[CTRL] 'The law that never was'

[Bill Richer]

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/A -Cui Bono?-

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'The law that never was'

Geoff Metcalf's interview answers
question, 'Is 16th Amendment legal?'

---
By Geoff Metcalf
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com

A criminal investigator for the Illinois Department of Revenue for
approximately 10 years, William J. Benson of South Holland, Illinois has been
at the vanguard of debate and controversy surround the 16th Amendment for
almost two decades. In 1984 he embarked upon a year-long project to examine
the process of the ratification of the 16th Amendment and to determine
whether or not it had been lawfully adopted as part of the U.S. Constitution.
The culmination of Benson's work is the book, "The Law That Never Was."
Bill Benson, author of "The Law That Never Was"
Question: You have been engaged in this 16th amendment battle for almost 20
years. How did it start?

Answer: I was a former investigator for the Illinois Department of Revenue. I
discovered a great deal of corruption within that department and for that the
Director fired me. I told him if he fired me, I would sue him for violation
of First Amendment rights. Six and half years later we were in court. We had
a jury of six; it was a civil trial. They awarded me $353,000 for violation
of First Amendment rights.

I began working with my attorney, Andy Spiegal. We had a willful failure to
file case in Indiana. Red Beckman had some documentation that showed there
was some serious problem with the 16th Amendment. He got the documentation
from a man named Dean Hurst, from Cheyenne, Wyoming. I purchased that
documentation and made every attempt to have Andy get it before the court,
and the Judge said no.

The judge gave us three real good reasons why he did that: The documentation
is not notarized, it is not certified, and you do not have a witness to
testify to.

That evening I said, "Okay, the judge has given us our marching orders. The
only thing we have to do is go to all 48 states and get the documentation" to
see if the documents have any validity. The attorney said, "Bill, you're
crazy, you can't do that." I said, "Sure you can."

Q: How long did it take to do that?

A: It took a full year. There is not one state -- not one -- that has
ratified the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution. One of the
most amazing documents I found was in the national archives in Washington
D.C. -- a 16-page memorandum written by Ruben J. Clark, then the attorney for
Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox, on February 15, 1913. What he says
is that in the certified copies of the amendment passed by the legislatures
of the several states ratifying the 16th Amendment, it appears that only four
of those resolutions -- Arizona, North Dakota, Tennessee and New Mexico --
have quoted absolutely accurately and correctly what was proposed by
Congress. The other 33 resolutions contain either errors of capitalization,
spelling or wording. ...

Q: So what's the big deal? Why are errors of capitalization, spelling or
wording so significant?

A: On page 15 of the 16-page memorandum, the attorney says, "further under
the Constitution, a Legislature is prohibited from altering 'in any way' the
resolution proposed by Congress." The right of the Legislature is merely to
approve or disapprove the amendment. The last page is also interesting
because it says the department has not received the copy of the resolution
passed by the state of Minnesota, but the secretary of the governor of the
state has officially notified the department that legislators of that state
have ratified the proposed 16th amendment.

Q: Here's the obvious question that comes up all the time. Say it was a
bureaucratic oversight, a procedural glitch or something. Why are we still
saddled with this thing? The reality check is, if you don't comply you end up
in a whole world of hurt, as you know from personal experience.

A: Oh, there isn't any question about it. And that is why I continue to defy
the federal government. That is why, when we were in Washington (at the
National Press Club) I said, "I have waited 15 years to get behind these
microphones, and I challenge the United States, I challenge the Justice
Department, to come and get me. Take me, and leave these people alone." Let's
get the 16th Amendment argument on the table once and for all before a jury
and let them decide.

Q: Why don't they just drag you into court and resolve the controversy once
and for all?

A: I wish they would. This has been going on now for 18 years. They cannot
win with the 16th Amendment argument.

Q: Bill, at this event you guys had in Washington D.C. at the National Press
Club in July, it seemed like a collection of former Geoff Metcalf guests,
including Joe Bannister.

