My hands turn and break Yes, all and all We do all and enjoy Yes, and we will be We will be Good evening, you're listening to the Hour of the Time, and what an hour it is. It definitely is the hour of the time. This time, right now, tonight we're going to have a guest who's just going to blow your mind. If you've had any doubts before about what I've been telling you, or many other people have been telling you, or what you've been reading on special sites on the internet that devote their entire being, or at least a good portion of it, to the revelation of the illegality of the Internal Revenue Service, then tonight you're going to have your eyes and ears open, and I hope your heart and soul also. Because our guest is going to be Special Agent Joe Bannister, I should say ex-Special Agent Joe Bannister, Internal Revenue Service, until recently, when he discovered that what he was doing was unlawful, unconstitutional, persecuting his fellow American citizens in what he thought was the performance of his duty. He was devoted to government service, like I was for most of my life. I was in the military, he was in law enforcement. He thought, just like I thought. I thought I was serving my country, but I was not serving my country. I was serving an agenda that was leading us into one world totalitarian socialist government. I would never have discovered that if I had not been granted a top secret QSI clearance and been attached to the intelligence briefing team of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Pacific Fleet. Well, Joe Bannister wasn't that lucky. He spent a lot of years in his position. And one night he heard D.D. Kidd on the radio talking about the unlawful application of the income tax to the citizens of the several states and all of the things that they did to persecute people. She talked about all kinds of things that he had never heard before. And he had been briefed by his superior, you know, his bosses. And he had been told that so-called, quote, tax protesters, end quote, were raving maniacs, didn't make sense, had hair on their tongue, blabbered and spoke nonsense, and, you know, all this kind of thing, that they were dangerous, off their rocker, didn't know anything about the law. And he believed what he was told because he did not have any conception. Just like I didn't either. I had no conception whatsoever. No. No idea that my superiors, he had no idea that his superiors, we had no idea that the government that we were serving would betray us, would lie to us, would actually be in the activity of destroying this nation from within in order to bring about a one-world government. Mr. Bannister, after he heard D.B. Kidd on the radio, contacted D.B. Kidd and began researching to find out if what she was saying was true. And he was hoping that it wasn't because what he wanted to do was go back and get on the radio and prove all of this stuff wrong. He wanted to vindicate his job. He wanted to feel good about what he was doing. He did not want this to be true at all. What he found out was that it is absolutely true. What he found out was that in his job he was performing unconstitutional and unlawful acts against his fellow American citizens. He didn't like that. So he began an earnest, in-depth program of research. And he discovered, he discovered that what I and many other people have been telling you for many, many years is absolutely true. And he was crushed. He was heartbroken because it meant the end of his career. Unless, unless he could make a report of all of the things that he had discovered, submitted it to his superiors right on up the line to Washington, D.C., and then, and then, have them refute it in the law. And explain to him where he was wrong. Well, he did this, but they refused to answer any of his questions. They refused to refute anything that he had discovered in his research. They absolutely defalted. He was an honest man who just wanted honest answers. And he did not get them. So, that's what I know about Mr. Joe Bannister. That's what I've learned. So, what happened to him, basically, is exactly what happened to me. Only I was in the military. And I discovered, instead of serving my country like I had planned and wanted to all my life, after 15 years of government service in the Air Force and the Navy, I had been lied to, betrayed. And this is what Mr. Bannister had discovered in his position, also in government service. He'd wanted to serve his country. He'd wanted to be a law enforcement officer. He'd applied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. And there was a hiring freeze at the FBI, so he was hired as a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service. I have on the telephone at this time Mr. Joe Bannister. And we're going to go right to him right now. Is that you, Joe? Hi there, Mr. Cooper. Hello. Welcome to the Hour of the Time. Thank you very much for having me. Well, I'm so happy that you found time to be our guest. And if we don't get through tonight's broadcast, I want to ask you right off the top, if we don't get through all the questions and everything that we need to do, can you come back tomorrow night? Possibly. Okay. More than likely. Okay, great. I hope that we can, but if we don't, and there's still, you know, because we only have two phone lines, we took all the questions from the audience last night and put them on tape. So what we're going to do right now is just have you, I've sort of given the audience a basic introduction to who you are and what happened to you. Very basic, because I don't know everything. I only know what I've heard and what I gleaned from the seminar that you attended in Washington, D.C., what I've read on your website and things like that. But I know that our listening audience wants to hear it from your own lips. So if you would introduce yourself and give your background and how you became an Internal Revenue Service Special Agent and just go from there, I think that's a good way to start the broadcast. Okay. Okay. Well, at the expense of repeating what may have already been said, I'm 36 years old, married with two boys, and a college graduate. I graduated from San Jose State University in 1986. I spent about three years at KPMG Pete Marwick, which is an international accounting firm. I spent a couple of years in