by Lawrence
A. Hunter
Social Security
Institute

Recently
by Lawrence A. Hunter: Arrest
of Ex-Marine Points to Virginia’s Casual Disregard for the Constitution

On September
6, 2012, Revolution PAC, which I chair, submitted
Freedom-of-Information-Act (FOIA) requests to eight state and local
agencies and offices of the Commonwealth of Virginia demanding release
of all information and communications relating to the Brandon J.
Raub case. Mr. Raub, a former, decorated Marine who served with
distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, was kidnapped on August 16
by a joint strike force of Virginia and Federal “law-enforcement”
agents, after which they tried to “disappear” him into
the Virginia psychiatric gulag without charging him with any wrongdoing.

What did Raub
do to deserve this abuse and torment by the government? He posted
comments on Facebook that were critical of the government, and it
was a private Facebook page, to boot. It was only by the courageous
efforts of his mother, a dedicated lawyer for liberty (John
Whitehead of the Rutherford
Institute), and widespread protest about this abuse of government
power by average people across the nation that Raub was saved
from being stashed away and subjected to psychotropic drugs and
brainwashing by government shrinks.

According to
Whitehead, something is rotten in the Commonwealth of Virginia that
goes way beyond just the Raub case:

“Every
year in Virginia, more than 20,000 people are detained for civil
commitment and whisked away just like Raub. Brandon RaubÂ’s
case exposed the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that
seems to be targeting Americans – especially military veterans
– for expressing their discontent over America’s rapid
transition to a police state.”

Is there a
massive government cover-up involving the Raub case, and perhaps
many others, going on in Virginia? ItÂ’s too early to tell but
the early returns are not encouraging.

It took the
Virginia State Police, through its Public Relations Director, exactly
36 minutes to respond to our 10-page FOIA request, which asked for
much more than simply the “documents,” to which the pro
forma response refers:

“The
Virginia State Police has no documents responsive to your request,
in accordance with Code of Virginia Section 2.2-3704. You may
wish to contact the primary law enforcement agency involved in
this incident: Chesterfield County Police Department. The Chesterfield
County Police DepartmentÂ’s mailing address is P.O. Box 148,
Chesterfield, VA, 23832.”

Clearly, this
is not a serious, good faith response to a lengthy and detailed
FOIA request that demands not only “documents” but also
all electronically stored information and communications (ESI).
The FOIA request reads, in part:

“Paper
Preservation of ESI is Inadequate

“As
hard copies do not preserve electronic searchability or metadata,
they are not an adequate substitute for, or cumulative of, electronically
stored versions. If information exists in both electronic and
paper forms, agencies should preserve both forms.”

Unless the
Virginia State Police are simply outright lying, they are playing
word games designed to avoid having to come clean with what they
knew, what they did and when they knew and did it. The PR Director
clearly already had her orders and a prepared response in hand ready
to go based on the old propaganda tactic of responding only to the
questions they want to answer and ignoring the rest.

It strains
credulity to accept at face value in this day and age that Virginia
State Police were unaware and uninvolved in a joint Virginia-Federal
strike force clearly planned and coordinated well before the fact
and carried out with precision and cooperation among local police
and several different federal “law-enforcement” agencies.
At a minimum, one would expect the Virginia State Police to have
audio records of police transmissions connected with the Raub case,
which the FOIA request specifically included.

It took Governor
Bob McDonnellÂ’s Deputy Chief of Staff exactly 113 minutes to
respond with this brush-off:

“Thank
you for contacting the Office of the Governor with your request
outlined below. This Office has no records responsive to your
request. To the extent you seek documents that may or may not
be in the possession of other state agencies or local law enforcement,
please contact those agencies directly with your request.”

Either the
GovernorÂ’s Office is lying or the Governor has totally ignored
the high-profile Raub incidents and has not even been briefed on
the matter, accounts and records of which would fall within the
purview of the FOIA request. Mendacity or dereliction, I donÂ’t
know which is worse.

What about
the Attorney GeneralÂ’s Office? Only this, 28 hours and 58 minutes
and four separate submissions later from the AGÂ’s FOIA Administrator:

“I
can confirm that your FOIA request was received and passed on
to me, the FOIA Administrator, for handling. We have begun the
process of determining whether or not this Office has documents
responsive to your request and will provide you with a response
within the statutory time frame. Thank you.”

Which at least
reveals that the AG is aware of the case and probably has seen the
complete file on it. The question now is, will he respond in good
faith and reveal the contents of this file or will he use the period
“within the statutory time frame” to construct a Nixonian
modified
limited hang-out. Time will tell.

In the meantime,
though, the most revealing of all responses thus far came from the
Clerk of the Circuit Court that ended up releasing Mr. Raub on August
23:

“Pursuant
to Code of Virginia Section 37.2-818 which requires the Court
to keep confidential any recordings, records, reports and documents,
this file was sealed by Judge W. Allan Sharrett and as such I
have no authority to unseal the file.”

This section
of the Virginia code ostensibly is intended to protect the privacy
of people caught up in the civil-commitment web, and it provides
for the person held under civil-commitment proceedings to obtain
the file. Additionally, however, the statute also provides that
anyone else may request access to the CourtÂ’s file, in which
case the Court is required to unseal the file “if it finds
that such disclosure is in the best interest of the person who is
the subject of the hearing or of the public.”

Whitehead has
stated publicly that Raub intends to sue the FBI, and presumably
during the process of discovery, Mr. Raub will seek access to the
sealed file. But, as I wrote
in this space earlier, and especially in light of the apparently
promiscuous use of civil commitment in Virginia, much more is at
stake than simply Mr. RaubÂ’s civil suit against the FBI, notwithstanding
its extraordinary importance:

“These
Orwellian actions and this criminal conspiracy between Virginia
and federal officials are so outrageous and so contrary to the
precepts of American and Virginian justice that the ramifications
of these unlawful acts go far beyond the harm done to Mr. Raub;
they undermine the constitutional foundations of the United States
of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Therefore, all communications
related to these incidents that occurred among Virginia agencies
and personnel and with federal officials should be released to
the public without delay.”

Therefore,
the Circuit CourtÂ’s response to Revolution PACÂ’s FOIA
request is far from adequate. Either the Court must open the file
to public scrutiny or explain why, in its opinion such disclosure
is not in the best interest of the public. Strong letter to follow.

So far, we
have not received any response to our FOIA request from either the
Chesterfield Police or the Commonwealth Attorney for Chesterfield
County. Stay tuned.

Reprinted
with permission from the Social
Security Institute. Originally posted at Forbes.com.

September
12, 2012

Lawrence
A. Hunter [send
him mail] is the President and CEO of the Social
Security Institute.

Copyright
© 2012 Social
Security Institute