"When poets buy guns, tourist season is over."

Walter Russell Mead: "Guns Better Investment Than Gold?"

I don't know why he put the question mark in there.

World Net Daily notices ChoreBoy and the Garand scandal.

"Put down the Chore Boy and back away from the weaponry!"

No joke! ATF bans scrub-pad stockpiles.
Feds warns kitchen staple considered part of 'silencer'


Weapon of choice for modern gangbangers if you believe Hillary's State Department. An M-1 rifle about to be "exploited for illicit purposes" in 1944.

Backlash against Obama's rifle ban to target Congress.

A stealth plan by the Obama administration to classify hundreds of thousands of workhorse rifles used by the U.S. military and public alike as dangerous has prompted a grass-roots campaign to save the weapons, and a key U.S. senator has lent his voice to the effort.

"If we're going to reverse President Obama's Million Rifle Ban, gun owners have to turn the heat up on Congress now before it's too late," writes Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in a campaign launched by National Association for Gun Rights. . .

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of State explained to WND when the re-importation ban initially was announced that the permission had been granted for the rifles to be shipped to the U.S., then it was rescinded.

The decision, explained Karl Duckworth, was prompted because of "concerns that such large numbers" of weapons would be brought into the U.S. and they could be "exploited for illicit purposes."

However, he said he could not elaborate on who expressed the concerns.

Well whaddaya know. Somebody figured it out. "Behind the fall of Operation Fast and Furious -- Motives, allegiances add to saga intrigue."

The Arizona Republic tries to understand the improbable tale of the Coalition of Willing Lilliputians.

If this story follows previous ones, this will also appear in tomorrow's USA Today. Perhaps they'll find a consistent spelling of my name by then.

The initial story line of Fast and Furious was about outrage -- anger that guns, let out of sight, had been used in crimes. But the backstory of the investigation is one of hidden motives, curious contradictions and strange allegiances, both among those who organized the effort and those who exposed it. . .

Bloggers

A growing number of ATF employees wanted to expose Fast and Furious. The question: How?

Dobyns and Cefalu began networking with two of the most prominent and prolific Second Amendment bloggers in America.

David Codrea, an Ohio-based writer, is field editor for GUNS Magazine and an author on a website known as "The War on Guns: Notes From the Resistance."

Mike Vanderboegh runs a website, Sipsey Street Irregulars, which he identifies as a gathering place for the 3 percent of Americans willing to fight for the right to bear arms.

Vanderboegh and Codrea, longtime friends, this year received Soldier of Fortune Magazine's Second Amendment Freedom Award and the David and Goliath Award from Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Dobyns says he turned to the bloggers because of a shared animus toward ATF administrators. "Do they have an agenda? Of course they do," he said. "But it's my experience that they're not anti-ATF; they're anti-bad ATF."

Codrea and Vanderboegh began churning out essays on Fast and Furious, even giving the operation its sardonic nickname, "Project Gunwalker." They joined forces with other bloggers, government employees and gun dealers in what Vanderboegh calls "a coalition of willing Lilliputians."

Their reports, frequently quoting anonymous sources, exposed the dubious investigative strategy but went much further, speculating that the White House was involved. A typical posting by Vanderboegh carried the headline, "... Obama's Gunwalker Was a Deliberate Conspiracy Vs. the 2nd Amendment."

That hypothesis has gone viral in the gun-rights blogosphere. Proponents, noting that Obama was endorsed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence during the 2008 campaign, claim that high-placed officials in Washington, D.C., devised a plan to flood Mexico with firearms as justification for a crackdown on gun ownership. . .

At a news conference in late January 2011, federal authorities announced indictments against 20 gun-trafficking suspects, including the man who bought weapons found at Agent Terry's death scene.

Newell, then the special agent in charge for Arizona, said those who arm the cartels "have as much blood on their hands as the criminals that use them."

Asked if the ATF knowingly let guns "walk," Newell answered, "Hell, no."

Codrea, the anti-ATF blogger, says outrage swelled because of that response, plus a growing sense of urgency: People were getting killed on both sides of the border, and ATF whistle-blowers were risking their careers by criticizing an agency that has a reputation for retaliation. But mainstream media -- lacking on-the-record sources -- resisted publication of undocumented claims about Fast and Furious.

Bloggers turned to politicians, making calls and e-mailing members of Congress.

Codrea wrote an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, begging for an inquiry. "We had to bang pots and pans because we were small fry," he says.

Vanderboegh sent e-mails to politicians for two weeks, with no success. Finally, he says, he wrote to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., threatening to publish an accusation that the senator was "complicit in the cover-up." Within hours, Vanderboegh says, he heard from Sessions' staff and was channeled to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

A congressional investigation was under way.

"We were the midwives of this scandal because nobody else would touch it and the agents were out there, twisting in the wind, willing to tell the truth at great risk to themselves," Vanderboegh boasted in a subsequent Internet post.

In interviews, Vanderbeogh and Codrea chuckle at the irony of government agents relying on their critics to find a congressional audience.

"It's so improbable that ATF guys would come to us, the Second Amendment advocates," Vanderbeogh says. "But we realized we did have common enemies in the ATF hierarchy."
Congress

Vanderbeogh says politicians were hesitant, unable to believe whistle-blowers, afraid to go after the Obama administration with such a bizarre tale.

