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Angel of Death Gives Deposition to Justice
Department in Inslaw Case
by J. Orlin Grabbe
On April 2, 1996, Charles S. Hayes--retired CIA
operative, Air Force Colonel, and Kentucky salvage
dealer--was deposed by the U.S. Department of Justice
with respect to the Inslaw case [1]. The attorney for the
Department of Justice, Beth Cook, seemed ill-prepared for
what turned out to be a brutal assault on the integrity of the
Justice Department itself, which Hayes accused of lying,
cheating, and stealing.
Hayes has recently acquired the Internet label of
AOD ("Angel of Death" or "Angel of Doom") due to his
efforts in encouraging the early retirement of corrupt
politicians. "Do you know the Angel of Death?" Cook
asked at one point. "I know him well," Hayes replied.
Hayes has previously testified with respect to the
Inslaw case, most notably before a Chicago grand jury in
August 1992. Hayes' extensive testimony in that case was
redacted under the National Security Act. The reasons for
the redaction are not known, but apparently the grand
jury's questions lead far afield from the principal topic of
the Justice Department's apparently illegal sales of Inslaw's
PROMIS software, and got into topics related to a tangled
web of freelance arms dealers, drug runners, assassins,
and government miscreants--whose murky and disparate
interrelationships Hayes dubbed "the Octopus"--a term
adopted and popularized by freelance journalist Danny
Casolaro [2], who used Hayes as a frequent source of
information. Hayes is said to have testified to detailed
criminal violations of U.S. law by employees of the
Department of Justice and other government agencies.
Although Hayes will not discuss his grand jury
testimony, other sources say that with respect to the Inslaw
case, he testified to a meeting at which he was present in
Brazil in the course of which Earl Brian called Attorney
General Ed Meese (then in the United States) to get
approval for the sale of PROMIS to the Brazilian
government. Hayes is said to have backed up this
assertion with an affidavit of Brazilian President João
Figueiredo.
Earl Brian, who is said to have marketed the
PROMIS software to intelligence agencies around the
world, is currently under indictment in California. The
indictment concerns ten of millions of dollars of fraudulent
lease transactions made while Earl Brian was Chairman of
the Board and Chief Executive Officer of three separate
companies: Infotechology, Financial News Network
(FNN), and United Press International (UPI).
Early in the April 2, 1996, deposition, Justice
Dept. attorney Beth Cook enjoined Hayes not to discuss
his grand jury testimony. Subsequently, however, she
began to question him about it. "Are you trying to entrap
me?" Hayes asked.
In the five-hour deposition, Hayes declared he was
not present to help Inslaw, nor to help any government
agency which was pirating software. "I'm here to help the
people of the United States, whom I hold in esteem second
only to my God" he said, and admonished Cook for what
he called her lack of preparation, laziness, and wasting of
taxpayers' money. He asked her if there was "some
medical reason related to the time of month" for her
"arrogance" and "obstinance".
Hayes asked to be reimbursed for expenses related
to the Justice Department subpoena. "We don't pay for
subpoenas," Cook said, although in fact Federal law
requires that expenses incurred in response to Federal
subpoenas be reimbursed.
Hayes pointed out that U.S. attorney Allen Lear
had threatened to bring the FBI down on him on January
18, 1996. "I don't think that's legal," Hayes said. Anyway,
"the FBI is not a chartered organization."
(A check with the Library of Congress shows that,
in fact, the FBI is not chartered. As such, laws related to,
and convictions based on, "lying to the FBI" are apparently
not valid, for no such chartered organization exists. The
correctness of this argument, based on lack of charter, has
been upheld in court cases involving the FBI in
Massachusetts and Vermont. In addition, since the FBI, as
a subdivision of the Department of Justice, is larger than
the DoJ itself, Federal law bars FBI employees from
receiving benefits. FBI agents who currently receive
benefits are thus apparently in violation of Federal law,
and could properly be required to return the money.)
Hayes accused the DoJ of theft, saying they owed
him money stemming from the largest gem seizure in U.S.
history. (This appeared to be in reference to Indictment
No. 86-44, U.S. vs. Antonio Carlos A Calvares, Mauricio
Alcides Kruger, Mark Edward Lewis, Empresa Brasileira
de Mineracao Imp e Exp. Ltda., filed Dec. 3, 1986, in the
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
Charles Hayes personally delivered gems with an
appraised value of $1.3 million. Customs Form 4655,
Receipt for Seized Goods, dated July 25, 1985, for goods
delivered by Charles Hayes is signed by Paul E.
