Truth Surfaces in Hansen Ordeal by Edward Snook & Don Harkins After four years of imprisonment, after ten years of persecution, after being ruined professionally and financially and after being permanently damaged physically, in December, 1995, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Hansen’s sentence for bank fraud because the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on May 15, 1995, that Hansen’s previous conviction as a member of Congress had been overturned. Diesel Therapy: A prison term which describes the most inhumane, degrading and painful of punishment; normally reserved for the most violent and uncontrollable of prisoners. A prisoner is shackled at the feet and handcuffed at the wrists, reinforced with a box-like structure which stiffens the chains and locks the wrists at a 90-degree angle. The handcuffs are connected to a waist chain that is connected to another chain which connects the shackles. Once this shackling is complete, a prisoner can barely move. The tightened manacles pinch the nerves and restrict the flow of blood causing severe pain and swelling. Legs swelling with blood are particularly damaging to the feet, as toenails under pressure from blood-blisters press up against shoes for long periods of time and soon become infected and deformed, causing such excruciating pain that they require surgery or the pulling of the nails out by the roots. Diesel therapy gets its name, not from the "cruel and unusual" bondage, but from being forced into bus after bus and onto plane after plane, shackled as described, and being shuttled from one prison to another, for weeks on end, 20 hours per day in chains, for no other reason than to cause pain and suffering and give the prisoner a "message." Welcome to diesel therapy and the world of seven-term Congressman George Hansen, who was found guilty in the court-room of the infamous Federal Judge Edward Lodge on bogus charges of bank fraud which were manipulated into an issue by the Idaho Department of Finance which illegally used the same agents previously employed by the IRS in their failed attempt to "get Hansen?" People who have been reading past editions of The Idaho Observer and The Oregon Observer will recall that the Judge Lodge/Idaho Department of Finance connection has already been uncovered in the bogus securities laws violations charges levied against Boise businessman and winemaker Petro (Pete) Eliopulos. "After Ed Snook of The Oregon Observer and I met with Hansen and he told me in a six-hour meeting what had happened to him, I was more shaken than I have ever been in my life. If (West One) bank officers Knox and Neaville had not subsequently been convicted of crimes which came to light in the bogus investigations of me and my businesses, they could have done to me what they did to Hansen," said Eliopulos, who was shocked that a U.S. Representative, or anybody for that matter, could be treated this way in America. What could an esteemed member of the U.S. Congress have done to deserve such treatment? A series of events were triggered to allow crimes to be manufactured which led to the imprisonment and torture of Congressman George Hansen. Idaho District Federal Judge Edward Lodge, who has been used by bankers and government officials for a decade to "legalize" their unethical and criminal activities, was given the job of putting Hansen away and seeing to it that he learned a lesson. Judge Lodge saw to it that Hansen received "diesel therapy" coming and going to prison from the judge’s court at great cost to the government, even though Hansen should have been allowed to make such trips at his own expense. On the way from his hometown of Pocatello to federal prison in Petersberg, VA, Hansen was bussed and flown, nearly immovably shackled, at taxpayer expense, to jails all over the country. Not Hansen’s lawyer, his wife, nor his allies in Congress were able to locate him. Hansen had simply disappeared for a month into the custody of the Federal Marshal’s Service. Hansen’s wife didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. And even when the Supreme Court overturned Hansen’s original case and the Appeals Court vacated his current sentence, Hansen still got the Judge Lodge treatment of another dose of diesel therapy from Virginia back to Idaho. What had Hansen, who was a model prisoner, done to deserve the most brutal, torturous and barbaric type of treatment this country’s penal system is capable of inflicting on a prisoner? Congressional Accountability Project Retired Congressman Tom Kindness (R-Ohio) stated, "I believe that George’s recent trial and conviction on charges of "bank fraud" was the direct result of a campaign by various members of the bureaucracy to stop the CAP." CAP, the Congressional Accountability Project, was being launched by Hansen and a group of investors interested in good government. CAP was going to utilize nation-wide television and a national 900 number to make congresspersons instantaneously accountable to the American people for their votes on the House and Senate floors. "This was a project which would, in my opinion, have had a major impact on the votes of congressmen since