More about how we foiled Hillary's Fundraiser

For background about this story, see http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/205907.html.

Also, see these video clips:

http://cbs13.com/video/?id=21233

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18980149/

and these other great articles:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1600/

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=331659

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/207708.html

The night before the event, I heard that a $500 to $4,600 per-person fundraising event for Hillary Clinton would be hosted in Sacramento at the home of Eleni and Markos Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis. I sent out a mass email to my list and announced our protest action. The goal was to draw participant and media attention to Hillary's poor Democratic leadership and her outrageous support for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and her support for the terrorism that Israel continues to inflict upon its neighbors.

Several of us got to the protest site at around 5pm. About 15 minutes later, and after we had set up our displays and signs, two Sheriff's deputies (one female who was a sergeant) arrived and parked about 10 feet away from where my flag-draped coffin was set up. The deputies began directing guests who arrived in cars through the gates and into the private residential community. The deputies properly showed no concern over the coffin. At one point, the sergeant walked up to me and asked me if the signs and displays were ours. I told her they were. She said that she had no problem with us being out there and that our signs and displays were fine. She said that she just wanted us to be sure that none of our signs crossed the property line of the private community. I told her that we'd make sure of that, and everyone in our group cooperated with her request. At that point, the sergeant thanked us and resumed directing traffic.

Just before 6pm, an unmarked car with two large males wearing suits and earphones drove past us and then made a u-turn and parked near us. Most of the people in our group assumed the car's occupants were secret service agents. One of the men got out and approached me. Pointing to the coffin, he asked me, "Whose box is this?" I said, "Who are you?" He said that he was with the Secret Service (although he didn't show any ID), and then he said, "Is this your box?" I said, "You mean the coffin?" He said, "Yes." I told him it was mine, and then he asked if he could look inside of it. So I asked him if he had probable cause to believe there was something unlawful in it. He said, "Yes, because I can't see inside it." I told him that the fact he couldn't see inside of it didn't give him any probable cause to believe something unlawful was in it. He said that if I didn't let him look in it, then he'd call the bomb squad. I said, "Go ahead, but they won't have any probable cause either." So he immediately pulled out his cell phone and made his call.

While he was on the phone, the sergeant rolled her eyes (the way one might if she thought the secret service agent was acting like Barney Fife). I told her that the man who claimed to be a secret service agent didn't identify himself. She said that he was a secret service agent; and then she quietly said to me that if he brings the bomb squad out there, then everyone will get moved way back and that will interfere with our goal to display our message. So I paused a bit, and just then the agent got off the phone. I decided to be nice. I lifted the flag from around the coffin and I exposed the top. The agent walked over, and I lifted the lid and showed him the inside of the coffin. I said, "As you can see, there's nothing in it." John Reiger was standing next to me, and we both watched the agent look inside the coffin, so he clearly knew that it was empty at that point. This was about 6pm.

After the secret service agent looked in the coffin, he said, "Well, I've already called the bomb squad, and I'm not an expert in these things, so I'm just going to let them come out and determine whether it's safe." Then he told us to leave all the protest stuff that was sitting on the ground (signs, etc.) and take whatever we had in our hands with us as we moved back 300 feet. The sergeant rolled her eyes again.

I think that the agent's ego is what made him decide to call the bomb squad and that his ego also prevented him from calling off the bomb squad after he knew the coffin was empty. I also think that the sergeant thought the secret service guy was a numbskull (again, the deputies were never troubled by the presence of the coffin). The issue with the coffin only arose after the secret service arrived. Could be they just never get any action.

The way that whole thing ultimately played out was pretty amazing. Even when experienced people try to disrupt events, it's extremely rare to pull something off of that magnitude.

I suspect that we were actually helped, and I don't just mean inadvertently when the secret service agent made his bad decision to call the bomb squad. This is really just pure speculation, but I think the "help" came from some members of the Sacramento Sheriff's Department's bomb squad. Of course, I don't think they helped us because they liked us or agreed with our messages or anything like that: I think that they helped us because they probably didn't like Hillary--i.e., they were Republicans!

