A Play Script

By Douglas Caddy

INDICTMENT RETURNED?

Presenting two Grand Jury Questions:

Should five Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court be indicted for fixing the 2000 Presidential election?

Is the 2004 Presidential election already rigged by Republican control of the computerized voting machines across the nation?

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About the play

The testimony of the named witnesses as to the question “Should five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court be indicted for fixing the 2000 presidential election?” is drawn verbatim from the statements of the witnesses made in books, articles and press releases. These are listed below. The books can be obtained from local bookstores or from Amazon.com

VOTING IRREGULARITIES IN FLORIDA DURING THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights June 2001.

THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA: HOW THE SUPREME COURT UNDERMINED THE CONSTITUTION AND CHOSE OUR PRESIDENT by Vincent Buglosi, with a Foreword by Gerry Spence (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books 2001)

“None Dare Call It Treason” by Vincent Bugliosi (The Nation Magazine January 22, 2001)

SUPREME INJUSTICE: HOW THE HIGH COURT HIJACKED ELECTION 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz (Oxford University Press 2001)

Press Release: NAACP AND NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS FILE FLORIDA VOTING RIGHTS LAWSUIT TO ELIMINATE UNFAIR VOTING PRACTICES (NAACP News January 10, 2001)

THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY: THE TRUTH ABOUT CORPORATE CONS, GLOBALIZATION, AND HIGH FINANCE FRAUDSTERS by Greg Palast (A Plume Book, published by the Penquin Group 2003)

TOO CLOSE TO CALL: THE THIRTY-SIX DAY BATTLE TO DECIDE THE 2000 ELECTION by Jeffrey Toobin (Random House Trade Paperbacks 2002)

“Texas Jailhouse Radio: The Story of Ray Hill” (Mother Jones Magazine December 2002)

P: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury. My name is ------ -----. Today I am appearing before the grand jury in the capacity as Special Prosecutor.

As members of the grand jury, you bear a heavy responsibility for seeing that justice is served in these United States. A person or persons can be charged to two ways with having engaged in criminal activity. One way is through an information. This is an instrument used by the prosecuting authorities directly to charge an individual or individuals with having committed a crime. An indictment, on the other hand, is an instrument by which members of the citizenry at large, sitting as a grand jury, after receiving evidence and hearing testimony, charge an individual or individuals with have committed a crime.

Today you will hear evidence presented by eight witnesses regarding this question:

Should five justices of the United States Supreme Court be indicted for fixing the 2000 presidential election?

After hearing the evidence, you will be asked to vote whether the five members of the Supreme Court should be indicted, or whether they should be no-billed.

You will also be asked, after hearing the evidence presented by two witnesses, to vote on whether a formal Grand Jury Report should be prepared on this second question:

Is the 2004 presidential election already being rigged by Republican control of the computerized voting machines across the nation?

On the first question as to whether the United States Supreme Court fixed the 2000 Presidential election, you will hear from eight witnesses who will briefly relate what they know about this subject. These witnesses include:

Mary Frances Berry, Chairperson of the United States Commission on Civil Rights,

Gerry Spence, one of the most well-known and successful defense attorneys in America,

Vincent Buglosi, author of "The Betrayal of America", who rose to national prominence as the prosecutor of Charles Manson and who also wrote "Helter Skelter" based on that case,

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School and author of "Supreme Injustice: How the Supreme Court Hijacked Election 2000",

Greg Palast, Investigative Reporter and author "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters",

Congressman Kweisi Mfume, President, NAACP, and

Jeffrey Tobin, attorney and author "Too Close to Call: The 36 Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election".

I shall now call the first witness: Mary Frances Berry, Chairperson of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Ms. Berry, why did the United States Commission on Civil Rights deem it was necessary after the 2000 presidential election to hold public hearings in Tallahassee, Florida in January 2001 and in Miami in the following month?

Berry: The purpose of the hearings was to investigate allegations that Florida voters were prevented from casting ballots or that their ballots were not counted in the November 2000 Presidential Election.

P: As a result of holding those hearings, did your Commission publish a report?

