Sunday, June 25, 2023

 

Mike German Interview

 

FBI Whistleblower: White Supremacists Are Major Domestic Terrorist Threat

STORYJUNE 13, 2005
Volume 90%
 
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We speak with Mike German, an ex-FBI agent who resigned from the agency last year in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the FBI counter terrorism program. German had worked for years going under cover to infiltrate domestic terrorist organizations like white supremacist skinhead groups and anti-government militias. [includes rush transcript]

While terrorism in the U.S has been synonymous with Al Qaeda, for most of this country’s history, domestic white supremacist organizations like the Klu Klux Klan were the greatest terrorism threat. Some believe they still may be today. Today, In Mississippi, the trial begins of Edgar Ray Killen in connection to the murder of three civil rights workers 41 years ago. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney — were shot dead allegedly by the Ku Klux Klan. And in Washington, the Senate is scheduled to vote today on a resolution to apologize for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation. An estimated 4,700 people — mostly African-Americans — were lynched between 1882 and 1968.

Another whistleblower just took on the FBI’s approach to domestic terrorism. Mike German worked for the agency for more than 15 years and quit last year. On June 5th, he wrote an editorial in the Washington Post advocating that law enforcement pay more attention to organizations that produce so-called lone wolf extremists like Timothy McVeigh who was executed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and Eric Rudolph who planted bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, abortion clinics and a gay nightclub. German writes that “lone extremists pose a challenge for law enforcement because they are difficult to predict. It’s like searching every haystack for a needle. Perhaps we’d have better luck if we paid more attention to the needle factories.”

  • Mike German, ex-FBI agent who resigned from the agency last year in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the FBI counter terrorism program. German had worked for years going under cover to infiltrate domestic terrorist organizations like white supremacist skinhead groups and anti-government militias.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we’re joined by an ex-F.B.I. agent, Mike German, a whistleblower. He resigned from the agency last year in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the F.B.I. counterterrorism program. German had worked for years going undercover to infiltrate domestic terrorist organizations like white supremacist skinhead groups and anti-government militias. On June 5, he wrote an editorial in The Washington Post advocating law enforcement pay more attention to groups that produce so-called lone wolf extremists like Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and Eric Rudolph who planted the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics and women’s health clinics, a gay night club, as well. German writes, (quote), “Lone extremists pose a challenge for law enforcement because they’re difficult to predict. It’s like searching every haystack for a needle. Perhaps we’d have better luck if we paid more attention to the needle factories.” He joins us now in our D.C. studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MIKE GERMAN: Thank you, Amy. How are you?

AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. Well, can you talk first about why you quit and what you see as the great domestic threats today, terroristic threats in this country?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I was — had been involved in counterterrorism operations for about a dozen years. And after 9/11, of course, the public became aware of how dysfunctional the counterterrorism program was, but there were problems that I knew about for years, so when things weren’t changing and the F.B.I. wasn’t fixing the internal problems that were causing the breakdowns in communication that actually led to 9/11, if you read the 9/11 Commission Report, I felt it was my obligation to come forward and report that there were continuing failures.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike German, can you talk specifically about what you wanted changed?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I was involved in specific investigations, and I’m not allowed to talk about those investigations, particularly, but basically, if you look at the 9/11 Commission Report, kind of the diversion was that it was a problem of intelligence, but it really wasn’t a problem of intelligence. You had agents in Phoenix who gathered the intelligence, who were aware of one portion of the plot. You had agents in Minneapolis who were aware of another portion of the plot. You had agents in New York who were aware of another portion of the plot. And they all wanted to continue their investigation. The agents on the street are doing their job, they’re collecting the information. It’s when they report that information to headquarters and request authority to continue their investigation, and that’s where the breakdown was. And basically, that was happening in my post-9/11 cases is that that same mid-level bureaucracy was hampering counterterrorism efforts. So that’s why I reported it to Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the groups that you think need to be watched in this country? And if you can give us a thumbnail sketch of the domestic terrorism attacks most famous one, of course, Oklahoma City bombing, 1995, Timothy McVeigh.