I suspect that the deputies capitalized on the bungling secret service agent's radio call and used the opportunity to delay the whole fundraising shebang. I expect that they had a great laugh in the roll call room the next day, much like the one I had on the way home after the fundraising fiasco ended.

We can all take the credit to some extent. Whatever the real dynamics and motives were with the cops, it was a fantastic protest action!

At one point when the bomb squad arrived in SUVs, someone in our group noticed that one of the SUVs had Blackwater decals on it. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pGSJ3kSVFY

I think the decals on the Sac Sheriff's SUV were placed there by a deputy just to be funny. Sometimes deputies play around at work. Stickers like that aren't hard to get. I could imagine a deputy who has a friend who came back from Iraq with a bunch of those stickers and passed them out to some cop friends, one of whom decided to be funny and stick some on one of their bomb squad vehicles. I doubt whether they'd be advertising it if it were really a Blackwater car. Maybe the cop who died in the helicopter crash (referenced in the video above) stuck those there to be funny, and maybe the deputies don't want to take them off because of some sentimental reasons. Again, that's just my own speculation.

Regarding the bomb squad's search of the coffin, it was unlawful. First, there was no warrant, and second, there was no probable cause for believing something unlawful was inside the coffin. Probable cause in the legal sense can only be formed when specific and articulable facts exist which point to the likelihood that something unlawful is happening. Probable cause can never be justified by pure speculation. Neither the Secret Service nor the Sheriff's deputies ever had probable cause to believe there was anything unlawful in my coffin. There was never a bomb threat or any other indication that the coffin should become the justifiable target of a search.

In fact, there were all kinds of cars parked along the roadway that Hillary would pass; and they would be, and were, just as close to Hillary when her motorcade passed as the coffin was. But the secret service didn't ask any of the owners of those cars if they could search the cars or the trunks. They just singled out the coffin. The search was either amazingly arbitrary or suspiciously specific.

The funny and obvious thing that many people wondered about was that if the SS had probable cause to believe that there was something unlawful in the coffin which gave them a right to search it, then why was I never detained and always allowed to wander freely among the guests? For example, I spoke with Phil Angelides twice while I was wading through the crowd waiting for the search to conclude. If there was suspicion about my coffin, then what about me? I was never searched personally or detained or asked for ID (which of course is fine with me). But if the bomb squad was justified, then wouldn't that require a heightened level of suspicion about me? And if the suspicion about the coffin was real, then should I have been left to wander freely among the guests?

For those who are glad that the bomb squad searched my coffin, I wonder whether they would feel safe knowing that the nobody bothered to search the owner of that "suspicious" coffin.

The only reason the agent decided to let the bomb squad come and search it (and damage it) was to punish me for exercising my 4th Amendment rights. He was clearly angered by my initial refusal to consent to his search of the coffin. But that doesn't create probable cause. It's a fundamental legal principle that probable cause can't be justified simply by a person's refusal to consent to a search. Wouldn't that be convenient?: We'd need probable cause to search, but if the suspect refused to consent, we'd have our probable cause instantly. Thus, every search would always be justified! Give me a break.

No matter how appropriate anyone thinks it was to search the coffin, the 4th Amendment doesn't provide exceptions for fundraising events for political candidates or for former 1st ladies passing by. Perhaps we can always avoid the warrant requirement simply by having Hillary announce that she'll be driving by any area in question.

While conducting the search, the cops broke open the coffin. But that wasn't necessary, because it had hinges. Do coffins even have locks? If so, what the hell for? Anyhow, mine sure didn't. It would have opened easily, and, again, the secret service agent had already seen me open it two hours before the bomb squad opened it again.

They broke the top right off of it. They also wadded up my American internment flag and tossed it inside (disrespectful, eh?) when they were done. They even tossed in a bunch of things that didn't belong to me that a guy named Dan had on a table next to where I displayed the coffin. Dan's books and papers and chair were all scattered throughout the inside of the coffin when I went back to get it. I guess it wasn't too surprising. The only real surprise to me was how the event became so chaotic once the cops sealed off the area around the coffin, which included blocking all traffic coming into the event.

It was one hell of an evening, and I know that the participants won't forget that one for long time!