Sometimes something comes along, as this welcome analysis did two days ago from Consortium News, that seems refreshingly clear and yet contrary to what the news media present as settled opinion. It is author Scott Ritter’s view of what is going on between NATO and Russia over Ukraine. One has to read, or scroll down, to the end to see his credentials. Apparently a piece in The Atlantic, which he links to, set him off. — MCM

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America’s Putin Psychosis

By Scott Ridder

The war of words between Russia and the United States over Ukraine escalated further on Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin responded for the first time to the U.S. written reply to Russia’s demands for security guarantees that were expressed in the form of a pair of draft treaties submitted by Moscow to the U.S. and NATO in December.

“It is already clear…that the fundamental Russian concerns were ignored. We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements,” Putin said at a press conference that followed his meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.

Putin said the U.S. had failed to give “adequate consideration of our three key demands regarding NATO expansion, the renunciation of the deployment of strike weapons systems near Russian borders, and the return of the [NATO] bloc’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state of 1997, when the Russia-NATO founding act was signed.”

He detailed what he alleged was NATO’s long history of deception, re-emphasizing the 1990 verbal commitment by former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand “an inch” eastward. “They said one thing, they did another,” Putin said. “As people say, they screwed us over, well they simply deceived us.”

With some 130,000 Russian troops deployed in the western and southern military districts bordering Ukraine, and another 30,000 assembling in neighboring Belarus, U.S. policy makers are scrambling to figure out what Russia’s next move might be, a choice most U.S. policy makers believe boils down to diplomacy or war.

Rather than examine the situation from the perspective of Russian national security interests, however, these officials have placed the fate of European peace and security in the hands of a single individual: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Tom Nichols opines that “no one really knows why Putin is doing this—or whether he really intends to do it at all. It is unlikely that his own inner circle even has a good read on its boss.”

Even the president of the United States, Joe Biden, professed a sense of frustration at not knowing what Putin’s objectives are vis-à-vis Ukraine. “I’ll be completely honest with you,” Biden said last month, “it is a little bit like reading tea leaves” when it came to predicting Putin’s next move.

The fact that the U.S. president is at a loss when assessing Russia’s next move regarding Ukraine should send a shiver up the spines of all concerned Americans. One of the main reasons for this confusion lies in the emphasis Biden placed on the importance of only what Putin was thinking, as opposed what the legitimate national security interests of Russia were.

This problem is not unique to the present circumstance, but rather is part and parcel of a national obsession with Putin the man that obviates the reality that Russia is a country whose interests are greater than any single individual, no matter how long serving or powerful.

The problem with focusing on an individual as the embodiment of a nation is that one is trying to solve the wrong problem. Russia’s ongoing issues with Ukraine are larger than Vladimir Putin, and as such, far more complex in defining national goals and policy boundaries. You can’t solve a problem unless you first accurately define the problem; by tying the problem of Ukraine to one man, American policy makers are, in effect, dealing with the wrong problem.

This disconnect from reality is further exacerbated when . . . READ MORE . . .

Liars include (but are not limited to) government and media outlets, as well as vengeful gossips of all stripes.

One outlier is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He may not be right about everything but seems like one of the most lied-about Americans currently on stage.

I’m HERE posting a new piece by Matt Taibbi headed “The Folly of Pandemic Censorship.” I won’t try to summarize it because that would involve too much time (and require work). But “Folly” beautifully begins to show how news media operations are rapidly putting themselves out of business and discrediting the people working in them — through aggressive, in-your-face censorship and stupid disparagement of people who care enough to openly disagree with official diktats.

This applies to Covid-19 and how to address its effects. And to — the reason this blog got started — the September 2001 terror attacks and seeking truth, justice and some kind of resolution from their effects.

— Mark Channing Miller

Yesterday I said Peter Bergen’s opinion piece labeling Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a dangerous disinformation artist endangering American lives AND Bob Guaccione Jr.’s long article on and interview with RFKJr. were both rare, each in its own way.

First, Bergen: It’s rare that a mainstream media commentator mentions this Kennedy at all. The attack by CNN’s national security analyst violated standard news media practice of pretending he doesn’t exist. Granted, Bergen didn’t address any of Kennedy’s arguments on viruses and vaccines and alternatives — too complicated — or or even mention his national best-seller, The True Anthony Fauci. But online Bergen links to a Twitter message in which RFKJr. had linked to the Guaccione thing. Could this have been a backhanded way of rebelling against the government/media whiteout of the rebel Kennedy?

Second, Guaccione: “The Outsider,” done for the webzine Spin, is the first print review of The Real Anthony Fauci, or the closest thing to one, yet. I’m waiting for The New Yorker’s Michael Specter to have a go at it.

— Mark Channing Miller

With all due respect to fellow and sister ‘“9/11 truthers” who feel the quest for truth in the matter of the September 2001 terror attacks should not be mixed with efforts to expose government/media false narratives on the Covid-19 pandemic and how to fight it . . . here are two pieces on the latter. Each is rare in its own way. The first, by author and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, was published today. The second, by Spin webzine publisher Bob Guaccione Jr., first appeared on Jan. 17. Click on the titles to access them.

