Campbell is Back in the Can

SOUP IS IN THE CAN: by Roderick Campbell, his story.

A wrongful execution always gets peoples attention. The subconscious thought is selfish, we suppose: That mistake could have been me! But the murder by inches being practiced on drug war prisoners doesnt produce the same notice. Because the years come out of a middle of life instead of the end, we rationalize: So what. He must be guilty of something! Let him pay! But one of our contributors has a story of Government fraud and treachery that has to cause the most stalwart proGovernment supporter pause. But he cant get anyone who matters to listen. Someday it might be your life, too, in the hands of the people he shows you.

The formal version of the story is at http://drrodcampbell@ aol.com/myhomepage/index.html. But the story here is complete enough to give everyone the important parts.
It begins in 1983 when Rod Campbell was Research Director for Organic Chemistry at OlinHunt Chemical Corporation in Rhode Island. After Olins recent merger with Hunt, Olin had sent Campbell a telegram calling his latest manufacturing process devilishly clever and inviting him to become the manager of the Special Chemical Division in Rennsaleer, New York.

To do so, Campbell had to divest a consulting and laboratory business that he had retained from before joining Hunt. He found a buyer in one Alan Woodman, a former Economics Laboratory salesman turned chemical broker, who was a customer of the laboratory. In order to revitalize the business for sale, they went together to American Optical Corporation and obtained a letter of intent and initial purchase order for $500,000 a year for the chemical that turns eyeglasses blue in sunlight.

Campbell took Woodman on the rounds of introduction to the other consulting customers. After they began to work together, it came back to Campbell from his regular employees that Woodman had used some of the chemicals he had purchased from Campbell to make PCP for people in Massachusetts. Campbell had a Dutch-uncle talk with Woodman and he agreed that, for a chemist, there was no real financial reason to do illegal chemicals over legal chemicals. Woodman explained that his had been a onetime foray, done to solve money problems over a house he was building in Florida. He was wholeheartedly, he said, behind the legitimate business. So Campbell treated it as over.

Part of Mr. Campbells laboratory business involved gold refining. While Campbell was out of town on Hunt business in March of 1983, the gold he had in process lost nearly $5000 in value in just three days. The money problem this created festered because Campbell had spent all his liquid cash on the raw materials for the A.O. project and nothing had arrived from overseas. By May, the customers, Mr. and Mrs. LaChappelle of Rhode Island Precious Metals (R.I.P.M.) were dunning Campbell for money at Hunt because their business had fallen off dramatically. Finally the critical A.O. chemical came in.

On Saturday, June 3, 1983, Woodman and Campbell went to a long lunch to work out both A.O. logistics and Woodman paying Campbell for the business. Campbell cried in his beer over the nuisance and embarrassment that the LaChappelles were causing him at Hunt. Woodman had a surprise offer, Tell him Im responsible now for the debt and give him this, producing a small baggie of white powder, How do you suppose he survived when gold fell off? It was one of those portentous moments.

Leaving his common sense, and ethics, at the bar, Campbell put the powder in a two-ounce lab bottle so it wouldnt seem like a drug when he went to LaChappelles house. Unbeknownst to him, State Police had already fingered R.I.P.M. and believed Campbell was the supplier, not knowing about Woodman. Serendipity gave them their proof that day when he arrived at LaChappelles and was arrested.

The State police investigation had been extensive, but it was a zero for figuring out their case. For example, Campbell and his lawyer listened to over 400 hours0 of Campbell on Hunt tapes without anything incriminating. When Attorney Dave Martin for Mr. LaChappelle (now U.S. Magistrate) asked the prosecutor why everyone had to keep listening, the prosecutor answered, Because the last call on the last tape is going to send Dr. Campbell away for twenty years. When the last call was played, it turned out that it was Campbells fiance on June 23rd asking if Campbell was coming over to her house, and not Dorothy LaChappelle, as the prosecutor thought, hoping for drugs. The tapes were never used.

Knowing how weak his case for conspiracy was, but not caring why, State Police Detective Gerald Prendergast enlisted LaChappelles nephew, Larry Bates, to plant some PCP in Campbells house one Saturday in January 1984. Unfortunately for the detective, bad weather caused him to drop Larry off so close to the house that they were both seen. Campbells fiance lambasted Larry for his motives as soon as he came in the door.

I think we ought to search him, she said, as Larry bee lined to the bathroom and locked himself inside. Watched like a hawk, Larry was eventually returned to West Warwick.