MIKE GERMAN: Right. Basically 19 — that was actually in 1995, Timothy McVeigh’s bombing in Oklahoma City. And, you know, what that was was their demonstration of the abilities that they had, and clearly, they can do a lot damage in this country. Any extremist group can do damage. And I think that a lot of the problem right now is we’re in this kind of area where we’re categorizing who’s the greater threat. Well, to me, the guy with the bomb today is the greatest threat, and whether he is a white supremacist terrorist, an Islamic terrorist or an eco-terrorist doesn’t really matter to me. My job as a criminal investigator out on the street is to try to stop the threat that’s there today. And if we do this sort of ranking where we’re only going to pay attention to eco-terrorists because they’re the number one threat or Islamic terrorists because they’re the bigger threat, we’re probably going to drop the ball in one of the other areas. So I think that the mission is let the agents on the street find out what’s happening, but we have to fix that mid-level management area so we can manage the information that they’re providing.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you infiltrate a group? Can you talk about your — what you can talk about, your own history?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I was involved in a case in Los Angeles in 1992, and in that case, there was a cooperating witness that introduced me into the group. And then I was involved in a second case in northwest Washington in 1996, and that also involved a different cooperating witness, but it was introductions into the group through public citizens, citizens who saw a problem and wanted to help law enforcement protect the community. And once they introduced me in, then it was up to me to try to figure out what — who the criminals were within the group and what the criminal activity was, and gather evidence of that criminal activity.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more specifically, like Los Angeles, what exactly what that group was doing?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, in Los Angeles there were actually a number of different groups that we had had gotten into, and they were white supremacist groups. Los Angeles in 1992, of course, the community was suffering after — the aftermath of the racial unrest following the Rodney King police beating, so there was a lot of racial animosity in the city. And the white supremacist groups were attempting to take advantage of that situation to spark a race war. So they were preparing for the race war by manufacturing machine guns and explosives, and one of the cells that we got into was actually already involved in a bombing campaign, and we were able to solve those bombings and recover more explosive devices and stop ongoing conspiracies to bomb synagogues and churches that were attended prominently by African Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: Looking at the piece that you did in The Washington Post, “Behind the Lone Terrorist, a Pack Mentality,” you talk about every once in a while, a follower of these movements bursts violently into our world with deadly consequences. McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Buford Furrow, Jr., Paul Hill, to name just a few, all convicted murderers, identified as lone extremists, the most difficult terrorists to stop, because they act independently from any organization. Or do they? You write, “Tim McVeigh seemed able to find a militia meeting wherever he went. He was linked to militia groups in Arizona and Michigan, white supremacist groups in Oklahoma and Missouri, and at gun shows he sold copies of The Turner Diaries, the racist novel written by the founder of a neo-Nazi organization. No one finds such groups by accident.” You talk about Eric Rudolph who planted the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, two abortion clinics, gay nightclub, grew up in the Christian Identity Movement, which identifies whites as God’s chosen people and encourages the faithful to follow the Biblical example of Phineas, by becoming instruments of God’s vengeance. Aryan Nations, formerly of Hayden Lake, Idaho, was the center of Christian Identity thought. Not incidentally, Buford Furrow worked there as a security guard before going on a shooting rampage at a Jewish day care center in Southern California. And you talk about Paul Hill, wrote of the need to take Phineas actions to prevent abortions and was so well known that the news media used to — used him to speak in support of Michael Griffin’s killing of abortion doctor, David Gunn, that Hill later shot an abortion provider himself should have surprised no one. Give us the landscape of these groups. They’re well known.

MIKE GERMAN: Sure, they’re well known. And they’re very well organized, and they’re very smart. They understand criminal conspiracy laws. They understand the First Amendment. And they take advantage of those in training their operatives to go out and do these activities. And the point I was trying to make is — is that we can’t look at these as isolated instances. It would be as if we were investigating the mafia and looking at every mafia hitman as a lone assassin and not looking at the underlying organization that was producing these murders, you know. And these people are careful, the leadership are careful about separating themselves from the actual criminal conspiracy, you know. But they do set the motive. They set the method that’s used, and I believe that makes them part of the conspiracy. Now, I’m not saying necessarily you can make a criminal case against them, but all I’m saying is if we’re — if our number one priority is to prevent acts of terrorism, we have to pay attention to these needle factories, because that’s what they’re producing is these lone extremist terrorists. And it’s not just random violence that occurs once in a while, it’s an organized pattern of activity.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember during President Bush, the first’s presidency, Planned Parenthood trying to get the administration to talk about the whole movement of burning, bombing, attacking women’s health clinics as a conspiracy, because the same kinds of things were happening around the country, not to mention the targeting of women’s health professionals, and doctors who performed abortions. They could hardly get an audience with the Justice Department at the time, and the administration was adamant about not talking about conspiracy of these groups. What is the significance of this?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think the problem is if you blind yourself to the conspiracy, then the chances of them being successful in their next act of lone extremist terrorism is more likely. So, you know, again I’m not saying that we could necessarily take these leaders into court and convict them, because the whole purpose of their methodology is to separate themselves from the actual criminal activity, but what I’m saying is if we don’t pay attention to those leaders, you’re going to insure that the next group is successful, just as if we were only investigating the mafia one murder at a time and not looking at the underlying organization. And frankly, you know, these groups, like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, have rich criminal histories just as deep as the Italian mafia does, yet, you know, we tend to give them a political status that I don’t think is necessarily deserved.

Now, one thing to keep in mind, there are political groups within this movement. It’s a huge community. Like any community, there’s a division of labor, and these — you know, there are completely law-abiding people within these groups, and as a criminal investigator, when I went undercover, one of my — one of the things that I had to do was separate those two out, because there are people who have very strong white supremacist beliefs but would never, ever engage in violence. And my role as a criminal investigator, I was there to gather evidence of criminal activity. So I had no interest in talking to those people. I had to try to find who were the criminals. And I mean, that’s the part — the hard part about law enforcement in a democratic society, but it’s something that has to be done. And, you know, in my cases, it was done very effectively and, you know, I believe the F.B.I. should have replicated those cases more than they did.

AMY GOODMAN: You write in your piece in The Washington Post of last week, that just six weeks ago, self-avowed white supremacist, Sean Gillespie, was convicted of firebombing an Oklahoma City synagogue. According to a CNN report, Gillespie said he once had been a member of the white supremacist group, Aryan Nations. He later left the group. At the time of his arrest, he told authorities he was a racist skinhead acting on his own. But before the attack, he videotaped himself stating, “I will film it for your viewing enjoyment, my kindred white power.” If he’s all alone, who are his “kindred”? “Neo-Nazi ideology is also a leading influence in rising school violence,” you write. “The March 21 shooting at Minnesota’s Red Lake High School was carried out by a Native American teen who praised Adolf Hitler, used the name 'Native Nazi' in internet chat rooms, and the shooters at Colorado’s Columbine High School reportedly greeted each other with Nazi salutes and chose Hitler’s birthday as the date of their attack. But you rarely hear these incidents described as acts of domestic terrorism.” Who defines whether it’s terrorism or not?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, that’s a big part of the problem, and you know, any time they come up with numbers of terrorist attacks, you have got to realize that there’s a reporting problem there. You know, a white man beats a black man on the street, is that just a random assault or is that a hate crime, or is that an act of domestic terrorism, or is it nothing? Does it not get reported at all? So, any time that the government talks about numbers of terrorism attacks, what they’re talking about is the number of attacks that were reported as acts of terrorism. And like the school violence, sometimes it’s not even thought of as domestic terrorism, but if neo-Nazi influence is influencing these kids to act out violently, I would argue that that’s part of the terrorist movement, and that that, by paying attention to the neo-Nazi groups that are producing that literature and those websites, we might have a better idea of who might be the next lone extremist, so that we can stop him.

