HOW TO TOPPLE A GOVERNMENT WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.
HOW A SMALL TOWN NOBODY BROUGHT DOWN A PRESIDENT. D.L.BLEWIITT, jJ.D. APRIL 16,2016
Apprehensive didn’t even begin to describe my state that day. I knew he was coming because the County Clerk tipped me off about the inquiries a few days after I lost my election. I had been bombarded by a shit-storm of problems, but this was probably the worse. I was scared as hell and afraid I could not hold my nerves in check at the meeting. I was scared shitless.
I knew that the IRS was checking on me so the phone call for an appointment came as no surprise. However, having read about the abuses of some government agencies and their use of terror tactics to obtain compliance, I considered overdosing on insulin. When he walked into my office, I was surprised. He introduced himself and sat down in front of my desk, opening his brief-case. He seemed more nervous than I was, and was actually shaking. He shook as he took out his file and dropped it on the floor, spilling the contents in random fashion. I came around my desk to help him pick things up and noticed the very visible oval seal on the file, indicating that it came from the “intelligence division,” which instigated criminal investigations.
However, I was gracious and invited him to have coffee with me in the drugstore downstairs in my building. As we left the office suite, my secretary slipped into my office and photocopied his whole file, while we got to know each other over coffee. He was the first IRS agent I had met who came by himself. Previously, when interviewed, there were always two of them. That was standard for criminal investigations. The difference was that never before was I the target of an investigation, my clients were. I knew enough about their procedures to know that the oval stamp on the file meant trouble. Even though the agent said that it was an audit, and that it would not be criminal unless they found something in the nature of a crime in their audit, the seal belied that fact.
After coffee, we returned to my office. He started. He explained the audit procedure to me and told me what years he would be investigating, which were from when I first started practicing law until the last year. He explained the procedure, and told me he would be requesting documents from me that I had to produce. If I didn’t produce them, he would subpoena them and things would go bad for me. He then gave me a list of documents he wished to see at our next meeting. After 4 hours, he left. I considered having a nervous breakdown, but suspected that such a course would not be beneficial. So, I went over the list with my secretary and to the file that she had copied from the agent and went home. I then got a box to put the documents in and mixed them up as best I could.
For the next 87 weeks, he became a regular figure in my office visiting at least once a week and interviewing my clients in the meantime. This apparently caused in many problems, because most my clients were hippies, had no addresses or were “street people” who existed in the thousands in Boulder at that time. The ones they did find, probably frustrated the agent because most of them told him that they hadn’t paid anything yet, although they intended to. To say my collections were low and very marginal was an understatement. Although they didn’t discover much income or revenue, they did manage to scare the hell out of most my clients. Imagine the reaction of young college age students, approached by federal agents who displayed badges, and explained that they were investigating their attorney. For some reason, this was bad for business and in the year and a half in which I was audited my officer shrunk from 6 lawyers to just me. The clients that did pay were Hispanics, Blacks, and Italians, all facing various criminal charges. Being told that their lawyer didn’t help instill much confident in them that I should be their lawyer. The ones that remained were not very helpful to the agents. Most had bad experience with agents previously.
This was just one of many problems I encountered while running for Dist. Atty. in Boulder County. I enjoyed politics. I loved making speeches and explaining positions on things. Earlier, I had attended a defense lawyers’ convention where the Nixon administration’s policies and assault on common-law were discussed by the participants. It was a fund convention and there were numerous luminary defense attorneys there, appearing in the costume of the defense attorney of that era. Many of them had beards and sideburns, or at least mustaches. Some wore turquoise jewelry. None of them wore ties and sports coats. To describe them as casual didn’t even approach their appearance. Curiously, our convention was followed by that of the district attorney’s and Attys. Generals of various states, who contrasted radically in both appearance and dress. In fact, one political writer satirized the 2 differences as a pipe dream or acid trip.
I had no desire to be district attorney and prosecute people, but I felt obligated to stop the police state juggernaut that I could see starting to trample the citizenry. Although the administration talked in code referring to “law and order,” it was obvious to all but the most stupid that the administration was talking about poor people and minorities who were prone to rebel against the status quo. There been riots in Newark, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities. Black power was on the rise, with black militants raising their arms in a symbol of defiance carrying assault rifles in the other arm. There were many political prosecutions such as the Chicago 7 trial. The Black Panther headquarters had been raided in Chicago and the leader murdered by the police. The people were fearful, and the police establishment fed their fear and used it to increase their power. Corrupt police said they were protecting themselves by firing 50 bullets into a door because they were fired at. Curiously, the door showed no holes whatsoever coming from within the apartment. This didn’t stop the corrupt officials from prosecuting the occupants.
