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Ortiz-Heymann: the Prior Generation
theodp writes "Two decades before the White House was petitioned to remove U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and her Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann from their jobs for the allegedly overzealous prosecution of Aaron Swartz, the Boston Globe reported on allegations of 'sometimes heavy-handed tactics and inaccuracies' of an NFL investigation into sexual harassment charges made by a sportswriter against the New England Patriots that was led by Watergate prosecutor Philip Heymann (Stephen's father) and included Ortiz. 'From the day Philip Heymann and his colleagues walked into Foxboro Stadium to investigate Lisa Olson's charges of sexual harassment,' the Globe reported, 'the New England Patriots were on the defensive, and apparently, they stayed there to the end. One day after conducting a preliminary six-hour interview with Olson, Heymann introduced each investigator to the Patriots and outlined their backgrounds at a meeting he later called benign. Yet he also said two weeks ago, "They were frightened from the beginning by the way I introduced people. I said that Jerry O'Sullivan had been US Attorney. I said Jim Ring had been FBI special agent in charge of organized crime."'
Regarding Ortiz, the Globe reported, 'Heymann investigator Carmen Ortiz wrote in a memo of her Oct. 18, 1990, interview with [Lisa Olson] that she took no notes and did not tape-record the conversation. Yet she used direct quotes when writing up her 15-page report on the session. When asked to explain, she referred the Globe to Heymann.' Aside from transcripts of two interviews (the tapes of which were destroyed), the Globe reported the NFL kept no notes on its interviews with 89 other people. '"It was contemplated that there would be a motion such as this [a lawsuit by Olson] and we did not want to create that type of document," an NFL attorney explained. According to the Globe, an attorney representing the Patriots said that 'one reason the tapes were destroyed may be that the NFL did not want anyone to hear raised voices or pounding of tables. He said some of those interviewed were not allowed to leave the room and had their livelihoods threatened if they did not cooperate.' Curiously, the elder Heymann featured prominently in a recently-upheld DOJ motion to keep the names of key people involved in the Aaron Swartz case secret — a postcard threat received by Philip Heymann was cited by Ortiz's office as evidence of why such secrecy was necessary."
Regarding Ortiz, the Globe reported, 'Heymann investigator Carmen Ortiz wrote in a memo of her Oct. 18, 1990, interview with [Lisa Olson] that she took no notes and did not tape-record the conversation. Yet she used direct quotes when writing up her 15-page report on the session. When asked to explain, she referred the Globe to Heymann.' Aside from transcripts of two interviews (the tapes of which were destroyed), the Globe reported the NFL kept no notes on its interviews with 89 other people. '"It was contemplated that there would be a motion such as this [a lawsuit by Olson] and we did not want to create that type of document," an NFL attorney explained. According to the Globe, an attorney representing the Patriots said that 'one reason the tapes were destroyed may be that the NFL did not want anyone to hear raised voices or pounding of tables. He said some of those interviewed were not allowed to leave the room and had their livelihoods threatened if they did not cooperate.' Curiously, the elder Heymann featured prominently in a recently-upheld DOJ motion to keep the names of key people involved in the Aaron Swartz case secret — a postcard threat received by Philip Heymann was cited by Ortiz's office as evidence of why such secrecy was necessary."
Government discriminates and over time government grows to become more and more abusive, especially when government connected people's interests are at stake, news at 11.
You can't handle the truth.
They both need to be removed from their positions. Their conduct demonstrates such a gross lack of proportionality and such a funhouse mirror-like distortion of the relative importance and societal significance of Aaron's crimes that their continued employment represents an ongoing threat to the respect we need society to have for its laws and for the judicial system generally.
If we want people to respect laws, we need prosecutors who at the very least have good judgement .
We would actually prefer prosecutors who had wisdom.
... a postcard threat received by Philip Heymann was cited by Ortiz's office as evidence of why such secrecy was necessary.
When prosecutors are more worried about covering their own asses than seeing that justice is done, you know things have gotten seriously f*ed up.