AMY GOODMAN: With people like Paul Hill, the abortion doctor killer, the whole violent attack on women’s health movement, is it also that the administration with a very anti-choice point of view, brings politics into defining who they will go after and who they don’t? Is that fair to say?

MIKE GERMAN: No, I really don’t think so. In my experience, the agents on the street have really never let politics get involved, really are very apolitical.

AMY GOODMAN: Not the agents on the street, but at the top.

MIKE GERMAN: Except that that’s who actually does the investigation. So, you know, I mean, kind of one of the misnomers about all this talk of reforming the government for counterterrorism, it’s not as if the director could say, 'Hey, agent in Des Moines, find me a domestic terrorist case today.' You know, he can only deal with what’s on the street in front of him. So, cases actually get reported up from the street. And, you know, the agents on the street are the ones that are actually making the cases, and where — like what I said before, where it breaks down is when it gets through management. And I don’t believe politics really plays a point in that. I — you know, whether politics plays a point in these kind of rankings of what terrorist groups are most dangerous right now, that very well may be, but my whole point is that you can’t really rank these guys based on their ideology. You have to worry about who has got the bomb today.

AMY GOODMAN: Where are the white militia groups centered today in this country, and how hard is it to infiltrate?

MIKE GERMAN: You know, they’re everywhere. I think that one of the big misperceptions about these groups is that they’re only out West. They’re only up in the Northwest. You know, once you’re kind of attuned to their language and their codes and their symbols, I see that kind of stuff everywhere I go. I have, you know, traveled all over the United States and have been able to find something that gives me an indication that there’s a community there. When a community gets leafleted, typically that’s a sign that there is a group that is at least trying to start operating in that community. And if you, you know, look at these groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, they keep track of this kind of information, you will see that they’re spread out everywhere, and keep in mind that they’re clandestine groups, so they do their best to hide. So of the ones we know about, there’s probably — you know, that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. There’s probably, you know, two or three times that many that nobody has ever heard of. When I was working undercover in the Los Angeles case, the one group that we found that was actually involved in the bombing campaign, nobody even knew about them. You know, the Huntington Beach Police Department had done a very nice job helping — assisting us in that case, in identifying some of these young people, but it was basically a group that was operating completely under the radar.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to former F.B.I. man, Mike German, who quit the F.B.I. in 2004, had been there for 16 years, quit over how the F.B.I. was dealing with domestic terrorism. Do you expect an attack soon in this country?

MIKE GERMAN: An attack from domestic terrorists?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

MIKE GERMAN: Or —

AMY GOODMAN: Or, well, no, let’s broaden it to: Do you expect a terrorist attack in this country?

MIKE GERMAN: Of course. I don’t think that, you know, you’re ever going to stop terrorism. You know, and part of the problem is, we use one word to describe very many different things, you know, whether it’s the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, or the D.C. snipers or, you know, organized white supremacist groups and organized foreign terrorist groups. We’re certainly never going to stop terrorism altogether. You know, I think we just have to try to do the best we can to prevent as many acts as we can, and it requires really a lot of proactive work. And I think one of the big problems is after 9/11, there was generated this idea that criminal law enforcement is somehow ineffective in preventing terrorist attacks.

Well, my two cases prove that you could prevent terrorist attacks. I mean, in both of my cases, we actually used criminal law enforcement techniques to prevent acts of terrorism. And unfortunately, the way the intelligence reform has gone has moved from criminal law enforcement to this intelligence model. Well, you know, basically the problem in 9/11 was the American public had no idea how dysfunctional the F.B.I. counterterrorism program had become, but now we’re under this intelligence model, we actually know even less about what the government is doing to protect us from terrorism. You know, there’s less accountability in the F.B.I., and I certainly know that there are problems, and I reported those problems to Congress, but so far, Congress hasn’t been able to even get to the bottom of what I reported to them over a year ago.

So, there’s just no oversight, and those things are really the problems. And until we fix what is internally wrong in the F.B.I., I don’t think it’s going to change. I think that we’re still at great risk. You know, the 9/11 Commission found that the big problems were the F.B.I. had a poor ability to analyze intelligence that was coming in from the street, that they didn’t share information well, and they didn’t have a computerized system to share information, even among agents. And just last week, the 9/11 Commission discourse project came out and told us that — gave us their report card, and it was that the F.B.I. still doesn’t have an analytic capability, it still isn’t sharing information in the intelligence community, and it still doesn’t have a computer system. That’s four years after 9/11.

So, you know, the problem — these are all symptoms of one problem, and the problem is mismanagement within the F.B.I., yet none of the recommendations that of the 9/11 Commission addressed that mismanagement. Former Attorney General Richard Thornburg at the 9/11 discourse project last Monday said that, you know, one of the things that bothered him as he was trying to review information about the F.B.I. is through the course of the time that he was there, every time he went to a meeting, it was a different F.B.I. supervisor he was meeting with, that the turnover among supervisors is so rapid that they really don’t have an opportunity to learn their job before they’re moving to the next one.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike German, last question. That is, the latest report that under pressure from the White House, the F.B.I. has agreed to adopt recommendations of a presidential commission to allow the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to help choose the powerful new intelligence chief at the F.B.I. The appointment would for the first time in the Bureau’s history give an outsider a significant role in the selection of a high level official in the F.B.I. What do you think about this?

