DENNIS FISHER #04:21:53
dennis fisher, I'm an asst. US attny, ND...
...I was covering the federal building in Chicago for the SunTimes between 72 and 78. And in the spring of 74 I decided that I'd watched enough of the activity in court and that I should get a degree and go into law...22/21...
and that's exactly what happened...
...22/41...there are a series of them and they're all lawyers, DAn WEbb was one of them, he prosecuted John Poindexter...
...23/15...it was a warm day, extremely warm day, it was a sunday and it was a day before Valentine's day and I'd only been in ND for 13 or 14 months. And I dind't expect something like this to happen. I saw the bulletins come across the tv, I think I was watching sixty minutes. And it talked about some people being injured whill making an arrest in medina which is in the central part of the state. so I went to the phone and dialed up Lynn Crooks, a person who was a US atty and a man with a lot more experience and asked him had seen the same tv bulletin, he said he had not, so I filled him in on what I knew...23/55
...and I began to make some phone calls myself and things began to develop that night. He and Rodney webb had jobs to do and they went off to do those...24/08...
...
FISH1
...24/12...the next morning I came in pretty early and worked on a series of press releases for the US Attny, who at the time was Rodney Webb and we began a series of briefings as well, he did the briefings and I was his right arm, he was a fasicile public speaker but not at all schooled as to how to deal with the media. So I kind of assited in that respect...24/38...
24/45...that's hard to recapture. mine was disbelief, I had never heard of GK before this time . I didn't know who the posse comitatus was, I didn't know the consequences might be in terms of the fallout in terms of victims, including indirect victims, even the prosecutor office and the reaction they might have to it all...25/12...
...taht's hard to recapture, I was shocked...
...25/27...the next morning which was monday , a lot of things were happening and Lynn Crooks came and asked if I'd help in the prosecution of this case. And I'm kind of the junior member...25/38...
...in the outfit, I'd only been a lawyer for six years, I started law school later than some, I'd been a newpaper man for some time. ...25/48...
...but I thought I was up to the challenge and I appreciated the trust in my abilities and that's the initial involvment...25/56...
...but we went immediately to Jamestown, he and I and two FBI agents and that's where the newscenter for a two pronged investigation, one the process for the trial and the other was to find GK because he was a fugitive at that point...26/17...
...26/17...and Spencer Hellicksen one of the FBI agents and I became the search warrant team and we wrote a whole series of search warrants for things that are still sealed in the court records...26/27...
...looking for GK , looking for evidence. It took several days of intensive behind the scenes kind of work...26/38...
...
...26/48...well, I'd never been to Medina in my life. It's not a very large hamlet, if you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. It's kind of, a couple of traffic signs on Hwy 94 going west. ...26/58...
...so, I had to see it first to understand what had occurred, we had photographs, but that didn't do justice to the whole thing, I saw TV aspects of it, before I saw the whole thing myself...27/08...
and the way I recall this the best, is the ramcharger which is the car that Chesire was shot on the running board. at close range. The ramcharger was sitting there. And I have in my own mind, the flashing light still going on, just going on...27/30...
...and I can see Chesire asking Ken Muir, I can see this because of the radio tapes, asking him to come forward, to come down from the crest of this hill, because they're kind of a dip right at the reardon farm. And Muir's car and Schanble's car driving forward trying to block the road. And to what a classic debacle the whole thing turned out to be
FISH1
..27/51...
it just boggles the mind. I'm not a combat veteran, but people I've talked to, tell me that when you're in a fire fight the people that fire first have the element of suprise, are usually the ones that take everybody that need to take out of the way, out of the way, and that's exactly what happened here...28/08...
28/23...well, GK seemed to me to be the kind of individual in terms not poitical would be an easy grandfatherly type of person to get along with...28/33...
he was a good rifle shot, he was reputed to be able to bring down a running deer with iron rifle sights on a 30/6 bolt action rifle with one shot...28/42...
...and that's a pretty incredible feat, He's the kind of person that you probably could have learned a lot from...28/47...
...from the philosphocal aspect of things, because he lived about 60 years when all of this happened...28/53...
as far as the political aspect of things, the posse comitatus simply means the power of the county, and it revolved around the notion that the sheriff is the leading law enforcement official and that is the highest law enforcement official that anybody should have to obey...29/09...
