the wolf worked its way towards
the center of the flock we discovered that we were now on the outer edges.
Now we must look the wolf squarely in the eye. That we did not do so when
the first of us was ripped and torn and eaten was the first wrong. It was
our wrong.
That none of us felt responsible for having lost our freedom has been a
part of an insidious progression. In the beginning the attention of the
flock was directed not to the marauding wolf but to our own deviant members
within the flock. We rejoiced as the wolf destroyed them for they were our
enemies. We were told that the weak lay under the rocks while we faced the
blizzards to rustle our food, and we did not care when the wolf took them.
We argued that they deserved it. When one of our flock faced the wolf alone
it was always eaten. Each of us was afraid of the wolf, but as a flock we
were not afraid. Indeed the wolf cleansed the herd by destroying the weak
and dismembering the aberrant element within. As time went by, strangely,
the herd felt more secure under the rule of the wolf. It believed that by
belonging to this wolf it would remain safe from all the other wolves. But
we were eaten just the same.
No one knows better than children of the Holocaust how the lessons of
history must never be forgotten. Yet Americans, whose battle cry was once,
"Give me liberty or give me death", have sat placidly by as a new king was
crowned. In America a new king was crowned by the shrug of our shoulders
when our neighbors were wrongfully seized. A new king was crowned when we
capitulated to a regime that is no longer sensitive to people, but to non
people--to corporations, to money and to power. The new king was crowned
when we turned our heads as the new king was crowned as we turned our heads
as the poor and the forgotten and the damned were rendered mute and
defenseless, not because they were evil but because, in the scheme of our
lives, they seemed unimportant, not because they were essentially dangerous
but because they were essentially powerless. The new king was crowned when
we cheered the government on as it prosecuted the progeny of our ghettos
and filled our prisons with black men whose first crime was that they were
born in the ghettos. We cheered the new king on as it diluted our right to
be secure in our homes against unlawful searches and to be secure in the
courts against unlawful evidence. We cheered the new king on because we
were told that our sacred rights were but "loopholes" but which our
enemies: the murderers and rapists and thieves and drug dealers, escaped.
We were told that those who fought for our rights, the lawyers, were worse
than the thieves who stole from us in the night, that our juries were
irresponsible and ignorant and ought not to be trusted. We watched with
barely more than a mumble as the legal system that once protected us became
populated with judges who were appointed by the new king. At last the new
king was crowned when we forgot the lessons of history, that:when the
rights of our enemies have been wrested from them, we have lost our own
rights as well, for the same rights serve both citizen and criminal.
When Randy Weaver failed to appear in court because he had lost his trust
in the government we witnessed the fruit of our crime. The government
indeed had no intent to protect his rights. The government had but one
purpose, as it remains today, the disengagement of this citizen from
society. Those who suffered and died in the Holocaust must have exquisitely
understood such illicit motivations of power.
I have said that I was attracted to the case out of my own pain. Let me
tell you the facts: a crack team of trained government marksmen sneaked on
to Randy Weaver's small isolated acreage on a reconnaissance mission
preparatory to a contemplated arrest. They wore camouflage suits and were
heavily armed. They gave Randy no warning of their coming. They came
without a warrant. They never identified themselves.
The Weavers owned 3 dogs, 2 small crossbred collie mutts and a yellow lab,
a big pup a little over a year old whose most potent weapon was his tail
with which he could beat a full grown man to death. The dog, Striker, was a
close member of the Weaver family. Not only was he the companion of the
children, but in winter he pulled the family sled to haul their water
supply from the spring below. When the dogs discovered the intruders they
raised a ruckus, and Randy his friend Kevin, and Randy's 14 year old son
Sam, grabbed their guns and followed the dogs to investigate.
When the government agents were confronted with the barking dog, they did
what men who have been taught to kill do. They shot Striker. The boy,
barely larger than a 10 year old child, heard the dog's yelp, saw the dog
fall dead. and as a 14 year old might, he returned the fire. Then the
government agents shot the child in the arm. He turned and ran. the arm
flopping, and when he did, the officers, still unidentified as such, shot
the child in the back and killed him.
Kevin Harris witnessed the shooting of the dog. Then he saw Sam being shot
as the boy turned and ran. To Kevin there was no alternative. He knew if he
ran these intruders, whoever they were, would kill him as well. In defense
of himself he raised his rifle and shot in the direction of the officer who
had shot and killed the boy. Then while the agents were in disarray, Kevin
retreated to the Weaver cabin.
In the meantime Randy Weaver had been off in another direction and had only
heard the shooting, the dog's yelp and the gunfire that followed. Randy
hollered for his son and shot his shotgun into the air to attract the boy.
"Come on home Sam, Come home."
Over and over he called.
