The Bothwell Letter
NEWS FROM THE LAW OFFICES OF ANTHONY P.X. BOTHWELL
350 BAY STREET, SUITE 100 PMB314, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94133 TEL. (415) 370-5971
NOV. 27, 2006 Vol. VIII / No. 4 - attorney@apxbothwell.com - www.apxbothwell.com

IN THIS ISSUE:
[1] Murder of President Kennedy remembered; records still concealed, witnesses still chilled
[2] Los Alamos weapons lab still mismanaged, Livermore contract comes up for renewal
[3] Napa tries to censor news of water problems
[4] Oil firm thumbs nose at environmental rules
[5] Polluters, war profiteers zinged by Hightower
[6] Reforms needed to assure U.S. election integrity
[7] White House aims to upend Venezuela election
[8] Scottish Parliament hears old Bothwell’s case

[1] Murder of President Kennedy remembered; records still concealed, witnesses still chilled
About 300 somber citizens gathered in Dealey Plaza 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hymns were sung, flowers displayed, a portrait of the slain leader mounted beside a plaque on the grass about 20 feet from where the fatal head wound occurred. Cars kept driving over spots, each marked by a white X in Elm Street’s center lane, where bullets changed history. A siren wailed briefly a few blocks away. A mournful horn signaled a freight train’s approach to the Triple Underpass. Where Zapruder once held his camera, researchers held up signs calling for government archives of assassination records to be unsealed. The triangular plaza seemed smaller than we envisioned – too small for an event of such magnitude, a generation’s trauma, a nation’s tipping point.

Overlooking the haunted scene, a privately-sponsored museum on the 6th floor of the old Texas School Book Depository displays a sophisticated defense of the long-discredited Warren Commission finding that Kennedy was killed by a loner.
For example, the museum:

Emphasizes that witnesses heard shots from the school book depository – but ignores the additional fact that larger numbers heard gunfire (and some saw or photographed the puff of gunsmoke) from the fence at the grassy knoll;

Says witnesses who walked up the grassy knoll toward the fence saw “nothing” – but ignores the fact that they were turned back by imposters flashing phony Secret Service identification;

Says government scientists found “no evidence” of a second gunman – ignoring acoustical, photographic and testimonial evidence that gunfire came from multiple directions;

Ignores autopsy records, photographs and doctors’ testimony revealing that the President’s wounds were altered, and the brain stolen, concealing evidence of actual bullet trajectories;

Dismisses those who questioned the authenticity of photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with a Mannlicher Carcano – but ignores the fact that mismatched shadows and other factors proved the photos were fake; and

Depicts Oswald as a Communist sympathizer – ignoring abundant evidence of his ties to the U.S. intelligence community.

Some Dallasites who know pieces of what happened on Nov. 22, 1963 still fear to come forward, because many who did start to speak up died violent deaths in suspicious circumstances. Many of those deaths occurred around the times of abortive probes by the Warren Commission, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, and the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations. Sources who, even at this late date, fear for their own safety say, for example:

A carload of young people sped from Dealey Plaza after the shooting and happened to arrive at the Texas Theater just as Oswald, bloodied, was taken from the movie house by police – indicating that the accused did not have time to get from the assassination scene to the site of his arrest.

Some law officers were allowed to see a film showing the fateful gunfire from the crest of the grassy knoll.
The killing of Kennedy was in the air before it happened; accomplices had been heard talking about it in Miami, Palm Beach, Tampa, New Orleans. In 1960, at age 43, Kennedy had become the youngest elected president in U.S. history. After his 1,000 days in office ended with the sound of rifle fire, big tax benefits for the oil industry were restored, the executive order to begin withdrawal of forces from South Vietnam was reversed, his decision to dismantle the Central Intelligence Agency was reversed, and his initiative for nuclear disarmament lost momentum.

