EVIDENCE THAT COULD HAVE exonerated Ed Steele was withheld from the jury by the judge. In a pre-trial hearing on the admissibility of evidence, two audio experts testified that the FBI recordings contained numerous audio signatures (aberrations) that strongly indicated the recordings might have been tampered with. One expert, Bennett Walsh, a former New York City detective with years of experience with audio recordings, said flatly the recordings were tampered with.

The other expert, George Papcun, PhD (pictured), an internationally known expert with solid scientific credentials, said there was an unusually high number of electronic transients and other discrepancies which could indicate tampering with the recordings. His reputation is bolstered by his knowledge of “voice morphing,” a technology that allows the creation of synthetic speech from digital “voice prints” of the person whose speech they seek to duplicate. It allows the “cloning” of a person’s voice, and the ability to have the subject “say” whatever the counterfeiters wish.

According to Robert McAllister, counsel for the defense, arrangements were made to fly Dr. Papcun by private aircraft from a vacation in the south Pacific to Boise to testify on May 4, the last day of the trial. According to McAllister it was possible for him to arrive at the courthouse by 9:00 AM.

However, McAllister reported that the judge ruled that Dr. Papcun would only be allowed to testify if he was in the court room by 8:30 AM. This information can be verified by McAllister.

Ed Steele was denied his right to call witnesses critical to his defense. Is this a demonstration of a “fair trial,” or is it a lynching? The answer should be obvious to any thinking person.

via National Vanguard

Read the original posting at Free Edgar Steele

AN EMOTIONALLY DEVASTATED Cyndi Steele vowed to fight on with an appeal to a higher court after her husband, free speech attorney Edgar J. Steele, was convicted earlier today of plotting to kill her. Mrs. Steele spoke of her pride in and love for her husband, stating that she and her legal team have absolute proof that the FBI tapes used to convict him are faked, but that her evidence was not allowed in court in what many are viewing as a rigged trial.

Promising to fight and speak out “until my last breath,” Mrs. Steele called for an end to political prosecutions, saying that no one in America is safe now.

IN A TRAGIC MISCARRIAGE of justice, a federal jury — which was denied the right to hear two experts’ testimony that the alleged FBI recordings of Edgar J. Steele were faked, with over 300 suspicious edits inserted — has convicted the courageous free speech attorney and writer on all four counts related to an alleged murder-for-hire of his wife, Cyndi Steele, and mother-in-law.

None of the alleged victims believe the FBI allegations, instead pointing to the admitted Idaho Pipe Bomber, Larry Fairfax — and his government handlers — as the real source of the plot. Fairfax, who allowed a lethal bomb to remain on Cyndi Steele’s car for weeks without telling her, was given a sweetheart deal by prosecutors and no serious charges were brought against him.

It is hoped that the outrageous behavior of the judge in this case — who refused to allow even a few days’ delay to let an expert witness travel from the South Pacific to testify for the defense, and also refused to permit the expert to testify via video conference, even though a prosecution witness was freely allowed to do so — will be the basis of a strong appeal.

The judge in question — Lynn Winmill — exhibited an almost unbelievable coldness toward the lives of the real victims, Edgar Steele and his family, when he stated that even a two-day delay to allow the audio expert to travel to the United States was unacceptable — saying of the brief delay only that “procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”

Cyndi Steele — who was allowed to hear the doctored recordings early on in the framing of her husband in hopes that she would be deceived by them — has long stated that the audio quality on the recordings changes abruptly and dramatically whenever her husband begins to discuss the alleged plot. When she heard the alleged recordings played back in court, however, she was in for a further shock.

As she puts it: “What is even more outrageous now is that the tapes that they played for the jury in the courtroom this week have been altered, because they are not the same recordings the FBI played for me on June 12, 2010, nor the tapes sent to the attorneys that I again listened to on March 7th. It is as if they used the info from the reports of our experts to make the changes to cover up the falsified tapes our experts analyzed.”

May the powers that created the universe — and our people — quickly bring these perjurers and criminals operating under color of law, who have falsely convicted this noble man, to justice; to true justice. And may it happen in our lifetimes.

In the words of Edgar J. Steele: “New America. An idea whose time has come.”

IN AN EFFORT to find justice and because we eschew oppression, we now have the absolute proof that the US government, for whatever reason, has fabricated its case against Edgar J. Steele, a First Amendment Idaho Lawyer. Steele (pictured) has been defending the falsely accused; many for free. If we do not turn this around now, this trend will impact our children and grandchildren.

In spite of the efforts of Edgar Steele’s new defense attorney, Robert T. McAllister, of Colorado, to get some time to prepare a defense, Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the Idaho Federal District Court is insisting that the Steele Case, based on false charges of murder-for-hire of his wife, Cyndi Steele, go to a jury trial in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho next Monday, March 7, 2011. Cyndi Steele was the victim of a real attempted murder-by-pipe-bomb last June. She has looked at the government’s evidence and proclaimed that her husband is innocent and sees that the entire government case is fabricated. New evidence, just discovered, reveals that the government recordings of Mr. Steele’s voice supposedly hiring a hitman, were fabricated. Even though this is fraud, there is a question whether the judge will permit a defense expert to testify in order to prove it!

The reason for this message is because Edgar J. Steele is facing the trial of his life. At age 65, any sentence is a death sentence. He and his wife Cyndi have three adult children and one grandchild who love him very much and he loves them. Most important, though, is that Edgar J. Steele in innocent.

