Chapter 4
OF COMMON LAW, JURY RIGHTS, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, TRADING
WITH THE ENEMY
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the Constitutional be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
George Washington
"When we get our back up as a nation, believe me, the federal government does not have enough force to inflict their will upon us," said Tom. "New York is relatively weak compared to other places. It is a very liberal state. I find myself to be a liberal in some respects.
"The sheriff sent a command-center vehicle to remove Dacey and his home, with a couple of National Guard armored vehicles, one of which was carrying an ATV military vehicle. We knew they were coming across the county. They were going to make the town of Perry's highway garage a command center. So the phone rang there, and the sheriff's personnel were told to leave the area immediately with the command-center and National Guard vehicles. We told them that if they were not gone in five minutes, to radio, not for backup, but for bodybags. The vehicles turned around in a matter of minutes, and they headed back over to Warsaw, to the sheriff's compound. And they never came back again.
"The National Guard unit in Buffalo had 200 men on standby," he said, a touch of humor entering his voice when he added after a pause, "which would have been a jolt." As Tom paused to consider what this "jolt" would have been, the corners of his bearded mouth curled up slightly. "Fortunately," he continued, "Sheriff Kaplow decided to remain dormant. He's not really a Constitutionalist at heart, but he decided against bloodshed. The National Guard unit only stood down from the alert in December. This is still an ongoing situation.
"There is another situation in the Adirondacks near the Raquette River. A five-generation Adirondacker has been prohibited from building a cabin on his own land. In that case, the Militia showed up and shots rang out, and the state police vacated the area in a hurry, never to return. He has since beaten back the initial court actions taken against him by the Adirondack Park Agency. It has cost him time and money, but he's fighting it through the legal process, which is all that we would ask—to allow him to follow the legal process, as is happening. The Adirondack Park Agency is like a super zoning board that covers the whole area of the Adirondack Park—what they call the Blue Line. Even though some of the land is privately held, its still within the Blue Line. This Park Agency, which is not elected officials, has dictatorial control of the land.
"Somewheres across the U.S., there will be someone under duress of heavy-handed government, and everywhere there are Militias. If Jerry ever needs us, we're there, and vice versa." (Jerry Loper of the Chemung Militia.) "There's a situation bubbling up right now in the Albany area. A man has a farm there in a very rural area, and his home burns. He moves into a trailer, and the elected public servants, instead of helping, set upon him, and they have him arrested. Mobile homes, they say, are not allowed. The audacity of providing for his family before he gives homage to the government! A mobile home, he is told, will be allowed for three months, with a three-month extension, while he is building a new home. But he hasn't been able to get the insurance money. He was in jail for eighteen days, and is in contempt of court now. But he has joined the Militia, and isn't going to leave his house this time to go to jail. He's going to fight the government, with aid at his side if the government comes again.
"If we start the process, where shooting occurs, we aren't stopping just by driving them off the property to the county highway. After the scale tips that way, we're not stopping until we clean this whole sorry affair out. There's gonna be people like you see with that Justus Township out in Montana, who have a town symbol of a noose. We're going to hold court and we're going to deal with these traitors. Many of them have already been put on constructive notice, just on a local basis, along with many of our public officials that are already subject to liens.
"Down in that area of the state, there's a county where you've got a family-court hearing examiner liened, a family-court judge liened, a State Supreme Court judge in the county liened, the sheriff liened, the county court clerk liened. They're all in a conspiracy to violate the people's rights. These people are without an excuse, but they'll be given a trial. I can guarantee you that the appeal process won't last more than the time that they'll be giving the appeal to their Maker, for his mercies, upon entering into the eternal life that they may have. They'll be given a trial, but the facts are very clear.
"The case will be made against them that they've taken an oath, and if it is shown that they violated this oath, and they're traitors to their oath, they're gonna be executed. With this oath goes serious responsibility. This is why our country today is where it is, because these people have been engaging in this condition of which I spoke earlier, of 'mixed war.' They've stopped all the proper means of redress. The courts are closed off to the People. The courts are a futile exercise for the people who know and have experienced what they do to you in court.
"The liens that we're doing are not done through the judicial process. They're done through non-judicial process, the UCC, which the government itself uses, because then the judges cannot be involved in covering the tracks for their fellow attorneys, who are also public servants—quote, unquote. They'll be given trials, but they're not going to have the benefit of the judges who've allowed them to do what they've done with impunity. They will be tried before The People.
"I hope you'll put somewhere in your book, where it is the power of the 'supreme Court' emanates from. And I'm not talking about the one in Washington. I'm talking about the one that Leroy Schweitzer and other people have in various states out and around the territories. We're talking about the Constitutional Common Law court, Article III of the Constitution, where the 'supreme Court'... Leroy Schweitzer talks about it, and about the other courts devised by the legislatures—Article I courts.
