agingrebel.com
The Waco Tribune-Herald reported yesterday that the McLennan County grand jury that indicted 106 defendants in nine hours last November for engaging in organized crime will reconvene March 23. The previous indictees were all men who had been detained after or wounded during the Twin Peaks Massacre last May 17.
Eighty men and women who have not yet been indicted were also arrested and charged with engaging in organized crime during a biker riot that left nine people dead and 19 wounded. Presumably, the grand jury will reconvene to indict at least some of those men and women. All parties involved know that the vast majority of the 186 people who have been arrested or indicted so far, including most members of the Bandidos, Cossacks, Scimitars, Bogatyrs and other motorcycle clubs who were at the Twin Peaks that day, were innocent victims of a confrontation engineered by high ranking members of the Cossacks.
Local authorities reacted to the bloody confrontation with a torrent of outrageous lies and accusations. The logical question has always been why. Why bother to lie when the truth is obvious?
There is a growing mountain of circumstantial evidence that federal police had advance knowledge of what was about to happen at the Twin Peaks and likely had a part in instigating it. That circumstantial evidence suggests the possibility of a scandal equal to or greater than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “Fast and Furious” scandal that erupted into public view in November 2011. Many high paying government careers could be in danger.
Two DEA Investigations
There was, provably, an ongoing federal investigation into both the Bandidos and the Cossacks underway last May 17. According to an indictment returned last December and unsealed in January against high ranking members of the Bandidos, the Houston Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the San Antonio Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Attorney’s Office in San Antonio and the Texas Department of Public Safety conducted a two-year-long investigation into drug trafficking and related violent crimes by both the Bandidos and the Cossacks.Strangely, despite the fact that a DEA investigation of the Bandidos and Cossacks was ongoing, the DEA opened a second investigation last May 26 “to target Owen Reeves, the president of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club. Additional targets will include the upper hierarchy of the Cossacks MC, the Bandidos MC and affiliated biker organizations.”
Reeves was also a director of the Aryan Circle, According to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, “The Aryan Circle not only deals drugs; many of its members abuse drugs, especially methamphetamine, which has caused serious problems for the group and its members. Efforts by Circle leaders in the past to combat drug use by members have failed.”
The Reeves investigation was to be conducted by Special Agent Russ Culver and Tactical Field Officer, and Temple, Texas police officer, Joshua Moore. The Aging Rebel believes this investigation was initiated in order to conceal or obscure the facts of the previous ongoing investigation.
The Aryan Circle and its connection to the Cossacks was also the subject of an ATF investigation that was ongoing last May 17. A series of raids by the ATF, United State Marshal Service Fugitive Task Force, Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division and various local police forces in Wood and Van Zandt Counties last April 17 was part of that investigation and gathered evidence related to Cossacks who were at the Twin Peaks last May 17.
Discovering Evidence
McLennan County officials have taken the lead in prosecuting the alleged perpetrators of the Twin Peaks carnage in order to provide a firewall against disclosure of the federal investigation that had foreknowledge of and may have instigated the Twin Peaks Massacre.At the beginning of February Clint Broden, a defense attorney in the case, filed a “Motion To Reveal Identity of Confidential Informants And Undercover Law Enforcement Officials.”
“It appears evident that law enforcement officials infiltrated and/or had confidential informants inside the Cossacks Motorcycle Club and/or other motorcycle clubs prior to the incident at Twin Peaks,” Broden wrote. “…the above requests relate to any informants known to the ‘prosecutorial team’ or to whom the ‘prosecutorial team’ had access. This would include federal investigative and prosecutorial agencies to the extent they participated in this investigation.”
Intelligence
Last May, Waco police sergeant Patrick Swanton bragged repeatedly about “intelligence” that prompted a massive police presence at the Twin Peaks last May 17. “I will tell you based upon the intelligence we had the, uh, the cooperation with the Texas Department of Public Safety, that kept a lot of innocent people from being killed or injured today because of us being here and being immediately able to respond when gunshots rang out” Swanton said on May 17.“Because of the intelligence that we’ve been receiving over the past several months, we know they were going to be here today. We knew there was a very real possibility that there was gonna be issues. That’s why we had a significant number of officers that were here not only from Waco PD but DPS as well and they immediately moved in once the, uh, fighting started and unfortunately it was one of that…that…we were gonna be here today. They were gonna be here. That’s why we had the heavy presence of law enforcement on scene and thankfully we had, “ Swanton said.
Motion Hearing
But, at a motion hearing on February 12, McLennan County prosecutors claimed ignorance of any knowledge pertaining to the federal investigation or investigations. Assistant District Attorney Michael Jarrett told Judge Matt Johnson:“I’d like to take up first…the possibility that there might have been an undercover police officer, or officers, implanted within either of the Cossacks or their organization or the Bandidos or their organization. And I would submit to the Court that we have no information to believe that there were undercover officers in either of those organizations, so I have nothing to provide the defense at that time on that…this time on that.
“I think the Court is aware that the federal government has come out with, or disclosed the indictments of Bandido members, that they had been doing an undercover investigation for 24 months. Um, the State did not…or the prosecution in this case did not have any knowledge of that investigation. We have not received any evidence from their investigation. We have been in contact with the United States Attorney’s Office. They have told us that we would have access to that at some point, but they are unwilling to give us that information now. It is under seal under federal courts. I don’t know that we have a, um…an ability to get that information without them releasing it directly to us. While I agree with Mr. Broden that there could be something that could be, uh, exculpatory, obviously is discoverable. That’s one of the reasons we want to make sure we get all the information to each defense attorney before these cases proceed to trial.”
District Attorney Abelino Reyna told Johnson, his former law partner:
“The local US Attorney’s Office informed us that they had been in contact with the San Antonio US Attorney’s Office, um, that that’s where the instruction came, that all the information was, um, deeply under seal, as it was relayed to us, um, but that at some point they would be willing to communicate with us regarding that investigation in the future but not now.”
And Johnson replied: “Well, to the extent I have the authority to order disclosure, um, if it comes to the knowledge of…of the District Attorney’s Office, uh, I would, uh, order that information disclosed.”
Shell Game
However the law is not a shell game. Following a 1963 Supreme Court ruling in a case titled Brady v. Maryland, withholding the evidence Broden seeks violates due process. The question then becomes, exactly the question posed in the February 12 hearing. What about pertinent evidence that is not in the possession of the prosecutors, but is in the possession of the federal investigators?There is a legal precedent for that too. In a December 2004 ruling in a case titled United States v. Blanco, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled:
“Exculpatory evidence cannot be kept out of the hands of the defense just because the prosecutor does not have it, where an investigating agency does. That would undermine Brady by allowing the investigating agency to prevent production by keeping a report out of the prosecutor’s hands until the agency decided the prosecutor ought to have it, and by allowing the prosecutor to tell the investigators not to give him certain materials unless he asked for them.”
And yet, McLennan County prosecutors still seem about to indict more innocent people anyway.