Season is tinged with sadness for family of fallen soldier
By Norm Parish / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
LaKesha Johnson, 17, works as a gift wrapper at 'That's a Wrap' in the Jamestown Mall.
The smile on her face doesn't erase the heavy heart of LaKesha Johnson, a part-time gift wrapper who helps customers excited about the holidays.
LaKesha, a senior at Hazelwood Central High School, loves her job in Jamestown Mall, but she doesn't have much cheer herself.
Her only sister, Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson, died mysteriously July 19 near Balad, Iraq, nearly two days after assuring her mother she would be home for her favorite holiday - Christmas.
"I don't feel great at all," said LaKesha, who lives with three brothers and her parents in a stately seven-bedroom house in Florissant. "LaVena is not here."
Before this year, Christmas was a big celebration for the tightknit Johnson family. Since 1998, LaKesha and LaVena, along with their father, John, decorated their house with the same artificial, 7-foot, green Christmas tree.
During the last telephone call LaVena had with her family, she excitedly told them she would be home for Christmas. Instead, her remains are in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
LaVena Johnson was the first female soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Her family still isn't sure how she died. An Army official told them she died of a self-inflicted, noncombat-related injury. And days after her death, John Johnson said, a military medical examiner told him his daughter had killed herself.
But the Johnsons don't believe she committed suicide.
LaVena Johnson, 19, joined the armed forces because she wanted to travel and pay for her own college education. She was an honor roll student at Hazelwood Central and played the violin. She hoped to become a Hollywood movie maker.
The military's Criminal Investigation Division is still investigating her death, her family said. Calls to a spokesman with the division were not returned.
The Johnson family also has called on the office of U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis, to make inquires into how LaVena died.
The controversy surrounding her death makes it especially tough, her family said.
"How can I hang stockings when one of my children got murdered this year?" asked Linda Carter Johnson, LaVena's mother. "I just don't want to do this, this year."
John Johnson recalled: "Ever since LaVena was a little girl, she would ride us until we put a tree up. Usually, we decorated the tree the first Saturday after Thanksgiving."
The house also was decorated with stockings. Christmas jingles played in the home. The family enjoyed a big turkey and ham meal. And some family members, including LaVena, would volunteer to feed the homeless Christmas meals.
This year, however, the family doesn't plan to put up a tree. And they aren't sure what they will do. Whatever the celebration, it will probably be low-key.
Linda Johnson, however, said she wanted the family, which includes sons John, 26, Jay, 24, and Jermaine, 21, to attend church.
"Of course, Christmas is a very difficult time," said Linda Fehrmann, who organizes support groups for the St. Louis chapter of Bereaved Parents of the USA. "A parent has memories of past Christmases, and now knows a child is no longer with them."
Her group has a special candlelight vigil in December to help grieving families because of the various holidays this time of the year. On Dec. 6, more than 900 people attended the group's vigil at Temple Shaare Emeth in Ladue, she said.
"I have clients who wish they could fast forward the holidays from Halloween to the beginning of the year," said Bob Lewis, a clinical psychologist in St. Louis.
"Everyone is suppose to be blissfully happy, and that is not how (some bereaved families) feel."
Some Johnson family members have had a hard time sleeping, while others have moments when they simply break into tears. LaKesha has even missed a couple of days of school because she was so depressed, Linda Johnson said. But her son John, a musician, wrote a song to commemorate his sister.
The elder John Johnson, who has a doctorate in psychology, said he spent time attempting to help his family deal with LaVena's death by having them talk about their feelings for her. He said he also had his family, as well as himself, continue to move forward with various goals.
"I just try to get them focus on other things," said Johnson, who is a motivational trainer. "LaVena was a go-getter, and so I want my children to focus on their career goals and school, too, and any other ambitions they have. I know this has changed the way LaKesha has planned for her future. She was talking about going away for school. Now, she is talking about attending colleges closer to home."
LaKesha said: "No one really understands what people go through in death. People can say they know what people go through, but they don't. . . . I don't really even look at television anymore because LaVena and I use to watch a lot of it together. . . . I am probably just going to stay asleep on Christmas."