Berry: Yes, the Commission published the report in June 2001. Its title is "Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election." Copies of the report are available by writing the Commission. Also the report can be read on line by going to the Commission's website: www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report.htm

P: Could you please tell the members of the grand jury what were the findings of the Commission as contained in your report.

Berry: Voting is the language of our democracy. As the United States Supreme Court has declared, "No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live." It is clear that many people in Florida were denied this precious right. The Commission's investigation and report demonstrated that although this denial in Florida fell most heavily on African Americans, it also affected many others, including, but not limited to, individuals with disabilities, people requiring language assistance, and former felons.

Statewide, based on county-level estimates, African American voters were nearly 10 times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in the November 2000 election. Poor counties, particularly those with large minority populations, were most likely to use voting systems with higher spoilage rates than more affluent counties with significant white populations.

P: Did the State of Florida create a purge list of persons of color arbitrarily to remove these voters from the voter rolls so that they could not vote?

Berry: The State of Florida's statutorily mandated purge list, compiled by a private firm, was provided to county supervisors of elections with names that were inexact matches. The data provided demonstrated that this list had a 14.1 percent error rate. Many Floridians who were registered and voted in past elections were informed for the first time on November 7, 2000, that their names had been removed prior to Election Day. These individuals were given no opportunity to appeal this determination. An official of the Division of Elections dictated to representatives of the private firm to employ a strategy that resulted in a disproportionate number of eligible African Americans voters being removed from the voter registration rolls in error. In fact, one local supervisor of elections, who had never been convicted of a felony, received a letter stating that she was identified as a convicted felon.

P: Finally, Ms. Berry, in a nutshell, please tell the members of the grand jury what personal conclusion you reached regarding the 2000 election.

Berry: American voters are no longer disenfranchised through the use of poll taxes, literacy requirements, grandfather clauses, and other similar procedures. The Commission investigation, however, revealed a more subtle and possible more insidious form of disenfranchisement caused by the inexplicable lack of needed election resources and accountability of public officials entrusted to protect this critical and fundamental right.

P: Thank you, Ms. Barry, for your testimony. You are excused but I ask that you remain available for possible questions later from members of the grand jury, along with the other witnesses whose testimony is to follow.

I now call upon attorney Gerry Spence to come to the witness stand.

Mr. Spence, it is my understanding that you wish to confine your testimony to remarks about the courage of our next witness, Mr. Bugliosi, for his speaking out so forcibly about the roles of the five Supreme Court justices in the 2002 election.

Spence: My father used to say that the line between bravery and foolery is narrow. Few have walked that line with as much steadfast and principled mettle as Vince Bugliosi, a member of the legal brotherhood. To even consider privately whether the acts of those five U.S. Supreme Court Justices are criminal extends beyond the pale. But as the self-appointed prosecutor for the American public, that Brother Bugliosi should charge those judges publicly - in clear, legible print - of criminal acts is an apostasy that steals the breath. But Brother Vincent went further. He undertook in understandable English to expose how those five high judges, simply because they had the power to do so, stole an election from the people and delivered it as the spoils of power to the new king, thereby violating the laws the Justices swore to uphold and thereby reducing themselves to common thugs. Such an act of courage is difficult for most members of this often timid profession to appreciate. That there is one among us who has the courage to speak the truth into the very faces of the judges who purport to discover and preserve the truth is not only refreshing, it is divine.

Vincent Bugliosi has ripped the robes from those five judges to reveal the awesome obscenity beneath. He permits us to view the ghastly sight - the nude, unabashed, most white-skinned majority arrogantly standing above us with their legs uncrossed and their heads turned in shame. It is a pathetic spectacle that Bugliosi beckons us to behold - this high, hollowed court and its revered majority sold out to Power. It is not so much whether he is right as that a lawyer of courage has finally dragged these judges into the light so that we, in turn, may judge them and come to our own conclusions - if, indeed, we have the courage to do so.

P: Thank you Mr. Spence. You are excused but I ask that you remain available for any questions later from the grand jury.

I now call Mr. Vincent Bugliosi to the witness stand.

