Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Instilling wrong values

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004 | 8:45 a.m.

IT IS A QUESTION of family values.

Everywhere you turn, the political dialogue in this country always seems to come down to those two misused and abused words: family values. Outside of the political context those words have real meaning to the real people who populate this great country. We care about about them and we want to instill them in our children and theirs so that the kind and quality of country that we were left by our forbears will be available to those who come after us.

Like everything else though, the political marketing machines have co-opted that which is important to us and made them words to divide us rather than the kind of words that should define us. Many years ago, the values we cherished for our families were not measured by 30-second sound bites but, rather, by the way we conducted ourselves. And the way our government conducted itself in our name.

The recent death of former federal court judge, Harry Claiborne, sent me searching the "Where I Stand" archives for columns written during those ugly days in Nevada when the government decided that what was good for our state and our people was not necessarily good for the rest of the country. Nevada vs. the federal government was and still is a theme that has defined our relationship with Washington, D.C.

The following was written by my father, Hank Greenspun, during the Harry Claiborne persecution by the federal government. I am reprinting it today because, while it makes light of a very serious abuse of governmental power, it is also timely in the way it portrays the nature of a values-driven society and the ease with which we can lose our way. Harry Claiborne's life and times are well-documented but the lessons we can and should learn from it are harder to find. Especially for those who didn't live here during those dark days.

I commend my father's writing to you and hope you, too, will understand just how fragile our freedom really is when a government unchecked by the rule of reason, goes out of control. In the name of values.

--Brian Greenspun

By Hank Greenspun

A FUTURE FOR the youthful members of our society.

If the parents of Nevada were permitted the good fortune of helping our children choose a career, what advice would we give? Go to college? Law school? Set sights on being a federal judge?

Or would we suggest they seek a career in white slavery, brothels, being a procurer, an habitual criminal or even a suspect in a cold-blooded killing?

It is not an easy choice to make if you follow the careers of two Nevada men who fill the job descriptions mentioned above.

The federal judge was impeached yesterday by the House of Representatives and will be tried by the U.S. Senate. He is presently serving a term in prison for income tax evasion.

The pimp and habitual criminal who committed perjury before a federal grand jury and later in a court of law in Reno was given total exoneration for his crimes and rewarded with millions of dollars in taxes that were forgiven if he would bear false testimony against the federal judge.

The judge had been harassed, humiliated and targeted for removal from the federal bench long before any crime was found with which to charge him.

The brothel owner received immunity for all his crimes but did not receive immunity from perjury if he would testify that he bribed the federal judge.

The public integrity prosecutor for the Justice Department who was responsible for the investigations, indictment and conviction of Judge Harry Claiborne, conceded to a special panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the brothel owner, Joe Conforte, had lied to the grand jury and before the federal court in Reno that tried Claiborne.

The prosecutor also told the judges that he had no knowledge of Conforte's fabrications at the time he presented Conforte's story and obtained the indictment of Claiborne.

However, he took no steps to charge Conforte with perjury or to revoke his probation.

Government records, tape recordings and grand jury testimony will prove that Public Integrity prosecutor Steven Shaw had knowledge of the fabricated story and that he was guilty of subornation of perjury before a federal grand jury. That, too, is a crime.

Today, Joe Conforte walks the streets of Northern Nevada a free man, free to run his $25 million brothel and free from all charges including one that would have landed him in jail for life.

This is not a discussion about the guilt or innocence of either the judge or the pimp. We are talking about the abdication of justice to a pig and the total denial of justice to a federal judge.

If one looks at the careers of these two men, the obvious conclusion is that white slavers and habitual criminals are the exalted members of our social structure.

The political structure is such that those who work their way through college, law school and achieve the ultimate in their profession, becoming a federal judge, are not afforded the same standards of justice that the most dirty, despicable characters of our society enjoy.

And the same government officials who conspired with the pimp to procure his perjured testimony go on to higher office and advance up the political ladder.

Government documents, grand jury testimony and federal wiretaps prove beyond question that Harry Claiborne was a victim of a government frame-up from the U.S. Attorney General down to the lowest echelon of law enforcement, a former FBI agent-in-charge of the Nevada office, Joe Yablonsky, by name.

There is far more zeal being shown in the Congress and the judiciary to rid the bench of a judge who could have proved an obstacle to the FBI scamming tactics, than in bringing a perjurer and pimp to justice for actual crimes committed against society.

If we take the experience of these two men and the government complicity in the conspiracy, it would be hard to advise young people which road to follow.

The issue is: what makes Claiborne's alleged crimes so horrific compared with Conforte's criminal conduct?

Based on these examples of fed operations in Nevada, which career would you advise your son or daughter to choose? Which would have a better chance of survival in this federal bureaucratic jungle which has been Nevada's lot at the hands of our national government?