Jim Bell Trial: Fourth Day (fwd)

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Fourth Day:  Jim Bell Trial

Gordon continued his testimony from the previous day.

He started by reviewing the mechanism for returning the guns seized on April 
1, 1997, to a person that Bell would designate.

He then verified the following admitted evidence:

1. A receipt issued to Bell by Clark County for assessor's records copies.
2. Copies of real property records for a (not the) Jeffrey Gordon.

London then asked Gordon about the tracking device that had been installed 
on Bell's car.  Gordon monitored the tracking device at night from his home. 
 When Bell got outside a small radius from his house, the alarm would sound. 
 The short radius was set to avoid trivial alerts, such as Bell going to 
a grocery store near his home.

More evidence was confirmed by Gordon, specifically:

1. A Wired article by Declan McCullagh, where he quoted Bell as saying that 
he was "thinking of picketing" Gordon's home.
2. A photo processing envelope from 11/17/00 and a photo of one of the residences 
that Bell had stopped at, found in Bell's car at the time of his arrest.

London asked Gordon how he had found out about Mueller.  Gordon stated that 
he had typed "Scott Mueller" into a search engine and that it had turned 
up in the cypherpunks archive.

Gordon then described why he believed that Bell's notebook was evidence 
of stalking:  There were some matches between phone numbers in Bell's "diary,
" and phone calls on the long distance bill-"At least one example where 
it [the numbers] did match up."  Gordon testified that that the numbers 
were "not necessarily victims in the case."  He noted that some of the numbers 
belonged to assessor's offices in various counties.

London asked Gordon if he carried a gun.  Gordon replied that he did.  London: 
 "Why are you afraid of this guy?  You're carrying a gun and he isn't." 
 "He's strongly advocated the assassination of IRS agents."  Gordon also 
cited Bell's chemistry background, the fact that he went to MIT, and the 
incident where Bell dumped chemicals in an IRS building.  Gordon stated 
that Bell had not reformed, that he had increased his activity since his 
release.  His behavior had become more "aggressive and escalating."

London asked Gordon how he was addressing this perceived threat.  Had he 
increased security?  Gordon responded that he had purchased additional firearms,
 installed security systems, obtained a restraining order, and educated 
his family.  His wife started carrying.  Gordon said that he looked out 
of the window more, took evasive routes when driving, and watched for anyone 
following.

Gordon stated that when Bell was released, he didn't do anything other than 
monitor the internet and take phone calls from people who were concerned 
about the danger that they believed Bell might pose.

On the matter of Bell using Oregon DMV databases:  Gordon stated that DMV 
access is not legal for non-commercial use, noting that both Oregon state 
and federal law restricted their use.

London ended the direct examination by asking Gordon about Bell's handwriting 
samples.  Gordon said that Bell refused to give samples although technicians 
were sent twice to the Seatac Detention Facility to get them.

In cross-examination, Gordon stated that when Bell's vehicle was seized 
in February, 1997, Gordon was aware of Bell and "had a lot of involvement 
in the process."  He already was aware of AP at the time.

"Later on" he began monitoring the cypherpunks list.

He was also aware of Walsh, the agent who testified about wearing a wire 
to numerous Multnomah County Common Law Court and to a Clark County Libertarian 
Party meeting.  Gordon claimed that Walsh's "mission was not to infiltrate 
the Common Law Court."

When asked if Bell had supplied an illegal FM transmitter that Walsh had 
tried to get Bell to supply, Gordon stated that Bell had not supplied any 
illegal FM transmitter.

Asked what had prompted the car seizure in 1997, Gordon said that Bell had 
failed to pay past taxes on stock sales amounting to a "big $100,000 payment."