...and these individuals, GK and his group, were talking about having a kind of an extra legal county imposed on the ND system of counties...they were going to carve out a section and just declare themselves a county and they were going to have their own sheriff, it was like a sheriff in England...29/30...
...the sheriff of Nottingham...and everything flowed from the sheriff and his authority, ...it turns out eventually that they didn't believe in the 16th amendment which gives congress the power to lay and collect income taxes from whatever source derived and they profess not to believe that that is a valid constitutional amendment...29/55...
...something that we've accepted since it was enacted 67 years ago. The aspect of carrying fire arms was foreign. Any weekend day in the fall you'll see many pickup trucks with guns on gunracks perched right behind the driver's head. on a set of gunracks, it's not unusual, it's forreging to me coming from ILLinois...30/23...
...where you just didn't have that situation at all, I was from chicago where the guns were either in the hands of agents or the bad guys...30/35...
...so it was much more rough and tumble out here so to say. Carrying your gun to church didn't make that much sense. I attend church and nobody that I know carries a gun and sets it inbeween his knees as he's praying...30/52...
...unless you're in a combat situation where you need to keep your weapon close at hand, I don't imagine that that would be a norm for anyone...30/58...
so the fasile use of the discussion of protecting your rights with a firearm based on some misguided notion that the second amendment gives him the right to keep and bear arms and to do whatever is necessary to protect their property and physical interests is something that is foreign to me because individulas dont, by becoming part of civilized society give up certain of those rights in favor of a normal police action...31/24...
...that we all expect... END THIS TAPE
FISHER#5
DENNIS FISHER INTERVIEW CONT...
FISH2
00/41...this was an unusual case in many respects, the FBI called this "MARMURS" for marshal murders. and the amount of resources that the govt was able to gather and focus in the efforts to find GK and his contiunual abilty to elude law enforcement for a good period of time until an informant was develped inside of his camp in Ark...1/05...
gave me the most pause, there's a live loose cannon out there someplace. And we had, course the rumor mill feeds itself rather well in time sof stress like this . but, stress you come to work with that, depending on your background, mine was from the daily pressure of a deadline for a newspaper so it didn't bother me very much...1/27...
...you go to work, you work until you're finished and you go home. this didn't seem to have logical conclusion. there were some mile posts that you work toward. The judge set up some pretrial motions deadline and you work yourselve to a frassile getting ready for those and when he set a trial...1/41...
...date. You knew within a day or two that that was going to be it. He backed it off by a week.
FISH2
So it was a very super stressful time , because of the mixed elements of a mystery figure out there that you never met, that might come back and do some more harm and try to break his son out of jail. Which was a concern of the marshals...2/03...
...so what we had was two hundred or more lawmen, US Marshals and the FBI, sometimes at loggerheads as to how they were going to proceed...2/15...
...helping to, helping us to gather the evidence that we needed. And by the way that was gathered all within a day or two, except for the evidence at the forensics laboratory...2/27...
...the forensics people doing the ballistics. One of the things that struck me that went along was what was missed during the course crime scene search. And that happened to be among other things the pistol grips from Yori Kahls .45 handgun, which Bob Ramlo, who was one of the defense lawyers for Mrs. Kahl, found during his honeymoon wedding trip when he was going thru medina. Stopped and looked where Yori had been . a little utility type post, and found these pistol grips on the ground and picked them up and took them to the authorities...which of course is...3/07......what anybody should have done.
FISH2
but it was just interesting, these little things come up because they came up later in the course of the trial when the gun mysteriously appeared in a West Acres parking lot, not even a refuse container but a 55 gallon drum , instide a plastic bag was the 45 gun that Yori had at the time that he was shot...3/28...
...and I remember also, this is not quite in answer to your question that Lynn Crooks made some reference to this in his closing argument, that he was pleased...3/37...
...that Ken Muir may have gotten off one good live shot that could have ended this whole thing, but unfortunately it was nipped by Yori's 45 in his shoulder holster...3/49...
...
