Chapter 6: SENATE HEARINGS, PETITIONING FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES

Chapter 6

SENATE HEARINGS, PETITIONING FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES

When all forms of government, in little as in great, things, shall rely on Washington as the center of all political power, it will render useless the checks of one government provided on another, and become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

                                                                                                                              Benjamin Franklin

On the panel with John Trochmann on June 15 were four other Militiamen; in all, they represented three Militias. John was accompanied by Bob Fletcher, who had joined the Militia of Montana early on, and was the official spokesman. Represented also was the Michigan Militia, which, unlike M.O.M., emphasized military preparedness, and was generally considered to be the largest Militia in the country. By many estimates, its numbers reached into the five figures. Norman Olson, the commander, and Ken Adams, the communications officer, were present. Having heard so often in the media that the Militias were racist, I was surprised at the time, to see that the fifth person on the panel, representing the Ohio Unorganized Citizens Militia, was black—J.J. Johnson. 

 The hearings were chaired by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), who was the chief Senate sponsor of the Anti-terrorism bill that Clinton was pushing. Specter (known to be a staunch supporter of the ADL, which, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, was pushing for draconian anti-Militia legislation) commenced, stating, "These hearings have been convened to inquire into a number of questions. First, to what extent, if at all, do the Militia pose a threat to public safety and the federal government? And the other side of that coin is, to what extent are Americans joining the Militia because they feel, rightly or wrongly, that the federal government poses a threat to their constitutional rights?" The senator said there were indications that there were 224 Militias operating in 39 states, and he believed it was no coincidence that Oklahoma had occurred on April 19, exactly two years after Waco. Nevertheless, he said, "I believe that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction in America today, on many lines, rightly or wrongly, and that these questions ought to be aired and ought to be ventilated."

Montana Senator Max Baucus (D), in his opening statement, informed the audience that in Montana the Militia was divided into three groups: the Militia of Montana, the North American Volunteer Militia and the Freemen. (His facts were wrong from the start, for the Freemen, of course, were not a Militia.) Senator Baucus said that law-enforcement officers (in Montana) believed that while there were about 25 to 30 hard-core Militia leaders, only some five hundred people in the state had casually attended Militia meetings. The leaders, he said, tended to share two beliefs: one, suspicion of the government; and two, "a deep strain of racism and anti-Semitism." (I wondered how he was able to reconcile the “racism” with J.J. Johnson's presence on the panel.)

Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D), professing to describe the Militias' internal publications and instructional materials, said they were "filled with the language of hate and paranoid conspiracy theories." In one publication, he said, it was written that "there are four massive crematoriums in the USA now complete with gas chambers and guillotines, more than 130 concentration camps already set up from Florida to Alaska, more than two million of us are already on computer lists for detention and liquidation." Levin said, "People have the right to say hateful things—and believe hateful things—about their government. But that doesn't make it right to say them, and extreme rhetoric contributes to an incendiary atmosphere in which an unstable individual will take the rhetoric seriously and light a match or a fuse."

Next, I thought, he would be advocating a law against criticizing the government. Freedom of speech notwithstanding, it was, after all, against the law to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. If the government could sell this analogy to the public, what was to keep them from passing laws against criticizing the government? (Such legislation would, in fact, be proposed the following year.)

At one point in the hearing, one of the senators held up an acid-yellow sheet of paper showing a drawing of Hitler with his right arm raised, superimposed on a target. The senator said it was an example of the racist, anti-Semitic hate literature the Militias were putting out. A Militia panel member, however, immediately identified it as a poster put out by a Jewish civil-rights organization in Milwaukee—Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO). What it said under Hitler's image was: "ALL IN FAVOR OF 'GUN CONTROL' RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND." This was an allusion to this Jewish civil rights organization's public position that the Holocaust could not have happened if the Jews in Europe had been armed. Copies of this poster could be bought in bulk, and were meant to be used for target practice.

A Bunyanesque John Trochmann, sitting before the senators looking solemn and grandfatherly, gray beard and mustache, like a village elder of yore, explained in his peculiarly-stilted manner, "The following are just a few examples as to why Americans are becoming more and more involved in the Militia-patriot organizations. The high office of the presidency has been turned into a position of dictatorial oppression through the abusive use of executive orders and directives... When the president overrules the Congress by executive order, representative government fails... When the average citizen must work for half of each year just to pay their taxes while billions of our tax dollars are forcibly sent to bail out the banking elite, when our fellow Americans are homeless, starving, and without jobs, Congress wonders why their constituents get upset. When government allows our military to be ordered and controlled by foreigners, under presidential orders, allowing foreign armies to train on our soil, allowing our military to label caring patriots as the enemy, then turn their tanks loose on U.S. citizens to murder and destroy, or directs a sniper to shoot a mother in the face while holding her infant in her arms—you bet your constituents get upset..."

In his characteristically-dry manner, he stated, "We the people have had about all we can stand of the twisted, slanted, biased media of America, who take their signals from a few private, covert, special interest groups bent on destroying what's left of the American way... A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within. America has nothing to fear from patriots maintaining vigilance; she should, however, fear those that would outlaw vigilance."

Ken Adams of the Michigan Militia, looking lawyerly and comfortable in his conservative dark suit and tie, explained that the Militias were not racists or anti-Semitic, though there were bound to be fringe groups and others that would "try to attach themselves to our coattails... and try to get their public attention too—but it is wrong. If they use hate, if they use violence. If they do not abide by the law, we will be the first to expose them."