Finally he heard the boy call back "I'm comin' Dad". Those were the last
words he ever heard from his son.
Later that same day, Randy, Kevin, and Vicki Weaver, Randy's wife went down
to where the boy lay and carried his body back to an outbuilding near the
cabin. There they removed the child's clothing and bathed his wounds and
prepared the body. The next evening Weaver's oldest daughter, Sarah,
sixteen, Kevin, and Randy went back to the shed to have a last look at Sam.
When they did, government snipers opened fire. Randy was hit in the
shoulder. The three turned and ran for the house where Vicki, with her 10
month old baby in her arms stood holding the door open. As the 3 entered
the house Vicki was shot and slowly fell to her knees, her head resting on
the floor like one kneeling in prayer. Randy ran up and took the baby that
she clutched, and then he lifted his wife's head. Half her face was blown
away.
Kevin was also hit. Huge areas of muscle in his arm were blown out, and his
lung was punctured in several places. Randy and his 16 year old daughter
stretched the dead mother on the floor of the cabin and covered he with a
blanket where she remained for over 8 days as the siege progressed.
By this time there were officers by the score, troops, armored personnel
carriers, helicopters, radios, televisions, robots, and untold armaments
surrounding the little house. I will not burden you with the misery and
horror the family suffered in this stand-off. I will tell you that finally
Bo Gritz, Randy's former commander in the special forces, came to help in
the negotiations. Gritz told Randy that if he would surrender, Gritz would
guarantee him a fair trial, and before the negotiations were ended, Randy
came to the belief that I would represent him. Although Gritz had contacted
me before I had spoke to Randy, I had only agreed to talk to Randy. But the
accuracy of what was said between Gritz and me and what was hard by Randy
somehow got lost in the horror, and Randy's belief that I would represent
him if he surrendered was in part, his motivation for finally submitting to
arrest.
And so my friend Allan, you can now understand the pain I feel in this
case. It is pain that comes from the realization that we have permitted a
government to act in our name and in our behalf in a criminal fashion. It
is the pain of watching the government as it now attempts to lie about its
criminal complicity in this affair and to cover its crimes by charging
Randy with crimes he did not commit, including murder. It is the pain of
seeing an innocent woman with a child in her arms murdered and innocent
children subjected to these atrocities. Indeed, as a human being I feel
Randy's irrepressible pain and horror and grief.
I also feel your pain, my friend. Yet I know that in the end, if you were
the judge at the trial of Adolph Eichmann, you would have insisted that he
not have ordinary council, but the best council. In the same way, if you
were the judge in Randy's case, and you had a choice, I have no doubt that
despite your own pain you might well have appointed me to defend him. In
the end you must know that the Holocaust must never stand for part
justice,or average justice but for the most noble of ideals--that even the
enemies of the Jews themselves must receive the best justice the system can
provide. If it were otherwise the meaning of the Holocaust would be
accordingly besmirched.
Alan, I agree with your arguments. They are proper and they are true. I
agree that my defense of Randy Weaver may attach a legitimacy and dignity
to his politics and religion. But it may, as well, stand for the
proposition that there are those who don't condone this kind of criminal
action by our government. I view the defense of Randy Waver's case as an
opportunity to address a more vital issue, one that transcends a white
separatist movement or notions of the supremacy of one race over another,
for the ultimate enemy of any people is not the angry hate groups that
fester within, but a government itself that has lost its respect for the
individual. The ultimate enemy of democracy is not the drug dealer or the
crooked politician or the crazed skinhead. The ultimate enemy is the new
king that has become so powerful it can murder its own citizens with
impunity.
To the same extent that Randy Weaver cannot find justice in this country,
we too will be deprived of justice. At last, my defense of Randy Weaver is
a defense of every Jew and every Gentile, for every black and every gay who
loves freedom and deplores tyranny.
Although I understand that it will be easy for my defense of Randy Weaver
to be confused with an endorsement of the politics of the Aryan Nation, my
challenge will be to demonstrate that we can still be a nation where the
rights of the individual, despite his race, color, religion, remain
supreme. If this be not so, then we are all lost. If this is not so, it is
because we have forgotten the lessons of our histories--the history of the
American Revolution as well as the history of the Holocaust.
And so my friend Allan, If I were to withdraw from the defense of Randy
Weaver as you request, I would be required to abandon my belief that this
system has any remaining virtue. I would be more at fault than the federal
government that has murdered these people, for I have not been trained to
murder but to defend. I would be less of a man than my client who had the
courage of his convictions. I would lose all respect for myself. I would be
unable to any longer be your friend, for friendship must always have its
foundation in respect. Therefore as my friend, I ask that you not require
this of me. I ask instead for your prayers, your understanding and your
continued love.
As ever,
Gerry Spence
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
aver. .