Buford Terrell
Bufford Terrel was Gordon Kahl's attorney in Texas who along with hisuncle represented Gordon at his original wilful failure to file income taxreturns trial: These transcripts are notes we used in the editing of Death& Taxes. For effeciency we did not transcribe the interviewer questions.You will have to extrapolate that yourselve. (Or, I suppose if you are interestedwe could make a VHS video copy of the entire interview, this would costyou about $75) These transcripts are being made available for those who want to go much,much further into the life and times of Gordon Kahl...BUFORD#14TAPE #1400/50 I'm buford Terrel ...starting in 1970 I had a solo practise in LubbockTX and I was sharing offices with my Uncle...02/00 as I read Bitter Harvest I was struck by the invetiablility ofit all. It was almost like a Greek drama where it had to play itself outBUFORD#1403/08 ...he was probaly the most resolute person as I've ever met...3/25 ...at that time I had been practising 3 to 4 years. he , my unclehad some tax clients...he got invovled with the tax revolt group... 04/00 so when Gordon was indicted down in Midland...the nat. taxpayersunion suggested he come and talk with my uncle...so Gordon came down witha bunch of taxpayers and we met and it went from there. ...04/47 he was a very hard man to get to know.. at the first meetintg therewere several other people invloved and GK had less to say than any of them...Ithought he might be a tool of these other people...as time went on I couldsee he was a whole lot more solid character than that... 05/40 ...actually I heard of Posse C. for the first time while talkingto GK...I think one of the things we discussed was whether he should wearone of the hangman's noose in his lapel during the trial...as a trial lawyerI didn't want that... I 06/15 and for the first time ran into IRS agentys who wore firearms andinsisted on going in pairs because of claimed threats by the Posse... 06/36 it struck me as one of his strange ideas on taxes...he had whatto me was a very incorrect view of medieval history as the posse as a lawenforcement body. to me at the time it was his rather strange view of theConstitution than it was an active group he was invovled with... 07/30 GK's attitude, I'm not sure he ever thought he'd be indicted. I felt like at the time that he thought he was too small for them to bemessing with...he really wanted to win the case in court... I felt likeGk really felt he deserved a an acquital...he seemed very willing to takemy suggestions on trial strategy... even to he decided not to testify becausethe govt. hadn't established their case... 08/54 ...I had my main stategy was forst this was a case of selectiveprosecution by the Govt. GK was the kind of taxpayer that the govt. wouldnormally not even bother with...they were after him because he went on TVin midland and second that he didn't probaly owe any money...so that wasour double thrust going in, that first he was a victim of selective prosecutionand second that they couldn't prove that he owed any tax in the first place. 10/30 ...I saw a tape of it (TV show) and I don't remember much exceptthinking this was a very minor thing for the govt. to have gotten disturbedabout. ...it seemed no more radical than people protesting dog ordinancesor anything elese. (CHANGE HIS HEAD DIRECTION PER CAMERA) 12/32 ...I don't recall much about it, except it seemed rather innoucous...thiswas not someone calling for the downfall of the govt. immediatley ...I thoughtit was a strange interpretation of the constituion but it was not outsideof the normal...he was definately being singled out because of his protest,not because he was someone who failed to pay income tax. ... 13/28 ...who knows what would have happened...I still feel if we'd havebeen able to go ahead with the appeal we may have been able to reverse iton that., because of several things that happened...looking back on it,I think the seed had grown quite a bit not because of anything GK and Idid, but because in each of the things we tried to do in his defense thereaction of both the govt. and the court were just really out of proportion.the response that my reaction should have called for, it surprised me allthe way through the trial. ...the way the judge treated me as if I wasan obstructionist, when in most instencse they would have been normal defenseefforts. there were several times during the course of the hearing thathe would instruct me to have briefs to him at eight the next morning....anyof my motions I felt like I was really fighting uphill to have him listento them, let along consider them. ... 15/04 ...the IRS struck me as out to get someone at that time and GKhappened to be in their path. For instance, this happened one of the interestinglittle side bits , in one of my motions to the judge I quoted from PlayboyMagazine because that was the time Johnny Walters the Internal Revenue Commissionerhad been interviewed by Playboy and statements in that interview where hesaid they really were looking to pick out some protesters and quash themovement. This indicated to me that the govt. really had full steam upand they were going after this movement. Gordon happened to be there... 