"They were hunting some very, very dangerous game," he says of congressional investigators. "This was something that could turn on them and eat them."

As more agents came forward, some with corroborating records, Republican lawmakers became attentive -- and more assertive in going after an executive branch run by Democrats. . .

Many have suggested that the ATF should be abolished.

Codrea and Vanderboegh say that last option would be a mistake because firearms enforcement might become the province of a larger, more powerful agency such as the FBI -- difficult to attack politically.

"I very much prefer the devil that I know in rehab to the devil that I don't know," Vanderbeogh says.

Weak Sister RINO Governors Refuse to Comment on Holder Removal.

GOP governors are hiding under their desks about the Gunwalker Scandal.

poltroon

1. An ignoble or total coward; a dastard; a mean-spirited wretch.

"Most GOP governors refuse to join calls for Attorney General Holder's resignation."

Republican governors are refusing to weigh-in on whether President Obama should fire his top law enforcement official over a botched gun-tracking operation.

The overwhelming silence of GOP state leaders comes as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal have joined more than 40 Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill in calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign for his role in Operation Fast and Furious.

The Hill spoke with the offices of all 29 Republican governors. Twenty-six of them either declined to comment or did not respond to whether their confidence in the Obama Administration has waned in the wake of Congress’s investigation into Fast and Furious — a gun tracking operation in the Southwest that oversaw the sale of thousands of firearms to known and suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels. . .

But Jindal, Perry, and Brewer are outliers in the GOP gubernatorial field. The Republican governors of Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming all declined to comment or did not respond for this article.

Cravenly poltroons all.

Maybe if your governor is on this list you might want to call him up and tell him what you think of him. I know mine is going to be hearing from me.

The Rules of Journalism that T. Brown missed. Spanish Inquisition begins at Newsweak. Tina Brown decides she really, really doesn't like me. Really.

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. -- Monty Python, The Spanish Inquisition.

Principles of Journalism

After extended examination by journalists themselves of the character of journalism at the end of the twentieth century, we offer this common understanding of what defines our work. The central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society.

This encompasses myriad roles--helping define community, creating common language and common knowledge, identifying a community's goals, heros and villains, and pushing people beyond complacency. This purpose also involves other requirements, such as being entertaining, serving as watchdog and offering voice to the voiceless.

Over time journalists have developed nine core principles to meet the task. They comprise what might be described as the theory of journalism:

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth

Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can--and must--pursue it in a practical sense. This "journalistic truth" is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation. Journalists should be as transparent as possible about sources and methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information. Even in a world of expanding voices, accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built--context, interpretation, comment, criticism, analysis and debate. The truth, over time, emerges from this forum. As citizens encounter an ever greater flow of data, they have more need--not less--for identifiable sources dedicated to verifying that information and putting it in context.

2. Its first loyalty is to citizens

While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization's credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers. Commitment to citizens also means journalism should present a representative picture of all constituent groups in society. Ignoring certain citizens has the effect of disenfranchising them. The theory underlying the modern news industry has been the belief that credibility builds a broad and loyal audience, and that economic success follows in turn. In that regard, the business people in a news organization also must nurture--not exploit--their allegiance to the audience ahead of other considerations.

3. Its essence is a discipline of verification

Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method of testing information--a transparent approach to evidence--precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction or entertainment. But the need for professional method is not always fully recognized or refined. While journalism has developed various techniques for determining facts, for instance, it has done less to develop a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover

Independence is an underlying requirement of journalism, a cornerstone of its reliability. Independence of spirit and mind, rather than neutrality, is the principle journalists must keep in focus. While editorialists and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is still their accuracy, intellectual fairness and ability to inform--not their devotion to a certain group or outcome. In our independence, however, we must avoid any tendency to stray into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power

Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve as watchdog over those whose power and position most affect citizens. The Founders recognized this to be a rampart against despotism when they ensured an independent press; courts have affirmed it; citizens rely on it. As journalists, we have an obligation to protect this watchdog freedom by not demeaning it in frivolous use or exploiting it for commercial gain.

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise

The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.

7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant

Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. The effectiveness of a piece of journalism is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional

Keeping news in proportion and not leaving important things out are also cornerstones of truthfulness. Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. The map is only an analogy; proportion and comprehensiveness are subjective, yet their elusiveness does not lessen their significance.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

Every journalist must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility--a moral compass. Each of us must be willing, if fairness and accuracy require, to voice differences with our colleagues, whether in the newsroom or the executive suite. News organizations do well to nurture this independence by encouraging individuals to speak their minds. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. It is this diversity of minds and voices, not just numbers, that matters. -- Journalism.org.

Tina Brown must have skipped class the day that they covered those rules.

According to reports from our C.O.W.L. deep-cover agent Alvin Wombat, the Spanish Inquisition began at Newsweak within two hours of the posting Friday of "Hiding mass murder behind 'national security. What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing."

Tina Brown is said to very angry and is determined to find out who leaked the details of the story she didn't want to surface. Wombat reports that the screaming was largely focused on the fact that Tina has decided that she really, really doesn't like me. Really.

