Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Brett Kimberlin: ‘I Want to Be Left Alone’

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Brett Kimberlin could have been sentenced to 230 years in federal prison

“Brett C. Kimberlin schemed to elude justice with a series of bizarre plots designed to murder, maim and rob his enemies, create havoc . . . and discredit the chief government prosecutor.”
— Joe Gelarden, “Kimberlin case a maze of murder, deceit,” Indianapolis Star, Oct. 18, 1981

“A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: ‘We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, “Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?” It made me very uncomfortable.’ Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as ‘my girlfriend,’ and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was ‘grooming Jessica to be his wife.'”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin, Page 78

“By accusing others of wrongdoing, Kimberlin seeks to evade responsibility for his own wrongdoing. What I’ve called the ‘accuse the accusers’ strategy . . . looks very much like obstruction of justice.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, June 30, 2012

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
The post title is a quote from the transcript of Brett Kimberlin’s June 29 “peace order” hearing against John Norton. Kimberlin made this  plea under questioning by Norton’s lawyer:

Lawyer: The only questions I have, the only… you are [a] convicted perjurer, correct? Correct?
Kimberlin: Yes, when —
Lawyer: All right.
Kimberlin: — I was nineteen years old. Thirty and forty years ago.
Lawyer: All right, and you’ve been in prison for bombings, correct?
Kimberlin: Sir, we are talking about the last thirty days.
Lawyer: Correct?
Kimberlin: That’s what this issue is about, you know you can try to attack my credibility. Your client took the picture, your client —
Lawyer: Sir.
Kimberlin: — was at my house.
Lawyer: Sir, answer the question.
Kimberlin: I want to be left alone.
Lawyer: Correct?
Kimberlin: I want to be —
Lawyer: Correct?
Kimberlin: — left alone.
Lawyer: You’ve been in prison for bombings, correct?
Kimberlin: No, I haven’t.
Lawyer: Where you served prison time, correct?
Kimberlin: No.
Lawyer: [louder, more stern.] Correct?
Kimberlin: Yes.
Lawyer: Okay. And it was related to bombings out of state, correct? Multiple bombings.
Kimberlin: No. You know, I’m not going to get into that. You know, if you want to talk about—
Lawyer: No further, no further questions.

Read the rest of Aaron Walker’s post. Keep in mind that the only reason Kimberlin became an object of widespread attention since May 17 is because Kimberlin has pursued a campaign of legal harassment of bloggers, including a false accusation of assault against Walker.

Brett Kimberlin is a liar, and his dishonest attempts to evade responsibility for his own actions by pointing the accusing finger at others is a remarkably consistent trait of his warped personality. Kimberlin has never admitted his guilt for the heinous crimes of which he was convicted, and has tried to portray himself as a victim of injustice — a political prisoner! — while seeking publicity for his rock band:

Epoxy arose out of the hellish depths of Brett’s time in prison for exercising his First Amendment rights to speech and political activity. Without any trial, Brett was hauled off to federal prison after being targeted by right-wingers who wanted to punish him for being a musician, writing a book and speaking out about politics.

In fact, Brett Kimberlin was a drug dealer, not a musician, when he was convicted in 1981 of a series of terrorist bombings in Indiana and — far from being “right-wingers” seeking to “punish” Kimberlin for “speaking out about politics” — the lead investigator in that case, Ben Neihaus, was the son of a former Democratic Party official. Yet Kimberlin’s dishonest claims of victimhood deluded certain gullible writers:

Who says that a great band has to fit into a set formula to be a success? Not Brett Kimberlin, the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for the critically acclaimed, three-piece band Epoxy. . . .
Kimberlin’s first CD, “Nothing Else,” reflects his varied influences, mixed with a grittier and more powerful type of garage rock and early punk rock. Almost a musical biography, “Nothing Else” draws on Kimberlin’s experiences as a political prisoner as well as his stance on subjects ranging from the death penalty to the stagnant state of public indoctrination to everyday life. . . .
“It is a non sequitur to hear a teenager from a middle class background sing about how bad his life is — but as a political prisoner who was abused, tortured and released into the world again, I have the credibility to sing about all aspects of life from a very unique and pure perspective.”