MIKE GERMAN: Well, it’ll depend on who it is and whether he has the ability to force the managers below him to reform their conduct. And you know, I mean, it’s kind of perfume on a pig to keep changing these top people, because I don’t think the top people are the problem.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike German. On that note, I’m going to say thanks very much for joining us. Again, Mike German, with the F.B.I. for more than 15 years, quit last year, did a piece in The Washington Post last week called, “Behind the Lone Terrorist, a Pack Mentality.”


Saturday, June 24, 2023

 

Freemen

 The following three articles were originally published at the Albion Monitor as part of the series Freemen.


 

The Law Applied

 Christian Patriots Part III

The Law Applied

by Paul de Armond

Only Christian Patriot common law courts with juries composed of sovereigns can sit in judgement of a sovereign

"Common law" as practiced by the Christian Patriots is not law in the sense that most people understand it. It is the arbitrary and capricious pronouncements of petty tyrants. The Christian Patriots frequently claim that common law descends from the Magna Carta. It does, but only in the sense that they see themselves as modern feudal lords whose sovereignty is granted by God, sealed by their "pure-bloodedness" and secured by their property. The "peers" of a common law jury are not peers in the ordinary sense of equals. They are peers in the sense of aristocratic lords in the earthly Kingdom of Heaven. As sovereigns, their word is law. Failure to obey that law is treason and punishable by death.

The hierarchy with the Christian Patriot sovereigns below God and above all others can be seen in this excerpt from the Justus Freemen's "Our de jure county government":

"Our" Lawful Chain of Command
1. Almighty God, pursuant to His Holy Scriptures, creator of all good and evil;
['So be it']
2. Adam, i.e., White race of Man/Israel, God's chosen People; 3. We the People [Adam] of the Posterity, obedient to the Laws of Almighty God, a.k.a., our 'Common Law';
4. Constitution(s), 1 States' then, 2 National, with limited powers....
5. which created public offices filled by our 'public officers/officials/agents/servants'....
6. 14th Amendment, creating a 'second class of citizens', and at the bottom of the chain, i.e., corporations, persons, subjects, and citizens of the United States, subject to its jurisdiction, Article 1, Section VIII, clause 17, and via the Fourteenth Amendment.
Attorneys are frequently baffled by common law practices, since the documents which the Christian Patriot sovereigns issue frequently look very similar to standard legal documents. Many Christian Patriots have spent considerable amounts of time studying legal language and procedure. As a result, Christian Patriot common law shares much of the form of law, but few of the basic assumptions and definitions. Most of the jail-house lawyering done by Christian Patriots is learned by rote and believed with a religious fervor.

This can -- and frequently does -- lead to considerable confusion and shouting matches in courtrooms, as occurred when the Justus Township Freemen were arraigned.

The Christian Patriot claim that real courts do not have jurisdiction over them is the usual starting point for common law legal shenanigans. The peers of the Christian Patriot Republic refuse to be judged by anyone who is not a Christian Patriot sovereign. Only Christian Patriot common law courts with juries composed of sovereigns can sit in judgement of a sovereign. Should anyone disagree with the sovereign challenging jurisdiction, that disagreement -- even coming from the bench in a real courtroom -- is an "unconstitutional" act and thus proof of treason. Since the penalty for treason is death, the next step is usually a death threat against the judge, sheriff, prosecutor, county clerk or who ever dares to disagree with the sovereign.

The Banking Conspiracy

The final piece in the Christian Patriot puzzle is their attitude towards money and banking. Expressed -- as usual -- as a conspiracy theory, the Christian Patriot mythos describes "money" as only gold and silver. All paper currency and financial institutions (except their own) are fraudulent.

In the minds of Christian Patriots, the banks are all controlled by Satan through the Jews. It's not as fashionable these days to say Jews control the banks as it used to be, so the most common catch- phrase is "international bankers." The bigger the bank, the closer to the Prince of Lies. In the minds of Christian Patriots, the center of the entire conspiracy is housed in the Federal Reserve and the creation of the Federal Reserve was part of the Illuminatti conspiracy which also altered the Constitution by passing all those "unconstitutional" amendments to the organic Constitution.

Most conspiracy theories have this sort of internal logic in which everything is connected to everything else -- conclusions become assumptions which lead to conclusions which are the original assumptions -- in a dizzy circle of logic without reason.

The historical circumstances which gave rise to the banking conspiracy theory are many: Disraeli's self-aggrandizing novels, the introduction of "greenback" currency during the Civil War, the role of political corruption in the many railroad and banking scandals of the era surrounding the Civil War, wild swings of inflation and deflation during the boom and bust cycle of the last two decades of the 19th century, the appearance of racial anti- Semitism, anti-immigrant hysteria, the rise of the Populist Party and most of all, the Free Silver issue. Without going into the history of political theories about the "money issue" of the last four decades of the 19th century, suffice it to say that by the end of the 19th century the "banking conspiracy" theory was:

The United States -- and particularly the those states whose economies depended upon wheat, cotton or silver -- had been victimized by an international conspiracy to deflate the value of American goods by the "disappearance" of silver coinage. This conspiracy was directed from Britain by Jews and the House of Rothchild.
Those who grew up during this period were subjected to a political climate described by Richard Hofstadter as "the wave of almost unbelievable money mania." The impressions of childhood became the prejudices of later life. The 1920's saw William Jennings Bryan involved with the Klan; Thomas E. Watson cheerleading the lynching of Leo Frank; and Henry Ford publishing The Protocals of the Elders of Zion as The International Jew.

