THE LAW THAT NEVER WAS & THE COVER-UP THAT STILL IS
(C) 2000 by Tina Terry, Sierra Times Staff Writer

www.sierratimes.com/

"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon everyman's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house....The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state." --- Virginia House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting what would happen if a federal income tax became law.

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Chapter 1 ?N The Law That Never Was

What if the 16th Amendment to the Constitution had never properly been ratified? Due to the almost superhuman, dogged diligence and persistence of one man, there exists today a body of evidence that indicates that proper ratification of the 16th Amendment never actually happened. Furthermore, considerable evidence exists that there has been for years ?N and even to this day - a massive effort on the part of many officials of the federal government to do everything possible to cover up and refuse to deal with this body of evidence.

On February 25th, 1913, an attorney named Philander Chase Knox, who at the time held the position of lame-duck Secretary of State under President William Howard Taft, signed a proclamation that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been ratified.

The actual wording that Secretary Knox used in his proclamation was this:

"?it appears from official documents on file in this Department that the Amendment to the Constitution of the United States proposed as afore-said has been ratified by the Legislatures of the States of Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Maine, Tennessee, Arkansas, Wisconsin, New York, South Dakota, Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana, Delaware and Wyoming, in all thirty-six."

Knox also went on in his proclamation to cite the legislatures of New Jersey and New Mexico as having "passed Resolutions ratifying the said proposed amendment."

The official ratification date of the 16th Amendment is listed in many copies of the Constitution and in IRS Publication 2105, which is entitled "Why Do I Have to Pay Taxes?" as February 3rd, 1913.

However, the date of Secretary Knox?s public proclamation of the Amendment?s ratification is February 25th, 1913 ?N a full 22 days after this alleged ratification date. This unexplained 22-day gap between the "official" ratification date of the Amendment and Secretary Knox?s proclamation of ratification is one of the many mysteries surrounding this issue, since as there also exists a memorandum dated February 15th, 1913, written to Knox by famed attorney William Jennings Bryan, Knox?s Solicitor, recommending that the Knox issue his declaration announcing the adoption of the 16th Amendment.

The 16th Amendment?s full text as found in today?s issues of the Constitution reads as follows:

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

For over 75 years, the ratification of the 16th Amendment was generally accepted to be valid by the American public. The Internal Revenue Service, the agency charged with the enforcement of the laws regarding the federal income tax, repeatedly states in many of its responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests:

"To the extent you are seeking records which establish the authority of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to assess, enforce, and collect taxes, please be advised of the following: The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution authorized Congress to impose an income tax. Congress did so in the Internal Revenue Code, which may be found at Title 26 of the United States Code. The IRS administers the Internal Revenue Code."

Thus the IRS itself acknowledges that it derives its authority from the 16th Amendment. In its Publication 2105, the IRS also asserts positively what it calls "The Truth" - that the 16th Amendment was ratified on February 3rd, 1913.

In January, 1984, a man named William J.("Bill") Benson began a massive one-man project to personally examine the actual ratification process of the 16th Amendment. His goal was to determine if indeed the Amendment had been lawfully ratified.


Bill Benson had been a criminal investigator for the Department of Revenue of the State of Illinois for about 10 years, during which time he had investigated citizens for tax crimes against the State of Illinois. Ironically, his background and training in painstaking criminal investigation procedures proved invaluable when he turned his investigation attention away from private citizens and focused it upon the government itself.

Mr. Benson started first with the New England states; upon delving into the journals of the various state legislative bodies to find out how each of these states had acted upon the proposal by Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution to permit a federal income tax law, he made a startling discovery: There were multiple and serious problems which existed in the state records regarding the ratification of the 16th Amendment. These problems indicated that bonafide ratification of the Amendment was gravely in doubt.

For example, in Rhode Island, the records showed that the Amendment had not actually been ratified by the state legislature, but had only been reported as having been ratified. In Vermont and New Hampshire, there were missing and incomplete records of ratification, even though the Amendment had been officially reported by Secretary Knox as having been properly ratified by these states.

Mr. Benson found similar discrepancies in the records of other states.

After examining the records of about 20 states, in which he saw that the true information regarding the action taken by these states involving ratification ?N or the lack thereof - had been sent to Secretary of State Knox, Mr. Benson decided to go to Washington, D.C. and see if he could find any corroborating evidence to support his findings.

