The Spiders of Wall Street: Threads of History Run Through Occupy Boise

...Former Idaho Governor Steunenberg had been assassinated outside his home. The authorities went gunning for Union leaders. A lower level operative, Harry Orchard, with a long troubled record, was jailed. Orchard finally took a deal and squealed – implicating Haywood and others.

Then a former Pinkerton detective, James McParland, who had earlier infiltrated and helped bring down the Molly Maguires, aided in a kind of within-the-US-rendition of Haywood. Haywood was abducted from Colorado, and whisked to Idaho on a “special train”.

Wikipedia describes the event:

McParland then used perjured extradition papers, which falsely stated that WFM leaders had been at the scene of the Steunenberg murder,^[17] to cross the state line into Denver, Colorado and arrest Haywood, Moyer, and George Pettibone.^[6] On February 17, 1906, in what writer Peter Carlson described as a “kidnapping scheme,”^[17] McParland forced the three men onto a special train and extradited them to Idaho before the courts in Denver could intervene.^[18] The abductions were so egregious that even American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers, who had little good to say about the WFM, directed his union to raise funds for the defense.^[19] Yet a habeas corpus appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed, with only Justice Joseph McKenna dissenting.^[20]

Mother Jones autobiography describes how this train had the right of way over every other train on the line from Denver to Boise, and then:

When the men arrived in Boise, they were taken to the penitentiary and placed incommunicado. Not for days did their families and friends know of their whereabouts.

So — is this where the dark door opened by the NDAA may be headed? Outsourcing to Blackwater types government-sanctioned internal abductions on a special train?

The Spiders of Wall Street

At least Big Bill got a jury trial. Clarence Darrow was his attorney. Mother Jones attended. And the trial’s outcome stunned everyone. The Idaho jury acquitted Haywood.

Some scholars believe the verdict of the Idaho jury in the summer of 1907 is the best example of the rule of law in American history. Certainly their verdict shocked many in the court room and beyond. ...

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