I believed the Constitution was in jeopardy. There were concerted attacks on search and seizure rules, confession rules, and right to counsel rules, in addition to those spelling out speedy trial and free speech. Most cases that I was involved in during that period had constitutional issues, particularly regarding search and seizure. Local states had been complaining about having to adhere to federal standards regarding due process and now had an audience. This was the beginning of filling the prisons. Information gathering, or intelligence, was being privatized and vital information upon which decisions to prosecute were made was unavailable to defendants, which left decisions totally up to the district attorney’s office without any check or balance. An informer system was being encouraged whereby various criminal groups could sabotage the competition and thereby eliminated. Law enforcement was too blind or stupid to figure that out, or else they just didn’t care. Since then, there has been a relentless four decades long attack on the Constitution and the implementation of a police state. Independent Courts were in the way and had to be changed. The Constitution was in the way and had to be abolished. Legislators had to be controlled. The only power recognized by the business model was that of the executive.
I’d been appointed to a group funded by HEW that was to set standards for drug abuse treatment. This was abolished by the administration, funds impounded, and given to a brand-new agency called Law Enforcement Assistance Agency. (LEAA). There appeared to be a witch hunt starting which I believed would ultimately harm the country. I also served on a group that was created to rewrite the Colorado criminal code. However, at the first meeting, a former supreme court judge passed out copies of a new code, explaining that this was going to be the new criminal code and that we were to okay the code so that he could present it to the Legislature. In other words, the politicians wanted rubberstamps rather than ideas. As a result, many defense attorneys walked out some of us came back and spent a year working out compromises in the criminal code. When it was presented to the Legislature, the Dist. Atty.’s Association appeared and lobbied out each and every change that we have fought for year to have included in the bill. That, to me, was a final straw, and I decided to run for District Attorney.
I based my campaign upon the U.S. Constitution, passing out copies at campaign rallies. My pitch was that if selected I would attend the district attorneys Association meetings and teach them how to read the Constitution, since obviously had never done so. That didn’t appeal to the law and order crowd, but it excited the young people.
Additionally, I had several highly publicized cases. One case in particular, I later discovered would cause a schism between the CIA and the FBI. That case involved a college professor who inexplicably disappeared, and a woman accused of causing his disappearance. They were each among my first clients, and I was way out of my element. The college professor disappeared causing months of speculation in both the local press and New York and Washington press, as well as radio and TV. Another client, who was referred to me by a draft of lawyer in Chicago was accused of causing his disappearance. Speculation was rampant a president of the University of Colorado was exposed as being in CIA asset, a leader of a national student group was exposed as working for the CIA as well as some press there were other strange deaths around the woman and one newspaper described her as a serial killer.
A Denver district attorney was visited by both CIA and FBI agents and requested the DA to drop an investigation of the matter, which he did. However, Richard Helms, Director of the CIA refused to identify his agent who accompanied the FBI agent to the district attorney, which pissed off J Edgar Hoover. At that time, the administration was planning to combine all the intelligence agencies into one superagency pursuant to what was called the Huston Plan. Since the directors of the 2 largest agencies were speaking to each other, the plan got scuttled. Because of that, the Pres., Richard Nixon, formed a group later referred to as the plumbers to gain information not provided to him by those agencies. When the plumbers got arrested breaking into an apartment office building called the Watergate building, the resulting scandal toppled the presidency.
While this was going on, I was blithely campaigning, oblivious to all of that intrigue. I told the voters that I would open a grand jury and find out what happened to the college professor who disappeared. I had also diagrammed the drug trade in Boulder and found a group that seemed to be able to operate with immunity. I promised to call a grand jury to find out why. I later found out the scared the hell out of a lot of different people in at least 3 Government agencies. At the same time, the Government was working overtime to sabotage or destroy me, all because I was in a position to learn things and cared enough to do so. So, before I turned 30, is had been a judge, lawyer, accused kidnapper, accused burglar, accused arsonist, accused Mafioso, and political candidate. Since I had no allies in Boulder, I moved my practice to Denver at the invitation of some political figures there who offered to help. Along the way, I received help from many sources, most of whom were not known to me at the time, but turned out to be as powerful as my enemies. This is the beginning of the short version. I am still working on memoirs as time and finances allow.
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