Censored!

Imagine a reporter permitting a Catholic priest to revise his op-ed article about abortion or allowing a tobacco executive to edit an article on the hazards of smoking. The public would immediately complain about journalism ethics. [01] However, Judge James A. Doerty, Superior Court, State of Washington, has issued an anti-harassment order and contempt citations that permit censorship of public media by Council House directors and their administrator. Doerty has contradicted a principle journalism ethic - seek truth and report it by abrogating a reporter’s First Amendment rights. [02]

Using their financial power, the directors obtained court orders and contempt citations against the author of valid exposé. They have also had him jailed using perjured testimony. Those findings now await appellate hearing. [03] The author/publisher claims judicial bias and arbitrary censorship that deny him his rights under the First Amendment to the US Constitution and Washington State Constitution.

The directors and managers would have the public believe that Contra Cabal, a web site, distorts truth. However, the author uses several sources to verify and validate all facts after investigation and before publication. The published information does not harass anyone as they claim. Instead, it reports unlawful behavior in the hope that US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will eventually take action to counter elder abuse.

Council House administrators falsely claim that HUD has investigated them and has not found them wanting. In fact, HUD officials have on several occasions colluded among themselves to cover up malfeasance and continue to deny access to public records that prove their neglect. They have never mounted any form of investigation of Council House using the reports about malfeasance sent to them. [Agency Accountability]

The directors have retaliated against the reporter by using their virtually unlimited wealth to harass him in the courts. Consistently, they have used kill-the-messenger techniques and misused police to destroy any lawful criticism. They used coercive persuasion to cover their incompetence then abused their power to avoid responsibility for their actions. They instill fear into their tenants within a predetermined ideology.

The directors claimed that news gathering constituted "surveillance" and reporting news defined as "harassment". Then a biased court order effectively denied the constitutional right to gather news to a widely published author who has held an international press card for many years.

Judge James (Jiminy) A. Doerty, Washington Superior Court, made him purge the names and addresses of Council House directors and administrators from his articles by a court order (27 Feb 02). He ordered a prior restraint of public information and considered publishing the names of alleged wrongdoers as an invasion of privacy and harassment. He later jailed the reporter for contempt of court.

Doerty previously ordered a constructive prior restraint that disallowed contact with journalism sources by misusing anti-harassment laws. He stopped the reporter from entering the premises where he lived and from contacting any of the Council House residents, staff, and directors, past, present, and future.

Doerty accepted obviously perjured testimony presented by the Council House administrator and his directors. Moreover, he refused to allow refutation of the charges and the use of an attorney. His bizarre order involves hundreds (probably thousands) of people whom the author does not know and has never met, some of them his friends.

The residents include US Representative Jim McDermott's mother who wrote a false and defamatory declaration that suits the directors’ harassment purposes then filed it with the court. This probably makes the issue politically sensitive for a recently elected judge. He may not want to cite her for perjury or indict forty cohorts and staff members who have perjured themselves with her. Ironically, the administrator, a neo-fascist, allows posting of McDermott's political announcements on the Council House bulletin board then censors McDermott’s opponents!

Doerty sent the author to jail (27 Feb 02) for 111 days for publishing information on a European web site. Doerty also had him placed in solitary confinement (23 May 02) for 25 days, among accused murderers and rapists, when someone apparently exercised their constitutional right and sent a draft of an article to Council House directors by US mail. The Council House administrator extracted information from that unpublished draft, changed its context, then leaked it to the media as a malicious libel.

Doerty has since threatened to bring felony charges for stalking and to deport the reporter if he publishes the names and addresses again. Draconian measures? Not really, when one considers that the list contains the names of two Council House directors and former co-presidents: the wife of senior Washington Superior Court Judge Anthony P. (Tony) Wartnik, and the wife of Seattle bankruptcy attorney, Craig S. Sternberg. One may commend Tony and Craig for their chivalry until one realizes that their wives have allegedly conspired in a cover-up of elder abuse and misappropriation of federal funds at Council House.

Here, responsibility for the battered condition of free expression rests squarely with a judge charged with the responsibility to protect it. Doerty used judicial power like an aphrodisiac and has created an orthodoxy for dissent. He has pandered to the oppressive power and wealth of social elites. He has allowed them to use speech codes to trump free speech. He has abrogated a prime right of journalists: freedom to gather information and to distribute it without fear of government intervention. [Heterodoxy or Orthodoxy of Dissent?]

