Michelle Obama's staff questioned Secret Service about 'murdered mom'
Garth Kant
WASHINGTON – “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon (Martin),” said President Barack Obama during the investigation of the controversial shooting of the black teen in 2012.
But the name Miriam Carey has never crossed the president’s lips in public, ever since the highly questionable shooting of the unarmed, black woman by his own security forces in 2013.
Unlike the highly publicized inquiries into the shootings of Martin and Michael Brown, the president did not dispatch his Justice Department to investigate the killing of Carey by Secret Service and Capitol Police officers.
In fact, the department declined to look into any possible civil-rights violations in the deadly shooting of the 34-year-old suburban, single mother, in the shadow of the nation’s capital.
The president’s wife may have been more sympathetic to Carey’s fate.
Miriam Carey
WND has learned that first lady Michelle Obama’s own staff members did question a Secret Service officer about the shooting.
Donald Jackson, a former officer of the Secret Service Uniformed Division, told WND at least three members of the first lady’s staff asked him about the shooting of Carey.
He recalled one staffer asked him, “Did they have to shoot her? Was there no other way they could’ve stopped that vehicle without shooting her?”
Jackson said questions asked by other staffers were similar, all inquiring as to whether officers really had to shoot and kill Carey.
Federal officers chased and killed Carey after she apparently did nothing more than make a mistaken turn into a White House guard post on Oct. 3, 2013. It is apparent that Carey turned into the post by mistake, because, according to witness statements uncovered by WND and provided by Secret Service officers in the police report, the first thing Carey did after entering the area was make a U-turn and immediately try to leave.
However, inexplicably, an off-duty secret service officer in street clothes dragged a bicycle rack in front of her car to try to stop her from leaving. According to witnesses, Carey tried to drive around the rack, but he dragged it back in front of her car, she hit it, and the officer was knocked over.
Off-duty Secret Service Officer tries to block Miriam Carey from leaving White House entrance. Photo provided by U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Trying to leave the White House grounds is not illegal. Yet, for reasons never explained by officials, Secret Service and Capitol Police officers chased Carey, with her infant daughter strapped into the backseat of her car, shot her five times from the back and killed her, two blocks from the Capitol.
WND has investigated the Carey case in depth since the beginning. The stunning facts and details of the investigation are revealed in WND Books’ just released “Capitol Crime: Washington’s Cover-Up of the Killing of Miriam Carey.”
Jackson told WND he worked for the Secret Service for five years. To verify his identity, Carey family attorney Eric Sanders provided WND with a copy of Jackson’s Certificate of Graduation from the Department of Homeland Security’s (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) Uniformed Police Training Program, dated July 10, 2009.
Jackson said he resigned in April 2014, and, at the time Carey was killed, he was the “head person” working at the East gate entrance to the White House.
“The East gate was the entrance where a lot of her (the first lady’s) staff entered,” he told WND.
Jackson said, in the course of doing his job, “I would converse with them as I would check for weapons, and everything, as everybody would come through. So, I developed a pretty good relationship with a lot of her staff over three years, the time that I was there.”
The former Secret Service officer said at least three staffers asked him, “What happened?” regarding the Carey shooting.
“They knew, as an officer, I could only give limited information. Of course, I couldn’t give them too much, but they felt close to me enough to try to find out little things about what had happened,” said Jackson.
He also said they kept their inquiries to a minimum because they were talking in the open, practically in public, “But, yeah, they were pretty much questioning why that had happened.”
WND asked if there was any indication that they were expressing the feelings of the first lady and whether she had similar questions.
“That, I really couldn’t say. But it scared them,” replied the former officer.
Jackson said, when the Carey incident happened, he was in the Secret Service officers’ locker room, changing clothes and getting ready to start his shift.
He heard the Carey drama play out over the police radio.
“There was a lot of commotion,” he recalled. “I heard one of the officers say there had been a breach at one of the gates. A breach or attempted breach, but I heard breach.”
That report over the radio of a breach may have been one of the key elements in the Carey saga that triggered officers to pursue her with such ferociousness that she ended up dead.