Former Chief Criminal Prosecuting Attorney (in both N. District of Illinois and Colorado) turned defense attorney McAllister began his representation of Edgar Steele on February 7, 2011, so he has been involved as the attorney for Edgar for less than a month. The government, as is their regular practice, is withholding critical evidence which, by law, should have been shown to the defendant months ago; this is a law violation by the government. There is no one to prosecute when the government breaks the law (see the 201 cases of innocent people falsely charged in USA Today article of September 23, 2010 by Brad Heath).  We saw the US government withholding evidence in the David Hinkson case in 2005, resulting in a 43-year prison sentence, an LDS person who is meek and mild, a scientist and inventor who literally never harmed anyone in his life and never had so much as a parking ticket before he was attacked by the US government.

Well, they’re at it again; the US government fraud on the innocent is in full swing, like a shark feeding frenzy. The FBI and US Attorney’s Office in Idaho are seeking to bring down another innocent person, Edgar Steele, and send him to prison, because he is an advocate for the US Constitution and individual rights.

What is interesting is that, in the Edgar Steele case, the government is following the same pattern it used in the David Hinkson case (which pattern reads like the KGB play book of dirty tricks against anyone who does not buy into the politically correct agenda). As it turns out, in thousands of other cases, the government has manufactured evidence by using the FBI to create a crime.

Though we have absolute proof that the audio tapes presented by the government as evidence in the Edgar Steele case are frauds, specific things need to happen in order for Edgar J. Steele to receive the justice: 1) the judge must allow the defense to present to the jury evidence that the tapes were fabricated; and 2) the jury must have the opportunity to see the US government has fabricated this case against Edgar J. Steele.

Our own freedom is at stake, for if they can fabricate a case out of whole cloth against the Edgar Steeles of this world, they can do it to you and me and our loved ones; it will only be a matter of time.

THE EDGAR STEELE DEFENSE FUND, an Idaho non-profit corporation wishes to address a recent prosecution motion which effectively asks for an all-expense paid trip to Ukraine, claiming it is related to Mr. Steele’s case.

Once again, the prosecution has it wrong. In pursuing the Ukrainian connection to my husband, First Amendment lawyer Edgar Steele (pictured), the government is grasping at straws because there is no motive for the alleged murder-for-hire. The government knows that, as my husband’s legal assistant, I was fully aware that the Ukrainian woman was suspected to be a part of a “Russian-Bride” scam which cheated one of his clients out of thousands of dollars. By communicating with this woman, my husband was working a case to bring down the people involved in stealing from Americans. Now, instead of doing her job, Assistant US Attorney (AUSA) Traci Whelan, is seeking an all expense trip abroad and has turned this into a Media-Op.

When my husband was first arrested, the FBI claimed his “motive” was to cash in on our life insurance proceeds. When I told them that we had canceled our life insurance years ago, the FBI claimed my husband had a private investigator following me who supposedly had pictures of me with a “boyfriend.” Oops, the FBI lied again. There was no private investigator, no pictures and no boyfriend. Now the government is using my husband’s investigation of a human trafficking ring to claim he had a girlfriend. This is just another example of the FBI using fraud to prosecute the innocent. As we all have learned from recent reports, the government has prosecuted thousands of innocent people on fabricated evidence over the past 14 years.

In response to AUSA Traci Whelan’s comment: “If the defendant could not control his actions and that is why he hired a hit man, what is to stop that from happening again?” First, my husband was weak from four surgeries and the prescription drugs taken during his recovery, so he didn’t see Larry Fairfax taking advantage of him. Second, he did not hire Larry Fairfax or anyone to be a hit man. And, third, AUSA Whelan well knows that Larry Fairfax is a liar because he lied to the FBI by not disclosing that he had attached a bomb to my car in June when he promised to “come forward” with all his criminal activity. AUSA Whelan has seen the theft report and knows that Fairfax stole $45,000 in silver savings from my husband and me. AUSA Whelan also knows that Fairfax was covering up his theft by blaming my husband in a supposed murder-for-hire scam. AUSA Whelan even told my attorney and me that Fairfax had confessed he was trying to “scam” us. So what does it take to get AUSA Whelan to do her job? She has the real criminal and she knows who his accomplices are but she will not properly charge either with the serious crimes committed by them, thus allowing them to continually put my life and the public in danger.

I’m standing up for my husband because he is innocent. It was the FBI that was tampering with my testimony, trying to persuade me to accept one of their many versions of this case. But I took the time to look at the evidence, without accepting anyone else’s perspective, in order to make up my own mind. After I looked, I realized that it was the FBI who knew there was a bomb on my car many days before I found it attached to my muffler on June 15th. Did the government say anything to me or do anything to warn the public? No!

The same day I found the bomb, a US Marshal told me that the government was not going to provide me any protection. This was the official word!!! At that point, the government supposedly didn’t know who had put the bomb on my car; because, supposedly, Larry Fairfax had not come forward with that information yet. But, all the same, I was being denied protection.

At that time, I told the government that I was worried about this bomb coming from some hate group because my family has had numerous death threats over the years. The FBI knew about these threats and ignored them even though the calls were traced back to the phone lines of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League). Now this same government that refused to protect me is going to give Larry Fairfax, who attempted to murder me, a soft plea deal of an 18 month sentence. The government also refuses to arrest or charge the Fairfax accomplices with their crimes. Since I am the victim of an attempted murder by Fairfax and his gang, I want to know what will it take to get the government to do its job?

Donations of any size for the defense of Mr. Steele are greatly appreciated and are still being accepted by the Edgar Steele Defense Fund. More information can be obtained at www.free-edgar-steele.com, or checks and money orders can be mailed to the Edgar Steele Defense Fund at P.O. 1255, Sagle, Idaho 83860. For further information call Robert Magnuson at 509-290-7466.

Read more at Free Edgar Steele

EDGAR J. STEELE has been entrapped by a legal system that presumes his guilt in the face of false charges. Ed, my husband, has been in jail and solitary confinement for three months in Spokane, Washington because of false allegations that he masterminded a murder-for-hire plot to kill me and my mother. I have never believed that Ed was involved in such a plot! Ed has defended the politically incorrect for years; people who, were it not for him, never would have had representation. Those who oppose Ed hate the truth and have threatened to harm Ed, me and our family in the past. Clearly, he is a political prisoner of the USA — and, quite literally, he is fighting for his life.