16/12 ...I didn't realize we were going to lose until the jury came backin with their verdict. I honestly felt all the way thru the trial thatthe govt. hadn't established a case...primarily that he had taxable incomeduring the years in question...it really came as a surprise when the jurycame in with a guilty verdict... 16/52 ...they didn't have W2's or if he was filing outrageous W2's...I'massuming it wasn't the latter because they didn't have conclusive proofof the sums of money that he earned... 18/05 ...that was the real question at the trial. My honest belief atthe time was that he probably he didn't have enough income to owe any taxes,if he did it would have been really minimal... 18/46 ...no, the way the tax law was and still is, is that even ifyou have no tax liablity, if you had certain 3earnings you still have anobligation to file a return, and failure to file the return itself is amisdeameanor....they chose to prosecute him for tax evasion which is themore serious offense than the failure to file a return... 21/05 ...title 18 is the penal code, title 26 is the irs code..I 'mnot sure what GK was talking about ....as I recall he was charged under... 22/18 ... this is an information for a faliure to file a tax return...Okay,I remember now what the situation at trial was, that this was the misdemeanor,,,that he had specific gross earnings in the two years of $9719.90 in 1973and $11,950.38 in 1974. that even though the charge was one of failureto file a return...because of the allegations they were requred to provespecified amounts. 24/02... right, in other words, title 26, the IRS code is a misdeamenor...then you go to the penal code which is title 18 , which specifies that thereare certain penalties... 24/29... this is the type of literalist reading that's quite common amongthe tax protesters and leads to a lot of their problems. in GK's mind,since this was a civil statue that he shouldn't be penalized criminally...thereis nothing constituinally infirm with the procedure. 25/49... I think ythat most of the tax protesters like a lot of fundamenlists give the words a literal meaning that were meant to be read in a commonsense way... 26/24 GK never struck me as being on a soapbox. At various times duringthe trial, we discussed whether he would testify.. we talked about gold/silverand the unconstitutionality... I convinced him that it would ruin the defenseswe had legally...he would back away from it in the interest of trial tactics.... 28/00 I think Gordon's case never would have never arisen today. thecurrent IRS would think this wasn't a knat worth swatting. ...I think thegovt. is less likely to take extremes stands as is was then. 29/40 most of the ones I was dealing with then were at the end of thechain... I normally would see someone who had gone to some meetings andfollowed their advice and were now in trouble...most of the ones that Idealt with were like ones who had gone to a tupper ware party and come backwith some plastic ware... 30/31 it wasn't working right and most of them seemed shocked that thisneat little thing they'd found out about was rebounding to hit them prettyseverely. ...and a couple of them came to see me and they were shocked thatthis wasn't something that they could do...most of them were like they'dgone to a group sales meeting and this was something they thought couldsolve their problems. END TAPE 14BUFORD#15 STARTTAPE 15 BUFORD TERRELL 03/50 I hate to call it a rigged trial most of lthe people had presuppositions,,,the IRS saw this as a dangerous thing, they saw the tax protest things asa major movement... the judge saw this... the IRS had conducted a seriesof seminars with district judges around the country... the judge saw thisas a matter of fact, what's to argue , he made money, he didn't pay taxes...the govt. on one side saying big movement... the judge almost losing histemper ... coming down much harder on me than the govt... I'm not sure whetherthey convinced him he was a threat or it was just me doing delaying tactics... 06/10 I certainly did, begfore and after both, I was involved with 3 o4 othermatters with IRS, with another case the court did say there was secleectiveprosecutions... ...I think this shows the govts. attitude, the thrid oneof these I was involved with,,, a man refused to turn over his records...the questions was was he concealing, he was put in jail, I was trying toget him out, the judge that wrote an opinion described me as a tax protestlawyer.,,, to me this was just a small part off a much bigger, but to thegovt. I was part of the tax protest moveen 08/03 It made me mad, and I think probably I would have done much more becausethey made me mad... one thing that was telling, ...okay in 76, I represented,the summer of 77 a man in the tax movement... I left private practise in77 to teach, a year or two after, 79 or 80, I got a notive from IRS thatmy 77 taxes were to be adited.. they transferred the case to NEEW orleansand they said, niver mind we don't want to audit,.. It think it's safe tosay the gobt. tattidue was to go after even the perripheral people invlolved. 