Earlier this month, another former uniformed Secret Service officer who regularly worked at the guard gate at 15th and E streets where Carey entered told WND that wrong turns into the post occurred routinely, and officers routinely let people leave without stopping them.
That officer spoke on condition of anonymity, but WND has seen his identification badge confirming his status as a former Secret Service officer.
Police with guns drawn surround MIriam Carey on Oct. 3, 2013
The Carey incident was different, said that officer, “because the officers got emotional when that guy (an off-duty Secret Service officer) put the bike rack out and he got knocked over.”
Jackson’s contention that he heard word of a “breach” of White House security broadcast over the police radio adds credence to the claim by the Carey family that officers overreacted to the incident, unjustly and unlawfully pursuing and killing the young woman.
“So when that goes over the air, they don’t know he’s not on duty,” the anonymous officer told WND, referring to the officer who tried to stop Carey. “It sounds like, ‘Oh, one of our guys got hit,’ because they know him by name. He got knocked over, so there was an emotional response. People were angry.”
That officer believed that was why they pursued Carey and with such ferocity. He said the intervention by the off-duty officer in civilian clothes touched off the chain of events that made the Carey case dramatically different than all those other “routine” wrong turns.
Jackson told WND, after he heard the radio report of the incident at the post, “Next thing you know, I hear there’s a pursuit.”
Significantly, he also said he clearly heard over the radio a warning: “There is a child in the back seat. Please be aware.”
The Department of Justice, which reviewed the police investigation, claimed officers only discovered there was a child in the car after the chase ended.
Jackson’s words contradict that.
So do the other officer’s. In fact, he told WND that was one of a number of lies about the Carey case told by officials.
‘He told them there was a baby in the car’
The officer said it was just one of the lies in the official story of the Carey case that officers did not know there was a child in the car until the infant was discovered at the scene of the deadly shooting and removed from the bullet-riddled vehicle, covered in blood and glass.
As the photograph evidence obtained by WND shown below demonstrated, it was nothing short of a miracle the child survived the barrage of bullets, as rods in a police photo showing the angles of the shots demonstrate at least one just missed the child seat by about an inch or two.
(Photo provided by Department of Justice)
Another photo shows the car seat was splattered with glass and blood:
(Photo provided by Department of Justice)
The official story from the Justice Department, or DOJ, was the child was not “seriously” injured. But the Capitol Police officer who removed the child from the car said she was “covered in glass and blood,” and they had her quickly whisked off to the hospital.
The photos show shattered glass strewn all around the child seat.
Even more ominously, they appear to show blood smears or spatter on the side of the child seat.
The side where the bullet hit.
That raises serious questions:
- Is it Carey’s blood or her child’s?
- Was the child injured?
- If so, how seriously?
- Was she shot?
- If so, how badly was she wounded?
- Did she suffer cuts from flying glass?
- Did she suffer any other physical trauma?
- What about psychological trauma?
- What is the effect on a 14-month-old child who witnesses her own mother shot to death in front of her?
The source said the Secret Service officer who first spotted Carey’s car at the White House was adamant that he reported the child’s presence in the car over the radio.
The source said, on the morning after the shooting during roll call, “I heard him say he told them there was a baby in the car, and he felt slighted that they said they didn’t know that, when he had told them that.”
“He was very vocal about the fact that he had told them that there was a baby in the car,” recalled the source.
“The next day after the shooting, during roll call, he was very persistent in stating that he had told them that there was a baby in the car. And, of course, when it came out, they said they didn’t know. He insisted he told them there was a baby in the car.”
The source said the guard post where Carey entered was that officer’s permanent position, and, “He was upset when he heard the claim they didn’t know there was a baby in the car. He said, ‘I told them that. Why did they say there wasn’t?’ He felt like they made him look bad and had slighted him.”
‘It shouldn’t have happened’
WND asked why would the department lie about that fact.
Miriam and her sister Valarie Carey
“First of all, they weren’t supposed to chase the car,” he replied, adding, “that was a known fact” in the department.