More lies:
"When asked by Maine Senator Susan Collins if Edward Snowden's claim that he could he could tap into virtually any American's phone call or e-mails. True or false?" Alexander said, "False. I know of no way to do that. "
The system is knowns as DCSNet, it lets them tap any phone in the country remotely:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCSNet
He's just a fucking liar. He knows how the systems work, he's trying to mislead the Senate and Congress. With the FBI data sharing, he gained access to DCSNet just as he got the telephone records. and he knows how phones are tapped FFS! The NSA *does* tap phones, its disingenuous to pretend he doesn't know how!
He also revealed they got your financial data too.
They got the same broad FISA warrants to grab tax data, credit card data etc. In the talking points the NSA says it isn't allowed to collect real names [using the phone FISA warrant law], and cannot convert IP addresses to names. The credit card data records your IP address used to make transactions, and has your real name data.
Likewise your email sent from your phone has your phones identity in it, and email data they sucked down from the net.
http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/12/nsa_boss_tells_lawmakers_the_govt_wants_to_collect_even_more_data
" National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander may be under fire for collecting millions of Americans' phone records and Internet data. But the nation's top electronic spy told a Congressional panel Wednesday that he wants the feds to slurp up even more information - and distribute it more widely throughout the government."
"During the same hearing with Senate Appropriations Committee, Alexander claimed that the intelligence collected by the NSA has potentially foiled "dozens of terrorist events." But he wouldn't give more specific number, or delve into specific plots. It was all part of a Capitol Hill hearing that saw the four-star general pledging more transparency -- yet deferring many details on the matter to a classified session tomorrow."
"The reason I want to get this exactly right, Senator, is I want the American people to know that we're being transparent in here," said Alexander in response to questions from Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. The general then promised to give more specific unclassified numbers within a week on the amount of potential attacks that have been thwarted by the millions of pieces of electronic data."
"We do want to get this right and it has to be vetted across the community [so that] what we give you, you know is accurate," said Alexander.
"Sen. Dick Durban revealed that there's been a huge spike in the amount of times U.S. government has requested authority under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to obtain phone records and possibly medical records, tax records, Internet search records and credit card records -- some 212 times last year compared to the 21 such instances in 2009."
"(Section 215 allows the goverment to ask a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA court to order a business to hand over customer records to federal investigators.) "
Curiously, the elder Heymann featured prominently in a recently-upheld DOJ motion to keep the names of key people involved in the Aaron Swartz case secret
I don't think it's really very curious, considering the entire internet hates them........
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If your job title is "Prosecutor", it's not a huge secret that(whatever lip service is paid to due process and rule of law and other such highflown nonsense) your job performance is being judged based on how much prosecution you can dish out. People who end up advancing up the ladder in that particular industry should, quite naturally, turn out to be very effective indeed at at least being seen prosecuting, if not actually doing a lot of it.
The trouble is, of course, that this creates an incentive to take cases that provide maximum visible product per unit work, and to do whatever is necessary to get results. Nobody wants to hear your whiny excuses about how you only handled one case this year because the target was heavily lawyered up and quite savvy(even if many of society's most dangerous malefactors are exactly these things, and would be far more deserving of prosecutorial attention) and 'acquittal' = 'you are a loser', even if justice was done.
It's an unfortunate misalignment of incentives.
Obama needs to be removed from his position. I'm at scandal overload right now. It does not matter anymore that Obama was not directly involved in some of the scandals. It is obvious that he has been appointing hacks and assholes, so he should have to answer for their crimes.
Recent scandals:
* Aaron Swartz 'murder by prosecution'
* IRS targeting conservatives
* State dept covering up a coverup about a US Ambassador soliciting prostitutes
* NSA spying using writs of assistance
* DOJ spying on reporters/threatening reporters
Oh, and now the asshole is trying to get us involved in Syria. Obama promised the rebels guns. Now Iran is giving the regime troops and Russia is giving them anti-aircraft missiles. I can't wait to hear Obama's next move there. Fucking proxy wars.
