by Glen Tate
“She had always taken pride in her job. She liked to help people and she moved up through the ranks at the Department of Licensing, or ‘DOL’ as we all call it, until she was the number two person in charge of making replacement drivers’ licenses. She would stay late sometimes when someone needed a new license to go on a trip or take a test that required identification. She tried hard to make people’s day and turn a very stressful time into a positive experience for them.”
“She watched as the state, and whole country for that matter, went downhill, but she wasn’t political. She was a Christian, though, and so was her daughter. Her daughter, and especially her son-in-law, were active in their church, which was a Black Robe church. Her son-in-law was an active Patriot. He got on several of the lists. When her daughter became active in the homeschooling movement as her oldest son was entering kindergarten, her daughter and son-in-law apparently got on a new list. This was right before the Collapse and the government was paranoid about the ‘teabaggers.’ For some reason that is still not known, Child Protective Services visited Jenn’s daughter and ‘interviewed’ her grandchildren. Her son-in-law was furious and went to the CPS office and demanded to speak with a supervisor. The family was elevated again to another list, one list below what would become the POI list.”
“At that time, CPS temporarily took her grandkids. She got temporary custody of them by showing CPS that she was a loyal public servant and wasn’t one of the teabaggers. This was right before the Collapse. When the Collapse hit, there were no more CPS workers to take kids, so that crisis was solved for her daughter and son-in-law.”
“But the whole incident got her thinking. She’d heard of other stories of the same thing, and things much worse. She asked her son-in-law if any of his friends were in the Patriot movement. Soon she met with a Patriot intelligence agent.”
“The Patriot agent was drooling at the prospect of having a person working at DOL where they made identifications. He wasn’t sure Jenn was tough enough to be a secret agent. He was wrong. She channeled her anger at all the things the state was doing into very discreetly and professionally getting false identifications for the Patriots.”
“Lucky for her, there was rampant corruption at DOL that worsened during the Collapse. Identifications were being sold by other employees to gang members and anyone else who could pay for them. Her supervisor looked the other way because he knew she had enough dirt on him for the identifications he had sold. It never occurred to him that a nice, mild-mannered grandmother like Jenn could possibly be getting false identifications.”
“The Patriot intelligence services were smart about how they handled Jenn. They only called on her for the very most important sets of identification. They knew that every time she made an identification card for them, she took more and more of a risk of being caught.”
“I’ve personally spoken with our intelligence chiefs and they confirmed to me the critical work Col. Cross did for us. By the very nature of the subject, I can’t tell you what she did because some of the false identities are still being used behind enemy lines in Seattle. She was ingenious enough, of course, to prevent DOL from knowing it was her who made a particular identification card so they can’t trace the ones she made to any of our agents currently operating.”
“A DOL co-worker who, for some reason, never liked Jenn started to suspect her of making money by selling false identifications. Her co-worker followed her around and noticed that she was meeting often with a strange man, who turned out to be her handler. Her co-worker, who was constantly told to be on the outlook for right-wing extremists, called the authorities.”
“The good news for Jenn and our side was that, in the midst of the chaos of the Collapse, the DOL internal investigators couldn’t do much. Many employees weren’t showing up for work, the Internet was spotty, and the electricity went off occasionally. Security measures were extreme; the DOL office Jenn worked at was an armed compound. All of these conditions meant that it was hard for DOL to do anything, even important things like investigating employees accused of making false identifications.”
“The other reason DOL took so long to do anything is that numerous employees, including Jenn’s supervisor, were making false identifications for money.”
“But, finally, DOL put Jenn under surveillance, at least in and around the DOL compound. They saw her meeting with the strange man. They stopped the strange man who shot it out with the police, killing both of them and escaping. DOL assumed Jenn was meeting with someone who was a Patriot spy because a common gang criminal would have tried to bribe his way out of the situation, which usually worked.”
“So they arrested Jenn and searched her office, computer, and home. However, because she was so cautious and had such a good handler, they couldn’t find anything. But they knew her daughter and son-and-law were on those lists. It’s a testament to the Limas' ineptitude that they never put together the fact that a person in a sensitive position was related to known teabaggers. I’ve said before and I’ll say it in the other colonelship presentations: one of our best weapons was that the Limas were so bad at doing just about everything.”
“But DOL couldn’t let Jenn go back to work. They expected her to go over to the Patriots out of revenge if she wasn’t already working for them. So they put her in a TDF.” The crowd got quiet. They didn’t want to hear which TDF.
“Yes,” Ben said. “That TDF.” He paused.
“Clover Park.”
Chapter 362
Col. Mark Fulaytor
(Law and Order)
Ben couldn’t help himself. “Excuse me,” he said. “Let’s take a short intermission.” The audience had been sitting for a long time, but that wasn’t why Ben needed to excuse himself.
He didn’t want any political points for it; he just wanted to be a regular person. He walked off the stage, motioned for Brad Finehoff, told him what he wanted to do, and followed Brad off the floor of the Legislature.