"Today, what we see are 'legislative courts.' They're Article I courts. The Common Law court is becoming an anachronism. Its little vestiges left of it that you can see. If you pull up a McKinney's book of law, you'll see all the statutes refer to the Common Law, but its all been concealed from the minds and eyes of the current generation of inhabitants on the land. They don't understand about the legality of the Common Law Constitutional court. Where does it emanate from? Where do we get the idea that we can do this? Article III of the Constitution. Even lawyers don't understand this.
"The Supreme Court in Washington, with its black-robed men and women—John Jay, a New Yorker, was the first Supreme Court Justice. If you read some of John Jay's cases—now, where is the jury that was there then? We don't have a jury in Washington any longer, do we? Something has changed. The Common Law, Constitutional, Article III court has been bypassed and deemphasized in the legislative tribunals that we see in Washington and other places like state capitals. These Article I courts have come into prominence, all brought on by the American Bar Association and by lawyers because the Common Law courts allowed others than lawyers to practice before it. They couldn't have that.
"My philosophy, and of the U.S. Militia—all our members believe the same thing—is, we need to do everything possible today of a peaceful nature to bring the government back into line. The U.S. Militia requires its members to vote. You have to vote. But I must tell you, I know that there's vote fraud. I don't believe my vote is adequately or accurately portrayed in the results. Even in their government courts—not a Peoples' court, its a legislative tribunal—there's no neutrality on the part of the judges that sit there. But we should do what we can with lobbying our legislators, all those things that are tools our Founding Fathers gave us.
"But when all these things fail, and they have failed—we have been doing this for thirty, forty, fifty years, and yet here we are today with less liberty than ever before—it has been said that our Founding Fathers gave us a few boxes to preserve our liberty. The ballot box was one. The jury box was another, but now the juries have been whittled down, so they can't consider the law as well as the facts. That's the way judges charge the juries now. The judge tells them that he will determine the law, that they determine the facts. The Fully Informed Jury Association is trying to get out a different message to jurors nationwide. They're one of the other parts of the patriot community."
Often the Militias passed out fliers on jury rights, produced by the Fully Informed Jury Association, or FIJA, which had been started in Montana, inspired by a man named Red Beckman. FIJA activists regularly passed the fliers out in front of courthouses around the country. Folded in three, under the title, "FACTUAL INFORMATION about JURY SERVICE...," the flier began with a warning:
The judge will try to intimidate and control jurors and can throw them off the jury if he finds out how knowledgeable they are before the jury begins to deliberate. Judges have gained a certain illegitimate power over the jury, but they must understand both their power and the judge's tactics. The jurors must have the courage to stand up to a bluffing, bullying judge and vote their conscience. Judges are jealous of their power and want it for their own. Judges are extremely afraid of the presence of well-informed jurors in "their" courtroom.
Inside, it was explained that most judges told people erroneously that they were allowed to consider only the facts, not whether the law was fair or not, or the motives of the defendant, and that conscience should not affect their decision. FIJA explained that, in fact, it was the juror's right to judge the law itself. (This practice was commonly called "jury nullification.") "In a trial by jury," said FIJA, "the judge's job was to referee the trial and provide neutral legal advice to the jury" (as intended by the Founders). How could a person get a fair trial if jurors were not allowed to use their conscience? Noted was the opinion that if only the facts needed to be judged, that could best be done with a computer. FIJA advocated:
When its your turn to serve, remember:
1) you may—and should—vote your conscience;
2) you cannot be forced to obey a "juror's oath";
3) it is your responsibility to "hang" the jury with your vote if you disagree with the other jurors!
FIJA's purpose, the flier explained, was to educate jurors and promote laws requiring judges to inform juries of all their rights, or at least allow lawyers to do so, as had been the practice in the time of the Founding Fathers and for most of the nineteenth century. The Founders, said FIJA, "understood that trials by juries of ordinary citizens, fully informed of their powers, would confine the government to its proper role as the servant, not the master, of the people." John Adams, the second American president, was quoted as saying about the role of a juror:
It is not only his right, but his duty... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.
Thomas Jefferson, who was of the opinion that the Constitution did not sufficiently guarantee individual rights in the Judiciary branch, and warned that if the Judiciary was given too much power it might ruin the republic, was quoted saying:
I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
Even before the Revolutionary War (in 1735), FIJA noted, in New York "a jury had established freedom of the press in the colonies by finding John Peter Zenger not guilty of seditious libel," for printing in his newspaper critical news stories about the governor. The court earlier had instructed the jury that "Truth is no defense." Zenger's attorney, Andrew Hamilton, however, had informed the jury of its rights to judge the law, giving as an example William Penn's trial in England before he came to America and founded Pennsylvania. Penn had been charged with preaching the Quaker religion when the Church of England was the only legal church. The law was against him. The jury was held four days in prison without water or food, but refused to find him guilty.