the venture capital industry. And then about a year, year and a half into venture capital, I wanted to scratch this law enforcement itch that I had had for quite some time. I also found that basically my accounting job was not very exciting. And I wanted to find some more excitement and applied to both the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. And for quite a long time, probably over two years, I really thought that I'd end up being an FBI agent because the application process went very swiftly. And to my knowledge, you know, I passed everything that they threw at me. But then there was a hiring freeze instituted because of, you know, budgetary concerns. And I never ended up getting hired, or at least they never had the authority to hire me. And then about August of 1993, I got a telephone call from the San Francisco office of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division asking me if I'd be interested in a position at the San Francisco office as a special agent. And, you know, I had pretty much had my heart set on being an FBI agent for years, basically. And, but I thought, well, there's an agency, law enforcement agency, calling me. They do tax investigations, and I certainly have a lot of tax experience. Why not give it a shot? So I went to the panel interview. I had already taken the Treasury Enforcement Exam and passed that. The panel interview went well, and they actually offered me a job. And after a very short amount of thinking, I accepted. And November 15th of 1993, I was sworn in as a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division. Now, when you say you had tax experience, Joe, you're talking about your job as an accountant. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And when you became an IRS special agent, what kind of training did you have? What they do is they send special agents to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia. And there I spent eight weeks in criminal investigator training, and then another eight weeks in what they call special agent basic training. The eight-week criminal investigator training is where they may put you in with secret service agents, customs agents, ATF, put you all together basically just to teach you criminal investigation, constitutional law, investigative techniques. Constitutional law? Well, a very basic course, but, yeah, they teach, you know, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment. But nothing about taxes. If you'd have read the Constitution about taxes, you all would have had to leave. Well, I mean, like I say, it was very basic, and they didn't go into significant detail. So that first eight weeks, you know, I did a lot of firearms training and defensive driving, and, you know, it was really pretty fun training, actually. And I was elected president of my training class. I ended up with a 95% academic average, qualified as an expert in firearms. So I really enjoyed the training, and it was tough being away from home for all those weeks, especially on my wife, who had to take care of the kids. But, you know, the training was fairly intensive. I was able to skip the tax portion of it because I was a CPA from back in the private sector, and that was one of the ways you could avoid three weeks of tax training. So my training was actually shortened by three weeks. Joe, let me ask you something. Based on what you know now, and based upon what I absolutely know now and many years of studying the tax code, do you honestly believe that three weeks is enough to train people who are going to go out and apply the tax code to citizens? Not at all. It's nowhere near enough. I mean, it's embarrassing when I think of, you know, I had a four-year degree, passed the CPA exam, had three years at an international accounting firm, and yet I never looked, never thought it was necessary to look at the internal revenue code to look at the filing requirements, or who might be liable for a tax, or what steps one goes through to become liable for a tax, what the 16th Amendment said, what the history of the 16th Amendment was. None of those things. I had to go and learn that all on my own. You know, nobody taught it, you know what I mean? And they get away with that because we're so trusting that the government wouldn't lie to us, that our supervisors would not send us out to do something that was unlawful. Well, that's true. I mean, I never thought that it was necessary to look for a filing requirement because my parents filed. I filed. Everyone I knew filed return. I mean, I just assumed that it was mandatory for everyone and, you know, that everything that the IRS did, they had the authority to do. Uh-huh. And so then what happened? You finished your training, and what happened then? Well, after training, or during training and after, I basically had three years of the most fulfilling job I had ever had in my life. By fulfilling, what do you mean by that? Just fun. I mean, just, I didn't, I never looked at my watch during the day. I mean, I worked 10-hour days because special agents worked 50-hour work weeks year-round. Yeah, but Joe, I've got to ask you something. When a law enforcement person tells me their job is fun, I find it difficult to believe that going out and confronting citizens and maybe getting into gun battles and having to bash down doors and arrest people and investigate the most private parts of their lives, I fail to see where that could be fun. Now, please educate me. Well, I mean, I'm saying based on my prior mindset, my mindset from the day that I swore an oath was that everything, you know, that the IRS and myself had the authority to do what I was doing, that the taxes that were collected were necessary and useful. And so I felt that I was using my financial skills to fight crime and help the country. So you felt like I did when I was in the military, that I was helping to fight the battles of my nation and protect and defend the Constitution and freedom and all of those things. Yeah, so when I say fun, I mean, I just, I felt good about what I was doing. Yeah. And I felt, you know, I mean, the IRS, I didn't live under a rock. I knew they had a bad reputation, but I thought that I was a friendly enough guy and I was fair and I believed in the Constitution. I was an NRA member from even before I was sworn in. You know, I was conscious about constitutional issues and I thought that I could be, put a good face on, you know, at least part of the IRS. Yeah. Now, let me ask you something, and bear in mind, Joe, that I'm not pinging on you. I'm asking these questions because they're in the minds of the listening audience, and I know it, and to be a fair radio host, I have to ask these questions. That's fine. But I know where you're coming from because I was in that position with government at one time myself. How could you say or believe that you were being fair when you didn't know anything about the regulations and the laws that you were applying? What is fair? Well, I guess my answer to that would be in my mind, I thought that I knew enough. Okay. Because the, you know, filing requirements, all those things, under my assumption that those questions have been answered long before I ever entered the job. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Then I assumed that, I mean, for one thing, I never really looked into any of these quote-unquote tax protester arguments. I just knew that they were out there, but I never investigated them, at least during the first three years of my career. Sure. Again, I just, I knew the agency was unpopular, but I believed that the tax was all the things that the average American thinks that it is. Sure. And felt that I could, you know, there aren't that many accountants who can shoot well. So, I just felt that I was a unique individual who had skills to be a law enforcement officer, but also financial skills. Okay. And then where did you go at that point? How many years were you a special agent for the Internal Revenue Service? Five and a half in total. First three years were as a euphoric person who thought that, you know, he had arrived at the best job on earth. Uh-huh. But in December of 1996, that changed when I heard DV Kidd on the radio. And I'm assuming you know who DV Kidd is. Yes, I know DV. I've known her for a long time. Um, and what happened? What did you hear DV say that got your dander up, so to speak? Well, I'd never heard of her in my life. I didn't know who she was. I didn't even know, I guess I could tell she was a female. But she was saying on the radio, it was on a San Francisco Bay Area radio station, saying that the income tax was voluntary for most people. And I thought, as I was listening to her say this, I was driving in my, we call it a G car, you know, with the lights and the siren. Uh-huh. I had my handcuffs and my six-hour nine-millimeter, and this lady is saying that the federal income tax was voluntary. And I would have normally dismissed that kind of talk right offhand, but she was saying it on a radio station, a radio show, that I had been listening to for a couple years prior to that. And they had talked about, you know, pro-gun issues and all the things that I liked. I mean, the Constitution, the corruption in the Clinton administration. They seemed to really tell things like they were. They didn't sugarcoat them. They just told the truth. So when this particular host had D.V. Kidd on, obviously what she was saying was completely the opposite of my belief system and what I knew to be true. So it really put me into kind of a quandary. I thought, this lady can't be telling the truth, but why is she on this particular radio show where they've told the truth in the past, at least as far as I can tell? And so the way I solved that little quandary was she has a couple books that she offered. One was called Buy a Bankrupt America, and the second was called Blind Loyalty. And I ordered those books and received them along about the beginning of January of 1997. Blind Loyalty tells the tale, doesn't it? It made my jaw drop down to a floor. And, you know, I mean, it really just barely touches the surface. At least I could tell after the two and a half plus years I've been at it now. It just barely scratches the surface of all these issues, but it really blew me away. And so what I started to do was I did a ton of reading, so much so, I mean, my wife knew I liked to read. What you started to do and what you really wanted to do was prove her wrong. Isn't that right? Yes. I thought, again, she cannot be right. Otherwise, why do I have this gun and badge and handcuffs and bulletproof vest? And why would the government allow you to do these things? Exactly. So I embarked on this long, long journey that I thought initially would be very short because I thought, hey, I'm a CPA, a college degree. I'm a special agent. You know, I should be able to put this stuff to bed in a couple weeks. And two and a half years later, or actually longer now, was not able to disprove most of, if not all, of what DV Kidd said. And in her booklet, she'll mention a variety of issues. But one of the people that she mentioned in there was a guy named Bill Conklin. And again, I'm assuming that you know who he is. Yes, I know who everybody is. I'm one of the ancient veterans of the true patriot movement in this country who really believe in government, support government, believe in the law, and are willing to die for it. So that's who you're talking to here. And forgive me for not, you know, I'm fairly new to all this, and I wish I wasn't. Well, you heard about me somewhere because you called me. Yeah, we talked about that. But I got your name from somewhere, but I didn't know much about you or, you know, don't have a lot of history. Yeah, well, go ahead. Anyway, I called Bill Conklin on the phone. I took the day off of work, and I called him and explicitly said, you know, I've taken the day off work, but I'm a special agent in the IRS criminal investigation division. I'm not calling as a special agent. I'm calling as a concerned citizen. You know, I received these booklets from DV Kidd at my home. I've been reading a lot at my home. This is not an IRS investigation. This is my investigation. And I'd like to talk to you more about the Fifth Amendment. And, you know, you say that filing federal income tax returns is voluntary, and I want to find out more about that. And so he sent me all kinds of literature. He sent me his book, Why No One is Required to File Income Tax Returns. And then I went out and independently verified, you know, went to law libraries and didn't take his word for anything. I went