Kimberlin used his criminal history for purposes of publicity, evidently supposing that no one would fact-check his false claims. Having cited his 17 years in federal prison as the basis of his “credibility” (!) Kimberlin subsequently sought to criminalize adverse publicity by calling it “harassment.” Any competent attorney familiar with libel law would inform Kimberlin that his status as a publicity seeker, who has used his personal notoriety to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his tax-exempt non-profit groups Justice Through Music Project and Velvet Revolution, makes him a public figure under the Sullivan precedent.

(Of course, Kimberlin’s infamy as the “Speedway Bomber” should be considered sufficient to establish him as a public figure under the Sullivan precedent, but it is unlikely anyone would be writing about Kimberlin’s criminal past if he were working as a Wal-Mart greeter.)

Kimberlin has most unwisely sought to suppress the truth about himself by threatening libel suits against Patrick Frey and Mandy Nagy, and actually pursued a libel suit against Seth “Socrates” Allen. Because truth is an ironclad defense against the charge of libel, these threats from a notorious criminal are ultimately impotent, but Kimberlin — who claims unfamiliarity with the term “lawfare” — apparently seeks to deter adverse publicity by these threats, which can be genuinely intimidating: Who wants the hassle of being named as the defendant in a lawsuit, no matter how frivolous? Continue reading Brett Kimberlin: ‘I Want to Be Left Alone’ →

East Coast Opium Kingpin Alex Pareene Writes About ‘Standard-Issue Right-Wing Character Assassination’ of Kimberlin

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Far be it from me to give credence to unsubstantiated (perhaps entirely satirical) allegations that Alex Pareene is the “East Coast kingpin of the Cambodian opium traffic,” but when I consider that Pareene credulously repeats assertions made by convicted perjurer Brett Kimberlin and the “Breitbart Unmasked” site while treating my own statements of fact as mere “claims” . . .

Well, if Alex Pareene would care to give me a phone call or send me an e-mail, perhaps we can discuss whether it is “character assassination” to suggest that the “unknown blogger” behind the “Breitbart Unmasked” site is notorious Internet menace Neal Rauhauser, who keeps showing up in Brett Kimberlin’s courtroom entourage and is almost certainly on Kimberlin’s (tax-exempt non-profit) payroll.

Pareene could call me to ask why the Kimberlin-Rauhuaser connection seemed to me newsworthy and relevant, and then I’d happily give Pareene the chance to deny that he’s a major opium distributor.

Of course, smuggling Cambodian opium isn’t nearly as a bad as blowing people up with bombs, but some folks might think it was worse than “standard-issue right-wing character assassination.”

Hat-tip to Patterico, who writes:

Pareene describes Kimberlin’s victim’s as people who “receive a great deal of joy from pretending to be the victims of unprovoked and terrible persecution.” Ask Aaron Walker how much joy he received when he and his wife lost their jobs, he was arrested, and spent money defending against frivolous actions from Kimberlin. It was not “joy” I experienced when Kimberlin’s site published photos of my house and my address; when he filed a state bar complaint against me; when he attempted to file frivolous criminal charges against me with the California Attorney General and the stalking unit of my office; or when he complained to my office numerous times about me.

Kimberlin has attempted to destroy his targeted enemies, and has apparently employed Neal Rauhauser to harass and smear anyone who attempts to defend Kimberlin’s enemies.

UPDATE: Dan Collins has been forced to publish a correction after erroneously calling Pareene an alleged heroin dealer. While this was almost certainly a simple mistake, some opium kingpins might consider it libelous. This is much like the unfortunately common mistake of saying that Matt Edelstein is a truck-stop prostitute, when we have no conclusive proof that he has followed in his mother’s footsteps.