Here is the bottom line: Without experts to prove that false government tape recordings are only imitations of Ed’s speech patterns (using voice cloning technology); and without experts to present the truth about alleged explosives, Ed will be “sent to the gallows” for something he didn’t do. We have an opportunity to prevent this great injustice. This is not the first time the government has made false criminal allegations against innocent people. Thus, it is our choice whether we want to be a part of the movement to stop this kind of government-sponsored insanity. Let me tell you, we sincerely need your help.

I humbly ask for your assistance, as I am now financially strapped and unable to raise the amount of money necessary to provide a proper defense for my husband. Any financial gift you can make will go directly to the Edgar Steele Defense Fund, to be placed in an attorney’s trust account and to be used exclusively for Ed’s defense. Contributions of $50 and $100 will be greatly appreciated as we try to make our goal of $250,000 needed to pay both attorney fees and the legal costs of this case. Time is critical as we need to have a new attorney on board soon who will work for Ed.

Edgar needs an attorney who is willing to challenge the FBI’s conduct and show that the government is wrong. Edgar can’t move forward without your help in funding his defense. Your kind financial assistance will help us to engage a qualified attorney (who has already been contacted) who believes in Ed’s innocence and will work vigorously to protect Ed’s rights and confront the government.

These are tough financial times. But please take a moment to think about my husband, sitting in a jail cell, day after day, with no hope, not even able to help in his own defense. And I can’t visit with him to give him hope or moral support, because the judge has entered a very unfair “no contact” order.

Even the smallest donation will go a long way to help win this case and expose the corruption behind the false charges. It may even help others who face false accusations by the government.

Please make your contribution check payable to:

The Edgar Steele Defense Fund
PO Box 1255
Sagle  ID 83860

Funds will be held in an attorney’s trust account.

Or, go online and pay with your credit card through Paypal at:

http://www.free-edgar-steele.com/?page_id=70

My sincerest and most heartfelt thanks for your time in considering this plea for help,

Cyndi G. Steele

PERJURER ARRESTED YET AGAIN, THIS TIME FOR STALKING: Elisha Strom, whose perjury assisted the government’s politically-motivated prosecution of me, has been arrested for yet a third time, this time for allegedly stalking a federal agent. She exhibits a pattern of using men and then attempting to get revenge on them in some way, just as she did with the first JTTF agent whom she stalked and now blogs about on her I HEARTE JADE blog. She claims she was sexually involved with that agent during the time frame of my prosecution. According to well-placed law enforcement sources, the JTTF agent vehemently denies the claim. Simple logic says they can’t both be telling the truth. The entire case against me is irretrievably tainted, and its falseness becomes more evident every day.

Hal Turner, Federal employee.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

MUCH HAS BEEN written about the effects of the Hal Turner conviction on what is left of free speech in America. I agree that it will have what lawyers and the cliché-ridden call a “chilling effect.” But so much of what has been written misses the most important fact in the case.

Hal Turner was a fake. A phony.

He was not really a critic of the regime in Washington.

He worked for that regime, and his job was 1) to make critics of that regime’s racial and foreign policies look like dangerous, violent lunatics by promoting stupidity and violence; and 2) to put the regime’s critics under close surveillance and, if possible, in jail. (I realized early on that he was a liar, that the articles he wrote were exaggerated or created out of whole cloth, and that his moronic “kill ’em” rhetoric was designed to defame and denigrate racially conscious Americans by association. He was enraged by my refusal to give him publicity.)

Despite the fact that he was fairly effective at his dishonorable profession, his employers were even more dishonorable.

A few months after a hacker publicly disclosed that Turner was working for the FBI’s “Joint Terrorism Task Force” (the same outlaw outfit that falsely charged and imprisoned me and was complicit in the theft of all of my property), his handlers decided he was more of a liability than an asset. So they arranged to have him prosecuted and imprisoned for doing the very things that they had hired and paid him to do.

There is a lesson here:

The regime in Washington and the ethnically distinct oligarchs that control it has no friends, and no honor. Cooperate with or work for it at your extreme peril.

This lesson will sooner or later be learned by the native inhabitants who have collaborated with the invaders in Afghanistan and Iraq. The regime in Washington will betray them when it is expedient to do so. And the Earth will be soaked red with their blood.

*   *   *

What will Hal Turner’s life be like in Federal prison?

His life may be in danger. Violence doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen. The billionaires’ media are allowed into the prisons, and the vilification of some prisoners as “haters” in the money-men’s press and TV does agitate the mostly-Black inmates, sometimes to fury.

There are some very nasty people in there, who — unlike me and the other 50 per cent. or so of innocent folks in prison — are really guilty of unimaginable crimes: people who enjoy hurting other people for the smallest reasons, or for the sheer fun of it. Or for racially- or politically-motivated “revenge.”

It’s doubtful that such persons would be able to comprehend the subtleties of Turner’s case, or care if they did.

There is little oversight of what prisoners do to one another in their huge filthy, open, stinking pens — sometimes none for hours at a time.

Turner will also will be provided with “medical care” that is essentially nonexistent, from alleged doctors who can’t make it in the real world (who might deign to see you if you’re in really severe pain… in a few days or weeks) and most of whom, like almost all the guards and administrators, don’t give a solitary damn and are there in Hell with you strictly for the Federal paycheck and retirement.

In addition to the violent criminals, there are some people in there — and some of these were falsely convicted, or convicted of “crimes” which shouldn’t be crimes — who are extremely bitter and are looking for any way out. Some of these will willingly lie and perjure themselves to help corrupt U.S. Attorneys advance their careers  — and get more convictions against hapless people in prison who have little or no means to defend themselves.

