Hope is vain, however. That safeguard is mostly irrelevant and procedural.
To illustrate that point, in five years under indictment, I had two separate attorneys with very different levels of security clearances, including a former federal prosecutor, the outstanding Mr. Brian Shaughnessy of Washington, DC, who regularly handles the most high level and complicated security cases. Neither attorney was ever able to determine what those two "secret charges" were. Neither attorney ever saw the "secret evidence."
More disturbingly, the attorney is strictly prohibited from revealing any part of that "secret evidence" to the Defendant. The Defendant cannot see it or know about it, and therefore cannot provide an effective response to the attorney to rebut it. Thus, ironically, the Patriot Act handicaps the defendant's ability to assist in the preparation of their Defense strategy.
Thus, it renders the Defendant INCOMPETENT TO STAND TRIAL.
Ah, the plot thickens.
Collins: It does in a very major way. What actions could be so serious as to deny your constitutional rights? Did you ever figure out what those "secret charges" might have been? Surely you know what you were doing in October, 1999 and October, 2001.
Lindauer: Oh yeah. And I'll bet your readers think those accusations must be very serious! Wouldn't you think? I must have done something far too horrible for the government to whisper aloud! Wanna bet?
In five years, we could only guess about those two charges. We surmised that in October 1999, I was indicted for blocking the Iraqi Government in Baghdad from making financial campaign contributions to the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign.
That's right. With immediate assistance from my U.S. Intelligence contacts, I stopped Iraq from making illegal campaign contributions to the 2000 Bush Election campaign--at least through my channels.
We have speculated that perhaps Saddam gave money to the Bush Campaign in 2000 through somebody else and some other channel. And the Republicans don't want anybody to know about it. Perhaps I was indicted to stop the Democrats from investigating campaign contribution records.
Consider that Andy Card was warned of Iraq's attempts in two progress reports on March 1, 2001 and December 2, 2001. The Republican leadership that attacked me was very much aware that this question of illegal campaign contributions was hanging out there. And I was indicted for stopping it from happening.
Collins: What about the second "secret charge"?
That was allegedly in October, 2001. We're still in the dark on that one; however, we think it involves my efforts to collect health statistics from Baghdad regarding depleted uranium left behind by the United States in the first Gulf War.
Depleted Uranium has resulted in a spike in Iraqi birth defects and cancer rates from long-term exposure. They say Iraqi children suffer cancer "like the flu," it's so common.
Tragically, exposure to depleted uranium might seriously harm American soldiers and their future unborn children, too! I suspect it will become a major health risk for soldiers who return from repeated tours of duty in Iraq. When they start having families back home, we're going to hear about this.
That's probably all it took to categorize the documents as "secret evidence" and "secret charges." They didn't want my case to raise the profile of that health risk for Americans in Iraq. None of that health information was ever returned to me in discovery.
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