Norman Olson of the Michigan Militia, wearing camouflage fatigues and cap, with several rows of "fruit salad" over his heart and a single gold star on each point of his collar, in far-more colorful manner than Trochmann or Adams, explained to the senators that the right to form Militias and keep and bear arms had existed from antiquity. "Fundamentally, it is not the state that defends the people but the people who defend the state... The Militia existed before there was a nation or government. The Militia... is the very authority out of which the United States Constitution grew." I had never thought about it that way, but it struck me that this was true. Olson was deft with words, the preacher in him shaping the emotion-laden words into vessels for a message of unmistakable rebuke. 

"The federal government itself is the child of the armed citizen. We the People are the parent of the child we call government. You senators are part of the child that We the People gave life to. The increasing amount of federal encroachment into our lives indicates the need for parental corrective action... In short, the federal government needs a good spanking to make it behave."

The senators were all scowling now, and Specter, like a child pulling a cat's tail, began baiting Olson. He said, "I heard you say on national television that you could understand why someone would bomb the Oklahoma City Federal Building. How can you say that?"

"What I said was that I understand the dynamic of retribution," replied Olson. "Revenge and retribution are a natural dynamic which occurs when justice is taken out of the equation," and, "We are the people who are opposed to racism and hatred. We are people who love our government and love the Constitution... The thing that we stand against is corruption. We stand against oppression and tyranny in government." At that point, the Michigan preacher-Militia commander in fatigues, bursting with forthrightness and looking straight at the senators, said, "Many of us are coming to the conclusion that you best represent that corruption and tyranny."

Taking this personally, Senator Specter shot back angrily, "I want to have a full discussion with you, Mr. Olson, because I want your ideas fully exposed." When Olson suggested that there were other people on the panel, Senator Specter retorted petulantly, "I know, but I'm the chairman... I want to hear all your ideas because I want your ideas compared to mine." "And I want to let the American public judge whether you're right or I'm right... I don't take lightly your comment to me that I represent corruption. I don't take that lightly at all. And I want you to prove it if you're going to say that." 

Olson retorted that when the FBI director had said on April 27 that the Michigan Militia had had nothing to do with Oklahoma, and no one had picked up on that, and, "I submit to you sir, that the Central Intelligence Agency has been in the business of killing Americans around the world since 1946. I submit to you, sir, that the Central Intelligence Agency is probably the grandest conspirator behind all of this government. And I submit to you, sir, that perhaps the puppeteer's strings of the Central Intelligence Agency reach even into the senators perhaps before us..."

"Well," said Senator Specter, his voice lowered, "as long as you say 'perhaps,' Mr. Olson."

 I had been caught off guard. Generally, it was from the left that such charges against the CIA were made, and the Militias were supposed to be right-wing. Until then, I had always thought of the "right" as Republicans who talked about "small government" but in fact supported increased police powers and a big military, also with police powers, which translated into a police state at the service of big business. I hadn't known about populist conservatives. Recently, under Clinton, the Democrats were openly supporting the same thing as the Establishment Republicans—big business and big police. (Perhaps when they were in office they always had—at least, in recent times.) To many, Olson's statements were a breath of fresh air. What was clear was that these Militiamen were refusing to play the Washington game. They were there on their own terms. It would strike me over and over, however, during the coming months that when the left made such accusations, it was called "healthy debate," but when the Militias did so, they were "anti-government."

Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), anxious to get his two cents in, after stating with more than a touch of sanctimoniousness, "We do have a democratic society," proceeded to inquire of J.J. Johnson, "What's your problem with working through the process to solve these problems?"

Johnson replied that the Militias advocated voting more than anything, but people were "getting outright economically terrorized, socially terrorized..." He said, "What this militia is now, it’s a mindset. Its the civil rights movement of the nineties." This was the most memorable phrase in the hearings, and all the more poignant because Johnson was black.

J.J. said, "It’s people drawing a line in the sand." He said, "Let me talk about the racist aspect now. It’s getting old. I'm getting real tired of being called a Klan member. I'm getting tired of being called a member of the Aryan Nations. I spoke two weeks ago down at the Lincoln Memorial along with two other black people and Jews For the Preservation of Firearms... and the reports came out that a racist, anti-Semitic group held a rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Are these people blind, or is there an agenda afoot here?" He continued, "Good grief, almost half the people in Waco who got killed were black. This movement isn't about guns and skin color. It’s about liberty. Its about freedom."

  Earlier, he had begun to drive his message home when he had said, "Its only a matter of time before an armed confrontation." Johnson had stated, "We're the calm ones. We're the ones who calm people down... The animosity I see out there between the citizens, all of them, and the government, is frightening... I feel that with the increasing polarization between the tax-paying public out there... that the only thing standing between some of the current legislation being contemplated and armed conflict is time."

"You can see from the last two years of sales from the firearms producers in this country, this nation is probably one of the most heavily armed forces on earth. And I have heard more and more people say, 'If one of these black-suited, armor-wearing, state-sponsored terrorists come kicking down my door I'm going to blow somebody away.' They don't call themselves Militia, they don't even call themselves patriots, they call themselves American citizens who are getting tired of confiscatory tax rates, heavy regulation, which, they believe, are leading them down the path to involuntary servitude." J.J.'s passionate message, in many ways, was easier for me to hear than that of the others, because he spoke a more familiar, urban language.