it would have made them instantaneously responsible to the people by making their votes known immediately after being cast," commented journalist John Voss. Hansen and his associates were on the verge of making CAP fully operational and accessible to the American public when the government, through the Idaho Department of Finance with the illegal help of former IRS agents, a revenge-minded Justice Department and the corrupt Judge Lodge, manufactured bank fraud charges against him. Judge Lodge’s provably compromised court ultimately found Hansen guilty and prescribed diesel therapy to teach him a lesson. Why did the "Honorable" Judge Lodge treat Hansen like Public Enemy #1? George Hansen was the only member of Congress able to pull the strings necessary to visit the hostages in Iran in 1979 and expose the big-bank scam behind the crises. George Hansen was the author of the book To Harass Our People, an indictment of the IRS, where he demanded its dismantling. George Hansen was the congressman who was so outraged by what he discovered about the IRS while researching his book that he wrote and helped to pass the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. George Hansen was the first man to propose the flat tax as a damage control alternative to protect the people from IRS abuses. George Hansen was the man who took on OSHA, WPPSS, and the INS, and George Hansen was the man who fearlessly and repeatedly made public his findings when investigations turned up government corruption and citizen abuse. The "system" decided it had to teach Congressman Hansen a lesson because, had he been allowed to continue serving on Capitol Hill, he would soon likely be the chairman of the powerful House Banking Committee. So, why did Judge Lodge, whose personal reasons for needing to keep the well-documented criminal nature of the banking industry below public scrutiny, with the help of the Idaho Department of Finance, trump up a bank fraud conviction by denying the admission of exonerating evidence in court in order to throw Hansen in prison and make sure that he was punished severely with diesel therapy? Was it because Congressman Hansen was getting close to the truth and accumulating the political power it would take to finally and totally expose the banking industry and government for its criminal abuses of the American people? Judge Lodge’s Court of Kangaroos CAP was apparently the final straw and abusive criminal government had to shut Hansen down. On the eve of CAP becoming fully operational, powerful special interests and political enemies derailed the project and forced a domino effect of financial repercussions upon Hansen and his associates. The government then took the situation it had created and indicted, prosecuted and convicted Hansen of bank fraud. Though the treachery of Judge Lodge and the government disdained the patriotic financial sacrifices made by Hansen’s supporters for good government and callously prevented his efforts to re-pay them, it did not prevent Hansen from publicly pledging that these law breaking government bullies could never seal his lips, nor stop him from somehow paying back the people he owed and thereby keeping his word. Every attorney who has read the court transcripts is concerned and confounded as to how George could have been convicted on bank fraud charges when the supervising bank officers were not only acutely aware of his financial operation and transactions, but were actively assisting him in his efforts for over ten years! "George defrauded no one and we can prove it," stated Congressman Kindness. Hansen was not really imprisoned and tortured by "our" government for bank fraud, though that was the government’s excuse to lock him up and shut him down. Hansen was actually a political prisoner who was guilty of attempting to provide the American people with the ammunition of knowledge so they could successfully fight back against the senseless encroachment of government oppression which more and more is ruining the lives of all of us. Hansen dedicated his civil service to facilitating a return to a Constitutional form of government which is of, by and for the people and "our" government felt threatened enough by his noble activities to see to it that he was imprisoned and tortured for daring to tell citizen/taxpayers the truth. Hansen was the only U.S. statesman who cared enough to risk his own safety and political career to visit the hostages in Iran in 1979. While in Iran, Hansen saw first hand what happens to political prisoners, who were beaten mercilessly, who had finger and toe nails ripped out by the roots and who had been shackled until they were permanently disabled physically. Hansen has also experienced first hand the same inhumane torture and it happened to him in the most "civilized" nation on earth, the only difference being that Hansen was denied treatment and pain-killers and had to rip his own deformed and infected toenails out. With renewed vigor, Hansen is back and is calling on all concerned Americans, including members of Congress and other elected officials, to join him in the fight to restore accountability and decency to our stricken nation.