Gordon said that Bell was not being prosecuted for his essay Assassination 
Politics or for chemicals recovered from his house in 1997.  He agreed with 
previous witnesses that no firearms had been found at the Bell house in 
the November, 2000, raid, nor had Gordon ever seen the weapons that had 
been released to Bell's friend Bob East again.  However, there were some 
chemicals found in the 2000 raid.  Gordon stated that he was aware that 
Bell had been a hobbyist chemist since he was a pre-teen.

Leen asked Gordon about his monitoring efforts.  Gordon stated that he had 
made no sustained effort to monitor Bell except when Walsh "did one-party 
consensual monitoring, which we were entitled to do."  (The conversations 
that were monitored involved Bell's phone in Vancouver, Washington.  Washington 
is a "two-party" state, a fact noted by a previous Treasury Department witness.)

Further questioning revealed that:

Gordon said that he started monitoring the cypherpunks mailing list in "mid 
to late 97."

The restraining order that Gordon said that he obtained as part of the effort 
to increase his personal security was obtained after Bell was arrested. 
 Bell has not been out of jail since his arrest.

The person who sold Bell the Oregon DMV records did not obtain a signed 
form stating that the database would be used only for commercial purposes 
for Bell, although this was a normal procedure.

On redirect examination, Gordon again stated that there was no political 
plan to infiltrate the Common Law Court, that having Walsh go to the Common 
Law Court "was the only way to contact Bell."

Walsh recorded conversations of Bell discussing AP, and what steps were 
necessary to implement it.

Gordon claimed that he would not have opened an investigation of Bell if 
the basis for the investigation was only AP.  Instead, it was the "Operation 
Locate IRS" that triggered the investigation.

Mopping up details, Gordon concluded his testimony by noting that a fax 
machine was found next to Bell's computer in the 11/6/2000 raid.  He also 
mentioned that Bell's use of the roads for travel between Washington and 
Oregon qualified as interstate commerce.

The jury was sent out for a break.

While the jury was out, Tanner observed that the relations between the defense 
attorney and the defendant has become "congenial."

Leen moved for a Rule 29 acquittal on all counts.  On count one, he argued,
 there was no prima facie showing that McNall was reall in danger; he also 
cited the commerce clause of the constitution.  Tanner denied.

Leen made the same argument for count 2.  Tanner denied.

On count three, Leen argued that Bell had only made one phone call and sent 
one fax-clearly not a consistent exercise to constitute a pattern or course 
of conduct; Leen also cited the constitution's commerce clause.  Leen pointed 
out that the federal law that Bell was prosecuted under was vague, but that 
similar laws required at least two instances and sometimes three to establish 
a pattern.

Leen also moved to dismiss counts four and five based on insufficient evidence 
of fear by the people mentioned in the counts.

London interjected that McNall not only expressed fear but took steps to 
protect himself.  London said that Bell should have understood that he was 
being surveilled since he knew that law enforcement was watching his posts. 
 Furthermore, London pointed out, the government could not wait until Bell 
actually did something.  "If law enforcement was aware [of Bell's actions] 
and someone got hurt, the victims could sue law enforcement."

Tanner asked:  "Is Assassination Politics sufficient to put people on the 
alert?"

London:  "It's enough to put people on the alert, but not enough to indict 
someone unless someone takes action against a specific person."

Tanner:  "Not only overt acts but subtle acts."  He denied all defense motions.

Leen announced that Bell would take the stand.  Tanner said that Bell couldn't 
use the blackboard, but instead must use butcher paper mounted on an easel. 
 Bell would not be permitted to get out of the witness box, but must instead 
use a pointer.  (During lunch, Bell drew some maps on the paper.  After 
reconvening, the easel was placed well beyond the reach of most pointers,
 and was oriented sideways where Bell could not see it.)

Leen then asked the court if Bell could retrieve his notes from SeaTac. 
 He said that the notes were locked up-by court order--and that Bell could 
only obtain them during business hours.  Tanner told Leen that the court 
would reconvene at one pm, and at that point he would asked if the defense 
was ready or not-implying that if Leen didn't put on his case at that time,
 he would not have the opportunity.