Ben made his way through the back stairs and up to the gallery. He knew his way around from his years lobbying for WAB. When he got to the gallery, he found Col. Jenn Cross’ husband, daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids. He hugged them, making sure there were no photos. He wasn’t doing it for that. He was doing it because he kept thinking of that sweet little grandson asking where “Gammy” was. It was too much for Ben. He had to be with that family, however briefly. When the hug was over, Jenn’s little grandson said, “Gammy was a hero, wasn’t she?” Ben nodded and hugged the little boy before Ben started bawling. He had other speeches to give and couldn’t do that if he were crying. He quickly headed back to the rostrum.
“You can see, ladies and gentlemen,” Ben said after regaining his composure, “that we’ve had regular people doing non-traditional things to help us, like Col. Jenn Cross, and we’ve had the kind of heroes you’d expect. Now we’ll hear from one of those traditional heroes, Col. Mark Fulaytor.”
“Col. Fulaytor is the Sheriff of Lewis County. Elected sheriffs played a huge role in our victory and the victory of Patriots in other parts of the country. Most of the sheriffs in the Lima areas were worthless political hacks, many of whom ran their departments like a gang after the Collapse. But quite a few sheriffs in the free areas were Oath Keepers and Patriots. They became the backbone of the resistance in many counties.”
“Sheriffs have two attributes that make them so effective against tyranny,” Ben continued. “First, they are elected. They have legitimacy. They aren’t merely claiming to have the consent of those who govern; an elected Sheriff already has it. Second, they are the top law enforcement authority in their county. They are responsible for law and order in their area and, as we will see, threats to law and order sometimes wear the badges of other law enforcement agencies.”
Ben motioned for a sheriff in his dress uniform to stand. A man who looked like a sheriff from an old Scooby Doo cartoon, stood and the audience applauded loudly. Many of them came from counties where their sheriff was critical to the
Patriots’ victory. Ben motioned the sheriff to come to the rostrum.
“Thank you,” Sheriff Fulaytor said after the applause died down. “It’s odd to be in the Legislature here. Usually I’m fighting with the people here, or at least the ones who used to be here. But I think I’ll get along just fine with you new people.”
“I am the Sheriff of Lewis County, one county to the south of you. I come from the same county as the Exit 79 Bandit you heard about earlier. I worked with him during the war to evict some people from my county who were breaking the law.”
“You see, it’s that simple. Government officials only have the legal authority to do things that they’ve been granted the power to do. The Constitution limits the government’s power. If an official tries to do something that’s prohibited by the Constitution, it’s unlawful. If that unlawful action involves something like trespassing, illegally searching, taking things, or more importantly, hurting people then I, as the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the county, need to intervene. It really is that simple,” he said.
“Well, that’s what happened in Lewis County with the Homeland Security thugs at Exit 79 and elsewhere. But I should start at the beginning. About two years before the Collapse, some of my residents in Lewis County told me that the federal Department of Labor sent them letters saying that the agency would be inspecting some farms for some safety violations. The federal government can do that--with a warrant. They can’t send a letter to people they have no reason to believe are breaking the law and just waltz in and search them. They don’t have the legal authority to do that because it violates the Constitution so, because of that, those federal agents were common trespassers. It’s my job to apprehend trespassers in Lewis County and let the prosecutor decide to charge them and, if so, for a Lewis County jury to decide if they committed the crime. Again, this is all really simple.”
“The federal agents didn’t see it that way. They said that because they were the federal government, they could do whatever they wanted. The ‘Supremacy Clause,’ they said, in the federal Constitution makes federal law supreme over state law. Well, I said, that might be true, but no federal law could allow searches without warrants or even probable cause. So they were still trespassers.”
“The feds got all huffy and had a federal prosecutor call me. She repeated the Supremacy Clause stuff and said I—the Sheriff, for goodness sakes—would be obstructing justice if I interfered with the inspections.”
“I told her that, with all due respect, she better bring some U.S. Marshals to arrest me and my deputies and any posse I formed to deal with these impending trespasses in Lewis County. She laughed at me, but I wasn’t kidding.”
“We had a network of volunteers who later became the core group of the posses I called up. The volunteers waited at the county line on I-5 and, sure enough, some cars with federal license plates came into my county right on time to do the inspections. I had my deputies follow the federal cars to the first farm. A few minutes after my men intercepted the feds on I-5 and started following them, my phone rang. It was the same federal prosecutor. She was screaming at me about obstruction of justice. I hung up on her. I had some trespassers to stop.”
“When the federal car pulled up to the entrance of the first farm, they just stopped and wouldn’t get out. My deputy went up to their car, before I got there, and asked them if they were here to do a warrantless search. They were scared and wouldn’t roll down the window. I got there a few minutes later and they wouldn’t talk to me either. They just sat there and so did we, for about an hour, until more federal vehicles with blaring sirens came flying down I-5 at the county line. ‘Must be the Marshals,’ I said.”
“Sure enough, three SUVs full of U.S. Marshals came zooming down the road toward the farm. I should have written them a ticket for speeding, but this was too important an issue to get sidetracked with traffic citations.”
