Jim Bell Trial: Second Day

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Second Day:  Jim Bell trial

The second day of the Jim Bell trial opened up with D.A. London making a 
motion to tell the jury that Bell had owned firearms in the past although 
he hasn't had any since the 1997 trial.  According to London, the fact that 
Bell had had a gun in the past was a reasonable basis for federal agents' 
current fear of Bell.

Defense attorney Leen pointed out that free speech could be a cause for 
fear in some people, but that nobody would reasonably constrain speech. 
 Leen said that firearms possession is constitutionally protected, and that 
this was true for Bell up until 1997.  The fact that he was exercising a 
constitutionally-protected right could not be held against him.

London said that the weapons were seized in 1997.  Bell designated a friend 
to receive the firearms when the IRS returned them in 2000, which by definition 
would mean that Bell was no longer in possession of them.  Leen pointed 
out that there was absolutely no evidence of current possession by Bell 
or of Bell contacting his friend regarding the weapons.  Bell had made no 
attempt to acquire firearms.

London suggested that Bell should retract his essay Assassination Politics. 
 Bell protested the suggestion, and Judge Tanner threatened to either muzzle 
Bell or move him downstairs to a viewing room.  London claimed that AP alone 
was a sufficient threat to the treasury agent witnesses.

The court ruled that London could introduce the firearm evidence.

The court then took up the matter of Bell's remaining subpoenas for Joanne 
Mayita and Anne Marie Evans, both of the U.S. Attorneys Office.  London 
moved to quash the subpoenas.  Leen pointed out that in-district subpoenas 
don't need to go through the court.  Miyeta was the prosecutor for Ryan 
Lund's case.  Bell believe Lund received consideration from the U.S. Attorney's 
Office to intimidate Bell while they were both incarcerated at the Seatac 
facility into signing a plea agreement in 1997.  Evans was a prosecutor 
in the 1997 Bell case, and Bell claims that she was aware of the Lund deal. 
 Tanner ruled to quash the subpoenas.

After this ruling, Bell twice banged the defense table with his hand.  Tanner 
warned that any subsequent display would mean removal, and ordered the downstairs 
viewing room to be prepared.  Shortly thereafter, Tanner told Bell to move 
over one seat to the end of the table, leaving a chair between him and his 
attorney.  His attorney asked that Bell be cuffed with an ankle cuff instead 
to the chair next to him so that Bell could still conference with him.  
Leen pointed out that the jury would not be able to observe the cuff.

Leen requested limitation on testimony regarding Bell's prior legal possession 
of firearms.

Leen also brought up the interlocutory issue again, mentioning that it was 
now on the briefing calendar for the ninth.

The jury was brought in, and the first witness for the day, Robert William 
East was sworn in.  East had been Bell's friend for 15 years, and was the 
person that the IRS released Jim's guns to.  He testified that he picked 
up the firearms from the IRS' downtown Portland office in 2000 and had stored 
them with friends of his that Bell had no access to.  The firearms included 
2 SKSes, a Ruger Mini-14, and an S&W 629.

London introduced Exhibit 21, a set of lock picks.  East testified that 
he had loaned Bell a tension wrench and a pick.  East and Bell had used 
the set once to open a door at East's house, and then had never seen that 
wrench and pick again.  (There was no evidence presented that the wrench 
and pick had been recovered from Bell's house in the 11/6/2000 raid.)  East 
said that he wasn't sure when this occurred, but it was sometime before 
6/24/96, the date of an email in which he and Bell mentioned the set.

Leen objected based on relevancy.  London pointed out that he was trying 
to show that because Bell could pick a lock, he was a credible threat to 
federal agents.

On cross-examination, Leen asked if Bell had written to him while Bell was 
in prison.  East said that Bell had, and that the letters contained requests 
to look up people's names.  East stated that he wadded up the letters and 
threw them away without acting on them.

In additional testimony, East said that there had been no discussion of 
lock picks since 1996.

On re-examination, London asked East if he and Bell had discussed Sarin. 
 He said that they had discussed methylphosphodiflouride and isopropyl alchohol 
as precursors.  London brought up the Tokyo subway incident again, implying 
that Bell would use Sarin to gas federal agents.  East replied that they 
had only discussed it in relation to the Tokyo incident and that they had 
researched it purely out of curiosity about current events.