Mr. Buglisoi, you have written a book whose title is "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose our President." Also, I understand that before the book was published you wrote an article for The Nation magazine that was the most widely circulated article in that magazine's publishing history. The article's title is "None Dare Call it Treason" and it was published by The Nation in February 2001. Please tell us, as an attorney and former prosecutor, in your own words what you have come to believe about the role of five justices of the Supreme Court in the 2000 election.

Bugliosi: There can be no reasonable question that U.S. Supreme Court Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Kennedy did not act impartially in the case of Bush v. Gore, and therefore violated the oath of office they took upon ascending to the highest court of the land. The following is the oath they took, as forth in Section 453 of Title 28 of the United States Code: "I, _________ _______, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as a justice of the United States Supreme Court under the Constitution and the laws of the United States. So help me God."

What good is an oath of office by Supreme Court justices if the violation of said oath carries no punishment for the offender? Remarkably, no sanction or punishment for a violation of 28 U.S.C. Section 453 is set forth in the United States Code.

P: What reaction has your book and your Nation article received from conservatives whom you know personally?

Bugliosi: What is disturbing to me about these conservative friends and acquaintances of mine who aren't troubled in the least by the fact that five Supreme Court Justices stole the election from Al Gore and his party is what is says about who, deep down, they really are, and what their values and sense of right and wrong are. If one is wondering if, in the event the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would be responding the same way, my answer is that I believe they would, though not in such a great degree. My assessment (at least as to those on the margins of both parties) is that although there is fanaticism among both groups, it is greater on the far right than the far left, and the far right unquestionably is much more mean-spirited.

P: Do you think that Justices Rhenquist and O'Connor, who both came from the same state, Arizona, are Republican partisans who cannot rise above their political loyalties?

Bugliosi: Talk about political vineyards, the current Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, who actively campaigned for Barry Goldwater in the latter's 1964 bid for the presidency, provided on-site legal advice in 1962 to Republicans assigned the task of challenging voters' credentials at a Phoenix polling station. The charge by four witnesses testifying under oath at Rehnquist's 1986 confirmation hearings for Chief Justice that Rehnquist had intimidated black and Hispanic voters on the ground of their inability of read was denied by Rehnquist.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor not only served three terms in the Arizona State Senate - at one point being the Arizona senate majority leader - but was co-chairman of the Arizona state committee to elect Richard Nixon president. Her biographer, Judith Bentley, writes in "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor" that O'Connor was very active in Republican politics in Phoenix, starting out as a county precinct worker in 1960 and in 1964 becoming the vice-chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Committee. Bentley writes (Page 49) that O'Connor "was rewarded for her years of party work" by being appointed a state senator.

P: What about Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy?

Buglioi: Since the The Nation's article's publication, the belief in the legal community has been that Justice Anthony Kennedy was the primary author of the Supreme Court's decision giving the election to George Bush. If for no other reason, let's take a look at Kennedy. A November 23, 1987, article by Aaron Freiwald in the Washington, D.C.-based journal Legal Times, refers to Kennedy in his pre-Court days as a "Sacramento lawyer-lobbyist" who, for no pay, traveled the state on behalf of then-Governor Ronald Reagan's anti-tax initiative. The initiative did not pass, but Kennedy, as Freiwald wrote, "won a soft spot in the heart of the governor. Not long after Kennedy's pro bono [gratuitous] work on the anti-tax initiative, Governor Reagan was in touch was the Nixon White House, urging the president to consider Kennedy, then thirty-eight, for a nomination to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeal for the 9^th Circuit. Ultimately, it was President Gerald Ford who gave Kennedy the nod in March 1975. But several officials involved in the judicial process, as well as Kennedy's friends, confirm that Kennedy was viewed as Ronald Reagan's....choice for the 9^th Circuit."

P: The word is that Kennedy was a lobbyist for special interests in Sacramento while Reagan was governor. Is there any truth to that?

Bugliosi: Kennedy's father was a legendary Sacramento lobbyist whose clientele Kennedy inherited when his father died unexpectedly in 1963. Kennedy's clients included Schenley, California Association of Dispensing Opticians, Capitol Records, GRT Corporation, and the National Association of Alcoholic Beverage Importers. Freiwald writes that "it was in the money-soaked world of politics in the capital of the nation's most popular and diverse state that Anthony Kennedy came of age, doing well by his clients, meeting the right people, and setting in motion the events that would culminate in his Supreme Court appointment."