The long-standing belief that the best way to counter an argument stems from more argument apparently counts for nothing with Doerty. The law protects his speech and preserves his rights for the time when he speaks for his own minority group. Evidently, that has no impact upon his interpretation of law when it applies to others. He ignores the fact that openly expressed divergence of opinion helps protect against reprisals and violence. [04] Instead he declares the opinion violent and the reporter a harasser.

Reporting facts and giving an opinion neither compels the reporter to make readers feel warm and fuzzy nor to use politically correct language. The term “diversity” does not mean intellectually and politically uniform. Misusing judicial power to silence heterodox comments ranks as judicial misconduct. When the judiciary censors language it denies the constitutional right to express personal feelings.

Critics of administrative policy have every right to speak out and to use whatever rhetoric they choose to strengthen their arguments especially when the topic concerns misuse of taxpayer money. Moreover, harassment, retaliation, and intimidation against reporters for what they write automatically prompts them to write more. No other legitimate method of self-defense exists.

Mark Twain advised against picking a fight with someone who "buys ink by the barrel." Doerty has failed to realize that the Internet allows all independent journalists to buy ink by the barrel not just wealthy newspaper publishers with special interests.

Council House administrators have deliberately interrupted the flow of public information and interfered with ethical reporting procedures designed to observe and report government dereliction. In this case, neglect by HUD properly to oversee management of Council House, a government financially-assisted building.

The directors have used anti-harassment law to prohibit behavior specifically allowed by that law. [05] That law clearly states that courts shall not interpret meaning to allow infringement upon any constitutionally protected rights including, but not limited to, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Doerty’s orders and contempt citations controvert that legislative admonition. He has granted the directors orders that condone their actions without any proper hearing.

Extensive costs have resulted from compliance with a series of arbitrary and ambiguous court orders. Doerty has ordered censorship and denied the author/publisher, an accredited journalist, constitutional rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the US Constitution and due process of law. He has held him in contempt of court.

Litigation costs money even when successful. However, those who break the law and then try to kill the messenger eventually have to settle accounts themselves. Unfortunately, lawsuits against the press affect the public even when they fail. The cost of a defense cautions media and makes reporters reluctant to practice investigative journalism. Would-be censors know that even if free speech triumphs then the cost makes some individuals reluctant to speak their minds in the future.

Doerty has jailed the reporter for not complying with censorship demands by Council House directors. He has acted upon frivolous and capricious motions submitted by the directors and administrators. By that, they constructively evicted the reporter from his home for what he wrote then jailed him.

Bizarrely, the censored information normally forms part of the public record. Secretary of State, Washington, requires nonprofit corporations to file an annual report containing names and addresses of officers and directors. However, the directors and administrators of Council House neither comply with this law nor with IRS regulations that require disclosure. Instead, they complain when journalists correct the omission. [Agency Accountability]

For more than a year, this web site contained the names and addresses of directors and administrators, Council House, Seattle. The author obtained them from a variety of public sources. He compiled and published the list as a resource that residents could use to bypass management blocking tactics. He tried to establish their right to approach board members directly in the manner that any tenant has a right to speak to his landlord. Doerty censored that list unconstitutionally. His order awaits appellate hearing because it denies the use of information contained in public records allowed under RCW 42.17 (Washington Public Disclosure Act).

The censored names and addresses still appear on several web sites although Doerty has ordered removal of them from Contra Cabal. He has ridiculously suggested that the author invoke his copyright to have them removed from other sites!

Moreover, Council House directors neglected to file a state report during 1993 and the Secretary dissolved the corporation. The board of directors applied for reinstatement and the Secretary granted a certificate to that effect October 8, 1993, on payment of a reinstatement filing fee.

They apparently do not learn from their mistakes. The registered agents (administrators) hold responsibility for filing the annual report but have consistently not filed the directors' names and addresses according to RCW 24.03.395 and WAC 434-110-120(d). They refuse access to this information for which the law requires public disclosure. By this, they deny residents contact with the directors. They have plenty to hide and Doerty helps them to hide it.

