AT WAR WITH THE CIA

dennis l blewitt, J.D.

 MY LOYAL CLIENTS

HOW I SURVIVED THE IRS CRUSADE OF DESTRUCTION

          The audit wasn’t without its moments of levity, at least in retrospect.  It gave me lots of things to talk about, ridicule and use as examples of how not to govern.  It also gave me something to talk about in bars.  But I mostly enjoyed watching how the agents with whom I had to deal transitioned from crusading ass-holes to guilt-ridden toadies during the several years in which they had to deal with me.  It is interesting to see the bureaucratic mind in action.  At first, it was obvious that all with whom I had to deal had preconceived ideas about me.  They all believed they had god on their side in a war against evil.  They, unlike my worldview, believed everyone was a miscreant, selfish criminal.  I was burdened by having been partially raised by an ecclesiastic, who believed all people were basically good.  He took the English common law view based upon religious doctrine.  Others took anti-christian original sin view, reflected in Roman law.  It was the paranoid view of a conqueror who viewed everyone as a potential enemy.

I often wondered how much of that view was a projection of their own selves.  Since I started out representing underdogs with little power or standing, I had many clients that couldn’t pay me or for whom it would be a horrible burden. I never dreamed they were out to get me or wanted to cheat or steal.  They just were not fortunate enough to have inherited money, or believed in the Age of Aquarius beliefs of the young at that time.  The flower children had arrived in Boulder and most of us didn’t think about money. There wasn’t a public defender’s office when I started and most lawyers with whom I associated took turns representing indigent arrestees.  I thought it was a good system, but that was before the advent of billable hours and turning the practice of law into a mercantile endeavor. In fact, legal ethics prohibited turning down a case or abandoning a client for not paying at that time.  Most of us honored that tradition.  I remember reading William Jennings Bryant’s statement in his biography that he was unable to make a living in the practice of law, so he entered politics. 

               So, I found it almost hysterical when the auditor expressed how shocked he was after he interviewed twelve of my clients in a row whose conversations I will consolidate and try to portray.

               Agent Stice, “I’m here to ask you a few questions about your lawyer, Mr. Blewitt.”

               Hippie client, “Far out.  It is about time that someone is finally recognizing him.  He is a really far out dude and helped me a lot.”

               “How much money did you pay him?”

               “What do you mean?

               “How much did he charge you?”  

               “Man, like you know, I always meant to lay some bread on him, but never could get around to it.”

               “What did he do when you didn’t pay him?”

               “Nothing.  He never pressed me for it.  He told me to give him something if I ever got some money.

               “What exactly did he say?”

               “Nothing, he just told me to pay when I could.”

               “How much?”

               “He said whatever I thought I could afford.  If I couldn’t afford it, don’t worry about it.”

               “Did he send you a bill?”  

               “Yes, but he said ‘don’t’ stress,” so I sort of spaced it out.  I want to lay some bread on him sometime, but I just haven’t been able to, you know.  Someone told me that he sent bills so that his clients wouldn’t be embarrassed.”

               I have to admit that he must have skewed his sample somehow, but I never asked Stice about it.  I got my information from my clients who clued me in when he talked to them.  One of my client’s conversation was remarkable.  He had 80 arrests without conviction, but was constantly targeted by various agencies.  I took his racketeering all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  He also appealed a gun possession to the Supreme Court, but it was combined with two others.  His conversation was amusing because he was reporting live from the IRS agent’s interview.

               “Hello,” I said, answering my phone after my assistant told me my client was on the line.

               “I need to ask you something,” he said.

               “Go ahead and ask,”

               “It concerns one of my attorneys,” the client informed me.  “There is an IRS agent here to interview me about one of my attorneys and I told him that I wanted to talk to an attorney.”

               “Is the interview about me?”

               “Yes. What should I do?”

               “Well, you always told me that you wanted to tell one of them to go fuck himself.”

               I heard my client tell the IRS agent he was talking to, “My lawyer told me to tell you to go fuck yourselves.”  I assume that the interview ended because the line went dead after that.

               That really brightened up my day.  This client had worked for Jack Ruby in the fifties running guns to Cuba.  He didn’t take sides, but delivered to both Castro and Batista.  He and his partner were paid in heroin, which was back to Dallas in armored trucks.  The Warren Commission forgot to mention this as well as the fact that Ruby had been with Army Intelligence prior to the time of the Kennedy assassination.  I wrote quite a bit more about this character in my memoirs.  He was among my most colorful clients.

               There were similar incidences, but that was the only one that I heard in progress.  They didn’t find any unreported income, but they sure scared away lots of clients.  Finally, after a year and a half, where I barely made my overhead, I was assessed for not keeping mileage records.  Since I couldn’t pay the money, they took all my office furniture and seized my rent deposit on my office.   I did have one client offer to pay with a side of beef.  I had him deliver it to the local IRS office and then called the health department to report a health hazard at their office.  Also one of my clients called the agent’s wife, telling her I had assigned her offer to take a fee out in trade to her husband and asked when it would be convenient for her to service him.  They laid off of my family after that, but I had to close my office.  I became a trophy husband at that point and listed my occupation as “odd jobs.”  It left me with lots of time for reading and learning.  Additionally, I started to get information from weird sources.  The whole ordeal was like a bad trip, except I never took any drugs.  Everyone else had all the fun.  I was under too much surveillance to take any chances.  My identity grew from the razzing that I took from friends and colleagues for being so paranoid. 

               Another amusing incident occurred when my youngest daughter noticed tape all over the house, notifying people that the house had been seized for back taxes.  She tore the tape down and was extremely embarrassed over the ordeal.  However, I didn’t own the house.  My wife did.  The IRS wasn’t embarrassed and never apologized, but they wrongfully seized the house.  I can say from my experiences with the Government and its representatives that they are arrogant, ignorant, vindictive, self-righteous and never admit mistakes.  Although they took oaths to uphold the Constitution, they believe that they can do so selectively, if they approve of the person.  Otherwise, its “let them eat cake.”  Like soldiers of the third Reicht, they just follow orders and never question them.  However, some had consciences and discussed my plight with friends, explaining that they were powerless.  Since agencies have the power to classify information, the public rarely learns about the transgressions, except during a scandal.  Secrecy is the real enemy.  It works because we are a nation of cowards, afraid of manufactured dangers, designed to keep us under control.  We are not the home of the brave, nor are we the land of the free.  We are a nation of ignorance and brainwashing, conditioned by an inferior privatized system which we have been conned into supporting because we are too lazy to think.  We can’t make informed or logical decisions, because we are denied information and facts which are essential to the preservation of freedom and justice.  It is time to put the liars in jail and take away their methods to harm us.  Strip them of status, respect, and funds.