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rfrr,444.fratto,3 fare the svfOnf,.. emçii IliVolvetneisiG .das....-tssi- nOticni:Atfiparney:' Oeritriat Kemirdy ,villei that 'has spartoruji At 200 ydrik!" tepli,Ed that ,he:CotiitFfititVinCilriOOf tkom.r:. ktire • Minitteinen2 had vhdateil any i-rhitois.Werzireiyer! Even noir?. i•rie'crOss F'ederal.,laivs,: and 'there. was, cons'e-- av on the b;:cle ofyour riOoks.r • 'quenily, 4-aftloti.the,,Departmetti:: • ;7 •-• • ' of JuitiCer,cquid;take, ,"iinless7ihere •IRE MULTILITII tx-ri•pt;:. bordered in •, is •'",,Sittheient ...ividence7 to establish hack land fteaded- "jp 1\4 einoriant:* that these acts 'aft beyond the pro- was achireised" to a ?niall4rOup of tedtecrrareas 41).e e 1.. r ess and liberal Cciniressrnen who had voted- assembly guarantees of the, ''FirSt.. r- to deny 1ppropriátIoni to the Houe Ainetulment. to die constitution." Committee on Uri:American_ A etivi-1 Kendiedy'S 'position failed to mollify ties for the fiscal yesr.' 1964-1965. It ,Nintttemary "rnitranium" leader was one of thou-Sands ,ruO' o' ff by Roberi.Bolivar,DePugh, who charged • •"superpatriotS :accusing „HLIAC's,,...foes ,• that the Attorney General had; iii Of aiding and abetting "the. interna- fact," been covertly harassing the or- ganization shore 196 GOntrourriir Conspiracy"; but .1. "If Robert Kennedy can't find: anything that fen of the: ttes recipients were we've tic me illegal," said DePugh, •inclined idiSMiss it as the work:of • It certainly is not because he basn:t ir' contrbOtiplaee::PoriiiCal.Ciarik:Thir. "'I/5Ru ncly„calto *-trisinrwai-is,sue,t1:•by the M.iritite"•:, ' kennedy.. t't men of America: ,zin undergrottnd or iii American. p • aramilitary organization. of , right- • ' Despite.' their }ea T4t, wing, extreinisti hetyily •artried and as gun-happy I:nit:relatively harmless , itching for actiah: One Congressman firstWarld War Three on the Minutemen hate list,"kepre-:" buffs.. as one Observer tlUbbed them sentative :Henry Gon7alei of Texas — mice .Mintiternen-,-, in recent, years •• : 1-nok: the tisteat seriously, enough.. to have evinced a teittleiky to translate urge then—Attorney General Robert theii.threato into action. Senator J.

those paranoid patriots ** —the minutemenTo plot t9,,,pve amer_

is William Fulbright, the bae noire of the to assassinate Stanley Marcus, millionaire cyanide plot in Kansas City's U. S. Dis=- 0 ultraright ever since his exposure of owner of the Neiman-Marcus depart- trict Court during DePugh's trial for General Edwin A. Walker's indoctrina- ment store and one of the city's few violation of the National Firearms Act tion of his troops with Birchite propa- outspoken liberals. An informer present —and who is now hiding out in the is in 1961, has received hundreds of at the planning sessions told journalist Alaskan tundra to escape his former threats from Minutemen and their sup- William W. Turner, an ex–FBI agent, comrades' retribution—believes that the a porters. In 1962, one fanatic Minuteman that snipers intended to ambush Marcus Minutemen are biding their time for a' put aside his pen and reached for his on one of his out-of-town trips, since "an- fresh attack on the UN, with or without Oil rifle. The plot to assassinate Fulbright other assassination in Dallas would be too cyanide gas. "That place is a symbol of was the brain child of "John Morris," the much." Once more, however, DePugh got everything they hate." he explained to a nom de guerre of a Dallas Minuteman wind of the plot and aborted it at the journalist. "They're bound to take an- activist and former recruiter for George last moment. other crack at it someday." Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party, A more grandiose and imaginative Real or imagined Communists—in who was convinced that the systematic Minuteman effort was the attempt to and out of the 11N—have been a favor- liquidation of leading liberals could introduce cyanide gas into the air-condi- ite target of Minuteman terrorist attacks "purify" the country, terrorize the oppo- tioning system of the United Nations in recent years. In the predawn hours of sition and enable the paramilitary right Building during a General Assembly ses- October 30, 1966. 19 heavily armed Min- to "gain control of the Government." sion. Minuteman defector Brooks claims utemen, divided into three bands, were Morris persuaded a number of fellow that the plan was initially approved by intercepted by staked-out police (tipped - Minutemen in Kansas City that Ful- DePugh, who then developed cold feet by an FBI informant) as they zeroed bright would make an ideal first victim. and backed out. "He got the idea at our in on left-wing camps in a three-state A former aide to DePugh, Jerry Milton training session in Independence, Mis- area. Targets of the coordinated forays Brooks—nicknamed "the Rabbi" because souri, in the summer of 1965," says were Camp Webatuck at Wingdale, New of his virulent anti-Semitism—claims that Brooks. "A bunch of us were sitting York, where fire bombs with detonators "Morris' plan was to knock off Fulbright around in a bull session and somebody had already been set in place; Camp during