The LongBow Papers

Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Monday, November 29, 2004

WOW Is Coming In Spits and Spurts, But It Is Coming...

1:32 PM

WOW: We Observe the World, the blog and online news magazine produced by the students of the Journalism Department at the Beijing Foreign Studies University has a number of new posts up. You will find fresh perspectives on issues such as: the Six-Party Talks, the Middle East after Arafat, hard times in the Chinese residential real estate market, corruption in the Chinese Football Association, the state of Chinese music publishing, modern classic movie reviews, and a whole lot more.

Please forgive our lapse in publishing, but growing pains are, well, growing pains, and we are definitely growing, if in spurts.

As to my posting in these pages, it has been sparse; I continue to be busier than any law should allow, but it is mostly all of the good kind of busy, so I am not whining, only explaining.

There has been far more interest in the O.J. Simpson murder case than I would have imagined; consequently, I will be posting further pieces of my somewhat unique experiences with the case that have not previously been published, and answering questions publicly that I have never answered before, when I can. A new installment should be up soon.

1:32 PM / Editor / permalink 1 comments

Monday, November 22, 2004

Bosco Spills the Beans on O.J. Simpson Case

2:01 AM

A very public part of my past has taken on new life in our blog circles: my involvement with the O.J. Simpson murder case. As you know from earlier posts, this new eruption started over at The Peking Duck and quickly developed an amazing comment string. Although a story of mine written years ago was the catalyst for it, I have not been able to participate as much as I would have liked to due to other writing projects.

It has become so unwieldy, however, with a lot of uninformed commentary from people whom know me for the most part only through my books or television, that I am bringing it out for open discussion in these pages instead of in a comment string. If you have no interest in a ten-year-old murder case, please forgive this indulgence; if you do have interest, but do not know what has been said so far, the links are provided for you to catch up. Therefore, to wit:

Trial of the Century Folks: I am sorry that there seems to be a problem leaving comments at The LongBow Papers; I can't imagine what is wrong, since I am getting comments (how many I'm missing I do not know). I do know there is a lengthy and erratic lag-time between posting a comment and it actually appearing on the site as Mario reported. This lag forced Mario to leave the same comment several times because he couldn't tell if his comment "stuck." I don't know what to say but please try again, my friend.

To Jasper (and Susan Moore from Court TV website) specifically, and others in general:

Very briefly I will address yours and apparently Susan's "problem" with the Wasz/Kardashian/O.J. scenario here. I have long considered writing another piece on the matter, particularly now that Bill is free, but I am deadline-jammed on other publishing projects and discretionary time is at a premium. I will give it a couple of hours of work and see how far we get.

Foreword to a Sweeping, but Indisputable Statement:

What most folks don't know is that after instantly understanding the importance of Det. Tom Lange's tip that Bill Wasz's notebook was genuine and that it had not been in his possession since his arrest almost six months prior to the Bundy murders (I was part of the Simpson press corps who were told just the opposite by both sides in the summer of '94 when the notebook story first broke), starting in late 1996, I worked the Wasz angle with Bert Luper and Bill Hodgman for almost two years out of my own pocket before I took the almost completed story to Time Magazine. Then, with its resources, we worked it all the more deeply and thoroughly.

We were greatly helped by a top-notch private investigation firm we could afford with Time's budget. I am not talking about one of your run-of-the-mill one-man private eye companies; while I will not reveal its name under these conditions, I can say it specializes in high-tech corporate and civil lawsuit work such as the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Vegas and the silicon breast-implant case. They are very, very good at what they do.

With all of the above as background, I can categorically write the following: Everything Bill Wasz said about his activities with Kardashian and O. J. Simpson in the late fall of 1993 that was material or relevant to the issue and was possible to corroborate, checked out to be true. Everything. Period. Amongst the people that know, including past and current members of the Robbery/Homicide division of the LAPD, past and present members of the Los Angeles District Attorneys' Office, and a little more than a handful of other folks who were involved in the Wasz investigation with me, there is no dispute over the events in Bill's story.

However, there is and always will be one crucial fact that cannot be corroborated now by anyone (Kardashian recently died): Exactly what Robert Kardashian said to Bill in his rented Encino home one day in mid-December 1993. Since only Kardashian and Wasz were present, it is impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Kardashian asked Bill Wasz to kill Nicole Brown Simpson for a fee.

Certainly from all of the internal logic and circumstantial evidence we can strongly argue that Kardashian did in fact solicit murder, but we cannot prove it with physical evidence. That is why there are special rules of evidence in conspiracy cases.

