("Quid coniuratio est?")
[CN Editor-in-chief: Yes, I'm back. Yes, it was a short vacation (due to circumstances beyond my control). It looks like it's just as well it turned out as it did, as things seem to be happening.]
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The following is from The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, April 3-9, 1995. Note that The Washington Times is almost if not in fact a "mainstream" press outlet. As such, the very fact that this has appeared in their newspaper is of note. If you can afford $60 for a year-long, weekly subscription, the price is well worth it as this paper is extremely well-written. Note that I have absolutely no connection with The Washington Times and that this is just my own personal endorsement; I receive absolutely no compensation for doing so. To subscribe to The Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, phone 1-800-636- 3699.
WHEN THE LAW BREAKS IN...
by Samuel Francis
Most Americans who keep up with the news today know about the atrocities inflicted by the federal leviathan at Waco and on the family of Randy Weaver in Idaho. In both cases, federal police deliberately provoked innocent people in ways that led to the violent deaths of the innocent. What few Americans know is that such horrors are far from rare.
In January 1994, several defenders of gun rights and civil liberties wrote to President Clinton detailing some of these horror stories. Whether he's bothered to reply I don't know, but what he has to say about the matter is unimportant. What's important is that Americans understand what is happening -- to them and their country.
On August 25, 1992, the California home of a law-abiding citizen named Donald Carlson was invaded by agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration shortly after midnight on the claim that they were looking for illegal drugs. Mr. Carlson, asleep at the time, thought robbers had broken in; he dialed 911 and reached for his hand gun. DEA agents riddled him with bullets; After seven weeks in intensive care, he survived -- sort of. No drugs were found.
In October the same year, the DEA paid a similar visit to Donald Scott, also in California, this time bringing along the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for extra protection against the dangerous Mr. Scott, also a law-abiding citizen. Busting into the house while he was asleep, a deputy sheriff shot Mr. Scott and killed him. Again, no illegal drugs were found.
A year earlier, in September, 1991, a small federal army composed of some 60 agents from the DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) the National Guard and the U.S. Forest Service (where, you have to wonder, were the Boy Scouts and the Little League) arrived in the living rooms of Mrs. Sina Brush and two neighbors in New Mexico just after dawn. Mrs. Brush and her daughter were handcuffed in their underwear and forced to kneel while the American gestapo searched the house for drugs. No drugs were found.
These aren't the only instances of armed invasions and violent attacks by federal police. There are other recent cases not mentioned in the letter to Mr. Clinton.
Last summer, the ATF paid a visit to Harry and Theresa Lumplugh in Pennsylvania. The ATF needed only 15 to 20 men, armed and masked, to handle the couple, whom they forced to open safes and hand over private papers while held at the point of a machine gun. One of America's finest kicked the Lumplughs' pet cat to death. No charges were brought against the Lumplughs.
Last year, four ATF agents raided the bedroom of Monique Montgomery at four in the morning. She reached for a gun and was shot four times and killed. Nothing illegal was found. In Ohio, the ATF raided the house of businessman and part-time police officer Louie Katona III, pushing his pregnant wife against a wall and causing her to miscarry. Nothing illegal was found.
In almost all of these cases, the feds showed up in the middle of the night, garbed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his latest thriller and proceeded to bully, beat, humiliate, intrude and sometimes wound or kill the victims they'd selected. In none did any of the victims violate any law; in several, the police had relied on intelligence known to be unreliable. In the Scott case, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office found that the raid was in part motivated by the desire of the Sheriff's Office to seize Mr. Scott's ranch under federal asset-forfeiture laws.
Last year, on a TV talk show discussing Waco, I listened to caller after caller phone in to report mini-Wacos in their own areas that no one else had ever heard of. Maybe some of them were cranks and made it up. But the horrors I've just described have to make you wonder if we really live in the United States anymore. In none of the cases I know about have any of the federal agents been charged; few have been disciplined; almost none made the national news.
What can be done about it? I guess "Write your congressman" doesn't quite cut it, does it? What should be done about it is that the Congress should forget its "Hundred Days," its "Contract with America," its constitutional amendments and its happy talk about the "Third Wave." It should find out who authorized these and similar raids and who committed these atrocities against law- abiding citizens. It should abolish the agencies responsible, and it should make certain that the tyrants and murderers in federal uniform who planned, authorized or committed these crimes are brought to justice.
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(Samuel Francis, a columnist for the Washington Times, is nationally syndicated.)
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"