[2] Los Alamos weapons lab still mismanaged, Livermore contract comes up for renewal
Atty. Tony Bothwell toured Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) Oct. 6 during a rare reunion of 50 Manhattan Project veterans at the New Mexico lab that created the atomic bomb. He went to parts of the lab that were about to be shut off permanently from public access, observed radioactive and chemical hazardous waste sites, saw warehouses suspected of being used by traffickers in stolen government property. “New management has failed to stop waste, fraud, and hazards at Los Alamos,” said Bothwell, counsel to whistleblowers at LANL and its California sister, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

The University of California (UC) had the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contracts to run both nuclear weapons labs since their founding more than half a century ago. In fact, the labs have run themselves, never effectively regulated by either DOE or the university. After Los Alamos scandals made headlines around the world, UC lost its exclusive contract in 2005 but stayed involved in LANL management by enlisting industry partners. Now LANL is administered by a joint venture of Bechtel National (manager of the Nevada Test Site and environmental disasters at Hanford, Wash.), BWX Technologies (a government nuclear contractor), Washington Group International (a construction and engineering company), and UC. In 2007, DOE is to decide whether to renew UC operation of the Livermore lab, where many employees dread the thought that industrial firms will take control of the freewheeling fiefdom.

Bothwell, a former journalist and nuclear industry spokesperson, was offered public affairs jobs at Chicago’s Argonne National Laboratory (a non-weapons nuclear lab, also descended from the Manhattan Project) in 1981 and at LANL in 1982. He went to work for LLNL as public affairs director in 1983. At Livermore, he led resistance to Reagan administration attempts to muzzle outspoken scientists; founded a science education center for the area’s children; launched a series of colloquia that brought together weapons scientists and religious leaders; and fostered dialogue with antinuclear activists that replaced mass civil disobedience. He resigned in 1985 after his plan to disclose publicly the lab’s environmental problems was not approved by the LLNL director’s office. Bothwell went on to earn his juris doctor degree, and then a master of laws degree summa cum laude; since 1999 he has helped 20 past and present employees of the nuclear weapons labs in cases of retaliation and discrimination.

[3] Napa tries to censor news of water problems
The City of Napa threatened “legal remedies” against The Bothwell Letter for publishing what the city’s lawyers claim was a “defamatory article” about problems related to quality of public drinking water supplies. In reply, Atty. Tony Bothwell quoted an internationally recognized water treatment expert – and, on a legal point, noted, “In this country there is no such thing as a ‘defamation’ of a governmental entity."

The Sept. 11 Bothwell Letter reported that Turan Ramadan, Napa’s water operations supervisor, testified that “the wrong treatment method” imposed by a manager caused “contamination” that, in the long run, “may affect public health.” By excessive use of the wrong chemicals, Napa wastes about $600,000 yearly, Ramadan testified Aug. 23 in his whistleblower-retaliation lawsuit.

An Oct. 17 fax memo by a defense staff lawyer at McDonough Holland & Allen of Sacramento called the report “defamatory” against the City of Napa. Bothwell wrote back that same day: “The type of legal ‘legal remedies’ you threaten have been unavailable in America since 1735 when the trial of John Peter Zenger (whose New York Post exposed misdeeds in the Colonial government of New York) inspired calls for a Bill of Rights.” In a followup letter on Nov. 11, Bothwell quoted Ramadan’s deposition, and explained that (under the American constitutional scheme) government cannot cry “defamation” when subjected to critical public scrutiny. After all, the public needs to know when official misconduct poses a potential hazard to public health.

[4] Oil firm thumbs nose at environmental rules
A post-trial brief filed Sept. 8 by the operators of a Cenex oil refinery in Montana said they were “no longer required” to use a new sulfur unit only as a “spare” even though state permit documents imposed that restriction. The Bothwell law firm, in a rebuttal brief filed in San Francisco on behalf of environmental engineer Max Sims, called the claim by CHS Inc. “preposterous.” Besides citing legal authorities, the rebuttal quoted President Theodore Roosevelt, who once put it this way: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor.” (T.R., Third Annual Message, Dec. 7, 1903.)

Lawyers for Cenex also claimed air monitor readings showed the firm never violated sulfur emission standards. The Bothwell brief, filed Sept. 26, countered that the refinery’s own records, introduced at the June trial in St. Paul, Minn., proved gross violations endangered public health. State monitors corroborated the finding.

The Cenex brief claimed that “persons responsible” for tampering with a sulfur unit meter “were not aware of” government regulation of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions. The Bothwell rebuttal cited testimony that refinery managers knew better, adding: “If CHS executives allowed ignorant, unsupervised employees to ‘re-range’ the meter controlling sulfur emissions, they were grossly negligent, to say the least.”