The depth of feeling inspired by Populist "money mania" is indicated by Sen. Ashurst of Arizona's statement to Treasury Secretary Morganthau: "My boy, I was brought up from my mother's knee on silver and I can't discuss that with you any more than you can discuss your religion with me."

With the creation of the Federal Reserve system, the passage of the income tax and the final recognition of federal responsibility for the general welfare during the New Deal, the final stones of the foundation of the modern "banking conspiracy" theory were laid. Again, the generational lag postponed the superstitious hysteria past the end of WWII. At this time, the seeds of Identity began to take root through the actions of Wesley Swift, William Potter Gale, San Jancinto Capt and others under the cover of "anti-communism."

In its current form the Christian Patriot "international banking conspiracy" myth now goes:

The Jews who control international banking have centralized financial institutions into a monolithic conspiracy which is able to direct the affairs of governments by currency manipulation and expanding the national debt. The Internal Revenue Service, Federal Reserve, World Bank and a few other institutions now seek to control every individual by issuing tax-payer identification numbers, credit cards and, in the most recent twist, implanted "microchip" transponders. All of this is related to the Scriptural prophesy in Revelations 13:15-18 about "the mark of the Beast [666]." As "money" becomes separated from the real value of gold and silver by the use of paper currency, checks, electronic funds transfers and other forms, the resulting monetary system has become a fraud. This fraud works through all aspects of the system of taxation, licensing, banking and lending with the goal of enslaving the world population to the "international bankers."

The Christian Patriot World View

In their corner of American political opinion, Christian Patriots have collected all the conspiratorial baggage of American history and assembled it into a cohesive and comprehensive -- but fundamentally irrational -- explanation of the world. These beliefs commit them to revolutionary and frequently violent action. While not all Christian Patriots are believers in Identity doctrine, most -- if not all -- have adopted the assumptions of Identity as key beliefs:

  • The Satanic/Jewish conspiracy

  • The role of whites as the chosen people of the "real" Nation/Race of Israel

  • The central place of financial institutions in the conspiracy

    The Christian Patriot movement is driven much more by the theological world-view of Identity doctrine, rather than a political ideology. Because religion has only recently come to play a direct role in national politics, there is a blind-spot in most observers' picture of the outbreak of Christian Patriot militancy which began in 1992. This is no doubt partly due to the respect for and toleration of religious dissent in America. The result is that Christian Patriots -- such as the Justus Township Freemen in Montana -- have been labeled "kooks," "crack-pots" and "extremists" without a serious examination of the belief structures which have led them to their current situation.

    Researchers and experts familiar with Christian Patriotism have adopted two complementary metaphors which capture the structural role of these beliefs:

  • The "conveyor belt" or "funnel" by which the recruiting and indoctrination of Christian Patriots takes place; and

  • The role of conspiracy theories and Identity doctrine as the "motor" which drives the Christian Patriot movement.

  • A chain of association that connects most groups across a wide range of opinion and belief

    Leonard Zeskind, an expert on Christian Identity and a active participant in opposing the Posse Comitatus in the 1980's described the belief structure as a "conveyor belt" at a research conference held in January 1992. The meeting was called by the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment to discuss the current state of knowledge and implications of the militias. Over 40 participants from all over the nation attended.

    As Zeskind explained the metaphor of the conveyor belt, people come into contact with political or religious groups looking for answers to the problems of society. Political affiliation is not tightly compartmented and there is always overlap with other groups.

    The members of political/religious minorities draw upon larger groups for their recruits. One often sees these recruiters hanging around the fringes of meetings, seeking to make contact with people who might be sympathetic to their cause The recruiters frequently ask to speak before other groups so that they can give their opinions wider exposure. In this way, there is a chain of association that connects most groups across a wide range of opinion and belief. As a potential convert becomes dissatisfied with one group, there is usually a recruiter for another -- and perhaps more extreme -- set of opinions somewhere nearby.

    According to Zeskind, this chain of association acts like a conveyor belt to carry susceptible people towards extreme actions and beliefs.

    Ken Toole is director of the Montana Human Rights Network, the first civil-liberties group to come into direct confrontation with militias. Toole takes a slightly different view from Zeskind's, but the image of people being actively selected by their sympathy for particular beliefs is also present. In Ken Stern's recent book on the militias, "A Force Upon the Plain," Toole explained how this works:

    "It's like a funnel moving through space," said Toole. "At the front end, it's picking up lots and lots of people by hitting on issues that have wide appeal, like gun control and environmental restrictions, which enrage many people here out West. Then you go a little bit further into the funnel, and it's about ideology, about the oppressiveness of the federal government. Then, further in, you get into the belief systems. The conspiracy. The Illuminatti. The Freemasons. Then, it's about the anti-Semitic conspiracy. Finally, at the narrow end of the funnel, you've drawn in the hard core, where you get someone like Tim McVeigh popping out.... [T]he bigger the front end of the funnel is, the bigger the number that get to the core."
    The notion of Christian Identity doctrine as the "motor" for militant white supremacy is widely shared among experts. Many of the most violent white supremacist groups of the last three decades have either been led by or composed of individuals who are Identity believers: Posse Comitatus; The Order; The Order Strike Force II; Phineas Priests; The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA); Aryan Nations; Texas Emergency Reserve; Committee of the States; Christian Patriot Defense League; and the Justus Township Freemen, to name a few. Accepting Leonard Zeskind's metaphor of a conveyor belt or Ken Toole's image of a funnel moving through space, one then must ask, "What drives this mechanism?"

    Among experts, the overwhelming majority agree that Christian Identity provides the "motor" for recruitment, propaganda and militant action by Christian Patriot white supremacists.

    A mandate from God is a powerful thing to true believers.