Various editors, reporters and sources are under suspicion.

(No attention has as yet focused on the aforementioned Wombat, who learned his intelligence techniques following around his brother-in-law, the celebrated anti-ATF spy Ramsey A. Bear.)


"Who the hell is Mike Vanderboegh and how did he find out about me gutting the f--king PATCON story?!? More importantly, WHO gave him the original story?!?!?"

Seriously, though, Brown is beside herself. So too, say other sources, is the FBI, DOJ and White House. They are all quite at sea about how to deal with this, and with me. Some fear that anything they do, including disciplining the editors and journalists, will blow back on them, drawing more attention to the story. On the other hand, the smart ones understand that this will not go away and all they need is for Brent Bozell to bring it to the attention of Rush Limbaugh and it will begin to get far, far worse.

It's a conundrum, fer sure. And it couldn't happen to nicer, more deserving folks.

For now, the Rules of Journalism have been taken down off the walls at Newsweek and the following poster put up in its stead, to remind Newsweek employees who's boss.

A note to "Bombin' Johnny" Bangerter. (And a wink and grin in the direction of Kirk Lyons, too.)

"These silly right-wingers think I am Mossad," says Kirk Lyons, Andreas Carl Strassmeier's "attorney" who had him spirited out of the country when attention shifted to the German Panzergrenadier officer over the Oklahoma City Bombing. Not me Kirk, I always KNEW you were an FBI PATCON asset.

My PATCON Newsweak story is bringing all the old suspects out of the bushes. You'd think I was talking about them, or something. First, to "Bombin' Johnny" Bangerter.

Sorry, Johnny, but that's what J.D. Cash used to call you and I never grew out of the habit. Please, Johnny, stop clogging up the comments section. If you have something you want to say to me, please send me an email to GeorgeMason1776@aol.com. I would be happy to communicate with you about PATCON and other issues.

The same goes for Kirk Lyons and all the old Andreas-Carl-Strassmeier-FBI-Asset Anti-Defamation League. I'm particularly interested in crossing swords with ole' Kirk, considering how well that worked out for him last time. Are you still claiming you were in the Talladega National Forest the day of the bombing, Kirk? ;-)

Thanks to the both of you,

Mike Vanderboegh
Formerly editor of The John Doe Times.
(Still on your trail after all these years.)

STOP!

. . . sending me money for the DC trip. I have more than enough. I have been in Ohio visiting my Mom for Thanksgiving, as well as other siblings who motored in for the event. I never post that I'm going out of town when there's nobody here to babysit the house, and although I have neighbors and friends checking it every so often, I just don't want to take the risk of broadcasting the fact to the world.

Anyway, after we got the car unloaded I ran down to the PO box, and true to FBI form, there was a bundle in there where there had been no mail for a week. And what a bundle. I was speechless for a while. Just . . . speechless.

Having recovered my voice, folks, you must stop sending me money for the DC trip. It is more than covered.

Please.

Thanks, and may God bless you and yours.

SITREP.

I've been very busy this weekend despite the lack of posts. Mostly I have been considering the near future and the many things that have come down the trail at me. In a word, there's too much on my plate.

Bob Wright has tentatively agreed to help me spin off the Praxis side of SSI into another blog. Not that Sipsey Street is going to become exclusively Gunwalker and PATCON. Sipsey Street will continue to cover a wide spectrum of subjects -- what ever interests me and that I think important to the times that we find ourselves in.

It is just that the Praxis side has been neglected and spinning it off into a stand-alone site covering all the practical topics of a functioning and healthy armed citizenry.

Bob Wright is the perfect editor for such a site and I will contribute as well, of course. Maybe we cazn talk the Trainer and Ranger Rick to contribute as well.

The fact of the matter is that I'm getting to the point where I have to have help -- archiving the posts on the site so they are not subject to hacking or official interruption, saving archival emails, filtering incoming emails. There is just too much to do and the taking on of a secretary is both sensitive and problematic, mostly because I have difficulty turning loose of control over things that I have responsibility for.

Anyway, I will probably not be posting substantive stuff until late tonight or first thing in the morning.

SSI Exclusive: Hiding mass murder behind "national security." What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing.

And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.

For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.

Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. "They don't want PATCON mentioned," said one source. "Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang." A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to "stay away from that shit" for "PATCON will get you killed -- it's national security."

There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years -- Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance -- including weapons, explosives and money -- to neoNazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, "Violence Against Abortion Providers," using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI's power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that "there isn't a neoNazi or racist group in the country that isn't operationally controlled by the FBI." Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. "Certainly," he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.

Now, however, "the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing" said another source. "They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. . ."

So I wrote on Monday in this article which linked to a
published but gutted version of the original Newsweek story about the patriotic volunteer confidential informant John Matthews, who was recruited by the FBI under the secret program known as PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy).

"What was it, specifically," I was asked later in numerous emails and phone calls, "that Tina Brown cut out?" From sources I had a pretty good idea, not all of which I put in the first article. But that was only based on trusted but secondhand sources.

Well, now I can answer that question. Sipsey Street has obtained a copy of the unedited article written by R.M. Schneiderman.

