Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 06:17:24 -0600 From: "The Old Blue Howler" <[l--oa--l] at [ICSI.Net]> To: [N--B--N] at [Mainstream.com], [r--c] at [xmission.com] Subject: Ambrose is at it again I was just wondering, could we trade the UK the NYTimes, Time Magazine, Sam Donaldson, Connie Chung and a player to be named later for the Telegraph? The Electronic Telegraph Monday 29 May 1995 World News [World News] Clinton attack swells ranks of the militias As mistrust in the federal government grows, new battle lines are being drawn across America, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington THE battle fatigues have been put away. Semi-automatic rifles are no longer quite so visible on the front seat of pick-up trucks. Weekend manoeuvres have been postponed. But those who thought that the militias were going to melt away after the Oklahoma bombing are in for a big surprise. Word from across the United States is that the militia organisers are overwhelmed by a surge of recruitment. Ken Gomes, a leader of the Maine State Militia, said: "People who were sympathetic before are now coming out of the woodwork and saying, 'We're with you'. We've got doctors, mill workers, waitresses and retired naval officers joining up. People around here just don't believe the militia blew that building up." Mr Gomes claims that there are now more than 15,000 members of the different militia outfits in Maine, an astonishing number for a state of only 1.3 million inhabitants. If there is any truth to this - and it is impossible to obtain accurate data - it is clear that Washington has totally misjudged the scale and character of the militia movement. Ben Swank, commander of the Unorganized Militia of Northern Ohio, said that his region is in ferment. "Our membership has increased dramatically but it's more clandestine now, more cautious," he said, adding that the movement was spreading from a core of fundamentalist Christians to a much broader cross-section. President Clinton has been a catalyst for recruitment. His speeches linking the Oklahoma bombing to the militias, and ascribing "intellectual complicity" to conservative radio shows, have enraged many people. So far, the government has been unable to show any involvement by militia units in the terrorist attack. Two of the early suspects, the Nichols brothers, apparently attended a couple of meetings of the Michigan Militia, but were asked not to come back because of their anarchist views on tax protest. On May 5, Clinton made a speech in Michigan amounting to a declaration of cultural war on the "constitutionalists", "patriots" and Vietnam veterans who make up the militia movement. "There is nothing patriotic about hating your country," he said. "How dare you call yourself patriots and heroes? . . . If you say violence is an acceptable way to make change, you are wrong . . . If you appropriate our sacred symbols for paranoid purposes and compare yourselves to colonial militias, you are wrong." Coming from a draft-evader, this speech was ill-advised, to put it mildly Coming from a draft-evader, this speech was ill-advised, to put it mildly. When the history of the late 20th century is finally written, this speech may well be judged as fatal, the moment when the establishment over-reached itself and provoked what could all too easily evolve into a caste war: the university-educated top third against the rest. In the short run, Clinton has won plaudits from the press. A majority of Americans have given him high marks for his handling of the bombing. But things are changing fast. Suddenly we are seeing a national dialogue about widespread abuses by the US federal government. Until the Oklahoma bombing, it was impossible to get anybody to talk about the Waco tragedy. Most people accepted the official line that the Branch Davidians were crazies who committed mass suicide by setting fire to themselves. But now the truth is coming out: the mothers of Waco were huddled with their children underneath wet blankets before they were engulfed in flames; the accusations that the Davidians were engaged in child abuse were lies. And so on. In an amazing programme last week on National Public Radio - the sanctum sanctorum of political correctness - most of the speakers accepted as a fact the thesis that the government caused the fire by mistake and then tried to cover up its own blunders. All of this is starting to lodge in the public consciousness. At the same time, the investigation of the Oklahoma bombing seems to have stalled. A federal judge has ordered the release of James Nichols for lack of evidence. Now lawyers for his brother Terry, who has been charged with the attack, have called for his release on grounds that the government case is "lamentably thin". As for Timothy McVeigh, the prime suspect, it turns out that some of what we were first told about him is untrue. For example, it was leaked that he had been rejected by the US Special Forces because he was psychologically unfit - a hint that he might be deranged enough to bomb federal buildings. In fact, McVeigh failed the physical, quite a different matter. Where did the false leak come from? The FBI has clearly been moving dogmatically, without much regard for expert opinion from outside its ranks The FBI has clearly been moving dogmatically, without much regard for expert opinion from outside its ranks. It ignored a report by the Oklahoma Geological Survey showing that two "events" of similar amplitude were picked up by their seismographic station outside Oklahoma City. The seismograph suggests two separate blasts, 10 seconds apart. A second blast of this kind would imply that the bombers had access to the building, pointing to a much more complex conspiracy than McVeigh and his truck bomb. Ray Brown, a geophysicist at the Geological Survey, says that his team have not been able to come up with any explanation for the two sets of signals. They discount theories that the second "event" could have been the collapse of the building, or an air wave. He said that some explosions occur at such low frequency that they are inaudible to the human ear. "It's possible that you could have had two or even three blasts without people hearing," he said. Criticisms have been pouring in from other quarters too. Brigadier-General Benton Partin, former commander of the Air Force Armament Technology Laboratory and an expert on explosives, says that it was physically "impossible" for the truck bomb to have inflicted so much structural damage on reinforced concrete columns and beams. "You can't bring down a building with ammonium nitrate like that," he said. Doubtless, these questions will be the subject of furious debate at the trials of McVeigh and Nichols. There may be simple explanations for some of the mysteries. But the government has no margin for error in this climate of extreme mistrust. If there is any hint of a rigged investigation, the consequences for America could be ugly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ET | Front | News | World | Features | Sport | City | What's new | Help | ET archive ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply to The Electronic Telegraph - [REDACTED] at [telegraph.co.uk] The Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc