Thomas C. Wales Was a Good Man and He Deserves Justice

           
               

Yesterday afternoon, I read a very fine article at The New Yorker, written by Jeffrey Toobin and linked here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/06/070806fa_fact_toobin. 

I spent most of the evening in a disturbed state and simply could not get Thomas Wales and the justice denied him off my mind.

This morning, on the way out to the frost-covered car, a single question popped into my head.

Where are our Edgar R. Murrows?

If we can’t depend on our government agencies to do what they should, who do we turn to? I think spotlighting Mr. Wales’s case on a show like Murrow’s might get things stirred up and moving again. 

Where is our outrage that a decent man like Mr. Wales—a beloved father, a good neighbor and friend, and a man who served our country on a daily basis--has had no justice?

I’m not going to recount here the details of Tom Wales’s tragic death. I could not possibly add anything to Mr. Toobin’s well-written and well-researched article, linked above. But, as an American, I must say I am outraged that the perpetrator(s) is still out there. This is the word that keeps surfacing for me. I must ask: If the F.B.I. doesn’t work any more diligently than they have to capture the perpetrators of Mr. Wales’s assassination, then what sort of justice can I or my family expect as average citizens?

I also ask the F.B.I. and the Federal Government in general: Whatever happened to taking care of your own? Evidently, the pursuit of a murderer is dependent upon the popularity of the personal politics of the victim. As an American, I find that notion, quite simply, disgusting.

In a commencement address he gave, Tom Wales once wisely urged: "Be engaged; be involved in what goes on around you. Be present in your own life. Find something you believe in passionately and get into it. Get outraged. Take a stand."

I'm outraged all right. Movie, Mr. Clooney?

For more information on Thomas C. Wales and his life, please visit the Thomas C. Wales Foundation at http://www.walesfoundation.org/