It was -- as originally written -- a great story, an important, game-changing story, a story that couold have made the career and reputation of Ross Schneiderman for the rest of his life. It had been several months in the making, sources say, as Schneiderman and his immediate editor John Solomon put it together and almost instantly ran into resistance from editors higher up the Newsweek food chain including, ultimately, Tina Brown.

When the editors were finished, most of the startling revelations of what John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue had to say were in Tina Brown's waste basket. Nestled beside them, amid waste paper and used Starbucks' latte cups, was the golden opportunity of Ross Schneiderman's career.

However, sources tell Sipsey Street, that the FBI, the Obama DOJ and the White House were all reportedly quite happy -- as well they should be.

Until now.

(NOTE: The excerpts below contain typographical errors found in the original and I have left them as is.)

Among the items expunged from the story:

1. The missing paragraphs that presented evidence that Tom Posey, the supposed chief conspirator whose crazy talk about using weapons of mass destruction first prompted Matthews to go to the FBI, may himself have been a government asset. From the original story as written, before Tina Brown's felt tip marker excised it:

After Posey’s arrest, the FBI had Matthews Social Security number changed, and paid for him and his family to move to Stockton , California . Yet the trial in Alabama proved frustrating for him. Despite hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, as well as video and personal surveillance, the Justice Department only chose to prosecute Posey and his cohorts for buying and selling the stolen night vision goggles. And in the end, Posey was sentenced to just two years in prison.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Birmingham said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Posey for the Brown’s Ferry plot. Yet curiously, the TVA denied that the plot or the weapons cache even existed. Meanwhile, several of the men involved in the planned robbery were never arrested. At the time, two of the men, Matthews says, were planning to blow up a federal building in Birmingham .

“They were gonna take a truck filled with fertilizer,” says Matthews. “You look at what Timothy McVeigh done, it’s basically the same thing. “What happened in Oklahoma could have happened a couple of years earlier.”

One possible explanation for how Posey’s trial played out: In 1996, the year he was released from prison, Posey appears to have been issued a new Social Security number, according to a Lexis-Nexus search conducted by Newsweek. Tony Gooch, a friend and Posey’s and a former CMA member, said that Posey was innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the whole Brown’s Ferry plot had been cooked up by Matthews. “Tom was a good man,” he says. “John did not endear himself to us with that story.” Yet Gooch said that Posey may have felt forced to cut a deal with the Justice Department, and provide them with information on other groups in the movement, or agreed not to reveal what he knew about Iran Contra.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Gooch said. “Tom knew some people who were real hardcore.”

Andreas Carl Strassmeier. John Matthews encountered him in company with Timothy McVeigh in San Saba, Texas. Sources say that Strassmeier was a joint operative of the German and U.S. governments.

2. There is mention that Matthews had encountered both Timothy McVeigh and Andreas Carl Strassmeier, widely thought to have been involved in the planning of the bombing, in Texas. From the original version of the story:

In the spring of 1995, Matthews was sitting on the couch with his father at his house in Stockton California when he heard the news: A truck bomb had exploded in front of a federal building in Oklahoma . Dozens had been killed, hundreds had been injured and the face of the building looked like it had been chewed off by an animal with a giant maw.

Matthews watched the coverage of the bombing with rapt attention. After all, this was the same sort of attack he had spent years trying to prevent. Days later, when McVeigh became the prime suspect and his photo flashed across the screen, Matthews realized he had seen him before. His mind drifted back to a weekend several years prior at a ranch in San Saba , Texas , where once a month, the TRM held paramilitary training.

It was a relatively warm Saturday morning. Matthews, who had spent the night on the ranch, was walking back from the woods where he had been setting up the evening’s exercise, when he spotted a group of men in fatigues hanging around a shed where the TRM stored explosives. Some of them, Matthews could tell by their haircuts and bearing, were ex-military.

Matthews and a few of his cohorts walked over to the men and introduced themselves. One man had dark hair, slightly buck teeth and a foreign accent. His name was “Andy,” and Matthews later learned that he was from Germany . Another man was tall and lanky, with short, buzzed hair. He said his name was “Tim.”

“He [Tim] was a nobody,” Matthews says. “Just another ex-soldier, but I remember his face. He was at one of the meetings, where a bunch of [stolen] ammunition was brought in from Fort Hood .”

Sitting in father’s living room in California , watching the television, Matthews decided he should call Jarrett. He told them about “Tim” and “Andy the German.” Yet Jarrett seemed blasé about the matter. “He said, ‘We know, John. Don’t worry about it. We got it covered.”

Instead, he was more interested in whether Matthews had seen McVeigh in Arizona . At the time, Matthews was working for the bureau there, infiltrating militias and separatists, along with meth-cooking gangs of bikers. Apparently, Jarrett said, McVeigh had spent time with similar groups. But Matthews never ran across him in Arizona , he said. Only in Texas . Jarrett thanked him and said he’d keep him updated. But as Matthews recalls it, that was the last time they ever spoke about the bombing.

When the FBI and the Justice Department eventually determined that McVeigh had largely acted alone in the bombing, with minimal assistance from two men who eventually back out of the attack, Matthews was skeptical. He began to wonder if it wasn’t a repeat of the Brown’s Ferry incident all over again.