One of the things that would strike me during the coming months, living in a big city as I did, was how differently people outside the cities thought. While in the cities people rarely mentioned the Constitution, except as something the experts were concerned with (usually the ACLU), outside the city, people referred to the Constitution as a contemporary document, meant to be held up to the government by ordinary people as an everyday standard. Increasingly, ordinary people outside the cities felt they were being subjected to unconstitutional and arbitrary laws and law enforcement. And between the corruption in government and the prohibitive cost of lawyers' services, more and more, they were finding themselves without recourse in the courts. (It was nothing for a lawyer to talk of $100,000- $200,000 for an ordinary case.) I already knew that a large number of people around the country lived in fear of the government. And many of the people in rural areas, as I was soon to learn, were only a hair's breadth from forming Militia groups to defend themselves from the government.

As J. J. Johnson noted in the hearings, weapons sales were at an all-time high, with ordinary people believing that stricter gun-control laws were coming, and, eventually, the total confiscation of weapons from private citizens. (Clinton's Brady Bill, they saw as a first step to registry, then confiscation.) The right to keep and bear arms was deeply ingrained in the American psyche, and people wanted to buy guns while they could.

Besides J.J. Johnson saying that the Militias were the "Civil Rights movement of the nineties" and that it was only a matter of time before "armed confrontation," the item that caught my attention the most during the Senate hearings was Bob Fletcher's statement that the government was using "weather control" as a "weapon" against Americans. At the time, I thought this was one of the most farfetched things I had ever heard the government accused of, but Fletcher told the senators that the Militias had all the backup information to prove it, and I decided to keep my mind open. Senator Claiborne Pell, added Fletcher, had written an article on the subject in the 1970s. There was, however, no visible follow-up by the media on the subject of weather engineering.

Nevertheless, Fletcher's statement had not gone unnoticed. Whenever I touched on the subject of the Militias in conversation with friends, his statement about the government controlling the weather—over and over, usually amid snickering or gales of laughter—was brought up to show that the Militias were a bunch of crackpots. I was skeptical, myself, but I was curious to know more. 

It was true, as Fletcher had pointed out, that the weather had changed significantly in recent years, and the number of natural disasters due to hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes had multiplied many times over. I recalled that it had been reported in the New York Times a few years earlier that Iran had attributed a large earthquake, that had resulted in thousands of deaths in Iran, to the CIA, and I had laughed it off as an example of how paranoid those Iranian mullahs were. But I also knew that in Russia there had been a lot of research in weather modification, and I had read that Russian weather machines were available commercially to farmers. So, I thought, who knows? I began to wonder, after all, if some of the increasing numbers of natural disasters were not due to government tampering with the environment, or the weather. I little suspected at the time that one day I would have the opportunity to ask Bob Fletcher in person.

After the hearings, I was asked to write a short article on the Oklahoma bombing and the rise of the Militias, for a photography magazine in Venezuela. At the time, I didn't know whether the Militias had anything to do with the bombing, so I emphasized the general discontent with the economy and the government, as the background for both the bombing and the Militias. To go with the article, I chose a photograph that had appeared on the front page of the New York Times, showing a man in military fatigues at the site, who the caption said was a fireman.

The point I was making was the militarization of civil society in the U.S. Earlier, there would have been a picture of a traditional fireman dressed in black rubber coat with yellow stripes and a red fireman's hat, not someone in jungle camouflage. The soldier was pulling a damaged American flag out of the rubble, which I thought was an apt metaphor for what was happening in the country: the military, a new symbol of government, or the "new order," camouflaged, carrying the damaged symbol of the nation of a country in economic and moral ruins. I didn't know yet how apt it was, for the flag also had yellow fringe on it, which, I was to learn later, for the Militias, had an extra, damning significance.

As the months drew on, it surprised me that there was no objective coverage of the Militias whatsoever, even in the alternative media. As it turned out later, the reason was, I was plugged into the wrong alternative media—that of the left, which, as I knew already, could be as elitist and narrow-minded as any amount of right-wing bigots. I didn't yet know there was another, alternative-populist media. The media of the right, I had never thought of as anything but propaganda for certain special-interest groups—big business or anti-abortionists—which I believed was the unwritten agenda for the entire right. As I was to learn, however, this was the same that Militia and patriot groups thought about the liberal media, which for all their talk of sharing the concerns of ordinary working people, were also an elite. The liberals, I figured, disdained the Militias because they were not their own.

I kept waiting for information on the Militias to appear, that was not hysterical or bent on demonizing them. Then came the standoff with the Montana Freemen in late March of 1996. It was during the first week of the standoff, on the day before April Fool's Day, that I embarked on my own endeavor to elucidate what the Militia movement was really about. It was a Sunday morning. I was fast asleep when I received a long-distance phone call from a banker friend I had not spoken to for some time, who happened to be from Montana originally. On another occasion, he had said to me, "Everyone in Montana belongs to the Militia, although they wouldn't say so to outsiders." My friend was also a former senior vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, which was ironic, as it turned out, given the role the Militias accorded the Rockefellers in bringing about the "New World Order," which I was yet to learn about. That morning, my Montana banker friend told me to put on the television and watch ABC. I did so, and found myself watching a Sunday morning talk show: the subject was the Montana Freemen.

On the panel were two ex-FBI directors, Judges William Webster and William Sessions (who had been ousted by Clinton in favor of Janet Reno shortly before the Waco massacre). ABC reporter Sam Donaldson was incensed that the Freemen were holding out against the government, and was practically demanding that the FBI go in and put a stop to the situation by force. I was appalled. Many people thought the government should wait it out, no matter how long, after what had happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Judge Sessions pointed out that in both these cases the FBI had only gotten involved once there were dead federal agents. Moreover, he said, the Freemen were wanted for white-collar crimes, and in such cases, force was not generally used.

