The Obama Justice Department's Strange Dismissal Of Criminal Charges Against Long-Sought Fugitive Terrorist Elizabeth Duke

 

 

Most Americans are probably unfamiliar with the name Elizabeth Anna Duke. Her role in the bombing of numerous government installations in the 1980s, including the U.S. Capitol building, however, earned her status as one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives from justice. Duke was arrested in Pennsylvania in 1985 as a suspect in a string of bombings of federal buildings and later indicted in 1988, along with six other persons, for her role in what became known as the Resistance Conspiracy case, a terrorist group that was an offshoot of Bill Ayers' Weather Underground radical terrorist group. Duke was released on a $300,000 bail following her arrest and remained on the lam for the next 20 years long after her co-conspirators had been brought to justice and served their prison sentences. A fugitive bench warrant for Duke's arrest was issued by Judge Harold Green on June 2, 1988. Strangely, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington quietly filed a motion in a U.S. federal district court before U.S. Magistrate Deborah Robinson in June, 2009 to dismiss the indictment against Duke and to quash the warrant for her arrest, which Robinson approved in a brief order issued the very same day, offering no explanation for the extraordinary action.

It is shocking to say the least that Duke was let entirely off the hook while still running from the law despite still being listed on the FBI's most wanted list for committing horrendous acts of terrorist bombings against key U.S. government buildings as part of an organization that also claimed the lives of at least two police officers and one armed guard who were shot to death during a shootout that took place during the 1981 Brink's robbery in Nanuet, New York during which members of the terrorist group stole $1.6 million from a Brink's armored truck. Duke was one of seven members of the terrorist group who were indicted by then-U.S. Attorney Jay B. Stephens. In announcing the indictments, Stephens said they should be "a warning to those who seek to influence the policies of the U.S. government through violence and terrorism that we will seek unrelentingly to bring them to justice." He added, "Those who attack our sacred institutions of government and seek to destroy the symbols of our democratic system ultimately will have to pay the price."

In addition to Duke, the indictment named Laura Whitehorn, Linda Evans, Marilyn Buck, Susan Rosenberg, Timothy Blunk and Alan Burkman. According to the indictment, the seven individuals were part of a conspiracy that carried out the bombings of the U.S. Capitol Building, the National War College, the Computer Center at the National Navy Yard and the Washington Navy Yard's Officer's Club as part of a self-described "communist/politico organization", sometimes referred to as the May 19 Communist Organization that went by different names, including the Revolutionary Fighting Group, Armed Resistance Unit and the Red Guerrilla Resistance. In addition to the Washington area bombings, the group was also responsible for several bombings in New York, including the federal building on Staten Island, the Israeli Aircraft Industries Building, the South African consulate and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. They were also accused of targeting other federal buildings, including the Executive Office Building and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, as well as the offices of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Cuban American Foundation in Washington and Summit Aviation in Delaware.

The indictment detailed a very sophisticated scheme the co-conspirators plotted to carry out their terrorist activities. They made extensive use of aliases and false identifications to evade detection. Using public birth records, the co-conspirators created multiple identities for themselves from known individuals born during a certain period of time to obtain fraudulently birth certificates, driver's licenses, social security numbers and U.S. passports, as well as fictitious law enforcement identification badges to impersonate law enforcement officers and business cards they used for phony companies they set up. In order to facilitate their false ID creation, they obtained photographic equipment, developed embossing techniques and sought access to sophisticated printing and reproduction equipment. They also obtained rifles, shotguns, handguns, bullet proof armor, time-delay firing mechanisms and explosive materials made into operable bombs, items they purchased through armed robberies and thefts.

The oddities in how these seven terrorists were handled by the federal government started long before the Obama Justice Department inexplicably dismissed the charges against Duke in 2009. Of the originally charged, only Marilyn Buck served a lengthy term in prison. She received an 80-year sentence for her role in the prison escape of Assata Shakur in 1979, the 1981 Brinks robbery and the 1983 Capitol Building bombing. She was released from prison in 2010 only one month before she died from uterine cancer at the age of 62. President Bill Clinton created a firestorm when he issued dozens of pardons on his last day in office with the assistance of then Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder for dozens of serious criminals, including the commutation of sentences for several of the May 19 Communist co-conspirators, including Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg. Alan Berkman was paroled from prison in 1992 after serving only 8 years for armed robbery and illegal possession of explosive materials. He returned to his former profession as a physician treating drug-addicted persons and parolees and returned as a fellow at President Obama's alma mater, Columbia University before passing away at the age of 63 less than a week after the charges against Duke were dismissed. Laura Whitehorn pleaded guilty to conspiracy and destruction of government property charges. She was released from prison in 1999 after serving 14 years in prison. Timothy Blunk was released from prison in 1997 according to the federal inmate locator despite receiving a 58-year sentence on explosives and weapons charges.

A controversial former Washington attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, is the person who discovered the unusual dismissal of the charges against Duke. Sibley, you may recall, is the attorney who stepped forward to defend the D.C. Madam who was found hanged in a barn at her Florida home and Larry Sinclair, the man who claimed he once shared drugs and sex with Barack Obama in the back of a limousine in Chicago when Obama was a state senator in Illinois. Sinclair was arrested after he held a press conference at the Press Club in Washington in June, 2008 based on a trumped up warrant for his arrest issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden. Although the bogus charges against Sinclair were later dropped after he was wrongfully jailed for several weeks, Sibley's representation of Sinclair brought the wrath of the Obama political machine down on him. Sibley was eventually disbarred from practicing law in several states after the Obama forces heralded his legal problems in an ongoing child custody and support battle with his ex-wife in Florida in which he had been jailed for contempt at one point. Sibley eventually threw in the towel and gave up the practice of law altogether. Acting pro se in his individual capacity now, he is seeking to draw scrutiny of Judge Robinson's order dismissing the charges against Duke. He claims that as a U.S. magistrate she lacked authority to dismiss the charges against Duke, which he claims could only be acted upon by a U.S. district court judge based upon her review of the evidence and recommendation thereon. Judge Robinson denied a motion he filed for reconsideration of her June, 2009 order. He has since filed a petition for writ of cert with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of the matter. Sibley has blogged about his case here.

I've let my opinions be known previously on President Obama's strong ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife, Beradine Dohrn, both of whom escaped any criminal responsibility for their admitted terrorist activities during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ayers, who admits that he ghost wrote Obama's "Dreams From My Father," is the son of Tom Ayers, the former CEO of Commonwealth Edison. The self-proclaimed autobiography has turned out to be a complete work of fiction. Ayers' father also served on the board of directors of defense contractor General Dynamics and G.D. Searle, the Chicago-based pharmaceutical company headed up by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, Rummy and Tom Ayers were good friends.Incidentally, the U.S. Attorney who indicted Duke and the rest of the gang, Jay Stephens, is now a Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the giant defense contractor, Raytheon. Lest we forget who President Obama's mentor was during those missing years he supposedly was enrolled at Columbia University. That would be former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a treacherous New World Order sychophant from Poland who had a meteoric climb to the highest levels of our national security apparatus not unlike immigrant Henry Kissinger, and who helped orchestrate the funding of Osama bin Laden and those rebels fighting in Afghanistan who morphed into al Qaeda.

It is my belief that both Ayers and Dohrn worked for the CIA while infiltrating the Weather Underground movement in an effort to radicalize it and turn public opinion against those who were demonstrating against the Vietnam War. How else do you explain the ease at which they assimilated back into the most elite circles of Chicago's political and business community after their terrorist adventures and the fact that they were able to land a job teaching at the University of Illinois, in the case of Bill, and a job for Bernadine at the law firm of Sidley & Austin, where both Barack and Michelle Obama worked briefly thanks to their friendship with the Ayers?

I would note that every single member of this terrorist organization of which Duke was a part, like Ayers and Dohrn, were all highly-educated individuals who came from relatively prominent families. It doesn't take much of an imagination to figure out that Duke and the others were carrying out these terrorist attacks during the 1980s to advance an agenda that had absolutely nothing to do with what the public was told. Look at their targets, including the targets that were obviously meant to throw the public off on who was really behind their terrorist activities. Given the domination of the national agenda today on the so-called War on Terror, folks should be asking why the federal government has treated with kid gloves the people who got this whole domestic terrorism business going decades ago. It should give one pause about how much should be believed about what we're being told today about those responsible for acts of terrorism.