Sheehan
There is a man occupying a pivotal position in Dennis Kucinich's campaign that I am extremely leery of. And, so it seems, are some other Kucinich supporters.
In more intimate circles, my distrust of attorney Daniel Sheehan is well known. I have not made much of an issue of it, because Sheehan can get blown out of proportion. There are "attack poodles" who defend him at every turn. Sheehan is the man who literally destroyed two of the best and biggest lawsuits connected to CIA drug dealing in history: the Christic Institute lawsuit in the 1980s and a civil suit arising from the murder of Marine Col. James Sabow at El Toro Marine Air Station after Sabow had discovered CIA-connected C-130s flying tons of cocaine onto his base in 1990 and 1991. As it turns out, the cases ultimately connected with each other, and what happened in both cases is remarkably consistent. As lead attorney, Sheehan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims and activists (Christic) and from the Sabow family, only to drag litigation out over a period of years and, through egregious legal conduct, destroy suits that could have changed the course of history. The Christic suit was "dismissed with prejudice" meaning that it could never be filed again by another attorney.
Rather than describe these cases and Sheehan's conduct in detail, I will rely on the excellent work of investigative reporter Nick Schou of The Orange County Weekly who has reported on Sheehan for years. An excellent history of Sheehan's record is contained in a February 2000 story by Schou located athttp://www.ocweekly.com/ink/00/24/news-schou.php.
Schou wrote:
Sheehan had failed to report [in the Sabow case] that the Christic Institute had been fined more than $1 million by a federal judge in Miami. According to the government's motion, the judge fined Sheehan after he submitted "an affidavit with unknown, nonexistent, deceased sources," using a "deceptive style used to mask its shortcomings…" Sheehan appealed King's ruling, lost, and was ordered to pay the legal fees for the defendants: $1,034,381.35…
… Honey [the Christic plaintiff], now the peace and security program director for the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, told the Weekly that Sheehan single-handedly ruined the La Penca [Christic] case.
"Sheehan's a lousy, lousy lawyer," she said. "None of the good legal work was done by him." Honey stated that she has unsuccessfully tried to get Sheehan disbarred as an attorney and has even sued him to recover investigative material and other records from the unsuccessful lawsuit. "After we found out about the Sandinista connection, we realized we had wasted millions of dollars and a decade with Sheehan," Honey concluded.
The great irony, still recited as a pro-Sheehan catechism today by many of his supporters, is that the allegations made by Sheehan in the case were subsequently corroborated, almost in their entirety, in hearings chaired by none other than John Kerry. What the Sheehan supporters fail to realize is that it was Sheehan's legal conduct, not the facts, that got the Christic case dismissed.
What makes the case of Col. James Sabow so tragic is that not only was he obviously murdered (all sides agreed that he had aspirated blood in his lungs and a skull fracture from a source other than a self-inflicted shotgun wound), but a man with an impeccable record and real honor was betrayed by those who claimed to be friends. When Sabow tried to expose the drug smuggling, connected to Iran-Contra operations, the Marine Corps charged him with using military aircraft to transport golf clubs, speakers and wall decorations for his son, who was attending college in the Pacific Northwest. And for that, the Marines claim a devout Catholic committed suicide. Then Dan Sheehan showed up and took the case for the family.
I will never forget a night in Washington, DC in 1995 when Sheehan's chief investigator, Gene Wheaton (who also worked on the Christic case), presented Sabow's brother, Dr. David Sabow, at a small discussion group headed by veteran White House correspondent Sarah McClendon. As Wheaton paraded Sabow and made his presentation -- saying that the case under appeal by Sheehan would bring the government down -- there were snickers from a senior congressional staffer, a former CIA analyst, and me that another victim was about to be fleeced and have his case destroyed. It took five more years and more than $100,000 of Dave Sabow's money, but that is exactly what happened.
Nick Schou's analysis of Sheehan's handling of the Sabow case revealed that:
Witness testimony that might have shown Marine Corps officers lied to the Sabows about their official investigation into the death was either excluded by the court as irrelevant or was obscured by Sheehan's habit of asking interminable, speculative and, in some cases, unintelligible questions. Indeed, toward the end of the six-day trial, the government's lawyers needed only to look as if they might object to Sheehan's questions--to lean forward, look annoyed or raise a hand--and Stotler would stop him.
The increasingly testy Stotler occasionally challenged Sheehan's skills as a lawyer, at one point observing, "Counsel, that is literally the worst question I have ever heard in my life." When Sheehan repeatedly pressed NCIS agent Mike Barrett about the quality of the Navy's original death investigation, Stotler intervened again. "That has nothing to do with this case," she told Sheehan. "Do you have any other questions for this witness?"