It was one of those puzzling reversals that had crept in during the 1980s, when the liberals, like Donaldson, had become the hawks in military and police matters, advocating tough reprisals against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, as well as against domestic undesirables. So-called conservatives, like New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani, likewise, that summer would defend welfare, while a Democratic President Clinton signed a bill to do away with it. What it meant was that all these self-righteous public figures stuck to their principles only when they stood to benefit.

At one point, it struck me that Sessions appeared almost to be taking the side of the Freemen when he said that this case was different, because these people saw what they were doing not as crimes but as their citizen rights. There had been reports that there were Militias surrounding the Freemen ranch to defend them from the government, so when Sessions said a debate needed to take place, something clicked, and I knew the moment was right for a book that would get inside the Militias. I began work that same day, thinking it would take only a few months. However, the subject turned out to be far more complex than I imagined. I might not have undertaken the project if I had known that it would take me the better part of five years to piece it all together.

Through a friend who had a farm in upstate New York, I was able to talk on the telephone to a Militiaman named Al Long, who was a member of the Chemung Citizens Militia, on the Pennsylvania border. He told me about a rally that was being planned for Labor Day weekend in Washington, D.C., and said it would be featuring as speakers many of the people whose ideas were popular with the Militias—the ones who wrote the books and gave the speeches. Al suggested that I contact the organizer in California, a woman named Charlena Alden, which I did. As it turned out, she headed a legal-reform organization named Citizens Against Legal Loopholes (CALL). 

Charlena, or Char, as she said she wanted to be called, told me she was planning to be in New York City the following week to do some fund-raising, on her way to Washington to meet with some Congressmen. Accompanying her would be Bob Fletcher (of the Militia of Montana), who was helping her organize the rally. She put him on the phone with me, and they agreed that we would meet. But Char and Bob postponed coming to New York several times, and I began to think they were not going to make it.

Char, in the meantime, sent me a copy of a 94-page booklet she had produced as a companion piece to the Rally, titled, Ignite the Spirit: The Plan, which contained a formal "Petition" for a "redress of grievances" addressed to the Congress. (The "right of the people" to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances" in the First Amendment followed that of the right "peaceably to assemble"; it was a right, along with the Second Amendment, often exercised by patriots and the Militias.) Char told me that her Petition pretty much summed up the issues as seen by the Militia-patriot community, and indeed, as I was to learn, there was a plethora of grassroots petitions that all pretty much said the same things. After spending a full three days reading it, however, I still didn't understand most of it. The issues were pretty dense, and much of it sounded paranoid to me. In the coming months I would find that most patriot literature was written for the believers, assuming, as it did, a prior knowledge of the complex issues put forth. Such literature, furthermore, tended to be written in legalese or poorly-polished, grassroots style, that made it easy to discredit and hard to understand for the uninitiated. I surely wouldn't have bothered to sift through the contents of Char's booklet if I hadn't already made up my mind to do so.

In the "Introduction" was reprinted a letter that Char had written to Senator Arlen Specter. She quoted J.J. Johnson right off the bat in the subject heading: "RE: Senate Subcommittee on Militias—'ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE AN ARMED CONFRONTATION.' J.J. Johnson 6/15/95."

Char began the letter quoting Senator Specter, also during the hearings on the Militias, stating that a public airing of grievances was "a very useful and healthy thing," and acknowledging the Constitutional "right of the citizenry to petition the Congress." She proceeded to inform him that CALL and many other grassroots organizations were hereby accepting his offer, and asked him to "support a petition mandating open hearings and investigations into the Department of Justice, the amended Trading with the Enemy Act, the Federal Reserve and the United Nations, and their role in the usurpation of our Constitution, and the fraud and corruption in our present judicial system."

Speaking about the "strong 'Centralization of Power' that our Founding Fathers warned us about," she then quoted the "Williamsburg Resolve"—a statement signed by thirty Republican governors at a conference in Williamsburg, Virginia, on November 22, 1994:

Federal action has exceeded the clear bounds of its jurisdiction under the Constitution, and thus violated rights guaranteed to the people. The government of limited, delegated powers envisioned by the framers has become a government of virtually unlimited power... Our freedoms are no longer safe when they exist only at the sufferance of Federal legislators, Federal courts and Federal bureaucrats...

(Patriot literature, as I was learning, relied heavily on direct quotations to make a point.)

Char then proceeded to remind Senator Specter that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and asked him: "Will you live up to your word, and your oath, and carry out a petition and mandate from We the People for 'Open' hearings and investigations and to introduce legislation to repeal Section 5b of the Trading with the Enemy Act, as amended, and the repealing of the Federal Reserve Act? If not, please explain why you are unwilling to end this declared war against We the People by the Federal government and free our Great Nation from the unlawful and unconstitutional hands of the Money-Changers?" (The part about the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Federal Reserve, as yet, meant very little to me.)

She quoted Thomas Jefferson, saying, "To sin by silence makes a coward of men (women)," and pleaded:

This covert act of war upon We the People, and compound interest on compound interest has pounded us into the ground. There is no longer any accountability and our court system no longer follows the law. The abusive discretionary powers, 'gag orders', and sanctions by the courts is out of hand. Our Bankruptcy and Family Courts are a disgrace. Help us resurrect the voice of the people. Please help us solve our problems in a peaceful and lawful manner.