“I felt Don knew more about this, but he could never say something to me,” Matthews says.

Jarrett passed away in 2009. . .

3. The story published also excised any mention of the Texas Light Infantry, a militia unit in the Lone Star State which contained constitutional militia, racist right and non-political elements. The racists and neoNazis, says one source who was familiar with TLI at the time, "kept a very low profile. Think of them as infiltrators that most TLI members knew nothing about."

Exactly why Newsweek found it necessary to delete mention of the TLI get-together in San Saba, and instead ascribe it to the Texas Reserve Militia, is curious. It was the TLI which is mentioned in FBI reports (called 302s) of this meeting where Matthews met men who he later discovered to be McVeigh and Strassmeier, sources say. Why, sources ask, is Newsweek (and presumably the FBI) allergic to mention of TLI?

4. The published story also expunged mention of an FBI undercover operative named Dave Rossi.

In January 1992, Matthews and Posey traveled to Austin Texas to meet with Neal Payne, a member of the Texas Reserve Militia, an Austin-based paramilitary group. Years earlier, Payne, a chiropractor who had been married in a church in which swastikas were frequently displayed, had been arrested for harboring Louis Beam, then a fugitive former Klan leader, who was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government. (He was later acquitted). Now, the FBI was investigating Payne, Beam and the TRM for allegedly laundering money through a Texas gun shop, paying off local law enforcement, purchasing stolen weapons from a Texas military base, smuggling arms from Central America, attempting to blow up a National Guard convoy in Alabama and threatening to kill two FBI agents in response to Beam’s arrest.

It was evening when they met at a small hotel room, on the outskirts of the city. The weather was cold and the sky was darkening. It had rained earlier that day, and inside the hotel room, the smell of must lingered in the air. Portraits of cowboys hung on the walls, as did old photos of the Alamo . Payne had wanted Matthews and Posey to meet a friend of his, an Austin-based Vietnam veteran named Dave Rossi. Rossi was about average height and build. He sported a shock of silver hair, a gray moustache and a green bomber jacket, which was fashionable among skinheads at the time.

For the next few hours, they kicked back on the beds and in the chairs and talked about the movement, how if they were ever going to stop the Jewish-led New World Order, they would have to band together, trading knowledge and weapons and making sure the government didn’t infiltrate them in the process. Fashioning his group after the Order, an infamous white supremacist gang of bank robbers from the 1980s, Rossi told Matthews and Posey that he and his cohorts were robbing armored cars, and using the proceeds to fund the movement. “He let us know that there was money available,” says Matthews. “We were feeling each other out.”

Posey, on his part, touted his access to weapons, and his history with the Contras. And as they left the hotel and drove to a local restaurant for dinner, Posey said could supply Rossi with C-4, a military grade explosive, as well as Stinger missiles, deadly heat-seeking devices, which when strapped to your shoulder, can bring down an aircraft with one shot.

Matthews recalls Posey leaving the meeting and feeling good about the future of the movement. “We really didn’t know where we were going with it at the time,” Matthews says. “But if they showed up with money then we could believe what they were telling us.”

In September of 1992, on a brisk morning in Benton , Tennessee , Matthews met Rossi and Posey at the annual convention of the American Pistol and Rifle Association, a gun rights group to the right of the NRA. Guards dressed in a camouflage uniforms, and armed with semi-automatic pistols patrolled the compound. Children and adults fired pistols and rifles at targets shaped like police cars a nearby range, and later, the group’s head of security, a police officer, taught a class on how to disarm law enforcement officials and kill them with their own guns.

As the day progressed, Matthews did his best to keep his distance from the undercover agent. For months, he and Posey had been travelling across the country, meeting a who’s who in the movement—from the Klan to the Aryan Nations--and linking them up with Rossi. Each time, Rossi introduced himself as a leader of a gang of armored car robbers with lots of money on his hands and a desire to fund the movement.

Eventually, however, Matthews began to wonder: If this guy has all this cash at his disposal, and he’s robbing all these banks, why haven’t I heard about the robberies? Matthews asked Jarrett and several of his other handlers at the bureau and they demurred. But eventually, after Matthews continued harping on the issue, Jarrett admitted what Matthews had begun to suspect: That Rossi was an undercover agent, posing as the leader of a white supremacist group. And the hotel they had initially met at in Texas had been bugged.

At first, Matthews felt betrayed; it was as if the bureau didn’t trust him. But then the knowledge that Rossi had been with him along the way was validating; Jarrett told him that he had earned their trust, and so Matthews continued his work, knowing that his handlers were behind him. Now, when they arrived on a scene, they often split up and had separate targets.

Matthews’ job for the weekend was to film. And that evening, as roughly 150 men and women—many of them in flannel shirts and baseball caps--gathered into an old barn to listen various speakers, Matthews sat in the back with the video camera rolling, while Posey and Rossi sat nearby, chatting amicably.

One speaker, a burly man with silver hair and a commanding Southern drawl drew considerable applause as he excoriated then President George H.W. Bush, and his opponent, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

“It is no longer the lesser of two evils, but the evil of two lesser that threatens the United States of America today!” the man said. “We have more of a good reason for a second American revolution than ever before.”