As a result, in 1670, England's highest court had been forced to acknowledge the right of the jury to reject both the law and the facts, and to vote according to conscience. This had greatly influenced how government was to be conducted from then on; it was this that had led, within the decade, to a recognition of individual rights—freedom of speech, and freedom of religion and assembly. England's efforts to restrict trial by jury later in the Colonies was an important factor in the American Revolution. In the Constitution and Bill of Rights, reference to the right to a trial by jury appeared no less than three times.
An effort was made (in the U.S.) again in the late nineteenth century to limit jury rights through a series of court decisions, and although this had failed, explained FIJA, since then it had been "held that jurors need not be told about these rights." Attorneys, furthermore, could now be cited for contempt of court for informing a jury of its right to vote its conscience. Notwithstanding this serious setback, however, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had held as recently as 1972 (in 473 F. 2d 1113) that a jury had the
unreviewable and irreversible power... to acquit in disregard of the instruction on the law given by the trial judge. The pages of history shine upon instances of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge; for example, acquittals under the fugitive slave law.
(In the years leading up to the Civil War, time and time again, when a runaway slave was brought to trial, juries had voted to acquit, no matter that running away was illegal; today, black-dominated local juries around the country routinely voted to acquit other blacks of crimes, such as for drugs, thought to be unfair or unfairly applied—at the public urging of prominent black lawyers.)
FIJA argued that it was the role of a juror to protect citizens from "bad law," and advocated passing laws that would require the jury to be informed of its powers, so that respect for the law could be restored. Legislators, the argument went, would be less likely to pass bad laws knowing that they would be disregarded by juries. There were thousands of people in prison who had harmed no one, there due to jurors' ignorance of their full rights, said FIJA. It advised jurors to consider the following four questions before voting:
Is this a good law?
If so, is the law being justly applied?
Was the Bill of Rights honored in the arrest?
Will the punishment fit the crime?
If a juror answered no to any one of these questions, FIJA advocated voting "not guilty."
FIJA's efforts at education of the public were bearing fruit, and not long after this interview, in an attempt to shut down the jury rights movement, activists began to be arrested for distributing FIJA fliers outside courthouses. Guidelines were drawn up by a judge for dealing with jurors who were knowlegeable about their rights, and shocking measures began to be taken against jurors voting their conscience, including jail, for the first time ever in the United States. I would learn about this later.
Tom's reference to the "jury box" had to do with the saying among the Militias that:
The Founding Fathers gave us five boxes—the soap box, the ballot box, the witness box, the jury box and the cartridge box.
"And so, they gave us the courts and the jury," remarked Tom, "but today they tell us that the judge decides what they can decide on. The one remaining box that I see that we have left is the cartridge box."
I asked him to expand on this. Gazing intently at the wide expanse of wintery spring ground that lay before us beginning to stir, he reflected, "I believe that just like you have a fertile piece of land to grow a garden or you have a dry piece of brush that's fertile for fire to spread, this land, the oppression of government at all levels, has created a fertile environment for violence to spring forth in this country. And it could be over the likes of the Jim Dacey situation. It could be the likes of the Montana situation. It could be a situation like the John Laiken situation in Ohio, where an average citizen was just home with his wife and his kid, and he was killed, or the retired minister who was set upon by the ATF, and he had a heart attack and died."
The retired minister Tom was referring to had been a black man in Boston whose apartment had been "dynamically entered" in 1995 by the ATF wearing black combat fatigues and masks. In this widely-publicized incident, they had kicked in the door and literally frightened the retired black minister to death. Afterwards, the ATF had simply said they had gone to the wrong apartment, with no public apology. (In New York, meanwhile, I heard on the news that a token-booth attendant had died of a heart attack during a robbery where—like the Boston ATF agents—four boys had worn frightening masks. The boys, however, unlike the ATF agents, were charged with murder.)
Tom continued, "Somewheres in this land we are going to be called to come to the defense of a fellow citizen, and when we do, if the federal or the state government won't back off, and there's bloodshed at the outset, this tinderbox of United States today is going to explode in a horror of violence aimed at the government. And we're going to throw this tyranny off!
"We are going to be victorious because what we are fighting for is liberty. Liberty takes many forms to many people. Liberty lovers come in all labels. You yourself are a writer. You love the liberty of the First Amendment. I would hope that you recognize that this right is being eroded, one decision after another, of our courts. In some cases, preemptive approval is required by the government, for certain authors on certain topics. And so, your right to be a writer is only as strong as my right to be a Militiaman—an armed, equipped Militiaman.
"Our Founding Fathers knew it well, and wrote about it, talked about it. The Constitution was to chain down the government as best they could. Even so, after having devised this thing, I think it was Jefferson who said a revolution every twenty years or so would be a good thing. Well, I don't think quite the same in that respect as Mr. Jefferson, although I understand his sentiments.