...4/00 ...well, I was not the lead prosecutor...in this case. I was doing tasks that were assigned to me. I had a number of witnesses to prepare during the course of the trial and I of course we discussed strategy as a group. And I was taking my lead from Lynn Crooks who is a very skilfull, methodical and thorough trial lawyer. All of those things come into play...the emotional atmosphere was very charged...4/28...
...it was charged because of the extremem dichotomy between what I saw as the side that the US was representing and the side that was being projected on the other side, which was a vocal, subminority, a sub group of people that would take the law into their own hands and we can't operate that way...4/50...
FISH2
...I keep remembering Robert Bolt's play , "A Man for All Seasons" , during the course of the play, sir thomas moore, is talking to his nephew, and will is saying let's go after that man, cut down all the laws in england if we have to, and let's go after him...5/08...
...and the character says in the play, but I would give the devil the benefit of the law Will, because if you cut all of the laws down, where would you turn when the devil turned on you? And that kind of ...5/22...
...thing. And here we have, not arch black and white figures, by any means and the govts never all right or all wrong. And there are some human aspects, clearly humanatarian aspects to what these people believed, misguided as I think it was...5/37...
...
...(sourgrapes from defense attnys)
...6/05...well, the watergate trials were held in Washington. The case law was quite clear that we could hold the trial in Fargo if the judge could find a jury. ...6/15...
...and in fact he was able to empanel a jury. I was teasing Lynn all the time about moving the case to Guam. Which is of course out of the realm of the possiblity...It is a protectorect of the US and we could have gotten our plane tickets and just headed over there...6/29...
and I kept coming down during the jury selection and I would said, we just got closer to Guam when we would use up more prospective jurors that had been summoned into court...6/43...
...so you had to find your humor where you could...I never for a moment as we were going thru this case that it was still not a jury question, they could have acquitted everyone as far as I was concerned. So I was under the gun. Not like Lynn and I have talked about it afterwards, it was just a question of which charges they were going to be found guilty on. 7/08...
...that was my first murder case, so it made a difference to me. And I wanted to make sure I performed to the best of my ability. We had to sleep in our own beds...7/21...
which is nice, hell we could camp in a hotel, I've done it an awful lot, it doesn't make any difference...7/28...
...7/44...well, I was assigned to write the answer and response by the govt. on the pretrial aspects of this thing. it was a manufactured issue from my persepective. There is a separation of powers issue that goes on here. The marshal is a person appointed by the president for a specific job to do. They work in the executive branch in the dept. of justice...8/03...
...they also had functions in protecting the jury, which is part of court security. And judge Bensen of course is part of the judicial branch and appointed for life and above the fray. and he's demonstarted in the course of his career that he doesn't get down in the thick of things like that...8/18...
...and oof course when you ask a judge and it's his discretion whether to excuse himself, they call it recusal. if you fail there what's your next move? You certainly wouldn't go to the court of appeals right away. because you certainly wouln'd certify it as an issue that was serious enough to do that. So, you're piquing the dragon so to say...8/34...
...if you don't like this man, you're asking him to get out of the case. What's going to happen when you're finished. What I saw was a fair impartial , unbiased, detached, referree, run the case just like he should of, in the face of all the slings and arrows that these individuals could throw at him, most of which were manufactured and hocum...8/54...
FISH2
...9/09...by gag order I suppose you mean whether we can make extrajudicial statements to the news media outside of what happens in court. But they seem to forget that their function is to defend their clients and ours is dual, one was to prepare for trial and the second was to find the fugitive who demonstrated how dangerous he was already. He shot and killed two people...9/34...
and the function it seemed to me of the govt lawyers to make clear that there is this menace afoot, trancends any gag order, the judge could issue a gag order, but it would only have to do with what we were doing in trial, it wouldn't have to do with what we were doing searching for GK...5/52...
and that's exactly what happened here. As a matter of fact we stopped talking to the press as soon as a trial date was set. And there weren't anymore interviews of that sort because we wanted to get a fair and impartial jury as well...10/04...
I mean we have an interest in justice as well...
...10/22...well, Jim likes to write a good yarn, a couple of friends in Chicage say, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story...and if you're going to be able to sell a few more books based on what your observations are, I can't take that away from him...