The speaker, James Gordon “Bo” Gritz, was the leading candidate for the extreme right wing Populist Party in the 1992 election. Four years earlier he had been on the party’s ticket as the running mate of former Klan leader David Duke. In recent months, Gritz had been in the headlines for his role in trying to negotiate an 18-month standoff between federal agents and Randy Weaver, a right-wing Christian fundamentalist and former ATF informant, who had links to the Aryan Nation. The standoff ended after an FBI sniper, who was authorized to use lethal force, shot and kicked Weaver’s wife Vicki, who was holding her new-born child.

The news quickly galvanized the radical right like never before. Men like Posey—who already worried that their right to bear arms was eroding--suddenly feared that the government would soon come for them, too. And while months prior, various white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and anti-government groups had talked about joining forces, after the Weaver shooting, that talk quickly turned to action.

The audience stood and applauded as Gritz decried the bureau’s handling of the Weaver standoff. And after Gritz’s speech ended, Matthews, Rossi and Posey slipped out of the back of the barn and walked through the grass over to where Posey had parked his blue Ford Bronco. For months they had been trying to hash out a weapons deal. Posey had told Rossi that he could get him as many as six Stinger missiles, priced at $40,000 a piece. The FBI had allocated the money for the purchase, apparently not to bust Posey, but to further embed the undercover into the world of hate and extremism. Days before the sale was to take place, however, Posey said he had sold the missiles to a group in Minnesota for $45,000 a piece, though it’s not clear if he was telling the truth.

That evening in Tennessee , however, Posey had several pairs of military night-vision goggles in his SUV. All were in green canvas cases and the serial numbers had been removed. Rossi tried out several pairs of goggles, and they worked. He then pulled out $7,500 in cash and handed it to Posey. Before they parted that evening, Rossi asked Posey when he could get more goggles, and where they came from. Posey said he’d have them in about a week along with some TNT and C-4 explosives. The goggles, he said, came from “the black market.”

Rossi, my sources say, may have been the ultimate PATCON operative, serving the FBI in a number of operations. If true, it is understandable that the FBI would be happy that Rossi's role ended up in Tina Brown's waste basket.


The body of Baylee Almon is carried from the wreckage of the Murrah Federal Building.

5. Also excised was mention that Jesse Trentadue had more than just a suspicion that his brother Kenney had been beaten to death as part of the OKBOMB investigation:

After his latest stint in the emergency room this year, Matthews says he kept thinking more and more about what his family knew about him and what he sacrificed over the years. Wondering if anyone had ever tied his name to the FBI, at a whim that morning this past summer, he began searching around online.

What he found was an article about Trentadue, the Salt Lake City attorney. For the past 15 years, the West Virginia-born lawyer has been shuffling across the street from his office in downtown Salt Lake City , and filing profanity-laced letters and Freedom of Information Act Requests to various federal agencies.

His goal? To prove that the agency killed his brother, Kenney, during a botched interrogation at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center in 1995, shortly after McVeigh’s attack. The bureau claims Kenney hung himself in his cell, but Trentadue says--and provided pictures indicating—that Kenney’s throat was slit and his body was covered in bruises.

Trentadue and his family were awarded $1.1 million for emotional distress after a federal judge found that the FBI and Bureau of Prisons had lied in court and destroyed evidence during the investigation. But Trentadue wasn’t satisfied. And not long after, he received an anonymous phone call from someone who said that his brother had been killed in a case of mistaken identity. The FBI, the caller said, believed that Kenney was actually a member of the Aryan Republican Army, a notorious gang of white supremacist bandits who robbed 22 banks across the Midwest in the early to mid ‘90s.

6. Gone, too, were the links between McVeigh and Strassmeier:

For years the FBI has insisted that McVeigh was essentially a lone wolf terrorist. Yet through his FOIA requests, Trentadue learned that the bureau had long possessed evidence linking McVeigh to the ARA, and several of the gang’s members to the bombing in Oklahoma City .

As Matthews read on he ran across a name that stopped him cold: Andy Strassmeir. A mysterious German national, a member of the country’s army and son of an advisor to Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, Strassmeir moved to the U.S. in the late 1980s. Over the next few years, he began palling around with ARA members and other white supremacists in Oklahoma . But according to the FBI files released by Trentadue, Strassmeir also conducted paramilitary training with the TRM in Texas . And Matthews believes he is the same man that he encountered, along with McVeigh, in San Saba.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said he had indeed trained with the TRM, but he did not recall training with McVeigh. Instead, he said that he and McVeigh had only met once at a gun show in Tulsa , Oklahoma in the spring of 1993—a meeting that McVeigh confirmed before he was put to death roughly a decade ago.

In an interview with Newsweek, Strassmeir said that he and McVeigh had never been friends. Phone records discovered by the FBI show that McVeigh called Strassmeir two weeks before the bombing. The German-native says he wasn’t home, and has no idea why McVeigh was calling. Roughly a year later, he slipped out of the country through Mexico , after a private investigator working for McVeigh’s defense attorney attempted to have him summoned to court. He had never been interviewed by the FBI until he was already safe and sound in Germany .

