Jerry Keenan, said a federal jury
Thursday, was guilty of lying to federal agents
investigating an attempted bombing of Internal Revenue
Services offices last December in Reno. But how strong was the evidence
behind the conviction -- really? According
to Keenan defense attorney Ben Walker, "The
government didn't even come close to meeting their burden
of proof.If
we can be hauled into a court on that kind of
evidence," said Walker, "we're all at
risk." And
later, to Electric Nevada, he said what the verdict
actually showed was "a little prejudicial
spill-over" from the coming trial of the main
bombing suspect, Joseph Bailie. After
all, the defense counsel emphasized, when two federal
agents got Keenan out of bed in the middle of the night a
couple of days after the bomb was discovered, the
53-year-old nurseryman did help them, providing
information which eventually led them to the chief
suspect, now indicted. Nevertheless,
said Walker, that hadn't seemed to matter to the
government. "Because
he didn't remember, he got indicted," he told the
jury. "Doesn't that send a message that if the
agents come to your house, you should shut the door in
their faces? Federal
prosecutors, on the other hand, argued in their summation
to jurors that the help Keenan gave was not significant
for two reasons: he was not definite enough, and the
investigators already had much of the information he gave
them. "How
is he helping by waffling on numbers, or waffling on
names?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Rachow, of
Reno. And Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Connell, of
Las Vegas, argued that Keenan had demonstrated, even in
his personal testimony before the jury, an indifference
to the truth. "That
is not so important when it's a question of whether there
were 20 or 6 in the coffee klatch.. but when it's whether
Joe Bailie has planted a bomb, you don't have that
luxury," argued O'Connell. Keenan
had, at different times, given different answers to
questions about the number of people who congregated for
early morning coffee and dominoes at his Green Valley
Garden Center. One answer had been six; another had been
20. In
the context of the trial it became clear that the first
answer had to do with the number of people who made up
the core of the group and frequented the gathering most
often. The second answer had to do with the total number
of people who, at different times, dropped in. But
the taciturn Keenan nearly always gives short, clipped,
answers, and habitually does not explain. That was his
pattern in his federal grand jury testimony, it was his
pattern testifying in his own trial for perjury, and it
was his pattern -- apparent to any observer-- in
conversation with friends, family and supporters outside
the courtroom during recesses. And
it was a pattern federal prosecutors used to their
advantage against the Gardnerville businessman. For
though the government never actually contended that
Keenan had known "whether Joe Bailie has planted a
bomb," the point that IF Bailie had planted a bomb,
and IF Keenan had given his habitual terse, clipped,
answers, it could have been a problem, seemed to speak to
the jury. "The
pattern and the tenor and the limited information that
the defendant gave before the Grand Jury bespeak a
pattern of disregard for the truth," argued
O'Connell. He pointed out that in one response Keenan
said he had known of Joe Bailie "three or four
years", and in another response, "eight to
ten." In their summations both O'Connell and fellow
assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Rachow heaped scorn upon what
they called Keenan's "very convenient memory,"
his "fudging" and his "self-serving
statements." "A
pattern of disregard for the truth"? Perhaps to some
degree, if one uses an absolute, or exact, standard --
one that government prosecutors, it should be noted, also
have no chance at all of meeting. The
core questions of the trial came down to paragraph B of
count one -- the allegation by the government that Keenan
had lied when he told investigators that "Joseph
Bailie had been present at the Green Valley Nursery only
once, at a time which was several months before the
December 17 attempted bombing." On
that particular point, the jury apparently chose to
believe it too much of a stretch that Keenan had simply
had a failure of memory. On this point, the jury even
discounted the testimony of the government's star
witness, Del Bidart. Bidart, a member of the morning
coffee group at Keenan's nursery for several years, had
acknowleged in cross- examination that Keenan did have a
bad memory. What
federal prosecutors succesfully exploited, to win their
conviction, was an unlovely mannerism of Jerry Keenan --
an habitual ingrained pattern of conversational behavior,
where Keenan tends to blurt out whatever is foremost on
his mind, even when it might not be directly responsive
to the question asked, or even when it might -- in
others' eyes -- require more explanation. A
bit like politicians who answer TV journalist's questions
with whatever rap they want to give, Keenan seems to
have, over the years, developed a habit of reflexively
answering 
whatever she feels is most salient or
relevant or important, even if sometimes not to the point
of what's been asked, and even if, to others, it can be
somewhat grating. Coupled with the memory lapse during
the agents' middle-of-the-night visit, it seems to have
made the difference.