one of his speaking tours in Ar- wondered how you could wipe out every- Midvale in New Jersey; and a pacifist kansas. One Kansas City Minuteman put body in the UN all at once, and one of community at Voluntown. Connecticut, up the money for Morris and another the guys suggested mortars, but I said. established by the New England Com- loaned him a 1952 Buick to get to Little 'No, even with a direct hit, you'd only mittee fo• Nonviolent Action. According Rock. A Texas man was supposed to zap a few, despite those glass walls.' And to Queens district attorney Nat Hentel. hire a private plane and fly him out of then Bob [DePugh] says to me, 'Do you who helped coordinate the roundup, the the state after Fulbright was zapped." think you could get hold of any cya- Minutemen, disguised as hunters, intend- According to Brooks, "Morris pur- nide?' He asked me because I was work- ed to burn the camps to the ground— chased a rifle with a telescopic sight; but ing for an extermination outfit at the along with their inhabitants. A state on the day he was to depart for Little time, and I said, 'Sure, as much as you ' police official added, "I don't know what Rock, news of the plot leaked to De- want.' So he told me to get him some, they thought they were going to accom- Pugh, who blew his top. At this stage, he and I bought twenty gallons and took it plish, but they had plenty of hardware was still preaching his principle of delib- back to headquarters. Some of it went out available to get the job done." erate delay, which means all the empha- to Ken Goff [the Reverend Kenneth Goff, As the Minutemen were being herded sis is on recruiting and propaganda and leader of an affiliated paramilitary organ- into custody, raids on secret munitions stockpiling arms, so you don't zap any- ization, the Soldiers of the Cross] and bunkers and basement arms caches by body till the outfit's ready to function Bob said we'd keep the rest for the UN. 110 state, county and city police officers fully underground. DePugh met Morris He told me he'd select one of our New netted a huge arsenal of Minuteman on a bridge in Lexington, Missouri, and York guys to put it into the air-condi- combat materiel: 1.000,000 rounds of rifle told him he had to call off the plan tioning ducts, and I found out later and small-arms ammunition, chemicals because, whether it succeeded or failed, they'd picked a member who's with the for preparing bomb detonators, consid- all that would happen was that the au- New York state police and who could erable radio equipment—including 30 thorities would be sicked onto the Min- use his credentials to get into the UN walkie-talkies and shortwave sets tuned utemen. DePugh ,made it clear that if basement. But then Bob decided he to police bands-125 single-shot and Morris went ahead, he'd be the one wanted to wait, and some of the guys automatic rifles, 10- dynamite bombs, 5 who'd end up six feet under. The poor who'd gotten all excited about the idea mortars, 12 .30-caliber machine guns, 25 guy panicked and beat it out to Okla- were really pissed off and decided to go pistols, 240 knives (hunting, throwing, homa." ahead on their own." cleaver and machete), I bazooka, 3 gre- DePugh has since denied that there This activist faction, chafing at De- nade launchers, 6 hand grenades and 50 was ever a serious plan to take Fulbright's Pugh's "moderation," secreted the cya- 80-millimeter mortar shells. For good life, but admits having "talked" with nide and prepared to act independently, measure, there was even a crossbow re- Morris. "The whole thing was blown up in defiance of DePugh's instructions. Ac- plete with curare-tipped arrows. out of all proportion," he asserts, add- cording to political historian George Arrested in the roundup was the man ing: "But just because I've exercised a Thayer, who scrutinized the Minutemen District Attorney Hentel identified as the restraining influence in the past, that closely in his book The Farther Shores of East Coast coordinator of the Minute- doesn't mean I'll always do so. There "DePugh loyalists were outraged men: Milton Kellogg, a wealthy Upstate is no act too brutal or illegal for us at this development and made plans to businessman. Police announced that in to take if it will help save this country shoot the faction's leader in a room lined raids on Kellogg's two homes, in Syracuse from communism—including assassina- with butcher paper. To obliterate any and Brewertoni they had confiscated— tion. There'll be a lot of dead s.o.b.s trace of the crime, the bloody paper was along with 11 hypodermic needles. 