Vineland post-1984

[RUTHSINGS at aol.com]

In the July 5 issue of The Nation--no longer the most recent one--Alex 
Cockburn's column focuses on a story more than reminiscent of VL. There is no 
link to the article in the archives on The Nation's website, so I'll provide 
the first few grafs:

"Here's a saga that gives us the drug war at its ripest malevolence. It 
concerns John Dalton, resident for the past twenty-one months at the federal 
detention center in Dublin, California, a few miles east of the Lawrence 
Livermore Labs.

All the details here come from an extraordinary series of articles written by 
Mark Heimann, published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser earlier this year.  
Let's return to 1985. Dalton is living with his first wife on an eighty-acre 
parcel in Mendocino County, some four hours' drive up 101 from San Francisco. 
 This is pot-growing country. About 4 in the afternoon bullets start raining 
down on the cabin, and Dalton sneaks out to the ridge where the shots are 
coming from.  At this point he's bushwhacked by five men in camo, who beat 
him senseless.  He comes to, face in the dirt, to find that his assailants 
are from the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, better known as CAMP. These 
are teams of federal, state and local cops.  They ask him if he's a marijuana 
grower.  Dalton says no, and that he will sue.  Sheriff's deputy Charlie 
Bone, who's dislocated his finger in the encounter, tells Dalton that they 
know he's a pot grower and that his troubles are only beginning.

Within eight hours of the arrest, the charges against Dalton are dropped, and 
though an attorney tells him he could collect big-time, Dalton reckons the 
safe course is to do nothing.

In 1992, Dalton, a brilliant mechanic favored by the hot-rod set, embarks on 
a relationship with Victoria (Tori) Horstman.  They are married a year later 
in Las Vegas. Horstman is a wannabe cop, consorts with cops and by 1994 is 
passing bank deposit slips from her husband's machine shop to DEA Special 
Agent Mark Nelson, who forthwith signs her up as a DEA source, SR3-94-0054."

  * * *
Need I add that Horstman eventually becomes romantically involved with Agent 
Nelson, who comes to think of her as his personal possession, that she begins 
spying on her husband, and that the DEA seizes all of his property in a 
forfeiture proceeding in 1994 and arrests him in 1996?  Cockburn also writes 
that Dalton spent two years in prison awaiting trial, that on May 17 a 
federal judge heard arguments on a motion to dismiss the case, and that her 
decision was still pending at the time of writing.

I'm sure you all are aware that on June 24 the House, by a 375-48 vote, 
passed a bill making it much harder for government authorities to confiscate 
property before they bring criminal charges in narcotics and other cases. The 
photo in the Times showed Henry Hyde, Bob Barr, John Conyers Jr. and Barney 
Frank joining hands to celebrate the bill's passage--quite a tableau.

Ruth
(who has recently spent a lot more time with p-listers in actual space than 
in virtual and found them to be charming company, including the ultra-lovable 
Charles Albert)