Bugliosi for the Prosecution

Vincent Bugliosi, legendary prosecutor and author, has a book on the New York Times hardback nonfiction best seller list, but the newspaper has not addressed the book in its review pages, as it has with all his other works. Bugliosi has not been interviewed about the book on Good Morning America, the Today show, Larry King Live, and other major stops along the path of national book tours. Bugliosi refers to his exclusion as a blackout.

Bugliosi's book is called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. In a recent telephone interview, Bugliosi talked at length about the case he is making in the book's pages, his passion for doing so, and his sincerity in ensuring that anyone responsible for criminal acts leading to the unspeakable deaths of innocents—for launching a war under false pretenses—should be brought before the bar of justice and held accountable.

"Credibility means everything to me," Bugliosi said. "Never in a million years would I propose a murder prosecution if I did not believe that there was more than enough evidence to convict George Bush for murder and that I stand on firm legal ground."

He noted that "when we are talking about the crime of murder, you have to realize that there's no difference between a former president and a regular citizen. I got a call from a state attorney general who said, 'Vince, I understand you have a book out now against Bush and it's about impeachment.' And I said no, I'm talking about murder. And he said to me, and these are his exact words, 'Under what law?' You know, the attorney general is the chief legal officer in the state. And I said to him, 'under the law that's already on the books in all 50 states and federally in Section 111(a) of Title 18 of the United States Code. And I said, 'as you know, no federal or state murder statute says it only applies to certain people, not to presidents, golf pros, or engineers, or that the murder has to take place in certain places, like a home, a car, or in the street, not on a battlefield.' The only reason I mention this is that no one says a president is above the law but in effect they are saying it, because they say, 'How can you prosecute the president of the United States for going to war?'"

Bugliosi discussed the legal framework underpinning the case against Bush, who could be tried after his term as president ends.

"To prosecute murder, there has to be two elements, the act and the accompanying criminal intent. Here, the act is the invasion of Iraq. And that has to be accompanied by the requisite intent. There is the express malice aforethought in that Bush, in invading Iraq, committed an act that he knew, absolutely knew, would result in the deaths of American soliders. Or it could be implied malice aforethought in that by invading Iraq, Bush committed an inherently dangerous act with indifference to human life. Now with respect to malice aforethought, that could be removed if Bush could argue a legal justification for what he did. And the legal justification that he would argue would be self-defense. The main legal issue at the trial would be whether Bush took the nation to war in self-defense, the so-called preemptive strike, saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he was an imminent threat to our country, and we had to strike first in self-defense. Now if he could prove that, he would not be guilty of murder. But if the prosecutor could prove that Bush did not take the nation to war in self-defense but under false pretenses, then all the killings of American soldiers in Iraq would become unlawful killings and therefore murder."

On the issue of jurisdiction, Bugliosi said, "Under Section 1111(b) of Title 18 of the United States Code, the federal courts only have jurisdiction for crimes that happen within American territory. So the defense argument would be that Iraq is outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and if the killings took place over there, which they did on the battlefield, the United States would not have jurisdiction. But there is an exception to that, known as the 'protective principle.' If an act takes place outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States but has an extremely deleterious effect on this country, the federal courts do have jurisdiction. And there's no question that 4,000 American soldiers dying over in Iraq has a terrible effect on the United States."

Bugliosi added, "And just to show you how little effect there has to be, look at the case of United States v. Benitez [741 F.2d 1312, 1316 (11th Cir.1984)]. In Benitez, the defendant was prosecuted for conspiring in Colombia to murder U.S. DEA agents, for assaulting them and also for robbing them. Now Columbia is otherwise outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. And Benitez's argument that the Southern District Court of Florida had no jurisdiction was rejected by the court. The court ruled that, 'under the protective principle,' the crimes committed in Colombia 'certainly had a potentially adverse affect on the security and governmental functions of the United States.' So if a case in Colombia resulting in only an assault on federal DEA agents and the robbery of their passports and DEA credentials was held to have a potentially adverse effect on the United States, as lawyers like to say, a fortiori, the protective principle applies all the more so in a case in which 4,000 soldiers have been killed in Iraq in a war that has cost the nation more than $1 trillion. This would certainly be deemed by any federal court to have had an extremely deleterious effect on this country. Additionally, the jurisdictional basis for the prosecution of George W. Bush in federal court would be much more robust because no part of Benitez's crimes were committed in the United States, everything was committed in Colombia. With Bush, the conspiracy to commit the murders in Iraq took place entirely in the United States."