Bill Hodgman's fervent desire during those days was that we get just enough to indict Kardashian on solicitation of murder with the belief that he would flip on O.J. and associates in a plea-bargain. I had no doubt that Kardashian would do exactly that. He had a history of close associates doing his prison time.

No one who has worked with the actual evidence, police interview notes, police reports, phone records, etc., doubts that Bill Wasz:

Sold small amounts of cocaine to Simpson and Kardashian in the fall of 1993;

Conducted surveillance of Nicole Brown Simpson for two consecutive days in early December during which he made written notes of where she went, and took pictures of her embracing an African-American man that was not O.J.;

Deliberately stole Paula Barbieri's Toyota SUV from a pre-arranged site;

Went into a self-destructive crime spree in the Toyota virtually guaranteeing apprehension immediately after telling Kardashian at gunpoint that he was taking the money and the Toyota but wasn't killing anyone, which, along with ripping off his cocaine wholesaler, made his odds of staying alive on his own on the outside more than a little long;

Was arrested in Newport Beach while attempting to flee on foot the scene of a crash of the Barbieri Toyota with a private automobile as a result of a high-speed police chase through the streets of downtown Newport Beach, doing so with a leg wound from a .357 magnum pistol that fired accidentally at the moment of collision;

Left a notebook with the Nicole Brown Simpson surveillance notes in the Toyota that was found within minutes of his arrest and handcuffing some 100 yards or so from the vehicle he never had access to again.

It is more than just interesting that Paula Barbieri refused to testify against Wasz for Grand Theft Auto, leaving the Orange County prosecutor dumbfounded, angry and suspicious.

When he was interviewed six-months later by a series of detectives about the Bundy murders Wasz gave up Kardashian's name consistently--and has ever since--even though the ex-con instinct within him knew that dropping O.J.'s name just once would have gotten him an instant ticket from Marcia Clark to a cushy spot in a witness program in Los Angeles.

There is another item that people need to know that helps explain why Bill Wasz was able to connect with high rollers; Bill had previously worked as an "enforcer" for an extremely successful Hollywood producer and Big Name money Player in the biz that I will not identify here.

Does Bill Wasz know anything about the events at Bundy on that bloody, busy night in June 1994? No. That is why I have always called my reporting of the Wasz story, "The Man Who Did Not Kill Nicole Brown Simpson," even though editors always changed it to something else. Of all the people associated with the case, we know for an absolute fact that Bill Wasz could not have killed anyone that night because he was in jail.

Does his story shed great light on the case? Absolutely. Exactly what? Ahh...there is where it becomes fun. Ladies and Gentlemen, the O.J. Simpson murder case is one of the best ever for nuance, complexity and human machinations.

Contrary to what many people believe, I did not "quit" the Simpson case--however, I did nothing to disabuse people from that belief, I readily confess. And I did go on with my life and work, but I have always kept the case simmering slowly on a back burner of my consciousness, coming out full-bore, but quietly, whenever I learned something new from a wide circle of sources.

For the first time publicly I will say this much: At least half of my work on the case I have not published anywhere, by choice, yet.

Based upon some the comments in the long string of comments at The Peking Duck, I think I need to briefly add a couple of nuggets:

Yes, I spoke with O.J. at length about the Wasz/Kardashian story. During a very surreal, lengthy conversation, O.J. kept trying to control the chat with his idea of fixing me up with Gretchen Stockdale, always saying something like: "Ah, Joe, I'm pretty upset with his (sic) book [American Tragedy] but I don't believe he would've done anything like that [Kardashian hire Wasz to kill Nicole]...but, I'm tellin' ya, Gretchen talks about you, she wants to take your course at UCLA, she's hot..." etc., etc.

Yes, O.J.'s inner circle was presented with everything in our Wasz case file. Of particular importance was a long session we had with Kathy Randa, O.J.'s secretary, and Kardashian's former secretary. She believed it all, and corroborated some matters further; she then recanted emotionally after others placed much pressure upon her.

Yes, Kardashian was called and advised that we were going to print with the story and would he like to comment. He screamed that he was going to sue, of course.

Yes, the investigation had an affect upon our subjects: O.J. and Kardashian had a shouting match, each accusing the other of "setting" him up with the Wasz investigation

Yes, Jasper, I did e-mail your site once and only once. It was about two or three months ago. It was a brief note to tell you that you are barking up a live--but ancillary--tree with your Fuhrman as murderer scenario. Let me suggest some areas you should look into:

Ten years before the murders at Bundy, Fuhrman first rented, then bought a home in Redondo Beach that was directly across the street--a single family, residential street--from a home that a company owned by O.J. Simpson and Robert Kardashian used in the production of pornographic films. This activity continued up to and well beyond the Bundy murders.