On the fifth day, the Justice Department asked Stotler to end the trial; the plaintiffs had called all their witnesses and hadn't proved a thing, the government attorneys argued. Stotler said she would consider it; 24 hours later, on the afternoon of Jan. 27, it was clear that she had had enough. "I am prepared to grant the defense's motion. I don't need to hear any further testimony at this point," she announced with finality, just moments before Adams was supposed to take the stand. "It's pretty apparent that, looking only at the plaintiff's testimony, their allegations have not been met by the evidence."
Sheehan hadn't just failed to prove a vast conspiracy involving drug running, covert flights and murder. He had also failed to prove the government acted maliciously in a death investigation…
While the OIG said it found no evidence to support the conclusion that Sabow was murdered, Sheehan's lawsuit contains what purports to be unassailable direct eyewitness testimony showing that Sabow was murdered. That allegation is based on the claims of "Mr. X," whom Dr. Sabow identified as an ex-Marine Corps official, now a law-enforcement officer somewhere in the southwestern United States. Sheehan refused to identify Mr. X or produce him for interviews either with military investigators or the media...
James Sabow was murdered. Mr. X was never necessary to prove that, and he should never have been brought up. The physical evidence does it. Among other loose ends, all fingerprints had been wiped from the shotgun that killed Sabow. Several police forensics experts said that it would have been impossible for Sabow to not have left his fingerprints on the weapon he used to kill himself.
But when Sheehan introduced a Mr. X, and couldn't follow simple legal procedure, the case fell, in part, because he couldn't produce the witness that he himself had brought up. Sound familiar? The Sheehan case rested on the premise that the Marine Corps had been rude to the Sabow family. It did not even address the wrongful death, which, according to legal experts interviewed by FTW, was outside the bounds of the so-called Feres Doctrine that basically says that soldiers are military property. I was surprised to learn, just a few weeks ago, that the indefatigable David had succeeded in getting a member of Congress to take a new look at the case from a different tack. In a September 5th 2003 interview, Sabow told The Orange County Weekly, "Now I believe that all the people who warned me about (Sheehan) were correct. I think there was a lot of duplicity involved. I don't lose any sleep over using the people that offered to help me, but I am disappointed in their character." The full story is at:http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/04/01/news-schou.php.
Richard Scheck is a political activist and researcher who was a classmate of Sheehan's at Harvard Law. He has long known of concerns about Sheehan. Six months ago, this writer provided Scheck with a copy of the Schou article and asked him to pass it up in the campaign for comment.
Scheck was a volunteer for the Kucinich team when he saw that Sheehan was positioning himself to play a major role in developing policy and strategy for Kucinich. He spoke personally with the Congressman, as well as several high-level aides, in an attempt to have a potential problem dealt with at the earliest possible moment.
"Dennis and his team are six months late in addressing this. I alerted them back in March and was ignored," Scheck told FTW.
Scheck wrote an internal memo to a senior campaign staffer regarding Sheehan's January speech in Ashland, Oregon in which, "Sheehan told the audience he hoped Dennis would run and that Danny intended to have Dennis include the platform Danny was developing at his new institute in Boston called the Center for the Study of Alternative World Views."
He told FTW, "The day after I spoke to Kucinich and sent this memo, I saw Dennis embrace Danny and speak with him at the big fund-raiser held in Marin at the beginning of his presidential campaign."
Scheck adds, "My clear sense is that Danny and his wife are playing a major role in the Kucinich campaign. Danny personally told me back in March he was planning a 10-state strategy. I recently learned from a source within the campaign that Sarah [Sheehan's wife] was deeply involved."
Aris Anagnos of Los Angeles is a pillar of the activist, pro-peace community and another staunch Kucinich supporter. A past president of Americans for Democratic Action, founder of L.A.'s Peace Center, and key supporter of the Office of the Americas, Anagnos was also a major supporter of the Christic Institute lawsuit. In an Oct 13th interview with FTW, Anagnos indicated that he was aware of the role Sheehan was playing in the Kucinich campaign and had "expressed his feelings inside the campaign".
He told FTW, "In the early 1990s, when the Christic ruling came up for appeal, Sheehan needed to post a bond to get it going. I put up a bond of almost a million and a half dollars to do that. When the appeal failed, the court said 'pay up'. I asked Sheehan, who had a large mailing list of people who knew that the allegations had been validated [by the Kerry hearings], if he would send out a letter asking them to help bear the burden. One person should not have to do it. He refused to do it. I had to pay up and I nearly went bankrupt. But I don't hold him responsible for the failure of the lawsuit."
FTW then asked Anagnos if he was aware of the fact that the Christic suit had been dismissed because of Sheehan's flawed affidavit using deceased and "non-existent" witnesses. I also asked if Anagnos was aware that the appeal had been thrown out because the trial court's ruling had been a dismissal with prejudice because of misconduct and that the money was a fine (as reported by Schou) and not a bond. To both questions Anagnos said, "I wasn't aware of that. I didn't know that." Anagnos was also not familiar with the Sabow case, even though it had been positively featured in two segments of a CBS News program anchored by Connie Chung.
Throughout the course of the Christic suit, Daniel Sheehan compiled a mailing list of supporters who donated hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars to support the case. In politics, such a mailing list is gold. Ask Bill Clinton about how important such lists are. A question that arises is, did Sheehan protect his donor list by having only one man pay the bill for his arguable legal malpractice?
There is something else that is remarkably consistent about Daniel Sheehan's behavior. He has a record of telling people what not to say.
I spoke with him in 1986 during the Christic trial well before the dismissal, and offered him my first-hand observations and records alleging CIA involvement in drug dealing. He was not interested, and he encouraged me to forget about it. He promised to contact me again and obtain my records, but he never called. I called back and left several messages. He refused to respond.
In 1992, during the Perot campaign, while I was serving as LA Press spokesman, I was told by Perot insiders that Sheehan had been communicating with Perot, and urging him to remain silent about POW and CIA-drug issues. One Perot staffer confirmed to me that Perot had recently met with or spoken to Sheehan on more than one occasion.
In 1996, just days after I had confronted CIA Director John Deutch at Locke High School with hard evidence of CIA drug trafficking (including names of CIA operations), Sheehan drove to my residence in Sylmar, California and spent three hours trying to persuade me to give up the whole issue and get on with my life. My efforts, he told me, were futile.
In January of 1997, at a large Los Angeles demonstration focusing on CIA-drug trafficking after a series of stories in The San Jose Mercury, Sheehan showed up with David Sabow, who was going to address an eager audience about proof that the CIA was involved in smuggling cocaine. Sheehan dogged Sabow's every step, and Sabow told me, "I have to clear everything I say with Danny. I just can't say that we know that the CIA was dealing drugs." Sabow's statement to the crowd was tepid, to say the least.
Is Sheehan having the same effect on Dennis Kucinich?
Decorated Vietnam veteran and lawyer Gary Eitel served as a special federal prosecutor in a case that looked into the CIA's diversion of C-130 Hercules aircraft into the hands of private companies who were operating as CIA contractors or proprietaries. These were the same C-130s that flew into Jim Sabow's life. Eitel's investigation and prosecution, unlike Sheehan's, resulted in two felony convictions and other civil remedies. Eitel indirectly provided some pro bono work to the Sabow family. He told them that the way to prove their case was to find the refueling records that would identify the El Toro planes as the same ones he had already proven had been maneuvered through the Forest Service by the government. According to Eitel, as soon as this information was passed to Sheehan's investigator, it was discovered that the records had been destroyed.
FTW's 1998 investigation of the CIA's diversion of twenty-eight C-130s is located at
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/pando ... c130s.html.
Eitel then seemed to raise a question that is on many people's minds. "When Danny Sheehan comes into any case, like he did with Christic, the case comes unglued. The team that prosecuted those cases couldn't have done a better job for the other side if they had been working for them."
A common assessment by those sympathetic to Sheehan is that his legal failures are the result of incompetence. However, another perspective could be offered: Namely that Sheehan is extremely competent at diffusing any case or issues - maybe even candidates -- that are potentially devastating to government covert operations. Eitel observed, "Sheehan was right there in the middle of all of it and he could have unraveled it right back to Southern Air Transport, [Bill] Casey and Richard Secord from the Sabow case. Instead it all went away when Sheehan turned a wrongful death case into a being rude case, and then blew that one."
One more thing should be said about Danny Sheehan. I received a confirmation in 2000 that Daniel Sheehan had served as the executive director of the Rockefeller/Michael Milken-funded State of the World Forum in San Francisco. The Rockefellers are, of course, the creator-founders of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
FTW solicited comment on Sheehan's role in the Kucinich campaign from three separate high-level campaign officials. As of press time for this article, that request has been neither acknowledged nor responded to...
From: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... ush_2.html