It is a long, rambling letter, and life is short, but early on she sets out her demands and identifies the consequences: “. . . Verify the above facts brought forward by me and demand Obama/Soetoro’s immediate resignation or removal from office due to fraud and Constitutional inability. National security and national survival depends on your expedient actions as Obama/ Soetoro releases violent terrorists from Gitmo, allocates $900 million to Gaza ruled by radical Hamas terrorists, signs an executive order that would provide expedient U.S. citizenship and bring hundreds of thousands of Hamas terrorists to this country.”
Then she details an alleged pattern of harassment: “When around the same time one gets her case erased from the docket of the Supreme Court and Wikipedia, a tire blows out on her in a car, and a link with a sign in Arabic about somebody’s hanging appears, one begins to feel threatened. I believe all the occurrences had to do with my investigation, not only in the area of Obama/ Soetoro’s ineligibility for the presidency, but also in the financial dealings of Barack and Michelle Obama.”
And finally, she offers a bargain to the feds: “As a private citizen I cannot complete this investigation. However, you, as Attorney General, together with the FBI, IRS, Secret Service and local law enforcement can and have an obligation to complete it. I would be willing to complete this investigation if you’re willing to grant me a status of relater-special prosecutor. Sincerely, Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire”
As I finished, I was reminded of U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land’s comments to Taitz when he dismissed one of her Birther complaints: “Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.”18
By then the Birther case had been heard about by millions of Americans—and a July 2009 poll found that 58 percent of Republicans either thought Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States or weren’t sure.19
The 9/11 Truthers
Somewhere in the world of Wingnut conspiracy theories, left and right overlap. And when you can rally around both Texan libertarian Ron Paul and Georgia leftist Cynthia McKinney as presidential nominees, you’ve hit a very special place of trans-partisan paranoia.
Welcome to the world of the 9/11 Truthers.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, were the most digitally documented loss of human life in history, exploding on our television screens in real time. And yet, an Internet-driven conspiracy theory soon set in—fueled by Bush Derangement Syndrome—arguing that the U.S. government, and not al-Qaeda, was behind the attack. To quote from one online screed, “The actual forces behind the conception, planning, and execution of this seminal event came not from bearded Islamic extremists living in a cave in Afghanistan, but from within high-level rogue elements of our own government.”
This could be dismissed as somewhere between offensive and absurd, if it weren’t for the fact that in the years since the attacks, the conspiracy theory’s credibility has been on the rise.
Five years after the attack, a Scripps poll found 36 percent of Americans believed the federal government “either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action” because they “wanted to go to war in the Middle East.” Sixteen percent thought the World Trade Center might have collapsed because of secret explosives, while 12 percent said a U.S. cruise missile—and not a hijacked airplane—hit the Pentagon.20
In the Bush era, liberal congressmen and celebrities were eager to get on the bandwagon.
Then-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney reflexively reached for Watergate rhetoric, asking, “What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11?”21 Congressman Dennis Kucinich rallied the crowd at a Code Pink protest by saying, “We have a plan, Mr. President, and our plan is to tell the truth about 9/11.”22 Michael Moore told a group of 9/11 Truthers he had questions about the plane that hit the Pentagon. “Why don’t they want us to see that plane coming into the building? . . . I don’t think the official investigations have told us the complete truth. They haven’t even told us half the truth.”23 Rosie O’Donnell weighed in by saying, “It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved.” And signatories of the 9/11 Truth petition included Ralph Nader, Janeane Garofalo, Howard Zinn, Edward Asner and President Obama’s onetime Green Jobs czar Van Jones.
Sadly and stupidly, they were not alone. Type “9/11 Conspiracy” into Google and you’ll get millions of page matches—8,730,000 on November 29, 2009. The site 9/11truth.org includes a site, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, which presents a score of endorsements by “legal scholars, judges and attorneys” for the statement: “We are demanding an end to the 9/11 cover-up, and a full investigation by unbiased people with subpoena power . . . and the courage to demand that the Constitution and rule of law are followed, and all guilty persons held accountable for their actions.”
Purple bumper stickers reading “9/11 was an Inside Job” became as annoyingly common in the ’00s as “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” stickers were in the ’90s. And in the summer of 2008, New Yorkers were stopped on street corners by petitioners seeking signatures for the creation of “a new, independent investigation of the attacks” that will “follow the evidence wherever it might lead.”
Like many New Yorkers, I lived through the attacks and their aftermath. I saw the first plane scream past my window and was covered in ash after the collapse. I was there. Afterwards, I spent three months writing eulogies for the fallen firefighters and police officers as a speechwriter for Mayor Rudy Giuliani. So when I see people in Lower Manhattan indulging the Blame-America-First reflex, I lose my sense of humor.