Keenan
has been a successful self-employed businessman for the
last 24 years in Gardnerville. Having had no boss to
answer to, and with employees and a gracious wife to
handle a lot of relations with the public, Keenan seems
to have let his 'people skills' atrophy. Over time, he's
developed something that now looks, in the context of the
trial, almost like a disability. It's the sort of
deformation one can find in men who've been swallowed, in
effect, by certain careers, but the prosecution was able
to argue that it "bespoke" an indifference to
the truth.
It
also could have been what triggered the ATF's initial
hostility. As defense counsel Walker got Keenan to
acknowledge on the stand, the nurseryman's conversational
mode is to make a short, taciturn answer, and then wait
for another question.
And
it could have been that which didn't work for Keenan the
night of December 19. Jim Doreen of the ATF apparently
read it as an 'attitude.' And maybe there was something
to that. In any case, on that night early in the morning,
after being roused from his sleep, Keenan said he only
remembered one case where the character known as
"Crazy Joe" had visited the Green Valley Garden
Center, and that had been several months before. And that
was the basis for the one government charge that stuck.
Testimony
in the trial later established that Joe Bailie had, in
fact, visited the nursery three times. But it was the
very first time, late the previous winter, that had set
off months of jokes in the coffee group about "Crazy
Joe" and "Psycho Joe." Maybe that why
Keenan remembered only one incident.
But
in context, how important was it whether Keenan
remembered the other visits? Why did the government even
bother to bring that charge, or the other, dismissed,
ones? After all, Keenan did direct the agents to Ricky
Hallert, Dell Bidart and Brian Crockett, who knew a good
deal more about Joe Bailie, and Keenan did tell the
agents the part of Douglas County where he believed
"Crazy Joe" lived. All that information was
accurate, and -- had the agents had no other help --
would have led them to Bailie.
So
Electric Nevada asked Assistant Directory Attorney
O'Connell why the government chose to even bring the
charges. He wouldn't answer the question, citing
Department of Justice rules prohibiting commenting on
topics "outside the public record," but
O'Connell did acknowledged that they "obviously have
the discression."
Maybe
the real reason why Keenan was prosecuted can be found in
what was never spoken aloud, but was apparent in the way
numerous ATF and IRS agents, never called as witnesses,
attended the trial and could be found hanging around in
the hall during the recesses, or joking with the two
assistant U.S. Attorneys or the supervising ATF agent
sitting at the prosecution table.
It's
not that Thomas O'Connell, Ron Rachow and the ATF and IRS
agents who were clustering in the halls, looking over
their shoulders at the non-government people who came to
support Jerry Keenan, are intrinsically sinister types
who sit around and plot Hitlerian evil for the citizens
of the United States.
But
the trial -- like recent American history -- did
demonstrate that they are quite zealous in their desire
to "win," and willing to cut corners and shade
the truth in their "team" drive to put down
those who they see as the enemy. Who are the enemy?
People with "anti-government sentiment,"
"tax protestors," "militia types" and
the like. In other words, citizens who question the
fundamental legitimacy of much of what they, the federal
agents and prosecutors, do.
Neither
supermen nor saints, these federal lawmen see themselves
as just regular guys who wanted to do good and be
respected for that. But they are increasingly isolated
from citizens who also resent disrespect --
the disrespect implicit in metasticized, arbitrary,
federal power.
Having
taken much heat for Waco and Ruby Ridge, the agents now
are more careful, but still see such citizens as the
'them' in their us-against-them view of America. Thus,
even when not institutionally blocked from explaining
what they are doing, these men are often unwilling to do
so. They are suspicious of questions, which often bring
to their faces sharp sudden looks, furtive with mistrust.
And
yet they wield great power over the rest of us, able to
levy immense legal expenses and permanently damage
reputations of anyone in their path they judge
insufficiently deferential.
Is
that what really happened in the Keenan case?
Last
year, in a Gallup poll surprising to many in the media, a
majority of Americans reported they view the U.S.
government as a personal threat.
What
the federal government was able to do here to a diabetic
53-year-old Gardnerville nurseryman shows why.