In the National Archives, he finally found a book that contained within it all federal records that had been prepared during the process of amending the Constitution by the 16th Amendment. The existence of this book and the nature of its contents clearly revealed that Secretary of State Knox had full knowledge that the 16th Amendment had not been lawfully ratified, even when he publicly proclaimed that it had been.

Mr. Benson also located a memorandum headed "DEPARTMENT OF STATE ?N OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR" and dated February 15th, 1913, from William Jennings Bryan to Philander Chase Knox . In his memorandum, Bryan informs Knox that only 4 states had ratified the 16th Amendment according to the wishes of Congress. The same memorandum goes on to state that all of the other states that had allegedly ratified the Amendment contained errors of capitalization, punctuation, or wording, about which Bryan has this to say:

"Further, under the provisions of the Constitution a legislator is not authorized to alter in any way the amendment as proposed by Congress, the function of the legislature consisting merely in the right to approve or disapprove the proposed amendment."

Then Bryan states:

"The Department has not received a copy of the Resolution passed by the State of Minnesota, but the Secretary of the Governor of that State has officially notified the Department that the Legislature of the State has ratified the proposed 16th amendment. It is believed that this meets fully the requirement with reference to the receipt of "official notice" contained in Section 205 Revised Statutes, and that Minnesota should be numbered with the States ratifying the aforesaid amendment.


It is recommended, therefore, that the Secretary issue his declaration announcing the adoption of the 16th amendment to the Constitution."

Bryan?s memorandum is curious for the following reasons: first he provides Knox with several strong legal reasons why the 16th Amendment should not be ratified: the fact that only 4 states have ratified the original language; that legislators are not permitted to alter in any way an amendment as proposed by Congress; and that the ratification resolution from the state of Minnesota hasn?t actually been received, but that the Secretary of Minnesota?s governor has simply "notified" him of that state?s "ratification."

Given the large number of states which changed wording, punctuation and capitalization of the original Congressional amendment proposal, thus, according to Bryan, committing an act that should have nullified their ratification of the amendment, Bryan nevertheless accepts this "notification" as sufficient evidence that Minnesota hasn?t changed any wording, punctuation or otherwise altered the original amendment, and that a valid ratification by Minnesota exists.

Mr. Benson also pointed out to this reporter that Bryan had no lawful authority to simply accept what was essentially a heresay reassurance from Minnesota?s governor?s secretary that the Amendment had been properly ratified, with no documentation whatsoever.

In the voluminous documents provided by Bill Benson to this reporter is a news article from the Chicago Tribune, dated January 10th, 1985, entitled "The letter of the law mistyped; case dismissed," which chronicles the case of a San Bernadino, California, man who was accused of selling hallucinogenic PCP to undercover agents. The man?s case was dismissed because of a one-letter typographical error in the California state narcotics law. This error consisted of a misplaced "f" substituted for an "e" in the code naming a revised section dealing with PCP, repealing the entire law. As Mr. Benson points out, the judge who dismissed the case did so properly because he was abiding by the law exactly as it was written, mistake or no. After all, anyone who is attempting to understand and abide by any law needs to be able to count on the way in which that law is written as reflecting precisely what that law says and means. A change in a law?s wording is a change in the law.

Bill Benson understandably insists that this same exacting standard must be applied to all written laws, including the law regarding the ratification of the 16th Amendment. And William Jennings Bryan, Philander Knox?s Solicitor, obviously agreed with Bill Benson, since Bryan stated in his February 15th, 1913, memo the very same thing to Knox at the time of the Amendment?s alleged ratification. Then, in that same memo, Bryan inscrutably recommended essentially that Knox ignore his (Bryan?s) own notice of the prohibitions against legislators to "alter in any way" a proposed amendment.

Realizing that he needed to complete his investigative research project to corroborate that what William Jennings Bryan had told Philander Knox was correct about various states? alterations of the Amendment, and limits on legislators to alter an amendment, by the end of 1984 Bill Benson had traveled to each of the 48 states that had been part of the Union in 1913, and had reviewed the records that were archived by each state relevant to the alleged ratification of the 16th Amendment.

What he found was this: not even one of the states of the reported 36 had properly completed the ratification process. In the records of all of the states that had been reported as having ratified the Amendment, there existed such serious defects as: Not ratified by the legislature, but so approved; failure of the governor or other official to sign the ratification, although such signature was required by the state constitution; approval but with change in wording, capitalization, punctuation or spelling, thus rendering such ratification null and void.

In addition to his research on the specific ratification of the Amendment by the individual states, Bill Benson also thoroughly researched the actual amendment ratification process itself.

The ratification process for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is found in Article V of that document: it states that Congress, by a two thirds majority, can propose a Constitutional amendment, and that, to become law, such amendment must be ratified by three fourths of the legislatures of the states. Thus, if there are 48 states in the Union, a total of 36 must ratify an amendment in order for it to become law.

At the time of his proclamation on February 25th of 1913 of the ratification of the 16th Amendment, Secretary of State Knox claimed there to be 36 states that had properly ratified it.

In this count, Knox included the state of Kentucky; however, on February 8th, 1910, on page 587 of the Senate Journal of the state of Kentucky is recorded a vote of 9 for the Amendment and 22 opposing the amendment resolution. As Bill Benson says repeatedly, and as he said in his July 2nd, 1999, live appearance on C-SPAN: "When in your wildest dreams or comprehension will nine ever become greater than twenty-two? If you can convince a jury that it can, Bill Benson will file a tax return!"

The case of Kentucky is particularly interesting for another reason:

Before the proposed 16th Amendment had actually been sent to the state, someone in the legislative body in Kentucky had gotten wind of the fact that the Congress was going to have them enact an income tax amendment; for some unknown reason, the legislature went ahead and ratified what they thought was the Amendment ?N but the version they ratified had two words which were different from Congress? original text. The governor, upon being presented with this ratification, vetoed it, saying that to permit it to go through containing such errors in wording would be "an embarrassment to the Commonwealth of the State of Kentucky." Subsequently the legislature of Kentucky voted 9 for and 22 opposed to the Amendment when it was presented before that body with the proper wording. Nevertheless, Knox claimed Kentucky had properly ratified the Amendment, and cited Kentucky in his official count of 36 ratifying states.

The law for ratification of an Amendment called for the following: Secretary of State Knox was required to send to each and every state a certified copy of the final version of the amendment to the governor; when those documents were sent out, they were adorned with a red ribbon and red seal, signifying that the came from the federal government. The governor of the state would then call a special session of the legislature in which the legislature would be informed that the Congress of the US wanted to adopt an amendment to the Constitution, and the state legislature would vote on the amendment as presented, with a yea or nay; they could not deviate at all from that procedure, including changing any wording, capitalization or punctuation.

In his pronouncement Knox cited Illinois as having ratified the Amendment. However, after violating numerous procedural requirements in the Illinois legislature, the version that was ratified by Illinois and received by Secretary Knox reads as follows:


"Article XVI. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or renumeration."

The word "enumeration" has been changed to "renumeration," and the word "States" in the original has been changed to "states."

Oklahoma is another state that had allegedly ratified the Amendment. However, Oklahoma actually altered the language of the resolution to cause it to say exactly the opposite of how it had been presented. Here?s what was allegedly ratified:

"Article 16: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and from any census or enumeration."

Besides several procedural violations too complex to describe in this article, the following serious problems exist with the above version of the Amendment: The Roman number "XIV" was changed to "16" and the meaning of the last phrase was completely reversed by changing the negative phrase "without regard to" to the positive word "from." This last causes the meaning of the Amendment to be completely altered.

Change the wording - change the law.

Knox also cited Minnesota in his proclamation, even though that state had sent no documents whatsoever to Washington regarding ratification. Other states which Knox claimed to have ratified the amendment included California, which records show never even voted on it, as well as many other states whose final versions of the resolution contained serious errors in punctuation, capitalization, spelling and wording.

The authority usually cited for the critical nature of ratification without any errors in spelling, capitalization or punctuation is from DOCUMENT NO. 97-120, of the 97th Congress, 1st Session. This document was written by Edward F. Willet, Jr., Esq., Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives, and states in part (emphasis added):

"Each amendment must be inserted in precisely the proper place in the bill, with the spelling and punctuation exactly the same as it was adopted by the House? it is extremely important that the Senate receive a copy of the bill in the precise form in which it passed the House? When the bill has been agreed to in identical form by both bodies? a copy of the bill is enrolled for presentation to the President? The preparation of the enrolled bill is a painstaking and important task since it must reflect precisely the effect of all amendments, either by deletion, substitution, or addition, agreed to by both bodies. The enrolling clerk? must prepare meticulously the final form of the bill, as it was agreed to by both Houses, for presentation to the President? each (amendment) must be set out in the enrollment exactly as agreed to, and all punctuation must be in accord with the action taken."

Since the time of Philander Chase Knox, the legal requirement that the ratifications of Constitutional amendments by the states be sent to the Secretary of State has been changed to a requirement that they be sent to the General Services Administration (GSA.)

In a document dated April 18th, 1980, entitled "AMENDING THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION ?N PROCEDURES OF THE GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION AND OF THE STATE LEGISLATURES," written by Michael V. Seitzinger, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division, and published by the Congressional Research Service (JK 140 C) is found the following regarding ratification (emphasis added):

"Ratification by the State legislature is often by means of a joint resolution. The requirements as to what must be set forth in the ratification resolution are not enumerated either in Art. V of the Constitution or in statutory law and, thus, are determined from custom and practice. Arguably, two requirements seem to be legally indispensable in a valid ratification resolution. The first is that the resolution contain in full the exact language of every section of the proposed amendment as it appears in the enrolled joint resolution proposing the amendment. This requirement is derived from the seeming impropriety of attaching conditions or reservations to the ratification. As a matter of historical fact, some States attempted to impose conditions upon the original ratification of the Constitution, but such leaders as Hamilton and Madison objected that this would be equivalent to rejection; as a result, each State accepted the Constitution with no reservations, "the obligation to adopt the Bill of Rights being wholly moral." (Orfield, supra., p. 6 ) In any event, CSA has rejected ratification resolutions containing the language of the proposed amendment in incorrect or changed form or omitting certain sections. Precedent for such action seems to have originated when the ratification resolutions of the states of Kansas and Missouri for the 15th Amendment were considered void because the second section of the proposed amendment was inadvertently left out?


"The second requirement is that the ratification resolution should contain a clear, unequivocal ratification clause. The Office of the General Counsel of GSA will not look behind the ratification resolution as submitted by the State to determine the intent of the State legislature in passing the resolution. Resolutions incorrectly or incompletely setting out the proposed amendment or resolutions not clearly expressing intent to ratify the amendment are likely to suffer rejection by GSA. On the other hand, GSA would probably not reject a ratification resolution solely because the State legislature "jumped the gun" by a few hours in passing the resolution before the final passage of the proposal by Congress, so long as the language of the proposed amendment correctly appeared in the ratification resolution and the ratification occurred on the same day as the adoption by Congress of the amendment?

"A third requirement suggested by the General Counsel of GSA is that the resolution should contain a clause directing that a certified copy of the ratification resolution be delivered to the Administrator of General Services?"

Reading the above provisions, one can only conclude that, if the various state versions of the 16th Amendment, with their word, punctuation and capitalization changes, had been sent to the GSA instead of to Secretary Knox, these discrepancies would have caused the GSA to reject them.

After completing a year of exhaustive research, Bill Benson began speaking about his findings around the country. One of the first places he spoke was at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, at the invitation and urging of his longstanding friend, Pastor Greg Dixon. (Note: Sierra Times has reported extensively on Pastor Dixon?s refusal to obtain a 26 USC Section 501 (c)(3) designation for the Temple, and on IRS?s ongoing threats to seize the Temple?s property because of IRS?s claim that the church has not been withholding and paying federal taxes.)

On April 4th, 1985, Mr. Benson published his findings in a book entitled "The Law that Never Was," Volume I (Volume II was published subsequently in 1986.)

In early 1985, shortly before the book?s publication, while Mr. Benson was in Birmingham, Alabama, lecturing on its contents, and announcing publicly that the book would be published shortly, his wife, Lorraine Benson, received a telephone call at their home from a man who identified himself as Warren Richardson. Mr. Richardson told Mrs. Benson that he was an attorney representing Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT.) He asked Mrs. Benson if she "knew Orrin Hatch," and she responded that she didn?t know Hatch, but that she knew of him. (Mr. Benson pointed out to this reporter that both he and his wife are very specific in their answers to all questions, as well as in their addressing all points of law.)