2005 Missouri military deaths
Spc. Justin B. Carter, Mansfield
1st Lt. William A. Edens, Columbia
Pfc. Colby Farnan, Weston
Lance Cpl. Erik R. Heldt, Hermann
Sgt. Lindsey T. James, Urbana
Pvt. LaVena Johnson, Florissant
Sgt. 1st Class Obediah J. Kolath, Louisburg
Pvt. Anthony M. Mazzarella, Blue Springs
Spc. Joshua J. Munger, Maysville
Spc. Edward L. Myers, St. Joseph
Spc. Peter j. Navarro, Wildwood
Sgt. Timothy J. Sutton, Springfield
Master Sgt. Thomas A. Wallsmith, Carthage
Sgt. Charles T. Wilkerson, Kansas City
Illinois military deaths in 2005
Pvt. Christopher M. Alcozer, Villa Park/DeKalb
Gunnery Sgt. Terry W. Ball Jr., East Peoria
1st Lt. Debra A. Banaszak, Bloomington
Cpl. Jonathan S. Beatty, Streator
Spc. Miguel Carrasquillo, River Grove
Cpl. Kevin Michael Clarke, Tinley Park
Pfc. Wyatt D. Eisenhauer, Pickneyville
1st Lt. David l. Giaimo, Waukegan
Staff Sgt. Daniel G. Gresham, Lincoln
Spc. James T. Grijalva, Burbank
Staff Sgt. Gary R. Harper Jr., Virden
Sgt. Jessica M. Housby, Rock Island
Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas C. Hull, Princeton
Sgt. Grzegorz Jakoniuk, Schiller Park
Lance Cpl. Adam Wade Kaiser, Naperville
Lance Cpl. Sean P. Maher, Grayslake
Cpl. Nathaniel K. Moore, Champaign
Cpl. John T. Olson, Elk Grove Village
Spc. Jacob C. Palmatier, Springfield
Lance Cpl. Andrew G. Patten, Byron
Sgt. 1st Class Eric P. Pearrow, Peoria
Lance Cpl. Hector Ramos, Aurora
Sgt. Kenneth L. Ridgley, Olney
Spc. Brian M. Romines, Simpson
Spc. Adriana N. Salem, Elk Grove Village
Sgt. Joshua A. Terando, Morris
Pfc. Jeffrey R. Wallace, Hoopeston
Staff Sgt. Kyle B. Wehrly, Galesburg
Spc. Jeffrey A. Williams, Warrenville
Spc. Brian A. Wright, Keensburg
Cpl. Christopher E. Zinny, Cook
Compiled by Steve Bolhafner, News Research
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TVNL Editor's Comments: “I did not have sexual relations with that illegal wiretap order!” Maybe if that was one of the thousands of lies uttered by George W. Bush over the last 5 years it would get news coverage. Maybe if sex was involved with the numerous lies of George W. Bush the news coverage would be adequate. I suppose you can change the “illegal wiretap” portion of that statement to any one of a thousand things like “fixed intelligence about Iraq”, “widespread voting irregularities that all went in my favor”, “unanswered questions about 9/11”, etc. The list is endless
So have you been able to count the lies that have come out of George W. Bush’s mouth? I lost count years ago, but I can tell you how many of his lies were pointed out by the US media: ZERO! Interestingly enough this week we have clear and undeniable poof that Bush once again lied and he lied to cover up the fact that he broke the law. We are not talking about marital infidelity here; we are talking about violating the US Constitution
We have seen video evidence of George W. Bush acknowledging that all wiretaps require court orders and that all the wiretaps that his administration complies with the law. Wouldn’t it be nice if America had a single broadcast news organization who felt that this was important as the Monica Lewinski scandal? Think about it! – Jesse, Editor, TvNewsLIES.org
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HOW THEY WIN ELECTIONS
California “Hack” test stalled as Diebold certification derails
BREAKING – Dec. 20, 2005: California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson
has laid a subtle and elegant trap. Today, California threw Diebold Election Systems’
pending certification into a tailspin, using Machiavellian logic designed to cast doubt
on the federal testing lab process, the upcoming HAVA deadline and Diebold voting
systems simultaneously (while standing neatly aside to watch the house of cards
collapse).
This move follows on the heels of a devastating hack demonstration by Harri Hursti
sponsored by Black Box Voting, which took place in Leon County, Florida on Dec. 13.
This hack manipulated memory cards by exploiting design defects and Diebold’s
customized “AccuBasic” program code.
Here’s how the California trap works: In a terse letter to Diebold, State elections
chief Caren Daniels-Meade writes, “Unresolved significant security concerns
exist with respect to the memory card used to program and configure the
AccuVote-OS [optical scan] and the AccuVote-TSX [touch-screen] components
of this system because this component was not subjected to federal source
code review and evaluation by the Independent Testing Authorities (ITA) who
examined your system for federal qualification. It is the Secretary of State’s
position that the source code for the AccuBasic code on these cards, as well
as for the AccuBasic interpreter that interprets this code, should have been
federally reviewed.