   Senator Specter, you have a very angry nation on your hands. If you are unwilling to resolve these issues in a peaceful and lawful manner, Mr. James Johnson's statement to the subcommittee on Terrorism, 'Its only a matter of time before an armed confrontation,' is a very serious and likely possibility.

The complete "Petition and Mandate" appeared in the booklet, with a sheet for signatures, with instructions to return completed sheets to CALL. It began:

Under the power and authority of Article [of Amendment] 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America, We, the Sovereign undersigned, in common law, for We the People, of the union of States of the united States of America, do hereby petition the government for a redress of grievances.

WHEREAS:  On November 22, 1994, our nation's sitting Republican Governors declared: "Federal action has exceeded the clear bounds of its jurisdiction under the Constitution and thus violated the rights guaranteed to the People;" and

WHEREAS:  Because Federal action has exceeded its Constitutional powers and authority, the Sovereign People of the united States of America face immediate crisis and undue hardships; and

WHEREAS:  We the People are being denied our unalienable God given Rights, Equal Protection, Equal Access to Justice and Due Process under the Law as guaranteed by the Constitution of the united States of America; and

WHEREAS:  Senate Report 93-549 declares that "Since March the 9th, 1933, the United States has been in a declared state of emergency... For 40 years, the freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged;" and

WHEREAS:  All elected officials have taken an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the united States of America.

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, WE THE PEOPLE, THE

UNDERSIGNED, DEMAND:

A.  THAT the Congress of the United States adopt a Resolution of Redress within thirty (30) days of receipt... to further act responsibly, and to thereupon conduct open hearings and investigations to identify the "Federal action" that has "exceeded the clear bounds of its jurisdiction under the Constitution;"  

    

Again, at the time, this all meant very little to me. I noted, however, that in the Petition, the "united States of America," when referring to "We the People," was written with a lower-case "u," but it was only later that I learned that many patriots distinguished (with some variations) between writing the name of the country as it appeared in the Declaration of Independence—with the lower-case "u"—and in the Preamble to the Constitution, where it was written, "United States of America," to denote the "more perfect Union." Another way to write it was, "United States" (often shortened to U.S.), as it appeared in the body of the Constitution, which, patriots claimed, denoted the federal government and federal citizenry in its early, limited sense, when the states were paramount. Some believed even, that "United States," and especially "U.S.," had been usurped and were being used (for legal purposes) to designate a parallel, "corporate" government (a legal entity due to its incorporation) that had little or nothing to do with the nation, or "Republic," of the Founding Fathers.

The document continued, calling for: a "moratorium on all new laws, rules, codes, regulations," until the hearings and investigations were completed. It also called for a Congressional subcommittee to work with "an independent committee of Sovereigns and public servants," that would include state Senators Don Rogers (R-Calif.) and Charles Duke (R-Colo.), Dr. Eugene Schroder, Byron Dale, Walt Myers (the latter three were on CALL's National Advisory Board), Charlena Alden and Terry Sanders (CALL's executive director). And it called for open hearings on the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, the role of the United Nations and its treaties in usurping governmental functions and "Sovereign rights", and an investigation of the Department of Justice and the American Bar Association (ABA), and their role also in usurping "Constitutional Rights."

The Petition called also for hearings on the Council on Foreign Relations, which, it noted, had been declared "subversive" by the American Legion in 1962. The American Legion, it explained, had charged the CFR with "One-Worldism and United Nationism," and with putting forward proposals "that our country be disarmed unilaterally or bilaterally, that all individuals in the United States be disarmed," as per State Department Publication Number 7277, Freedom from War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World" (issued the year before the American Legion statement). (I was yet to read this Program, initiated by JFK, and it was not included in Char's booklet.) This Petition for redress of grievances ended with a call for "a plan in the plain language to restore to the States and to the People prerogatives and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution as it was envisioned by our forefathers."      

In a press release included in the booklet, Char and CALL's executive director added another subject to be discussed in open Congressional hearing, in Point 6:

The restoring of allodial title and the return of all confiscated property.

While already, most of the charges just didn't make any sense to me, with the sweeping, general statements and accusations, and obscure references, this one left me even more baffled. At that time, I had no idea what "allodial title" meant, and nowhere was it explained.

Listed as a co-sponsor of the Rally was the Constitutionists Networking Center (CNC) in Arizona, whose executive director, Walt Myers, was named as part of the suggested people's committee to help with the hearings. CNC, which appeared in the booklet as the co-sponsor of CALL's proposals, it said, had been created in 1993, with the goal of bringing about "a government operating within the limits of the Constitution." I wrote to CNC, asking for more information on the organization, but never received a response.

In a section of the rally booklet titled, "The Plan," Char explained that during the week of November 5, 1995, a task force had gone to Washington, which had included a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, to hand-deliver notices paving the way for law suits against the President and members of Congress and the Supreme Court for "failure to uphold their oath." Notices, it said, had also gone to the Vice President, the Attorney General, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Treasury and many others. She called on people around the nation to do the same with state and local officials. "We will gun them down with paper," she wrote, explaining that this would not be a class action lawsuit, but rather, individual suits, which would make it difficult or impossible to enjoin them.

The collection of lawsuits, she said, would be taken from San Diego (where CALL's office was) at the finish of the Republican Convention in August, as part of "Operation Accountability," by way of a "Constitutional Caravan" to Washington, and culminate in a Labor-Day weekend "Bill of Rights Rally." The lawsuits would then be filed at the Common Law Court in the nation's capital on the first business day following the rally.

