
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 10  Num. 25
             =======================================
                     ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
FOCUS ON FORTIER
================
 
With media attention beginning to turn again to the Oklahoma City
bomb, and particularly the  confessions of McVeigh friend Michael
Fortier, Steamshovel Press  would  like  to  present  again  John
Judge's  comments about Fortier from SP14, which developed into a
broader discussion about  manipulation  of  the militia movement.
As the author of Judge For Yourself and a research  associate  of
the  late  Mae  Brussell,  Judge  is  well-known among conspiracy
researchers.  He works as  one  of  the central organizers of the
Committee on Political Assassinations, a non-profit group working
for the release of government files on  political  assassinations
(POB 772, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, DC 20044-0772.)  This
excerpt comes from Steamshovel Press #14, now available as a back
issue  for  $6 postpaid.  The current issue of Steamshovel (#15),
is also now available for  $6.  Steamshovel Press, POB 23715, St.
Louis, MO 63121.
 
 
Q:  You mentioned that you talked to Michael Fortier  before  his
"confession."
 
A:   Myself  and researchers I know talked to Fortier.  He was an
army buddy of McVeigh's and  he  also  helped McVeigh get the job
out in Arizona at the TruValue hardware  store.   When  he  spoke
with  us,  and  he didn't have to speak with us, we're not press,
and if he was part of this  elaborate it would not be likely that
he would talk to anybody.  He was  saying  to  us  that  he  knew
McVeigh  and he didn't think McVeigh would do anything like this.
He had never seen indication  that  McVeigh would bomb a building
or do this kind of violence.  He basically expressed  frustration
with  the  way  things  were  going.   He said, "what happened to
innocent until proven  guilty?"   Now  he  seems  to  be the main
prosecution  witness.   They  have  him  visiting  the  building,
checking it out with  McVeigh.   There's  a  whole  story  that's
implicated McVeigh.
 
Q: He seems to be plea bargaining with that.
 
A:   I  guess.  It seems like they put him over a barrel and they
said it's either going to be  you  or McVeigh, so take your pick.
That's the implication  always  when  you  have  somebody  that's
cooperating  and  all  of  sudden  they become a suspect, or vice
versa, you have to wonder  about  what  the prosecution is up to.
And there have been a string of these:  the brother  out  on  the
farm  in  Michigan,  Terry  Nichols,  was first said to be a very
cooperative person and  eventually  became suspect.  These people
become suspects, but then we're told they are not suspects in the
bombing.  They are just  suspects  of  other,  sort  of  related,
crimes.  Blowing up cans in the back yard, I guess.
   There  are  a  lot  of  disinformation  rumors  flying around.
Michael McLure said years  ago  that even paranoids have enemies.
That's true, but that doesn't mean that the  paranoids  know  who
their enemies are.
 
Q:   That's  my  feeling  about  people I have met in the militia
movement.  Some of  them  are  real,  sincere populist types, but
they should have real suspicions about their leadership.
 
A:  It's quite likely that these groups are either created  whole
cloth  or heavily infiltrated.  These kinds of groups would be of
use to the government, both in terms of as they used the Klan and
the Hell's Angels in the past, as  an arm of the government to be
paid to do murders, assassinations, hits  or  attacks  on  people
that  the  government  wanted to go after and thereby camouflage,
this  one  done  through  COINTELPRO  and  other programs--Hell's
Angels were paid off by the US government to kill  Cesar  Chavez,
there  were different plots of this sort in the past.  So they're
a good scapegoat if they need  one.   There's also quite a bit of
history of missing weapons being stolen from military  bases  and
in  a few cases where there are suspects, these suspects tie back
in to either the Aryan Brotherhood, neo-Nazi, right-wing or these
militia movements.  It  was  very  clear  that  there were active
police  department  and  active  military  and  reserve  military
veterans in the militia, even three congressmen were named in the
congressional roll call  as  members  of  the  militia.   So  the
militia have clearly a whole range of people.
   The militia want to see themselves as victims.  They would say
that the government did the Oklahoma bombing and are scapegoating
them because they want to destroy the militia and take their guns
away.   I  think  all  anybody  has  to  do  to put that claim in
perspective is look  at  how  the  Panthers  were  treated in the
1960s, when black people picked up guns and how  different  their
experience  was.   There  weren't  Panthers getting on Nightline.
There  weren't  people  being   allowed  to  just  espouse  their
philosophy without any political comeback.   The  militia  people
are   basically   being   given  a  forum.   "Are  you  a  racist
organization?"  "Oh,  no."   But  these  are  predominantly white
organizations and their  response  to  the  situation  that  they
believe  is  going  on,  which is partially racism and xenophobia
coming out, that United  Nations  is  bringing foreign troops and
foreign weapons--this isn't going to be  done  with  a  good  old
American  tank, they're going to have go import a Russian tank to
do this to us.   We're  more  than  willing  to  be a conduit for
foreign weapons and to ship them out as long as they are inferior
to any other country on the dole. We certainly do  bring  foreign
troops  into  this country and train them, as assassins and death
squads, we train other foreign  troops to be surrogate forces for
us around the world, and it's us that's taking over the  UN,  not
the  other  way  around.   The  UN  has  clearly  been used as an
extension of US foreign policy for many years.
   It's not that  to  that  there  haven't  been victims of these
federal police attacks, but you're comparing a few, the one Randy
Weaver, even the hundred people at Waco, the underlying theme  is
that  the  people  that  the government is really after are these
good white Christians.
 