FISH2
...10/35... did I hate these individuals? No. I didn't then and I don't now...I'm hopefully a person would consider a proficient prosecutor, one who can take the facts as they are, it would be easy to hate them ...but I could certainly show my disregard for what they'd done without saying that I had to hate them . No, I was hoping the processes of law would work...11/00
...that's the reason we were in court, versus issuing me a 9mm and saying, okay, go take care of the situation...11/07...
...which is so far remote in thinking from what normally happens, so he can have his quote,
FISH2
I didn't hate them then and I don't hate them now...11/18...
...but I didn't hide my feelings for what was going on. I mean, there's a dramatic flair that most tiral lawyers develop that hopefully is not too melodramatic and hopefully not too soap-operaish, but it was very clear cut what my functions were...11/40...
and what I thought of everyone else in that courtroom. I mean within the realm of decorum and non consequensious conduct. ..11/48...
...12/02...they were wrong and that the allegations that were set out in the indictment were proven without any doubt, not even beyond any reasonable doubt, when they left and went back to deliberate...12/13...what happened out there as best we could present it to them. so it was an aggressvie focused, very sharply delineated trail as far as I was concerned....
...12/38...because of the potential for fallout further I don't want to talk about that...(still today?=JJ) ...absolutely...12/48...
...not so much me, you take the risks when you take em, by the nature of the job that I have,. it is not a normal job. I enjoy it, I have my own case load, I develp my own style with the help of the people here...13/04...
...but the US dept of justice is a good agency to work for. there is certain fallout for a person family and friends and people that you associate with. and I just think to protect them it's probably good for me to stay away from that, I can take with you off camera about it...13/20...
...13/33...well, the bomb threats came late, we didn't have any during the course of the trial...I'm also in the navy so I used the training that was given to all of us when you go overseas, ...not going in uniform, not carrying ID card, not doing the same routine everyday...I didn't drive my car to work for example...I went into a different door everyday...I told people not to pick me up at my house...14/35...
...14/41...during the course of the case, somebody came out in front of my house with a video camera with a wisconsin license plate on their car...one of the more vocal persons in the whole posse comitatus was a man near stevenspoint wisconsin...I felt something was amiss in this, so I dialed up an FBI man and he had the whole thing checked out within hours...15/13...
it turned out to be an innocent sort of thing, but it came everybody second thoughts in my house,...it sure gave everybody a second beat to the heart as to what was happening...15/33...
...15/37...my kids were pretty young, my wife is a stalwart person, but you can penetrate anyone cal....I'm sure it got to her, it got to me...15/59...
...it was difficult to go to sleep, when you're in a rough and tumble situation you develop flexible habits. You get done what needs to be done...
...16/31...any prsecutor that doesn't ask a pointed quetion on cross examination using all the skill and abliility and resources that are available, probably shouldn't be doing the job...
Vicious?...16/44
...that's his view again, I'd say some of the comments probably were ascerbic, sharp, caustic, holding a person up to ridic¨le, mocking, but those are all stylistic devices taht are used to good effect, but you can overdo them as well...so there's a point after which deminishg returns set in...17/02...
...so viscious, I sdon't know, I'd say aggressive, I remember during cross examination of his client for examople, Judge Benson was very rigid in his schedule, I think Yori Kahl got on the witness stand at about eleven-thirty in the morning. we weren't going to break until noon, I had to hold my good questions that were going to evoke some response from him...17/27...
...for at least 30 minutes or more, and I had 30 or 40 items that ticked off in my notes that I needed to get from him as either concessions by him, tings that he'd said, either to the agents, yeh, I think that I shot the guy in the white shirt, which was bob Chesire...17/42...
...yeah, I might have shot first, things that he was saying like this from his hospital bed. And the change of clothes and the whole incident up to the noon break and lynn uh, wrote me a little note saying, you've got to stall, and I knew that already, but I didn't mind having someone who's someone much more senior than I , who'd been thru the Leonard Peltier case...18/04...
...give me some affirmation of what I thought, so I shucked and jived
and did a little tap dance and showed em forty or fifty different weapons,
cause we had a whole lot of weapons. and various other pieces of evidence
and did everything I had to do until the noon break and then