Then, if the officials who had been served with an "Actual Constructive Notice and Demand," and "evidence package," failed to carry out the demands of We the People, there would be criminal charges—among them, treason. The argument went that these officials had sworn to uphold the Constitution, and by going along with the unconstitutional system that was in place, if they continued to do so after they were put on notice, they would be willfully failing to uphold their oaths of office, thereby committing treason.

Included in the booklet was a packet of blank services, with instructions for "We the The People" on how to deliver them to as many remaining public officials as possible before the summer. If the office holders in question failed to initiate corrective action, it said, this would be the basis for bringing lawsuits against these officials, with Grand Juries around the country bringing charges of sedition, insurrection, rebellion and treason. CALL, it said, was seeking ten million signatures around the country for Congressional hearings to be held, and investigations.

Under Grand Jury Code 22-3001, it was explained, a grand jury could be summoned by the people for an investigation whenever official action was considered deficient. This could be done with a petition to the district court bearing the signatures of a hundred plus 2% of the total number of votes cast in the preceding governor's election. A Grand Jury would consist of fifteen jurors, with a quorum of twelve. (The problems of actually doing this, however, were well-illustrated when citizens tried to impanel their own grand jury in Oklahoma, to investigate the bombing a couple of years later.)

On Labor Day weekend, the plan went, immediately after the rally, from the steps of Capitol Hill, "We the People" would proceed to the Common Law Court, carrying the mountain of lawsuits to be filed. The goal, it said, was to have two million individual lawsuits in courts all over the country by the fall. (This was my first encounter with efforts by patriots to restore the U.S. to the earlier system of Common Law, as it had existed through much of the nineteenth century, and in some form, well into the twentieth; it had been replaced with the Uniform Commercial Code, UCC, only in the mid-'60s.) This all sounded terribly ambitious and grand, and I thought Char must have tremendous resources at her disposal. Either she had a lot of money herself, or she had some rich Westerners backing her.

In the "evidence package" in the booklet, it said the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Rockefellers were running the world, which I had heard ad nauseum  from the left in the '70s and '80s, and from rebellious Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, as well as from anti-Shah Iranians. I, myself, had participated in study groups at the CFR, and I had once worked across the street from the Council at a fellow Rockefeller organization, now the Americas Society. Thus, by Char's logic, I would myself have been one of those people planning for a world police state and government.

The idea that the United Nations was to be the seat of that world government, I found especially ridiculous. For one, as I well knew—living in New York where the UN was headquartered—the UN was one of the most inept organizations in the world. And two, I knew many of the people who had held, or continued to hold, key jobs, especially in the disarmament section, which, I would find, was the agency that patriots believed was meant to preside over the dismantling of national armies, establishing a single world peacekeeping force, and enforcing universal gun control (under the JFK Program). The UN people I knew were idealists; they were good people. 

What did give me pause, however, was what had been done to Iraq under the auspices of the UN during the Persian Gulf War (1990-’91) and afterwards, with the continuing, devastating sanctions. Long after the war, the UN was continuing to kill and damage Iraqi children, systematically; it was estimated that some 50,000 children a month were dying because of the sanctions. Another five children for every one that died, were growing up with brain damage and stunted growth due to malnutrition, which, according to health experts, would take several generations to reverse.

It was being said by some that "sanctions" were the "new weapon of mass destruction"—a UN weapon.

Although I knew full well that it was the U.S. and Britain that had initiated the Iraq action, I also knew that they had done it under UN Security Council authority, using this institution to launch the war—in other words, to make it "legal." In the end, all but a handful of member states of the UN had gone along with the war, with those few states remaining officially neutral. Only Jordan had stood up to the action, publicly criticizing the war against Iraq. No matter how much UN supporters argued that the UN itself hadn't done any of this, it was clear that it couldn't have happened without the UN. Not that degree of international coordination! The U.S. and Britain, without the UN, would have been hard pressed to get anyone other than Israel to join in the attack, which they had wanted to avoid, or in the sanctions afterwards. It was highly doubtful that the Soviet Union or France, Turkey or any Arab country, would have taken part, or that Saudi Arabia would have allowed the attack to be staged on its territory, if there had not been the UN umbrella (of respectability).

There was no doubt that the United Nations, with the acquisition of this major peacekeeping capability, had become a decidedly dangerous organization, in much the same way that any weapon would be in the wrong hands. Only here, it was a global army in the wrong hands. I would learn a great deal from the Militias about the difference between the individual right to bear arms and form a Militia, and the dangers of tyranny when arms were borne only by the "collective," or government. Living in a big city, and having learned over a period of many years to associate weapons in individual hands with crime, I did not yet understand this.

The one issue, at that point, that I was willing to dig my teeth into in Char's booklet, was the matter of the Federal Reserve System. I had already learned that it was privately owned, or perhaps I would have turned away even from that. And it would have been the end of the matter. I might have decided to go about my business with little thought of the Militias, trying in my own way to understand what had gone so wrong in the country (and, for that matter, in the world), especially since the 1980s, with the rise of such things as widespread homelessness in the U.S. while the rich got richer, with the rise of outright police abuse even as crime decreased, and with the loss, for a large segment of the population, of the ability to continue to earn a decent living.

All this, while at the same time, we had seen the transformation of a relatively free press into a fully-managed media, controlled by the big corporations and a government that more and more existed to do the corporations' bidding. As a journalist, I had seen this total managing of the media (although the process had started much earlier) come about almost overnight during the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.

