With Judge Jennifer Coffman suppressing all the evidence showing key prosecution witnesses were lying, the London, KY jury in the Charles Hayes' trial had little to go on other than some obscure tapes and their interpretation.
The U.S. Attorney's office said Charles Hayes was living in a "make- believe world" and his strange stories about battling U.S. government corruption were just that--fantasy. To prove this, they proposed to show that Charles Hayes had never worked for the CIA.
This is going to be good, I thought, sitting in the courtroom audience. It'll put an end to those silly posts on alt.current- events.clinton.whitewater about Charles Hayes and Mena. And it'll allow me to discreetly dismiss my own stories about the Fifth Column and go back to a normal life. Moreover, the FBI can reassign all those agents who are out looking for a certain truck to some more useful purpose, like investigating DNC campaign financing.
But I was worried. I was afraid the U.S. Attorney's office might not assuage all my doubts. First, Jim Norman had testified he had confirmed Hayes' employment as a contract agent with the CIA, while a Senior editor at Forbes. But, then, I thought, Norman lived in a fantasy world of his own: he believed he had been fired from Forbes after Hayes helped him uncover evidence that Caspar Weinberger, Chairman of the Board of Forbes, had a secret Swiss bank account containing illegal funds.
And I personally had spoken to Hayes while he was at the White House to have a meeting with Bill Clinton. Hmmm. Being at the White House doesn't prove anything. Maybe it was just Hayes' fantasy that he was there to talk about resignation issues. It was probably a Clinton coffee klatsch. Bill was hoping to pad DNC coffers with the untapped wealth of Kentucky junk dealers.
And I was worried about those oh so very many sources I had talked to who confirmed Hayes' employment by the CIA. But that was probably due to some sort of conspiracy--a compact between numerous people who appeared to not know each other, but who were in fact engaged in a gigantic plot to deceive me into thinking Hayes was an ex-CIA agent. My heart swelled with pride at the thought I might be worth so much conspiratorial attention. They're afraid of me, I thought, that's why they want me to think Hayes is an ex-CIA agent. Otherwise, I might turn my attention to a real ex-CIA agent like John Deutch, and discover the truth.
But AUSA Martin Hatfield immediately put my mind at ease. He produced, not one, but TWO letters from the CIA saying Hayes had not worked for them. And Hatfield insisted the letters be read in their entirety, missing neither jot nor tittle, letters droning on and on about what laws were consulted, what computer systems were searched, and the official duties of the person writing the letter.
But then I started to have doubts again. The FBI had requested a record check based on a list of names they supplied. And I knew Hayes' CIA record wasn't filed under any of those names-- he had told me the name they were filed under the previous year. I sure hope they get this cleared up, I thought.
"Did you send them Hayes' fingerprints for identification purposes?" Gatewood Galbraith asked. No, the FBI couldn't be bothered with fingerprints.
Hayes went back on the stand. Why did the letters deny any record of his working for the CIA under those names? Gatewood Galbraith wanted to know. Because they are under another name, Hayes said. He gave out the name and also his control number. The control number was new to me. The name Hayes gave was the same he mentioned to me months earlier. Now, I was beginning to have doubts again. Maybe Hayes had worked for the CIA, after all?
Hatfield back to the rescue. He put an IRS inspector on the stand. Had IRS employees been dealing crack cocaine out of the Covington office, Hatfield wanted to know. Yes, they had, said the inspector. Had he gotten any info from the Fifth Column? Hatfield wanted to know. No, he had done all the work himself--all the glory was his own--the inspector said.
Now, to my knowledge, about the only press put out on crack-dealing IRS employees had been three Internet posts of mine: "Is the IRS Dealing Crack?" (Sept. 20, 1996), "IRS Files for Sale" (Sept. 22, 1996), "Join the IRS: Deal Crack with Pay" (Sept. 26, 1996). Some of the information I got from the IRS itself, once their employees were indicted. But Charles Hayes had told me beforehand that IRS employees at that office would be indicted for selling cocaine and IRS files. (Indictments for selling files have not yet taken place.) The coincidental correspondence between real-world events and Hayes' fantasies kept pestering me. Moreover, while I was getting all that IRS crack information, no one had ever mentioned the name of this inspector.
Jury foreman Darrell Brown "said the jury just didn't believe Hayes' CIA claims. If Hayes worked for the agency, Brown said the defense should have produced records to prove it" (Lexington Herald-Leader, Jan. 29, 1997).
There you have it: a jury determined that Hayes never worked for the CIA.
Lawrence Meyers never spent time in a mental institution. David Keller was never a member of the Outlaws. NCIC records were not falsified. No checks to Meyers were paid out of an account at Mellon Bank.
The audience was mostly comprised of representatives of the Meadors/King clan for whom Hayes was serving as an investigator at the time of his incarceration. But some people in the audience were there apparently because they hated David "Orlin-Grabbe-is-Chuck- Hayes" Keller. One man told me that the government had used an individual with mental problems, much like Lawrence Meyers, in connection with David Keller to set up charges against him. Another woman told me during a court break that "Keller was living on a houseboat in 1989, and was stalking a woman named C-- J--. He slashed her tires."
"You've been a great audience," Judge Coffman told the spectators at the end of the trial.
There was no applause.
January 30, 1997
Web Page: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/