The court recessed for lunch.

The afternoon started with Bell on the stand.  Defense attorney Leen had 
Bell describe his family and educational background.  Bell came across as 
affable and chatty, directly addressing the jury.  He related his experience 
in working for Intel in 1980, then starting and running Semi-Disk Corporation 
from 1982-1992, when its main product finally became obsolete and the company 
failed.  Since 1992, he had taken occasional work in electronics design 
and prototyping.

So how did Bell come by so large a tax liability?  Bell sold some stock 
after the business failed and did not pay capital gains on it.  After the 
business failed, he said, he "developed a phobia about dealing with large 
scale transactions."  He often set aside unopened letters from the IRS about 
the tax liability because of his phobia.

Bell testified that he had been a libertarian since 1975.  How did he get 
involved with the Multnomah County Common Law Court?  "They sounded kind 
of interesting, and the meeting was held in a pizza joint, and I will go 
anywhere for pizza."

He also says that he went to the CLC to look for signs of infiltration by 
federal agents.  Bell stated that he considers infiltration of political 
groups "improper."

Leen then had Bell review the history of his essay.  Bell first posted AP 
to Fidonet in 1985.

Leen:  "What was interesting about Assassination Politics?"

Bell:  "The name was kind of a joke."  It really meant the end of politics,
 an elimination of hierarchical power structures.  Bell saw that as an improvement,
 noting that governments cause wars, that individuals don't bear that kind 
of animus toward each other.

Assassination Politics was originally intended for somebody like Saddam 
Hussein, not American public officials.  So what about someone who didn't 
like their boss, Leen asked.  Bell said that was unlikely to happen, since 
the whole society would have to be quite different from what it is now for 
AP to function.  "I wasn't specifically instituting this system into a small 
area of another system."

Bell stated that AP was "only quite hypothetically" workable.

Leen:  "So you are advocating anarchy?"  Bell:  "Anarchy is a lack of orders,
 not a lack of order?.  I don't advocate chaos, I don't believe in lack 
of order.  I believe in a lack of orders."

Leen then asked Bell to define encryption and cyphers, followed by questions 
about how public key encryption is related to AP.  Bell described in simple 
terms how encryption would work in his proposed system.

Bell said that he had first gotten the idea from an article on blind signatures 
that was in a 1993 Scientific American article.

So why did Bell discuss AP on the cypherpunks list?  Because cypherpunks 
understood computers, networks and encryption.  AP was merely intended for 
debate and discussion, not necessarily implementation.

Bell mapped the probability for AP's implementation to the prediction of 
a moon landing by HG Wells in the 1890s, saying that the capability to implement 
AP was "at least 10 or 15 years off."

So why did Bell suggest to the CLC that AP could be a "solution?"  Bell 
said that the tax collector is a familiar symbol to people on the CLC, and 
that he was trying to make his essay relevant to them so that they would 
discuss it.

So, Leen asked, what would happen to people like tax collectors?  After 
all, "a person who learns of a system that makes it impossible to keep their 
job would be terrified."  Bell thought it unlikely to become a problem, 
since those people would tend to find other work before having to deal with 
such a system.  He said that a lot of jobs become obsolete.  When that happens,
 people find new jobs.  He characterized such fear as "economic fear and 
not life-threatening" that could be addressed simply by changing jobs.

"The fundamental reason for the essay was to make it unnecessary to pay 
for a lot of big government."  Under AP, the need for a large military would 
decline.

Bell thought that the IRS' surveillance of him began in 1997 at the CLC. 
 He fabricated a field strength meter that would signal him with vibration 
and took that to a meeting, where he detected RF emissions coming from "Steve 
Wilson" (whose real name was Steve Walsh).

While at the CLC, Bell outlined AP to some of the members.  Bell stated 
that AP would be seldom implemented, "very few people killed"-only "very 
serious offenders or people who didn't pay their fines."