     

    Ancient Conspiracies

    Christian Patriots Part II

    Ancient Conspiracies

    by Paul de Armond

    The exaltation of the rights of property over the rights of people is a common denominator of the entire right wing

    Christian Patriotism is the result of the confluence of the far- right tax resistance movement, regressive Populism, and Identity doctrine. The Christian Patriot branch of white supremacy traces its explosive growth back to the rise of William Potter Gale's Posse Comitatus, a virulently anti-Semitic paramilitary movement which began operating publicly in 1968. Founded on the principle of all-out resistance to federal authority -- which has marked all white supremacy since the rise of the Ku Klux Klan at the end of the Civil War -- the Posse carries the notion of anti-federalism to new extremes.

    Most racist politics has its legal and philosophical roots in the "property rights" and "states rights" clauses in the Constitution. These sections of the Constitution were a compromise necessary to enlist the cooperation of the slave-holding states in replacing the unworkable Articles of Confederation with the federal Constitution. The exaltation of the rights of property over the rights of people is a common denominator of the entire right wing of American politics.

    Robison's fictional view of history as a Satanic conspiracy has become a paranoid pinball

    Right-wing political movements and establishments have been the norm, rather than the exception, in America since the founding of the Republic. The Anti-Masonic movement of the early 1800's spawned the modern school of history as conspiracy. Anti-Masonic theories -- particularly those which created the myth of the Bavarian Illuminatti's responsibility for nearly everything that has gone wrong for aristocrats, landowners, reactionary Christian hierarchies, and other inhabitants of the far right since the French Revolution -- mutated in the late 1800's from traditional Christian religious anti-Semitism into the virulent racist anti- Semitism which formed the core of international fascism's support for the Nazis rise to power.

    The book which started the Illuminatti myth, John Robison's 1797 "Proofs of a Conspiracy Against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminatti and Reading Societies," is still popular fare among the politically paranoid. I have in my collection of right-wing literature several flyers promoting Robison's Proofs prepared and distributed in 1996 by Ben Hinkle, the leader of a Northwest Washington Populist Party splinter group called Citizens for Liberty.

    Robison's fictional view of history as a Satanic conspiracy has become a paranoid pinball, banging around in history for over two hundred years and picking up momentum from the bumpers and flippers of each succeeding wave of reaction against social progress.

    Towards the end of the 19th century, traditional religious anti- Semitism suddenly mutated to an explicitly racist form: the "two seed" theory. This theory is the central tenet of Identity doctrine and the basic justification for Christian Patriots' racism and anti-Semitism. The essence of the "two seed" theory is that there are two races on earth: one godly and one satanic.

    Jews are the literal "spawn of Satan" and intent on the extermination of all Christians

    In an anonymous document titled, "Our de jure county government," and attributed to the Justus Township Freemen, there is an example of "two seed" theory:
    ...one must understand that "Baal", is the false chief god of the Canaanities,[sic] the descendants of 'Cain', a.k.a., the "jews", none other than "Satan", the father of Cain.
    According to the racist and anti-Semitic "two seed" theory, the white "Adamic" peoples descended from the union of Adam and Eve. But there was also another race beginning with Cain whose father was not Adam, but Satan -- who mated with Eve in the guise of a serpent. The descendants of Cain became known as the Jews. The Adamic peoples became the Aryans or Anglo-Saxons. The Pre-Adamic (non-white) races were not human at all, but descendants of the "beasts of the fields" described in Genesis, without souls and no more than cattle in the eyes of their Aryan betters. All three races could interbreed, but the non-Adamic blood acted like a poison to exterminate the Aryan race. In the eyes of white supremacists, race-mixing became a Satanic plot to exterminate God's chosen people, the white race.

    By the "two seed" theory, Jesus was not a Jew, but an Aryan. The Adamic people were the lost tribes of Israel, fled to northern Europe and later became the Christian nations. There are many corollaries to the "two seed" theory which provide justification for racists to claim God's favor:

  • Jesus was a Christian, not a Jew.

  • White superiority is ordained by God and slavery is not repugnant to His sight.

  • The Jews are the literal "spawn of Satan" and intent on the extermination of all Christian (i.e. Aryan or Anglo-Saxon) peoples. Needless to say, these opinions are in direct contraction to most established Christian doctrines.

  • The most recent resurgence of the Robison Illuminatti mythos is Rev. Pat Robertson's The New World Order

    The merging of the Illuminatti and "two seed" theories combined race and religion into a doctrine of hate and intolerance at a time that Western society was beginning to accept notions of cultural assimilation and cross-fertilization as normal and healthy. The conspiratorial viewpoint -- with the Satanic Jewish Illuminatti as the focus of fear and dread -- has spawned a substantial occult body of literature. These books are rarely seen or read outside of extreme right-wing circles, but they continue to be circulated, quoted and adapted to the present day.

    Nesta Webster, a British fascist and anti-Semite, revived Robison at the turn of the century and recast his book in explicitly anti- Semitic terms. At about the same time, the wholly fictitious The Protocals of the Elders of Zion also appeared. The Protocals are an anti-Semitic forgery which claims to provide details of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. This short book continues to be a staple of anti-Semitic literature and is frequently included in neo-nazi and Christian Patriot books, such as Phillip Marsh's The Complete Patriot.

    After the defeat of Nazism, the Jewish Satanic conspiracy was recast as anti-communism in a book by American Col. John Beatty, Iron Curtain Over America. Canadian writer William Guy Carr contributed Red Fog Over America and other conspiracy books which emphasized the role of the Illuminatti. In the 1960's the John Birch Society retold the tale in a sanitized version -- the Illuminatti are replaced with "Insiders" -- in Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy. The third printing of Allen's book states that over 5,000,000 copies were printed.