The system itself is a crime, and it is irremediably corrupt.

To put someone in that Hell who is guilty of nothing more than possessing a recreational drug — or not possessing the right paperwork for his firearm — or who is guilty of no crime whatsoever, as I was — is absolutely unconscionable.

I’m very leery of wishing that anyone — even the most thuggish Black drug dealer imaginable — be put into such a Hell. Like the system that created it, it is too cruel.

Of course, Hal Turner supported that system with all the vigor and dishonesty and cleverness he could muster. And he accepted the system’s filthy dollars. He helped put others — innocent others — into that Hell. So perhaps he is a special case.

THANKS TO EU TIMES: My thanks go out to the European Union Times, which — alone among important media outlets — spoke out for justice throughout my travails, telling both sides of the story in their news reporting and calling for my release in editorials. They stated “Kevin Alfred Strom is innocent,” saying of me that “he dedicated his life to fighting against pornography, child pornography, rape, murder… How could they even accuse him of such nonsense?” In another editorial they wrote: “Kevin Alfred Strom has a family and he has children… He dedicated his life to fighting against globalization, child porn, sex slavery, drugs…” and that the accusations against me were “inventions of severely damaged and evil brains.”

POLITICAL PROSECUTION: At the urging of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, European-American activist and writer Kevin Alfred Strom is (wrongfully) convicted of possessing eight images of child pornography, based on the testimony of a perjurer who was having a relationship with the JTTF “investigating officer.” Kevin Strom is sentenced to 23 months in prison, most of that in brutal solitary confinement. He is placed under supervision for 15 years. Contrast that with the case of Korean-American “youth leader” Timothy Han of Miracleland Korean Baptist Church, who was convicted of actually having sex with a child. Han was sentenced to 45 days in jail and 45 days in a work-release program.

PERJURER EXPOSED AGAIN: Evidence is mounting that Elisha Strom, the woman whose perjured testimony and work with the so-called Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) caused false federal charges to be filed against me, had several inappropriate relationships with the local and “terrorism task force” officers she was at first working with — and then turned against, causing her to be arrested for stalking them, harassing them, and interfering with them. Both she and the JTTF avoided a trial full of revelations of their respective characters when a plea agreement was struck in which she plead guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice.

PERJURER ARRESTED: The woman whose perjury and close collaboration with the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) caused false charges to be filed against me has been arrested for harassment of  a Charlottesville, Virginia drug task force. Elisha R. Strom apparently turned on the JTTF man she had been working with, who is also an agent on the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) task force. She relentlessly stalked the JADE men for months and published much of the private information she discovered. Elisha Strom has a pattern of getting close to men to get what she wants, then turning against them viciously, maliciously, and irrationally.

A montage of Liberty Dollars, which may have been the most successful of all U.S. alternative currencies to date. Despite repeated Treasury assurances that their efforts were perfectly legal, the creators of this truly honest metal-backed money found themselves under arrest.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

I’VE MENTIONED ALTERNATIVE currencies — usually private efforts to help the local or national economy without resorting to debt, usurious interest, the banks, or the Fed — in a supportive way on this site before.

Recently I learned that the creators of some of the most interesting and successful alternative currencies — the Hawaiian Dala, the California Bear, the Chambersburg Dollar, the Evansville Dollar, the Liberty Dollar, the Peace Dollar, and the Ron Paul Dollar, among others — have been arrested by the FBI (for totally bogus charges under statutes intended to stop counterfeiting). They are Kevin Innes, Bernard von NotHaus, Sarah Bledsoe, and Rachelle Moseley.

For the “crime” of trying to create honest money to give people an alternative to the colossal confidence rackets called the Federal Reserve and the commercial banking system, these good people now find themselves facing the very real possibility of living the rest of their lives in a hellhole federal prison.

The New Peace Dollar

They deserve support. One thing even those of us living on a very low income might do is buy a quantity of their Peace Dollars (available in a low-cost copper version for those who can’t afford the silver ones) and spread them around your community. As their makers tell us, as a private currency these coins are good for peace and bad for war, since they can’t be used to fund the Iraq war — or any war, for that matter.

The Liberty Dollar folks weren’t trying to do anything illegal, and in fact kept the relevant authorities informed of what they were doing, even asking them for legal opinions — Claudia Dickens, spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said “There’s nothing illegal about this.” After the Treasury Department’s legal team reviewed the currency, she reiterated “As long as it doesn’t say ‘legal tender’ there’s nothing wrong with it.”

The Hawaiian Dala

“It’s not counterfeit money,” according to Ron Legan, Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle, Washington, Secret Service field office. Amazingly, the Liberty Dollar folks find themselves charged under statutes intended to prevent counterfeiting — though they never made any claim that Liberty Dollars are government currency, and they do not even slightly resemble U.S. coins or bills. Logan investigated and concluded that the Liberty Dollars are well within the boundaries of American monetary guidelines. “We determined there wasn’t a federal currency violation,” he said. Apparently a rogue and politically-motivated element in the Department of Justice disagrees.

The shrinking value of the dollar (click for a larger chart). Since the Federal Reserve and official U.S. currency were "liberated" from the discipline of silver and gold, the dollar has steadily lost value -- and that loss has recently accelerated (Bush war and Obama inflation losses are too recent to be fully shown in this chart). This represents one of the greatest thefts in history, mostly from honest working folks who can ill afford the loss.

If we had an honest government, the best way to issue money and credit would be to issue it directly to the people (instead of allowing the banks or the government to create it for themselves) through a National Dividend. Clifford Hugh Douglas wrote of the idea in his groundbreaking work Social Credit. But absent honest bankers or honest politicians, private labor-based or asset-based currencies are excellent alternatives.