Thomas Jefferson had indeed said in a letter dated November 13, 1987:
... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
"We've been allowing our rights to be usurped by the government. When I look at my grandson and other little children, I get a lump in my throat. I think about how, no matter everything that I've done, lobbying my legislators, writing letters to the editor, trying to stand up for people's rights in court as an advocate, all my efforts aside, I look at that little child and I can't say that he has the same rights I had as a kid. The documents that we had when I was a little kid have been eroded. We're leaving them a life of little more than an indentured servant. While we pay in excess of 50% taxes, those little children are going to pay 80 or 90%. It can't go on. It has to change. All it lacks is people with the intestinal fortitude to deal with their mortality and say, 'I'm never gonna live forever. No one gets off this planet alive.' And to ask, 'Will I leave this a better place for my fellow man and my offspring? Or will I leave it a worse place, by virtue of my apathy or my nothing view?'
"And so it is that many people have made a hard choice. No matter what it costs us, we must restore liberty. We have Militiamen with young children, with children in the womb. They live on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps something will happen, literally, next week, that will require us to come to service in defense of someone's unalienable rights. That Militiaman with a wife with child, he doesn't know how his wife will exist if he dies. He is her sole source of support. But he knows that he cannot look his son in the face, or his young daughter, if he allows liberty to slip away on his watch.
"These are the kind of people that belong to the New York Regiment. I love them all dearly, and I suffer under the weight of the responsibility I feel to these people, like the pregnant woman, this burden of, people look to me for these decisions. There could be life-and-death decisions, and I have to have my head straight. Even if there was a George Bush-type figure out there in the U.S. Militia somewheres in the country, at a given scene on a given moment, what do you suppose the chances are of us getting communications through to the guy to ask, 'What do we do now?'
"We have to do these things at the time. We have to know what we're doing. Its a grievous responsibility, which I can handle. I've handled it. But I sense it all the time, every time I go to something and I see a family of one of our members, I look at the family, and I take a very serious responsibility to know what we're doing and that we do the right thing."
Tom looked pensive, and said, "There's something else I wanted to tell you about our organization. We're not any kind of a racial organization. I can tell you that at times someone was thinking about joining, and they were talking racist language and so forth, in more than one locale in the state, and members reported back to me that they'd told the person they better not hear that language again, and no literature of that nature. We are not racists. We are for Americans, be they of whatever color. Are there racists in society? Yeah, we know that. I would be naive to think there are no white supremacist views. But we do not allow any dissemination or talk of that sort. The person would be put out of the organization. This is well understood in New York.
"Like J. J. Johnson, he stayed at my house.” J.J. Johnson was a well-known black Militia leader I would encounter later. Tom continued, “I have been to his house. But there are very few blacks in the organization, not for lack of effort. I had a rally for J.J., with a letter I devised that reached out to black ministers, every predominantly-black church I could find in the vecinity, with complimentary tickets. Not one was used. I personally met with a minister afterward, and he was hospitable and said he would look into it, and I never heard from him.
"There's another thing that I want to tell you, because I want the historical record preserved. It pertains to another minority group. But this has to be even more vague than some of the things I told you about the U.S. Militia. What it involves is Native Americans. There are Native Americans in the Militia. There are Native Americans in the New York Regiment. The Indians understand the New World Order from some of the old teachings.
"Indian groups in New York state, as tribes, have to be very careful about the legalities of Militia involvement because they are signatories to treaties. The most important single thing for an Indian is the preservation of their bloodline, that they not be rubbed out from the face of the earth. If the Indian nations in New York state—and this is the Iroquois Confederacy, and I can't be any more exact—were to become openly associated, the federal government could claim they have violated the treaty, and take everything they have. They have to protect their bloodline perpetuity. But they understand very well from the ancient teachings where it is we are going right now.
"I had a meeting with the chiefs about matters of mutuality. We were concerned about minorities. We reached out to the Native Americans. I get goose bumps. The Indian chiefs told me they knew there would be a day when somebody like me would come to them. I didn't know six months before it happened. They knew the federal government in these times would ask them for their help, and that they as nations couldn't help either side. They couldn't help me. And they couldn't possibly help the federal government, because its a monstruosity. Their teachings told them they would not help this government. Beyond that, if it ever becomes relevant historically, and I am not around, you might be able to find some of these people and ask what they meant, what it is the teachings are. All I can tell you is, we remain extremely close to the Native Americans in New York state.
"We became aware of a plan under Governor Cuomo," he continued, "to invade an Indian reservation with the New York State National Guard—basically, divest them of their territory and their sovereignty. It was in '94, I believe. It was through our intelligence collection that we became aware of Operation, I can't remember the name. We told them about it at the time, and they found it hard to believe. They checked it out. We're white men. They were skeptical. They've been screwed by Anglo white men for hundreds of years, and we couldn't blame them. Our intelligence checked out, and then the relationship was meaningful. In 1995, Governor Pataki took office and acknowledged that there had been this plan under Governor Cuomo, and he disbanded it. It was in the Albany papers. The Indians demanded a meeting with Governor Pataki. They had been going to take over lands with military forces, over a sales-tax issue.
