From: pfrankli@well.sf.ca.us (Paul Franklin)
Subject: Bobbie Riconosciuto part two
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:26:09 GMT


Date: December 11, 1992
Place: Public Forum, Louden Nelson Center, Santa Cruz, California.
Bobbie: I appreciate it.  I want to thank you for everything that
you've done so far.  It was good to know that there were people
out there who knew what was happening.  It could have been real
ugly.  Thanks.

Dave Emery: Well, hopefully we can do more.

Bobbie: What Dave is saying about the state of our freedom,
personal freedom, Michael and I have seen up front, as have my
children.  When Michael made the decision to sign the affidavit
in the Inslaw case, I wasn't real happy about it.  It's one of
the only things that Michael and I, in the course of the time
we've been together, that we haven't agreed on it.  And the
reason I didn't agree, was because he had to include the
paragraphs that he did about the threats made against my
children.  He felt that he had, that we had enough things in
place to protect the kids, and we'd been able to protect them up
to that point.
     He foresaw some sort of retribution, but not as quickly and
not as swiftly.  His back was against the wall when they
subpoenaed him to Chicago.  Bear in mind that Michael is serving
a 30 year sentence with no hope of parole.  His appeal has been
basically shuffled up to Buffalo.  He was given a court appointed
attorney in Seattle to represent him in his appeal and he was
moved to Long Beach.  His attorney is not getting paid for this,
except by the government, and he felt no need to be further
involved in Michael's case than he had to be to satisfy the law.

     At the time Michael was subpoenaed to Chicago, we had just
been given some help by the UCLA law center and their team of
young attorneys who have not yet been indoctrinated into the way
that the justice system actually works in practice anymore.  They
were very helpful; they were putting together quite a package to
be able to slam dunk things, as it were, to make it possible for
Michael to maybe come home.  When they subpoenaed him to Chicago,
his medical records did not go with him.  They have just
recently, finally, after over a year in jail, given him the
medication that he needed, and admitted that he had a medical
problem that needed attention.

Dave: Bobbie, you might want to just briefly review, for the sake
of the people who might not have heard all of the broadcasts, and
I suppose most of the people here are familiar with the whole
situation, but who Mike is and what his medical condition is.

Bobbie: Michael is a whiz kid, only now he's in his 40's.  When
he was young, when he was 16 years old, he was at Stanford
University.  He worked with Dr. Shalo (sp?) on LASER things,
before he was 16 actually.  He was recruited into the Agency
(CIA) at that time.  His first trip was to South America, and he
made that trip along with a man named mister John Nichols.  Then
he was basically left alone for a while.  The things that Michael
thought of when he was a kid are things that are just now on the
cutting edge of technology in this country and in the world.  He
learned everything that his tutors from the University of
Washington had to teach him about mathematics before he was 11
years old.
     Oddly enough, he's a pretty whole person.  He's musically
inclined, he's very sensitive, he's a real person.  When he got
to a certain point in his work with the Agency and with the NSA
and Navel Intelligence, especially as it had to do with
biological things, he came to a point where he couldn't do it any
more, and he walked away.  Although, people in Michael's position
aren't really allowed to do that.  Shortly, it was pretty much
near that time that I met him, and when I was pregnant with
Elizabeth, we tried as hard as we could to stabilize an
environment for our kids.
     And the things that came - there was always one more thing,
one more thing, and because of the projects that Michael had
worked on, you have to talk to them.  They have questions for
things that, unfinished things.  All of these projects are open
ended, I've found.  We did the best that we could.
     But with the Inslaw case, Michael modifying that software, I
don't know if you are all aware of it or not, but what he did, as
far as the PROMIS software went, was it was brought to him while
he was working on the Cabazon reservation.  He was also working
on gaseous fuel devices at that time, and other things that go
"boom."  He was brought the software to modify for sales
overseas, to many different countries, allies and not so allies
as well, and he did.  After what happened to Bill and Nancy
Hamilton and their company, the Hamiltons found Michael in 1989.
Every where we went there was a FAX - they wanted to talk to him,
they wanted him to help them, because he modified the software,
the alternative in their mind, once they documented that, was
that he could be charged with pirating the software instead of
the government - "How do you want to play it?"  That was the
moral decision anyway.
     The Hamiltons have suffered as well, and there were lots of
people that were no longer with us.  There were reporters and
investigators, and it was getting ugly out there.  So, he went
ahead and signed the affidavit and right before he did he got in
touch with one of his intermediaries between him and his control
at the time that he worked on the software named Peter
Viedenieks, and he told him that he was going to have to sign the
affidavit.  Mr. Viedenieks told him that his mouth was digging
him a grave, and that if he talked about it certain things would
happen.  There were three in particular that Michael included in
the affidavit.  One was that my protracted custody problems would
suddenly take a front seat, that my children would be taken and
that they would be in danger.  Another was that an associate of
Michael's and his dad's would be, that there was an indictment
that was sealed, that we were told about, this man would be
indicted.  The third thing was that Michael would go to jail on
unrelated charges for the rest of his life.
     Nine days after he signed the affidavit he was arrested, and
in the mean time, during that nine days was when the indictment
was unsealed against the other individual, and when Michael was
in custody, we had certain audio tapes of his conversation with
that man.  Michael was told that if those things were buried and
he didn't use them in his defense, that the children and I would
get out of Washington alive.
     I have tried over that last year and a half to be as vocal
as I can be to help him come home, without jeopardizing the
children.  I think it's unfair that the way that these old boys
play is to attack the family.  I don't think it's fair, I don't
think it's right.  My children are more politically aware than
any 13, 12, and 16 year-olds I know.  And they're very strong.
They know their rights, but they found they didn't do any good.
I realize that I'm wandering.  I'm not used to talking to people
without a small window anymore.  It's getting close to Christmas
and so this is a subject that's close to my heart.
     The night before I was arrested I wrote a letter to the
Brooks committee, to Jack Brooks, about Michael's health.  His
health, he has a sleep disorder, he has sleep apnea, it's severe
enough that during the time we've been together, he has what's
called a c-pap unit, a device that you use at night that forces
air in and out so that you don't stop breathing, and he also is
severely hypoglycemic.  When we're on the road, the family and
Michael, you know when Dad's driving you got to look out, because
if you give him anything to eat he falls asleep.  So, it's pretty
severe.  Now when he was in the Pierce County jail in Tacoma for
eleven and a half months, they refused to do anything about these
problems.  Every time we pushed on it, because he was
unconscious, he had to be dragged to the infirmary many times,
there were times that had it not been for another inmate shoving
him out of bed in the middle of night, he would not have been
breathing in the morning.
     This disorder also causes his oxygen level to be reduced,
his blood gases are often very very low, this affected his
ability to defend himself - they knew that.  The local county
jail people said that it was up to the U.S. Marshall said he's in
(the) control of the Pierce County jail.  We went back and forth,
back and forth, on and on and on until he was sentenced and moved
to Terminal Island.  At that time he was given adequate medical
attention finally.  At first they started the same thing - 'well
where is the documentation, where is his medical history?'  Did
you ever try to find the medical history of a CIA operative?
It's not an easy task, even when you have all the right names and
things like I do.  It's very difficult to access these things
because there are things about Michael's life, and the things
that he carries around in his head, that preclude him from being
under a general anesthetic.
     You know, it's not easy to find the things that I needed.  I
did find them, then they wouldn't accept them.  When they started
it in Long Beach, again with the same song and dance, I said
"excuse me, now we have eleven and a half months in the pierce
county jail to go from - how many times was he in the infirmary?
How many times was he unconscious on the floor?  How many times
did his fellow inmates, when they were annoyed by his snoring
that is attendant when he *is* breathing, how many times did they
spray cleaning fluids in his face?  Let's get down to business
here."  And they did, they followed up, they did a work up on
him, they gave him a diet for his hypoglycemia, and they gave him
medication for during the day to keep him alert, and they were in
the process of fitting him for a CPAP unit when he was subpoenaed
to Chicago.
     Since he's been in Chicago he has not had any medical
attention until very very recently, since I was arrested.  The
night before I was arrested, which was a week after I got out of
the hospital in Martinez myself, during that time Michael had a
hypoglycemic seizure on the floor and there were guards present
and there was a doctor present.  None of them did anything to
help him.  His fellow inmates finally forced sugar water down his
throat and brought him out of the seizure.  I don't know what
would have happened had they not.  The doctor at that time said
'OK, I believe you, this man has a problem, let's see what we can
do about it.'
     Unfortunately, Judge (Nicholas) Bua decided that he was a
doctor and said that Michael did not need any medical attention.
I went through the roof.  I sat down and I wrote a letter to Mr.
Brooks.  In the letter, not only did I outline Michael's medical
problem.  In fact, Jack Brooks and his committee are very much
aware of all the problems that Michael has had, physically,
because I talked to them every chance I got.  I begged them, I
begged them to help me, and they tried, sometimes.  Mostly, when
it came right down to it, the Brook's committee did what they
could do. They were under a lot of pressure themselves.  In the
letter I also outlined that my children do not believe in the
system of government in this country anymore, and that makes me
cry.
(to be continued)

     The right thing to do is never the easiest thing to do.  The
     moral, ethical, and most compassionate imperative from within
     your heart may in fact be the most difficult.  To be informed is
     important, to tell others is even more important, but without
     tangible action, our efforts are meaningless.

     Paul Franklin
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