Impeach and then remove Obama. I say this as a Democrat.
not trying to troll, but this is exactly the type of stuff that is a waste of tax money, over zealous prosecution on petty NON-crimes. I think it is time that the prosecutors start having the same happen to them, rack up a bunch of charges and threaten them to plea guilty or go to prison for the next 30-50 years, and imprison the politicians who put the laws in place and left said laws so wide open.
tl;dr
Who prosecutes the prosecutors?
It is obvious that he has been appointing hacks and assholes, so he should have to answer for their crimes.
I think most hacks and assholes have a much longer history on their job than any president. The president's job is to bring them in line while he's around, and it's a comparatively small ratio that gets appointed during his term(s). Obama is making the mistake that he tries doing this based on mutual respect. Which is a mistake since the notorious hacks and assholes aren't interested in respecting the president or the constitution. they are interested in their paycheck. And in power. Both of which he lets them keep.
George Bush scandals:
So let's try to keep things in perspective.
well the highest obama scandal is saying(or at least implying) putting a change on it, to close gitmo etc.
then doing fucking nothing about it and adding drone strikes to the agenda. because hellfires from remote controlled aircraft is "starting a constructive dialog"...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You can say it as mayor McCheese if you want.. It's not going to matter one damm bit at this point.
as a democrat YOU are part of the problem.
Anyone who has voted D or R in the last 30 years or so.. This is your fault. 100%. You all fucked up. And kept fucking up monumentally while telling yourselves it was the OTHER side fucking up worse.
It's all bullshit. You're all guilty as fuck of putting our country where it is now.
And yet... next voting season.. YOU'LL FUCKING DO IT AGAIN! and elect more of the same ol corrupt evil bastards who got us here.
While pissing and moaning about 'impeachment' when it FINALLY it becomes obvious you fucked up AGAIN!
Privileged superstars get treated like suspects. Shocked, *shocked* that they're not catered to, brought orange juice,and given foot massages.
Film at 11.
The 'IRS targeting conservatives' story is a bit inaccurate. The IRS wasn't targeting conservative groups specifically, it was targeting anti-taxation groups - there's an obvious motive there. It just happens that most anti-taxation groups have conservative affiliation.
The IRS wasn't trying to shut them down, it was just being stricter in ensuring compliance with the very vague restrictions on the political activities permitted to 501(c) organisations. It's a very fuzzy area of the law, and one that is very frequently and openly violated by organisations on both side of the political divide. The accusation is one of selective enforcement: While most organisations applying for tax-exempt status got a quick glance over their records by an accountant, anti-tax pressure groups were subjected to months-long intensive auditing and investigation.
The IRS is in a real political mess right now - with Republicans and Democrats still fighting over healthcare reform, the IRS has the unenviable job of having to enforce the tax-credit/subsidy aspect, which means not just lots more work but becoming a political target of those opposed to the reform too. Republicans have been able to use the political bias scandal as a means to 'punish' the IRS by cutting their budget, with the aim of reducing their ability to handle the new workload and so render the healthcare reform unworkable. Now is not a good time to work at the IRS.
Idiots like you are what is wrong with this country.
Just because Bush should have been tossed out too does not mean we still shouldn't toss out Obama.
most writers like to have something called "a point". they put at the front of the "story" so people will "know what the fuck you are talking about".
then inside the story, you explain your point and give further detail.
2 sentences?
If they are not doing anything wrong then they should mot have anything to hide. All interpersonal interactions of all government functionaries with public citizens should be recorded and filed electronically by the media audio/vidieo and metadata to be made available immeadiately following the conclusion of the inquiry/investigation. Make them responsible for their (in)actions. Any extensions beyond a sunset date must be individually approved and summary reports published on how many extensions were approved made on a monthly basis. Let the cockroaches scurry for the baseboards when the light comes on.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
What the both of you are failing to remember is that the office of president isn't meant to wield power, but to draw attention away from it.
Look to long standing lobbyists, senators, congressmen, and generals if you want to direct your anger at the head rather than the puppet.
Idiots like you are what is wrong with this country.