Please, tell me the statistical probability of the above happening coincidentally in a county the size and population of Los Angeles.

Jasper, Mark Fuhrman was very much involved with O.J. Simpson's life and business for at least a decade before the murders. I am not talking about responding to spousal abuse calls as a patrol cop, either. (Oh, what "assertion" about a Bruno Maglis comment coming from either Denise or Dominique are you talking about? Most of the civil trial testimony mercifully escapes me these days.)

"Following the money" is a good idea in any investigation. We did and we learned almost everything we needed to know, in time. For starters, follow: "R & R Entertainment," or many derivations of "R & R." There are literally dozens of such fictitious dba's registered to Simpson and Kardashian, that include nonexistent agents and partners with nonexistent phone numbers and street addresses. Mr. Simpson and Mr. Kardashian were apparently involved in lucrative, illegal activity for many years, mostly involving pornographic film production and distribution, and sports gambling. I wish you easier hunting than I had; the records at the county courthouse were not digitized or even microfiched when I went through them day after day in the late 90's.

There is so much more, but I should stop here for the time being, except for a closing caveat or two:

Don't let the physical evidence be the basis for concrete theories. As most of you know, I learned my forensics under Dr. Henry Lee. The Bundy crime scene, like almost all of the case, is not what it seems to be, on several different levels, mostly by design, but a significant part is due to the vagaries of bad luck and timing. That crime scene was not only tampered with, different people tampered with it at different times and for very different reasons. That was one busy crime scene BEFORE the police arrived "officially." Consequently, tread lightly when you swear by the physical evidence of that night unless you really understand the case long before it came down to that goddamn bloody shame.

Also, never forget that whatever happened that ugly night, perpetrated by whomever, there was at least one double cross planned and executed. Someone, a female, called the West L.A. Division station house at 10:30 and asked the desk sgt. if they were sitting on two stiffs in Brentwood? Some one wanted the police on scene much earlier than they actually were. Perhaps before O.J.'s plane left?

The Bundy murders were part of a complex plan, which not all co-conspirators knew completely--on purpose.

Remember that the "plan" only partly revealed to Bill Wasz back in December 1993 also was complicated with certain parts making little sense because the shell-game-with-patsy being set up was derailed when Bill went off on Kardashian.

There is enough to chew on for awhile, I hope.

2:01 AM / Editor / permalink 19 comments

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Shrub? You're Back? Okay, So Am I, with Friends...

6:28 PM

Alright, I've moped around long enough. It is now time for me to get back into the good fight of taking my America back from the hands of those who would have us merrily carol our way back into the dark ages when there were such things as the Hayes Committee and Standards and Practices--before your time? Google them both and you will see what your future will be like if the "moral values" crowd truly does have little jesus's ear and gullet on the direct hot-line.

But enough of that. The above was just me warming up to posting again; it was also an attempt to hook you into reading Nicholas Kristof's column in today's The New York Times. It has scant to do with the "morals" aspect of the great divide in our country, unless you think the casualties of wars of choice are a moral issue. I like it so much I have reproduced it in its entirety below.

Having crushed the resistance in Falluja, President Bush is now trying to do the same at the State Department and the C.I.A.

Colin Powell may have "resigned," but don't kid yourself - the White House didn't want him. Mr. Powell's own statement said that he and Mr. Bush "came to the mutual agreement that it would be appropriate for me to leave at this time."

The real winner in this foreign policy wrestling match is Dick Cheney. One of his former aides, Stephen Hadley, will now be the national security adviser, and Condoleezza Rice was run over so many times by Mr. Cheney in the first term that she'll be docile at State.

In a conversation with the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, Mr. Powell once referred in frustration to Mr. Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz as "[expletive] crazies," according to a recent British biography of Tony Blair. Mr. Powell had a point, but they're getting the last laugh.

The central question of President Bush's second term is this: Will he shaft his Christian-right supporters, since he doesn't need them any more, and try to secure his legacy with moderate policies that might unite the country? Or, with no re-election to worry about, will he pursue revolutionary changes on the right? To me, it looks increasingly like the latter.

Many liberals are still enraged at Mr. Powell for misleading the world about Iraqi W.M.D. in his U.N. speech. Fair enough. But wait six months, and they'll fervently wish they had him back. The reality is that Mr. Powell was a voice of reason in foreign policy discussions ranging from Pakistan to Venezuela. Without him, foreign relations would have been even more catastrophic.

