Posted on 05/27/2002 10:24:25 AM PDT by Jean S
This also happened to Paula Jones.
You are precisely correct. MOC Karen Thumond (D-FL) had the whole story from the Martins when she accepted the tape from them. She KNOWINGLY transported illegally-obtained material across state lines. She gave it to McDermott, who then KNOWINGLY provided illegally-obtained material to members of the press in a blatant effort to skew the public's impression of the contents.
It is an outrage that all these MOC's are using the Speech and Debate clause in this manner. The Founding Dads put it in specifically to keep politically-motivated arrest, seizure, etc., from being an obstacle to good government, NOT to allow these jerks to violate the law willy-nilly and get away with everything possible.
After this incident Gingrich folded during the impeachment and eventually resigned his post.
US Department Of Justice: MARTINS PLEAD GUILTY AND ARE SENTENCED IN CELL PHONE CASE
KWAME HOLMAN: Even the most imaginative of political fiction writers would be hard pressed to top the tale Alice and John Martin told yesterday.ALICE MARTIN: We’re just scared.
JOHN MARTIN: We’re just scared.
ALICE MARTIN: We really are.
KWAME HOLMAN: There they were on December 21st, they said, driving from their home in Fort White, Florida, to do some Christmas shopping in nearby Lake City. They were listening to a police scanner John Martin had gotten for his birthday. Also, there was a small cassette tape recorder in the car.
JOHN MARTIN: We kind of record stupid jingles and stuff off the TV set--off the TV and off the radio in the car and--
KWAME HOLMAN: At the same time the Martins were on the road so was Congressman John Boehner, a top member of the House Republican leadership. He was driving through the Lake City area, the last leg of a trip from his home in Ohio, to Marco Island off of Florida’s West Coast. But then Boehner pulled off the road and picked up his car phone to join a conference call.
ALICE MARTIN: I was excited. I mean, I was so excited to think that I actually heard a real politician’s voice.
KWAME HOLMAN: The Martins picked up the call on the police scanner and after a few minutes began recording it.
JOHN MARTIN: We thought it was just a part of history really. I mean--
KWAME HOLMAN: Among those participating in the conference call with Boehner were Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey, Republican Whip Tom Delay, New York Congressman Bill Paxon, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, discussing possible responses to Ethics Committee charges against Gingrich to be disclosed later that day.
ALICE MARTIN: We’re going to have a grandson at the end of January, and we were thinking how neat it would be to play this tape for him and him hear the voices of people that we thought were important. That’s really all it was going to be is a little tape we put aside and when he was old enough to hear it, he could hear it.
KWAME HOLMAN: Included on the tape reportedly is this conversation: Congressman Paxon: "If we have several hours or a day go by when our members are out there without a response, it will be a disaster. That’s right." Congressman Armey: "Right." Paxon: "When will we see your statement, Newt?". Speaker Gingrich: "My guess is--and I think they are running about 15 minutes late--my guess is we will have our statement out before noon." The Martins, long-time Democrats, gave the tape to Florida Congresswoman Karen Thurman, who later gave it back to the Martins and recommended they give it to Congressman Jim McDermott, the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee investigating Gingrich. In Washington last Wednesday the Martins waited for McDermott outside the Ethics Committee room in the capitol.
REPORTER: Had you ever met Mr. McDermott before?
ALICE MARTIN: Oh, no, no.
REPORTER: Did you know what he looked like?
ALICE MARTIN: We had a vague idea that he had white hair from physical description and that way, so we went back and we went back behind where the cameras were, and we asked, I think there was a policeman or a security guard if he could help us because we weren’t exactly sure what Mr. McDermott looked like, and we said, when we see him, could you, could you point him out to us, we need to give him something. And he said, oh, sure. So it seemed like in just a few minutes Mr. McDermott became--coming down the hallway--we asked to see him, and we told him we had something to turn--we told him we had something to turn over to the Ethics Committee, and he asked us who we were. He took the envelope in his hand and he felt where the tape was, and he said he would listen to it. And then he asked if there was any way to get in touch with us. And so my husband gave him one of his STPNEA cards, and he said, thank you, and we said, thank you, and we left.
KWAME HOLMAN: Two days later the contents of the tape were on the front page of the "New York Times." The tape potentially could cause problems for Newt Gingrich, who had made a deal with the Ethics Committee not to orchestrate a response to its charges. But the tape might cause problems for McDermott as well because federal law prohibits intentionally intercepting telephone calls or intentionally disclosing their contents. Late this afternoon McDermott announced he will recuse himself from any further work on the Gingrich ethics matter. As for the Martins, they too could be prosecuted for their actions.
JOHN MARTIN: I just felt that--that if I brought this tape and handed it over that there would be nothing against me because I didn’t use it in a court of law. I felt that the Ethics Committee was like a court of law, but you know--
LARRY TURNER, The Martins’ Lawyers: My hope is that once it’s understood that these folks are Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen, who happened to discover something they felt was pertinent to the Ethics Commission and did what I think we want citizens to do, which is take it to the commission responsible for the investigation and say, here, you do what’s right, my hope is that those who are responsible for making prosecuting decisions will decide this shouldn’t be prosecuted.
KWAME HOLMAN: The entire tape episode has been turned over to the Justice Department for investigation.
Excerpted from: Online Newshour (Speaker Phone) (the Martins' quotes can also be found elsewhere on the web)
The New York Times, January 19, 1997, WIR, p. 5.
At the New Frontier of Eavesdropping
http://www.cryptosoft.com/snews/jan97/19019700.htm
It was only as recently as 1967 that the Supreme Court, in Katz v. United States, determined that the F.B.I.'s use of electronic devices to listen to and record telephone conversations without a warrant constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment's unreasonable search and seizure provisions.That ruling defined many modern notions about privacy and freedom from high-tech surveillance. But while the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act extended earlier laws to include privacy protection for cellular telephone users, it also reduced the penalty for intercepting such communications from a felony to a $500 fine.
Moreover, the law specifically exempted from protection eavesdropping on electronic transmissions between home portable telephones and base stations.
So it would seem that McDermott is saying that his First Amendment protections trump the phone call participants' Fourth Amendment protections.
Wiretapped Conversations by Kathleen Kirby, for Communicator, February 2000
This article directly references the Martin case as well as others.
So the ends justify the means? Wonder if the Democrats would think it OK to search their houses without a warrant, if in the process we discovered stashes of cocain? Ends justify the means and all that...
You gotta love the way the Martins go from the doting, expectant grandparents who just want to preserve a piece of history for their progeny -- to turning over the tape of a private conversation to the democrats. Their story isn't even remotely believable. OTOH, you would think that Gingrich and the rest would have had the foresight to scramble/encrypt their communications.
A New Republic article I found online said that John Martin was a maintenance man at a public school near Gainesville, Florida while his wife Alice was a teacher's aide.
I've tried searching for their political activism and run into too many men named John Martin in Florida politics (even when I add the word democrats to my search).
Considering the level of their breach, they seemed to have disappeared from the public eye. There were several "remember back in 1997 articles" with McDermott's ongoing defense strategies but nothing to update us on the current activities of this couple that tried to take down the speaker of the house.
This article and the one I linked on "Freedom Of (illegally obtained) Information" go quite a ways in revealing the activist nature of journalists and some judges.
Another recent case was the LA Times reporter who holed up with the arab terrorists in the Church of the Nativity.
She was also arrested for trying to cause a disturbance (by throwing rocks) during the Elian ordeal in Florida.
Want one more story behind the story that was also given a "pretty" face? The girl who ask BJ Clinton about "boxers or briefs" was the daughter of a journalist who worked with her mom to come up with a suitable question for the MTV "town hall" meeting (of hand picked participants). They settled on a question about legalization of drugs. Their question was rejected and this was her "alternate". Pre-screened questions from the liberal press' youth brigade? I wonder if Colin Powell was given that courtesy. < /sarcasm >
Choice excerpt of Arianna mocking the disingenuous pleadings of the Martins --
...and the judge in their case rewarded their transparent mendacity by fining them 1/10 of the 5k maximum. How considerate of him.
Speaking of the Church of the Nativity, did you see this today?
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