Freiwald continued: "Kennedy contributed thousands of dollars on behalf of his clients to state and local elected officials. [He] entertained clients to state and legislators at exclusive restaurants and country clubs in Sacramento and San Francisco [charging] some of his golfing fees and club memberships to his lobbying clients. Kennedy's lobbying records also showed that he had a penchant for purchasing hundreds of dollars' worth of 'bottled liquor for entertainment' when wooing legislators and clients. In the 'clubby' circle of Sacramento

lawyers-lobbyists, Kennedy 'was one of the guys you know,' recalls Clayton Jackson, now one of Sacramento's highest-paid lobbyists."

The long and the short of it was that Anthony Kennedy was a "go to" guy, someone corporations with money went to in order to get things done. And boy, he certainly got things done (as Vice President Dick Cheney would say, "big-time") for his party, the Republican Party, in Bush v. Gore.

P: So how would you sum up the objectivity of these Supreme Court justices who gave the election to a fellow Republican?

Buglisoi: The aforementioned backgrounds of some of the members of the Supreme Court, and the reminder that are all simply lawyers who wear black robes, is set forth to reduce the Justices down to their true dimensions - nine ordinary human beings who are subject to all the infirmaries that afflict mankind. The five justices who, I believe you will find, literally stole a presidential election from the American people, did so not because they are lawyers or politicians, but because like so many of us, including those of the highest station in life and the bluest of the pedigree, they had, incubating inside of them, the most squalid of characters, a lowness that may never have manifested itself had they never been presented with this situation. If anyone believes that a decent and honorable human being could have done something as horrendous as these justices did, I say to you that you very mistaken. Indeed, I told my daughter, Wendy, that what these Justices ended up doing was so monumentally base, so extraordinarily wrong and dishonorable that I wasn't gifted enough as a writer to describe it.

P: Thank you Mr. Bugliosi for your most interesting and informative observations on the issue facing the grand jury today.

The grand jury now requests the presence of Professor Alan Dershowitz:

Professor Dershowitz, you are the author of the book, "Supreme Injustice: How the Supreme Court Hijacked Election 2000." Please tell the grand jury in your own words what conclusion you reached in writing your book.

Dershowitz:: The five justices who ended Election 2000 by stopping the Florida hand recount have damaged the credibility of the U.S. Supreme Court, and their lawless decision in Bush v. Gore promises to have a more enduring impact on Americans that the outcome of the election itself. The nation has accepted the election of George W. Bush, as it must under the rule of law. It will have an opportunity to reassess this result in 2004. But the unprecedented decision of the five justices to substitute their political judgment for that of the American people threatens to undermine the moral authority of the high court for generations to come.

The Supreme Court, which consists of only nine relatively unknown justices with small staffs, has wielded an enormous influence on the history of our nation. It is the most powerful court in the world - the envy of judges in every other country. Presidents accepts its rulings, even when disagreeing. The public eventually embraces much of what the justices say in their judgments. Legislatures rarely seek to overrule their decisions. Though only one part of our delicate system of checks and balances, the high court speaks the final word on many of the most divisive and important issues of the day. This enormous power has always been viewed as legitimate because of the unique status of the justices as transcending partisan politics, eschewing political advantage and pronouncing the enduring constitutional values of our nation. We defer to them because we respect them.

Now in one fell swoop, five partisan judges have caused many Americans to question each of the assumptions undergirding the special status accorded these nine robed human beings. Bush v. Gore showed them to be little different from ordinary politicians. Their votes reflected not any enduring constitutional values rooted in the precedents of the age, but rather the partisan quest for immediate political victory. In so voting, they shamed themselves and the Court on which they serve, and they defiled their places in history.

Because the Supreme Court lacks the legitimacy and accountability that comes with election and power that derives from the sword and the purse, its authority rests in the public acceptance of its status as a nonpartisan arbiter of the law. This moral authority is essential to its continued effectiveness as an important guarantor of our constitutional liberties. Unless steps are taken to mitigate the damage inflicted on the Court by these five justices, the balance struck by our Constitution between popular democracy and judicial oligarchy will remain askew. Preserving this delicate balance is essential to our liberties and to our system of checks and balances.