6 before this fight is over." to be burned, the body buried in a deep syringes, 4 handguns, 4 rifles, 2 shotguns, Minuteman wrath is not restricted to grave somewhere in Missouri and the gunpowder and 5000 rounds of ammuni- "subversive" Senators. In the fall of gun smelted down. Both the plot and tion—files disclosing that the extent of 1966, three Dallas Minutemen, led by a counterplot fell apart when the authori- Minutemen activities in the New York/ night-club owner who served as a local ties got wind of them and stepped into New England area was far greater than official of the organization's political the picture." local authorities had hitherto suspected, 104 arm, the Patriotic Party, hatched a plot Brooks, who blew the whistle on the (continued on page 146) ters were swiftly apprehended and their (continued from page 104) • PARAMILITARY RIGHT leader was sentenced to two years in pris- and that the paramilitary activists had- recruits the rudiments of jungle warfare on; his four codefendants—one of them 01 even succeeded in infiltrating the state in his back yard. the owner of a Bronx sporting-goods shop to police. Hentel announced in the after- Despite appearances, this group was —were let off with lighter sentences. math of the raids that for two years, an viewed by New York authorities as any- The six Minutemen who launched a unnamed state policeman—one of three thing but ludicrous. "Kooks they are, second attack on the pacifist encamp- ▪ state troopers comprising a Minuteman harmless they're not," said one officer of ment at Voluntown late last summer 01 "action squad"—had looted heavy weap- the Bureau of Special Services, the un- fared no better. Once again, FBI infiltra- ons from armories for the organization dercover intelligence unit of the New tors in their ranks had tipped off local and had tipped off Minuteman leaders on York City police force. "It's only due to authorities—but this time the warning pending state and Federal investigations. their own incompetence, and not any almost came too late. State troopers, According to Hentel, the trooper had lack of motivation, that they haven't left alerted by Federal agents to the impend- also served as an organizer for the Min- a trail of corpses in their wake." ing raid, had stationed themselves in force utemen and had recruited National In the aftermath of the roundup, a at the entrance to the 40-acre farm two Guardsmen as possible leaders of Min- high New York City official revealed to miles north on Route 165, but the Min- utemen cells. The three state policemen The Washington Post that if the orches- utemen slipped through the cordon and were subsequently cashiered, but no trated raids on the leftist camps had surprised two women residents of the criminal action was taken against them. proved successful, the Minutemen's next camp outside the main farmhouse. The Minutemen arrested in the raids move was to have been an assassination (None of the pacifists had been apprised were drawn from a cross section of lower- attempt on former CORE leader James by police of their danger.) According to middle-class America; in addition to the Farmer, marked for death as a "top one of the women, the six masked Min- state troopers, there were a cabdriver, a black Red." Hentel adds that during the utemen, dressed in combat fatigues and gardener, a subway conductor, a fireman, raids, hundreds of copies of a forged carrying rifles with fixed bayonets, "spoke a mechanic, a plasterer, a truck driver, pamphlet, purportedly issued by a black quietly, moved quietly and seemed very a heavy-equipment operator, a draftsman, nationalist group, were discovered in the self-assured." The Minutemen shoved the several small businessmen, a horse groom Bellmore, Long Island, home of Minute- women inside the farmhouse, bound them man leader William Garrett. The leaflets and two milkmen. Mostwere we respectable securely and taped their eyes and mouths, family men in their late 20s or early 30s, —which Hentel characterized as part of a before setting forth to ransack the ground plot to foment racial violence—had been floor. known to their neighbors as solid, church- thrown from speeding cars in racially The scenario was abruptly interrupted going pillars of the community—but they tense areas of Queens and Long Island, by the belated arrival of the state troop- inhabited a world far removed from the urging Negroes "to kill white devils and ers. The Minutemen opened fire and a P. T. A. and the Rotary Club. One of the have the white women for our pleasure." brief gun battle ensued before they milkmen, nicknamed "Nathan Hale" be- Hentel feels that a racial conflict was threw down their weapons and surren- cause of the inscription LIBERTY out DEATH only narrowly averted through the coop- dered. Six people were shot in the melee on the stock of one of his semiautomatic eration of local newspapers and radio —one state trooper, four raiders and one rifles, carefully stored highly volatile plas- stations, whidi damped a news blackout of the women residents, who was wound- tic bombs in the refrigerator. One of the on the incident. William H. Booth, ed in the hip when a trooper's shotgun leaders of the group, Jack Lynn Boyce chairman of the New York City Commis- discharged as he side-stepped a Minute- of Katonah, New York, a former Madi- sion on Human Rights, contends that man's bayonet thrust. The six men were son Avenue copywriter and more recently there was a "tie-in" between the Minute- charged with conspiracy to commit arson a sophomore at Danbury Staie College men and rumored attacks on whites by and assault with intent to kill. One of in Connecticut, stockpiled his own pri- Negroes that led to racial disturbances in them was identified as chairman of his