Pardon me: An update

Ron Kuby is the radical attorney and radio host whose praise festoons the memoir by former left-wing revolutionary Susan Rosenberg — An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country. Kuby testifies: “[T]his book is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.” Rosenberg was the partner in crime of of Judith Clark, the imprisoned woman whom I wrote about yesterday in “Pardon me.”

It was the publication of Rosenberg’s memoir that prompted George Russell to write the brilliant Commentary essay “The other Rosenberg case.” Please read it. Russell found Rosenberg’s book to be a “deeply disingenuous and misleading memoir.”

Kuby emerged yesterday to comment on my post. Kuby wrote in defense of Rosenberg: “[Y]our statement ‘Susan Rosenberg…served as the getaway team for the BLA in a string of bank robberies in which people were killed’ is false and defamatory. Rosenberg was never convicted of being part of any getaway team, any bank robbery, or any murder. In the interests of factual accuracy, please remove that reference.” Close readers, which Kuby obviously is not, may note a hole in the chain of Kuby’s reasoning on behalf of Rosenberg. Does she have to be convicted of an act in order to have committed it? Out here in the free world, citizens are still allowed to draw inferences from known facts that may or may not have been the subject of adjudication in a criminal trial.

The statement to which Kuby objects was made by David Horowitz in his comment on the New York Times Magazine cover story that was the subject of my post. Since Kuby raised the issue, however, I quoted Jay Nordlinger from his NR article “Clinton’s Rosenberg case.” Referring to the Brink’s robbery, Jay wrote: “Rosenberg’s role in the crime was that of getaway driver and general accomplice.” And George Russell seems to be referring to the likes of Kuby, or those who might fall for his act, when he writes in the Commentary essay:

Rosenberg was a hardened member of an active terrorist organization whose members had robbed banks and armored cars; killed police and unarmed security guards; broken prisoners out of U.S. jail; helped to smuggle felons to Cuba; continued a campaign of bombing after various group members jumped bail; and they were storing large quantities of explosives and weaponry to further continue that campaign when she was apprehended. It took two more years to roll up most of the other members of the disparate and dangerous group.

Because federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District under then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani decided that they would not pursue charges for her alleged part in the Brink’s armored car robbery, Rosenberg and her lawyers have ceaselessly argued for more than two decades that the lack of a conviction is tantamount to proof of her innocence. But Justice Department officials, led by future U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, a Democrat, insisted that they had evidence Rosenberg was also involved in the 1981 robbery bloodbath. They testified to that effect every time Rosenberg had a parole hearing.

This lengthy recitation is a necessary precondition for putting in context who Susan Rosenberg really is…

These folks are engaged in a wholesale campaign to rewrite the past. In my opinion, Tom Robbins’s New York Times Magazine cover story is part of the campaign. Despite their best efforts, they really should not be allowed to get away with it.

UPDATE: Ron Radosh also goes back over this ground today in “Second thoughts on the plight of Judith Clark: An answer to my critics.”

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