On the following Mondays evening news, there was Larry being brought to Court for the kidnapping and sexual assault of Donna Barribeault. It was not shown on television when, at State Police, he screamed, You cant blame me. I did what you wanted me to do! It was Rod that was supposed to be set up, not me. I had to swallow the bag!!! When Campbell two days later learned what Larry had said, Campbell went to Channel 12, WPRI.

Channel 12 people wouldnt let him look at the socalled bulk tape. Instead, they referred him to the station attorney, David Carroll of the Edwards & Angel law firm, who said, Off the record, Rod, you dont think that tape still exists, do you? There was the TV station destroying evidence in a criminal case. Attorney Carroll was more candid than most attorneys would be because he is the brother of Campbells original business partner. The final outcome was already in the handwriting on the wall; it was only Campbell who couldnt see it.

At trial, the powder that half-filled the two-ounce powder jar On June 23 now needed a four-ounce jar to hold it. In the same evidence room a year prior a miracle occurred for Mr. Gallego who had when found a different set of lock on his briefcase when it was brought into court (different from those in his arrest photos.

Campbell made sure Governor Bruce Sundlun learned of his own suspicions and the Governor eventually refused to re-appoint Lt.

Leon Blanchette, the evidence room officer in his case, to continue with the State Police beyond his twenty-year retirement. By this time, though, the State had made the La Chappelles into its lapdogs; Campbell was the scapegoat for a good deal in court. The judge pronounced twenty years for Campbell, but nine for all of LaChappelles counts of indictment. After the appeals were exhausted and news interest died down, he reduced the sentence to 12 years on Campbells pro se motion for leniency.

Campbell surrendered to serve his sentence in 1987. He threw himself into legal work, for his own sake of course, but then because it was the only undertaking for which any prison has adequate resources. He sued, for example, over the Larry Bates episode and temporarily put the State of Rhode Island into $ 6,000,000 supersedeas default bond until Judge Pettine conveniently dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim!!! Regardless of setbacks, after six years Attorney Merlyn OKeefe, a lawyer for one of the people Campbell was helping, introduced himself with a story to share from a recent cocktail hour: I says your to meet you, he said, The Attorney General says youre the most vicious writwriter they ye ever bad to deal with. Thought you might want to know. Campbell considered it high praise.

In March of 1992, Campbell was released on parole, family-less, moneyless, employmentless. He moved in with a friend who offered a gracious favor and began job hunting. For a time he worked the video business of another friend because it might offer the opportunity to rebuild a relationship with his former fiance, who ran her own video business. Eventually, he got real. He located a
research position with a Cambridge, Massachusetts, thinktank company called Spectra Science Corporation. He became their Director of Synthetic Research, making laser dyes for military and civilian applications. When the company sent a sample of Campbells Lambda 2 laser dye to Bolle Optical in France, for example, it was the only sample Monsieur Passaquay, Bolles own research director, would talk about, calling it the superb ruby.

When Spectra Science decided to scale up its research products to development size, this meant testing the dyes in polycarbonate plastics like those used in helmet visors for fighter pilots to keep them from being blinded. Campbell went to Acme Machinery in Spencer, Massachusetts, in search of equipment, which brought him close to Woodmans parents home. Campbell was curious to learn why Woodman had never pursued the business they had worked so hard to cement. He had dropped out of sight for obvious reasons, but never resurfaced. A newspaper story in late 1990 was the only news about him: Woodman had picked up his own PCP case. Campbell presumed he had gone to jail, but his parents would still be living in Spencer. Imagine Campbells surprise when Woodman came around the corner himself.

By way of explanation, he displayed his bypass surgery scar and apologized profusely for not helping Campbell over all those years. He then proceeded to plumb Campbells mind for legal and prison hints, and most of all for ways to make money to pay his legal and medical bills. Fellow prisoners will know what happened next, but not how Campbell reacted. First, Woodman encouraged Campbell to visit, for fellow pariahs

should flock together and all that. Then he had something to offer to Campbells employer:

His brotherinlaw was vice president of the SafeFlex Division of Monsanto Chemical in Springfield, Massachusetts. Spectra Science was attempting to get Monsanto to jointresearch dyes which would reduce the infrared heat coming through window glass. This became Woodmans justification for still more contact. He came to Spectra Science for a business meeting with management, but a tape of the meeting is said to have malfunctioned.