[5] Polluters, war profiteers zinged by Hightower
“If it weren’t for agitators, we’d be wearing powdered wigs and singing God Bless the Queen.” So said Jim Hightower, keynote speaker at the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) convention Oct. 18 in Austin. “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” That’s what Mark Twain said, as quoted by Hightower, Texas’ former commissioner of agriculture. Hightower’s new book, Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush, laments “multibillion-dollar military contracts to Halliburton,” “crackpot, autocratic assaults on our liberties,” and an Environmental Protection Agency “allowing electric companies, chemical plants, oil refineries, and other inveterate spewers of toxics to goose up their profits by gleefully pumping an additional forty-two tons of their industrial poisons into our air (and lungs) each year.”

[6] Reforms needed to assure U.S. election integrity
Luckily for Democrats, the American people’s disgust with the extremism and incompetence of recent Republican leadership was great enough on Election Day 2006 to offset effects of gerrymandering, malfunctioning computers and alleged vote fraud. But uniform national standards must be set in law to make real the promise of “one person, one vote.” Tony Bothwell proposed:

Software should be implemented to design congressional and state legislative districts according to Geometric Grids having equal numbers of citizens, adjusted reasonably within bounds to follow nearby county, city or precinct lines. Every vote should have a verifiable paper trail. In cases like the one in Katherine Harris’ Florida district where 18,000 votes were lost in cyberspace, there ought to be a rematch.

[7] White House aims to upend Venezuela election
U.S. government support for attempts to overthrow Hugo Chavez have been documented by Eva Golinger, an American human rights lawyer, author of The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela. Golinger, who addressed the NLG convention Oct. 20, has used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain thousands of relevant documents from more than 30 U.S. government agencies. The paper trail indicates that White House aims for regime change in Caracas are driven by interest in Venezuela’s huge oil industry. Though U.S. officials have reasons for disliking Chavez, they should recognize that he is the popularly elected president of a sovereign nation.

[8] Scottish Parliament hears old Bothwell’s case
Ted Brocklebank, Member of the Scottish Parliament, made a case for the return of the remains of the late James Hepburn, Fourth Earl of Bothwell (1535-1576), late husband of Mary Queen of Scots, from Denmark to Scotland. In Parliament on Nov. 9, Brocklebank, who represents Mid Scotland and Fife, said:

Members who have studied history or have read Schiller's play "Mary Stuart", which is currently being staged to rave reviews at the Lyceum, will be aware that Mary lost her throne, and subsequently her head, following her marriage to Bothwell. Bothwell's estates were forfeit for treason and he escaped from Scotland first to Norway and then to Denmark, where he was imprisoned in appalling conditions for 10 years before he died, insane. Until 1975, the Danish church authorities kept his mummified body in a glass coffin in Fårevejle church as a ghastly tourist attraction. Now, happily—or unhappily—it lies in a crypt in the same church.

Brocklebank said that he has been promoting “the possibility of the Danish authorities returning Bothwell's remains to Scotland, where he no doubt wished to be buried.” He added that “a number of Bothwell's descendants—including Sir Alastair Buchan-Hepburn, a constituent of mine—have been in touch with the congregation of Fårevejle church, seeking to have the remains repatriated.” Brocklebank continued:

As we know, Johann Sebastian Bach is now interred in the church of St. Thomas in Leipzig; Martin Luther has found his final resting place in Wittenberg; and, although Thomas Hardy's body lies in Westminster, his heart is interred in his native west country. Those various historical figures have one thing in common: they were buried with their families' consent in a place that their descendants deemed worthy. American movie stars Katherine and Audrey Hepburn were descended from James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and Hepburns all over the world are united in their desire to have his body returned from Denmark to Scotland.

….Even though it was expressed 438 years ago, there is no reason why James Hepburn's wish to return home should not be treated with the same respect as the wish of Tsarina Maria, whose body has now been reinterred in St Petersburg. Maria was consort to the Tsar of Russia, Bothwell was consort to the Queen of Scotland, and both were buried in Denmark, a place where neither wanted to be.

…. Perhaps an appropriate last resting place for the earl would be the Crichton collegiate church in Midlothian, close by Crichton castle, which played such an important role in the story of James Hepburn and his ill-fated Queen. That would provide a focus for all those who are fascinated by the life and loves of Mary, Queen
of Scots.

San Francisco’s Atty. Tony Bothwell on Oct. 30, 2006 joined an international legal team seeking repatriation of the remains of the Scottish nobleman. Tony’s brother, Fred Bothwell of Texas, successfully persuaded the authorities in 1976 to cause the earl’s coffin to be covered. The mummy previously had been displayed under glass, accompanied by a sign, “King of the Scots.”
As a man urging patience in another context said, “It’s the centuries that count.”