10/14 I can't remember Ralston, at the time they were using two agents foreveryting my impression was the two of them were hardnosed, much more outto get some body, than the noarmal agetns 10/52 I think that they wre doing some targetting. 11/06 It surprised me that that judge wouldn't listen to any of my arguments,..he was elderly, canterrous, he had a reputaiton ... thhe wouldn't even allowme to speak,,, other lawyers said they thought I was going to jail,,, hetold me to sit down and shut up... I felt like I was having to fight thejudge personally 12/27 I suspect that all the stops were out on that case 13/08 I think that -art of the reason the jury prbrought in the guilty verdict.. it was the times, where Goeroge Bush started ... very progovt., veryrightwing, in veiw of the time, just as we were getting over Watergate,anyone the govt. says was bad, would get convicted by a jury. 14/50 Certainly there are kernals of truth in ther. 15/42 the judge controlled what the jury heard, he didn't give us much latitude...one of the fascinating things of law in america, the balance of powerbetween the judge and jury ..up until 1820 the jury's had control over thecase. ... they're not limited to what they hear, they may know someting...at that time the jury could hear everything... starting 1820 the judge controlslaw, they jury over facts... I would want to let the juries hear more insome cases and less in others... jury's are ke0pt from hearing things thatare a result of improper concduct by the govt. 18/01 one of the things that compolicated thew trial, during the trial I hadan infection in my foot, by the time the trial was in progesss, I was gettingout of bed in the hostipait, gtoe back and spend the lunchhour in ed, getup and back in bed,... to some extent, I didn't hear a lot of the developemtnswith GK... after the jry delivedered the verdict... my uncle asked the judgeto send GK for psychiartriactiv exam... GK didn't want to go,,, as I recallhe refused to cooperate 19/47 actually from the time the verdict came back his attidute was they convictedme they can't change me, they can't change me, send me to jail, ... thiswas the first time I saw the internal firmness of GK.. 20/33 It probably was, he probably he was to believe in the legal process,then he followed my advice, and then he lost, that may have been a turningpoint for him. 21/13 Except for, let's see, one appearance when we went back to court,I asked the judge to let us represent him on appeal and he refused. andpossibly one more time after the sentencing hearing, I don't think I hadany contact with GK after the trial... 21/55 No he didn't turn hostile on me. I would say that his reaction,he really withdrew into himself... very much his reaction was being resignedto what was happening. 22/35 As I recall GK was working primarily as a machinist in the Odessaarea, for some reason, I don't remember, he didn't work steadily for oneperson, he'd work one job here and one there. It didn't look like they hadany records to figure out what his income was. I don't remember whetherjoan was working,,, mainly I had the feeling there was no way they couldpeice together records of where he was working and I had the feeling thatthe govt. never did peiece it together. 23/46 They called some of the people that employeed him. I think theymay have introduced records from businesses that had hired GK a week hereand a week there, but as I recall they could never assemble close to nearthe amounts they claimed he earned... 24/49 Well, you never forget something like this. it was an unusaulthing from the very beginning. ... 25/10 it was the kind of thing, once several years ago one of my studentswanted to do a special project, so I had him do a paper on selective prosecution...littlebits and pieces one way or another have stuck with me, I think probablydoing a lot of tax practise, I had a pretty jaudiced view of IRS to beginwith. Watching them thru these, I think has left me with a much strongerdistaste for the IRS than I would have had otherwise. 25/56 I think probably it's because they can now blame it on past administrations... 27/08 I think all of the time I was invovled with these cases. I feltlike that the revenue agents were taking them quite personally. They reallyacted as if they had a vendetta aagainst these people or as if they wereattacking them directly in some way, it wasn't the same as with other taxagents in other issues... 28/04 The revunue agents as it turned out a few months later, it waskind of a collective ego that had come up. The tax protesters, if theyshowed up at an appt....would show up as a group and always bring tape recorders. There had been at least some intances later where people who claimed tobe posse comitatus made direct threats against revenue agents... who occasionalloyeven brandished a weapon of some kind. ... to some extent I think that therevenue agents took this personally , I think they were physically frighteneda little bit, and they were not used to anyone from a moral standpoint challengingtheir authority and that's one thing about these guys they really believedthat they were morally right. 