UPDATE II: Dan Riehl points out that Pareene quotes the “unknown blogger” who cites unnamed “sources” for dubious assertions about me that Pareene never bothered to verify.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

The Columbia Journalism Review Is (Still) Depraved and Decadent

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“In the context of journalism, here, we are dealing with a new kind of ‘lead’ — the Symbiotic Trapezoid Quote. The Columbia Journalism Review will never sanction it; at least not until the current editor dies of brain syphilis, and probably not even then.
“What?
“Do we have a libel suit on our hands?
“Probably not, I think, because nobody in his right mind would take a thing like that seriously — and especially not that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to great lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing I say should be taken seriously.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1974 (collected in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)

The best possible career advice anybody could give ambitious young journalists is this: Get the hell out of the journalism racket.

Go to law school. Start dealing methamphetamine. Go do something — anything — where the work-to-reward ratio doesn’t require a masochist’s appetite for constant humiliation.

However, if you’re one of those mule-headed young fools who refuses to heed such wisdom, or if you’re someone who pursues a career in journalism because you have no aptitude for any honest vocation, please keep in mind these two invaluable pieces of advice:

  1. Quit your bitching and get to work. Nothing is less interesting than journalists whining about the low pay, wretched hours and miserable working conditions of their trade.
  2. Ignore the Columbia Journalism Review.

There is no greater waste of time than sitting around reading a magazine about journalism, edited by swine who are self-evidently incapable of earning an honest dollar, and who therefore attach themselves to the teats of an Ivy League university journalism department.

The only thing worse that reading CJR is writing for CJR, and I don’t know how Ben Adler will ever overcome the stigma of having contributed an article to that monument to uselessness:

In 2009, an editor for a new website called The Faster Times, which sought to be “an edgier Huffington Post,” emailed to ask if I was interested in a part-time job. I didn’t know it was possible to be edgier than HuffPo, but their payment scheme was certainly more innovative. Whereas HuffPo paid staff reporters the old-fashioned way, with a salary and benefits, while paying freelancers nothing at all, The Faster Times was creating a third way. Instead of staff writers, it had contributors who spent roughly 10 hours a week blogging and aggregating news on a given topic. In exchange, they would receive a majority of the revenue generated by ads sold on the pages they created. It took me a while to realize the editor was suggesting that I promise to perform a regular amount of work in exchange for no guaranteed payment at all.

Actually, it’s not a bad article, and it’s a crying shame that Adler couldn’t find a respectable venue willing to publish it. The plight of young freelancers in the New Media environment must indeed be dire, when someone like Adler — a promising writer who seems to have real talent — is so desperate that he would be willing to let his byline appear in CJR.

Deperate young freelancers who are unwilling to augment their incomes by dealing dangerous narcotics can probably be excused for such gestures of despair as writing for CJR.

If Dave Weigel hadn’t been growing potent hybrid sinsemilla in his D.C. townhouse for the past few years, he never would have been able to survive on the pittance he gets from those thieving vultures at Slate, and Alex Pareene’s status as East Coast kingpin of the Cambodian opium traffic was the only way he could afford to write for ripoff outfits like Gawker and Salon. Adler examines the grim alternatives:

Today’s aspiring magazine writers might be better advised to start their own websites, promote them on their Twitter feeds, freelance for no paycheck, and hope for good things to happen.
These days, you might start out by writing an unpaid piece for HuffPo or The Awl (and hope it goes viral), or blogging 12 times a day, as a job I interviewed for at Curbed last year required. You might be working from home, without an editor to mentor you. You might be earning no money, or never knowing what you will earn, month to month.