and checked out what he had to say. And one of the things he did, which I thought was interesting, is he sent me $50 to cover my phone bills because I guess I had mistakenly complained too much that, you know, I was paying for all this on my own because I wasn't doing this under the auspices of the IRS. But basically after a number of months, he very much convinced me that there was a significant issue with the Fifth Amendment. And it didn't take that much convincing for me because as a special agent, you know, we had to read people their Miranda rights whenever we talked to them. So clearly, you know, we have to tell them. They didn't have to talk to us. They didn't have to give us any information. And you really don't have the power to subpoena, do you? Well, I guess you mean summons? Summons, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the summons have now found out by looking at the parallel table of authorities, you know, who really has the authority to issue summonses. And the IRS does not? They're not in there. It's Title 27. That's right. So all of you people who have been summoned by the IRS and thought you had to go and went, and because you went and opened your mouth, got in trouble, now you know. It was all unlawful. But go ahead, Joe. Well, I spoke to Bill Conklin and, you know, got to be fairly close, at least in terms of him sharing information with me. And so I thought, well, this is really strange. You know, the IRS led me to believe that somebody like Bill Conklin would be drooling and incoherent and incomprehensible because he's a tax processor. You know, and clearly those people don't make any sense. But he made perfect sense to me. And so what I decided to do was call another person in DVKid's books, and his name is Bill Benson. The grand old patriarch of the lawful tax loop. See, we're not tax protesters. We're supporters of the law. And when they tell you we're tax protesters, they're making a propaganda ploy so that you won't listen to any of us. And now that you bring that up, I mean, that's something that I definitely noticed throughout my research and I continue to see is they have this broad brush approach to, you know, put us all, and I say us because I'm now, I guess, one of those people. Yeah. So they broad brush and call a kook or crazy or, you know, putting out incomprehensible arguments that don't make any sense. You know, this is very interesting because, you know, the Internal Revenue Service has issued warrant for my arrest. Were you aware of that? There's actually a warrant for your arrest? Yes. And at some future date, if they ever try to execute the warrant, if you were still a special agent for the IRS, we would have faced each other across the battlefield, and I would not have hesitated to shoot you right between the eyes. Not for one second. Well, I'll tell you, that's the scary thing is that, you know, I have a lot of, I know probably 150 special agents. And the sad thing is that, you know, in my opinion, based on my research, they're not doing the right thing. They're not part of an agency that's doing the right thing. And I can see why people are as upset as they are. And that's why I'm trying to get out and talk to talk. And so the people on the, you know, non-government side or the people that don't work for the government can see that, yes, there are some people in government who are honest and they just maybe didn't know what was going on. Well, so far, you say some, Joe, but so far you're the only one that anybody knows about. Well, in terms of coming forward publicly, that appears to be true. I have met some other revenue officers and revenue agents who don't work for the IRS anymore, who left for the same reasons that I did. But haven't got the courage of their convictions and won't stand up and talk. Well, they do. Some of them have told me that they regret not being more outspoken. Well, they can cure that any day. Well, I mean, the people that I talk to, they do speak out, but I guess they don't have the same forum that I've been able to have access to. I don't know if it's because I carried a gun or because I actually issued that report asking for an answer. I'm not sure why, but I tell every chance I get there's a revenue officer named John Turner here in California. You have him call me. I'll give him a forum. I'll give any government official or ex-government official who wants to stand up for what's right, a forum on this broadcast, any time they want. Well, John has an interesting story, and I can tell you briefly. He, his father-in-law was a chief in the collection division and had worked, I don't know, 40, 45 years for the IRS. So when John found out this information, he was devastated, but he couldn't tell, he couldn't bring himself to tell his father-in-law because it would just crush him. Oh, sure. After all the lives that have been ruined by their actions, sure, it would. He resigned quietly, and he didn't tell, I guess he told his wife, but he didn't tell his family why he resigned after nine years as a revenue officer. And, you know, I can see where that would be a very tough thing, but his father-in-law has since passed away, and so he is, you know, speaking out whenever he gets the chance. Okay. Well, let's get to your report now. You did all this research, and you called all of these people, and you got their story, and you set off to prove them wrong, and you actually found out that they were right, and you made a report. Tell us about your report and what you did with that. Well, you know, I had done all years of research here, you know, evenings, weekends, and I did put it all together in a report. I should have thought of it myself, but a friend said, well, you know, you're a special agent. Why don't you just put together a report with all your stuff? And I thought, well, you're right. I mean, I put together facts and evidence and, you know, make a recommendation, and so I just took to putting together all this information into about a 9,500-page report. 9,500 pages. 