Bugliosi described the main basis for state jurisdiction for prosecuting George W. Bush for murder. "In old common law, if two people agree to commit a crime, that was a conspiracy. But today, under federal law and in virtually every state, an agreement alone does not constitute a conspiracy. There has to be an overt act by one of the members of the conspiracy to further the object of the conspiracy. That overt act could be anything at all. Here the agreement probably would have been in the Oval Office, where Bush and his assistants like Rice and Cheney obviously conspired to go to war. But if overt acts were committed outside of the Oval Office in the various states, those states would have jurisdiction. There were two main overt acts. First were all the lies and misrepresentations that went out over radio and television into every state of the union, into the car radios and television sets in every city and state of this county. And the purpose of these misrepresentations was to get the support of the American people to go to war. The second overt act would be recruiting soldiers in the 50 states to fight Bush's war.

"These are extremely powerful overt acts. A California case, People v. Finch [213 Cal. App. 2d 752, 778 (1963)], held that a state in which an overt act is committed has jurisdiction to prosecute a conspiracy to commit murder even though the agreement was entered into outside the state.

Bugliosi discussed a related issue, "the third party innocent agent doctrine. How can Bush be guilty of murder when neither he nor any of his coconspirators killed American soldiers in Iraq? The innocent agent doctrine holds that if a principle—€”in this case Bush and his coconspirators—”deliberately set in motion something they know, absolutely know, will cause the third party innocent agent to commit an act—€”the agents would be the Iraqi insurgents or Iraqi soldiers—€”the conspirator is criminally responsible for that act. Bush, Cheney, and Rice knew that in invading Iraq this would inevitably result in American casualties. A person who sets in motion an act that he knows will cause a third person to commit an act is guilty of that act. The principal does not have to want the innocent agent to commit the act, only that he caused him to, the important word here being 'cause.' The innocent agent doctrine is even codified in several states and federally it is in Section 2(b) of Title 18 of the United States Code. The doctrine falls under the category of vicarious liability."

Bugliosi is confident that Bush can be charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder under federal and state law. "Now federally we are only talking about one prosecutor, the attorney general in Washington, D.C. There are 93 U.S. attorneys across the country, but practically speaking they are not going to bring charges against Bush without the consent of their boss in Washington, the attorney general. But on a state level, I have established jurisdiction for the attorney general in each of the 50 states or the approximately 950 district attorneys in counties within those states to prosecute Bush for the murder of any soldier or soldiers from their states or counties who died fighting Bush's war in Iraq. So we are talking about approximately 1,000 prosecutors out there on a state and local level whom I strongly believe can establish jurisdiction to prosecute George Bush for murder.

"With all those prosecutors out there, and with all the evidence of guilt that I have gathered against Bush, I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that there's at least one prosecutor in the country, maybe there's more, who is sufficiently courageous to step forward and say, hey, this is the United States of America, no man is above the law, and I'm going to go after George Bush."

Bugliosi is proud that his book not only is the first that contains "the legal blueprint for prosecuting Bush for taking this nation to war under false pretenses." He also points to the strength of the book in "putting together all the evidence in such a way that the conclusion of guilt is irresistible." He said, "To my knowledge, the two main areas of deception that Bush and his people engaged in came out for the first time in my book. These two pieces of evidence have never appeared before in any major newspaper or magazine in America."

To be continued