WHERE'S THE MONEY?

The claim that the amount of cannabis seized by federal agents had a
"street value of nearly $5 million" is absolutely bogus.

The authorities seized about $20,000 in cash back in March -- nothing
remotely close to $5 million. The $20,000 seized was apparently
operating cash that Roger Christie used to pay the rent on the
ministry offices at the Moses building in Hilo. About a four-month
reserve.

Here's the key question: If the THC Ministry is -- as the feds insist
- -- a "big drug operation," you might expect to see $5 million in cash,
property, cars, boats, planes, condos, whatever.

So where are the millions of dollars in cash and property?
Conspicuously absent.

I happen to know that Roger Christie doesn't even have health
insurance. He's a Birkenstock vegetarian who lives in a Spartan,
one-bedroom apartment. He drives a beat up, 10-year-old Dodge van, for
goodness sake.

Of course this "$5 million" number is an outrageous, trumped-up lie,
spoon-fed to gullible news consumers by cynical prosecutors. There is
evidently no money, no extravagant property, nothing except the modest
homes that people live in -- now forfeited to a Mafia-like federal
authority.

I am sickened by the persecution of Roger Christie, and all the other
people ensnared by these federal drug war careerists.

It's a classic travesty of justice. A bald rip-off staged by greedy
and out-of-control government agencies. This outrageous behavior on
the part of federal authorities only increases popular lack of faith
in the federal system.

Shame on the DEA. Shame on the federal government. Shame on the Obama
administration. Shame on the "justice" system.

Mike Aiello

Keaau