9,000. I'm sorry, 95 or 100 pages. Oh, 95 or 100 pages. Okay. That's still a lot of pages. Well, and it was really, again, just scratching the surface of what I had found, but I really wanted to condense it into three main issues that I presented there. For a minute I was worried. See, I have your report. Uh-huh. And I was worried that if you issued a 9,500 report, how come I only got what happened to mine? Right. No, what you have is probably the one. Okay. So I condensed it down into three allegations, the first one being the income tax, federal income tax is voluntary. The second allegation is that the 16th Amendment was never ratified. And the third allegation was that our income tax money does not go towards, you know, helping the government to turn on lights and put gas in their car. No, it goes to pay the interest for the national debt. Right. That's where it goes. In fact, when you get your check back after it's been cashed, if you're smart enough to get it back, a lot of people never get their cash checks back. They're kept on by the bank. But I always make sure that I get mine back. And during the years that I did pay income tax, and you turn the check over and you look at it, it doesn't say pay to the Treasury of the United States of America. It says pay to any Federal Reserve Bank on the account of the United States. Yeah. In fact, I remember when we had seized funds, I was the asset forfeiture coordinator, and I didn't seize the stuff myself. But then once we had custody of it, I had to take care of the various aspects of it. And we used to take the funds and stick them in the Federal Reserve Bank. Yeah. Did you know that the United States of America does not have an account with any Federal Reserve Bank, that the account of the United States of America is the Treasury of the United States of America? And every time that the United States of America writes a check, it does not write it on any Federal Reserve Bank check, but up on the Treasury of the United States of America? That's where you get your paychecks from, isn't it? Well, actually, I guess mine were always electronically deposited, but it does say United States Treasury on the... Yeah, you better believe it. Yeah. Yeah. I was in the military for many years. Every check I ever received was written on the Treasury of the United States of America. Not the Department of the Treasury, but the Treasury of the United States of America. Mm-hmm. They were Treasury checks. So depositing the income tax in a Federal Reserve Bank is highly irregular, don't you think? It definitely got me questioning. Thank you. Okay. Where do we go from here? You submitted your... You wrote your report. What did you do with it then? Well, about the same time as I was putting it together, I was talking to DV Kidd. I had called her up and said, you know, thank you for ruining my life. I didn't tell her that, but, you know, I told her that this had changed my life, and I had researched everything that she had talked about and found it to be true. And so she said, well, what are you going to do about it? And so we talked about this report that I was putting together, and I said, well, I'm going to be confronting somebody about this because I am a sworn federal law enforcement officer. I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, and it looks like I'm going to have to, you know, do a little abiding by that oath, and I'm going to have to start bringing this up. So in February of 1999 was the actual D-Day where I took all of my research and put the report all together and handed it to my immediate supervisor. And who was that? If you don't mind, I'd rather not say his name because he's an old friend of my wife's family, and I just... Yeah, but Joe, you have to understand there's a lot of people out there who don't believe a word you're saying. And if you skirt around naming names, they're going to say that this is all a hoax or something. I mean, you've got to say who this guy was, who you submitted it to. I mean, we can find out if we have to. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I'm sure the letters are already all over everywhere anyway. His name is Bob Guarini. Okay, and what was his position? He was a supervisory special agent. Okay, of what area? Of the Criminal Investigation Division for the Central California District. Okay, and then so he saw the report. Where did it go after it was placed in his hands? He took it to my chief. Yeah. His name was Paul Barville. Okay. And what was his position? He was chief of the Central California District of the IRS. So he was chief of the whole district. Yes. And then where did it go from there? I was told, I didn't follow it that far, but I was told that it went to the assistant commissioner for criminal investigation, and he answers to the commissioner. And did it ever go to the commissioner? I wanted it to, but I don't have confirmation that it did. Okay. Okay. And then what happened? What did you do to follow it up? Or did they come back to you? Or did you go to them and say, what happened with my report? Well, I put a letter with my report where I kind of recounted my background and experience. Uh-huh. I wanted to say once again that I'm not, you know, I think I'm a competent enough person to have put this information together. Hey, guys, I'm no quake. You hired me. I've been working for this long for you. I've done this, this, and this. I, you know, I know what's going on here. That's right. That kind of. At least one-fourth of it just talking about what I, what the positions I had held and my promotions and all that kind of stuff. And I went into my oath, and I talked about the different treasury pronouncements, talking about confidence in the service and faith and its dependability and integrity are factors having a vital impact on our ability to carry out our purpose. Went into the IRS mission statement. Uh-huh. We're supposed to collect the proper amount of tax revenues in a manner that warrants the highest degree of public confidence in our integrity, efficiency, and fairness. You know, basically all of these things that I used as guideposts to let me know whether or not I was doing a good job. Sure. But what I said was I've put this report together, and based on my findings, I find, you know, that a lot of this information is true. I need you to help me find the error of my analysis if there is any. In other words, you wanted the, you really wanted the government to come back to you. And I know how this feels. Remember my background. You really wanted the government to come back to you and say, you