On North Korea, Iraq and Europe, Mr. Powell was like the man in the circus who follows the elephants, cleaning up their messes. Yet his even more useful role in the administration was not sensible diplomacy. It was his willingness to disagree, to offer another viewpoint. He pushed back.

Condoleezza Rice is smart, diligent and honest, but she has zero record of pushing back. And that's what Mr. Bush needs - somebody besides Laura who will tell him when he's about to do something stupid.

He needs lots of those somebodies in the intelligence community, whose crucial role is not so much to steal secrets abroad but to resist political pressures at home and offer unwelcome analyses. That will be much less likely now that heads are rolling down the corridors of the C.I.A.'s directorate of operations.

It's fair to replace Mr. Powell, a political appointee, but the spies being pushed out at Langley are career professionals. The intelligence community's best assets aren't those spying for us in foreign capitals, but the thousands of Americans at the C.I.A., the D.I.A., the N.S.A. and the rest of the alphabet soup of spookdom. Their morale - already bad - will suffer a further dive, along with their effectiveness.

So what should we expect in a second term?

A squeeze on North Korea The hawks have been impatient with what they see as the coddling of North Korea, and unless there is progress soon, there will be a push to get tougher and apply sanctions.

A continued embrace of Ariel Sharon With Mr. Powell out, there will be no one in the administration pushing Mr. Bush toward a more balanced policy. Tony Blair will try, but he's too far away.

A collision with Iran When Iran's new agreement with Europe on curbing its nuclear programs falls apart, the U.S. will resume its push for regime change in Iran (ironically, pushing for regime change in Iran and Cuba is what keeps those regimes in power). Then the U.S. will discuss whether to look the other way as Israel launches airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

Dithering on Darfur Mr. Powell traveled to Darfur, proclaimed the slaughter there to be genocide and quietly pushed within the administration to get some action. I wish he had done much more, but, by contrast, the White House has been lackadaisical.

A litmus test of foreign policy prospects will be whether John Bolton, a genial raptor among the doves at State, is promoted to be its deputy secretary. For liberals who have been wavering on whether to move to New Zealand, that would be a sign to head for the airport.

The New York Times

6:28 PM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Talking About O.J. (Redux)

8:01 PM

While I have been consumed by writing and editing in mediums other than these pages for some weeks now, a post referring to my days covering the O.J. Simpson case at Richard's The Peking Duck attracted a number of people who remain interested in the case, some of whom were also involved in the case in one form or another. The comments string it developed is rather amazing, to say the least.

Richard was kind enough to forward the string to me at different times over the several weeks I've been away from these pages, so I have mostly been able to follow it. Since a number of the questions and issues in the comments were directed towards me, for some time now I have been thinking I should put up a post to accommodate them here. Well, I'm finally getting a round tuit.

Welcome...(Again)

8:01 PM / Editor / permalink 22 comments

WOW Staff Shakes Off Mid-Term Exam Crunch

2:09 AM

There is activity at WOW: We Observe the World, the weblog/online news magazine produced by the journalism students of the Beijing Foreign Studies University.

After a week's dose of exam-crunch that precluded any posting, this experiment in J-school blogging in China is cranking up again. Stop by and have a look.

2:09 AM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

I Want to Introduce You to a Friend of Mine

1:03 AM

There's a man and a website I want to introduce you to. He's a friend of mine. In many ways one could say he was just about the closest friend I had over much of the last ten years of my life. He's a big, tall man from Virginia. He has a smile all his own. His name is Bill Wasz, in formal circles he is William Benson Wasz, but Bill is his handle. Interesting is his life. Compelling is his vision, often raw is his message.

I don't want to tell you much about Bill Wasz here, I've done a lot of explaining Bill and his life over the years. But I think I'll leave that up to him from now on; now that he's free to do so. Bill Wasz is a very good man who while still relatively young has lead a genuinely colorful and often star-crossed life which has afforded him perspectives on the human animal that are singular and powerful. And you should give it all a look-see; I suspect you'll learn a few things and also pass a good time.

All you need to do is click on: Bill Wasz.

1:03 AM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Saturday, November 13, 2004

To Sleep, Blog or Go Crazy (and other matters)

11:21 PM

Hi. It's been awhile. A lot has happened since I've posted in these pages with any regularity. Unfortunately, too much has not. But I shan't dwell on the chilling event of almost a fortnight back that cast a pall over everything my mind processed, not in this post, at least.