29/14 Oh no, I mean the protesters. were very strong in this being areligious position with them 30/15 I think that Bitter Harvest probably made the tax protest movementsound more solid than it's ever been. ...30/22...I think what struck meabout GK was even around the other tax protesters that surrounded his case,he was a loner and an outsider. if he did something he did it because GKbelieved it, not because the group was doing or the group said to. I alsohad the feeling and still believe that there were several aspects of thetax protests, there were the true believers, there were the GK's who reallyfelt this way, but I also there were the others who were really in it tomake a buck. That they had fuond a way to make some money. BUFORD#15/31 START:TAPE 15:31BUFORD TERRELL: 32/22 if I were casting it today I would probably pick Walter Matthooew....back then, maybe a Richard Gere kind of actor. 33/10 it's hard to find anyone who's very good at, who would do GK justice...tellyou who I'm thinking of, he's been dead a long time, I think MOntgomeryClift would have been a good GK. Someone who can both be rather soft andinoffensive on the outside and still pretty well possessed on the inside. 34/00 . ... I think the author of Bitter Harvest really got more caughtup in the mechanixs of the chase, than the dynamics of what was realllygoing on.... one of the things that interested me about BH was the conflictthat opened up within the govt. about it. the mixed minds of the differentpeople involved , especially at the beggining, leading up to the shootingin medina... there were those on the one hand who viewed this as a trivialepisode and others who were really going to grind out the full force ofthe law no matter what. ...and I think too the thing that really impressedme the most about BH was that it was just so totally inexolerable, oncethat warrant was out, it was going to end in some sort of tragedy. No onehad any choice about the matter sooner or later... sooner or later therewould be a Marshal trying to serve that warrant. sooner or later GK wouldresist it. I think to me that's the main thing that came thru. 35/35 When GK got back from Springfield and when the judge put himon probation after GK's telling him, don't do it, I won't live up to it. I knew it wasn't over. I was really hoping at the time that there was someway that GK could do the appeal and get the trial reversed. so that at leastthere would be a different starting point for the future. ...it was obviousthat GK wasn't going to change. 36/20 Okay, when we were retained to defend GK. Gordon had no $ at thetime and it was apparent that he didn't. The United taxpayers agreed topay $5000 for the defense at the trial stage. once we came on as trialcounsel that didn't matter our obligation was to GK. we went thru with thetrial. I think they paid us something less than a $1000 total and they keptpromising us the rest. after the conviction, we talked to GK. We asked thecourt to appoint us on appeal or to appoint another lawyer for him. Thejudge wouldn't do it. Gordon had no money himself. we talked to him orJoan... the upshot was, he agreed to release us as his lawyers, so thathe could either do the appeal himself or get the court to appoint him one.and I honestly don't know why the appeal didn't go forward... at the timethe United Taxpayers wouldn't even come up with the money for us to havethe transcript printed to prepare the record... 38/17 I think probably my main thoughts of it are thoughts of frustration. that I wish I could get the govt to ignore people who have something tosay no matter how crazy it is and who really don't have the power to doany great evil.... going against GK for the back taxes he might have owed,probablly would have done as much to protect the revenues as to start thecriminal process... most of the polarization in this, I think that the govt.has caused , simply because they overreacted to something that I don'tthink that they should have taken all that seriously to begin with. 39/25 I've used versions of it on tax protesters... I teach professionalresposniblilyty...one of the rules for instance is that a lawyer shouldnot present a position that he knows is contrary to law or cannot be arguedas a good faith extension... someone who claims that the constitution prohibittsanything but gold and silver money... using GK's case cleaned up as a hypothetical,so I still use it from time to time...#15:40:24END OF BUFFORD TERRELL INTERVIEW
|
A timeline of the life of Gordon Kahl, from early childhood interests, to his marriage to Joan Kahl, his decorated military experience,
his outspoken tax protest, the Medina shootout, and his unusual death in Arkansas in 1983.