“…we are requesting that you submit the source code relating to the AccuBasic
code on the memory cards and the AccuBasic interpreter to the ITA for immediate
evaluation. We require this additional review before proceeding with further
consideration of your application for certification in California.”
And herein lies the trap. Federal testing authorities are supposed to rely on
standards set by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC standards prohibit
“Interpreted code” – thus, the AccuBasic “interpreter” is illegal. (The entire
AccuBasic source code tree is written in a home-brewed language that Diebold
programmers made up themselves, making it more difficult for certifiers to examine.)
The Hursti memory card attack demonstrated in Leon County Florida manipulated
the voting system by passing code through -- drum roll please -- the Diebold
interpreter, using a set of programs called AccuBasic which was written in a
concocted computer language and (now it is revealed) was never examined at
all by federal testing labs.
The ITA dilemma: ITAs have the choice of either recommending code that explicitly
violates FEC standards (placing an unsupportable liability burden on them) or
admitting that the original certification was defective. If the ITAs retract their
recommendation, it will effectively strip Diebold of its federal certification, and
may also affect its older products.
The Diebold dilemma: Diebold can refuse to submit its code to the ITAs, but that
will lose the state of California, continuing a pattern initiated last week when
two Florida counties dumped their Diebold machines. Alternatively, Diebold can
submit its code and watch as the federal authorities sever their product line
from the U.S. market.
The position is made more unstable because Diebold is now fending off stockholder
suits by an armload of attorneys piling on to solicit clients for a voting machine-related
securities fraud lawsuit.
California Secretary of State letters to Diebold Election Systems:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Dumpty1.pdf
http://www.bbvdocs.org/legal/Dumpty2.pdf
Something terribly wrong has happened here.
American citizens have been commenting on the unacceptable performance of the
ITAs since before Black Box Voting was incorporated in 2004.
In November 2002, Dan Spillane (a former senior test engineer for VoteHere) met
with Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris.
“It’s a house of cards,” he said, showing her stacks of bogus ITA reports.
“The bottom card is the certification process.” Spillane says he flagged more
than 250 system integrity errors in the touch-screen system he evaluated, yet
the system passed every level of certification. He was terminated by VoteHere,
he sued, and the case was settled by VoteHere with details kept confidential.
Here are writings by computer programmer Jim March on this subject: "The
Federal testing process was subverted multiple times by Diebold staff…we’re
going to need to study the Federal certification process, in public.” http://www.equalccw.com/lewisdeconstructed.pdf (Date 9/23/2003; Jim March)
Bev Harris’s book, Black Box Voting, took the ITAs, NASED and the state examiners
to task: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-6.pdf (Date 10/10/2003;
Bev Harris). Harris published interviews with state voting machine examiners
exposing slipshod state certification that relies on the flawed premise of strong
federal certification: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-9.pdf
(Date 10/15/2003)
A Riverside (Calif.) computer programmer Jeremiah Akin writes of ITA failure
during testing of Sequoia voting software: "Failure of certification process to catch
major security flaws in software:…Riverside has run elections on software that
was later found to contain major security vulnerabilities that were not spotted in
the certification process."
http://www.exit.com/RiversideVoteTest/letters/response_to_mudslinging.pdf
(Date 2/29/2004; Jeremiah Akin)
Black Box Voting published ITA reports from Ciber Labs for Diebold showing that
“penetration tests” (security evaluations) were marked “not applicable” and “not tested.” http://www.bbvdocs.org/general/ciber-reports.zip
(Date: Oct. 17, 2004; Black Box Voting, Inc.)
Susan Pynchon, an ordinary citizen who now runs the Florida Fair Elections Coalition,
wrote this analysis demonstrating a breakdown in Florida's state certification process:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/general/FFECreport.pdf (Date July 11, 2005; Susan Pynchon)
Ordinary citizens led this investigation, gathering momentum and evidence nationwide,
resulting in the Thompson and Hursti security tests in Florida, culminating in the
California Secretary of State ordering Diebold and federal testing labs to go clean up
their room (while neatly diverting attention from state-level certification failures).
And now, a word from one of our forefathers:
"There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the
government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves.
They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power,
and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone
are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government."
-- Thomas Jefferson - END
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