The next witness was Christopher John Groener, who lives in Mike McNall's 
former house.  McNall is an IRS agent who Bell had been researching.  Bell 
visited Groener's house in October, looking for McNall.  While at Groener's 
house, Bell recorded the license plate numbers of cars on the property before 
leaving.

On cross-examination, Groener stated that McNall hadn't lived at the residence 
for about four years.  Groener stated that Bell had not been threatening,
 nor had any weapons.

The jury was sent out for a recess.

Leen motioned for mistrial, based on London's mention of the Tokyo subway 
attack and the transparent attempt to link Bell to it.  Tanner declined 
to declare a mistrial, saying that he had already instructed the jury to 
ignore it.  London pointed out that because of Tokyo, agents had reason 
to be afraid.  Lean countered that any fear that the agents had, no matter 
how unreasonable, they could attribute to Bell.  "If Bell were Japanese,
 they would bring up World War II [as a reason to be afraid]."

The jury returned to the courtroom.

The next witness was Hilda Wong Muramoto who is a subpoena manager for @Home 
Corporation.  In direct testimony she stated that Bell had a cable modem 
account, that the "DNS designation and sub-domain" as well as the IP address 
were hard-wired, and that the account did not cover dial-up connections. 
 She said that the IP address was 24.16.209.166 and that the DNS number 
was C1099371-A.  The DNS name that was captured in the e-mail that Bell 
allegedly sent to cypherpunks was encrv1.wa.home.com.  She claimed that 
those "numbers" could not appear on anyone else's e-mail.

Leen failed to explore the issue of e-mail header spoofing at cross-examination.

The next witness was John Young.  London started asking him about an email 
that he wrote on 10/25/2000 to the cypherpunks list.  Young said that it 
was just a request for information in relation to the Cryptome web site,
 which publishes documents involved with cryptology, intelligence, and dual-
use technologies.

In an almost-professorial manner, John explained how he had come across 
the information concerning an ISTAC office of the CIA in Bend, Oregon.  
By consulting the .gov domain database for web sites that the CIA owned,
 he noticed the ISTAC web site and tried to find further information on 
it.  As part of his research, he said that he sent out a general request 
to the cypherpunks list because it was sometimes a good source of information. 
 Young published the domain name lookup info, which included the name Deforest 
X. Mueller, to the cypherpunks list.

Bell, among others, had responded to the discussion about a CIA presence 
in Bend.  However, it became apparent that London did not understand the 
difference between a contribution to a mailing list and direct correspondence. 
 He tried, briefly, to characterize Bell's contribution as direct communication. 
 Young pointed out that there are hundreds of subscribers to cypherpunks 
and that anyone can contribute.

On cross-examination, Leen asked Young if he published names of CIA agents 
as "public information."  "Potentially, they could be injured or killed 
as a result?"  "We don't think so."  Young stated that numerous such allegations 
had been made, but that such a scenario had never materialized.

"Do you feel that Mr. Bell's technology is feasible to implement?"  "No." 
 "Is there anything of value in his essay?"  "Yes indeed?. It's a good essay 
to envision how new technologies are deployed."  Young further characterized 
Bell's AP essay as being one of many such papers that explore potential 
outcomes of new technologies.

On re-examination, London claimed that Assassination Politics, contrary 
to Young's claim, had already been implemented by one person-C.J. Parker. 
 He claimed Parker had developed a working system.  Young said that Parker's 
system was a spoof, but London stuck to his claim that it was real because 
people could enter a name, which was forwarded to Parker.

Young was then excused as a witness for the rest of the trial.

The next witness was Jay Brian Goold, a special agent for the Treasury Inspector 
General for Tax Administration.  He said that his job was to investigate 
assaults on IRS agents and their families.

He was present at the 11/6/2000 raid on Bell's home.  Among other items 
that he found were:

1) a floppy with the label "ATF thug hunt" and Bell's name and address
2) a spiral notebook (previously referred to as "the diary") of names, addresses,
 phone numbers, and license plate numbers
3) the original of the "Joshua" fax
4) several CDROMs of the Oregon DMV database, sorted by different criteria

By the time that Goold had described the contents of five CDROMs, most of 
the jury, who had paid rapt attention to Young's testimony, appeared districted 
and bored.

