by James Mason
The two of them flew me several hundred miles away for a quick lunch. At the lunch they kept talking taxes and ways to get out of them. (They had already obviously despaired of ever suckering me on illegal weapons or acts of violence.) As a prelude to this however, their scenario was to include my helping the first agent in his bid to win points and secure this lucrative flying job with his prospective boss, agent two. He told me to give him a "big build-up" to this new guy when he was away from us at one point. Like clockwork, the first agent excused himself from the table leaving me and the second one alone. And, like clockwork, the second agent pointedly asked me how well I knew agent number one. The truth was that I had known him on and off for three years. One would surely think that one person gets to know - or thinks he gets to know - another person in a period of time like that. My pointed response was, "Not very well at all." After a pleasant and uneventful return flight home, we parted company with smiles, handshakes and waves. I haven't seen or heard from either of them since.
My own opinion? As I said, that final meeting was clearly intended to be either the firm start or the final finish of something. And who was the older man who piloted the twin-engine cabin cruiser in the sky? The direct superior of the younger man, agent number one. He was there to size me up for himself after the former's three year job of groundwork. And my answer to his question was all he needed to hear in order to know what his young friend didn't see.
[Vol. XV, #4 -Apr., 1986]
Skee-Rooed
While still in the sky with this pair, my thoughts were of a situation in transformation. It was now serious. While chuckling to myself over the very thought of a spectacle such as this one, I knew from experience that one plant can be no more than an informant while two or more can be, and usually are, a set-up. I knew and finally acknowledged to myself that I was to going to have to do what I had been toying with ever since the first contact by the younger agent. I would have to check them out.
Having no concrete reason to believe they wouldn't attempt to proceed with their plan involving me, I telephoned an attorney whose acquaintance I had made while helping with the defense of an entrapment case in 1979. The men concerned had been infiltrated, set up and entrapped first (and significantly enough for a period of three years) by one agent and then, at the critical stage, by several and had been convicted in federal court and served four years in a federal penitentiary for having done NOTHING. This particular attorney - the sharpest and best I've witnessed, "Perry Mason" included - I knew had been deeply chagrined at having lost the case to the prosecution despite overwhelming evidence that the whole thing had been conceived, engineered and instrumented by POLICE agents, and despite a BRILLIANT defense. Furthermore, it had all happened just before "Abscam" and certainly before DeLorean. Had it happened afterward, as I told him when I re-contacted him, he'd most surely have won. Aside from all this, the man had impressed me with the speed and thoroughness with which he had dug out the background on the prime agent involved in this entrapment case. From absolute zero to a complete sketch in about twenty minutes from the time we first met and I supplied him with the agent's cover name and a photograph of him. It seems this attorney had been an FBI man before taking up law and, since our last meeting, had served as a municipal judge. And he agreed to help me now without hesitation and without fee.
What he found out was that the first agent was a licensed private investigator in the State of Ohio, including the name of the agency for which he worked. Plus the fact that he had turned state's witness with information he'd been paid by the defense to collect in a rape case the year before. And so my suspicions were confirmed. The attorney also felt the situation serious enough to warrant hiring a private investigator of our own in order to learn why I was being watched and exactly who was footing the bill as this was a private business. The attorney's services were free but to retain an investigator would cost five-hundred dollars going in. At that point, with this man knowing my story, I felt my ass was sufficiently covered even if the agents made a reappearance. Naturally, I wanted to know what was behind all this. If I were to scrimp and save, I might have been able to come up with the five-hundred but I had two afterthoughts: first, to tell the agents to go to hell and forget the whole thing now that the joke was over; second, since this affair did involve the Movement and I was only in a cockpit position, I'd go to the Movement and request help in turning one around on the System for a change.
This final afterthought I decided was the best course by far. Right away I ruled out a general appeal because I have seen from experience just how dismally those turn out and this was far too important to trifle around with. So I settled upon a handful of Movement leaders upon whom to appeal, significantly the same group I had been watching over the years and placing increasingly high hopes in as well as the same ones that the agent had expressed the greatest interest in my helping him get close to. The System and I seemed to be noticing the same things and, certainly, by all this, these men had a very real and vested interest in cooperating with me in order to not only protect all of us but score a strong victory for the Movement as well in a great show of working unity. Split amongst this group, the dollar amount called for was practically insignificant.
Remember, these were considered by both the System and myself as THE BEST, those most effective, most dangerous to the System and, therefore, most worth watching. And the response to the urgent appeal that went out via certified mail, with copies of the attorney's letter attached? ZERO. After a time, I received ONE polite response from one of these men, and that was all. The rest chose to IGNORE it completely. And while this was in progress, they were all lamenting the fatal damage done to The Order by these very same types of infiltrators. Agents who were in operation at the same time as Thomas Martinez [the man who informed on and later testified in court against members of The Order], etc., who were working their way into different Movement circles, the same types as had sent who-knows-how-many others to prison or to death, and who were STILL AROUND and active after the climax with The Order, doing their level best to try to move in and wreck what was left of the Movement, lest it might produce still other organized revolutionaries.
