Tattooed for Life

The Farm

From the air, it looks like a small high school campus.  There are neatly arranged buildings around a grass central courtyard with neat paths crossing in between.  A thin running track encircles the soccer field, with a neat softball field, basketball courts, volleyball courts, and even horseshoe pits around it.  

“Allenwood Low Federal Correction Institution” might look like a school from the air, but it’s part of the Federal Prison system.  In the 1970’s it was called the Allenwood Prison Farm.  It was where non-violent Federal offenders were sent to do their time:  working out, taking classes, finding religion; but placed on the shelf in Northern Pennsylvania.  At a particularly low time in my freshman year of college, I had “Allenwood” signs hanging in my dorm room.  Things got better, and I tore them up.

Allenwood is where the Watergate offenders went, at least most of them.  But there was one Watergate conspirator who did “hard time.”   Gordon Liddy, the architect of the Watergate break-in, refused to talk.  He took pride in the fact that he didn’t cooperate with the investigation.  Unlike most of the conspirators, Liddy served time in a medium correction facility, four and a half years before President Jimmy Carter commuted his sentence.

A Young Trickster

Roger Stone was just twenty when he went to work for the Nixon campaign.  He became part of the Nixon “dirty tricks” group, known as the “rat f**kers.”  They worked the edge of the law, cancelling opponents’ rallies, writing fake racist letters on their stationery, and sending spies into their campaigns.  They slipped over the legal edge from time to time, allegedly putting drugs into their opponents’ drinks.  

When Watergate came to a climax, Liddy went to jail and Nixon resigned.   Young Roger Stone took them as his role models.  He believed Nixon should have “toughed it out,” just like Liddy did, burned the tapes and force impeachment. Stone had Nixon’s face tattooed on his back:  the mark of his eternal loyalty.

Never Grow Up

Stone’s time with the “dirty tricksters” established the pattern of his life.  He became a Republican political “consultant,” with expertise in the “dark art” of winning campaigns at all costs.  He joined with his friend Paul Manafort in establishing a consulting firm that ending up specializing in representing world dictators, as well as domestic clients.

It was Roger Stone who helped lead the “Brook Brothers Riot” that disrupted the 2000 Florida recount in Palm Beach, and assured the election of George W Bush as President.  When Republicans needed something done that was “questionable,” Stone was the guy.  

But he always wanted “his” candidate, who would follow “his” plan to be President of the United States.  He waited for years, for the right time and person.  Donald Trump became Stone’s “vehicle.”  Trump was well known from television, had money to self-finance his campaign, and was eminently flexible when it came to ideology.  He was the “clay” for Stone to mold.

And America moved towards Stone’s kind of campaign as well.  The nation became increasingly polarized.  We can blame the Republicans for the Benghazi hearings and McConnell’s determination to stop Obama.   We can blame Mr. Obama’s refusal to reach across the aisle, or Secretary Clinton’s haughty “basket of deplorables” attitude.  Or we can blame an entire “news” network that eschewed facts to push their chosen political view.   However we got there, we were primed for a Roger Stone type candidacy.

Whatever it Takes

“I have an idea … to save Trump’s ass,” (Stone) told Manafort in an email in August. “I know how to win this but it ain’t pretty,” he told campaign chief Stephen K. Bannon in another exchange (WAPO.)

Stone convinced Trump to run for President.  While he was a prime force in the beginning, he was soon moved to the outskirts of the Trump Campaign.  Even the Trump family found him too extreme.  But he remained involved, and helped to bring in his friend Paul Manafort to Chair the campaign.  

In the spring of 2016, no one, especially the campaign staff, thought Trump had a chance of actually winning the Presidency.  But then they found that the DNC emails were hacked by Russian Intelligence, and that Wikileaks had them.  Stone looked for a way to weaponize the emails against the Clinton campaign.  To do so, he found a way to communicate with Wikileaks.

Donald Trump Jr. communicated with Wikileaks as well.   

Like Stone’s Nixon days, they worked over the edge of the law; accepting campaign aid from a foreign source.  And like the “rat f**kers” of old, they were successful.

Following Liddy

The Mueller investigation was a prime threat to the Trump Presidency.  If Mueller could find the direct link from the campaign to Wikileaks and the Russians, it would raise the specter of impeachment.  Stone was that link, but he lied to Congress, stonewalled the investigation, and, with the help of the new Attorney General William Barr, successfully outlasted Mueller.

It’s hard to picture Robert Mueller as a man of retribution.  But the last public case he left to the Courts was the seven-count indictment against Roger Stone.  The message was clear when the FBI Swat Taskforce arrived outside Stone’s home in Ft. Lauderdale.   This wasn’t a “white collar” arrest, the automatic weapons were out in the dark early morning hours, and somehow CNN was just down the street.

Mueller brought five counts of lying in official statements to Congress and Federal investigators, one count of obstruction, and one count of witness tampering.  In the trial, Deputy Trump Campaign Manager Rick Gates and Campaign Chairman Steve Bannon testified against him.  Stone refused to take the stand in his own defense.  The guilty verdict exposed him to a fifty year sentence, but sentencing guidelines put his maximum term somewhere closer to two or three years.

He’s lied so often, there’s no value in his turning “state’s evidence.”  There’s no deal waiting for him to tell the truth.  The only hope Stone has is that his greatest “project,” the President, issues him a pardon.  But Trump’s got enough troubles of his own, and a Stone pardon would make his 2020 re-election even more difficult.

Roger Stone gets to emulate his hero, Gordon Liddy.  His best hope is that he gets to do his time at the “Farm.”