Scientists Norberto R. Keppe and Claudia B. Pacheco were stopped by customs agents on Saturday, June 25, 1988, at Kennedy Airport in New York as they were preparing to board Pan Am flight 100 to London to conduct an international congress based on their science. They were subsequently arrested for failing to file correct currency declaration forms.

The real story, though, is a lot more complicated.

As the agents were questioning the scientists, Keppe and Pacheco’s checked luggage had already been separated from the baggage handlers and was waiting in a van outside the terminal building. This suggests the customs officials didn’t stop Keppe and Pacheco randomly as they later testified, but with an agenda firmly in mind.

Adding to the sense of “vendetta” that the Keppe and Pacheco lawyers mentioned they felt hovering over the case was the fact that little was done by the officials to clarify the reporting regulations in effect for currency transport. In fact, the two scientists were never given the proper forms to fill out. Currency declaration forms at that time were 4790 or 6059-B forms; Keppe and Pacheco were given Customs Publication No. 503 (cp-503), ordered to write the amount they were carrying on that document, and sign it. The 503 was an explanatory form outlining the rules regulating declaration of funds, not an official currency declaration form.

And here’s another thing: Keppe and Pacheco are not native English speakers, and Customs officials should have met their constitutional rights by providing Portuguese translation. That never happened. So as well as giving them the incorrect forms, there was also pressured questioning in English, with no translation options. Whatever inconsistencies that occurred in Keppe and Pacheco’s reporting of monies they were transporting must be laid at the feet, not of illegal intentions on their parts, but of language complications.

And on the entrapment mentality of the customs officials.

In fact, arresting officer, Carl Brownholtz was overheard by Keppe’s physician on the scene saying, “We’ve got our man,” in a phone conversation to his superior, something that certainly opens the door to interpretations of a trap.

The arrest occurred at 9:30 in the morning, but Keppe and Pacheco were held in the airport for several hours, making it impossible for them to plead their case before a judge until Monday morning. That meant two very uncomfortable nights at the Manhattan Detention Center where these humanitarian scientists were held together with serious criminals, adding to the harrowing nature of this encounter.

The Monday hearing before Judge Schrein was a further window into the plans against the work of these scientists. Keppe and Pacheco were eager for their day in court, sure that once they presented their side of the story, all would be cleared up. That was short-lived. The prosecutor, Judy Copland, questioned by the judge as to why these 2 scientists should be further detained merely on a currency declaration violation, stated, “We believe that there are possibly other crimes committed by these defendants.”

That got Keppe and Pacheco’s lawyers to sit up and take notice. They told the scientists that the government prosecutors seemed out to get the “last drop of blood.” The lawyers felt like they were “fighting a ghost.” They asked repeatedly whether Keppe and Pacheco were aware of any other motive for the aggressive position taken by U.S. prosecutors.

In fact, there was, but it wasn’t clear at the time. Harassment had started soon after Keppe and Pacheco’s organization began to alert the American people and their elected officials about the corrosive effects stock market speculation, economic exploitation, drug abuse and pathology of power were having on the American way of life. Books, TV and radio programs, public campaigns, massive mail outs of Keppe’s books all created an enormous groundswell of consciousness that America was being led down the wrong path.

The powers-that-be didn’t like that one bit, as proven a few years later when Pacheco’s assistant reached out to former Secretary of State, Ramsay Clark, from Paris and asked him if he would consider taking on the Keppe and Pacheco human rights case. Clark agreed to meet on neutral ground in Geneva. What he said there lifted the veil of obfuscation that had surrounded this case from the beginning. “Your imprisonment and persecution is due to a basically American initiative, although Brazil is also involved,” he said. “They hate every word of your books; and even more so because of the narco-trafficking denouncements,” (Pacheco had written about Brazilians involved with Americans in this contraband business starting in 1986). “If you want to stay alive, you have to stop writing books, giving lectures and even attending clients in psychotherapy,” he warned.

That explained the various types of harassment Keppe and Pacheco and their International Society of Analytical Trilogy had been undergoing for some time prior to their arrest at JFK. A negative newspaper article had appeared in the Village Voice two years before and their Society had experienced violation and misdirection of correspondence, tapped telephones, surveillance by unmarked cars and persecution by municipal officials, suggesting an organized campaign against their work. The arrest can now be seen as the final step in this concerted process to destroy the reputation and work of Keppe and Pacheco.

And now the judge was being led straight into the mess of slander, suspicion and character assassination, influenced no doubt by the surprising presence of Thomas Roche in the courtroom. Roche was Copland’s boss and the third most senior prosecutor in the Eastern District. Keppe and Pacheco’s lawyers commented that it was “highly unusual” for Roche to appear at a court hearing for something this minor. He should have bigger fish to fry, and his presence in Judge Schrein’s court suggests that some people very high up in the chain of command had direct interest, and influence, in what was going down in the courtroom.

When Judge Schrein posted bail of $1,000,000.00, Keppe and Pacheco knew they’d never get a fair day in court, and so a month later, they jumped bail and fled to Europe to continue their valuable work there. The U.S. Government had left them no other choice.