    These are only a few of the books, but these titles trace the literary descent from Robison to the present day. Most of these books, with the exception of Nesta Webster's which are quite rare, can be found in almost any town in America. They frequently show up at rummage sales and used book stores. Many of the titles in the anti-Semitic canon have never gone out of print.

    The most recent resurgence of the Robison Illuminatti mythos is Rev. Pat Robertson's The New World Order, which draws on both Robison and the more explicitly racist anti-Semites Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins. One of the more irresponsible statements contained in Robertson's tome is the claim that both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels learned of communism from a "communist rabbi" who was "linked" to the Illuminatti. This passage can be found on pages 69 and 70 in The New World Order. The only "link" mentioned in Robertson's book is that the "communist rabbi" was Jewish.

    The "organic Constitution"

    After Robison's Illuminatti, the next major advance in the right- wing mythos came in the aftermath of the Civil War. In seeking ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, the victorious Unionists were confronted by the near insurmountable obstacle of Article V, which requires the consent of three quarters of the states in order to ratify an amendment to the Constitution.

    The recently conquered Confederacy -- now rejoined to the Union -- possessed sufficient votes to block the amendments abolishing slavery, extending the full rights of citizenship to all people born in the United States and granting equal protection of the laws to all people within the United States' jurisdiction. The Unionists solution was to impose military occupation governments in a sufficient number of the former Confederate states long enough to ratify the new amendments. Immediately after ratification, the military governments were replaced with civilian ones.

    This historical fact is little known outside of the South. The response to the forcible alteration of the Constitution was a conspiracy theory which asserts all amendments beginning with the 13th and 14th Amendments were never properly ratified and thus are not part of "the supreme Law of the Land" as described in Article VI. This conspiracy theory has become the central myth of Christian Patriot "common law" -- the "organic Constitution."

    James Aho, a professor of sociology at the University of Idaho, points out the role of the organic Constitution in justifying disobeying the law:

    Christian patriots distinguish between Law and legality, Morality and legalese. The former of these pairs is determined, respectively, by their readings of the so- called organic Constitution (the original Articles of Constitution plus the Bill of Rights) and selected edicts from the Pentateuch the first five books of the Bible). They believe they have little, if any, moral obligation to obey legal statutes inconsistent with Law or Morality.
    The most widespread common law handbook is a little pamphlet titled Citizens Rule Book: A Palladium of Liberty. The Rule Book is a pocket-sized Constitution and guide to common law theory. The following quotation is from its index to the Constitution. The first twelve amendments are described as "adopted" and all amendments past that are described as "took effect." A footnote on page 25 explains the difference:
    Took effect is used as there is a great deal of suspicion as to the nature of these amendments (common law vs equity), also whether these last 16 amendments are legal, how many were ratified correctly, do they create a federal constitution in opposition the original, etc.
    In its most concise form, the myth of the organic Constitution can be summarized as follows:
    The Constitution is a divinely inspired document in which human agency is secondary to God's will. Only the original Constitution and Bill of Rights as signed by the Founders is the supreme Law of the Land and this law should be interpreted in the light of Biblical understanding. All later amendments, laws and regulations are "unconstitutional" in the sense that they "create a federal constitution in opposition to the original."
    There are several corollaries to the myth of the organic Constitution which inform Christian Patriot "common law." In the following statements can be found much of the meaning of the catch- phrases and slogans of Christian Patriots:

  • The organic Constitution is God's law and the only law of the land.

  • "Natural rights" come from God, not the state. The rights enumerated in the divinely inspired organic Constitution are expressions of God's laws and can not be altered by the laws of men.

  • The federal government is an "unconstitutional" tyranny and the Constitution must be "upheld" by resisting that tyranny.

  • Because the 13th and 14th Amendments are unconstitutional, there are two or more classes of citizen, with only white Christian property-owning males possessing the natural rights of first class citizenship -- "sovereign citizenship." All others are "14th Amendment citizens" and possess inferior rights.

  • These "sovereigns" are the only people empowered to interpret the organic Constitution as the law of the land.

    The upshot of the myth of the divinely inspired organic Constitution is that Christian Patriot sovereigns can do whatever they want if they convince other sovereigns that such an action is "constitutional." According to the Christian Patriots, no other laws apply but the ones that they recognize.


  •  

    The Gathering Storm

    Christian Patriots Part I

    The Gathering Storm

    by Paul de Armond

    Showing the Freemen as cardboard "extremists," the media has not explored the cohesive ideology and -- more importantly -- theology

    The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City came as the latest in a series of rude shocks to America. Starting with the shoot-out at Ruby Ridge which killed a Deputy U.S. Marshal, the young son and the wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver, Christian Patriot white supremacists have been steadily escalating their endless war against American democracy. The battles fought with the Posse Comitatus and the Order a decade ago, are now being joined again with new strategy and tactics.

    The formation of armed vigilante groups called "unorganized militias" was first viewed in the media as the ranting of a bunch of gun-nuts and crackpots. A year after the Oklahoma City bombing, the nation is still uninformed about what Christian Patriotism is and where it is leading people.

    The long-standing failure of the FBI to arrest the Justus Township Freemen in Jordan, Montana on charges of fraud, forgery, and intimidation of public officials has focussed national attention on the individuals involved. However, the near-total absence of informed public discussion has left most Americans in the dark as to what was really going on with the Freemen, the militias and the Christian Patriot faction of white supremacy. Showing the Freemen as cardboard "extremists," the media has not explored the cohesive ideology and -- more importantly -- the theology that guides Christian Patriotism.