|
VARIETY / Indie documaker Jeffrey F. Jackson sticks it to the IRS and the Feds in "Death & Taxes," a hard-hitting reinvestigation of the 1983 Gordon Kahl case, about which questions still linger. Jackson's unfazed, investigative reporting-style approach and inventive handling of familiar material make this a controversial item for fests and progressive webs. Non-U.S. viewers will also get a charge out of its conspiracy theme. read more
CHRONICLES MAGAZINE / Gordon Kahl was a simple farmer who became famous for not filing income tax returns. Imprisoned and hounded by IRS agents who never did prove he owed any amount of money, Kahl and his son were involved in a shootout with police. The son is still serving a prison sentence, but the father was surrounded and shot in Arkansas by police officers who mutilated and burned his body. read more
GUNS & AMMO / A new video documentary, Death & Taxes, details a case of government murderously out of control that was briefly mentioned in the October 1994 Guns & Ammo article "The Ugly Truth About Gun Control." Death & Taxes is the story of Gordon Kahl, a North Dakota farmer and decorated World War II veteran, and his apparent death at the hands of federal agents. read more
|
|
Now Available!This set of 6 DVD's comprises over 13 hours of uncut footage, including a 2+ hour prison interview with Yorie Kahl, and candid interviews with wife Joan Kahl. In this rich stockpile of research, you'll find many more threads than could reasonably be pursued in the final feature.
The Death & Taxes Miniseries DVD Set Includes...
01: Gordon Kahl Meets With Head North Dakota U.S. Marshal Bud Warren (60 min)
02: The Beginning: Gordon Kahl's military experience and views on a variety of subjects (93 min)
03: Gordon's Texas Tax Trial (90 min)
04: Medina Shootout (60 min)
05: Gordon Kahl Was...: A montage of over 25 people describing who Gordon Kahl was in their eyes. (50 min)
06: Mysterious Death In Arkansas (90 min)
07: Media Circus: Chronological portrayal of Gordon Kahl in the media (70 min)
08: Yorie Kahl Prison Interview (150 min)
09: Joan Kahl Uncut Interviews (120 min)
A little-known fact regarding Death & Taxes is the surprising connection to Timothy McVeigh and the ATF / Oklahoma City Bombing. Here's a clip of Jackson sharing the story during a director's commentary on his film Postal Worker.
The story of Gordon Kahl so captured the attention of mainstream America that it was turned into a highly-rated made-for-television movie titled
In The Line of Duty - Manhunt In The Dakotas.
DEATH & TAXES is the story of Gordon Kahl, a North Dakota farmer who became America's "most-wanted" fugitive. How had a WWII war hero become the target of one of the largest manhunts in FBI history?
|
|
The badly burned remains of Gordon Kahl, with an island of skin that shows he was in a prone position at the time of the fire.
Was Kahl a racist, gun-toting fanatic? Or a victim of an IRS policy of harassing vocal tax protestors into silence to keep the rest of us intimidated? Did Bill Clinton conspire to cover-up the torture and execution of Gordon Kahl in Arkansas? Did federal agents mutilate and burn the body to cover-up the murder of the wrong man?
DEATH & TAXES follows the trail of Gordon Kahl as his body is exhumed for a new autopsy. Building on newsreel clips covering two fiery shootouts and hundreds of interviews -- with IRS agents and federal prosecutors as well as Kahl's family and supporters -- D&T explores the myths and controversies surrounding a man who dared to challenge the federal income tax system. Some revile Kahl as a cop killer. Others revere him as an American patriot. Which was he?
|
|