A resident applied pressure to HUD under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) insisting that officials obtain and furnish copies of documents that they should have on file. Following that pressure, the co-presidents retroactively signed and filed documents on April 22, 2000. However, both HUD and Council House directors continue to withhold financial information contrary to a variety of state and federal laws that mandate release.

For several years, neither the administrator nor the directors complied with HUD Directive 4381.5 Rev-2 (1994). They filed neither borrower's certificates nor management entity profiles required by that revision. By association, this neglect has denied residents the right properly to organize and to present complaints about adverse living conditions to the directors and to HUD. It has allowed successive administrators to evade the issues by denying access to mandated resident complaint procedures.

In addition, Doerty has retroactively ordered the publisher to remove information, published during 2000, without any legal rationale. He found the author in contempt by claiming that he kept people "under surveillance" using an order issued more than twelve months after the published fact. He also claimed that using public records and attending a court hearing as a witness classified as surveillance and by further inference - stalking.

Doerty then ordered the author to obtain signed waivers from named journalistic sources long after publication. Moreover, his order effectively denies use of information contained in public records available under the Public Disclosure Act. [06] He later ordered extensive censorship of the site with another order couched in ambiguity.

The cost of court ordered censorship requested by Council House now exceeds one hundred thousand dollars. That total does not take into account attorney fees and court costs and loss of potential publishing revenue. The author has had to alter illustrations, redesign, reprogram, rewrite, and edit his web site under duress to avoid going back to jail.

In addition, Doerty fined him $100/day for contempt of court until he satisfied him and his “clients”. However, the publisher can never satisfy the court due to ambiguity inherent in the rulings. The more that he revises the copy the more Council House directors want revised or removed. Doerty created a $100/day catch-22.

Unlawfully, the directors have used anti-harassment laws to support censorship that covers up alleged misappropriation of government funds and abuse of senior citizens. They have tried to use intimidation to create a climate that silences open debate. After Doerty deliberately thwarted appeal of his findings for two years they now await appellate review by unanimous decision of the Washington Supreme Court. [Unanimous Decision] [Appellate Brief #1] [Appellate Brief #2]

Prosecuting reporters for espousing unpopular views and limiting free speech through litigation has no new ring to it. However, the excuses for censorship have changed. Council House directors, supported by a biased judge, have used the 911 disaster and terrorism as an excuse.

Managers have instituted strict bulletin board and pamphlet censorship. Contrary to Seattle Municipal Code prohibiting landlords from such acts. [SMC 22.206.180] That code specifically allows tenants to indulge in those activities. It also allows them to freely assemble to discuss tenant affairs without landlord interference - another right abrogated by Council House. Moreover, as directors of a HUD financially-assisted building they must comply with Code of Federal Regulations. [24 CFR 245.115]

Gilda Kabbani, a Council House resident, posted statements on the tenant’s bulletin board all of them generally considered democratic,. They included part of a speech made by Eleanor Roosevelt before the United Nations and other quotations by Elie Wiesel and George Washington Carver. Audrey F. Dunbar, Council House rental manger removed and destroyed them. If one reads the flyers then considers Dunbar’s supremacist leanings, one understands why she censored them. The content of the censored pieces reveals her neo-fascist ideology and that of her directors. These blatant acts of censorship form part of testimony in the Washington Superior Court brief that calls for restoration of constitutional freedom of speech and other constitutional rights guaranteed by Congress to Council House residents. [Roosevelt/Wiesel/Carver]

Dunbar’s behavior emulates McCarthyism, the Red Menace, and similar excuses for censorship and harassment of journalists and tenants. Too many journalists already die by assassination each year resulting from truthful reports about terrorism or other sensitive political matters. Council House directors do not understand, or have no wish to know, that if the media loses its freedom of expression then terrorists and their ilk will always win. Apparently, the American West still has its outlaws.

Nmesis.

Readers may request a copy of the list of Council House directors’ and administrators’ names and addresses by sending an email request to: [Council House Names].

© Copyright 2001 by Paul Trummel
All Rights Reserved: 08 Nov 01/09:31 PST
Edition: #801-27-00/05-0713-12:16
Feedback: Webspinner@ContraCabal.org