"The way the contact started, in 1992 the state blockaded the Cattaraugas Indian reservation west of Buffalo with a military-like display of state police, with armored vehicles and so forth. The state police used the throughway maintenance area at Exit 58 as a staging point. They had tents set up with all kinds of state police, and they had the command-center vehicles there and helicopters. And they had ambulance facilities. They blockaded the Indian nation. You couldn't go on or off unless you were an Indian. What they did is they shut the businesses down. Only Indians could go to the store or the bingo place.
"What happened then was the Cattaraugas Indians said, 'You're going to blockade us, we're going to shut down the throughway'—the throughway runs through their land. The Indians went up on the two bridges where their roads cross over the throughway, at one-half-mile distance, and they proceeded to dump everything imaginable, including burning tires, off the bridges onto the throughway. They had fires roaring twenty, thirty foot in the air. The fires were so intense that it scalped the paint right off the steel bridgework. The throughway was shut down for two days. We were just fledglings, but we heard about this and we went there. We never had talked to Indians before. Four people went—an intelligence collection party, including me. After the intense standoff, the State police were made to withdraw the blockade.
"In '95, there was intertribal fighting, with some deaths. Those who wanted a white-man's form of government fought with those who wanted a traditionalist form of government. We in the Militia didn't believe we should interfere. They are sovereign, and if they want to use the force of arms to decide, they have the right to do so. If the state decided to intervene militarily, we would only do something to help if the Indians requested it. There are no formal links. They do believe in their right to protect against any kind of invasion. Indians will die for that."
The Iroquois Confederacy had been an important influence on the Framers of the Constitution, as was explained in a book that another New York Militiaman gave me to read—Indian Givers, by Jack Weatherford. The Iroquois Confederacy, it explained, was a union of sovereign nations with a limited central governing council elected by the tribal councils, and it had been the model for the federal system of government. The Iroquois Confederacy's practice of admitting new "members" into the Confederacy had been adopted by the Framers. Rather than creating "colonies" or annexing territories, as was the practice in Europe, new "states" would enter the Union as full members.
Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, both, were students of the Indian methods of governing. Franklin, who was considerably older than Jefferson, had been Pennsylvania's Indian commissioner in the 1750s, and following the Revolutionary War, pressed hard for Indian traditions to be adopted by the government. "Impeachment" (which was also English) and "caucuses" were among those traditions that were incorporated. One very important practice that was adopted was a separation between civil public officials and the military. Unlike in England, in order to hold public office in the United States, an officer was required to resign from the military, following Native American practice. The Militias also adopted the Indian practice whereby military officers were elected by the men serving under them. The unorganized Militia, today, continued this practice. Commanders were normally elected by members.
In 1974, the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.), formed to protect American Indians' civil rights, had been officially labeled a "terrorist organization" by the federal government, in order to justify greater police power. This was followed a year later by a shootout between A.I.M. members and unidentified FBI agents who came onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, showing their weapons, at what came to be known as "Wounded Knee." One American Indian and two FBI agents died, and three Indians were tried for first-degree murder. Two of them were acquitted by a jury who said they were acting in self-defense. The third, Leonard Peltier, who was tried separately because he had fled to Canada, received a life sentence on two counts of murder. One of the two who were acquitted, Bob Robideau, in a 1995 interview, said about the Militias:
The FBI, the ATF and other internal national law enforcement agencies have been well-trained, well-sensitized to using subversive tactics against their own population. Their training ground was with the black people. Not only were they trained in how to do a better job, but they also sensitized the general population into accepting this type of activity for its own protection. And that's the most important part, that ultimately they sensitize the general population to accept these types of tactics. Just like I'm sure in Germany many Jews were accepting of the tactics that were being used against them. Are we, too, going to go to the gas chambers without a fight? Probably, if this is allowed to continue without a struggle... The main thing is that the government and those that control this country, the multinational corporations, have been able to manipulate the minds of this country to the degree where they can focus those minds where they want to.
Now they have focused on militia groups, when we should be focused instead on what the government is actually doing and preparing to do.
Nodding his head slowly, Tom said, "I see us on an inextricable path to the New World Order, save for armed intervention. I believe in participating in rallies and such, but we don't believe this is going to work. Many of our members would like to do something right now. They say, 'How many more first shots do we have to hear?' They say, 'How many more violations of our Constitution do we have to endure? When will we act? Will it be never?' These are questions that are put to me. They want to act now.