    A godly white race descended from Adam and a satanic race fathered by Satan

    Americans are amazingly tolerant of diverse religious beliefs. The federal Constitution incorporates the right of dissenting opinion as a basic prerequisite for a democratic republic. Respect for differing religious beliefs is a widely held core American value. Religious con men, charlatans, self-appointed messiahs, frauds, thieves, bigots, crack-pots and cranks have flourished in America as nowhere else. Consulting encyclopedias of religious sects show that America -- and the Los Angeles region in particular -- has produced more religions, sects and cults than any other region of the world. Some minority beliefs can become vastly more influential than mere numbers alone would suggest.

    One such religion is Christian Identity. Incorporated in Los Angeles in 1948, Wesley Swift's Church of Jesus Christ Christian was initially an racist sect which became Christian Identity. The central belief in Identity doctrine is the existence of two races on earth: a godly white race descended from Adam and a satanic race fathered by Satan.

    Swift, a Klan leader and preacher at Amy Semple McPherson's Foursquare Church in Los Angles, was never able to make much of a success out of his doctrine, but it attracted several people who became central to what was later named "Christian Identity": San Jacinto Capt, William Potter Gale and Richard Girnt Butler.

    Capt was a California Klan leader and a believer in British Israelism, a doctrine which holds that the Israelites of the Bible are not the Jews, but rather Aryan/Anglo-Saxons. Gale was a stock- broker and former Army officer who briefly served on Gen. MacArthur's staff in the Philippines. Gale in turn recruited Butler to Swift's church during the 1950's. In 1970, Swift died, triggering a dispute between Gale and Butler. Ultimately, Butler assumed control and moved the church to Idaho, where he renamed it Aryan Nations - Church of Jesus Christ Christian.

    The function of religion in the lives of these four men was to provide a theological justification for their racism and anti- Semitism. Stated another way, racism and anti-Semitism were their religion. William Gale claimed to have chosen the term "Christian Identity" in 1965, when it was adopted as the name of a newsletter. In Gale's mind, the Identity movement was the glue to hold together racist ideology in the United States. Though he died almost unnoticed in 1987, Gale is the central figure and inspiration for America's present white supremacist movement and Identity doctrine is his legacy to that movement.

    Relying mostly on preaching, teaching, radio broadcasts and taped sermons, Gale didn't leave much of a written record behind. This has led to a consistent undervaluation of the central role William Potter Gale played in the formation of Identity, the Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations, The Committee of the States, the Unorganized Militia and all the rest of the panoply of militant white supremacy in the United States today.

    The War of Republic Versus Democracy

    Baldly stated, the white supremacist movement seeks to undermine federal authority and bring about the collapse of the United States of America. The destruction of federal power is the prerequisite to establishing a new racial nationalist state. It is highly unlikely that such a thing is within the means of the small number of militant racists, but it is certain that they will continue to use all means at their disposal to pursue that unrealistic goal.

    These means include bombings, sabotage, undermining discipline in the armed forces, counterfeiting, tax evasion, bank robbery, subversion of local governments and law enforcement, fraud, and attempts at nuclear, chemical, biological and psychological warfare. Instances of all of these acts have occurred and -- with the exception of an incident involving nuclear or chemical material -- each of these tactics have been employed in the last twelve months.

    Two stories filed with the Associated press on April 6, 1996, "From Bombers To Fed-Fearing Freemen, Outlaws Seek Haven In Wild Northwest" and "Beyond Militias: Extremism's Many Faces Vex Anti-Terrorism Efforts" by AP writer David Foster list the following dozen incidents:

  • A pipe bomb exploded outside an office of The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash. Ten minutes later, gunmen robbed a nearby bank and set off a bomb as they left. No one was injured. The methods and a letter left behind bore similarities to past crimes blamed on white supremacists.

  • A shed packed with explosives, ammunition and guns exploded 60 miles east of Portland, Ore., breaking windows in nearby homes. Shredded bomb-making literature rained down like confetti. A federal firearms charge was filed against the shed's owner, a self-described survivalist.

  • Willie Ray Lampley called himself a "prophet of the most high' and vowed holy war against Jews, gays, abortion doctors and the government. Now Lampley, 65, is standing trial in Oklahoma, accused of plotting with three others to blow up abortion clinics, gay bars and the offices of civil-rights groups.

  • Saboteurs derailed an Amtrak train near Phoenix in October, killing one person and injuring 78. No arrests have been made, but a note at the scene, signed by "Sons of the Gestapo," railed against federal heavy-handedness at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

  • In December, a fertilizer bomb fizzled outside an Internal Revenue Service office in Reno, Nev. Two tax protesters were charged in the bombing attempt. One pleaded guilty, and the other faces trial in June.

  • Two men accused in January of netting more than $250,000 from a string of Midwestern bank robberies may have used the loot to finance a white supremacist militia, officials said. In court papers, one defendant listed his occupation as "revolutionary" and called himself Commander Pedro of the Aryan Republican Army.

  • The standoff that began March 25 between the FBI and Montana Freemen, anti-government activists who set up their own government, wrote millions of dollars in bogus checks and threatened to kill anyone who interfered.

  • Right-wing extremists were suspected of stealing explosives in five states.

  • A tax protester was charged with plotting to blow up an IRS center in Austin, Texas.

  • A white supremacist in Ohio tricked a medical lab into mailing him vials of bubonic plague bacteria.

  • And, of course, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.

    The violence of the movement has frequently been ascribed to "loners" and their acts described as "isolated incidents." While the violence may be committed by small groups, and separate attacks are rarely coordinated by a central authority, the pattern of this violent attack upon society comes from a shared and consistent set of beliefs. White supremacy is not monolithic. It has factions and clear distinctions can be drawn between them, but the largest and most active faction has adopted the name "Christian Patriotism."


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