Joe Bannister is a former IRS agent -- a badge-carrying, gun-carrying agent
who after listening to my radio 

Re: [CTRL] 'The law that never was'

[pmeares]

-Caveat Lector-   A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"
/A -Cui Bono?-

Bill Richer wrote:

 A: It took a full year. There is not one state -- not one -- that has
 ratified the 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution. One of the
 most amazing documents I found was in the national archives in Washington
 D.C. -- a 16-page memorandum written by Ruben J. Clark, then the attorney for
 Secretary of State Philander Chase Knox


-[re-post]-

WHO WAS PHILANDER KNOX?
IS IT CREDIBLE THAT HE WOULD COMMIT FRAUD?
http://www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/philanderknox.htm

Understanding a crime or a misdeed involves
learning not only what was done and who did
it, but also what the motivation was. With
a clear motive, evidence of the "what" and
"who" becomes much more credible. Allegations
that Secretary of State Philander Knox was
not merely in error, but committed fraud
when he falsely declared the 16th amendment
ratified in 1913, require us to look at who
he was to understand why he would commit
such an act. The following sketch was
prepared by the We The People Foundation
For Constitutional Education and is
condensed from Bill Benson's research
report on the ratification of the 16th
Amendment, "The Law That Never Was,"
Volume II (1985), pages 122-135.
__

Philander Chase Knox was born in 1853 in western
Pennsylvania, son of a bank cashier. While attending
college in Ohio, he became closely acquainted with
William McKinley, then the local district attorney, who
was prosecuting a local tavern owner for selling
alcohol to the college students. Knox took McKinley's
advice and became a lawyer.

McKinley, having chaired the powerful House Ways and
Means Committee in Congress, was elected governor of
Ohio in 1891. Although he owed his election to support
from both business and labor, he quelled the labor
strike called by Eugene V. Debs against the Great
Northern Railroad in 1894 by summoning federal troops.

McKinley won the 1896 presidential race with a great
deal of support from Big Business, e.g., John D.
Rockefeller's Standard Oil contributed $250,000 to the
"front porch" campaign that defeated Bryan and his
populist platform of returning to the constitutionally
mandated monetary system and reform of McKinley's high
tariffs that had allowed domestic manufacturers to
raise their prices to a level that matched the
artificially-induced higher prices of foreign goods,
thus causing a severe depression. Knox helped in this
financial and political effort that was directed by the
wealthy Ohio industrialist Mark Hanna, who was
appointed to a vacant U.S. Senate seat the following
year by Ohio's governor. McKinley had already been
saved from personal financial ruin by help from his old
friend, Philander Knox, who had become wealthy as
counsel to the very wealthy.

Knox came to be regarded as one of the ablest lawyers
in the country, his repute due in no small measure to
his being counsel for Carnegie and Vanderbilt and their
corporate enterprises. He was instrumental in
Carnegie's big victory in a crucial patent case in
which the most important invention for the manufacture
of crude steel was at stake. In 1892, he defended Henry
Frick, Carnegie's steel plant manager, who was being
sued by the steel workers who had been beaten up by
Pinkertons brought in by Frick during the infamous
Homestead strike, a strike that was provoked by two of
Carnegie's presidents, one of whom was also an attorney
for J.P. Morgan. Knox also deflected prosecution and
civil suit against Carnegie in 1894 after it was shown
to Congress that Carnegie had defrauded the Navy with
inferior armor plate for U.S. warships. Morgan himself
had defrauded the U.S. Army in arms sales during the
Civil War. And Knox averted prosecution of Carnegie
after the president of the Morgan-controlled
Pennsylvania Railroad testified that Carnegie had
regularly received illegal kickbacks from the railroad.
Knox's other big client at the time, the Vanderbilt
family, was connected to Carnegie primarily through the
railroad industry.

President McKinley offered Knox the post of U.S.
Attorney General in 1899, but Knox had to decline,
because he was then and for two more years engaged in
arranging the merger of the railroad, oil, coal, iron
and steel interests of Carnegie, J.P. Morgan,
Rockefeller, and other robber barons into the largest
conglomerate in history - U.S. Steel. This immense
corporation encompassed the interests of nearly all the
robber barons in what Knox's new client, J.P. Morgan,
referred to as a "community of interest." One important
component of the conglomerate was Consolidated Iron
Mines in the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, which
Rockefeller had fraudulently swindled from the Merritt
family, who later successfully sued John D. for fraud,
but had to settle for a fraction of the award