Analysis

John Roberts: career-long criminal player and imperial bagman

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

September 18, 2005—In yet another typically stomach-turning Washington charade, the smug John Roberts non-answered his way through his Senate confirmation hearings, sailing towards a virtually certain approval as America's 17th chief justice.

Another deep political player who should be grilled, excoriated, and punished, for a lifetime of criminal and treasonous activity, was warmly welcomed by a panel of hapless and equally corrupt politicians, and then permitted to perjure, lie and play-act to a position on the highest court of the land.

It is no surprise that the ascension of Roberts has been such an urgent priority for this administration. It is not just because Roberts facially resembles Bush, and echoes Bush's oily and arrogant smugness. The darkness at the core of Roberts is amply documented in Nat Parry's John Roberts and the apex of presidential power.

Parry points out:

"While much of the focus on Bush's choice of Judge Roberts has centered on his life-long conservative ideology, including his hostility towards women's rights, a sleeper issue has been Roberts's support for giving the Executive nearly unlimited authority, at least when the White House is held by a Republican.

"Roberts's deference to presidential power is a strand that has run through his entire career as special assistant to Ronald Reagan's attorney general, a legal strategist for Reagan's White House counsel, a top deputy to George H.W. Bush's solicitor general Kenneth W. Starr, and a federal appeals court judge accepting George W. Bush's right to deny due-process rights to anyone deemed an 'enemy combatant.'"

As noted by Parry and others, Roberts work on behalf of the presidential "apex of political power" has been a continuous participation in government corruption from the 1980s to the present. With all due respect to Parry, these are not "sleeper" issues.

Roberts 1) counseled Reagan/Bush on how to get around congressional restrictions on contra funding; 2) counseled Reagan/Bush on the establishment of CIA/narcotrafficking proprietaries; 3) counseled Reagan/Bush on how to obstruct Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's probe; 4) as US Appeals Court judge, endorsed the most extreme aspects of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism," including the right to designate "enemy combatants" and the endorsement of torture, the protection of the Bush administration's right to torture; and 5) has maintained intimate ties to top Bush administration officials, including all participants in the CIA/Plame case (which could be decided by a Roberts court).

This is, by definition, a criminal background, in direct participation as well as association, with treason, mass murder and crimes against humanity. In the Bush world, where open criminality and corruption are king, Roberts is the ideal yes-man for the chief justice post, where he will oversee the final destruction of what remains of American democracy.