Q:  This is exactly the kind of thing that's behind, say, Qubilah
Shabazz and Louis Farrakhan.  The  FBI  is going in and trying to
manipulate Shabazz into taking a contract out on Farrakhan.   The
militias  don't  seem  to care about that.  They don't care about
the Black Panthers.  But when  it  happens to Randy Weaver or the
strange Christians at Mt. Carmel, the whole movement is enflamed.
 
A:  Or the children in Waco or the  children  in  Oklahoma  City.
But  foreign  children, when they die, aren't somehow as innocent
or deserving of our  pity.   There's stories about seeing foreign
troops being trained to go house to house and disarm  the  people
in   the   houses.   That's  classic  counter-insurgency  warfare
strategy that they would use  in  a  place like Somalia.  Does it
mean that they wouldn't use it here?   No,  but  the  communities
where  it's going to be used first are the communities where they
are afraid of people having  guns.  They have been providing guns
to people in this country, much more so than  taking  them  away.
Any  kid  in  Los  Angeles, on the streets in a black or Hispanic
neighborhood, in the gangs,  they  know  where  to  go to get the
guns.  They come in by the trainload literally.  On certain notes
and certain locations you go down and you can buy the guns.  It's
like the drugs.  They don't come from the moon, they  don't  come
from  a  sixteen  year  old  kid with a plane that goes to Bogota
every week.  They come  through  channels that involve government
complicity or looking the other way.
   Guns generally don't protect homes.   It's  more  likely  that
it's  going  to  end  up with a gun fatality in the home.  On the
other hand, I'm not  saying  that  therefore  no one should own a
gun.  But what I am saying is that guns cannot be said to protect
civil liberties.  The fact that somebody armed themselves--as  G.
Gordon Liddy says, when BATF comes to break into the house, shoot
for  the  head  because  of  the  vests  they've  got  on--is not
protecting the  civil  liberties  of  themselves  and the broader
rights of people.  Most of the people that focus  on  the  second
amendment rights are not people that I have ever seen focussed on
anybody   else's  rights  in  the  United  States.   They  aren't
concerned about the violation of  civil and human rights here and
abroad by this government for many, many years.  They are  people
who  have  a  kind of reactionary response, a selfish response of
"I'm going to protect what I have."
   Going out and practicing with a 350 Magnum in the woods is the
response of the last guy  in  a  prison  riot.  In the last cell,
back in there saying, "Come on  in,  you  dirty  screws!   You'll
never  take  me  alive and I'm going to take a couple of you with
me.  Pry the gun  out  of  my  cold,  dead hand."  Well, so what?
This isn't about changing the United  States.   It  really  isn't
about  realizing  constitutional  rights.   It's about individual
protection.  It's the response of  the  guy  who goes down to his
fallout shelter as a response to the  bomb  and  not  only  that,
won't let you in.  He takes  the  shotgun down there to make sure
you try and come in.
   There is another view.  Yes, the government has  conspired  to
take away your rights.  But the thing to do about it is to expose
it  and to work for a democratic and public solution to it, not a
private or little militia  vigilante  solution  to it, because it
doesn't rest there.  You are not  going  to  win  a  pop-gun  war
against the current US military.  If the only game you understand
how  to  play is the gun game, you've lost at this point in human
history.
 
Also now available from Steamshovel Press: 
 
     Popular Alienation, a back issue anthology
     NASA, Nazis and JFK: The Torbitt Document
     The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny
          Casolaro
 
See also http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma
Link to that site available at
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
       Views expressed do not necessarily  reflect  those
       of Conspiracy Nation, nor of its Editor in Chief.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
        I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail 
address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to 
listproc@cornell.edu          (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
    For information on how to receive the improved Conspiracy 
  Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc? 
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
-----------------------------------------------------------------
       See also: http://www.shout.net/~bigred/cn.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
          See also: ftp.shout.net  pub/users/bigred
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