(NOTE: The version below of Bergen’s article, from CNN’s website,  is in a format that is far more readable than the one initially posted here, which was from his own website. Apologies for the tough reading.) — MCM

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The threat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. poses to Covid-19 vaccination efforts, by Peter Bergen. “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has become one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccination against Covid-19 movement, and he is imperiling the lives of countless Americans in the process.”

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The Outsider, written by Bob Guaccione Jr, “Robert Kennedy, Jr., ostracized for his criticisms of vaccines, has written an explosive expose of America’s Doctor, Anthony Fauci. Here [in an interview] Kennedy has a lot to say, about Fauci, COVID and our corrupted media.”

Last Friday, attorneys for plaintiffs and the defense presented oral arguments in the case of Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry v. Garland, before a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Cirucuit. Below is a transcript. Arguing for plaintiffs is Attorney Mick Harrison of the Lawyers’ Committee. Arguing for the defense is nn attorney Hogan, otherwise unidentified. For a recording click HERE. Defendants are the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and U.S.  Attorney General Merrick Garland. Plaintiffs are appealing the alleged failure of the U.S. Attorney’s Office to relay to a federal special grand jury evidence concerning federal crimes in the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. — MCM

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A COURT OFFICIAL: Hear ye, hear ye, here ye. All persons having business before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit  draw near, give your attention, and you shall be heard.

A JUDGE: Thank you, Ms. Rodriquez. [Here follow remarks related to the Zoom nature of the proceedings.] Our first case for argument is Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry v. Garland. . . . Mr. Harrison?

MICK HARRISON: Yes, your honor.

JUDGE: Mr. Hogan?

HOGAN: Good morning, your honor.

JUDGE: So, Mr. Harrison, you’ve got 10 minutes but we reserve two for rebuttal, so that gives you eight out of the gate. You may proceed.

HARRISON: Thanks, your honor. The case below was decided on standing. The plaintiffs are three 9/11 family members, two ground zero responders, two non-profits, and one architect associated with one of those non-profits. There were four counts in the complaint. As your honors know, the standing is to be analyzed count by count.

The district court erred below on the standing issue, first, by making a fundamental procedural error, which was to consolidate the analysis of standing of counts 2, 3 and 4 as if they essentially were the same. The problem with that is that count 2 is a First Amendment claim. Counts 3 and 4 are mandamus claims. So had the court separated those claims and analyzed the First Amendment claims separately, the standing analysis would be straightforward.

As your honors know, there is a three-part test for Article 3 standing: Injury needs to be shown (injury-in-fact); injury needs to be traceable to the conduct of the defendants, alleged; and the relief requested from the court needs to provide remedy for that injury, if granted.

In this case those requirements are clearly met. The Supreme Court — and this court — has recognized that even in a First Amendment case where there’s not a complete obstruction of a right, but merely the interference, hindering, inconvenience, discouraging or chilling of a First Amendment exercise that …

CHIEF JUDGE DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON: Mr Harrison, is there a case that identifies a First Amendment right to present evidence to a grand jury?

HARRISON: Not to my knowledge, your honor. And that’s a key question. The government, I think, attempted to give the impression that there was. I recall that they cited a Sixth Circuit case that was unpublished regarding a pro se prisoner — Granton, I believe — and in that case, which may be the closest your honor has to either of the briefs to answer the question you asked.

That case also did not answer the question because the pro se plaintiff there … first of all didn’t have a lawyer. So the court denied relief because that pro se plaintiff did not articulate legal authority on the point your honor just asked about.

CHIEF JUDGE LIVINGSTON: But is that a problem for you, though, that you don’t have a case to point to? And the cases that have addressed this do seem to be solely or predominantly, I guess, in the prisoner-access context. So it seems like it is an issue, but it seems like it’s a problem for you.

HARRISON: Well, the applicants don’t see it as a problem, your honor, but it is a challenge for this court because I think this court may be the first ever to decide that question. And the reason that I don’t believe as counsel that it’s a problem for appellants is that the Supreme Court precedent is clear not on grand jury petitions specifically, but on First Amendment petitions to redress, generally and in many other contexts, that the First Amendment right to petition applies to all branches and to all components of the federal government.

JUDGE WALKER: . . . no question that you have a First Amendment right to petition the government under the First Amendment. The only question is what is the government’s responsibility having received that petition. You have no First Amendment right to have the government act on the basis of your petition the way you choose or in any other way. I mean, really, there is no First Amendment right on the part of the petitioner to have the government listen to the petition. You can petition, but the government may or may not act on it.

HARRISON: I understand your honor’s point. I think the case law agrees with you as far as that goes.

There is a developing debate between, I think, the academic community on the law regarding the obligation of the government to respond to a petition. The courts have not yet embraced at the highest level that position. We may evolve there, but at the moment I think the case law agrees with your honor.