“The Marshals leapt out of their car with rifles and started pointing them at us. That’s when I got mad. The rest of this was just a calm legal dispute; now the feds were breaching the peace.”
“My men were calm. We halfway expected this. I asked the feds if they would mind lowering their weapons so we could talk. They said we needed to surrender ours. That’s when I got even angrier. Who were these people coming into my county telling me and my deputies that we needed to surrender our weapons?”
“‘I can’t, and won’t, do that,’ I explained calmly. ‘Instead, I need you to surrender your weapons. You’re committing felony assault of a law enforcement official,’ I explained to them. They thought I was crazy.”
“By now, our county commissioners were on the phone with our congressman who got the Marshals to lower their weapons and get back into their vehicles.”
“I told the Marshals that we had probable cause to arrest them and that they would be spending the evening in the Lewis County jail until they made bail. I didn’t want to get in a firefight. My job, as a peace officer, is as much to maintain the peace as it is to enforce the laws. I told the Marshals that I could mail them the indictments I would be seeking in state court because I assumed, as fellow law enforcement officers, I could count on their word that they would appear in court to answer the charges.”
“They got nervous and sped off, almost hitting one of my deputies. They left the Labor Department agents there, who had been sitting in the car with the windows rolled up for a few hours. I imagine they were soiling themselves, either from fright and/or from being cooped up in there for hours. We never drew a weapon or told the Labor Department agents they had to stay in the car. By this point, they hadn’t committed a crime. If they entered that farm, they would, but they hadn’t done that yet.”
“I walked up to the Labor Department car and told them they were free to go. I told them about the restaurant two miles back the other way and encouraged them to use the facilities there. I waved at them and then we left. We had volunteers watching to make sure the Labor Department people didn’t enter the farm. They drove straight back to Seattle.”
“Over the next few days, I took angry phone calls from politicians and law enforcement chiefs. I was told that all the federal money for the joint task forces was in jeopardy; I said, ‘Great. We don’t need your money anyway.’”
“I wrote a report about how several armed men pointed rifles at me and my deputies and ordered us to surrender our weapons. The prosecutor declined to file charges against the Marshals, and that was his prerogative, but it was a decision he will need to explain to the voters in the next election.”
“The story made national news. I explained to everyone that I’m an Oath Keeper and why I had an obligation to keep the peace in Lewis County, and why I was enforcing the laws.”
“I guess I gave other sheriffs courage to do what I did because several others went on to do similar things. There was a wave of stories about sheriffs, especially in the western states, chasing out feds who were breaking the law. I started getting calls from other sheriffs who asked me how they could do it. I told them: it’s real simple.”
“Looking back at how the federal government fell apart, it seems that in rural areas, especially here in the West, the feds knew that they didn’t have the manpower or the political will to start arresting or shooting local law enforcement, who were enforcing the law. Pretty soon, ‘inspections’ like the Department of Labor’s stopped as did EPA searches and all the others. The feds got into a bunker mentality. They thought the rural areas were the Wild West where local sheriffs were waiting to arrest or shoot them. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t like arresting or shooting anyone. I just want people who are about to commit a crime to stay out of my county. It’s that simple.”
“When the Collapse hit, I was apparently on the POI list. The feds wanted to make an example of me. They don’t know the hills and mountains in Lewis County and their family hasn’t lived here for generations. I retreated to the hills and set up operations there. We essentially abandoned the pa
rts of the county near I-5; we let the feds run that area until we were strong enough to challenge them even on I-5. That’s where the Exit 79 Bandit came in. I had almost a thousand men in my posse hiding in the hills which was quite a nice little force to have when we finally swept down the hills back into the I-5 area. I had a lot of feds to arrest.”
“It turned out that I didn’t need to arrest them. They ran as soon as they lost control of I-5 and their supplies were drying up. They went back up I-5 to Olympia and eventually Seattle. Good riddance.”
“Now there’s not a lot of crime in Lewis County. That’s just how we like it.”
Chapter 363
Col. Brandon Roswell
(The General)
“Col. Fulaytor served as an example for local law enforcement to resist federal overreach. Our next colonel served as example to the military,” Ben said.
“Protocol is important in the military,” Ben said, “so I must note that our next colonel is actually a general. A colonelship is technically a demotion for Gen. Brandon Roswell, who is my commandant of the New Washington State Guard. But a colonelship is a civilian honor by the Legislature and in no way will result in a pay cut, General,” he said, looking at Gen. Roswell in the audience. The crowd laughed.
“Gen. Roswell is being honored for three things. First, his pre-war work persuading units to either come over to the Patriot side or ‘sit out’ the war. Second, his conduct of the war, which as you can tell because you’re sitting in the Legislature of the former State of Washington, means we won. Third, Gen. Roswell is working on forming the New Washington military going forward. Because, while the Limas are weak now, we have to be ready for that to change. On a personal note, I should add that I have grown to trust and appreciate Gen. Roswell’s wise counsel on a variety of topics, military and non-military. Please come up here, General. That’s an order.” The audience laughed.