"I tell them we have to stay a certain course, that if we are forced to arms by a defensive action, to help a fellow citizen, it may be possible for some of the generally-dumb public, as I call them, to understand that we've taken on the government's public policy. If we were to do something like the bomb at Oklahoma City, which isn't even in our vernacular, but if we were to do something like go and snatch some particularly tyrannical judge, or a traitorous senator, or some such act, we would not succeed, with the onslaught of the press and what they would do to us. We need to have public support, even by the generally-dumb public, cause we're doing this for them, even if they don't know it. They don't have any idea what's going on, what's being done to their rights."
He paused, and added, "It is a much harder challenge to put Humpty Dumpty back together again than knocking him off the wall. We have a course. Its a defensive one, and we're going to stay that course. So when the time comes, and we are pressed into service, and forced to arms to protect a person's unalienable rights, we will do so. Once blood is spilled, we will do whatever is required to be victorious.
"We don't use the phone or mail for business. It is all hand-carried, or by electronic communications which are encoded for operational convenience. Encoded with PGP—an encryption device brought out at the time of the government Clipper chip. This gifted individual, he put it on the Internet and gave it away to defeat the Clipper chip. By the way, he was arrested when he did this, and charged with violating the export act, even though he was not selling it."
If I had been surprised to hear of the close links to Native Americans, now I was even more surprised when Tom began telling me about the U.S. Militia's contact with another group—the Chiapas rebels in Mexico. I had thought of Native American rights and the Chiapas rebels as being the sole province of the left. I thought how this just went to show that if the old paradigm of "left-right" continued to exist among the elites, it no longer did so at the grassroots. Today, it was the "Haves," with their internationalist institutions, and the "Have-nots," or populists, who, in the case of the Militias, were being labeled "nationalists" and condemned for it, as if nationalism in and of itself were evil. The Militias liked to point out that during World War II it was the nationalism of the Free French and other resistance groups—as well as the nationalism of the Russians, British and Americans—that had caused them to fight against and eventually defeat Germany. Otherwise, Europe might have submitted to German rule. (Ironically, it was happening now with the European Union, economically, with the EU's central bank in Frankfort.) Americans in World War II had been told they were also fighting to preserve their own freedom.
"The Chiapas contact began in '94," said Tom, "in the fall of the first year that they became publicly known. We understand very well the corruption of the Mexican government and the role our government plays in the enslavement of the Mexican people. The NAFTA agreement was part of it."
The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was a trade pact that had been signed by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, for the stated purpose of opening the borders to trade. The reason given, both by the Bush and Clinton Administrations, was that foreign trade would increase, and this would automatically raise wages in the U.S. and bring more jobs. But just the opposite had happened. Immediately after the argument had gone into effect in 1994, factories had begun moving to Mexico, where there were few environmental controls and factory wages were often lower than 50 cents an hour.
Critics such as Jerry Brown had pointed out before it passed, that NAFTA was modeled on the UN's General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—an agreement to lift all trade protections globally, scheduled to go into effect the following year—and that, in sum, these trade agreements would "allow unelected officials to resolve conflicts." Already, Brown noted, a secret dispute panel in Geneva had ruled that GATT would override federal and state laws in the U.S. Americans, he warned, would be subjected to "a supergovernment of unelected trade bureaucrats working for NAFTA and GATT."
Jerry Brown had also warned that there were an estimated 800,000 Mexican farming families that would be "driven off their communal lands because of low-cost U.S. competition, inducing another 700,000 illegal immigrants to seek work in the U.S., depressing wages on both sides of the border." And so it was, on January 1,1994—the day that NAFTA went into effect—that corn-growing peasants in the state of Chiapas began an armed uprising, just as he had predicted. The rebels called themselves "Zapatistas," after a turn-of-the-century, peasant Mexican Revolutionary hero who had championed the peasants' property rights, by the name of Emiliano Zapata.
"We are sympathetic to the Zapatista movement," said Tom. "We have rendered them aid, which I won't go into. We have people who have gone down there and participated in their day-to-day life. The corruption of the Mexican government, former President Salinas—who was the shoo-in candidate for president of the World Trade Organization—that was to be his payoff for selling Mexicans into bondage in NAFTA. Of course, he couldn't be reelected, so he had to have another beautiful perch to aggrandize himself. Today he's a fugitive. There are warrants out for his arrest, related to drugs."
The World Trade Organization, or WTO, was a brand-new UN agency headquartered in Geneva, there to administer GATT and the global open borders. President Carlos Salinas had been Wall Street's and the Clinton Administration's golden boy, and the U.S. had nominated him for first head of the WTO. When, at the last minute, some U.S. Congressmen had shown a reluctance to ratify NAFTA, the Clinton Administration had warned that a failure to ratify would hurt President Salinas and his designated successor's chances of winning the elections that fall, which could result in civil unrest in Mexico and a devaluation of the peso. In fact, all these things soon happened—because of NAFTA.
Soon after it was signed, Salinas and his family were hit with a drug-trafficking and corruption scandal of major proportions, and Salinas's name had had to be withdrawn. His chosen candidate for president was assassinated while campaigning. On the day that NAFTA went into effect, the armed rebellion in Chiapas started, spreading to other parts of Mexico, and soon the peso was devalued by half (bringing economic desperation and a rise in crime never before seen, that would last for years.)