The question, though, is how does that apply to this particular situation. And the key distinction is, the plaintiffs’ petition was addressed to the special grand jury, seeking a special grand jury investigation, a public report of government misconduct. It’s true that we delivered it to the U.S. Attorney, as your honor I think is contemplating. The U.S. Attorney chose not to act on it. The U.S. Attorney may well have that discretion. The problem lies in not handing it to the other government entity for which it was intended, the special grand jury. And our position isn’t that the federal grand jury has an obligation to agree with the plaintiffs, even to read the petition, to respond to it, although we think that the grand jury duty, one of the grand jury’s duties under the Constitution, may require them to read it and evaluate it independently; if they don’t, then there is a Constitutional problem there.

But the problem here, your honor, is, that petition was never delivered. This is just a case about delivery.

ANOTHER JUDGE: But again, this is a standing issue. Now you’re back to the statute. Now we’re out of the First Amendment. Now we’re talking about 18 U.S.C. 33:32, right?

HARRISON: No, your honor, the delivery question applies to both the First Amendment claim and the mandatory duty claims under 18 U.S.C. 33:32A. So it’s an issue in both. I was answering Judge Walker’s question in my last response. But the standing question, which I started with, is straightforward here: An injury-in-fact exists. A First Amendment right is obstructed or even hindered. In this case the obstruction is the failure to deliver to the grand jury. So it’s clearly traceable to the acts of the defendants, and if your honor gives us an order that says to the U.S. attorney, please deliver the petition to the grand jury, we’ll have a remedy for that injury. So there is the standing under the First Amendment claim here.

So going quickly to the mandamus claims, although one can argue as the Southern District of New York did back in 1985 — and as I’m sure your honors have noted, we agree with the 1985 decision . . .

A JUDGE: The problem with the 1985 decision is, first of all, it’s a Southern District case — it’s not binding on anybody, really. And second, that it predates Zelesky, which stands for a totally different proposition and overrules it, right?

HARRISON: No, your honor, Zelesky did not address this particular question. Zelesky was decided on the fact that a plaintiff there did not invoke 18 U.S.C. 33:32A because he didn’t request the U.S. attorney to deliver his information to the grand jury. The question was never reached.

The court did talk about the question in dicta and even then qualified its language about what appears might have been the case had the court reached the question. So this court is going to have to address that question in the first instance in this case. Your honor, my eight minutes primary argument time is elapsing

A JUDGE: Well, you’ve got two minutes for rebuttal. Now we’ll hear from Mr. Hogan.

HOGAN: Good morning. May it please the court . . . In 2018 plaintiffs presented what they called to be a petition to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York setting forth alleged crimes that they thought occurred on the morning of September 11th, and they asked the U.S. Attorney to present this information to a grand jury pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 33:32A. And this case presents two questions for the court’s review, though only one was touched upon in the counsel’s opening argument — the first being what plaintiffs have standing with respect to their allegation that the U.S. attorney allegedly did not present this to a grand jury, and then, second, if this had been presented whether applicants are entitled to any of those grand jury records.

So, just talking about the first of those two issues, with respect to standing: Of course it’s fundamental that plaintiffs have to demonstrate both harm and addressability for there to be standing. And the plaintiffs have asserted a bunch of different things with respect to standing, the First Amendment being one of them. But, quickly, they also asserted other claims, other theories that were not mentioned in the opening arguments with respect to bounties from the State Department if terrorists are brought to justice, or special interests about transparency and accountability of 9/11, or prosecuting the people to receive justice.

So the government would submit that for all those reasons in its brief those have been repeatedly rejected by courts with respect to giving enough for a plaintiff to have standing.

But talking specifically about the First Amendment issue, that doesn’t somehow fundamentally change the calculus here, as plaintiffs want us to believe; simply because, as Judge Lee properly noted, there simply is no case that the government has ever held a First Amendment right to communicate and petition directly to a grand jury. Kebranis held so when he was a District judge in Re New Haven Grand Jury.

The Third Circuit has said so in Barinosky, the DDC [U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia] has said so in Sibly vs. Obama — both of those last two cases being in the 33:32A context. The Southerm Circuit said so in Gratten [sp.?].

And . . . in a related context this Circuit has also held that a defendant doesn’t have the right to personally appear before a grand jury that is investigating it. And that’s in Cianbrone from the Second Circuit.

So all of this leads one to believe that there is no First Amendment right there. And without that right there is obviously no wrong that plaintiffs have suffered that gives rise to standing. And all of these cases so concluding, it is for good reason, as Judge Kabronis has noted in his New Haven case when he was a District judge, to allow a member of the public to directly communicate with the grand jury would, as he put it, open it up to being used to “by hook or by crook” allow people to potentially use the grand jury for improper purposes, as he said, “for personal vendettas, malicious prosecutions,” and it would undermine  the very reason the grand jury found its way into the Bill of Rights, to protect the rights of the innocent.

So, your honors, the government does submit that — and it’s happy to talk about any of the other theories of standing that the plaintiffs have asserted — the plaintiffs are attempting to hang their hat on the First Amendment. The government would submit that there is no First Amendment right there. And accordingly, it was proper for the District Court to, as appellants noted, to consolidate these standing issues into one analysis, because if there is no First Amendment right, then you have to look elsewhere for the harm that gives rise to standing.