In search of some perspective, I called Professor Patrick J. Leman, a conspiracy theory specialist at the University of London, to ask a decidedly un-academic question: What the hell is going on?
“There is an underlying psychological phenomena called ‘major-event/major-cause’ thinking,” explained Dr. Leman. “If there’s a big event, we like to find a similarly big cause to explain what happened. It provides us with a sense that the world is a relatively predictable place. Because the alternative—imagining that something big, like the death of a president, can be caused by something minor like a lone gunman—presents us with a view of the world that’s unpredictable and scary and difficult to control.”
The greatest check against government conspiracy is the up-close chaos of any human organization. People are simply too disorganized and indiscreet to pull off a secret world-wide plot. But it turns out that the Orwellian-named 9/11 Truthers need a Big Brother for their story to hold.
“Conspiracy theorists need a competent and malevolent conspirator,” said Dr. Leman. “And if you have a lot of Keystone Kops messing around, that’s not going to work very well. So there is a kind of contradiction here: ‘They’re up to no good, but they’re very good at it.’”
This requires that 9/11 Truthers effectively reverse-engineer a well-documented al-Qaeda plot to bring down the Twin Towers. They would rather believe that their own government is all-powerful and evil than imperfect and well-intentioned. Faced with a real conspiracy they must invent their own.
Investigating the 9/11 conspiracy Web sites is a thankless business—as the old saying goes, When you argue with a fool, you’ve got two fools. They drape their paranoia in the American flag and earnest prose. The catalogue of accusations is dizzying—a Top 40 list is available on 911truth.org—but the usual suspects include explosives to bring down the Twin Towers, missiles to hit the Pentagon, Dick Cheney complicit, the military and the FAA gone MIA. The documentary Loose Change—an X-Files-tempoed account of the conspiracy by upstate New York twenty-somethings—has been viewed on You Tube more than 3 million times.
Alternately, you can just take Osama bin Laden’s word for it. He’s repeatedly taken credit for the attacks, including on a videotape where he recounts the planning process and his wish for maximum damage: “We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated t
hat the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. . . . Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we hoped for.”24
But this tape is dismissed by the Truthers: “The man shown in the video, though bearded, Arabic, and of darkish complexion, is much heavier than bin Laden. The man in the video is seen writing something down with his right hand. Bin Laden is well-known to be left-handed.” Similarly dismissed are the voluminous 9/11 Commission Report and the thorough special report by Popular Mechanics, Debunking the 9/11 Myths. As Dr. Leman says, “A conspiracy theorist is always going to see a conspiracy—whatever evidence you give to them.”
The conspiracy theories continued to be pumped up even after the Bush administration ended, promoted by fright-wing anti-government radio hosts like Alex Jones and disturbingly mainstream liberal celebrity dupes like Charlie Sheen, who demanded and was denied a request to brief President Obama on the matter.25,26 Thanks, Charlie.
The dogged search for truth is admirable and essential to a free society. But when that concept becomes twisted by a moral relativism that masquerades as open inquiry, the idea of truth starts to lose its meaning. Ignoring the obvious does not lead to insight. And by entertaining conspiracy theories after being attacked, we run the risk of amusing ourselves to death.
Just because an evil ideology expresses its murderous intentions with cartoonish clarity doesn’t mean that they are not deadly serious. We have the body count to prove otherwise. So let’s call the 9/11 Truthers what they are—al-Qaeda apologists.
THE HATRIOTS: ARMED AND DANGEROUS
The plan to assassinate the president was called Operation Patriot. Marine Lance Corporal Kody Brittingham plotted from his barracks at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. With maps of the Capitol Building and a dossier on Barack Obama, he penned a letter explaining his reasons for wanting to join the ranks of John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald:I Kody Brittingham, write this as a letter of intent. I am in full mental health and clear judgment, having consciously made a decision, and in turn do so choose to carry out the actions entailed. I have sworn to defend my country, my constitution, and the values and virtues of the aforementioned. My vow was to protect against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I have found, through much research, evidence to support my current state of mind. Having found said domestic enemy, it is my duty and honor to carry out by all means necessary to protect my nation and her people from this threat.1
Kody Brittingham was arrested before his plot had a chance to be enacted. President Obama spoke at Camp LeJeune in February 2009 without incident, announcing his plan to draw down U.S. forces from Iraq. But Brittingham’s clear, cold-blooded rationalization for assassination—a patriot defending the Constitution against the president by any means necessary—reflected the rhetoric of the emerging Hatriot movement.
They are self-styled patriots armed and ready for a new American Revolution. They talk of martial law, a seizure of guns and imposition of global government, complete with forced internment camps and mass executions. When love of country is mixed with fear of the government and hate for the president, that’s when you become a Hatriot.