In essence, I had asked the Movement the same identical kind of question as that senior agent had asked of me at that final luncheon date. The answer was given and in no unmistakable terms.
I was disgusted but not surprised. I had known all along that when you are in any kind of trouble, as far as the "Movement" is concerned, you are just plain SKEE-ROOED! In twenty years of all kinds of trouble, I had known better than to call upon the Movement for help. This time it could have been the worst jam I was ever in - it had all of the potentialities. But, instead of falling into a System trap, I worked things to where it could have been a MOVEMENT TRAP for the System! Instead of crying for help out of a mess, I was inviting AID in prosecuting an offensive type operation. And you can be sure, by the result, that I have been thanking what gods there may be ever since that it had not been a case of my ass in the sling!
Just be sure it never happens to you.
[Vol. XV, #4 -Apr., 1986]
Thanks - But No Thanks... Again
As stated a few segments back, this year saw the first time I have felt compelled to decline offers to promote Movement exposure. Last month I mentioned the cancellation of the speaking engagements, this month it is about a direct approach by the press here locally for an interview.
The last time any dealing with the press here was had, it was on account of a prominent Movement personality known internationally. Since we were all "publicity hounds" then, by both bent and profession, I telephoned the local paper's news room and informed them of his presence in town. "So what?" was the response I received. This being a small town anyway and my being a person who doesn't forget, when John Hinckley shot Reagan and this paper had wire service photos of an individual purported to be Hinckley but who was not, I didn't bother saying a word about it.
Last year Universal Ord
er, Chillicothe, and my own name appeared in nationally circulated periodicals. The local paper - as I later found out - didn't catch any of it and I, for my part, wasn't interested in bringing it to their attention.
Then suddenly, in January, I was forcefully approached, later wined and dined, in the hopes that I would not only grant this paper an interview but a photo spread as well. I must confess the old temptation arose and at one brief point I had made up my mind to do it: the evening I had bumped into an enemy of mine in a downtown drug store and had thought that would be a novel way to remind him and the rest just who they had made an enemy of.
But within twenty-four hours I had thought better of it. Several personal pleadings from those closest to me plus my own better judgment finally caused me to rule it out entirely. As for my enemies, those distant as well as more current, I had already successfully defeated them at the time of the challenge and had permanently confounded their plans. I am a man of revenge but I am also a realist. I will not sacrifice myself for the sake of any punitive measure, large or small. As Manson would pointedly ask, "Are you ready to die?" Because if you aren't ready to die over this or that particular issue, then you'd best let it ride.
Besides, this would have been merely blowing smoke, serving a warning. And, serious as I am, I believe in doing neither. Let's face it, that story, any such story, would have come out just like a veiled threat to these stupid yokels who understand nothing. Today I am in better shape and position and have more "in"s than I ever had as a "mass strategy" act. The story would have blown most of all that, and for what? So these fools would have something to gaggle about for the next ten years or so. (I say 'ten years' because to this day people tell me tales from when, in 1974, "the Nazis" had a booth at the county fair. They don't know me as the person who organized the first openly Nazi county fair booth.)
They could scarcely conceal their upset with me in their publisher's office when I broke it to them that I would have to decline their generous offer. About the best they could do to try and spite me was to coolly inform me that should anything involving me come across the wire services, there'd be nothing I could do to prevent them from printing it in their paper. True enough, as far as it went. But then they had missed everything else that had come across the wire, and lately I follow my new policy of "run silent, run deep". Unless I'm grossly mistaken, they've missed their opportunity.
Then finally there is a quick, fleeting consideration: it had only been a matter of a few weeks since I had for all practical purposes shut the door on the spy game someone or some agency had been running on me for a three-year period. The timing and the newspapers insistence were both a bit too "high" for me. But take it or leave it as you will.
[Vol. XV, #5 -May, 1986]
Spooksville
The first time as a kid anyone samples boxing in the ring, one of the first things his instructor will tell him is, "Expect to be hit." And not lightly tapped either but clobbered as hard as his opponent - just as determined NOT to be hit and to win the match himself - can manage. But hit he will be until he masters the art gradually. If he is too faint-hearted, he will flee the ring at once. If he is too inept, he will get his brains beaten out. But if he is a healthy, normal specimen then Nietzsche's maxim will prevail in his case. He will feel the blows when they land but he will learn that blows are to be warded off. He will learn not to "lead with his chin" just to impress anyone that he can "take it". Above all, he will master himself and will not allow himself to be "spooked" either by his opponent or by the image of what might happen. For to allow oneself to be "spooked" is to concede defeat before the real fight begins.
When antagonism leads to conflict, and most especially when one antagonist is an old, well-established, deeply-entrenched System while the other is a young, bantam-weight revolutionary movement, then the fight is going to be heavily one-sided throughout much of its duration. The enormous body fat of the System will absorb the brunt of our best blows while any backhanded swat from the System if allowed to connect - can send us reeling off our feet. One thing however: the blows we have felt in the past are truly about as hard as can be felt, for the System's attacks, for the most part, have been and can be expected to remain on the individual, personal level. To attack us as a Movement, as a Party, would be a great strategic mistake for the System and they well know it. It would provide for us the mass forum we could never manage for ourselves. It would make us a public cause. It would also be a strong unifying factor and that they cannot afford. They will continue to keep it to a "criminal" level, attacking us singly or in the smallest groups in order to make the pickings easy and to prevent a political spectacle.
This being the case then, it is up to the Movement to better learn HOW, WHEN & WHERE to aim and deliver its blows. We've been leading with our chins for the past twenty-odd years and it's time to stop. The fall taken for a federal conspiracy charge without basis would be no harder that one with a basis to it. A trip to the penitentiary for the deaths of a half-dozen racial enemies would be no longer or worse than a trip for the deaths of hundreds. The consequences for the wounding of one or several System bureaucrats are about the same as they would be for killing them. However, none of this is the actual point.
The first time something goes wrong, you can blame others. The second time it goes wrong, you can only blame yourself. Never make the same mistake twice. If you can help it, never make it once. The rule is that once burned, twice shy. It only means keeping your hand out of the fire, not staying clear of the kitchen. The System wants - depends upon - INTIMIDATION. They count on fear and division to keep an increasingly alienated and sullen population subjected. Don't get "spooked", get SHARP! Rise and fight again with the experience you have gained.
My greatest experience as a young novice in the ring with the System landed me in the Cincinnati Workhouse for six months in the early 1970's. (By contrast, my "blow" took less than sixty seconds.) However, today's course was set in that cell block. I recall walking along that block, among a population half Black, and thinking to myself what a setting this was for one to end up a political effort. But the fact was that the previous effort had led there, with no result, and, upon release, could lead there again, also without result. And I recall in the next moment looking upward those six stories of prison cells, in that dungeon dating from the Civil War, toward the roof of the place where the pigeons flew about freely, and knowing right then that when I walked out of there the following year I'd be set on a new course. Hand-in-hand with that larger experience were many smaller ones of a day-to-day nature - perhaps the most indicative of these was the comment made by one Black prisoner as our group was being herded aside for a surprise "shakedown", "Don't they know that this only forces us to become sharper?"
For most in the traditional Racialist Right, the feeling that the police have eyes in the backs of their heads must be gotten over. It is true that we have today what Tommasi correctly saw as a "Big Brother Electronic Surveillance Society" but I would maintain that it's still not omniscient or omnipresent (and the technology even has the effect of making Big Brother's Pigs spoiled and lazy). Big Brother has up till now (and probably always shall) depended upon, number one, our own stupid goof-ups and, number two, "Uncle Toms" and other species of babbling idiots in society, for the effectiveness of his investigations, detections, arrests and prosecutions. And these are some very age-old tactics and can be combated in equally simple, age-old ways. Determination plus guts plus smarts equals an effective and successful Revolutionary Movement.
[Vol. XI, #8- Aug., 1982]
Biting The Bullet
I've just stated that your first time up against the Big Brother System - just like a brand new boxer's first time in the ring - isn't likely at all to be a winner. In fact, the first several times, one is likely to fall flat. We recalled that it was Nietzsche who said, "That which does not destroy me only makes me stronger", but we have to include the unspoken proviso that says, obviously, if you take a hard enough blow from the
System to the point where you are more or less permanently incarcerated or otherwise seriously handicapped, you can count yourself effectively out. It has been observed that the road to the palace leads through the dungeons, and Commander Rockwell changed that to read that the road to the White House leads through the jails. We also said that the object is to deliver our blows and yet avoid the jails at all costs. We've said that in the event of an arrest, you shouldn't expect to be shown any mercy (and nor shall we show it on the day the tables are turned). We've seen cases which demonstrate that System persecution can and does make the sufferer stronger and sharper as a result. I've experienced it myself where such things can provide the opportunity for new commitment and new beginning. We've said that, when it comes, it is your duty to take it like a man.
The final thing to discuss on this matter is the personal decision of just what and how much is acceptable. Robert Miles, in his FROM THE MOUNTAIN newsletter, advised NEVER let them put you in their prisons. Prison is one of the hardest realities. When faced with the certainty or strong likelihood of going to prison, one of the most difficult decisions is whether to submit and hope you will come out alive and in one piece or whether to resist, either by going completely underground or by dying in a final act of supreme defiance. These are the things each and every revolutionary must have already carefully sorted out in his mind well in advance of when such a situation may arrive.