vate arsenal; in a six-A.m. raid on his the East New York, Bushwick, Lafayette, home town's Wallace for President organ- home, police seized an undetermined Bensonhurst-Gravesend and South Ozone ization; another served as cochairman number of bazookas, 10 machine guns, Park areas of the city in 1966. of the Wallace campaign in Norwich, 3 mortars, several handguns, an antitank The raids put a temporary crimp in Connecticut. missile launcher, 12 walkie-talkie sets, a Minuteman plans, but they failed to Minuteman chief DePugh invariably sawed-off shotgun, automatic rifles and break the back of the organization, even denies responsibility for such terrorist a large quantity of ammunition. Out- in the New York/New England area. In raids and claims they are carried out by side Boyce's spacious two-story farm- June 1967, five New York City Minute- local leaders without his approval. But house, a Betsy Ross flag with 13 stars men organized an assassination attempt in recent years, DePugh has encountered fluttered proudly in the breeze, and against Herbert Aptheker, director of the his own share of difficulties with the law. his porch door was flanked by two up- American Institute of Marxist Studies He was sentenced to four years' imprison- right howitzers. Buried in the back of a and a member of the national committee ment for violations between May 1963 hill behind his house was the neighbor- of the U. S. Communist Party, whose and August 1966 of the National Fire- hood's only fallout shelter; Boyce was Brooklyn campaign headquarters had al- arms Act, which makes it illegal to possess 4 a regional Civil Defense officer. In his ready been the target of an abortive unregistered automatic weapons; he is spare time, he sharpened his marksman- Minuteman fire-bombing. The conspira- appealing the conviction. And on Mardi ship by lobbing cans of peas from a tors this time planted a homemade 4, 1968, a Federal Grand Jury in Seattle modified mortar at cows grazing in a near- pipe bomb on the roof of the Allerton indicted DePugh and his chief aide, Wal- by pasture, while his brother, equipped Community and Social Center in the ter Patrick Peyson, on charges of master- with a walkie-talkie, served as forward Bronx, directly above an upstairs room minding a conspiracy to dynamite the artillery observer. Bemused neighbors re- where Aptheker was scheduled to ad- police and power stations in Redmond, corded no direct hits. Another of the dress an audience on Marxist dialectics. Washington, as a diversionary tactic band, a Long Island gardener, held re- Due to a defective timing mechanism, the preparatory to robbing the town's three cruiting sessions for the Ku Klux Klan in bomb exploded after the meeting, shatter- banks—all part of a bizarre plan to swell his greenhouse; and one of the most dedi- ing a skylight above the speaker's stand Minuteman coffers in the tradition of cared members, a Reserve master sergeant and causing considerable damage to the the early Bolshevik terrorists. Redmond's 146 in the Green Berets, taught unseasoned empty auditorium. The Minutemen plot- (continued on page 242) ▪•

0. PARAMILITARY RIGHT (continued from page 146) for the hostilities to come. Each member 0 is assigned a number that becomes his chief of police reports that the FBI knew and a number of Congressmen have identification in all communications; he of the conspiracy in advance. strongly urged a Federal probe of the is warned about the use of the telephone Most such Minuteman plots have so Minutemen and affiliated groups. Such in contacting headquarters; he is ad- al far been aborted—or so it seems. As one legislators have not escaped the wrath— vised in the use of mail drops; he is Minuteman activist in Pennsylvania told so far only verbal—of the paramilitarists. warned to use two envelopes in organiza- a newsman: "Sure, some of the guys get New Jersey Representative Charles Joel- tion correspondence and to place an caught. That's all in the game. But there son reports that after he urged a probe opaque material between the inner and are a lot of bombings—and murders—in of Minuteman activities, he was deluged outer envelopes, to prevent the letter this country that never get solved; and by thousands of letters accusing him not from being read by means of infrared after the first day, you never read any- only of bad judgment and ignorance but cameras; and he is instructed to employ thing about it in the papers. We're not of insanity and treason. From Cincinnati a wide variety of stratagems and devices happy about all these convictions, but it's came one billet-doux indicting Joelson as security measures." Secrecy, for the still just the visible tip of the iceberg." for being "against Christian groups Minuteman, is a way of life—to such an In response to the burgeoning of Min- fighting black African Communist con- extent that even the national leadership uteman violence—reported and unre- trol of the United States." And an anon- does not know the membership figures. ported—the legislatures of New York and ymous letter from Colorado told him "I don't even know the members' California, two states that rank high in simply: "We'll get