He said officers should not have chased Carey’s car because, “She did not commit a felony. But they went in hot pursuit of the car. A tourist who didn’t commit a crime. It shouldn’t have happened.”
That conforms with what WND learned and reported in June 2015, when it obtained policy rules in the Secret Service manual the government has refused to release to the public. They can be read here.
The U.S. Secret Service Operational Procedures guidelines on “Vehicular Pursuits” states under the heading “General Policy”:
A member shall not become engaged in a vehicular pursuit except to effect the arrest or prevent the escape, when every other means of effecting the arrest or preventing the escape has been exhausted, of a person who has committed a felony or attempted to commit a felony in the member’s presence, or when a felony has been committed and the member has reasonable grounds to believe the person he/she is attempting to apprehend has committed the felony; provided that the felony for which the arrest is sought involved an actual or threatened attack which the member has reasonable cause to believe could result in death or serious bodily injury.
Not only did Miriam Carey not commit a felony, officials never even accused her of committing a crime. Nothing in the police report cited any laws Carey broke at the White House. The application for the search warrant for Carey’s car and apartment, contained in that report, never accused her of violating any laws at all.
An affidavit filed by the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department in support of the search warrant merely accused Carey of violating “several traffic regulations.”
Furthermore, nothing in the July 10, 2014, Justice Department statement exonerating officers said she committed any crimes to instigate the chase.
One more thing both officers seem to agree upon.
“I honestly believe there could have been a way that that vehicle could have been stopped without using deadly force,” Jackson told WND.
The other officer spoke to WND precisely because he was so upset over what he saw as the unjust killing of Carey.
“Everybody knew it was a cover-up,” the officer bluntly told WND.
Bullet holes in rear of Carey’s car
(Photo provided by Department of Justice)
In fact, he said his fellow officers initially thought “someone was going to jail over it because it was such an obvious bad shooting.”
“Secret Service policy had been so obviously violated.”
Specifically, he said, “They all knew it was unlawful to pursue Carey because no felony had been committed.”
Asked if federal officers had lied about the facts of the case, the source said there was no doubt about that, remarking, “Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
The book “Capitol Crime: Washington’s Cover-Up of the Killing of Miriam Carey” details how:
- Carey was shot in the back
- Officers claimed they shot her in self-defense
- Carey didn’t break any laws
- Carey didn’t try to enter the White House grounds
- Carey did not ram a White House gate
- Officers did not try to prevent Carey from entering a White House guard post
- Officers tried to prevent Carey from leaving a White House guard post
- Officers gave no reason for stopping Carey
- Officers gave no reason for pursuing Carey
- Carey did not flee or speed away
- Carey did not run over an officer
- Police knew Carey was not a terrorist before they shot her
- Her child in the backseat was covered in glass and blood
- Secret Service officers violated their use-of-force policy
- Police statements are missing
- Witness statements are missing
- Evidence is missing
- Police refuse to release findings justifying the shooting
These are series of steps WND has taken obtain to uncover the truth in Carey case, and obtain the evidence used to make those revelations:
- Filed a FOIA request for surveillance video and the forensics report
- Visited the shooting scene and discovered at least seven surveillance cameras
- Spoke to an officer who confirmed the existence of video of the Carey shooting
- Obtained a copy of the unpublished Secret Service policy on the use of force
- After the investigation was completed, made a FOIA request for the police report and all evidence
- After that was denied, successfully appealed the FOIA request to the office of the Washington, D.C. mayor
- Discovered the police report was missing key evidence
- Made a FOIA request with the Justice Department for all evidence
- After the Justice Department stonewalled, enlisted Judicial Watch to sue the government to compel compliance
- The Justice Department agreed to comply and turned over additional evidence
Even long before WND uncovered many of those details, once he heard the basic facts of the case in December of 2013, famed civil libertarian Nat Hentoff said from all of the evidence he had seen in WND’s reports, which he called very thorough and easily corroborated, “[T]his is a classic case of police out of control and, therefore, guilty of plain murder.”
Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com
URL to article: http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/michelle-obamas-staff-questioned-secret-service-about-murdered-mom/