There was nothing fraudulent or criminal about Liberty Dollars or Peace Dollars or Hawaiian Dalas, or their creators. How many other banks or governments — or currency issuers of any kind — offer to give you more dollars whenever necessary so that the value of your money, measured in silver, will always stay the same? That’s exactly what the Liberty Dollar folks do.

It is the ultimate expression of hypocrisy for the master-counterfeiters of the world, and the flagrant debasers of the dollar (now worth less than 4 cents in real terms) to place these good people under arrest and indictment.

Get your Peace Dollars from libertydollar.org today!

Kevin Alfred Strom today

Kevin Alfred Strom is absolutely innocent of any crime against children or anyone else. He has paid a heavy price for his advocacy of self-determination for his people.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

given at Federal District Court, Charlottesville, Virginia on April 21, 2008; with annotations

MY NAME is Kevin Alfred Strom. I have been in solitary confinement for sixteen months. Circumstances and strategic considerations have kept me silent until now. But I have sworn to tell the whole truth, so I ask the court to grant me now perhaps one minute for every month I have been imprisoned.

All along I’ve told the truth to everyone — investigators, family members, this court, my closest friends — about this case, even when that truth was embarrassing to me or easily misconstrued to be used against me.

Let me tell you a little about my background. For some 20 years, I worked as a broadcast engineer. For three years, until I moved to Virginia in 2001, I was the local chapter leader of the Family Support Network, a parenting group. I’m a writer, a publisher, an editor, a broadcaster — and an activist for social change who’s taken on some powerful interest groups, armed only with a microphone and a pen. But more than anything else, I’m a father.

The greatest title of honor I’ve ever been given is “Daddy.”

My Children

My son Oliver[1] is fifteen, an honor student just embarking on his high school years and all the changes that implies.

My daughter Vita is eleven, also an honor student and getting set to graduate to middle school.

My younger son Alfred is thirteen and severely autistic. He has made some progress at a special school for autistic children, but in many ways he lives in his own inner world. Victims of autism have trouble relating to people, but often get very attached to one person in their lives. In Alfred’s case, that person is me.

[1] (All minors named here have been given alternate names to protect their identities.)

Some years ago, I lived in Virginia while my ex-wife, the children’s mother, lived in Minnesota. I had to bear all the driving duties and all the costs to maintain my parenting time under joint custody. My parenting time was split into four periods every year.

My children and I

I drove 1,250 miles to pick up the children, another 1,250 miles back home for my time with them, another 1,250 miles to drop them off, and then 1,250 miles back home again. And that’s for one trip. Depending on school or other schedules, sometimes the driving time was longer than the time at home with them. I was making that trip between here and Minnesota sixteen times a year. I did that for six years. It was worth every bit of effort. I love my children more than my own soul.

Your honor, I am not a pedophile. I am the farthest thing imaginable from a sexual pervert of any kind. I am in fact the precise opposite of the way I have been characterized in this case. And I have never sought out, purchased, enjoyed, or wanted child pornography of any kind.

Those who would in reality or fantasy violate the innocence of a child disgust me. They are monsters, aberrations, contra naturam, from whom the innocent need to be protected.

I am not a hateful person, your honor, but I do revile the foul deeds of pedophiles and child pornographers. In my public and private life I have exposed and condemned them, and opposed the “normalization” of pedophilia now being pushed in some psychological circles.

Sex and Love

I regard human sexuality not as a casual pleasure, nor as something dirty, but rather as something sacred, something holy. It is the means by which new souls are brought into the universe. This love of our hearts and our bodies connects us to — actually physically connects us to — the mysterious beginnings of all life, and to our as yet unknown destiny. It is not to be spoken of lightly.

To me, sex, love, and family form a kind of natural trinity which ought never to be sundered. I have long instinctively felt this way.

I believe in love. In my sexual life, I have been what one of my friends calls “an absolute straight arrow.” In high school, some called me a “Puritan” because I refused to participate in the alcohol, recreational drugs, and recreational sex which were and are so common. And I’ve remained true to my principles.

When the fates have blessed me with a sweetheart, I have always been faithful to her, always and absolutely. I have loved imperfectly and made innumerable mistakes, but I have loved with all my heart. And the number of sweethearts I have had in 51 years of life can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Art and Beauty

Your honor, before it was all taken from me, my home was filled with fine art: reproductions of the paintings of Maxfield Parrish, John William Waterhouse, William Bouguereau; the sculptures of Rodin, Houdon, St. Gaudens, Hiram Powers; and many others. I’m also a photographer and a graphic artist myself in my role as editor. And I operate a highly regarded online art gallery.

Cupid and Psyche - an example of the art collected and displayed by Kevin Alfred Strom

I believe one of the greatest purposes of high art is to depict the human form as an ideal of beauty and nobility. I believe that one of the greatest tragedies of modern art is that it has abandoned the Classical reverence for our natural form which, our ancestors believed and so do I, partakes of the Divine.

I believe that whenever the human body is portrayed, that portrayal should embody respect, nobility, beauty, and dignity — never crudity, lasciviousness, or degradation; even, or perhaps especially, when the erotic is part of that portrayal.

I do not like pornography. When in my life I have sought out the erotic, I have never sought the gross, the crude, the pornographic.

I’d like to live in a society in which no one wanted pornography of any kind. And I firmly believe that a revival of the Classical nude in art, in the exquisite tradition that culminated near the end of the 19th century, would go a very long way toward making all kinds of pornography disappear.

How then did I come here before you?

The Erotic and the Pornographic

Now, I have enjoyed erotic — but not pornographic — photography depicting beautiful young women. And my imprecisely-chosen words and speculations[2] about those pictures have been used against me. But the erotic photographs I actually sought out, on sites like BodyInMind.com, have nothing to do with these charges — except to the extent that my honest discussion of enjoying pictures of “beautiful young girls” (all of them on sites where the models are certified to be over eighteen) and words to that effect have been edited and twisted beyond recognition in order to incriminate me.