Leen asked Bell about his communications with "Steve Wilson" between January 
31, 1997 and the following April 28.  Wilson asked Bell to obtain a transmitter 
for an FM pirate radio station.  Leen:  "Did you do that?"  Bell:  "Oh no,
 that's illegal."

Bell believed that he was under surveillance in 1997 and 1998.

What led to his conviction in 1997 was the prank of putting Mercaptan, a 
"non-toxic smelly substance" in IRS offices, as well as using a false Social 
Security number.  Bell stated that he resisted using his SSN for casual 
non-tax purposes, and would ask for a unique identifier instead.  Since 
he used his Social Security number rarely, he made the error of swapping 
two digits on a tax form.

The conviction was part of a plea agreement.  (The agreement itself was 
interesting:  it contained clauses where Bell would turn over his PGP keys 
and passphrase, which federal agents agreed would not be used to make posts; 
that Bell would reveal what he knew about chemicals such as sarin and ricin. 
 This agreement was not discussed in detail in the trial, but is available 
as a public document.)

Bell insists that he signed the plea agreement under duress.  He bases this 
claim on an incident in 1997, where Eric Thomas Lund started an altercation 
with him, and during the altercation yelled at Bell that he'd better accept 
the agreement that was offered.  Bell testified that he had been informing 
various people, including his own lawyer, that he had decided to refuse 
the agreement.

Bell had suspected Lund from the first day he met him.  While at the Tacoma 
courthouse on 11/21/1997, Bell had been placed in the same holding cell 
as Lund.  However, Lund had his papers with him-usually not permitted to 
prisoners-and he was dressed in street clothes instead of the more normal 
prison garb.  Lund went so far as to clearly admit his guilt in front of 
the cameras and microphones monitoring the cells.

After getting out of prison, Bell obtained a copy of both Lund's criminal 
prosecution files and a civil file for a slip-and-fall case that Lund sued 
the Seatac Detention facility for on 12/15/1997.  Bell says that the civil 
case indicates that Lund was a government informant at that time.

Bell pursued his course of action because he believed that the way that 
federal agents had used Lund to intimidate him should be exposed.  He said 
that he didn't believe in revenge.

Bell then told several stories about surveillance that he suspected had 
occurred, including a 1998 incident at a Clark County LP meeting at Smokey's 
Pizza in Orchards, Washington.

After his release in 2000, Bell decided to investigate Lund.  He found the 
name of Mike McNall in Lund's criminal file and believed that McNall might 
be Lund's "handler."  Bell said that he did not want to contact McNall at 
his office, but believed that McNall would be more candid and forthcoming 
if Bell could talk to him away from his office.

Regarding the CIA/Mueller incident, Bell said that was not connected to 
any of the IRS matters.  Bell was familiar with Bend and was curious as 
to why there would be a CIA presence there, since it was a relatively small 
town far from anything of interest.  Bell decoupled himself from John Young,
 pointing out that "Young didn't request assistance, and I didn't offer 
assistance."  Bell admitted that he had mistaken Mueller for a CIA agent 
and that now he believes that Mueller is telling the truth about being a 
real estate agent.  (A separate check of Washington state's real estate 
licensing board indicates that Mueller was a real estate agent licensed 
in Chelan until July, 1996.  He is registered under the name "Scott Mueller" 
rather than "Deforest Mueller," the name listed with directory information 
in Bend, and the name on the CIA ISTAC domain record.)

The jury was dismissed for the day.

Leen told Tanner that all of Bell's discovery notes were at Seatac; that 
Seatac would not release the notes without a court order, and that the counsellor 
who would release the notes doesn't work on the weekend.  Leen asked for 
an opportunity to recover the notes.  Tanner refused.

London asked about when the conference on jury instructions would be held. 
 Tanner put considering that off for a day.

Court adjourned until Monday.


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