Speaking by way of phone from Berlin , Strassmeir told Newsweek that he was neither an informant nor a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing. A FOIA by Trentadue sent to the CIA about Strassmeir came up with 26 documents. Yet the National Geospatial Agency, part of the Department of Defense, would not allow Langley to release the documents, citing national security concerns.

Chase and Colton Smith. Collateral damage to the unintended consequences of PATCON, 19 April 1995. They would be young men now if not for McVeigh and Strassmeier. They never got the chance.

There is one thing that the heavily-edited article did, however, which makes these edits so much more important now that we know about them.

Both the FBI and Newsweek have validated Mr. Matthews service, his accounts and the quality of his memory. From the FBI plaque given to John Matthews:

“John W. Matthews: In appreciation and recognition for your outstanding efforts in assisting the FBI to combat domestic terrorism throughout the United States : March 28, 1991 – May 30, 1998.”

And Newsweek added this paragraph:

Matthews' story, which Newsweek verified through hundreds of FBI documents and several dozen interviews, including conversations with current and former FBI officials, offers a rare glimpse into the murky world of domestic intelligence, and the bureau's struggles to combat right-wing extremism.

When you take the gutted version of the story and combine it with the critical information Tina Brown cut out and then compare it to these glowing character references, there is one thing that leaps out at any independent observer -- the full truth about the FBI's involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma City bombing has yet to be even scratched.

John Matthews, a dying man, a patriotic man, a man who tried above all to do right and protect the country that he swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, has come forward to tell his story.

Then let him tell the WHOLE story about PATCON.

The cause of simple justice for the victims of Oklahoma City demands it.

Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.

It remains to be seen if there are any other "mainstream media" outlets who can, or will.

But at least, gentle readers, you know now the extent of Newsweek's perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano -- both of whom were knee deep in PATCON and the cover-up of the true circumstances behind the deaths of 176 men, women and children in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995.


Blows of truth against the Empire.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving.

I plan no posts for tomorrow. Enjoy your family time and pray for our country.

Washington Times: Armed illegals stalked Border Patrol

From the indictment now sealed.

It is important to remember that this is the Feds account of what happened (or didn't happen) in Peck Canyon. Read the story based on the indictment with an eye jaundiced by experience.

Tactical to impractical. ALICE Packs in Zuccotti Park.

Zoners in Zuccotti Utopia.

In an earlier Praxis post, from January 2010, Flight ER Doc commented:

In theory, the medium sized packs can be used with just shoulder straps (not with a frame)....

This is a bad idea! As long ago as the mid 1980's the Army started noticing (officially) that a lot of troops were suffering nerve damage (from slow to heal, to permanent) from the pressure of the alice shoulder straps in the brachial plexus (a cluster of nerves in the shoulder). The pack without the frame and waist band will pull down and put too much pressure on these nerves, causing the damage.

Now, it apparent that these two love birds from Zuccotti Park may indeed have nerve damage, but I don't think it is from the ALICE packs.

Day by Day

Something for the analysts to remind their Mandarin bosses of.

When armies approach each other, it makes all the difference which owns only the ground on which it stands or sleeps and which one owns all the rest. -- Winston Churchill: Their Finest Hour, 1949

That paragon of moral virtue, Jesse Jackson, writes "Lesson of White House strafing: Limit guns now."

I was once asked by a citizen disarmament advocate, a follower of the Bradys, what I thought about more firearm restrictions. I began to answer when he impatiently broke in, "Give me the short answer." I replied, "Okay. . . If you try to take our firearms we will kill you." All the fellow could do was stare at me in disbelief. This is the restated meaning of "shall not be infringed." Some people, however, have to have it translated for them. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

And I always thought "strafing" required an airplane. Who knew?

As David Codrea writes: Jesse Jackson Proposes New Civil War. Yes, either he hasn't thought the unintended consequences of his proposal through or Jesse is seemingly willing to kill millions of those of us who would resist such tyranny.

Well, under Bill Clinton's 1999 Serbian Rules of Engagement, at least he'd probably get what he deserved for proposing such a bloody conflict in the first place -- if not a precision guided munition through the window like Serbian Television, then at least an American version of "Rule .303". Personally, if I lived through such a ghastly future as Jesse longs for, which I don't expect to, I would prefer that he get a rope at the end of an exquisitely fair war crimes tribunal, like Julius Streicher.


Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher demonstrates the perils of collectivist propaganda, although by this point he was past caring and beyond further pontificating.

Unfortunately, poor Jesse is risking the sentiment expressed in a hand-lettered sign on an intelligence office wall in Iraq:

"Proper target information means never having to say you're sorry."

Wait for it . . . Wait for it . . . The next Media Matters excremental spasm is coming just about . . . NOW.

I LOVE jerking those jerks' chain.



Be careful what you wish for, for you may get it.

Movement to contact in Peck Canyon. A daylight view of the terrain Brian Terry saw just before he was murdered by an FBI snitch using an ATF weapon.

Movement to contact is a type of offensive operation designed to develop the situation and establish or regain contact. A commander conducts this type of offensive operation when the tactical situation is not clear or when the enemy has broken contact. -- Field Manual 3-90, Tactics.