Just because Bush should have been tossed out too does not mean we still shouldn't toss out Obama.
Idiots like you who just rant and don't actually do anything are what's wrong with this country. When you figure out how to get perfection then you can start complaining about the people who worked for and contributed to the Obama campaign (both times) because he was better than the alternatives. Who did you prefer? Romney? Paul? Santorum?
Remove Obama and you get Joe Biden as President.
So you had your chance for BOTH at the mid term elections.
Now you are whining. Too late.
what scandals? this is the repubs trying to do anything and everything to discredit Obama.. if you pay attention to the game of politics this has been going on for years, the dems did this with Bush. Nobody is perfect and it really doesn't matter since they are hand puppets, do you honestly think the have any "ruling power" over anything?
Arron's case is do to both sides passing a terribly written law, which has been in place for sometime.
NSA having the power they have again been in place for awhile and both sides agreed to allow this..
DOJ, part of the underbelly of intelligence, they've been doing this to the press/media since before Nixon..
Biden is a fuckhead I'm sure, but at least he knows why Hoovering up metadata is dangerous:
Biden in 2006 schools Obama in 2013 over NSA spying program
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Without taking a stand on either case, I have to say that digging back through 23 years of Ortiz's career to find some vague evidence of misconduct is pretty much the definition of muckraking. Honestly, if you have to look this hard to find some dirt on a U.S. attorney, she's remarkably clean for someone in her career.
The author is clearly going for a hatchet-job rather than honest investigative journalism, and as such, their motives are not to be trusted.
This is a case I happen to be familiar with, having been a Boston sports fan at the time, although not at the insider level of detail. The short version is that if they're trying to dig up cases from the prosecutor's distant past (now that's a surprise they would do that, right) where they railroaded some innocents, I would've expected them to come up with much more sympathetic defendants.
The New England Patriots NFL team had a succession of clownish owners and terrible head coaches in the late '80s and early '90s. Among the owners was Victor Kiam, the CEO of Remington who used to star on cringeworthy TV ads where he said "I like the shave so much, I bought the company." This became a bitter joke among the (few remaining) Patriots fans as the team continued to finish at the bottom of the standings with castoffs and misfits from other teams. The nadir came when Lisa Olson, a sportswriter with the Boston Herald (one of the city's two daily papers) went into the team's locker room after a game to do some interviews. Now football players have never been known for political correctness, and 20 years ago the idea of women reporters in the locker room was a relatively new occurrence. Protocols hadn't been set up. Plus the team was the laughingstock of the league, the stands were empty at home games and the players were fed up. So some of the Patriots players didn't bother to hide their private parts, and some of them yelled sexist stuff at Olson, probably something like "hey baby, you want some of this? Come get it!" A more seasoned reporter maybe would've shrugged it off (the way Suzy Kolber later handled a drunken on-air pass from Joe Namath) but Olson apparently was intimidated and frightened by this juvenile crudeness. She later resumed her career in Australia.
After Olson complained, the owner Victor Kiam dismissed it as the whinings of a "bitch", and the stakes grew exponentially. The NFL, as always, was trying to court more female fans, so they stepped in and came down hard on the Patriots. Frankly, the team at that point was a mess top to bottom, both on and off the field, so they didn't have much fan support in this particular incident, although there were some who criticized Olson. Kiam shortly after sold the team, after yet another change of hands it was purchased by Bob Kraft, who owns it to this day.
Just like Jim Crow laws, you support the abuse of people you don't like by the government.
I wrote up a plain text summary, from the /. submission, and personalized it a bit so, if you want to copy / paste and sign it and email it to your reps, senators and Obama you can grab it from here: http://pastebin.com/VvHbTaZ8
Find your reps and links to their contact info with your zip code here: http://app.leg.wa.gov/districtfinder/
If you're too apathetic to think it can make any difference no need to reply. Thanks much!
Less *is* more.
You guys just can't deal with a strong Latina.
I was too young for one, and I tried with the other. Go fuck yourself.
According to former IRS agents there was never a good time to work there.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock