Charlotte Dennett, an attorney and former investigative journalist who lives in Cambridge, Vermont, was the Vermont Progressive Party’s candidate State Attorney General in 2008. In that race she gained national attention for her campaign pledge to bring murder charges against then-President George Bush if elected. She is an activist in labor, women’s, and environmental causes, and has served on the board of the Vermont AFL-CIO.  Since the election, she has completed a book titled The People v. Bush. This interview was conducted for Vermont Commons by Kayleigh Blanchette.
        
Why did you choose to write The People v. Bush?

Charlotte Dennett: I thought that if I write this book, I could get out there and talk to more people. Maybe even create enough groundswell so that somebody else could take on the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder. At first I thought I’d write an article. Then when I started writing, I realized I had a lot more to say. Also, in the course of the campaign, I got a huge amount of support outside of Vermont. That’s when I realized that this was very much of a national issue. It had tapped into this call for accountability and into a very deep-seated sentiment among everyday Americans that this government had gone way too far in its ambitions abroad and in the repression of people at home. Some people feel like they’re above the law. Nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States when he leaves office. Those were some of the reasons why I decided to write a book.”

So tell our readers more about Vince Bugliosi. Who is he and how has he helped you over the past year?

CD: Vincent Bugliosi is a world-famous prosecutor. Most people know him for his book Helter Skelter, the biggest-selling true-crime book in history. He has written many books. One day, a friend put Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder in my hands. When I got to the section in the book that says “any attorney general or any district attorney can carry on this prosecution, even in your local state,” I realized why my friend gave me the book. She knew I was running for attorney general.
    
When another friend came up to visit me and said she knew how to get a hold of Bugliosi, I saw a lot of coincidences lining up. I got his phone number in two minutes and in five I was on the phone with him. We started talking, and I told him I was running for attorney general and that I wanted to make the prosecution of Bush a campaign issue. He said he was flying east in a week for a big conference, called High Government Officials and War Crimes, and that he was invited to speak. And so I met him. We got to talking at dinner and I asked if he’d come up to Vermont and be with me when I announced my campaign. And he agreed to; he canceled all of his speaking arrangements and came up.
 
Generous of him. How is your book different from Vince Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder?
    
CD: The book is different because his book is completely focused on the prosecution. My book, while it repeats some of his points, which it must do because we raised them during the campaign, is more like a memoir, at least for the first part of the book. I talk about the issues that came up during my campaign, how people reacted to it, and what lessons I got from it. The second part of the book, however, is when I start to look into other groups and individuals and what they’ve been doing to hold the president and high government officials accountable. I interviewed people, peace movements, lawyers, veterans, and everyone that had somehow been impacted by this illegal war in Iraq.
        
The other thing that makes it different is that I go beyond the issue of murder and explore the issue of torture. I think it was a little easier for people to conceptualize holding him and other high government officials accountable for torture. In the end, I actually learned a way of integrating the torture crime into the major prosecution for murder.

So with the big January 2010 release of your book, what are you doing in the coming months to prepare?
    
CD: The first thing I have to do is set up my website. I have to do Facebook, network with people, put out an announcement for the book, and then send out press releases. Then I want to get feedback, because I’m sure I just touched the surface in terms of the people I interviewed that are a part of the accountability movement. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t find out some other story about another group of Americans that are doing something. I’m going to be putting pictures from a lot of these events on my website because the mainstream media are just not covering this protest. And because I want people to go to my website and understand that this is a national movement. I think overall, if there’s one thing I know very well, it’s that once you finish your book, your job is only halfway done.

Shifting gears for a moment: What made you take the risk of running for Vermont’s attorney general last year?
    
CD: I was risking to a certain degree my professional reputation as a lawyer by adding the issue of prosecuting Bush to my campaign. There’s a certain danger in doing this. I knew that it was an edgy subject and I could’ve been dismissed as a crazy person. The one thing that gave me confidence was Vincent Bugliosi and his arguments. I read them over carefully and there’s some legitimacy to what he says. I mean, something has to be done.

While running on the Progressive ticket for attorney general, what obstacles made you tentative about the position?
    
CD: I was working on another book at the time; in fact, I’d been working on this book for years. It was a book based largely on my father, who was a top intelligence agent, and the investigation into his death. I felt like I could really tell an amazing story, but I had a lot of difficulty finding a publisher. I was very committed to this book and running for attorney general would have meant putting my book on the back burner at a time when I thought I was really close to getting it published. Also, my husband was soon to leave his job as the president of the National Writers Union, so there were financial issues to be taken into consideration. There was just a lot of uncertainty in our lives at that time.