From a reader.

Peck Canyon. You are looking to the North and slightly to the East. This was the direction they were coming towards (the BORTAC team) that night. . . As you look at it, scan towards the right side which points East towards Route # 19. A very short distance.

There has been much mirth and appreciation expressed over my use of an illustration of a red herring. What "red herring" meant in the 70s.

Glad y'all liked it. But there is another, thankfully much more obscure, meaning of red herring which comes down in the unwritten lore of the anti-war movement of the 60s and 70s. To wit,

Red Herring: A committed communist lesbian who consistently fails to wash her private parts, thus stinking inevitably of fish, often to the attraction of hungry stray four-legged cats.

Whether I was referring to Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney with this particular definition of red herring, or whether Maloney was herself communicating in code to her sisters, I'll leave to your wonderment.


Red herrings, circa early 1970s.

Need a reader's help with finding an old Daily Oklahoman article.

I am looking for a copy of the Nolan Clay article "Robbery Victim's Alliances Promise Drama in Nichols' Trial," published in the Daily Oklahoman, on 9 November 1997. Used to have a copy but cannot locate it now, and I need it for a PATCON article I'm working on.

Will anyone who has it or can locate it send to GeorgeMason1776@aol.com?

David Codrea asks: Is disarming Africans a ‘greater good’?

“Jewelry Made From AK-47s, for the Greater Good,” Lauren Covello of Fox Business News assumes.

"They attack us, because we are doing something right." Bob Wright's bright idea & the ambulance chaser's calculation: What's 50% of 300 million?

Bob Wright has a bright idea.

A Message To The SPLC From A Montana “Extremist”

I’ll be the first to admit, people who refuse to compromise their principles under any circumstances can be utterly terrifying. Defiance, in its purest form, requires fearlessness; a brand of fearlessness we have little experience of today. For many in our society, fearlessness in the face of immeasurable opposition is unthinkable, and (unjustly) considered a sign of “madness”, or of “extremism”. To go against the tides of a culture, a collective, and point out its crimes and inconsistencies, is so counter to what they have been conditioned to expect, any sign of dissent triggers in them feelings of confusion and fury.

The Liberty Movement, and all it’s more specific and specialized branches, represents a resurgence of the immovable ideal. We refuse to set aside the truth. We refuse to relinquish our freedoms. We refuse to be silent. We refuse to negotiate. Regardless of the consequences, and despite contrary impositions of so called “national security”, we simply will not go away. This kind of philosophy is a serious obstacle for any establishment system which seeks to maintain or even expand its base of power. If you cannot buy off a person, if you cannot co-opt a person, and if you cannot frighten him into compliance, then all that is left to do is to demonize his public character, lock him up, or kill him. Men of conscience force the agents of centralization to expose their inherent tyranny before they are ready for the citizenry to know who they really are. Frankly, the Liberty Movement is a considerable pain in the neck for those who would see the American dynamic distorted to the benefit of a select few.

We wear this distinction like a badge of honor. If we were not a threat to the globalist corporatist strategy, then they would not consistently go out of their way to attack us. They attack us, because we are doing something right.

You know, in the light of the PATCON documents related to SPLC, Bob Wright had a brilliant idea. I'm ashamed I didn't think of it myself. Bob and I have been slandered and libeled by the Southern Preposterous Lie Center since at least 1995. That doesn't make us special. Hell, hundreds, thousands, of people have. Some of us paid more than others, back then, this price of our convictions. Some of us lost jobs. Some lost wives. Our children were harassed at school. We were called names by people we thought were our friends. All because of what Professor Robert Churchill has called "The Narrative of 1995," the Brown Scare whipped up, principally, by SPLC -- and all for money.

It paid them well, this Narrative of 1995. "What do you think Morris Dees and SPLC are worth?" Bob asked me. I thought a bit. All the cash, company property, private property, accounts in the Grand Caymans, luxury homes, artwork, the "Crystal Palace" headquarters in Montgomery, the Dees Private Army's automatic weapons . . .

I figured between 200 and 300 million dollars.

Well, Bob asked, knowing what we know now about PATCON and SPLC, "why can't we find us a good ambulance chaser on contingency, SUE the sonsabitches and take every last cent?"

Now THAT is bright idea. A great idea.

And I know just the jury I want, too. I think that Morris would benefit most (or least, depending upon your POV) with a jury panel made up of Civil Rights foot soldiers from the 50s and 60s. They think that Morris is a "civil rights pimp" who piggybacked a fundraising operation off their misery. And just think of the dramatic value of SPLC attorneys striking jurors based on race . . . "SPLC seeks all white jury to hear libel case."

Oh, hell yeah.

I think Bob wants Morris' palatial digs to turn into a retirement home for old constitutional militiamen, with rockers on the porch, where old geezers can entertain young pups with stories about what it was like before the Doyle Proctor Foundation subsidized militia training for teenagers. "You mean, Grampa, that you had to buy your own blank ammunition? Gee. . ."

As for me, I want the Crystal Palace to turn it into a museum for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms & the Constitutional Militia ideal.

Oh, HELL yeah.

The discovery process on the court case would be worth $300 million in entertainment value alone.

Oh, HELL YEAH.