Writing an unpaid piece for HuffPo? My God! This is the most disreputable thing any journalist could ever do, short of joining the editorial staff of CJR or informing the DEA that Reason magazine editor Matt Welch controls the crack cocaine trade in Anacostia. Resourcefulness is required for today’s young journalists, Adler says:

The new approach has worked so far for Emma Carmichael, a 2010 Vassar graduate who moved to New York hoping to break into journalism. While working days at a public-relations firm, she wrote unpaid pieces for The Awl. She credits those clips with helping her land an unpaid internship at Deadspin, Gawker Media’s sports blog. That led to a job as a paid staff writer at Deadspin, and she has since been promoted to managing editor of Gawker.

Deadspin is another plantation in Nick Denton’s blog-slave empire, and “managing editor of Gawker” is a title like SS-Obergruppenführer — a gig with a few perks and a certain amount of status, but unlikely to endear you to the victims of your crimes against humanity. Exactly how a graduate of Vassar (annual tuition $45,580) could be compelled to pursue that kind of gruesome work, Adler doesn’t bother to explain, but he does point out the most obvious problem facing commandants of these online concentration camps:

Meanwhile, every editor of a website with one of these new payment models acknowledges a common quandary: People are willing to wax philosophical or crack jokes for free, but not to do real reporting. “One of the gaps we have is that I would like to have more reporting,” says [former Gawker editor Choire] Sicha [who now runs another site]. “The scale of the economics doesn’t work for that, necessarily.”

And indeed, why should any reasonably ambitious writer “do real reporting” for peanuts, when they could make a lot more money cooking moonshine whiskey or selling bootleg oxycontin? But there’s probably no need to drag Nick Gillespie into this argument . . .

My point is that there is nothing wrong with 21st-century journalism except (a) the continued existence of the Columbia Journalism Review and (b) the shortage of good, cheap mescaline. And if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. IYKWIMAITYD.

 

Hereditary Genius

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Reagan, 9, and Emerson, 11, with their Dad at the
Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Va.

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Among the numerous hassles which convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin imposed on my family with his “I-know-where-you-live” call to my wife’s employer was the necessity of disposing of our old refrigerator. This meant moving the refrigerator down a flight of stairs, loading it onto a pickup truck and then putting it in a dumpster.

Choosing the dumpster as the refrigerator’s final destination was our 19-year-old son Bob’s decision, about which my wife was skeptical.

“How are we going to lift the refrigerator that high?” Mrs. Other McCain asked, obviously doubtful about our ability to raise that heavy monstrosity far enough to clear the top of the nearly seven-foot-high dumpster, when the only available manpower was her, me, Bob and his 13-year-old brother Jefferson.

“Don’t worry — we can do it,” Bob said. “Trust me.”

A sanguine temperament in action is a marvelous thing to behold, and the question that puzzles social scientists is whether such things are a matter of nature or nuture. Are distinctive personal traits — as in this instance, my son’s confident “can-do” spirit when confronted with a seemingly impossible task — the result of environment and upbringing, or are they an expression of genetic heredity?

Both factors obviously matter to some extent, and I’m not a social scientist, so there’s no obligation for me to come up with a definitive answer as to the exact role played by genetics and environmental factors in determining personality. However, I was obligated to get rid of that refrigerator, and had confidence in Bob’s plan for getting that done, even though he hadn’t bothered to explain what his plan was.

First, we wrangled the refrigerator out of the kitchen, down a flight of stairs, out the front door and onto the truck, an accomplishment in itself. When we got to the dumpster, Bob directed my wife, myself and Jefferson to get under one end of the refrigerator, while he slid the other end off the tailgate of the truck. If you’ve ever seen the famous image of the Marines raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi, that’s the basic explanation of how the rest of Bob’s plan worked.

And it did indeed work. Continue reading Hereditary Genius →

Neal Rauhauser Boasts of Access to Secret Congressional Staff ‘Policy Intel’ Network UPDATE: Don’t Believe the Hype?