Given that uncertainty, do you think that you appreciate politics more now that you’ve run for office?
    
CD: Yes. Personally speaking, I really enjoyed running for office. It reinforced in me the belief that American people take you seriously when you run for office. You can wail about how unjust things are, but if you don’t go out and try to change things, then no one will take you seriously. Even if you are a long-shot candidate or a third-party candidate, I found that people were very respectful. I’d say, in terms of how the media handled all of us, at least at the outset, we all got a fair shot. I liked the experience very much and I think that more people have to do it. You have to look at power in this country and come to realize that if there aren’t more of us standing up to the status quo, there will only be one idea. If you don’t act on your beliefs they’ll just run roughshod right over you, so there’s got to be many different levels of resistance and running for office is one of the ways you can do that. More working-class people, women, union people, minorities, and people whose interests aren’t being sufficiently represented have to seriously think about running for office. We came so perilously close to losing our democracy under the Bush administration, so we cannot sit back and rest.

After running for Vermont’s attorney general, you continued to fight for the accountability movement. What is the accountability movement, and what is a recent accomplishment or goal that you have for the group?
    
CD: The accountability movement begins with insisting that our leaders abide by the rule of the law, that they follow the Constitution, that they don’t write secret memos, that they honor our democracy, and that they do it by ensuring transparency. The accountability movement is rooted in democracy and it’s a people’s movement. It mostly grew out of the abuses of the Bush Administration, but its ideals can extend to town select boards. The whole idea is to change Americans from being passive to getting them to be more informed, aware, and on top of what our leaders are doing. You need to start to really analyze where people’s votes are coming from. That’s my wish: that the movement will spread from holding the Bush people accountable to holding everybody accountable. We need to come forward and do something about this.

Tell us more. Why do you care about this issue?
    
CD: Democracy is deeply ingrained in my family. In my particular case, my grandfather was a great believer in free speech. He cherished that right. Then, in the course of writing the book about my father, I found out that he cared deeply about this issue. In fact he was so outspoken [it] may have gotten him in trouble. My care for the accountability movement comes from taking very seriously as a kid that we lived in the greatest country in the world and democracy was what made it great. I’m not going to say we live in the greatest country in the world, but we certainly live in a great one, where so many people come in hopes of having some degree of freedom in their life. Under the Bush Administration we were losing our freedom.

Also, as a result of traveling, I care very deeply about the death and destruction that we’ve caused in the Middle East. I was born and lived part of my life there, so I feel like I have to do something to address the great injustice that is being done.

What was your proudest moment during the election, or since discovering the accountability movement?
    
CD: My top three favorite moments: Number one, the press conference with Bugliosi, when I announced my candidacy. That was a proud moment because I knew we were doing something that in many ways was a shear act of faith, but damn, we were going to do it. Here I was sitting next to one of the best prosecutors in the country and he came to support me in my effort.
        
Number two was debating on Vermont Public Radio, because I knew that I was able to hold my own at that debate. Many people called in afterwards saying I did a really good job fielding a huge range of questions.
        
Number three was being invited to an evening of supporters with Ben and Jerry. It was a very interesting environment: this big room filled with all of these different ice creams for us to eat, and then having all of these people listening to Vince and me describe what this campaign was all about. I liked the spirit of it and the real feeling of solidarity among the people there.
        
I’m also proud of how far the accountability movement has gone. I had no idea that, a year later, I’d be writing about this issue that is still very much alive.  And, I guess my next proudest moment will be when my book is published.
 
You’ve been a lawyer, an investigative reporter, a candidate for attorney general, and an author, just to name a few. Which career did you like the most? Which had the greatest impact on your life?
    
CD: So far, I’d say investigative journalism. The beauty of being a journalist, and especially an investigative journalist, is that you get to go places where other people don’t go, find things other people don’t find, and meet all sorts of people. You’re after the truth. In the ideal world, I’d probably be an investigative journalist. That is probably how I’d be happiest, because I love doing it.

Do you support Vermont nonviolently seceding from the United States and becoming its own independent republic?
    
CD: I haven’t had the time to really properly think that through. I think that we have to engage in some very creative thinking and I can only say that I just haven’t studied the issue thoroughly enough to take a stand on it yet. I find a lot of Vermont Commons articles, however, very fascinating and well thought-through. I think they are really trying to come to grips with where our country is going.