Clinton proceeded to bail out Mexico with a loan of $40 billion, bypassing Congress. Although he said it was to help with the pain and suffering of the Mexican people, as it turned out, the money never left the U.S.; it went to the Wall Street banks that were owed money by Mexico. Clinton had promised that American taxpayers would not be stuck with an uncollectible debt, and so, in a special White House ceremony the following year, Mexico handed over a check, and American taxpayers sighed with relief. As it turned out later, however, what had really happened was, the IMF (as the Militias would say, a part of the rapidly-consolidating "UN System") had advanced an extra $26 billion to the Mexican government—so Mexico could pay the U.S. that amount—with a promise by Clinton to raise the U.S. contribution by that amount the following year (in the end, a great deal more had to be loaned to Mexico, costing Americans far more than the initial $40 billion). So in fact, without knowing it, the American taxpayers were stuck with the bad debt after all (even though the monies to the IMF, technically, were a loan). Only the Wall Street banks, such as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's firm, Goldman Sachs, were paid back.
This had been the case in the late 1980s also, inside the U.S., with the savings-and-loans banking crisis, where the taxpayers had been coerced into a bailout of the banks for between $300 and $500 billion (no one knew exactly). This was accomplished with warnings that, otherwise, the whole economy would collapse. The savings-and-loans, however, had gotten themselves into the mess in the first place by engaging in corrupt and bad business practices. And, while risk, in this system, was normally expected to be assumed by the owners of a business, it became clear that in the case of the banks—if they were big enough—the risk was underwritten by unwitting taxpayers. This meant that there was no risk for those making the decisions. However, when there were profits, they always went to the banks, not the taxpayers.
"Looking at the international scene," said Tom, "one of the things that has been so totally repugnant is what we see our government doing with respect to the Chechens. Its not known by very many people, but the United States has sent advisers over there to help the Russian military in how to subjugate these freedom-loving Chechens, fighting for self-determination and all those things that our country used to stand for. Spetsnaz has been brought to this country for training. They are the KGB of today, terrorizing the Chechens, destroying their women and children, irrespective of whether they're guerrillas or not. Search and destroy, scorched-earth strategy to displace the Chechens to an area where we have better control over the population."
After a short silence, Tom said, "About the Zapatistas, I don't know about it appearing in a book. I don't know what the feds would do with this information. I guess, say the Militias are involved in international terrorism. And we have no faith in the American press. We have a Militia member who is an accredited journalist—who has access to the White House and Air Force One, and is right there with Clinton. And we know how it works from the inside—the government handlers, and how inside his organization they marshal him."
I said I thought it should be included because it would show people a side of the Militias that people did not suspect, and destroy the perception that the Militias were isolationist rednecks who had no thought or understanding of the world.
I asked Tom what made the Militias different from gangs or other armed or paramilitary organizations. He replied, "It is a matter of international law, what distinguishes a Militia member from a common criminal. The people in Georgia will be tried as criminals."
This was a reference to the arrest during those days by the ATF of three members of the Georgia Militia, on charges of conspiracy to make pipe bombs to use against the government. Much had been made in the media of reports that sections of pipe had been found on Militia commander Robert Starr's property—who happened, however, to be a plumber—and the fact that they had also found fertilizer there. Headlines around the country had cried that there had been plans by the Georgia Militia to set off bombs at the Olympics in Atlanta that summer. But, as it turned out, like Randy Weaver—and many others around the country—these Militia members had been set up and entrapped by the ATF. This was to be revealed during the court hearings later. Outright entrapment was becoming a regular federal police activity, especially by the ATF.
Tom continued, "There is international law that deals with Militias—what constitutes a Militia, what distinguishes a Militia person from a common criminal. What do we have to do to comply with the international rules of land warfare, so that if we have to act, we will be doing so as a recognized Militia, as opposed to a criminal gang? The literature says that you have to be distinguished from a civilian in appearance, and it speaks about an arm patch and military-type headgear. And it talks about several criteria, one of which is, you have to be part of an organization with a chain of command. You have to have some kind of identification."
Tom had shown me his U.S. Militia ID card, roughly 4" by 5", and his armpatch, embroidered in bright colors—the official New York seal, with the female figure of Justice on the right, blindfolded, balancing her scales. "What you saw fully complies with all the laws," he said, now showing me the oath that U.S. Militia members were required to take, which he allowed me to copy by hand. It said:
I swear to support and defend the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION and BILL OF RIGHTS from all enemies, foreign or domestic, with all means at my disposal.
I further swear to maintain complete silence with respect to all U.S. MILITIA information that I may learn, and insure that such information is not divulged to any persons who are not sworn members of any U.S. MILITIA chain of command, so help me God.