Finally, Woodman began to complain that he was badly in debt and desperately needed to do some thing. In spite of having met with Spectra Science over Monsanto, though, be never did anything to arrange a meeting with Monsanto. Instead be showed Campbell the most. recent edition of a West Publishing law book to persuade him that they could make P2P, which is pot to be confused with the PCP mentioned earlier, and that it would he legal to do so. Campbell politely refused. Put the no answer wasnt acceptable to Woodman, and be raised the P2P subject as often as he dared without appearing rash. What he pawned off casually at first, progressively became very important, essential for me, and ultimately, I had to: tell my people your name because I took their money.

Meantime, Campbell wasnt stupid in the cat and mouse game. He went to the U.S. District Court, where Woodman had his case. Why cant L find U.S. v. Woodman in the card index? he asked of the asked clerk with the now exploding-head. It tool a whisper conference of clerks to decide to send their heartiest to deal with Campbell. Why do you want U.S. v. Woodman? I clerk for Attorney Paul Lancia, Campbell half-white lied. Oh, Clerk said, and produced a binder. The binder only had two pages of docket entries, stamped SEALED.

When temporizing and several more nos failed to stop Woodman from asking for P2P, Campbell decided to send a message to his kind Government. When Woodman picked up some glassware in Connecticut in behalf of Sectra Science, he used the flavor as a claim to quid pro quo. Cambell gave Woodman a one cc sample. Back in the surveillance van that night, the Kel-mike preserved the glee of the agents anxious to check it out. Sniff, sniff.. .WOW! that is some powerful shit: WOWWW! ! ! How the fuckkk do chemists manage to work with this staff? Uggh.. my eyes! Ive got to get out of here... uggghh! As the footfalls show, the glee was short lived.

There is no record of what the D.E.A. chemist in New York, Jack Fasaniello, said when he opened the sample. Apparently, the agents didnt presume to tell him anything, however, because he later explained how he had to bang his head several time on his gas chromatograph to numb it. Later in the investigation he is recorded saying, That stuff! That stuff. You better not ever give me any shit like that again, or else!

Campbell had teargassed them all with a Class A chemical agent used by the Government itself; there was no P2P. Fasaniello especially should have known better, both for being a chemist and for knowing Campbell personally. Years earlier, R.S.A. Chemical Corporation had referred a customer to Campbells company to make 4Hydroxydiethyltryptamine and, against Campbells wishes, his businesspartner cousin had taken a deposit. But the company had written the D.E.A. in New York to be certain the work was legal. Fasaniello had been pretty well embarrassed when he came to Rhode Island; the newspaper was saying Big Investigation, But Was The Stuff Illegal? No!

Burned again, agents evidently told Woodman to be wary of anything liquid. But his desperation wasnt financial. . . it was to please his masters and save his. . . soul? According to Woodman, the world now desperately needed? Quaaludes? Remember when you made the blue jean dye in 1976? What did you do with the extra anthranilic acid?

Obsession begets obsession, we suppose, and that was why Woodman was calling Campbells job a nauseous three times a day. Finally, to end the calling, Campbell said he could have a sample. Great, Ill split the distance to Restaurant 99 in Milford, responded Woodman. After Campbell delivered the sample down the Mass Pike, the phone calling stopped until. . . . .
Achoo! Are you sure this, achoo, stuff is still, achoo, achoo, oh fuckkk, all right? Achoo, achoo! (Background achoos). My people in New York say it wont make anything. Well, its been in storage for over ten years, Campbell answered, Who can say? It is what it is. I knew it was an acetanilide sneezing powder. The phones went silent, but. .

Youre fired. Ive learned things and youre fired, said Campbells boss. Ah, unemployed and bankrupt; just the way the D.E.A. likes em. Get me 50,000 to build a lab, Campbell told Woodman, and Ill fill the Pacific Ocean with P2P for you. (But he told two people what he really had in mind.) Woodman now introduced Campbell to a member of the organization, Undercover Agent Vinnie Kelly. After all your shit, were going to need a real sample first, said Kelly, Jack (now named as the organizations clandestine chemist) is pretty pissed. No more experimenting! All right, Campbell retaliated, Ill make it by the catpiss method; youll like it... I dont care how you make it. But you heard Jack; dont screw up.

Agent Kelly had orders to ingratiated himself into seeing Campbells laboratory location, where he thought he would get more evidence by talking about drugs for his recorder and watching Campbell work, but.

At least a thousand pounds of quaalude on top of the P2P, youll be rich! Kelly spieled on and on. Uninspired, Campbell warned, It might get a little rough in here, since we dont have the right equipment thanks to you folks. He unscrewed the cap to a tenpound bottle of bromine. Woodmans chemisttrained eyes widened to cokebottle dimensions with awareness, as the bloodbrown vapor preceded the dense liquid out of the bottle. He moved hastily walked to just outside the doorway of the small room where Campbell and Kelly still stood. Oblivious, Kelly continued to talk sugarplums into his recorder. Then a breeze from the open window at Campbells back delivered the first vapor to Kellys region of space, just as he finished an extralong sentence.

So you. . . , he tried to continue, Yccch. . . hack, hack hack. . . eloop. . , yulp. . , slursh. . what the, . hack, loop, Ive got to get out!!! With informant in tow, or the other way around, Kelly bolted for the outside door. Hes crazy, he told Woodman, but neither ever entered a Campbell lab again.

A few days later, Campbell met with Kelly. Heres your sample. Sorry it all fits in a teaspoon, but your stingy people wont give me any money to build a proper lab. Kelly said, If the sample passes, the money will flow like honey, but once outside the door he continued, but the money will be my bonus and the cuffs will come out, no doubt, for you sucker. (By now the astute reader realizes this is abbreviated storytelling because no D.E.A. agent has ever been this eloquent). Eventually, Campbell got the answer on his sample.

Approved!? Thats great, but I never changed my method to catpiss. With just a little better technique it must have worked out. Whatever, said Kelly, just keep doing the same thing. Heres $2,000. I know its shabby, but so was your sample. $2,000? Campbell thought, what the hell am I supposed to do with $2,000?

The idea had been to get the money and expose them; but $2,000 wasnt newsworthy. Campbell was certain that he had been given money for nothing and he really did need to start a business. So he tried to tough it out. Fasaniello had thought his analysis would be the end of the investigation; but Campbells real business plans had caused him to locate a partner, Harold Farrell, who became another person to investigate and so the investigation continued.

Campbell stalled Kelly for over a month now, while he set up a real laboratory and tried to get orders. It was the old Catch 22: he could have business if he had a laboratory so that he was real; he could have a laboratory if he had the business to be real. The business proved very tough to start. So the phony P2P was still the companys only product after the month was up. Both Campbell and his partner believed P2P was not a controlled substance, so what the hell, just so long as nobody could make a real drug.

Fasaniello had insisted on an apple blossom smell; so Campbell gave him a perfume based on 40% benzylacetate (banana oil) and ten other chemicals. All the manufacturing was really just bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. A technician learned to do chlorination reactions and make Grignard Reagent, oblivious like everyone else except Campbell that the product was being made into benzyl alcohol. Were only going to pay you when your stuff is approved by New York, insisted Kelly. But New York approved almost everything. Campbell began to wonder if they really were just stupid drug dealers.

It all gelled when the judge told the jury, and you will convict Mr. Campbell for any amount of P2P that is detectable by scientific method in his sample, so no matter how small. A jury, believing 750 part per million was a slap-on-thewrist offense, did just that. Campbell had been livid at trial when he saw the textbook-quality chromatogram (i.e., analysis) for the cat-piss reaction he knew he had never run. And he thought he knew where 750 ppm in the other samples came from, too. But he was powerless when the judge pronounced 24 years. He must have been a much more terrible bad man than we thought, Campbell imagines the jurors rationalizing at their newspaper, Lordy heavens, that nice judge man knows better than we do. Campbell was screwed. The people he had told thought he had used them as foils, and with P2P in the samples, he couldnt prove otherwise.

Months later, deep in appeal, Campbell was still saying, Those lying bleeps ! There must be something to trip them up. He was listening to the ultra-hightechnology undercover recording again of r rhr. crrrhr .crqrcheek .n! Kelly leaving the lab on March 2 with a sample: Curr (door slam) (ass squiggling on car seat) Four is clear scree Did the doc (unintel) hrr Yeah, I got one (unintel) (unintel) (2minutes fractured radio talk) (new voice). Enough chatter (unintel) ovr scrrh Health rrr rrchr (unintel) and go home.

Health lab, he said, Health Lab. They took the sample to the Rhode Island Department of Health Laboratory!! Bingo!

When the Rhode Island Freedom of Information request came back, it was an epiphany: There was an analysis for every sample! So why wasnt there a cat-piss analysis among them? Why was the Health Lab calling 4-methylacetophenone P2P? And, while were asking, why wasnt there any peak in the chromatograms for P2P at all!? Tilt! Tilt!

Because he had to be sure, Campbell conference-called the Health Laboratory with his attorney. Together they confirmed that the lab had screened all the samples in the case with the
same method of analysis used by the D.E.A. lab. (It was later determined that the similarity was identical to using the same instrument and chromatography columns). Dept. of Health chemist Juan Canerjo was proud that their analyses separated the chemicals in Campbells mixtures 150% better than the D.E.A.s work.

This quality made the difference between D.E.A. Sample 1 and

D.0.H. Sample 1 all the more telling:

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE IS MY ATTEMPT AT SCANNING AND COPYING THE MASS SPECTROGRAPH OF CAMPBELL'S CLEAN SAMPLE, WHICH TURNED UP DIRTY AT THE NYC FBI LAB. (I COULDN'T STICK IT INTO THE WORD DOCUMENT--IF YOU KNOW HOW, COULD YOU PLEASE E-MAIL ME.)

Sample 1 D.E.A.

TIC ofCH9lOOOlXl7. d
A5299; Run at 08:57 AM EST on Wed Mar 17, 1993
Abandancc

Beginning at 5.33 minutes, the peaks in the D.O.H. analysis have been identified as 4-chlorobutane-l-acetate, 2- or 3-methylacetophenone (6.20), 4-methylacetophenone (6.50), benzylacetate (6.85), unknowns (toluic derivatives suspect), and bibenzyl (10.81). There may also be brominated substances. Scan 207, 4-methylacetophenone, was wrongly identified as P2] in this analysis. [SEE SCAN AT BOTTOM OF ESSAY]

And there was no peak corresponding to the true P2P peak to be found in any D.0.H. chromatograms. Campbell said, My Congressman will hear about this! Thank you, Mr. Long (Administrative Aide to Representative Jack Reed) for reviewing my letter. I am certainly glad to finally be able to speak with someone. Click! The next day: This number is not available at the request of the subscriber.

Dear Mr. Borstein (Inspector General of the United States):
Enclosed please find my sworn criminal complaint describing the crimes of perjury, evidence-tampering, obstruction of justice, manufacture of controlled substances, and distribution of controlled substances to a United States District Court. I accuse D.E.A. Chemist Jack Fasaniello of committing these crimes for the investigation and prosecution of Criminal Case No. 930049 in the District of Rhode Island. You will find these offense completely substantiated from the data enclosed. . . .

Hello, Im calling to follow up on the status of a sworn criminal complaint that I submitted to the Inspector General a month ago. I havent received any response and .yes. What? Submit a Freedom of Information Request for my own complaint??

Thats ridiculous. It takes a year and
. Click.
Campbell tried a different tact. Every city with a population greater than 1,000,000 people seats a special grand jury to investigate crimes. A little known law, 18 U.S.C. 3332, allows ordinary citizens to tell that grand jury about suspected crimes at least in theory. So Campbell mailed his sworn criminal complaint and evidence to Foreman, Special Grand Jury for the Southern District of New York.

His mail was intercepted by the United States Attorneys Office and returned by a summer intern employee. He remailed with a cover letter addressed specifically to Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney for that District, advising her of his reasons and the Districts own law on the subject. Again, it was returned by the summer intern.

He sent the complaint and evidence to the Honorable John E. Sprizzo, a Southern District Judge. Judges may make submissions to the grand jury under another provision of the statute. The Judge returned the papers saying he could not become involved .

When Campbell finally submitted a habeas corpus application to raise this and other matters wrong with his case, it too was a study in judicial obfuscation. First, the Court accused him of being late. It took nearly a year to resolve that matter. Then the Government pretended that the analysis differences made no legal difference (P2P was supposed to be one peak in the D.E.A. chromatograms, but a different peak in the D.0.H chromatograms created the same way.??? This is scientifically impossible and deserves a dumbdog look. Campbell now wrote a demolishing sworn Traverse which reduced the Government logic to ridicule. The Court reacted by refusing to file the Traverse or its supporting exhibits. In retrospect, it could not because Campbell had sworn by the Traverse that he had pulled the Woodman case file in order to counter the continuing allegation that he wanted to make good P2P. He had never recognized it before, but that act had made the Court a material party to the case itself, and would divest it of jurisdiction to have heard the case in the first place!!!!

What more convincing proof do we need that courts themselves are a part of the prosecution and then the cover-up in the drug war?