know, you've been misled, and these people have conned you, and here it is right here. Joe, all you've got to do is read this and look at this, and we can explain this over here, and this is how it really is. And what did they do? And, you know, actually the title of my report was a preliminary report. I mean, I really had my hat in my hand in saying, look, I'm not a Supreme Court justice. I'm not an attorney. Uh-huh. I could be wrong. And I really don't want to believe this. I don't really want to believe this, but, you know, I need your assistance here to help me get to the bottom of this. And I did say in that letter, if you can't show me where I went wrong, or if you won't answer me, I'll have to resign. Uh-huh. Because I cannot serve two masters, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. And if you're going to tell me that you're not going to listen to me, then I can't be here anymore. Well, about a week later, they gave me a memorandum. I was called into my chief's office, and they gave me a very short memorandum. And it said, quote, the Internal Revenue Service will not be responding to your request and will provide you with the necessary paperwork to tender your resignation. Now, Joe, why in the world would a government agency, if indeed it is, there are many of us who have discovered that it can't possibly be. It's not even listed in the United States Code under Title 31 as an agency of the Department of the Treasury, which by law it must be if it is. And I don't know if you've gotten that far in your research, but it's true. You can look it up yourself. Now, why in the world would a government agency refuse to support its position in the law when challenged, when it could be so easy to do that and would solve so many problems? For instance, I've been challenging them for years to prove to me that I'm required to file and pay the income tax, and the minute they do that, I will be happy to not only do it, but make up for all the years that I didn't do it. And they still refuse. Well, and that's exactly what I've been thinking a lot about since February of this year, because they have the opportunity, if they truly want to solve problems, one of the big problems is all this information that's out there that more and more people are learning about and doing something with. And they could have said to me, you know, Joe, you went wrong, you went down this wrong path here, here, and here, and if you had done this, this, and this, you would have come to a different conclusion. I would have very much liked to have that kind of an answer. But even if they would have said, you know what, we're going to make a complete fool out of this guy, he went and risked his reputation as a CPA, his reputation as a law enforcement officer, his reputation as an American and a human being, and we're going to make him look like a complete fool because we're going to show how stupid his research was. Well, they chose not to do that either. They simply chose to accept my resignation, which I really just said, if you can't answer me, I'll have to resign. They basically encouraged me to, you know, pack my bags and get out. Well, they can't have somebody around that knows the truth. You might educate somebody else. It turns out later on, there's that report that I issued to them, they sent it back to me, the original report. So apparently they didn't even want somebody reading it there in the files. Oh, so it was never filed anywhere. Well, I mean, I gave it to them, and I didn't see it for a few months. Well, that's highly irregular. Anything submitted should be on the record and in the files. One day in the mail, I got my report back, and it just said, your report on a little IRS transmittal thing. Wow. Well, that says a lot, doesn't it? Yeah, or it doesn't say anything, but it says a lot, yeah. Yeah, it says an awful lot to me. They didn't want it in the file. They didn't want it on the record. In fact, I heard from Bill Benson recently that there was a doctor, like in Michigan or somewhere back there, she sent in a copy of my report with some other, you know, documentation, and they sent back my report to her, but they kept everything else. Oh, really? I'm not sure what's going on. They kept everything else. They put it in her file as a tax protester. If she wasn't a tax protester before, she now is. Yeah, but I guess for some reason they didn't want my report in her file. It's like the FBI. If you don't have an FBI file, the minute you file a Freedom of Information Act request to find out if you do, that opens a file on you. Some people don't know that, but it's the truth. Well, I guess in my case, I must have a pretty thick file, because the FBI did a background investigation on me before the IRS did. Oh, welcome to the club. I have a top-secret QSI clearance in the Navy, and so I've had an FBI file for many, many years. Joe, what have you learned from all this? I've learned how to be very depressed about my government. Well, don't be depressed, because it's not our government. Our government couldn't possibly do these things. Our government is outlined in the Constitution for the United States of America. Our government is severely restricted and only has a very few powers. This is not our government, so don't be depressed. This is a subversive movement that's destroying this country from within. All you have to do to regain your faith in our government is sit down and read the Constitution for the United States of America, and your faith will come back, and you will stop being depressed. And if you want to, you can join all of us who are fighting this subversion from within. Well, maybe disappointed is a better word. I mean, I really had this pretty cheery attitude for the first three years of my career, and to find out that it was this bad, and of course I continue to find out or hear other stories and see other evidence of just how bad it is and how much they overstepped their authority, and then how the courts helped them along. It's just very disappointing. But I'm happy to be telling what I believe to be the truth. It's been quite a strange road because I've had people say that I'm a spy, and of course the government isn't happy with me, so I started to wonder if I'd have even less friends than I had when I was working for the IRS. Well, you know, I don't know if you know or not, but those of us who have been fighting this battle for a long, long time, we started out with the belief that we could affect a political restoration of constitutional Republican government, and now we know that that's not going to happen, that there's going to be a civil war in this country. So if you were a spy, when this civil war breaks out, you know your life isn't worth a nickel. Well, that's part of the worry, but I mean, it's part of the reality of I'm not, but yet somebody makes the accusation, and then I don't have a friend because I left the government job because I wanted to tell the truth, Well, you do have friends, and I'm not saying this to cast some kind of aspersion on you that you are a spy. What I'm trying to say is that no person who valued their life would ever do such a thing. There's too many patriots in this country, and you would never be able to go anywhere if you were ever discovered to be a spy and be safe. It just, you could not do that. It would not happen. You'd have to leave this country forever. And I think, you know, I mean, I think the people that have made that accusation, if they really think it through, you know, they'd have to question, I mean, why, like the third chapter of my report is all about the monetary system. I mean, you know, I told it all. Well, I have your report, and you did. You haven't told it all, but you've told the basics of what you were able to hear initially and research. I mean, there's so much more to it. I mean, it's the subversion and the tyranny and the treason that has occurred is way beyond your wildest imagination even at this point. You barely scratched the surface. And I would venture to say that you're still, in many ways, in your mind, thinking a lot like you used to think when you felt that you were really serving your country, like I did. I was totally committed. I mean, if somebody had walked up to me back when I was in the military and really believed that I was serving my country and just full of the thrill of it all and told me just the slightest little bit of what you and I are discussing tonight, I'd have punched him in the nose. And I think that's what I'm dealing with with a lot of the people that I used to work with is that they want to continue to feel good about what they do or what they've done. Plus, they sure want to finish out their term and get their retirement check, too. That's a big part of it. Retirement is a way of buying people. I'm afraid you're right. I was there five years and didn't take a nickel away from it, but I wouldn't want it based on what I've learned. Yeah. Well, Joe, I admire your courage and your honesty. I think that you're the only, right now, this moment, you're the only person in government that I actually know believed in the oath that he took and was willing to actually support that oath. Well, I think they underestimated because, you know, I videotaped that oath and I had my mom and my wife and one of my brothers and the oldest son. I mean, it was a big day for me, you know, taking that oath, and I really meant what I said. And I never realized that I'd have to, you know, carry it out quite the way I did. Yeah. I don't know what your oath said, but mine said, support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yeah, mine said that too. Well, fantastic. You know, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to get a copy of the oath for Internal Revenue Service Special Agents, and they refused to give it to me. Well, actually, on my website, I've got my oath. It's within the transmittal letter that I spoke about earlier. I put that up on my website, so you can see the oath that I swore to. Great. Wow, this is just a quick, you know, you're going to have to come back tomorrow night because we haven't even asked any of the questions that we spent all night getting from our audience last night. Can you do that? Sure. I'm going to have, you're going to have to let me call you because I'm just not even sure what the calendar holds. Well, give me a call. If you can, do it tomorrow night. We'll do it sometime next week or the week after because I have all these questions. We spent all last night's broadcast getting questions from the audience to ask you because we only have two phone lines here. One goes to WBCQ for our international broadcast, and we're broadcasting concurrently here in the Round Valley of Arizona. We're on 101.1 FM, and we're also picked up by a whole bunch of low-power FM stations across the country. And the other phone line you're on right now, so when I have a guest on the phone, nobody can call in and ask questions. That's the kind of budget we have, so to speak. So what has been the repercussions in your life from this? It's changed my life significantly. I mean, I'm back. I re-activated my CPA certificate, and I'm back doing accounting work, which is kind of something I left before for all that excitement of law enforcement. Things have kind of gotten back to normal for the most part. I mean, I don't, you know, I started the website, and I've had like 120,000 visits to it since March 1st. I think that that's helped me to steer clear of any reprisal or any kind of dirty pool. I hope that's the reason because, I mean, I haven't experienced. The more you are in front of the public, the safer you are. If you try to hide, you're dead. Yeah. It's as simple as that. Take it from one who knows. The president called me the most dangerous radio host in America in a White House memo which Rush Limbaugh read on the air. So I know what I'm talking about. The more you are in front of the public, the safer you are. If you try to go and hide, nobody even knows that you're living, and you can disappear off the face of the earth in a split second, and nobody will ever even ask any questions. So stay in front of the public. Keep your website. All right, keep doing radio shows. In fact, get your own radio show. Stay in front of the public. That's the only way you'll ever be safe. You see, if you're in front of the public and they harm you, it confirms everything you ever said. Right. If you disappear and you go into hiding, nobody knows where you are. Nobody knows if you're alive or dead. Nobody knows what happened to you, and you disappear. And I've got to tell