In August 1995, Hans Schmidt, a naturalized American citizen, was about to board a plane in Frankfurt, bound for his home in Florida, after having received medical treatment in Germany. But he never got past the German border police. The 68-year-old writer was arrested and imprisoned in the fortress-like prison of Bützow. Thus began an ordeal that most would think was a bygone relic of the medieval era: an independent writer is jailed because his essays and letters offend powerful forces in the international establishment, forces to which the regime in Bonn is tethered like a subservient plough horse. Schmidt's "crime" had not even been committed on German soil. He had written the offending periodicals and letters from his home in Pensacola. But as the New World Order extends its tentacles world-wide, national sovereignty is becoming a thing of the past. ...