Carpenter. A similar receipt on July 28 is signed by
George F. Fritz, Special Agent, witnessed by John D.
Morton, RAC. The total seizure in the case involved more
than $10 million in property. Under 18 USC 371, 542,
545, Hayes says, he is entitled to *mordi*--this being
typically 25 percent of the total seizure, but a minimum of
10 percent.)
More relevant to the Inslaw case, is the fact that in
August 1990, Charles Hayes purchased used Justice
Department computers and peripheral equipment (Lot 097
from the U.S. attorney's office in Lexington, Kentucky) for
salvage for $45, and found on them copies of the pirated
PROMIS software, as well as sealed grand jury
indictments, and the names of Justice Dept. informants.
The General Accounting Office found the Justice
Department's sale of computers from which it had not
erased sensitive information alarming, noting, "The error
may have put some informants, witness and undercover
agents in a 'life-and-death' situation."
The Justice Department, having sold Hayes the
equipment, subsequently seized it under warrant--
apparently to prevent its being used as evidence in the
Inslaw case. But Hayes subsequently sued and got the
equipment back, plus a undetermined settlement amount.
(This case is discussed, albeit somewhat incompletely and
inaccurately, in David Burnham, Above the Law: Secret
Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the
U.S. Department of Justice, Scribner, New York, 1996).
In the April 2, 1996, deposition, Justice attorney
Beth Cook seemed unaware that the Justice Department
was under Congressional order from the Brookes
Committee on the Judiciary (see [1]) to cease the sale of
pirated software, not to mention hard drives containing
confidential information. Similar restrictions have been
placed on the IRS which, from its Martinsburg, West
Virginia, central record depository, sold some 40,000
pounds of used computer disks containing the tax records
of thousands of U.S. citizens--records of considerable
interest to credit bureaus, organized crime, and foreign
intelligence organizations.
When asked how he felt just prior to the
deposition, Hayes said, "Great, Kentucky's No. 1,"
referring to the previous night's championship win over
Syracuse by the University of Kentucky basketball team.
About the only thing that Hayes didn't accuse the
DoJ of in his April 2 deposition was murder. Others are
not so kind. In its Addendum to INSLAW's ANALYSIS and
REBUTTAL of the BUA REPORT, dated February 14,
1994, Inslaw notes with respect to the Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations (OSI): "OSI's publicly-
declared mission is to locate and deport Nazi war
criminals. The Nazi war criminal program is, however, a
front for the Justice Department's own covert intelligence
service, according to disclosures recently made to
INSLAW by several senior Justice Department career
officials . . . According to written statements of which
INSLAW has obtained copies, another undeclared mission
of the Justice Department's covert agents was to insure that
investigative journalist Danny Casolaro remained silent
about the role of the Justice Department in the INSLAW
scandal by murdering him in West Virginia in August
1991."
Is the U.S. Department of Justice just another
tenacle of the Octopus? If so, then what is the meaning of
the phrase "with liberty and justice for all"?
Footnotes
[1] The Inslaw case was the subject of a Congressional
report: The Inslaw Affair: Investigative Report by the
Committee on the Judiciary, Jack Brookes, Chairman,
House Report 102-856, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1992.
See also:
Mahar, Maggie, "Beneath Contemp: Did the Justice Dept.
Deliberately Bankrupt INSLAW," Barron's National
Business and Financial Weekly, March 21, 1988.
Mahar, Maggie, "Rogue Justice: Who and What Were
Behind the Vendette Against INSLAW?", Barron's
National Business and Financial Weekly, April 4, 1988.
Martin, Harry V., "Federal Corruption: Inslaw", The
Napa Sentinel, a series of articles with various titles
beginning March 15, 1991 and extending through March
19, 1993.
Fricker, Richard L., "The Inslaw Octopus," Wired, #4,
1993.
Bua, Nicolas J., Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J.
Bua to the Attorney General of the United States
Responding to the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc., March
1993
Inslaw, Inc., INSLAW's ANALYSIS and REBUTTAL of the
BUA REPORT, July 1993.
Inslaw, Inc., Addendum to INSLAW's ANALYSIS and
REBUTTAL of the BUA REPORT, February 14, 1994
[2] In addition to the sources mentioned in footnote [1],
the death of Danny Casolaro is explored in: Connolly,
John, "Dead Right," Spy Magazine, January 1993.
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