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FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Brooks Bayne at the Trenches quotes an April 2012 text message reportedly sent by Brett Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser:

“Keep in mind policy intel for 700+ Congressional staffers runs through a system I built and I back up the natsec editor. I hear stuff average bear does not.“

Bayne interprets the phrase “policy intel” to include sensitive national-security information, which would be extremely troubling given Rauhauser’s clear connections to Anonymous, the international computer hacking conspiracy. However, leaving aside that potentially scary implication, and stipulating that this text message is authentic — that Rauhauser did indeed send it, and that his claim is not just more of Neal’s habitual bragging — Bayne still has produced evidence worthy of serious investigation. Some questions that investigators might wish to ask:

  • What is this “system” that Rauhauser built? Is it an official system, paid for with taxpayer dollars?
  • Have these staffers been authorized by members of Congress to access the system Rauhauser built?
  • What are the names of the staffers participating in this “policy intel” system, and which members of Congress do they work for?
  • Who is the “natsec” (i.e., national security) editor of the system Rauhauser built? What sort of “stuff,” unknown to the “average bear,” does Rauhauser access through this system?
  • Was Rauhauser working with these congressional staffers at the same time he was harassing Patterico as “the Gaped Crusader”? Was Rauhauser being paid to operate this congressional “policy intel” system (and act as backup to the national security editor of the system) while assisting Matt Edelstein’s “Stop Rush” boycotters? If so, by whom was Rauhauser paid?

Perhaps the reader who hasn’t been following my “Kimberlin Files” reporting in depth now understands why Rauhauser’s involvement with Brett Kimberlin caused me to take notice on May 17.

Neal Rauhauser isn’t just some random crazy guy on the Internet. He is a well-connected Democrat operative who has worked for numerous candidates and campaigns, who was a featured speaker at the 2010 Netroots Nation conference, a consultant who represents a direct link between his client, convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, and the official Democratic Party political apparatus.

UPDATE: Friends inform me that this appears to be a typical example of Rauhauser’s boastfulness, and that the “policy intel” mountain to which Neal refers may actually be an online molehill known as Progressive Congress News. Here is an October 2010 Daily Kos post in which Rauhauser (aka “Stranded Wind”) hypes PCN.

Of course, the administrator of such an operation could probably use his access in nefarious ways (and Rauhauser is a distinctly hinky character) but PCN itself doesn’t seem all that important.

– Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown

‘Concentrated Campaign of Harassment … to Terrorize People into Silence’
UPDATE: Parallels to Rauhauser

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Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress is against such online harasssment when it’s directed at a feminist named Anita Sarkesian.

So maybe we can get Alyssa Rosenberg to take notice of online harasssment aimed at conservative women by her progressive friends? Probably not.

Perhaps Alyssa Rosenberg can ask Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin or S.E. Cupp what manner of “civility” they’ve experienced online over the years.

UPDATE: Helen Lewis of the New Statesman elaborates on the hate campaign against Sarkesian and says, “It looks like those charming chaps at 4Chan might have had something to do it.”

Those “charming chaps at 4Chan” were invoked by Neal Rauhauser after he helped the “Stop Rush” boycotters identify a Texas man who had infilitrated their group. “I have been sorely tempted to point him out to various actors — a guy like this, he could really produce some high quality entertainment for 4chan, Something Awful, Encyclopedia Dramatica, etc.,” Rauhauser wrote in an e-mail to Matt “Shoq” Edelstein.

Patterico noted how Rauhauser and his “Gaped Crusader” sockpuppet spoke the vernacular of hacker-trolls:

The Gaped Crusader, like Rauhauser himself, loves to speak in the idiom of 4chan-style hackers. Everything is “epic” and “lulzy” and there are a billion references to “lulzcows” and Encyclopedia Dramatica and the like.