[2] (Speculations encouraged by cynical JTTF interrogators and a vengeful ex-spouse who surreptitiously recorded a marriage counseling session, both of whom later edited the recordings to remove the relevant context.)

In the presentencing report you will note that the number of images involved in this “crime” is fewer than ten. I was not even allowed to see these images, and then only briefly, until I was escorted to the FBI evidence room on August 22, 2007, in the eighth month of my imprisonment. At that time I and my lead attorney were able to view the files along with their associated metadata, showing size, date of last modification, and source, among other things.[3] Some of them are on my hard drive as a result of my actions and some are not. They break down as follows:

[3] (Except for one file downloaded and saved by my wife, which was an artistic photograph of a young woman wearing an angel costume which by no stretch of the imagination could be called pornographic, I had never seen any of these images before that date. They had all been deleted by me unseen when a picture forum was spammed, or were just unwanted and never-saved garbage from popup ads or spam, and were “recovered” by FBI/JTTF technicians.)

Only one of the charged files is even saved to the hard drive. All the others were deleted or never saved and no one (except a forensic investigator) could ever view them.

That one saved file was not saved by me. It was saved on a portion of the hard drive reserved for backups made automatically of my wife Elisha’s computer, and the file’s metadata confirm that it was in fact downloaded originally by her.

Responsibility

More than half of the remaining charged files have “last modified” dates after July 14, 2006 — the day I left my home to save my life and my children’s lives from Elisha’s violence. I never had access to that computer again after that date. I do not know exactly what was done to download or alter those files after that July 14, but one thing is sure: whoever did so was not I.[4]

By studying the metadata, I was able to determine that I was responsible for the presence of the tiny number of remaining files. Their source data shows that they came from an online forum I remember visiting several years ago. It’s a photography forum devoted to beautiful portraits, having nothing to do with sex or even nudity. Many wonderful, creative photos have been posted there. In fact, the rules of the forum prohibit the posting of any kind of pornography there. But, practically speaking, anyone can post anything there — and it will stay there until a moderator gets around to removing it.

[4] (It’s worth noting that only two or three of the charged files are in fact child pornography, and many are not even pornography at all. One was obviously a banner ad for an adult porn site, disgusting but not illegal, which prosecutors doubtlessly included because of the revolting and lurid text (“Teen Rape!”) plastered across the ad, which they falsely characterized as the “file name” in the indictment. The real file name was numeric and would not have made the desired impression on the public or the members of the grand jury.)

The last time I visited the forum it was flooded with spam promoting commercial pornography sites, with “sample” images some of which showed models that were children. Though the spammers used various tricks to evade the letter of the law (by blurring out genitals, for example), these pictures nevertheless were by turns sleazy, disgusting, and tragic. After seeing the first few images of the many in the group, I deleted them all, mostly sight unseen. Every image, of course, even the ones I never saw, left its trace on the hard drive. I never returned to the forum again. These files I “possessed” I possessed unwillingly.

Faith in God - an example of the art collected and displayed by Kevin Alfred Strom

Wanted and Unwanted; Beauty and Ugliness

To get a realistic picture of this affair, you must also comprehend the scale involved. I am a heavy user of computer images, both professionally and personally. There are more than 40,000 image files on my computer related to my journalism work alone. There are tens of thousands of family and Nature photographs — it’s nothing for me to take 100 in a single day — and thousands of fine art scans and images, book illustrations, and much more. I would estimate that the number of image files on that computer at more than 100,000; so many that I had to add several additional hard drives to the system.

Clearly, your honor, I know how to seek out, collect, and save huge numbers of the images I’m really interested in.

Our lawmakers included something called the Affirmative Defense in the child pornography statutes. It states that if the files in question are deleted, and there are three or fewer, there can be no prosecution.[5] It’s designed to protect inadvertent possessors from prosecution, prison time, and the false characterization of being labeled a “sex offender” for life. But prosecutors, even in the flimsiest cases, can just inflate the number of charged files to over three even if the files don’t meet the criteria, and thereby evade the intent of the Affirmative Defense. And in these days of high speed Internet connections and Web sites that commonly have 50 or hundreds of images on their opening pages, each of which leaves its traces on your hard drive instantly, before it is even seen — and even if it isn’t seen — I venture to suggest that the Affirmative Defense no longer applies to anyone, even the most inadvertent. Its intent was, clearly, to apply in cases precisely like this one.

[5] (There are many cases on the record in which prosecutors refused to prosecute even when thousands of the most horrifying and abusive pornographic images of children were found on someone’s computer — refused for the simple and quite valid reason that the person in question did not have exclusive access to said computer. I never had exclusive access to the computer in question in my case, and had no access whatever to it after July 14, 2006. I leave it to the reader to decide why I was treated differently.)

The Essential Element in the Case

In my work as a writer and publisher, I have taken on controversial issues — foreign adventurism by the Bush administration, abuse of the fundamental rights of European-Americans, and many more — and made powerful enemies in high places. I have been a strong critic of the loss of our liberties and the rise of the security/surveillance state since 9/11.

In particular, I have published and written dozens of exposés of the illegitimate and politically-motivated acts of the so-called “Joint Terrorism Task Force,” or JTTF, now operating within the U.S. Justice Department.

In early 2004, in my role as journalist, I was covering a court hearing in Atlanta in which the JTTF was involved in persecuting an innocent patriot named Chester Doles. After the hearing I was approached by JTTF Special Agent Joe Thompson, who, interestingly, knew me though I did not know him. Thompson threatened me, saying loudly enough for the entire room to hear (and pointing directly at me): “Strom, you’re next!”[6]

The JTTF even intervened in an attempt — successful, so far — to prevent me from getting redress in the Greene County courts for the theft of virtually all of my possessions by my wife Elisha and for her violent attacks upon me.

[6] (The article I wrote at the time is widely available on the Internet (such as at http://tinyurl.com/strom-jttf) and includes a description of the threat by Thompson. It was published more than two years before my current case began.)

When this case began, who was it who raided my home with a SWAT-like team of armored thugs and terrorized my family? Was it the FBI’s Crimes Against Children unit? — or another agency devoted to protecting children? No indeed. It was the Joint Terrorism Task Force.[7]

[7]( It is worthwhile to consider that, according to FBI spokesmen quoted recently in USA Today and the Washington Post (see http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-07-child-porn-computers_n.htm and http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-04-15-childporn-side_n.htm), there are more than 624,000 active traders and producers of child pornography in the United States who have been conclusively identified by their Internet addresses and IDs — more than 17,000 are in Virginia alone. And these figures are based on a study of only one of the many file-sharing networks in use today. If cases reaching the press are any indication, these are largely people with thousands or tens of thousands of the most horrifying images imaginable, many of which graphically depict violent abuse of little children, even toddlers and infants. One investigator stated he had to go to counseling after seeing some of these pictures. Law enforcement spokesmen state that they only have the resources to go after a minuscule percentage of such criminals, so they have to concentrate their efforts and only prosecute the very worst offenders. Arnold Bell, head of the FBI’s Innocent Images Unit, said to USA Today: “There aren’t enough cops in the world to pursue every lead, so the FBI focuses on cases in which kids may be located and rescued.” It does appear that a very different set of standards was applied by the JTTF in this case.)

Who was it at the prosecution table, trying to falsely convict me of child sexual abuse and witness tampering when I was totally innocent — when in fact the charges were so ludicrous they were thrown out of court? And who is sitting at the prosecution table today? None other than an agent of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

A small corner of my home in 1999, before I met Elisha, showing a tiny sample of the possessions taken

Attempted Destruction of a Life

When I left my home to protect myself from my wife’s anger and violence, I took with me only what I could carry under my arms. Elisha refused to allow me to retrieve any of my possessions. She sold them openly, then incinerated what she didn’t keep in a bonfire that burned for two days. I lost everything I owned; a lifetime of books, art, heirlooms, clothes, radio equipment, letters, personal records, mementos, and even my children’s possessions.

In November 2006 I went to the courts in Greene County to obtain redress for that unprecedented theft and for the violence committed against me. But I was prevented from pursuing my cases and in fact found myself charged with serious crimes[8] for doing so. Who was it who showed up at the Greene County courthouse, literally arm-in-arm with Elisha, illegitimately crossing the bar and whispering secretly to the judge and Commonwealth’s Attorney? An agent of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

[8] (For the “crimes” of filing a lawsuit demanding return of my property, and for talking with a local magistrate about Elisha’s violent attacks on me, I found myself facing federal charges of “witness tampering” and “obstruction of justice” which alone could have netted me 20 years in prison.)

A small part of the radio/studio equipment stolen from me

My troubled and estranged wife Elisha has committed many acts of violence against me. I was an abused spouse. She has threatened to kill me, and I have documentation[9] of those threats. She has used threats and coercion to force me to give her money and property and to sign documents under duress. She is both dangerous and delusional.

[9] (For one example, see documentation of her clearly audible physical aggression, anger, and threats toward me captured when she attacked me during a recording session for my radio program in 2006, downloadable at http://documents.iqradio.org/. The source of her rage in this case was my suggestion that she seek additional help for her anger problem.)

She has accused me of having sexual liaisons with my ex-wife, with professional colleagues, with correspondents from halfway across the continent whom I’ve never met, with two teenage musicians whose work I’ve promoted, with my stepdaughter, with my stepdaughter’s friends, with cashiers at the local grocery store, with neighbors — I literally cannot remember them all. My denials engendered more accusations, more anger, more violence. At Elisha’s hands I’ve suffered innumerable bruises, cuts, including a laceration that sent me to the hospital to get eight stitches, and permanent damage to my vision. My ill-advised attempts to placate and appease her[10] made things even worse.

Report certifying that I am not a pedophile

The Motivation

Let me state for your honor and the record that I have never touched Elisha or any other person in anger in my entire adult life; and let me further state that my behavior and intentions toward all of these girls and women was absolutely proper at all times.

[10] (Including agreeing in writing to see a counselor, an act which has been wildly misinterpreted by the press and others: Though still trying to placate Elisha and prevent her from carrying out her violent and other threats, I changed the wording of the document she demanded I sign to make it clear that I was not admitting to pedophilia or anything of the sort. The counselor was one I was already seeing in order to deal with the horrific situation I found myself in — and I, not being a pedophile, knew that the counselor would if he was honest declare me free of that perversion, as he in fact has done. I am probably the only man within a hundred of miles of Charlottesville who has been officially declared not to be a pedophile. A copy of the counselor’s letter is also available at http://documents.iqradio.org/.)

When I finally stopped acceding to Elisha’s demands for submission, money, and property, she followed through on her threats to make her false allegations public in order to, as she put it, “ruin” me. She told me again and again that, unless I gave her large sums of money, paid for thousands of dollars worth of cosmetic and augmentation surgery for her, and gave her my property including a quitclaim deed to the house — that unless I did what she demanded I would never work in my chosen field again, and that I would be permanently separated from my beloved children, saying of them explicitly “When I get through with you, you’ll never see those f—-ing brats again.”

The Children Spoke the Truth

My stepdaughter and a friend of hers were interviewed by child welfare authorities as a result of Elisha’s false claims, and despite whatever pressures there may have been, they told the truth. I was cleared. Though totally cleared by the local authorities, I still found myself falsely charged and accused by prosecutors and the JTTF with “sexual enticement of a minor,” charges which could have put me in prison for the rest of my natural life, and yet charges so absurd[11] that I made history in this very courtroom when, for the first time in this district, federal charges were thrown out as nonsense on their very face without the defense having to utter a word. The preposterous “witness tampering” charges were also thrown out at the same time.