At one point, Goold tried to introduce a CDROM into evidence that was labeled 
"DMV 2000".  On cross-examination, he admitted that he hadn't looked at 
the CDROM, and didn't really know what was on it.  At this point, the judge 
granted a recess for lunch, and Goold stated that he would look at the CDROM 
during lunch.

Before the court reconvened, London joked to bystanders:  "Bell should feel 
that he's already got revenge on the system, because I've had to stay in 
Tacoma during all of this."

On re-convening, but before the jury was brought back in, Leen asked the 
judge for permission for Bell to move back from the end of the table and 
said that Bell would "behave himself."  Tanner took a long look at Bell 
and said, grudgingly, "Oh, alright."

The jury returned and Goold took the stand.

He confirmed that the exhibit was indeed as labeled.

Goold then described the next exhibits to be introduced:

1) a residential phone disk for the eastern U.S.
2) a residential phone disk for the western U.S.
3) "Digital Directory Assistance" for the western U.S.
4) "CD Phone Disk Business Pro"
5) user guide for phone disks

Goold then introduced some printouts from those CDROMs, including lookups 
of addresses and names for the people he was researching.

On cross-examination, Leen asked Goold if the printouts that were seized 
were the only ones found at Bell's house of if there were many other printouts. 
 Goold said that there were others, but that the warrant only allowed seizure 
of relevant items.  "There were other printouts, but they weren't relevant 
so I didn't take them."

One of the warrant items was for copies of AP.  During the raid, no copies 
of AP were seized.

On re-examination, London asked Goold if the search team discussed before,
 during, or after the search if they had any discussion about seizing documents 
related to the free expression of political opinion.  Goold stated that 
the agents did not.

The next witness was John Michael Copp of Portland, a friend of Jim Bell's 
for 15 years.  Copp had driven Bell around on a couple of his trips to check 
out houses of suspected federal agents.  Copp said that Bell had gotten 
the addresses "from the internet."  When they arrived at the destination,
 Copp said that he had warned Bell just to look and not to get out of the 
car, "or it was going to be a long walk home."  Bell stayed in the car and 
took a picture at each location.

Copp tried to tell Bell that he might be on shaky grounds:  "I communicated 
to him on several occasions that I really didn't think it was a really good 
idea."

Leen asked Copp if he took many road trips with Bell.  He had.

Copp stated that Bell believed that he was being spied on by neighbors, 
followed by airplanes at night.  Copp said that he was sure that he was 
being followed by a Cessna 172 with government markings.  On a trip to Rocky 
Butte, he and Bell had stopped at the Butte, and watched a plane that had 
apparently been following them go into a pattern of "lazily circling" around 
the Butte area until they left.

Copp revealed that he had once been a Portland police officer.

Copp testified that Bell had never confronted anyone.  When asked about 
weapons, he said that "none seen none inferred."  "Any chemicals?"  "None."

Copp said that Bell believed that Gordon was following him around.  "[Bell] 
thoroughly believed that Mr. Lund was an agent or instrument of the government 
of the U.S."  Jim believed that Jeff had put Mr. Lund up to assaulting him.

On re-examination, Copp stated that after Bell's arrest in 1997, he had 
told Gordon that he had actually thought about calling authorities about 
Bell's behavior.

On re-cross, Leen asked Copp about Bell's state of mind.  "Over years, he 
became more and more concerned and worried about being followed and spied 
on? paranoid, maybe."  Copp added that Bell had plans to sue the federal 
government and specifically special agent Gordon.

The next witness was Scott Deforest Mueller.  He stated that he was a real 
estate agent, denied working for the CIA or any national security organization,
 and had never heard of ISTAC.  He had resided at the address on Dionne 
Way in Bend that had been listed in the domain name record for ISTAC until 
about two years ago.

Mueller's answers were delivered in a nearly monotone staccato.  He exhibited 
no change in facial expression as he answered the questions.

When asked by London why his address was listed on the record, he claimed 
that "he had no idea how it got there."

Mueller felt threatened because Bell had sent letters to the Vancouver Columbian 
and the Portland Oregonian outing him as a CIA agent.  He said that he had 
to buy three firearms to protect himself and his family, and that previously 
he hadn't owned any firearms.

