[osint] Martha's lesson - don't talk to the FBI

[Tefft, Bruce]

Thought everyone knew that.

Bruce


----- http://www.nwanews.com/times/story_Editorial.php?storyid=115586

Guest Commentary : Martha's lesson - don't talk to the FBI
BY DONALD KAUL
Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2004

Here is the lesson to be learned from the fall of Martha

Stewart:

Don't ever, under any circumstances, answer questions put to you by the FBI
or any other federal agent unless you have a competent criminal lawyer at
your side. And it would be better if it were a very good criminal lawyer.
There are other lessons to be drawn from the fate of poor Martha, but that's
the main one. You see, there is a section in the federal code, referred to
as 1001 by legal eagles, that makes it a crime to lie to a federal agent.
The agent doesn't have to put you under oath. If you tell him or her a lie,
you're guilty. The federal officer doesn't even have to tape the
conversation. All he or she has to do is produce handwritten notes that
indicate that you made false statements. So, if you misspeak or the agent
mishears or there is an ambiguity that the agent chooses to interpret in an
unfortunate (for you) direction, you're on the hook. There's also the
possibility that you might be tempted to shade the truth a bit when an IRS
agent is quizzing you about that business deduction you took for the trip to
Vegas. My advice to you is: Don't do it. To be on the safe side, when
confronted by a federal agent, don't say anything at all unless your lawyer
says you have to.

It's a shame things have come to this. It used to be that people felt it
their duty as citizens to cooperate with federal authorities. That was
before Law 1001.

We now live in an era of Incredible Shrinking Civil Rights. You have to
protect yourself at all times.

Let's look more closely at the case of Poor Martha the Match Girl. What did
she do?

She was convicted of lying about the reason she sold her shares in a
biotechnology company two years ago. She said she sold them because they had
fallen to the price at which she and her broker had agreed to sell.

The government argued (and the jury believed) that she sold because her
broker passed on some inside information that the stock was going to plunge
in the next couple of days.

I know what you're going to say - "insider trading." True, it has that smell
about it, but the government did not charge her with insider trading, only
with lying about it.

I hate that. It seems to me that convicting someone of lying about a crime
that the government isn't willing to prove happened is unfair.

Add to that the fact that Ms. Stewart saved all of $45,000 on the stock
transaction and has seen her fortune decrease by hundreds of millions
because of the trial, and the penalty does not seem to fit the crime.

I think the reason the government has spent millions pursuing this two-bit
case is because Ms. Stewart is famous and the case makes it look as though
the Justice Department is doing a bang-up job running down crooks in high
places. Also, the lifestyle lady - a political contributor to Democrats
rather than Republicans, incidentally - irritated prosecutors with her
haughty, arrogant attitude. (It's always a bad idea to make prosecutors
mad.)

Then too, her high-priced attorney, Robert Morvillo, lost a series of
strategic gambles that left his client virtually defenseless. After the
government had spent six weeks making the case against Stewart, Morvillo
called only one witness in her defense and questioned him for 20 minutes.

His chief argument was that Stewart and her broker were too smart to pull a
dumb stunt like this. As one juror said later, "How could we tell anything
about how smart either of them was if they never took the stand?"

Ultimately, I suppose, Ms. Stewart's downfall was precipitated by petty
greed, arrogance and deceitfulness, not attractive attributes.

But I still feel sorry for her. She's getting worse than she deserves.

Donald Kaul recently retired as Washington columnist for the Des Moines
Register.




--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic?  Head on over to our discussion list,
discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com.
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
bisoldi at intellnet.org

http://www.intellnet.org

  Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com
  Subscribe:    osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
  Unsubscribe:  osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com


*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use
has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a
part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to
OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods,
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational
purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright
Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own
that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/


--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'