P: Is this not the same point made by Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent in Bush v. Gore decision?

Dershowitz: He warned that the majority's opinion "can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is," said Justice Stevens, "confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfect clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

P: Thank you, Professor Dershowitz.

I now call to the witness stand the renowned investigative reporter, Greg Palast of the London Guardian and Observer, author of the book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." Although an American citizen, Mr. Palast has hosted his own television program on the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Mr. Palast, you personally investigated the Florida election of 2002. What did you find out?

Palast: In the days following the presidential election, there were so many stories of African Americans erased from voter rolls you might think they were targeted by some kind of racial computer program. They were I have a copy of it: two silvery CD-ROM disks right out of the office computers of Florida Secretary of State Katharine Harris. Once decoded and flowed into a database, they make for interesting, if chilling reading. They tell us how our president was elected - and it wasn't by the voters.

Here's how it worked: Mostly, the disks contain data on Florida citizens - 57,000 of them. In the months leading up to the November 2000 balloting, Florida Secretary of State Harris, in cooperation with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local elections supervisors to purge these 57,000 from voter registries. In Harris's computers, they are named as felons who have no right to vote in Florida.

Thomas Cooper is on the list: criminal scum, bad guy, felon, attempted voter. The Harris hit list says Cooper was convicted of a felony on January 30, 2007.

2007?

You may suspect that something's wrong with the list. You'd be right. At least 90.2 percent of those on this "scrub" list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, over half - about 54 percent are Black and Hispanic voters. Overwhelmingly, it is a list of Democrats.

Secretary of State Harris declared George W. Bush winner of Florida, and thereby president, by a plurality of 537 voters over Al Gore. Now do the arithmetic. Over 50,000 voters wrongly targeted by the purge, most Blacks. My BBC researchers reported that Gore lost at least 22,000 votes as a result of this small little blackbox operation

P: Where did the list of these co-called felons that was used to purge the Florida voter lists originate?

Palast: One list of 8,000 supposed felons was supplied by Texas. But these criminals from the Lone Star State had committed nothing more serious that misdemeanors, such as driving drunk (like their governor, George W. Bush.)

The source of this poisonous blacklist: Database Technologies, acting under the direction of Governor Jeb Bush's frothingly partisan secretary of state, Katharine Harris. DBT, a division of ChoicePoint, is under fire for misuse of personal data in state computers in Pennsylvania. ChoicePoint's board is loaded with Republican sugar daddies, including Ken Langone, finance chief for Rudy Guiliani's aborted Senate run against Hillary Clinton.

P: When did the Republican secret campaign to fix the Florida election begin?

Palast: The disenfranchisement operation began in 1998 under Katharine Harris's predecessor as secretary of state, Sandra Mortham. Mortham was a Republican star, designated by Jeb Bush as his lieutenant governor running mate for his second run for governor. (A financial scandal caused Jeb to replace her with Harris.)

One can't sabotage democracy with felon list alone. Ballot-eating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.

Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology. Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems and Software of Omaha. On their web site, there is a neat demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and successfully cast an "overvote," a double vote for one candidate. Then the site crashed on my laptop. But, hey, the bugs will be worked out...or worked in.

The question is, who else is touching the screen? In the case of iVotronics, it's Sandra Morthram. Ring a bell? She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state, the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronic's representative in Florida.

P: Mr. Palast, you have given the grand jury a lot to chew over. In fact, what you have just testified to sets stage for the second issue to be decided today by the Grand Jury, which is: Is the 2004 Presidential Election already being rigged by Republican control of the computerized voting machines around the nation?

This is a valid question because the grand jury is scheduled to hear a witness in a few minutes who will show that iVotronics was incorporated and secretly controlled by a well-known Republican Senator, who may in fact owe his own election to the United States Senate to rigging the election with his computerized voting machine.

Our next witness is Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, who is also a member of Congress from Maryland.

P: Congressman Kweisi, is it not true that after the Florida election in 2000 the NAACP and a number of other organizations filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida and seven counties?

Mfume: The NAACP filed the lawsuit following the numerous complaints about election irregularities in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election. At hearings held by the NAACP in Miami and other areas of the state, African American voters and others testified about being kept from the polls in some counties and having voting problems on Election Day. There were complaints that some voters were told their names were not on the registration lists. Others had

been erroneously removed from the lists of eligible voters because they were wrongfully believed to be felons who were not eligible to vote. Another common complaint was that poll voters were not adequately trained to assist voters.

P: It is my understanding that in September 2002 a settlement was reached in your Florida lawsuit.

Mfume: The settlement is significant because it means that Florida officials finally recognized the need to correct past election process problems, particularly in the areas of election administration, voter list maintenance and poll worker training. The new state laws following the 2000 election did not go far enough to make sure all Florida voters will have equal access to the polls on Election Day. The NAACP will continue to monitor the situation to make sure that not only Florida, but also all states, ensure equal access to the polls and follow the spirit and the letter of election laws.

P: Thank you for your statement, Congressman Mfume. It harbors well for our nation that the NAACP is going to stay on top of this crucial issue until fair and accurate elections are conducted not only in Florida but in every state in the union.

Our next witness is Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and the legal analyst for CNN. Mr. Toobin, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, is author of "Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 election."

Mr. Toobin, please advise the grand jury of the findings of your book about the 2000 election.

Toobin: Al Gore received 50,996,782 votes for president, the second highest total in history, behind only Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1984. In a nationwide total, Gore defeated Bush by 540,520 votes, or 51 percent, which was more than four times greater than John F. Kennedy's margin over Richard Nixon in 1960. In Florida, Ralph Nader received 57,488 votes, meaning that if one out of every hundred Nader supporters in the state had switched to Gore, he would have won the state, and the presidency, with relative ease.

But the election of 2000 will not go away, because in any real, moral and democratic sense, Al Gore should have been declared the victor over George W. Bush - in the popular vote, in Florida, and in the Electoral College. No one seriously suggests that 3,407 people intended to vote for Patrick Buchanan in Palm Beach County; no one believes that thousands of black voters in Duval County had no preference in the race for president. The 680 questionable overseas absentee ballots identified in July 2001 by The New York Times assuredly, and improperly, went to Bush by a wide margin. If the simple preference of the voters behind their curtains was the rule - and it is supposed to be the rule in a democracy - then Gore probably won the state by several thousand votes, approximately the margin of the original network exit polls. Should Gore have won in a legal sense, as well? He probably should have, and a Supreme Court opinion that is doomed to infamy denied him this opportunity, too.

P: And the bottom line, then is?

Toobin: In the cynical calculus of contemporary politics, it is easy to dismiss Gore's putative

victory. But if more people intended to vote for Gore than for Bush in Florida - and they surely did - then it is a crime against democracy that he did not win the state and thus the presidency. It isn't that the Republicans "stole" the election or that Bush is an "illegitimate" president. But the fact remains: The wrong man was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, and this is no small thing in our nation's history. The bell of this election can never be unrung, and the sound will haunt us for some time.

P: Thank you, Mr. Toobin.

The grand jury will now turn its attention to the final and remaining issue: Is the 2004 presidential election already being rigged by Republican control of the computerized voting machines across the nation.

I now call our final two witnesses: Mr. Ray Hill and Attorney Douglas Caddy.

Mr. Hill, would you please come forward to the witness stand.

Mr. Hill, it is especially appropriate that you are a witness today in a case involving the United States Supreme Court because you had a First Amendment case of your own that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Could you briefly tell the Grand Jury about that case?

Hill: The name of the case is The City of Houston v. Hill. My case arose when I witnessed two Houston police officers unjustly and unmercifully beating a young man in my neighborhood. I yelled at the officers to no avail. So I escalated the situation by calling them a name that cast dispersions on their relationships with their mothers. That accomplished my goal: they let the young man go and arrested me. I won my case and now even the United States Supreme Court recognizes the relationship between police officers and their mothers is suspect.

P. And the case earned you the moniker, Citizen Provocateur, did it not?

Hill: Yes. Along the way Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ruben bestowed that title upon me, which I wear in pride and may even have it engraved on my tombstone.

And while I praise the Supreme Court for protecting free speech in their ruling in my case, I am appalled by the gross partisanship of five justices who rigged the 2000 election outcome in favor of George Bush.

I might add, because it is relevant, that for over 23 years I have been the host of "The Prison Show', a weekly radio broadcast that discusses issues important to inmates, their families, and former inmates. One of the most important issues is the restoration of citizenship to former offenders, including the right to vote. In Texas a convicted felon's right to vote is restored upon the completion of his or her sentence. In many other states, including Florida, felons may only get their citizenship back if awarded an individual pardon from the governor.

One of the many abuses that occurred in the 2000 presidential election was the purging of voters from the voting rolls because they allegedly were former offenders. Approximately 3.9 million Americans are disenfranchised from their right to vote in public elections due to their status as former offenders. Over 36 percent of the total disenfranchised population of these former offenders consists of African-American men. Thirteen percent of all African American men are disenfranchised from voting.

The disenfranchisement of almost 4 million Americans who are former offenders, in my opinion, is part of the rigging of our elections.

P. Is it not true that there were many voters who were denied the right to vote in Florida in 2000 because it was alleged that they were former offenders?

Hill: In the 2000 election the names of former Texas inmates were sent to Florida to be placed on control lists identifying those unqualified to vote. Those lists were used to deny hundreds, perhaps thousands, of registered voters, mostly of minority racial and ethnic heritage of their right to vote in the presidential election. Under Texas law they would have been qualified to vote if their convictions took place in Texas and they had completed their sentences. Under the Full Faith and Credit clause of the United States Constitution, Texas offenders qualified to vote in Texas should be able do so in other states as well. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the United States Constitution was ignored by Florida elections officials in the last presidential election.

P. Before you leave the witness stand, it is my understanding that you have done some research on how the Republicans plan to rig the presidential election next year by manipulating votes cast by Americans living abroad and by members of the armed forces. Could you elucidate on this?

The nation might be faced with another disputed election, one, which despite all the efforts by the Republicans to rig the election, may be before the U.S. Supreme Court again, a repeat of what happened in 2000. So, let's take a look at what we know now that we did not know at the time when the five justices of the Supreme Court rigged the 2000 outcome.

Chief Justice Rehnquist after the election arranged for his daughter to be appointed Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services. There she distinguished herself by keeping a loaded pistol in her office and by placing a shooting target on her office wall. She intervened to delay an audit of Florida's pension money at the request of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the President's brother. Most of her professional staff members either quit or were forced out after she took office. The corruption of her office of Inspector General became no notorious that she was forced to resign. In April 2003 the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency declared that Chief Justice Rehnquist's daughter was not legally entitled to receive a government handgun and law enforcement credentials but got them anyway. The same investigation blamed the Chief Justice's daughter for "administrative failure." The U.S. Justice Department promptly announced that it would not prosecute her, which came as no surprise.

The long and the short of it is that a corrupt Chief Justice rigged the 2000 Presidential election to assure that his equally corrupt daughter received a high appointment in the Bush Administration.

P. What about Anthony Scalia, who preens himself as the most moral justice ever to sit on the Supreme Court?

Hill: Scalia's son was working for the Bush team of lawyers that appeared before the Supreme Court in the Florida vote case. Afterwards, Scalia received his payoff by having his son appointed by Bush as Counsel to the U.S. Department of Labor. I mean, how corrupt can a Supreme Court judge become? Scalia's hypocritical "morality" turns one's stomach.

Both Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas belong to a secretive and extremist Catholic sect called Opus Dei, whose origin in Spain is alleged to go back to fascism. Ironically, both former FBI Director Louis Freeh and Robert Hansen, the high-level FBI agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, are also members of Opus Dei.

While the election case was before the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas's wife was working for the Heritage Foundation in vetting resumes of those who would receive appointments in the pre-ordained Bush Administration. Clarence Thomas was thus the conduit by which the illegal and criminal payoffs to Rehnquist and Scalia took place by assuring them that their children would receive high level Administration jobs.

P: And Justice Sandra Day O'Connor? What about her?

Hill: Well, at a party on election night, when it looked that Gore was going to win, Justice O'Connor exclaimed aloud, how terrible all this was and how it would wreck her and her husband's plans to retire to Arizona. It is a toss-up as to which one of the five Supreme Court justice is the most corrupt. In my opinion, they are a gang of thieves.

