Harry T. Cook

1/30/09

The legendary bank robber Willie Sutton is widely but perhaps mistakenly credited with this response to an FBI agent's question about why he robbed so many banks -- more than 100 in his long so-called career: "Because that's where the money is."

What we know to be true is that in his ghost-written biography published after his release from prison in 1969, these words concerning banks appear: "Go where the money is . . . and go there often."

Either way, Sutton's advice would be even more to the point today. The banks are where the money is -- a lot of that money, around $350 billion, poured into their coffers by the immediate past Secretary of the Treasury and his fringe of hapless ineffectuals supposedly to stave off a national financial crisis. That sure worked well.

What the banks did with the money was bank it, pay their executives and shareholders unearned but fabulous sums and sit on the rest of it like Smaug on his pile of treasure.

You can't really call it "bank robbery," but you can call it plain old robbery.

And, by the way, the banks are now screaming for more. The bank at which I do business started out more than a half century ago as "Standard Federal Savings & Loan," a relatively small, Bedford Falls, George Bailey type of institution. Eventually it morphed into Standard Federal Bank, then into LaSalle Bank and now finally it has become one of the arms of the octopus-like Bank of America. The bigger it got, the more trouble it has had staying profitable. My bank wants some more money, too, courtesy of the federal government by way of a slice of my taxes.

It might be simpler if my banker just showed up at my house wearing a Willie Sutton mask, carrying a Thompson machine gun and robbed me. No worries. Bankers seem just now to be immune from prosecution however it is they are mugging us. Other miscreants have not been stealing our money. They have been stealing our national honor. They are the ones in the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney axis of evil who trashed the Constitution's protection of unreasonable search and seizure by bugging the communications of American citizens without proper judicial leave. They are the ones who said "pfft" to the Geneva Convention's prohibition of torture and made "Abu Ghraib" and "Guantanamo" obscenities.

Phillip Butler, a retired U.S. Navy commander, has called on Congress to bring criminal charges against Bush administration officials who were complicit in violating the Constitution. Says Butler: "I served 20 years as an active duty commissioned officer. During that time, I became a naval aviator, flew combat in Vietnam, was downed over North Vietnam on April 20, 1965, and became a prisoner of war. I was repatriated on February 12, 1973, having served 2,855 days and nights as a POW -- just short of eight years. The Vietnamese were not signatories to any international treaties on treatment of prisoners. They pronounced us 'criminals' and freely used torture, harassment, malnutrition, isolation, lack of medical care, and other degradations during our captivity. I was tortured dozens of times during my captivity. But I often thought of our Constitution and the higher purpose we served -- a purpose that helped me resist beyond what I thought I'd ever be capable of. Ironically, we POWs often reminded each other that our country would never stoop to torture and the low level of treatment we were experiencing at the hands of our captors." Meanwhile, the bankers are still in business, having sent only half of their several dozen $3,000 suits to the cleaners. Those who just escaped the nation's capital without being indicted are busy trying to justify their crimes using the old "fear" motif, as in "George Bush kept us safe." I can say the same of my home. On my watch no herd of grunting gnus has invaded my living room -- before or since 9/11. Dear, sweet Justita with her comely drape, blindfold and depending scales must be doing a slow burn as the criminal element slinks out of Washington, D.C., and their friends on Wall Street clutch our dollars to their bosoms. The Egyptians of antiquity called her Ma'at, from which the term magistrate supposedly comes. It was said that Ma'at assisted Osiris in the judgment of the dead by weighing their hearts. Hmmm. The Grinch's pinhead-sized heart (prior to his conversion by the Who's down in Whoville)

would be gargantuan next to those of the millionaire bankers now gorging themselves at the public trough. I think our national torturers have no hearts at all.

What the rest of us and the world do not have is justice. It was said a decade ago by no less a paragon of virtue than Kenneth Starr that the American people deserved -- desperately needed, in fact -- justice in the matter of the impeachment trial of President Clinton, who had been party neither to robbery of the national treasury nor to the torture of human beings. I do not hear Judge Starr demanding justice now. I hardly hear anyone seriously calling for justice in these matters. I would like my children and grandchildren to know that I am calling for justice. Thus shall the U.S. senators from my home state of Michigan, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, and my representative in Congress, Gary Peters, receive copies of this essay, though I seriously doubt that their staffs will see that they are read: "Just another geezer standing in his bathrobe on the front porch shaking his fist at passing cars."

Failing attention from the congressional folk, I suppose I might threaten to set myself afire in some public square if the Justice Department does not make thorough investigations of the banks and their officers as well as of the violations of basic human rights and decency committed by persons under orders from on high. Where now is the passion that took us to the streets in the '60s against the war and for civil rights? "No justice, no peace," we used to say.

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Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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