This is attorney protected information.
Received today by e-mail:
November 16, 1998
Springfield, Missouri
To: friends of Carl Johnson, The Last Canadian
Outlaw (name of his last album)
From: Alia Johnson
I saw CJ today at the Springfield facility for the
criminally disturbing. We spent five hours, a lot of
laughing, a little crying, and talking, with lots of
cameras and mikes on us. The controllers would not
let me take notes!
First, CJ's great hope and request to his friends is
to hang in there with him. He intends to go all the
way with this to trial, being his own defense lawyer,
even though he believes that since the Feds know they
will lose, they will try to get him to plea bargain
down to "walking his dog without a leash" as he puts
it. He is definitely on a mission. He received
John's package, nothing from Declan. He has received
about half the mail I sent him. They are reading his
mail to his lawyers, supposedly forbidden.
CJ has been without glasses and without his teeth for
the whole time since he was arrested. JEFF GORDON
STILL HAS CJ'S TEETH. However, his vision has
improved! He is also without proper medication for
his Tourette's. The shrink told him that the
amphetamines he had been prescribed and which were
working well would probably be stolen by the staff
anyway. CJ is very conscious of managing his
neurological condition, with coffee, sugar, fasting,
and self-control. He does complain that he was so
pleased with himself that he got through his last
rage attack without hurting himself or acting it out
that he punched a wall in celebration and hurt his
hand!
Even though he is supposed to be his own lawyer, he
has not even been informed about his indictment nor
has he been informed about anything else about his
case.
At Springfield he has been in lockup for things that
he purportedly did at the Florence, Arizona prison.
The shrink gets a message this past weekend that
suddenly I am coming down, and this morning before I
get there he rushes in to tell CJ he's finally moving
him out of lockup into the open ward! Wolfson later
tells me that over two weeks ago he notified the
federal marshalls that CJ can be moved back to
Arizona, but he had not told CJ that. I don't know
whether it's true. He actually took me to task for
coming on such short notice.
CJ was very happy that the things he has sent out
have been posted, and it is clear that the support of
the cypherpunks community is important to him.
He did not talk to me about particular defense
strategies for obvious reasons.
He did indicate that the story that I relayed to John
about the incident in the federal courthouse in
Estevan involving a supposed gasoline "bomb" (a
version of which incident was part of a story by
Declan) was a surprise to him; he seemed both
surprised and amused about what actions had been
attributed to him. To say I know and understand
nothing about this incident is an understatement. I
mention it only because it is part of Jeff Gordon's
original complaint, a significant part I assume since
CJ has never been known to do physical injury to a
human being.
CJ has not seen the stories by Declan nor what has
been posted; I sent a hundred pages of stuff to Larry
Dowling his Austin lawyer, including copies of
Declan's articles. I had not sent these things to CJ
on the assumption that they would be censored. CJ
suggested that I ask Dowling to sent them with the
instruction on the envelope "open in the presence of
the inmate only". Again, he wants to see these things
because his spirit is hanging on the support from
John and the rest of the community, although he said
very clearly that he is doing this on his own and
would do it alone if he had to.
Just before I left to come here, having finally been
cleared as a visitor, I got a call from Linda Lou
Reed, saying that she had not done a couple of things
needed to get his music CD together, since she has
been out of town. CJ and I talked about how to get
this together and I will work on it with other Tucson
friends. Someone had the idea of selling the CD's to
support a legal defense fund. I will report progress
as it occurs.
And speaking of legal defense support, thanks to John
and others who made suggestions about legal support.
After many hours of discussion the family decided
that it was not the most intelligent thing to put up
the meagre family fortunes against the federal
government, and therefore we intend at this point to
trust CJ's defense to his stated (and historically
effective) plan to be his own defense, or to public
defenders. With some trepidation I brought this up to
CJ, and he was relieved; he said that he had been
worried that we would try to pay for a defense in
this case, which again he intends to push all the way
through no matter what compromises are offered to
him, and that our paying for his defense was not what
he wanted.
Therefore I would like to put out to those who know
the situation to help CJ to obtain relevant legal
information and consultation as he goes into this, in
whatever form it is available. If there are costs
that I personally can afford to support, I am happy
to. CJ has made repeated requests for access to legal
books at Springfield, and they disappear into
nowhere, no yes, no no.
An interesting point: CJ related that Dr. Wolfson
had asked him about his filing of IRS tax forms! As
if they were on a fishing expedition looking for
other things to get CJ on, as they did with Jim Bell.
I confronted Wolfson about this, asking how it was
relevant to the issue Wolfson was supposed to be
investigating, which is CJ's competence to understand
the charges against him and to stand trial. At that
exact moment he jumped up and said that he urgently
needed to answer a page which he had received five
minutes before. I overheard the conversation which he
had suddenly urgently to engage in, and it was a
trivial conversation about returning a copy of a
document to someone. But when he returned to me he
said "Well I have three reasons for having asked
that." Already suspicious, to have three reasons. The
main reason Wolfson said was that CJ says he has
attention deficient disorder (ADD) associated with
the Tourette's, and that asking if someone filed
taxes was a good indicator of their attention span!
(Could I be making this up?) I said, why not pick
something like, can you make it through the college
registration process? He replied, "I'm not used to
working with educated people." Other "reasons" he
gave: 1) I want to give a thorough medical,
psychological, social and legal picture as part of my
judgment whether someone is capable of understanding
the charges against him, because if I leave
significant things out of my report I am more likely
to be receiving a subpoena to wherever CJ is being
tried, and that's inconvenient for me; and 2) there
are all these wacko people who question the authority
of government to levy taxes, put people to trial,
etc., and I need to determine whether he's one of
those and therefore suffering as part of a mass
delusion (his words)... he lost me there a little
bit. I didn't know whether that would be evidence of
sanity or insanity.
Anyway he seems to be sending off CJ into the next
stage with a report that CJ might have Tourette's, is
not schizophrenic, and in his experience is not
dangerous.
CJ does have some mighty interesting observations
about how things are done in this federal nuthouse
situation, which god willing we will all get to hear
someday. Meanwhile he has sent out certain
information to Declan on specific incidents in the
facility which he observed, but is concerned that it
was not received.
Our expectation is that CJ will be returned to Tucson
and then extradited to Washington, but clearly as a
form of harrassment the marshalls are taking their
own sweet time about everything.
CJ's "case manager" at Springfeld is Bob Harris. The
phone number there is 417 862 7041, and CJ's prisoner
number is 05987-196. Any correspondence to anywhere
in the prison system needs to have that number on it.
John Bogart in Tucson (520 624 8196) is the public
defender in CJ's local case, pending his extradition
to Washington state. The family retained Larry
Dowling in Austin, a very old friend of CJ's and his
lawyer for a long time, for a small amount to look
after CJ's rights during incarceration; we have not
retained him to go the full way in this defense, for
the reasons stated above. Supposedly John Bogart
will be informed when the marshalls actually choose
to move CJ (after the fact). Therefore I suggest
that those who want to write to CJ write him soon and
by fast mail at U.S. Medical Center, POB Box 4000,
Springfield, Missouri 65801. Larry Dowling's
address is 606 West 11th, Austin, 78701. I assume he
might be willing to forward it to CJ on the
assumption that CJ will in fact be moved. Larry has
been a true friend throughout this and past
tribulations.
CJ has said that since he has been incarcerated for
three months now with no indication to him as to
formal charges, it is time to act to get him out of
Springfield. I concur, and unless I hear within a
week that he is being moved, I will take some of the
cypherpunk friends up on their offer to begin to
address this case through the local ACLU. CJ's
greatest fear is that he will do something that will
justify involuntary drug administration, and he will
be defeated in that way. He is also afraid that he
will simply be killed in prison.
However, all in all I found CJ in pretty good
spirits, and clearly feeling "on purpose" vis a vis
his goals with his cypherpunk activities. I related
to him during our talk that one of my sons just took
some time off from university so that he would have
time to actually read, and that he had accurately
predicted to his friends exactly how I would respond
to the news: "Honey, I'm so proud!" CJ said that's
how I seemed to feel now about his arrest. It is,
finally. I trust that CJ, in spite of a pattern of
sometimes shooting himself in the foot, is
brilliantly inspired by important libertarian values
and goals. I appreciate the education and inspiration
I have gained from getting to know this side of his
life and some of the people, technologies, issues and
ideas of which previously I had only vague notions.
Alia Johnson (lodi(a)well.com) my phone 510 548 2008;
my fax 510 848 7842.