UPDATE II: Lewis also mentions that the British parliament is debating a law that would “encourage service providers to identify internet trolls, without their victims having to resort to costly legal action,” and describes one troll’s threats against a member of Parliament:

A man who targeted [Tory MP] Louise Mensch was [in June] given a suspended sentence, and banned from contacting a list of celebrities. Few papers reported Frank Zimmerman’s full remarks, with the notable exception of The Guardian: they included a reference to the film Sophie’s Choice, in which a mother is forced to choose which of her children dies, and the following: “We are Anonymous and we do not like rude cunts like you and your nouveau riche husband Peter Mensch…  So get off Twitter. We see you are still on Twitter. We have sent a camera crew to photograph you and your kids and we will post it over the net including Twitter, cuntface. You now have Sophie’s Choice: which kid is to go. One will. Count on it cunt. Have a nice day.”

“We are Anonymous” — yet another parallel: Rauhauser became fascinated with Anonymous after they hacked the security firm HBGary, posting a series of items about the hacker collective and their targets under his “Stranded Wind” alias at Daily Kos:

Subsequently, Rauhauser boasted of being contacted by a “very big dog” in Anonymous who evidently agreed to assist Rauhauser and Brett Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution in a campaign of vengeance against their enemies. None of that, however, has ever elicited commentary from Alyssa Rosenberg and her progressive friends. We must assume they share Neal Rauhauser’s peculiar hatreds, and endorse his methods.

 

When ‘Jessica’ Was 10, 11, 12

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‘Speedway Bomber’ Brett Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in 1981

“For three consecutive summers, 1974 through 1976, they took vacations of a week or longer in Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. Sandi couldn’t get time off from work, so on these summer trips it was just the two of them — Brett and Jessica.
“Eyebrows levitated. A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: ‘We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, “Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?” It made me very uncomfortable.’ Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as ‘my girlfriend,’ and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was ‘grooming Jessica to be his wife.’ To another, Sandi explained that although Kimberlin’s relationship with Jessica was chaste, he intended ‘to wait for her and would marry her.’”
— Mark Singer, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin, Page 78

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
We do not actually know the name of the girl who was reportedly “groomed” by Brett Kimberlin. Mark Singer used the pseudonym “Jessica” for Sandi Barton’s youngest daughter, whereas a 1981 news article by Joe Gelarten of the Indianapolis Star used the name “Debbie.”

Jessica/Debbie was 10 years old when Kimberlin, 20 at the time, entered her life in 1974, and she was 14 when her grandmother, 65-year-old Julia Scyphers, was murdered — a crime that remains officially unsolved to this day.

Jessica/Debbie had an older sister who, according to Singer’s account, seems to have objected to Kimberlin’s weird interest in the younger Barton girl. It may have been the older sister who expressed concern to Mrs. Scyphers. As Gelarten reported, Mrs. Scyphers “violently objected” to the strange relationship between her daughter, her granddaughters and Kimberlin, a notorious drug smuggler. Mrs. Scyphers had the two girls move in with her, forbade them to see Kimberlin and, reportedly, Kimberlin became so despondent over this separation from the youngest Barton girl that he threatened suicide.

Then on the morning of July 29, 1978, a man shot Julia Scyphers dead, in a crime that investigators believed was a murder for hire.

Nobody ever said Kimberlin himself shot her, but his conflict with Mrs. Scyphers over the Barton girl made him the only person with a motive to wish her dead and he soon came under suspicion by detectives. A few weeks later, a weeklong series of bombings struck the small Indiana town and, when Kimberlin was apprehended for those otherwise unexplained explosions, police believed they understood the connection: The bombings had been a ill-conceived effort by Kimberlin to distract police whom he knew to be investigating the Scyphers murder.

Fred Scyphers was the only witness who had seen the man who shot his wife. In February 1979, he identified William “Bill” Bowman, a member of Kimberlin’s drug gang, as the gunman. However, Fred Scyphers died three months later and, with the only eyewitness dead, the charges against Bowman were dropped.

FURTHER READING: