I neglected to mention in my last blog that Oscar Manassa, the African American postal worker who was murdered, experienced the same vicious harassment I did for four years before he was killed. In fact this is why his legal team brought him to see me. He, too, complained of relentless prank calls, stalking, and anonymous calls to his wife that ultimately broke up his marriage. He developed classic acute stress disorder symptoms as a result of the harassment – severe insomnia, anxiety attacks, loss of motivation, memory problems and difficulty focusing. Which made it impossible for him to participate effectively in grievance hearings or his workers compensation appeal.

Unfortunately Oscar’s problems weren’t psychiatric, and my (pro-bono) professional services weren’t of much use to him. His symptoms were a natural response to genuine, life threatening stress. What ultimately helped Oscar get on top of his fear and anxiety was a six month stay with his family in Alabama. The turning point, as he described shortly before his murder, was when his mother began receiving prank calls. It was the phone calls from two anonymous males urging her to put Oscar in a mental institution that ultimately convinced his family that his claims weren’t pure paranoia – that anonymous strangers were threatening him with real harm. As commonly happens, his ordeal had to become real to his family before they could fully support him in coping with it.

Oscar returned to Seattle in March 1989 to reopen his workers compensation claim and file for reinstatement at the post office. I saw him once, to help him apply for temporary welfare benefits for the deposit on a new apartment. He was a totally different person – positive, confident and optimistic about his future. He had already seen his attorney to reopen his workers compensation claim and was doing casual labor through the Millionaire’s Club.

Oscar’s Recovery Cost Him His Life

Oscar ultimately won his workers compensation claim. His attorney received notification from the Department of Labor several weeks after his death. A clear signal for his supporters that his recovery had cost him his life. The link between his return to Seattle to resume his legal battles and his murder was undeniable. If he had remained a terrified and depressed no-hoper in rural Alabama, they would have left him alone.

It would be several years before I learned why postal workers were being systematically harassed – in some cases murdered – for filing workers compensation claims. In the end, the complex political motives behind Oscar’s murder didn’t really matter. What would change my life forever was the glimpse it gave me into an invisible intelligence-security operation very similar to Hitler’s Brownshirts. This, in turn, shattered every illusion I grew up with about democracy and the rule of law.

I could no longer escape the ugly truth that ultimate power in the US resides in a network of intelligence thugs – who answer only to an invisible elite – and who carry out extrajudicial murders of political opponents with no legal consequences whatsoever. What I find most tragic and horrifying about Oscar’s case was that he was merely politically inconvenient, as opposed to a genuine threat.

The Assassination of Domingo and Viernes

Extra-judicial assassination of political dissidents isn’t new in Seattle. In 1981 the FBI collaborated with Marcos agents (by infiltrating local 37 and monitoring the targets’ whereabouts) in the assassination of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, organizers in the Filipino cannery workers union. All this came out in the lawsuit the Domingo family filed against Marcos, the FBI and CIA.

In the 1989 trial, the jury awarded the family $32.5 million. Marcos was dead by then and his wife Imelda theoretically bankrupt. The court records are sealed, but presumably the US government paid the bulk of the award.

To be continued