Tom also allowed me to read the typewritten pages that he used for recruiting, where I learned that the penalty for violating the oath was death. He assured me, however, that he had not violated his oath, talking to me. He added that no member had yet had occasion to use this official identification with law enforcement. However, he said, "Should anyone be arrested, we have the groundwork covered. If caught, he would immediately claim he's a POW. We are in a state of war.
"What you saw fully complies with all the requirements. If any of our people were to be arrested, we're not going to be like those couple of bubbas down in Georgia. We're gonna have the ground under the person's feet, so they can say, 'You cannot charge me as a criminal.' For instance, if the authorities caught one of our members with a machinegun without a permit, that person would immediately claim that he was a prisoner of war. The state of war is in existence—mixed war. Its already been declared by the government against the People. You know, the 'War Powers' act. So we're in a state of war. Most civilians don't know anything about the War Powers act, that the People are the enemy of the government, but we do."
Tom was referring to, "The Act to Define, Regulate and Punish Trading with the Enemy," better known as the "Trading with the Enemy Act," for short, often referred to by patriots simply as the "War Powers act" (not to be confused with the War Powers Resolution passed in the early 1970s during the Viet Nam war); it had been passed in 1917 during World War I, when the Congress had granted the president full "War Powers," making it possible for President Woodrow Wilson to have control over the assets of foreign nationals from enemy countries—meaning the Germans and their allies. The law had been forgotten about after the war, along with all the other war measures that became defunct when the war ended. But in 1933, in a little-noticed action by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it had been dusted off and amended to include the American people in the definition of "enemy." Unknown to most Americans, it was this amended statute that had allowed Roosevelt's government to formally declare a state of emergency and seize all the gold in the country.
Unknown to the general public also, this now-amended Trading with the Enemy Act remained in full force, and was the basis for many government actions, including the thousands of "executive orders" and "presidential decision directives" issued since by the various presidents (which would otherwise have no basis in law). During his first term, President Clinton, already, had issued some two hundred of these directives and executive orders, roughly one a week (at almost the same rate as Roosevelt during the Great Depression). Some were classified, where the public was not even allowed to know what the law so decreed was.
The Sovereign American Handbook, like Tom, said about this:
Our government formally declared war on us in 1933 by amending the Trading with the Enemies Act (1917) to include all American sovereign Citizens and suspending the Constitution through the Emergency and War Powers Acts.
Indeed, in light of the use to which the Trading with the Enemy Act was being put, unbelievable though this was to me at first, it was hard to argue with the assertion that the federal government was at war with the American people—the "mixed war" that Tom had referred to. It was a subject that I was to learn a great deal more about over the coming months, for, along with the Second Amendment, it was at the heart of the Militia movement.
Tom continued, "And we're going to get an attorney, who's gonna present the case that this person, as a member of the Militia, has the right to own military accoutrements, be they whatever they are. I wonder how that'll fly with the average tyrannical judge. He'll say that's frivolous. He'll put the person in jail without bail. We'll file a habeas corpus request, and they'll deny you. You're a terrorist. So we don't think this is going to help our members, but we'll do it anyway because this is the right way. This is the facts of the matter. What it all comes down to is, when they eliminate all other forms of reasonable means to address grievances, you have two choices. Either you be subservient and say nothing, or you fight for your beliefs.
"This thing is being foisted upon us. I can tell you, I do not aspire to a war in this country, but I can also tell you that if things go over the line, where blood is shed, where they're after us in earnest, we are gonna be some nasty, mean, vicious hombres. We are fighting for everything that's dear to us. All the Gestapos in the federal government—the alphabet soup agencies—they're out for a pension, for a paycheck."
Pointing toward the ochre valley edged with a stubble of darkish green below us, Tom added, "Those people in those houses don't know the government is the enemy and that we're at war." I looked out over the wide-open field, with the tiny farmhouses nestled in straw fields, and could see that in the space of a few hours the spring light had gotten colder, harder. His earlier intensity spent, a bleak note entered Tom's voice as he changed cadence, repeating what he had just said—more slowly, almost in a whisper. "Its the right way when we eliminate all other forms of reasonable means of addressing grievances. You either be subservient or fight for your beliefs. I do not aspire to a war in this country. We're fighting for everything that is dear to us. All those alphabet soup agencies, out for a pension, are mercenaries. Can a war be won by mercenaries, as opposed to people fighting for their life, backed into a corner?"
Tom was silent for a long while, then added solemnly, "You know, I've been thinking about your book. I hope everyone reads it, but I'm not optimistic. But even if no one reads it, except for the government gumshoes, it is there as history. You are in possession of history, and I hope you'll be a careful guardian of that."
In order to understand fully how the Militia movement had caught fire everywhere in months, it was necessary to look at the public Militias, namely the Militia of Montana, a foundation stone in the movement, which saw its role as something very different from the underground U.S. Militia.
