I’m moving on through my book about Whitey. I’ve been fooling around with the introduction to it. It runs about 2,000 words so those who have the time might want to read it. If you have any comments, corrections, or additions let me know.

Introduction to The Great Whitey Myth

Roger Wheeler left his country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 27, 1981, having completed a friendly round of golf. He walked toward his automobile parked in the lot. Another car parked in the lot contained two men, John Martorano and Joseph McDonald. Both me were fugitives from justice hiding out in Florida. They had flown into Tulsa a couple of days earlier.

They were there to murder Wheeler. They had been paid fifty thousand dollars by John Callahan to kill him. Callahan had been the former president of a business owned by Wheeler. He and Martorano were friends. Callahan knew of Martorano’s reputation as a stone killer. Callahan told Martorano he had been trying to buy the business from Wheeler but they couldn’t come to terms. Putting Wheeler out of the way would enable him to buy the business from Wheeler’s widow.

Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh 
Me gotta go find another to vote aside you
Oh my Joe you lost my vote , me oh my oh
Son of a gun I’ll have big fun not voting for you…

Joe did me in. The 76-year-old straw I clung to hoping to oust the Trump was not there when I reached to cling to it. It disappeared when I heard Joe say:  “There were a bunch of white guys … hearing [Anita HIll’s] testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee. . . .  she faced a committee that didn’t fully understand what the hell it was all about.” 

That testimony was back in October 1991. Hill was testifying against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court suggesting that he sexually harassed her when she worked with him.

Biden suggests back then there were a bunch of white guys on the Senate Judiciary Committee who were apparently quite ignorant. It must give you a warm feeling knowing it was their job to make decisions on who would become judges on the Supreme Court and other federal courts.

When I wrote about the part where Gertner was correct I noted how Joe Barboza the FBI cooperating witness kept his friend Jimmy Flemmi who was part of the Teddy Deegan murder out of it. He substituted other people who were involved in the planning and at the scene instead. Various reasons have been offered for him doing that but I’d suggest the true reasons as to why he included Joe Salvati and Louie Greco may never be known. If I had to guess he probably just didn’t like Salvati [Frank Salemme had a great dislike for him]; but had some type of grudge against Greco. There was street talk that Greco stood up to him when he was giving another guy a hard time.

Judge Gertner found that they were not involved in the murder.  She based that on the idea that Barboza was willing to perjure himself as to Greco and Salvati then his testimony as to others, such as Henry Tameleo and Peter Limone, must also be wrong. In her decision she takes a very narrow view of the evidence; she ignores what is commonly known about the way the Mafia operates.

This is a true story. The names of the characters involved have not been changed to protect the innocent or guilty. I know the story is true because it happened to me.

Of all days of the year it was on St. Patrick’s Day  March 17, 2019, a Sunday. It was a warm Sunday morning and the darkness still held its grip on the outside land when my door bell was rung. Answering the door with my grandson standing aside me I saw a man standing there with a small flashlight. He said he had come to pick me up.

I had an inkling this would happen so I had my backpack ready near the door. I picked it up as the man retreated back towards his car. My grandson waved goodbye as I walked out the front door into the back seat of a black sedan as the driver held the door.

He asked me the time my flight was scheduled to leave  Ten-thirty I responded. The airport was over an hour away. The driver had been in the Marines at the same time I had been. He spent much of his time with a helicopter squadron in the Far East while I spent over a year with the air wing at Atsugi, Japan.

I believed Christine Blasey Ford when she testified that Brett M. Kavanaugh assaulted her in high school. I was skeptical about Kavanaugh’s denial. Maybe the booze dimmed his memory. If it was no more than juvenile high jinks it left no impression. Maybe not being a victim lends to forgetfulness. Reading over my prior posts on the incident I wondered why Kavanaugh’s nomination was being rushed and why he did not demand a full investigation.

The real question really is whether the actions that one engages in during high school (or even college) should be a disqualification for a future position. I suggested that perhaps not all but a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court may be one where we would want a less blemished appointment.

Kavanaugh is now on the Court. My prediction of it tarnishing the Court was wrong. It is not that I agree with his judicial opinions but because the river of life flows on and people are caught up in the newest ado while the old one seems to lose its oomph. What we are left with though is the term Kavanized defined as a seemingly reputable man having a long forgotten incident or incidents in his past which at the time he considered innocuous, consensual or horseplay thrown back into his face.

The Washington Post editorial board on March 25, 2019, at 7:30 p.m. posted an opinion titled, “What the U.S. can learn from the fight against the Islamic State.”

Unfortunately the lesson it tells us we should learn is all wrong. To cut to the core it is that the United States should not get into any wars unless we have other people on the ground willing to fight and die in it. We should not get into any wars where American ground forces will be casualties. If that is the lesson we should learn, why do we have an Army and a Marine Corps. Aren’t they supposed to do any fighting on our behalf any more?

We are told that ISIS was “a self-declared caliphate that once controlled a territory the size of Britain and ruled over as many as 12 million people.”  That the fight against ISIS was conducted differently from “troop-heavy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  It would be fought by the U.S.  partnering “with local forces that would take the lead on the ground, . . . American troops in Iraq and Syria, mostly Special Operations forces and trainers, numbered in the single-digit thousands.”

One of the great miscarriage in American justice was the fix put in for Jeffrey Epstein accused of raping and sexually molesting young girls by a US attorney who is now Trump’s secretary of labor.  Trump, a long-term buddy of Epstein, apparently has no trouble that his labor secretary schemed to help this child molester by lying to a judge and deceiving the victims in conjunction with Epstein’s lawyers.

Speaking of Epstein, it seems Bob Kraft is following his lead. He’s got his lawyers trying to walk him out of his charges by hard ball tactics.  He’s not taking a plea deal which makes it look like he committed a crime which apparently he denies at the same time he wants to suppress the evidence, a tape of his activity. Do you think he wants to do that because it exonerates him?

What is it about Florida’s judicial  system that these shenanigans happen? Speaking of that what about the case of FBI agent John Connolly.

Having done many, many investigations as a prosecutor and a few as a defense lawyer I wondered why anyone suggested that you need an underlying crime to have an obstruction of justice crime. I could not answer it based on my experience as a defense lawyer because I was defending someone accused of a crime and never defended anyone who was charged with obstruction of justice where no crime had been committed.

On the other hand as a prosecutor where I spent most of my time I suggest the answer is quite easy. It is contained in the statement itself: “obstruction of justice.”  The crime is not “obstruction of a crime” but of justice. I suppose the best way to begin is to look at the federal statute, It is quite broad:

Under 18 U.S.C. 73 there are 21 general categories that are considered obstruction of justice. Section 1503 reads: “Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States, or officer who may be serving at any examination or other proceeding before any United States magistrate judge or other committing magistrate, in the discharge of his duty, . . .  or corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be punished. . . .”