And turning to the second of these issues, your honor, the grand jury materials, it’s of course fundamental that a grand jury operate in secrecy. This is a tradition older than the nation. This court has said as much, and the government would just submit that even though there are exceptions related to grand jury argument that are set forth in federal criminal procedures 6E, they are all plainly applicable here. The only one that potentially applies is this idea that a person can get records in connection with another judicial proceeding of some type. But even there you have to show that there’s some type of injustice that will arise in this other proceeding that outweighs the grand jury’s secrecy concerns, and here,  . . .

A JUDGE: . . ., for a second, Mr. Hogan . . . Judge Gardiffy treated this like it was like a 12 V 6  and dismissed [indistinct]. Typically, requests for grand jury material like petitions are then left to the discretion of the court, and standard of review would be abuse of discretion. So which should we be dealing with here?

HOGAN: Your honor, I think perhaps the fundamental issue here is that in the primary case the applicants rely on from the Ninth Circuit, it’s about grand jury materials, they noted a potential jurisdictional issue, with respect to the fact that the court is the entity that holds these grand jury materials and given this application was not made to the court but rather seemingly to the district attorney’s office in some way to disclose these materials. That could indeed be a jurisdictional issue, that, as I said, would again in this Ninth Circuit case, has not been raised in this litigation thus far.

But to specifically address your honor’s question, it is indeed the case that it is indeed an abuse-of-discretion analysis when you are determining whether the lower court properly relied upon or properly analyzed [indistinct] so now the government’s position that indeed an abuse of discretion even though yes,  it was done on a 12 B 6 basis.

JUDGE: [Indistinct]

HOGAN: So, your honor, the government’s ultimate point here is simply that without any other type of judicial proceeding where these records are needed to outweigh these secrecy concerns that are so fundamental to the grand jury, plaintiffs aren’t entitled to these records.

And unless the court has any other questions the government is happy to rest on its papers going further. And thank you very much for your time.

A JUDGE: Seeing no further questions, we’ll hear again from Mr. Harrison for two minutes of rebuttal.

HARRISON: Yes, thank you, your honor. The first point is that the government’s concern about improper influence by citizens to a grand jury . . . It really wasn’t an intent of the Constitution in creating the grand jury as an independent government entity. The goal is for the grand jury to serve as a protection against the prosecutors, to protect against a politically motivated prosecution, an unjust prosecution. The grand jury cannot serve that Constitutional function if it never sees the evidence. If your honor gives the U.S. attorney what it wants in this case it will be able to decide to essentially withhold inculpatory evidence from a political ally that it doesn’t want prosecuted [and] withhold exculpatory evidence from a political adversary it does want to prosecute.

A JUDGE: Well, let’s talk about that. Because the case law is pretty clear that a defendant, the target of a grand jury investigation, does have the right to come in and provide his side of the story, right?

HARRISON: Not in person, but the First Amendment would give a right to submit evidence in a petition, even  for a defendant — I don’t know if that’s ever been decided.

But this First Amendment petition right — the Supreme Court has never carved out an exception for the grand jury or any other government entity. The Constitution creates the grand jury as a government entity, and the Supreme Court decisions say all government entities may be petitioned.

CHIEF JUDGE LIVINGSTON: Can I just ask you . . . I don’t understand what sort of limiting principle there would be with your argument. Is it the case then that every organization or every person who has an interest in a particular topic is that they get to present something, that they’re entitled to have the government present that to a grand jury? Like, what are the bounds of this right, the way you’re putting it forward?

HARRISON: I would love to answer your question. My rebuttal time just expired.

A JUDGE: You can answer. That’s fine.

HARRISON: Thank you, your honor. So, the limits, I think, will have to be developed by the case law, and maybe by the U.S. attorney, in pragmatically managing the task. I doubt if the floodgate is going to be opened, like the government may be concerned, if citizens are allowed to communicate. Before there was a Constitution citizens did communicate with grand juries.

CHIEF JUDGE LIVINGSTON: This is a Constitutional right. And so if you’re saying that this right means that there is this ability to petition, to have this petition, have evidence brought by individual citizens or organizations to a grand jury, I don’t think that it would be appropriate, just for practical reasons, to place limits on it. Where’s something we can look to? Here are the limits to this right.

HARRISON: Well, the courts have certainly regulated the access to the court’s component to the First Amendment in terms of being able to discuss frivolous lawsuits, having certain preliminary reviews for prisoners’ actions, dismissal of standing, certainly comes to mind. It’s not an impossible task, one the government’s side.

Trans union, a recent Supreme Court case of last year, points out that there may be an inconvenience and a burden in some cases from the exercise of Constitutional rights, but if an inconvenience to the government comes up against protecting the right, the inconvenience has to give way and the right has to be honored. And that’s our position here. It is pretty much a new question, your honor, for each of your honors to struggle with and decide. I wish you the best of luck with that. I think it’s an important public interest question.