On cross-examination, Mueller admitted that Bell had never contacted him. 
 Mueller further admitted that he was unaware of any threat until Jeff Gordon 
contacted him in September or October, 2000, "after the raid."  (The raid 
was in November.)  Mueller said that he'd never had any mail stolen, nor 
had his house been broken into, nor had anyone trespassed on his property.

Leen:  "If Jeff Gordon hadn't told you about this, you'd never know any 
of this, presumably?"  "Presumably."

The next witness was Philip Scott, special agent of the U.S. Treasury Office 
of Inspector General for Tax Administration, who was present at the November 
raid.

He introduced a couple of printouts of maps, both to the Dionne Way address 
that was pointed to by the .gov ISTAC domain name record.

Leen objected that warrant didn't include seizing anything having to do 
with Dionne Way.  It turns out that the search warrant that was given to 
the defense by the D.A. did not include the search warrant for the house,
 but only for Bell's car.  London pointed out that his office had mistakenly 
put in the wrong warrant.

At this point the jury left the courtroom, and Leen argued that Scott had 
seized items not on the search warrant.  His objection was denied.

After recess, but before the jury returned to the courtroom, the judge asked 
if there were any outstanding subpoenas?  The defense said no.  Although 
he had disposed of the remaining subpoenas early the same day, 82-year-old 
Tanner did not remember disposing of the last of them.

Leen brought up that they would like to subpoena Ryan Lund.  London argued 
against it, and Tanner seemed to be quite confused by the whole argument 
and unable to follow which attorney was saying what.  Leen pointed out that 
a number of documents concerning Ryan Lund had been seized in the November 
raid and that Lund would be able to provide information relevant to Jeff 
Gordon and Mike McNall.  The judge refused to allow Lund to be subpoenaed.

After the jury returned, the prosecution next called Brian Timothy Kenney,
 an operations manager for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama.  BCBS is the 
insurer for Joshua Gordon, son of one Jeffrey and Barbara Gordon (not related 
to the Jeff Gordon in this case).  Bell had mistakenly thought that he had 
located the Jeff Gordon that he was looking for, and had somehow managed 
to find out the name of their son.  The prosecution has tried to establish 
that Bell stole a statement from BCBS from the Gordon's mail that covered 
Joshua's medical payments.  Kenney testified that the item in question was 
sent out in mid-October.  Kenney testified that a check had been enclosed,
 but that he didn't know if it had been cashed.

Leen asked if Kenney knew if his server had been hacked, indirectly implying 
that the Gordon's son's name could have been obtained by other means.  (The 
jury probably didn't catch on to this inference.)  Kenney said that he was 
not really knowledgeable about it, that he possibly might have been informed.

Upon further examination of a replica of the insurance statement, Kenney 
said that it was just a statement of what the provider had been paid, and 
that no check had been enclosed.

The next witness was John Rabatin, special agent of the Office of the Inspector 
General Tax Enforcement Division.  Rabitin is a computer forensics specialist.

When asked to identify the three computers that had been seized from Bell's 
house 5 months before, he barely glanced at them and said that they were 
the same computers.

Rabatin identified more documents seized from Bell's house, mainly assessment 
records of the addresses that Bell had been interested in, and search results 
listings for Gordon.

Rabitin also produced an e-mail that Bell authored calling for publishing 
the names and addresses of agents involved in Waco, Ruby Ridge and other 
incidents.  Bell also suggested that people in other states buy up and publish 
DMV databases similar to what had happened in Oregon.

Rabitin described how he performed forensics on Bell's machines:  he removed 
the hard drive from each machine, put them in a lab computer, and performed 
a bit copy from the source drive.  After removing the source drive, he used 
"various forensic software and techniques on the image."

More emails recovered from the computers were produced including an email 
from Bell mentioning that he had voter registration records.

By this time, Tanner is clearly napping.  But he's not alone; one of the 
jurors has slumped over, eyes closed, head to the side.

Rabitin further talks about emails where Bell describes the surveillance 
he's under, and discusses how to get back the items that were seized in 
the 1997 raid.

The jury then recessed for the day.

After the jury left. London moved to seal all documents containing personal 
information, including addresses, so that they would "not be splashed all 
over the internet."  Leen argued against a sealing order based on first 
and sixth amendments.

No ruling was made at the time.


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