It seemed to me, as I read through Char's booklet several more times, that the crux of the matter, for patriots, was in the creation, on the eve of World War I, in late 1913, of the Federal Reserve (it had been followed by the Trading with the Enemy Act once the U.S. formally entered the war, in 1917).  Char sent me a few pages on the creation of the Federal Reserve and its effects, from a book that was popular with patriots, titled, Vultures in Eagle's Clothing, by Lynne Meredith. The author explained that in 1913, "Congress sank America into eternal debt by giving the powers to issue currency and control the American monetary system" to the Federal Reserve and its shareholders, the owner banks. The Federal Reserve, moreover, she explained, could not really be considered a federal agency because it was owned by "a group of primarily foreign bankers."

The largest of the original shareholders, researchers agreed, had been the Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan banks. Meredith included lists from two different sources, which were similar, with other owners listed as: the Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin; Lazard Brothers of Paris; Israel Moses Sieff Banks of Italy; Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam; and Wall Street's Kuhn Loeb & Company and Goldman Sachs.

According to Eustace Mullins, a widely-read author on the origins of the Federal Reserve (about whom I was to learn a great deal more later), who claimed to have copies of the original organization certificates of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, the principal shareholders of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, at the outset, were: (Kuhn Loeb, Rockefeller-controlled) National City Bank, 30,000; (J.P. Morgan-controlled) First National Bank, 15,000 (National City and First National merged in 1955); Chase National Bank (which became the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank), 6,000; Marine National Bank of Buffalo (which became Marine Midland), 6,000; and National Bank of Commerce, 21,000.

Meredith said that the same original banks continued to be the owners. The best I was able to get was a list of current member banks from the New York Federal Reserve Bank—the lead bank in the Federal Reserve System—and found that, whatever the list might have included originally (if it was indeed these particular banks), it had been greatly expanded—assuming that all the shareholders were member banks. Most of the banks that Meredith and Mullins had listed, in any case, no longer figured.

Although it was impossible to get a list of the original owners from the Federal Reserve, it stood to reason that the J.P Morgan and Rockefeller banks would have been prominent, and Meredith's point was well taken that there were foreign banks among them. Although the Federal Reserve claimed that all the member banks were American, many of the banks on the current list, such as I.B.J. Schroder, Barclay's and Safra National Bank—to mention a few of the obvious ones—were clearly foreign-owned. The way the Federal Reserve got around this was by saying they were U.S. subsidiaries. Most if not all of the so-called American banks, furthermore, such as Chase and Citicorp, had interlocking directorates with foreign banks and corporations, and they owned large chunks of each other's stock.

Although many of the original stockholders, in any event, would no longer have appeared on the list—some of them no longer existed, or had changed their names or merged with other banks—undoubtedly, many of the same banking interests did continue to hold stock in the Federal Reserve Banks, under different names. The largest current members, I found, continued to be the original-owner J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller banks, with Citibank and Chase in the lead. On the New York Federal Reserve Bank's list at the end of 1995, I found that Chase was listed as having assets worth 100,451,999, and Citibank 220,110,000, making it the largest. (Interestingly, Chase's merger with Chemical in 1997 would bring Chase's assets to 255,059,400, making Chase Manhattan Bank—the Rockefeller flagship—the largest member. In 1999, there was a new addition, the British-owned HSBC, or Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, listed as the fourth largest, after J.P. Morgan; as if to state its position, this British bank erected an enormous tower directly across the street from the New York Federal Reserve Bank.)

Stating that the foreign banking interests that owned the Federal Reserve stock were the same ones that "have corrupted economies since the beginning of world banking history," Meredith went on to cite a famous quote of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the original, late-18th-century scion of this Frankfurt banking family, who had once said: "Permit me to control the currency of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."

I well knew that any allegation that Jews were prominent in or controlled international banking today, as the Rothschilds and their cohorts had done openly in Europe throughout the nineteenth century, would immediately bring charges of anti-Semitism, and I supposed, reading this, that this must be the main reason the patriots and Militias had been labeled anti-Semitic. The Militias' prolific dissemination of information on the origins of the Federal Reserve, and the frequent references to the "international banking cartel," and especially the Rothschilds, had made them prime targets of the ADL, which lumped them together in its reports, with the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis, labeling the Militias, "Hate Groups."

I asked Char about this over the phone, and she replied angrily that she herself was Jewish, and that, "Facts are facts." "Lynne Meredith," she said, "is my friend, and she is certainly not anti-Semitic. And neither are the other patriots I know. It happens to be true that many of the 'banksters' are Jewish. What is true is true." The use of the term "banksters," which I was hearing for the first time, I found, was widespread among patriots.

Meredith also quoted one of the Federal Reserve Act's most outspoken opponents in 1913, Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr. (the father of the famous aviator of that name). The day before the Federal Reserve Act passed, he had stated:

The money trust deliberately caused the 1907 money panic and thereby forced Congress to create a National Monetary Commission which led to the ultimate creation of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve Act establishes the most gigantic monetary trust on earth. When the President signs the bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Powers will be legalized. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Powers by taking control of Congress!... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government!

Meredith proceeded to explain in a section titled, "The Invisible Government," how the Federal Reserve Act had come into being. The chairman of the Monetary Commission, which had put together the Federal Reserve Act, she explained, had been Senator Nelson Aldrich. His daughter Abigail had married John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (of Standard Oil and Chase Manhattan Bank), and so, the Rockefellers had been among the largest beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve. Also, a member of the Monetary Commission had been Jacob Schiff of Kuhn Loeb & Company of New York, who, interestingly, had been born in the Rothschild home in Germany. Interestingly, said Meredith, he and William B. Thompson, who was none other than a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (which set Federal Reserve policy), had helped finance the Bolshevik Revolution. Thompson had traveled to Moscow in 1917. Schiff had made a contribution of $20 million. (Interestingly, Schiff, I learned elsewhere, had also been the chief financial strategist for the Rockefellers' Standard Oil before it had been broken up by the government in an anti-trust suit in 1911.)