A JUDGE: I have a question. Traditionally, the grand jury has been seen as really an arm of the court, of the district court. The district court impanels the grand jury. The district court resolves any legal questions that arise during the grand jury proceedings whether it’s an indictment or a report presented to the district court. And it seems to me that [. . . ] I’m surprised that you decided to proceed by petitioning to government, by serving the petition to the government as opposed to just going to court and asking for relief.

HARRISON:  It’s a fascinating question, your honor. That option exists, under exactly the same statute that we used to appeal to the U.S. attorney. The difference is, as I read the statute — I’d be happy to be corrected by your honor. There is a mandatory duty imposed by Congress on the U.S. attorney to relay reports supplied by citizens to the grand jury. I did not notice language in that statute or anywhere else that imposes a mandatory duty on the district court to relay evidence to a grand jury. I believe it’s within the district court’s discretion. And at the moment that is the reason we did not go down that path.

A JUDGE: Well, thank you both. We will reserve decision.

To listen to oral arguments beginning at 10 this morning in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on citizens’ First Amendment right to report crimes to a grand jury, and secrecy limits on grand jury proceedings, click HERE.

As noted yesterday in this blog, Attorney Mick Harrison of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry will present the case of eight plantiffs/applicants.

The court is to decide whether 9/11 victim family members, ground zero responders, and nonprofits have standing to sue U.S. Attorney for obstructing their First Amendment petition to grand jury.

— Mark Channing Miller

The following news release was received last night from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. — MCM

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SECOND CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS TO HEAR ORAL ARGUMENTS IN 9/11 CASE ON CITIZENS’ FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO REPORT CRIMES TO A GRAND JURY, AND SECRECY LIMITS ON GRAND JURY PROCEEDINGS

Court to decide if 9/11 victim family members, ground zero responders, and nonprofits have standing to sue U.S. Attorney for obstructing their First Amendment petition to grand jury

What: Oral Argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Who: Attorney Mick Harrison will argue for Plaintiffs-Appellants

When: Friday, January 21, 2022, 10 a.m. Eastern Time

Where: Livestream audio from U.S. Court of Appeals

Public livestream link:  ww2.ca2.uscourts.gov/Court.html

NEW YORK, N.Y. — In a case likely to set precedent on First Amendment rights and grand jury secrecy, the second highest court in the nation will hear arguments Friday, Jan. 21, from family members of 9/11 victims, 9/11 Ground Zero responders, and two national nonprofits.

Plaintiffs-Appellants are: (1) Robert McIlvaine, father of Bobby McIlvaine who perished at the World Trade Center (WTC) on September 11, 2001; (2) Christopher Gioia, Fire Chief, former Fire Commissioner of the Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department and a Ground Zero responder who lost colleagues and friends on that day; (3) Diana Hetzel, the widow of Fire Fighter Thomas J. Hetzel, FDNY Ladder #13, who perished at the WTC on 9/11; (4) Michael J. O’Kelly, Fire Battalion Chief of the FDNY who, while responding to Ground Zero after the attacks, was exposed to the toxic and caustic dust and fumes, and was granted disability; (5) Jeanne Evans, the sister of FDNY Firefighter Robert Evans who perished at the WTC on 9/11; (6) Richard Gage, AIA, an experienced architect who has played a leading role in an independent multi-year investigation of the causes of collapse of the WTC towers and WTC 7 on 9/11; ( 7) Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a nonprofit organization of architects, engineers, and others dedicated to forensic research and public education on the scientific evidence related to the destruction of the WTC towers and WTC 7; and (8) the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc., a nonprofit whose mission is applying the law to promote full factual transparency and accountability for the tragic events of 9/11.

In the Spring and Summer of 2018, the above-named Plaintiffs-Appellants submitted to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for delivery to the Special Grand Jury a detailed and lengthy Petition, and Amended Petition, pursuant to the First Amendment, signed by more than 2,000 concerned citizens, with more than 50 scientific and technical evidentiary exhibits presenting extensive scientific and first responder eyewitness evidence that the WTC Twin Towers and WTC 7 collapsed on 9/11 due to the detonation of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries.

Authored by experienced attorneys and based on the work of numerous highly educated, credentialled, experienced, and professionally licensed architects, engineers, chemists and other experts, including an expert in seismology, this Petition and Amended Petition objectively, logically, and professionally presents a body of hard evidence, and the criminal law that applies to that evidence, deserving of the scrutiny of a federal grand jury. In the Amended Petition, Plaintiffs-Appellants asked simply that the U.S. Attorney submit the Petition to a federal Special Grand Jury so the Grand Jury can exercise its independent judgment on that evidence and decide if further investigation is warranted.

Despite the federal Special Grand Jury Statute mandating that any U.S. Attorney provide to the Special Grand Jury any report of a federal crime made by a citizen, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has refused to even deliver the Amended Petition to the Special Grand Jury. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken the remarkable position in court that the Ground Zero responders, family members of 9/11 victims, and nonprofits who filed the Amended Petition have no legal standing to sue to seek a remedy for the obstruction by DOJ of their First Amendment right to have their Petition delivered to the Special Grand Jury.

The DOJ has even taken the extraordinary position, notwithstanding the clear mandatory language in the Special Grand Jury Statute, that the U.S. Attorney does not have an obligation under law to give to a Special Grand Jury any of the evidence of any federal crime reported by any citizen. Thus, in the view of the DOJ, if a U.S. Attorney or his or her superior (including the Attorney General or the President of the United States) does not want a grand jury to see certain evidence of a particular crime (regardless of whether that evidence comes from citizens, the FBI, or any other source), the grand jury will never see that evidence.

The Plaintiffs-Appellants believe the U.S. Attorney’s position is a dangerous one that usurps the constitutional duty of the grand jury to determine if there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and that opens the door to abuse of the prosecutorial function that the grand jury was intended to prevent. If the DOJ prevails, that department would be able to withhold from any grand jury any citizen report of any crime and any supporting evidence.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will hear argument on, and eventually decide, these critical questions for all Americans regarding their First Amendment rights, grand jury secrecy, the role of the grand jury, and the right of WTC victim family members and Ground Zero first responders to have evidence of serious 9/11 crimes presented to a grand jury.

What follows, below the three dashes, is from page 178 of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. — MCM

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[S]ome four hundred years after Galileo . . . politics and power continue to dictate “scientific consensus,” rather than empiricism, critical thinking, or the established steps of the scientific method. It is a hazard to both democracy and public health when a kind of religious faith in authoritative pronouncements supplants disciplined observation, rigorous proofs, and reproducible results as the source of “truth” in the medical field.

While consensus may be an admirable political objective, it is the enemy of science and truth. The term “settled science” is an oxymoron. The admonishment that we should “trust the experts” is a trope of authoritarianism. Science is disruptive, irreverent, dynamic, rebellious, and democratic. Consensus and appeals to authority (be it CDC, WHO, Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, or the Vatican) are features of religion, not science, Science is tumult. Empirical truth generally rises from the tilled, agitated, and upturned soils of debate. Doubt, skepticism, questioning and dissent are its fertilizers. Every great scientific advance in history, every transformative idea, from evolution to heliocentrism to relativity, met initial ridicule from the panjandrums of “scientific consensus.” As novelist and physician Michael Crichton observed,

Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

The commentary below arrived ths other day. It is reprinted without the author’s permission.  The headline is his. The essay may be more readable in THIS format. — MCM

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A Tale of Two Authoritarians

By Matt Taibbi

Former Vice President Dick Cheney visited the House of Representatives yesterday. He and his daughter Liz were the only two Republicans present at a moment of silence commemorating the events of last January 6th. It was a touching scene, which perfectly described why the surviving anti-Trump Uniparty of the political mainstream is at least as much of a threat to democracy as the “insurrectionists” they never stop wailing about.

In a story entitled “Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome . . . from Democrats,” the Washington Post wrote that “Democrats put aside their fierce and lasting policy divides with the Cheneys to thank them for condemning the attack and Trump’s continued effort to undermine the 2020 presidential election results with his false claims of fraud.”

(News writing has become a pre-fab profession, like assembling IKEA furniture. All you need is an Allen wrench and a list of the latest clichés. “Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election” has replaced “Trump’s efforts to coordinate with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “Trump’s false claims of fraud” has replaced “Trump’s false claims of ‘fake news.’” Part of the significance of January 6th is that it updated popular propaganda stock, which had grown stale.)

I don’t mean to understate the seriousness of January 6th, even though it’s been absurdly misreported for over a year now. No one from a country where these things actually happen could mistake 1/6 for “a coup .” In the real version, the mob doesn’t take selfies and blaze doobies after seizing the palace, and the would-be dictator doesn’t spend 187 minutes snacking and watching Fox before tweeting “go home.” Instead, he works the phones nonstop to rally precinct chiefs, generals, and airport officials to the cause, because a coup is a real attempt to seize power. Britannica says the “chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements.” We saw none of that on January 6th, but it’s become journalistic requirement to use either “coup” or “insurrection” in describing it:

[ Here Taibbi inserts pictures of headlines to show his point. “One year after Jan. 6, Congress considers new laws to protect against election coups.” “Columnist Will Bunch: Trump Came Much Closer to Pulling Off a January 6 Coup Than People Realize.” “Opinion: Think coup threat has passed? We’ll see.” “Did the January 6th coup fail?” “The DOJ’s Progress On The January 6th Coup Attempt.” “Team Trump’s Navarro offers surprising candor about coup attempt.” ]

The endless hyperventilating efforts to describe January 6th as a disaster on the order of Pearl Harbor or even 9/11 has been awesome to behold. Huffington Post nitwit S.V. Date even called it “1,000 percent worse” than 9/11, moving the decimal point over on the famous Team America joke*:

[ Here Taibbi inserts THIS link. ]

The panic inspired convulsions across politics and the media. Ted Cruz made a plea for mainstream recognition by denouncing 1/6 as a “violent terrorist attack” before cowering in retreat on Tucker Carlson Tonight, in the process pantsing himself with audiences in all directions. Meanwhile, podcaster Eric Lendrum, on the pro-Trump site American Greatness, devised the impressively crazy syllogism that because the mainstream caricature of Trump supporters is so incorrect, conservatives should therefore embrace it: “If their aim is to make January 6 their Reichstag Fire, then we should go forward celebrating the events of that day as our Storming of the Bastille.”

It was no heroic storming of the Bastille. January 6th was a massive LARP that got out of hand. Trump has been around long enough for us to know his pattern as a serial line-crosser. Like a comedian, he’s always trying out new material, and if he gets the right reaction, he comes back with a bigger delivery next time. January 6th was Trump dipping a toe in the lake of strongman politics. The reason it wasn’t worse is because Trump has also been constantly mislabeled as a Hitler, Stalin, or Pinochet. The man has no attention span, no interest in planning or strategy, and most importantly, no ability to maintain relationships with the type of people who do have those qualities (like Steve Bannon). Even if he wanted to overturn “democracy itself” — I don’t believe he does, but let’s say — Trump has proven over and over he lacks the qualities a politician would need to make that happen.

Which brings us back to Cheney. All those things Trump is rumored to be, Dick Cheney actually is. That’s why it’s so significant that he appeared on the floor of the House yesterday to be slobbered over by the Adam Schiffs and Nancy Pelosis of the world. Dick Cheney did more to destroy democracy in ten minutes of his Vice Presidency than Donald Trump did in four years.

Seeing leading Democrats nuzzling the man George Bush called “Iron Ass” summed up the essential problem of the ordinary person trying to find a political home in this landscape. Even if you find the Trump phenomenon troubling, his opposition is not only authoritarian, but organized and armed with the intellectual tools to understand and appreciate how the technological elimination of democracy might be achieved in the 21st century.

We’re living through a period where an unpleasantly likely outcome for the ordinary American is the invocation of emergency powers to eliminate basic rights. From which side is that threat most likely to come? The pattern during Trump’s presidency was hyping the Russian menace to justify increased surveillance and censorship. Russia has since been switched out in favor of two new emergency bugbears. The first is the rise of “domestic terrorism,” and if you don’t think Cheney-style democracy-canceling is on the minds of officials heading into the next presidential election, you haven’t been reading the growing pile of articles quoting military types advertising their preparations for counter-coup in 2024.

The second emergency of course is the pandemic, which ought to have been exhibit A in Trump’s uninterest in being a dictator — he could have legally invoked all sorts of powers and did not. Instead, it’s become part of a widening propaganda campaign designed to enlist the wine-cave MSNBC set behind full-blown Big Brother governance. Remember our Health and Human Services Secretary saying last summer, in advance of a “door-to-door” campaign that was supposedly about urging people toward the jab, that “it absolutely is the government’s business” to know who’s vaccinated and who isn’t? Or, have you noticed the total lack of interest among pundits and politicians in distinguishing between anti-vaxxers and people who merely have anti-mandate or anti-passport attitudes? It’s all the same obstructionism to them.

Where have we seen this style of intentional line-blurring to justify the expansion of executive authority before? From Cheney, who took emergency politics to places even a sober Joe McCarthy could never have dreamed of. On the pretense that new powers were needed to combat the sweeping global threat whose existence 9/11 supposedly proved, Cheney institutionalized executive assassination, torture, mass surveillance, secret prisons, secret budgeting, and the wholesale elimination of congressional oversight over most of his program, turning the world into what one Pentagon adviser who talked to Seymour Hersh back in the day called a “global free-fire zone.”

It was under Cheney’s watch that we turned into a country that snatched people off the streets all over the world, put them in indefinite detention in an archipelago of secret hell-holes, threatened to rape their family members, and resorted to techniques like “rectal feeding” so often that one Guantanamo Bay prisoner had to bring a special pillow to sit in court.

The core principle of Cheney’s politics was protecting his new bureaucracies of murder and open-ended detention from legal challenge. That meant creating structures that were legally invisible. Are you on a watch list? Has the FBI sent out a National Security Letter to your telecom provider? Have you been approved for “lethal action” and put on the kill list? Courts repeatedly declined to listen to complainants with such questions because the secrecy of the programs made it difficult or impossible to prove they had a cause of action, a perfect Catch-22.

Even members of congress were often unable to find out about whole ranges of programs unless an accident like the Edward Snowden revelations came their way. Cheney built a government inside a government that simply did not recognize the authority of the other branches. It’s no accident this person is now receiving a “warm welcome” from Democrats because that party has for years now been openly worshipful of his secret-hammer model of executive rule, which expanded to a conspicuous degree after he left office.

What would Cheney have done in response to 1/6 or the pandemic? We don’t have to work too hard to guess. His contemptuous vision of rights and constitutional law remains the face of American government, with the most obvious recent example being the extradition of Julian Assange. For thirteen years after Dick Cheney left the Vice President’s office, the United States remained committed to a ruthless manhunt of a person whose chief “crime” was the publishing of details of Cheney’s secret authoritarian state, from the “Gitmo files,” to the Afghan and Iraqi war logs, to the Collateral Murder video.

To go after Assange, the Biden (and Trump) administrations used the Espionage Act, a dystopian law from the Woodrow Wilson era written so broadly that being charged under it is essentially part of what defines a person as guilty of the crime. Barack Obama used it to go after leakers eight times. Worse, one of the people who was kissing Cheney’s ring yesterday, House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, not long ago beefed up a similar law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) that would make any journalist who revealed the name of a covert agent engaged in assassination or torture, even long after the fact, subject to prosecution. This from a man, Schiff, who is the co-chair of the Congressional Freedom of the Press Caucus! A few years ago, the New York Times got hold of the CIA memo arguing in favor of the provision Schiff reportedly helped insert:

”Particularly with the lengths organizations such as WikiLeaks are willing to go to obtain and release sensitive national security information, as well as incidents related to past Agency programs, such as the RDI investigation, the original congressional reasoning mentioned above for a narrow definition of “covert agent” no longer remains valid. This proposal would provide protection for all undercover Agency officers by allowing for the prosecution of individuals responsible for disclosing the identities of those officers…”

As journalist Trevor Timm noted, “RDI” stands for “Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation,” and is a common euphemism for the CIA’s illegal torture program. If the Democrats cared at all about issues like transparency, human rights, and civil liberties, they would be recoiling in horror from the prosecution of Assange, and the head of their intel committee wouldn’t be working to make it easier to prosecute journalists for exposing war crimes and torture.

Instead, they’re backing the principle of arresting a non-American for the equivalent of treason, using a law that would render illegal practices that virtually every national security reporter engages in as a matter of routine.

For those who want to retort, “Most journalists don’t steal and hack derp!” I’d encourage reading the indictment. All but one of the charges against Assange are for things like “conspiracy to obtain national defense information” or “obtaining national defense information,” with “national defense information” defined with extraordinary vagueness. Just hearing information “the President has determined would be prejudicial to the national defense,” or which may be “used to the injury of the United States,” can put you in jail basically forever under this law.

This is not the same as revealing classified information (there are different laws for that). Widespread application of this law, or the IIPA, would essentially criminalize reporting on state wrongdoing, which was exactly the CIA’s point in arguing for such measures.

Before the Cheney era, the vast majority of us would have considered such thinking repellent and anti-American. In the last five years especially, though, Democrats, former security officials like John Brennan, and ex-Republicans like David Frum and Bill Kristol have pounded the table for this logic as more necessary than ever. They claim, as Cheney did, that not only are some threats so dire that extraordinary vigilance is necessary, but that the nature of those threats is such that counter-operations against them must not ever be corrupted by due process or oversight.

This is why these people can’t be trusted with policies like vaccine passports and/or Merrick Garland’s plan to “methodically track” what he called “violent extremists” and domestic terrorists in the wake of 1/6. The latter idea is particularly troubling given that no one connected with that incident has been charged with anything like terrorism, for the simple reason that what happened wasn’t terrorism.

The potential applications for a souped-up domestic version of Cheney’s still-extant watch lists are horrific to consider. Are we going to widen the circle of people who will mysteriously find themselves unable to get bank accounts, transfer money, or attend schools? Do we want to leave it up to the White House to determine what’s reporting and what’s “obtaining national defense information,” particularly if they start stretching the concept to cover revelations about the pandemic? Yes, it’s a little ironic that some of the people now on those lists may have cheered their creation once upon a time, when the victims were mainly Muslims. But that doesn’t make the idea of expanding the policy any less asinine.

Cheney’s reappearance and the outpouring of loony commentary describing 1/6 as a “coup” or an “insurrection” (instead of something closer to the American version of a soccer riot) are related. The types of policies that Cheney instituted relied upon the idea that government was capable of making unassailable decisions about, say, who was a real terrorist and who was just a taxi driver or a small-town cop in Yemen. He was successful in taking the courts out of the business of reviewing the detention of human beings because he argued that when it came to terrorism, our “professionals” didn’t make those errors. Cheney’s idea of justice was the same kind of insane authoritarian whack-off fantasy as the “surgical strike,” only even more dangerous because it had wider potential applications.

“Professionals” do make errors, about everything from terrorists to viruses. In fact, a fair number of the people seeking this enhanced authority are dumber than average. You don’t have to like Donald Trump to recognize the dire threat represented by a clique of mediocrities with just enough brains to use their offices to organize the criminalization of their opposition.

Think about how badly we botched the War on Terror, how many bombs we dropped in the wrong places, how many innocent people we turned into prisoners while suffering global delirium tremens, using 800 military bases loaded with Hellfire missiles to scratch all over at bugs that weren’t there. That madness made us a villain across the planet, exponentially increasing the risk of terrorist attacks. Are we really going to bring that show home?

*An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Date’s quote as “1000 times worse,” not “1000 percent worse,” so the number is 9,110, not 911,000.