[11] (The “enticement” included such “criminal” acts as 1) attending the same county fair as a young family friend (though making no contact and totally unaware of the other’s presence), 2) “being seen” driving on a road a half mile from the friend’s home, 3) sending a totally non-sexual and non-romantic birthday card to the family friend, 4) sending a DVD of a G-rated film to the friend’s entire family as a Christmas present (after receiving presents from them earlier), and 5) holding an umbrella for her in a driving rainstorm.)

Violence and Threats

Even after my arrest, Elisha’s violence and threats continued. I continue to fear for my family and myself. Elisha has been leafleting the neighborhoods where my stepfather and family live and work, making lurid and false, yet alarming statements about me — including accusing me of the crimes of which I have been acquitted — which could seriously impact the lives of my family members.

Last May 9th Elisha lashed out with gunfire in a road rage incident, discharging a firearm in a residential neighborhood — a crime. Yet the JTTF came to the rescue, falsely characterizing Elisha as the “victim” in the “witness tampering” case against me, and seizing jurisdiction from the local authorities[12] so the government’s star perjurer would not be prosecuted — as she most certainly would have been otherwise.

Just a few weeks ago, Elisha openly and publicly called for my death in an interview she gave to the press right outside the doors of this courtroom.

[12] (Copies of the police reports on this incident are also available at http://documents.iqradio.org/.)

A Most Telling Fact

And let me clarify one thing, your honor; a very important thing. Elisha, no matter what her jealousies and hatreds may be, knows I am not a pedophile. Just two weeks after the day she claims she confronted me on that issue, October 17, 2005 — the date which figured in my trial and the date her violence sent me to the hospital — Elisha allowed me to take her nine-year-old daughter, by myself and with no other adult present, to pick up my autistic son and take them on a three-day trip to the beach for my son’s eleventh birthday.

And she also allowed me to take her daughter, my stepdaughter, to school and shopping on dozens of unaccompanied trips between that October 17 and the day I fled our home nine months later.

A picture I made for my daughter while in solitary confinement

Your honor, I know that judges have great powers to order dispositions of their cases, and that power has increased of late. Powers may exist which have seldom or never been exercised, and even where there is no power to order, the ability to recommend still exists.

I genuinely fear that Elisha, or those she may incite, may harm me or my family. Please take steps so that such persons may not obtain my street address from any publicly available database. I am not a sex offender in any meaningful sense of that term, nor a felon.

Please order or recommend that upon my release there be no restrictions placed upon me regarding travel with my children or attendance at their classes or school or other events.[13]

[13] (The judge did so order.)

My son and I on a hike in the mountains

Please make my family whole again as soon as possible. In considering my fate, please also consider the fate of the real victims in this case:

My 77-year-old mother and my stepfather who are taking care of my children in my absence; they have been a hero and heroine beyond my capacity to thank them.

My son Oliver, strong and stoic at 15, but also shy and sensitive, who chokes up from the pain sometimes.

My daughter Vita, who is eleven and at the stage of life when she needs her Daddy most. She is so bright, so open-hearted, so innocent, so vulnerable. She does science projects and learns elementary Latin — but still sleeps with a teddy bear. She cries for her Daddy, and I keep telling her I’ll be home as soon as I can.

My autistic son Alfred, who doesn’t understand — isn’t capable of understanding — what has happened to his Dad. He only knows that he hasn’t seen me for a very, very long time. Let me quote from his latest school reports: “His irritability and impatience typically lead to tantrums accompanied by property destruction, self-abuse, and aggression. He seems remorseful once he has calmed down, often crying for his father and repeatedly saying ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I’m sad.’ There has been an increase in elopement. He often runs to the van[14] and on occasion has put the van in gear. He frequently requests to look at pictures of his father and hear ‘Daddy’s letters.’ …Alfred perseverates about his father daily[15]. He calls out for ‘Daddy’ and asks to call Daddy on the phone. He often reassures himself ‘You’ll see your Daddy again.’ At times he will tantrum and engage in self-abuse.”

[14] (I have a van also, which Alfred loves to ride in.)

[15] (476 days so far.)

Your honor, I know I have spoken longer than is usual in such cases — but this case is anything but usual. I believe that I have now fulfilled my oath to tell the whole truth. I deeply appreciate your listening. Thank you.

*   *   *

The judge expressed himself after my statement, indicating that based on the reports he had read, including the interviews with my stepdaughter and her friend, that he would have preferred me to have pled Not Guilty to all charges. As a loving father, I could not do that: The prosecutor “piled on” charges — six counts for one alleged violation of law. I would have had to be acquitted six times in a row to go home to my children — and the government could lose four or five times in a row and still succeed in imprisoning me for decades if one or two counts “stuck” as they could easily do in a politically- and emotionally-charged case like this one, whatever the facts. The ability to “pile on” charges for one alleged offense is, in my opinion, a crime itself. It gives the government the near-absolute power to intimidate innocent people — especially innocent people with children they love — into pleading guilty to one or two counts. I chose to return to my children this summer instead of decades after they were grown, if ever. That’s the choice I had to make, and I made it.

The judge could have sentenced me to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine. I was released about four months after my hearing, close to the minimum sentence within his discretion. No fine was imposed.

The time for truth-telling has come, and the world will be hearing from me again.

*   *   *

Further information on this case can be found in the ‘About’ section of this Web site.

In recent months, additional evidence of the character of the prosecution’s only witness (Elisha Strom) and her relationship with the lead investigator in the case has come to light. The latest information on her continuing record of immoral and psychotic behavior can be found in the article Perjurer Arrested Yet Again and its links.