The Federal Reserve Act had been passed on December 23 of 1913, Meredith related, when many in the Congress had already left for the Christmas holidays. It was immediately signed by President Woodrow Wilson, whose campaign had been financed by the banks. Within months, individual income taxes began to be collected for the first time (the amendment on the income tax had been passed earlier in the year), to pay interest to the Federal Reserve.

In a section titled, "Money From Nothing," Meredith explained what, exactly, had been put into effect by this Act, likening the newly-created Federal Reserve's powers to a person having a printing press for producing currency, and giving it away to a banker, then agreeing to borrow all your money from him and repay it with interest. This, she explained, was what Congress had done, giving away the power to print unlimited amounts of money to a group of self-serving bankers—the shareholders of the Federal Reserve. Moreover, she pointed out, this had been in violation of the law, as was evident reading the 1935 Supreme Court ruling in Schechter Poultry v. U.S., which clearly stated:

Congress may not abdicate or transfer to others its legitimate functions.  

She explained in simplified form how money was created, with the process beginning with, the U.S. government, say, informing the Federal Reserve that it needed $300 billion in credit and $100 million in currency. At the request of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department would then instruct the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to print $300 billion worth of Treasury Bonds and $100 million of Federal Reserve notes, at a cost to the Federal Reserve of only $20.60 per thousand notes. At the same time, the Federal Reserve would place an order to purchase Treasury Bonds in the amount of $300,100,000,000, using the $100 million currency (for which it had paid only some two and a half cents per note), transferring, with a simple computer entry, the remaining $300 billion as a credit, to the U.S. Treasury.

For this loan to the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve would receive continuously compounding interest, forever, which could never be repaid in its entirety. Contrary to what most people believed, the Federal Reserve assets were, not gold or silver, but these same Treasury Bonds, for which, in this case, the Federal Reserve had spent some $26,000 only, in printing costs. And so, the Federal Reserve created money from thin air. In this way, Meredith explained, the Federal Reserve had imposed on the country a debt-based economy, where "every Federal Reserve Note... is nothing more than a debt certificate." America's greatest power, the creation of money, had been given to the Federal Reserve. She noted that the Boston Federal Reserve Bank had summed it up in a booklet for the public, saying:

When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover that check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money. 

She quoted the House Banking and Currency Committee's 1964 publication, Money Facts, which explained it as follows:

The Federal Reserve Banks create... Federal Reserve Notes out of thin air to buy government bonds from the United States Treasury by lending into circulation at interest and by bookkeeping entries of checkbook credit to the United States Treasury. The Treasury writes up an interest bearing bond for one billion dollars. The Federal Reserve gives the Treasury a one billion dollar credit for the bond, it has created out of nothing. This is a one billion dollar debt which the American people are obligated to pay, in full, with interest.

In regards to the chartering of the first Bank of the United States, the country's first central bank and forerunner of the Federal Reserve System, in 1791, Thomas Jefferson had said:

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are preserved to the states or to the people... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank [the first Bank of the United States], and the powers assumed by this bill, have not been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

At the bottom of the last of the four pages that she sent me, Char had put a big exclamation mark, and brackets around Meredith's statement that: "The Congress should immediately take back the power of legislative monetary and credit creation, with safeguards, for the benefit and prosperity of the American people!"

Char's booklet contained model legislation for amending the Federal Reserve Act, titled, "The Money Reform Act"—authored by Byron Dale, a member of her advisory board—which called for returning the function of the issue of currency to the U.S. Treasury, under the control of Congress. The new currency, it stated, would be backed by silver and gold, and by labor. The proposed legislation also called for abolishing the IRS and the income tax.

The creation of the Federal Reserve, I was fast learning from patriots, was what had led to World War I, and to the "Trading with the Enemy Act" in 1917, under the "War Powers" that the Founders had meant to reside in the Congress. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, said:

The Congress shall have the Power... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.

 A seemingly innocuous war measure at the time, passed by the Congress on the eve of the U.S. entry into the war (to accord the president "War Powers," enabling him to control all the assets and commercial transactions in the U.S. of the Germans and their allies), this "War Powers act"—the Trading with the Enemy Act—was often called by patriots—would lead to a continuing state of emergency in the U.S., which only the president had the power to end. (In the mainstream media, the "War Powers" act generally referred to the 1973 "War Powers Resolution," passed in connection with the Viet Nam war, requiring a formal declaration of war by the Congress 60 days after the president's deployment of troops abroad in an offensive action, with a possible extension, upon request, of another 30 days.)

Char told me over the phone that the most important person for me to interview on this subject was a man from Colorado named Eugene Schroder, who was also on her advisory board. He had researched it in depth, she said, and had written a couple of books. And indeed, it was only after I read one of his books that I understood the impact of the Trading with the Enemy Act on the current situation, and learned more about Senate Report 93-549, cited in the preamble to CALL's Petition. This Senate Report had been issued in 1976 by the Senate Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, chaired by the widely-admired Senator Frank Church. If I had had any doubts about the truth of patriots' claims that the U.S., technically, had been under "War Powers," or emergency rule, ever since the Trading with the Enemy Act had been amended in 1933 to include Americans, this report confirmed that this was so.   

©2000 Nita M. Renfrew