P. Thank you Mr. Hill for your testimony. You certainly have lived up to your reputation as a Citizen Provocateur!

I now call Douglas Caddy to the witness stand.

Mr. Caddy, I understand that one time you served as Director of Elections for the State of Texas, a position in the Texas Secretary of State's office, under Republican Governor Bill Clements. Also, you were the original attorney for the Watergate Seven. Do you see any parallel between what happened in Watergate and what is happening now to our election system?

Caddy: Watergate started when five Republican operatives were arrested around 2 A.M. on June 17, 1972 while they were inside the Democratic Party headquarters attempting to plant wiretapping devices. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, who were nearby, escaped, and Hunt telephoned me about half a hour later to retain me as his attorney in the matter. I has previously served as Hunt's personal attorney. Hunt telephoned Liddy, whom I also knew, from my apartment a short time later and Liddy also retained me as his attorney.

What took place in the Republican rigging of the Presidential election in the 2000 and is now taking place for 2004 is a million times worse that what the Republicans tried to do back in 1972. It makes the Watergate scandal look like a third-rate burglary.

The 2004 election is being rigged through the use of computerized voting machines - machines owned by companies that are in turn owned by Republicans.

A new book on the subject is published. It's title is "BlackBox Voting," and its author is Beverly Harris. The book can be read at www.blackboxvoting.com. Ms. Harris has already dropped one bombshell as the result of doing research for her book.

P: That bombshell being?

Caddy: That for more than six years a leading Republican Senator, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, failed to disclose on his financial statements filed with the Senate Ethics Committee that he is a key owner of the company that manufactures many of the electronic voting machines used throughout the country.

The Hill newspaper, published on Capitol Hill, carried a February 2, 2003 article titled, "Hagel's ethics filing pose disclosure issue." The article states, "On May 23, 1997 [over five years ago], Victor Baird, who resigned Monday as director of the Senate Ethics Committee, sent a letter to Sen. Charles Hagel requesting 'additional, clarifying information' for the personal financial disclosure report that all lawmakers are required to file annually."

The article goes on to state, "One underlying issue is whether Hagel properly disclosed his financial ties to Election Systems & Software (ES&S), a company that makes nearly half the voting machines used in the United States, including those used in his native Nebraska.

"ES&S is a subsidiary of McCarthy Group Inc., which is jointly held by the holding firm and the Omaha World-Herald Co., which publishes the state's largest newspaper. The voting machine company makes sophisticated optical scan and touch-screen machines vote-counting devices that many states have begun using in recent years.

An official of Nebraska's Election Administration estimated that ES&S machines tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in Hagel's 2002 and 1996 elections races."

P: What is being done to alert the general public to the overall issue of fraudulent use of electronic voting machines?

Caddy: The newly published book, "BlackBox Voting," by Beverley Harris exposes the scandal. Also the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King III and investigative reporter Greg Palast have created a petition online directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft to "Stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election."

Congressman Rush Holt has introduced a bill in Congress that would go far to assuring the voter than his vote will be counted as he cast it. However, with the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, I fear that this legislation stands little chance of being enacted.

P: Thank you, Mr. Caddy, you have give us much food for thought.

Before the members of the Grand Jury vote on the two questions before it today, we offer the opportunity for members to ask any questions they might have about the testimony by our ten witnesses. Does anyone have a question he or she wishes to ask?

[ Question and Answer period takes place]

P. It is now time for members of the Grand Jury to vote on the two pending questions.

The first question is: Should five justices of the United States Supreme Court be indicted for fixing the 2000 presidential election?

All those in vote in favor, please raise your right hand.

Now, all those opposed, please raise your right hand.

The result of the vote is: __________ .

The second question is: Is the 2004 presidential election already being rigged by Republican control of the computerized voting machines across the nation?

All those in favor, raise your right hand.

Now, all those opposed, raise your right hand.

The result of the vote is ___________ .

We thank our witnesses for testifying today and the members of the Grand Jury for hearing the testimony and evidence and casting their votes. This Grand Jury session is now adjourned.

-End-