By Certified US Mail

31 Jan 00/08:00

The Honorable Seth P. Waxman
Solicitor General of the United States
US Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Mr. Solicitor General:

As an accredited journalist with more than forty years experience, I lawfully publish an Internet column that exposes academic and state corruption. Published electronically since 1992, it will soon appear as a web site. University of Washington (UW) officials have tried for almost five years to apply prior restraint to me. They have used unlawful methods that include computer fraud to cover up the violations of law about which I write. They have also convened kangaroo courts to deprive me of my university computer rights.

Monday, January 10, 2000, the Washington state governor, attorney general, auditor, also UW officials and regents, received a prepublication notice from me. It introduced a new web site that contains a series of essays that refer to them and their official actions. It also gave them an opportunity to respond to charges affecting their reputation and moral character within ten days and before publication. That time has now expired and they have not properly responded.

Instead, UW officials broke into my computers violating [18 USC § 1030(a)(5)] and other sections of that title. This series of unlawful acts shows a pattern and practice of trying to prevent publication of my reports about criminal activity involving public officials.

Over an extended period, Ronald A. Johnson, Vice President, Computers and Computing, University of Washington, and his team have arbitrarily destroyed computer programs and databases that contained intellectual property belonging to me. Last week, state employees broke into the Messaging Application Program Interface (MAPI) of my computers. They used the Northwest Link Internet Service Provider (ISP) server as a gateway. In addition, they entered the software of my voice mail program through US West telephone computers and lines. Both these intrusions have damaged programs and caused computer crashes.

UW employees have used knowledge gained from prevention research to deposit computerized payloads. They have reversed the rules for computer protection. Almost five years ago they destroyed upwards of twelve years of academic research data belonging to me. Later they deposited a payload in my computer that required reformatting the hard drive and reloading all the programs and data. Repairs took sixty hours.

Filing complaints with a university that holds a mandate to investigate itself, which consistently finds no reasonable or probable cause at clandestine hearings, means that virtually no due process exists on that campus. In fact, one of the alleged UW computer hackers chaired a university investigating committee.

Moreover, Christine O. Gregoire, the Washington State Attorney General, although informed five years ago about these alleged criminal acts, continues to turn a blind eye to them. She neither responds to correspondence nor investigates the charges. In fact, her assistant attorneys general actively cover up these unlawful activities and thwart attempts to obtain due process of law. For example, former assistant attorney general Carol S. Niccolls (now executive assistant to the UW president) deliberately obstructed an ACLU investigation that found reasonable and probable cause for prosecuting the same allegations.

Many delays in verification and validation of my copy have occurred during the past two years because the Washington State Attorney General and UW continue unlawfully to deny me access to public records. They use this tactic, and many other bureaucratic ploys, to cover up crimes that I believe the Attorney General should have prosecuted long ago.

Please take the action prescribed by law and mount an independent investigation into the allegations that I have made. I possess documents that fully support them.

Sincerely,

[Signed]

Paul Trummel
International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (Press Card #GB 6929)
National Union of Journalists, London (Press Card #025057)
National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO
Society of Professional Journalists, Greencastle, Indiana (#491793)
Investigative Reporters and Editors (#21107)
Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired)

PO Box 1854
Renton, WA 98057-1854, USA
Vox: 01 (206) 568-3137
Email: trummel+contracabal.org
Fax: 01 (206) 568-3137

Enclosure: [Statement of Facts].