March 24, 2004

In what may be the first documented case of a non-terrorist, American citizen being held without charges under terms of the so-called “Patriot Act”, Arizona rancher Casey Nethercott was arrested March 1, 2004 by exclusive and arbitrary order of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano.

Using a “Governor’s Warrant” to hold Nethercott without charges in the Pima County Jail located in Tucson, Arizona, Nethercott was released to the State of Texas on March 22, 2004. According to the records clerk of the Pima County Jail, no one knows where in Texas Nethercott was taken. In fact, she informed me that Nethercott would have to call someone to let him or her know where he is being held. That is, of course, only if Nethercott is allowed to make a telephone call.

Nethercott is a member of Ranch Rescue, the citizens group organized by Jack Foote, which has been using volunteers along the American southern border to capture and detain illegal aliens entering this nation for our undermanned Border Patrol. If the allegations of Ranch Rescue are true, Arizona Governor Napolitano used provisions of the Patriot Act to arrest Nethercott for activities having nothing to do with terrorism, and having everything to do with Napolitano’s personal and opposing position on how matters of illegal immigration should be handled.

Hey, pinch yourself and remember that the term, “Terrorist” is not a well-defined term, and is therefore quite subjective. For example, you may recall that King George bestowed that term on our future first president, George Washington and his merry band. Perhaps Governor Napolitano thinks a terrorist is anyone who disagrees with her. The standing rule of all law is that if it can be abused, it will be abused.

You may recall the arrest of American citizen Jose Padilla, who has been held incommunicado in a Navy Brig for over 2 years under provisions of the Patriot Act, and by direct Executive Order of President George W. Bush.

Padilla was fingered by sources in Pakistan, claiming he was a terrorist with orders to detonate a “dirty” radiological bomb somewhere here in America. Federal authorities arrested Padilla when he arrived at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Padilla had never been in combat with American or our allied forces, yet by order of President Bush, he was labeled an “Enemy Combatant”, and has been held all this time without any charges being filed against him.

In defiance of a recent federal judge’s order, Padilla has been denied his right to legal counsel, and his accusers have never been forced to reveal the “evidence” they have against him. Obviously, Padilla has also been denied his most basic right to a trial by a jury of his peers.

I wrote an article on the Padilla Case over a year ago, titled, “The Padilla Test Run”, because that’s exactly what it was. The Bush Administration and John Ashcroft’s Justice Department wanted to see to what extent the average American would accept blatant civil rights violations following the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, and they were not disappointed.

Just as most Americans accepted the government’s unnecessary and cruel internment of Japanese-Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, today’s American citizen is more than willing to accept violations of a fellow citizen’s most basic civil rights -- if doing so somehow makes them more “safe” from domestic terrorist attack.

It is a hard, irrefutable fact that no American citizen outside of a select few employees of the federal government actually knows that Padilla planned to do anything the government publicly alleges.

We don’t know if the source in Pakistan got money for falsely fingering Padilla, and we don’t know if this government actually has any hard evidence of criminal intent by Padilla. We don’t know jack about the Padilla Case -- except what we’re being told -- and despite all the lies this government has been caught telling the American public over the past 40 years!

From Viet Nam’s bogus Bay of Tonkin incident to Waco, to Ruby Ridge, to Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, you’d think we’d all have learned to question everything this government tells us -- unless they can prove it with hard evidence. But all the average mindless American needs to hear right now is the word “Terrorist” applied to any fellow citizen in order to disregard his share of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Now we have the Casey Nethercott Case, where Nethercott was never a traveler to any terrorist-sponsoring nation, and is not publicly alleged to have presented any terrorist threat to America whatsoever. Nevertheless, he was held without charges in the Pima County Jail for 3 weeks on a “Governor’s Warrant” that I’ve never heard of, and he has since disappeared into the bowels of Texas somewhere.

In order to pull this off, it sounds very suspiciously like the folks at Ranch Rescue are correct in accusing Governor Janet Napolitano of abusing the Patriot Act to punish an American citizen for nothing more than actively opposing her political and ideological sentiments. Now if true, that is dangerous ground indeed.

I know of fellow American citizens who are so pathetically naive they actually wrote me their belief that our government would never abuse the outrageously unconstitutional provisions of the Patriot Act against innocent American citizens. Well now you have your answer. Go tell it to Casey Nethercott and his loved ones.

Carl F. Worden

References:

Ranch Rescue (520) 364-3966

Pima County Jail Records Division (520) 547-8111

Casey Nethercott, Inmate # 997200

Governor Janet Napolitano (602) 542-4331

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Paragraph 5

The Padilla Test Run