you, out of sight, out of mind. Good. Well, so far it must be working because life is just very uneventful. Good. What happened to your friends? Did you have a lot of friends in government service? Yeah. What happened to them? Well, the IRS agents are all still working there. I speak to a few of them here and there. Did they have a conscience? Well, I guess one in particular didn't say it to me, but he said it to my wife. He said that we don't agree with your ideology. And I thought to myself, I wish he had said that to me because I would have said, well, what is your ideology? My ideology is that I swore an oath, and my ideology is that the money that I make is mine until there's a law passed that says the government can take it. You know, on and on and on. Yeah. And I don't think that's a very strange or right-wing or crazy ideology. It's just common sense and decency and, you know, truth and integrity and all those things. And I just thought it was kind of a strange thing for that person to say because I do have always considered him to have. It's exactly what somebody would say who couldn't support an argument in the law. They have to demonize you. You have some weird ideology. Right. It would have been very easy for him, if you're wrong, to show your wife the law that shows that you're wrong. But he can't do that. Which they couldn't do. No. They can never do it. I know. I've researched it for years and years and years and years. I've been following this fox like a hound since forever. And they never will be able to because they can't. It doesn't exist. And you found that out. Well, I'm glad we won't be facing each other across a battlefield someday because there are some of us who are committed. I mean, we believe enough in freedom and in the ideals and principles upon which this nation was founded that we're willing to give our lives in defense of the law. And we will not kneel to tyranny under any circumstances whatsoever, not ever. Well, our founding fathers were the same way. That's right. I respect for them. So I don't... They have to do what they have to do. And it's a shame because the tyranny won't go away. They just won't... If you ask nicely, they don't just say, Yeah, you're right. We've been bad. We've been wrong. No, they don't. They haven't yet, anyway. So what are your plans now? I don't know. I guess just try to raise my son to be good men and try to be a decent husband. And I don't know. Hope that I can spread the word enough that maybe people will wake up. You know, because I do try to have hope. I'm very Roman Catholic my whole life. I mean, I love God and I love Jesus. And I want to just do right. I want to live a nice life, a good life. And I want God to be proud of the life that I lived. Wow. A Christian in government. That's almost unheard of. How did that happen? They used to live through a crack somewhere. No, there's a lot of, at least, Christians at my old work. I mean, they go to church and they... They sure don't take it to heart. Well, I think they just don't... They haven't taken the time that I took because it took a lot of time and a lot of effort. And most people, even that don't work in government, I mean, they just don't care. They don't take enough time to look. Yeah. But they'll go out and persecute their fellow citizens without even the slightest grounding in the law. And yet they go to church on Sunday and claim to be good Christians. I don't buy that. They're not Christians. They're hypocrites. Liars. And the worst thing about it is they lie to themselves. I think, unfortunately, the American people at large, you know, they don't subscribe to that bumper sticker that my brother used to have when he got out of the Army, freedom isn't free. Yeah. I think too many Americans, they just think that freedom is free. Yeah. And you can just go about your life and never pay attention to what your government's doing to others. So true. And that's got to change. Joe, we're out of time. Call me tomorrow. Will you do that? I sure will. And we'll make arrangements either for you to be on tomorrow night or sometime next week or whenever your schedule is free. And I'll save this tape of the questions. And when you come back on, we'll just do the questions that night and get that out of the way. And any time that you've got something to say and you want a forum to say it, and you've always got a place on the hour of the time. Do you mind if I give out my website? Oh, please do. It's www.freedomabovefortune.com. That's all one word, freedomabovefortune.com. And it's got my resignation letter. You know, people can kind of get up to speed on what's been happening. Yeah. Gee, Joe, thanks an awful lot for being our special guest tonight. Thank you so much for being an honest person with integrity and for having the courage of your convictions. That carries an awful lot of weight with me, and I know it does with the majority of the listening audience of the hour at the time. Well, thank you for having me. You're welcome. And don't forget to call me sometime tomorrow afternoon between about 12 and 4 of my time. Okay, Mr. Cooper, thank you. Thank you. Good night. Bye. Well, that's it, folks. You heard it. And we're going to get to your questions, and we're going to have him back on either tomorrow night or next week or whenever he's available. I've got all your questions edited on tape, and I will keep them. And when he's on next, we will ask those questions, and we will get his answers. Good night, folks. God bless each and every single one of you. And good night, Annie, Pooh, and Allison. I love you. I miss you with all my heart and soul. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. little girl green What's your name, little girl? What's your name? I'm shooting you, baby, little girl, I want to do the same. Oh, now I'm quiet and next, then I'm ready to go. I've got 600 miles to ride and one more show. Oh, no, can I get to a taxi home? I'm sure it was planned. When I come back to next year, I want to see you again. What was your name, little girl? What's your name? I'm shooting you, baby, little girl. There ain't no shame. What was your name, little girl? What's your name? Shooting you, baby, little girl. I want to do the same. Woo! I want to do the same. Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!