Letters to the Editor
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@Happy Jack
Has anyone here ever heard the term "provocateur"? Cointelpro used them. Is it too conspiratorial to think that DHS, ATF, or FBI might occasionally resort to the same. Happy Jack's "stranger" sounds a lot like one of those to me.
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Sounds like a frame-up to me... Here's why.
I hope that Waters received a competent defense. If I were a juror, it would be hard to convince me that a woman who was about to commit an act which demanded considerable presence of mind and precision would have been stalling around, making a purchase in Olympia, 48 minutes before what might have been the most momentous act of her life. She then would have had to drive 60 miles to Seattle to meet her co-conspirators, averaging 75 miles an hour, not only for her time on I-5, but for the distance from the purchase point to the meeting point, each of which probably involved city street driving, traffic lights, etc. She would have risked a ticket that would not only delayed her, but would have placed her conclusively on the route she took. I don't know where the Seattle meeting location was, but the Center for Urban Horticulture is on the north side of the city, well off Highway 5, down North 45th Street, through the University center and northeast of the main campus.
To cover that distance, I can't imagine that she would have made the appointment without averaging over 80 mph on I-5, probably 15 mph over the limit. The traffic for the portions around Olympia, past SeaTac and through south Seattle, would have been moderate to heavy at that time in the early evening.
I hope counsel checked road conditions to ascertain if there were construction slowdowns at the time of the alleged drive. I would have even pulled the tickets written by the state troopers during those minutes to see how many cruisers she might have passed on her supposed dash to the meeting, perhaps making the prosecution's tale even more implausible.
The testimony of her putative co-conspirators sounds like the stuff of which bogus murder convictions are fabricated: Alleged "confessions" claimed to be made to career criminal cellmates,looking for prosecutorial leniency for instance. One even denied her participation. That would have been a statement "against interest," and would have jeopardized his deal with the Feds.
There were no disclosures to investigators until after much time and many interviews, quite uncommon with cooperating witnesses. I would have looked for videotapes and listened to audiotapes of those interrogations to see if words weren't being put in the mouths of the informants who may have only vaguely known Waters.
This certainly does not sound as if any sort of "justice" was done.
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Penalty Should be Proportionate
I would certainly be against the death penalty for her.
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The discrepancy in jail sentences for boomers and gen x
Many people here have drawn apt parallels between the investigative methods used by the federal government against radicals in the 60s/70s and post 9/11.
But there is a major disparity in the jail sentences given to the convicted.
In 1972, four young men blew up a building on the campus of the UW-Madison as an anti-war protest. Although they detonated the bomb at time when the building would likely be vacant, they killed a grad a student in his lab. The bombers fled to Canada and were extradited (one is still at large). The longest sentence given to those caught was 23 years, and that person only served seven years in prison.
I find these two cases quite similar in several respects, though the bombing seemed far more likely to destroy and more likely to kill. And, of course, the bomb did kill and the fire did not. It wasn't just property damage; it was manslaughter.
But look at the huge discrepancy between the sentences that young boomers faced and those faced by young people today.
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so when you plant a bomb, phone it in first to evacuate the building
then it's not a violent act, let alone terrorism, according to some of you. that actually works for me and I whole heartedly endorse that. now where is Salon HQ?
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Correction: the bombing was in 1970, not 1972.
Sorry for the typo.
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Maybe I'm being too picky here
"She could spend as much as two decades behind bars for allegedly holding a walkie-talkie."
What the hell is that? The whole point of your article is that Waters could be innocent of the charges. This statement is a pointless minimization of the crime. She would not be locked up for "holding a walkie-talkie." She would be locked up for aiding and abetting an arson that caused over 2 million in property damage, plus destroying valuable environmental research.
Stick to your point. This one statement hurts your argument.
Nonetheless, thank you for the article. It's clear to me that this campaign by the Bush Justice Department is not as much about catching arsonists as it is about sending a chill through law-abiding environmental organizations.
It's like torture. They know it doesn't work - the real purpose of it is to spread fear in the innocent population of Iraq and beyond to squash dissent against the United States.
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Reasonable doubt
If the prosecution claims that you were hiding in a bush, then they have to show beyond a reasonable doubt that you did so. That condition is not met if there is reasonable doubt that you could have been there. I believe that the judge did not properly instruct the jury. I have no legal expertise; so I might have this wrong. Does anyone know better?
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I had a bad experience along these lines
Recently, I was detained as a terror suspect by local police, photographed, my car was illegally searched, and my camera and documents were confiscated. That episode - I later learned - triggered an FBI response network. I was taking photographs of NJ oil refineries that were to receive subsidies under a bill then pending before the legislature. I had testified in opposition to the bill.
About 10 days later - after I posted the photographs and analysis on my blog at NJ's largest newspaper - investigators from Homeland Security knocked on my door as part of an investigation of me. Here are the innocuous photo's the zealous Homeland Security folks were looking into:
Oil refineries subsidized by Corzine global warming bill
http://blog.nj.com/njv_bill_wolfe/2008/01/oil_refineries_subsidized_by_c.html