“You need to be alert and aware of how close we are to having our constitutional republic destroyed!”
So thundered Stewart Rhodes to a wave of applause on Lexington Green, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2009. The crowd assembled including military veterans and reservists, cops and firefighters, and no small number of Revolutionary War re-enactors. It was the first public meeting of the Oath Keepers. The location and date of the gathering had been chosen carefully. It was the anniversary of the first battle of the American Revolution on that very spot. The Oath Keeper Web site featured a quote from George Washington to set the tone: “The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own.” The Oath Keepers then added their own dark warning: “Such a time is near at hand again.”2
But April 19th has deeper significance for members of the militia movement and their inheritors throughout the United States. It is the date that federal officers attacked the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. And it’s the day that Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt that day with a favorite Hatriot message handed down from Thomas Jefferson: “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Within nine months of their first meeting, Oath Keeper dues-paying membership rose to 3,000—including active-duty military, current and retired police officers and sheriffs—and the organization claims that 15,000 people have signed up to participate on their online forum. They have established themselves as a non-profit organization, complete with a board of directors. Describing themselves as “The Guardians of the Republic,” the Oath Keepers distribute business cards with orders they will not obey—it’s a step-by-step tour through the Hatriot vision of America. Among them:• We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
• We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.
• We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
• We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
• We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.
It’s a world of government-sponsored concentration camps, forced disarmament and international invasion—scary stuff. But where many see fearmongering, the Oath Keepers see themselves as freedom’s last defender. Stewart Rhodes is an engaging and intelligent if angry, guy—he’s taken the stage on MSNBC’s Hardball and won a constitutional prize at Yale Law. He is careful to distance his group from outright advocates of anti-government violence, writing that “those of you who are in militia have a vital mission which we support and agree with fully. But it is a different mission. We don’t mind at all if people belong to both, but keep the two activities separate.” He also knows the way to disarm critics: To those who see the rise of the Oath Keepers as a response to Obama, he is quick to condemn George W. Bush—he was just too busy during the Bush years to mobilize his ideas into action. And to those who question the repeated concentration camp riff, he pulls the ultimate liberal guilt trip: If internment camps happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II, why should we think it couldn’t happen today. It raises the image of Stewart Rhodes, liberal action hero.
But not all Oath Keepers are as smooth as Stewart Rhodes. In a video posted on the Oath Keepers’ site, a man who describes himself as a former army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq calls President Obama “an enemy of the state,” adding, “I would rather die than be a slave to my government.” Oath Keeper and former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack has said, “The greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government.” 3 Extremism is no vice in Hatriot circles: you can even buy T-shirts at the Oath Keeper site that say: “I’m a Right Wing Extremist and Damn Proud of It!”
The Hatriot movement has morphed from the militia movements of the mid-1990s. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that more than 125 new hate groups and 350 new Nativist groups have sprung up since 2005.4 “One big difference from the militia movement of the 1990s,” the SPLC points out, “is that the face of the federal government—the enemy that almost all parts of th
e extreme right see as the primary threat to freedom—is now black.”5
The Three Percenters are another new breed of Hatriot, who, like the Oath Keepers, focus on armed resistance and American Revolutionary War imagery. They take their name from the questionable statistic that only 3 percent of the American colonists actively fought for independence. Therefore the Three Percenters are not only an elite group but also a direct link to the Founding Fathers, making their extremist alienation from mainstream America a badge of honor and secret knowledge. They describe themselves, as “promoting the ideals of liberty, freedom and a constitutional government restrained by law.”6 But beneath the benign bumper sticker, the loosely affiliated group also professes that they “embrace the American Resistance Movement philosophy”—a survivalist militia-incubating network that teaches its followers how to train for the coming fight against tyranny. Their online forums offer a glimpse into a lunatic fringe that is itching to get the fight on: “This government has failed,” writes one registered user known as JV67. “At what point do we follow the example of the Founding Fathers and take up arms against these tyrants?”7
Three Percenter founder, Mike Vanderboegh, of Pin-son, Alabama, is a self-described “former leftist” and SDS member who had a political epiphany reading Nobel economist Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in the mid-1970s. He became a Second Amendment activist and was involved in the militia movement during the 1990s. The father of three now reluctantly believes the escalation is all but inevitable. As he chronicles the first year of the Obama administration, particularly the attempts to pass health-care legislation, he is bracing for revolution: “You should understand that we are rapidly coming to a point in this country when half of the people are going to become convinced of the illegitimacy of this administration and its designs upon our liberty. Need I remind you that this side is the one with most of the firearms?”8
Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America Page 18