DOJ: You Really Think You Can Find A Psychiatrist Who Would Say I Am Sane?

PATIENT:  I was accused by the U.S. Marshal of being "angry" and writing "an angry blog." They didn't accuse me of anything else.

Anger is a mental state. Anger is not a law enforcement issue in itself--mental states in themselves are not a law enforcement issue.

The law is concerned with behavior not mental states. The law is concerned with mental states to the extent that they are related to behaviors. Violence is a behavior. Behavior is a law enforcement issue. Inciting violence is a law enforcement issue.  Inciting a breach of the peace is a law enforcement issue.   Threats of violence are a law enforcement issue.  I was accused of being "angry."  There has never been any evidence that my mental states would lead me to commit a crime. I have never committed an act of violence or incited a crime. I don't have angry outbursts.

When I was fired from my job at Akin Gump, when Dennis Race said he was terminating me, I said nothing.  I didn't get upset or angry.  I didn't get into an argument with him.  I face reality calmly.  I simply smiled at him, as if it wasn't my problem.  Doesn't that say something about my personality?

My mental states as revealed in my writings have always showed a stability. If I am angry, there has never been an escalation in anger in my writings. My writings are purely factual. My employer has said I was potentially violent. People have said I was homicidal. My references to those fears have always been quotations of other people's statements about me. That's what they said. I have never placed the issue of violent crimes in controversy. Other people did that. I'm just quoting them.

My friend Craig Dye once said he thought I was a genius -- a warped genius. It doesn't matter how many times I quote that statement. It won't make me a genius. It doesn't matter how many times I quote somebody who says I might kill somebody. It won't make me a potential criminal. I'm not talking about crime on my blog. I'm talking about defamation. I'm talking about defamatory statements by other people that impute criminal tendencies to me. That's defamation -- that's not a threat or an admission.

The officers said I was angry. "Anger" is an accusation that you use to intimidate a person into believing he has done something wrong when you have nothing else to accuse him of. "Intimidation" is something you do to a person who has written statements that are an embarrassment to somebody -- an influential somebody who might say, "Lanny, I need you to do me a solid-- . . ."

PSYCHIATRIST: So you think the U.S. Marshal tried to intimidate you because you wrote embarrassing things about an influential person with connections in the Justice Department?

PATIENT: Yes, that's what I believe.

PSYCHIATRIST: How high in the Justice Department?

PATIENT: The sky's the limit.

PSYCHIATRIST: You think the Attorney General's Office is corrupt?

PATIENT: I think it's a possibility.

PSYCHIATRIST: Do you have any proof?

PATIENT: No, but I'm suspicious.

PSYCHIATRIST: You mean you're paranoid.

PATIENT: I believe what I believe. Call it what you will.

PSYCHIATRIST: Have you ever believed your life was in danger because you have been publishing secrets about influential people?

PATIENT: You make me sound like a nut case.

PSYCHIATRIST: You feel I am ridiculing you?

PATIENT: Well . . . actually, well, you know, that actually is in the back of my mind. I think its fundamentally irrational.

PSYCHIATRIST: Irrational?

PATIENT: I don't actually fear my life is in danger, but the idea that somebody might try to kill me has a peculiar resonance for me.

PSYCHIATRIST: What do you mean?

PATIENT: Years ago, back in the fall of 1985, I worked at a law firm, Hogan & Hartson. I worked with a guy named Chas Green. He once said to me: "Someday you're going to screw around with the wrong person, and they're going to find your body floating down the Potomac, face down, with a knife in your back."

PSYCHIATRIST: You believe that statement describes your fate?

PATIENT: Not really. But it's sort of odd that he said that. Now, 25 years later, it sort of fits in with my present circumstances. I mean, there's no way that guy could have known 25 years ago that I would someday publish information about influential people -- lawyers, government officials. I find his statement a little uncanny.

PSYCHIATRIST: You believe that someone might try to kill you?

PATIENT: Not really. But I'll tell you something odd. Back in 1989 I bought a book called Soul Murder, about child abuse.

PSYCHIATRIST: By Leonard Shengold.

PATIENT: Yes. He writes about the case of Kaspar Hauser. Are you familiar with the case of Kaspar Hauser?

PSYCHIATRIST: Yes.

PATIENT: I identify with that case, the case of Kaspar Hauser.

PSYCHIATRIST: How so?

PATIENT: Well, he was kept by a jailer throughout his childhood. The circumstances of his incarceration were kept secret by his jailer. I see the incarceration period as analogous to my employment at Akin Gump. The jailer's identity and his reasons for the lock-up of Kaspar Hauser were kept secret. I see the jailer as analogous to the people at Akin Gump who had me under surveillance. I mean, I don't really know their identity. The reasons for the surveillance were kept hidden from me.

Then Kaspar Hauser escaped, I think. He was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg. His entire childhood, how he lived, how he survived, was a total mystery to him. Jeffrey Masson wrote a book about Kaspar Hauser that was published in about 1994, The Lost Prince. I read that book. A chill ran through me when I read the following line, if I recall it correctly, "The jailer could not have foreseen that Kaspar Hauser would eventually begin to dream about the circumstances of his incarceration."

You see, he knew nothing about his childhood, the time he was kept locked up in a castle. But when he got his freedom, he started to have dreams. And in these dreams, he began to disclose actual facts about his incarceration. I think his jailer knew about the dreams. The jailer -- whoever he was -- was keeping tabs on Hauser. So when the jailer found out about these dreams Hauser was having, he started to get scared that Hauser would eventually disclose facts that would lead to the identity of the jailer. And then Hauser was walking alone in a park one day, and a mysterious stranger stabbed him to death. That mysterious stranger who killed Hauser is believed to have been Hauser's jailer.

PSYCHIATRIST: So you identify with Kasper Hauser.

PATIENT: Yes, I do. I mean I don't necessarily believe someone would kill me. But I identify with the idea of my possessing secrets, my revealing the secrets, and the person who is counting on certain facts being concealed being very concerned about an investigation of things.

PSYCHIATRIST: What things?

PATIENT: I'm not sure. But something related to that law firm and the reasons they had me under surveillance.

I don't know. The whole thing has a kind of uncanny resonance for me. Like I say, I've been intrigued by the Kasper Hauser case since 1989, when I was 35 years old, when I first read about him in Dr. Shengold's book.

PSYCHIATRIST: When did you first come to believe that you were placed under surveillance by your employer?

PATIENT: That was in late October 1988.

Clinical Report

Patient's thinking is pervasively persecutory and grandiose. He believes he was a victim of job harassment. He believes he is under surveillance by his former employer: that the surveillance began more than 20 years ago. He believes that he possesses embarrassing secrets about important and influential people. He believes that influential and powerful people in the government have sought to intimidate him. He believes that I tried to ridicule him. He believes that someone might try to kill him.

Dx: Delusional psychosis, rule-out schizophrenia