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@well.com) my phone 510 548 2008; my fax 510 848 7842.