In all honesty, I cannot lay much blame for my absence in these pages on my post-election depressive lethargy. Oh, I was kicked in the gut, no doubt. But I had less than maybe 30 hours to really deal with it (yet). A literary project had to consume me for most of a week if quality of work and the reality of deadlines were to find some acceptable common ground. And then there is my teaching here at the university, which happens with punctual regularity regardless of what I'm writing.

Frankly, I was jammed and my discretionary time was down to about four or five hours out of every twenty-four: To blog or sleep those four hours or so was the question, and pretty much has been for too much of the fall. Mostly I chose sleep. And sanity, of sorts. My own brand of it anyway.

It appears that I might be coming up for air for a spell here, and I hope to post more that just a little. We shall see.

11:21 PM / Editor / permalink 0 comments

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Ouch! The truth does hurt...

7:01 PM

Karl Rove kicked our ass. There is no other way to slice it. We got an old-fashion whupping and it hurts. I, and a whole lot of people like me, just found out that we are seriously out of synch with our country. America, my beloved America come what may, is a conservative nation. I am anything but conservative. I am in the minority. The other guys are in the majority. They won. We lost. I lost. It's their country to run as they will. That's the law and it's the America way. I will honor it. I do not have to like it. Goddamn all Ghost-worshippers!

7:01 PM / Editor / permalink 2 comments

Monday, November 01, 2004

Democracy at Work in the City of Liberty

4:51 PM

The words below, written by columnist Bob Herbert in today's The New York Times, chilled me to the marrow, because I knew such people and such sentiments, but that was a long time ago in Mississippi. The villainy of the racism apparently embedded in to the current Republican Party is frightening beyond measure. Just how far back into the dark ages does the party of bush want to drag America?

Please read Mr. Herbert's column, it is reproduced here in its entirety:

Overseas, our troops are being mauled in the long dark night of Iraq - a war with no end in sight that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,100 American troops and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent Iraqis.

At home, the party of the sitting president is systematically stomping on the right of black Americans to vote, a vile and racist practice that makes a mockery of the president's claim to favor real democracy anywhere.

This will never be seen as a shining moment in U.S. history.

There is a hallucinatory quality to the news as Americans prepare to vote tomorrow in what is probably the most critical election the country has faced since 1932. Osama bin Laden made his bizarre cameo appearance on Friday, taunting the president who once promised to get him dead or alive. Commentators have been compulsively reading the tea leaves ever since, trying to determine who was helped by the video, George W. Bush or John Kerry.

On Saturday, as if to take our minds off the sideshow, nine more American marines were killed in the Iraq slaughterhouse. It was the deadliest day for U.S. forces in six months. The death toll for Iraqis, which the U.S. government has tried mightily to keep from the American people, is flat out horrifying. Unofficial estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the war have ranged from 10,000 to 30,000. But a survey conducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad compared the death rates of Iraqis before and after the American invasion. They estimated that 100,000 more Iraqis have died in the 18 months since the invasion than would have been expected based on Iraqi death rates before the war.

The scientists acknowledged that the survey was difficult to compile and that their findings represent a rough estimate. But even if they were off by as many as 20,000 or 40,000 deaths, their findings would still be chilling.

Most of the widespread violent deaths, the scientists reported, were attributed to coalition forces. "Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces," the report said, "were women and children."

That people are dying by the tens of thousands in a war that did not have to be fought - a war that was launched by the United States - is mind-boggling.

Also mind-boggling is the attempt by Republican Party elements to return the U.S. to the wretched days of the mid-20th century when many black Americans faced harassment, intimidation and worse for daring to exercise their fundamental right to vote. A flier circulating extensively in black neighborhoods in Wisconsin carries the heading "Milwaukee Black Voters League." It asserts that people are not eligible to vote if they have voted in any previous election this year; if they have ever been found guilty of anything, even a traffic violation; or if anyone in their family has ever been found guilty of anything.

"If you violate any of these laws," the flier says, "you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."

In Philadelphia, where a large black vote is essential to a Kerry victory in the crucial state of Pennsylvania, the Republican speaker of the Pennsylvania House, John Perzel, is hard at work challenging Democratic voters. He makes no bones about his intent, telling U.S. News & World Report:

"The Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia. It's important for me to keep that number down."

That's called voter suppression, folks, and the G.O.P. concentrates its voter-suppression efforts in the precincts where there are large numbers of African-Americans. And that's called racism.

These are days of shame for the United States. No one writing a civics text for American high school students would recommend this kind of behavior for a great and mighty nation. We have to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from Iraq and rebuild a truly representative democracy here at home. Right now we have a mess on both fronts.

It was Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, who said that "America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment."

That's as good a thought as any to carry with you into the voting booth tomorrow.