Mr. Richardson told Mrs. Benson that it was an "absolute emergency" that she have her husband call him immediately. He gave her two phone numbers: one was 317-786-9722, which was the number of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple; the other was a Washington D.C. number: 202-546-8808.

When Mr. Benson called his wife that same evening, she relayed Mr. Richardson?s message that it was an "emergency" that he call Washington, D.C. Mr. Benson responded that he "had no emergencies in D.C.," and that he would call when he was finished with his lecturing, which he subsequently did.

Mr. Benson describes his phone call to Warren Richardson as follows. (He says that Mrs. Benson was also on the line, listening to the conversation.) -

"I called the 202 number. Warren Richardson answered the phone, and Greg (Dixon) came on the line and said, ??Bill, I?m here also.? Warren Richardson then said, ??I?ll call you Bill, and you can call me Warren. Bill, we know what you?re doing out there as far as your lecturing on the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is concerned; we also know that Volume I will be out shortly. Bill, you cannot permit that book to get into the hands of the kooks out there.?

"I said, ??Warren, as far as I?m concerned, you?re one of the biggest kooks for making a telephone call like this.?

"Richardson said, ??I don?t think you understand what we?re offering you. You can have all the books printed up that you want ?N you name the number, and then you put a price on the books and we?ll pay it.?

"I said, ?? Warren, you can go to hell. America is not for sale. I?m not for sale. I cannot be bought or bribed, nor can my research ?N that I did for the entire year of 1984 - be bought or bribed.?

"Warren Richardson then said, ??Stop and think ?N you?ll be a multi-millionaire; you?ll never have to work another day in your life, nor will your family. No one will ever bother you.?

"I said, ?? If you can guarantee me that for all of America, then I?ll remain silent.?

"Richardson said, ??You should stop and think about it.?

"I said, ??I don?t have to ?N don?t you understand that principle to some people means a great deal more than money??

"Richardson replied, ??I am bewildered that you will not accept this offer.?

"I told him I didn?t care to discuss it anymore. I told him, ??Volume I will be out shortly, and I?ll be barnstorming the country with an attorney speaking about the fraudulent act of the 16th Amendment committed by Philander Chase Knox on February 25th, 1913.?

"The interesting part was this ?N about five minutes later, Pastor Greg Dixon called me; he said, ??Bill, I never dreamed that man would try to bribe you.?

"I said, ??There wasn?t any question that he did ?N I?m sure we both know that.?

"Greg Dixon answered, ??No question in my mind. If I had known, I never would have had him call you.?

"I could tell by his (Dixon?s) voice that he was shocked and amazed by what Warren Richardson had said to me.?

"For 15 years I have been talking about Warren Richardson ?N and Orrin Hatch."

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NEXT: Bill Benson publishes "The Law That Never Was," and the federal government comes after him. In 1987 Bill Benson sends ?N at his own expense ?N a personalized copy of both Volumes of "The Law That Never Was" to every sitting Congressman and Senator, stamped with each Congressman and Senator?s name in gold leaf. He also, that same year, sends copies of both volumes to all U.S. Attorneys and federal judges ?N again, at his own expense.

Later, public meetings are held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. at which Benson and various other Constitutional and legal scholars and researchers - including ex-IRS CID Special Agent Joseph Banister - discuss their findings, and challenge the Clinton White House and both houses of Congress to publicly debate the specifics of these findings.

Someone approaches Bill Benson and tells him that attorney Warren Richardson is concerned that someone will file a complaint about him with the attorney?s disciplinary committee.

And? Bill Benson gets a notarized letter from Warren Richardson himself stating,

"In my professional opinion your two books demonstrate, at least to me, that the 16th Amendment was not properly ratified, even though the Secretary of State made the public announcement that it had been properly ratified."

Note: Tina Terry interviewed Bill Benson extensively by telephone for this article. Mrs. Terry first read Volume I of "The Law That Never Was" in 1986, and Volume 2 in 1987, and she has subsequently followed and studied this issue closely since that time. She has met and spoken personally with Bill Benson on several occasions, including at the November 1999 National Press Club meeting in Washington, D.C. sponsored by We The People.

Mrs. Terry recommends to everyone reading this article that they visit Bill Benson?s web site and that they purchase and read both Volume I and II of "The Law That Never Was" in order to do their own research on this issue.