you, Laddy Boy." names," says DePugh. "All we ask is the Minuteman activity, have already passed Perhaps because of, rather than despite name and address of a unit leader—and legislation outlawing all paramilitary such threats, Congressional pressure for this can be a pseudonym. I have no way organizations. The New York ban was a Federal crackdown on the Minutemen of knowing exactly how many members adopted unanimously in late 1967, after has continued, with some effect. The we have, except that each group is sup- New York Attorney General Louis J. FBI and the Treasury Department have posed to have a minimum of five and a Lefkowitz initiated an intensive inquiry stepped up their efforts to infiltrate the into Minuteman activities in the state at maximum of fifteen. So I strike an aver- group and nip its lethal plots. Local, age of eight." DePugh's most recent esti- the request of Governor Rockefeller. In city and state police, who initially treated mate: 25,000 "hard-core" members, fully his report to the governor, which galva- the Minutemen as a bad joke, have also nized the legislature into action, Lefko- trained and armed, plus approximately grown increasingly concerned—as dem- 65,000 supporters and recruits undergoing witz charged that his office's ten-month onstrated by the spiraling arrest rate of probe had disclosed "shocking evidence instruction and indoctrination. "Only a Minutemen for terrorist attacks and for relatively small percentage of these will of violence and potential guerrila war- illegal possession of weapons. The latter ever become 'secure' members and fare" by Minutemen activists in 33 coun- be in- charge constitutes the Minutemen's corporated into the unit chain of com- ties; for one thing, Minutemen had told Achilles' heel. Wally Peyson, an ex- mand," DePugh explains. "We make a state investigators they would not hesitate Marine, was convicted of illegal posses- real effort to weed out all the weak links to assassinate such "Communist sympa- sion of an automatic weapon in 1966; in advance: we're looking for quality, not thizers" as Earl Warren, Hubert Hum- and Rich Lauchli, Jr., a founding quantity; one man ready to give his life phrey and Nelson Rockefeller. Lefkowitz member of the Minutemen, served a is worth fifty who'll crack when the heat warned that the Minutemen were "train- term in a Federal penitentiary for at- is on. That's why I reject three out of ing, reading, thinking and living guns, tempting to sell guns and mortars to every four membership applications at the bombs and violence ... actively prepar- Federal investigators posing as represent- very outset." Other estimates range from ing for a private war." New York State atives of a Latin-American government, an improbable low of 500 (from J. Edgar Minutemen were not dismayed at being and then—within two months of his Hoover, who derides the group as a "pa- outlawed. "This won't stop us," one parole last February—was arrested in per organization," despite the attention Long Island Minuteman assured a re- southern Illinois with a cache of more it receives from his agents) to an equally porter. "We've always been underground; than 1000 Thompson submachine guns. improbable high of 100,000 (by a fervent we'll just burrow a little deeper now." A host of lesser Minutemen have also Minuteman in Kansas City). Most California proscribed the organization fallen victim to the Federal Firearms law-enforcement officials and informed in the spring of 1965, after an 81-page Act. journalists believe the organization has investigative report by Attorney General But despite the surveillance of Feder- between 5000 and 10,000 members and Thomas C. Lynch characterized the Min- al, state and local police, the Minute. 30,000 to 40,000 supporters, but the utemen as a group "led by men who men's organizational effectiveness has not "activist" percentage remains in doubt. have publicly stated: 'When our consti- been appreciably impaired. Agents and Whatever their actual number, there is tutional Government is threatened, we informants of the FBI and the Treasury no doubt that the Minutemen have be- are morally justified in resorting to vio- Department have succeeded in penetrat- come a potent force on the ultraright. lence to discourage Communists and ing many Minutemen cadres, but the And there is no doubt that the founder their fellow travelers.' Notice is thus organization is structured according to and national coordinator has traveled a served that the decision rests with the the Communist Party's "cell" system. long way since the bucolic days when he Minuteman leadership as to what consti- Members of one unit do not know the peddled veterinary medicines to Midwest tutes a threat to our Government and identity of any other Minutemen, even farmers. Robert Bolivar DePugh was what action the Minutemen will take to though they might live halfway down the born 45 years ago in Independence, Mis- counter such a threat. That presents the block; hydralike, the group is thus able souri, where his father served until re- fantastic situation of a private citizen to survive the lopping off of one or more cently as a deputy .sheriff. (The elder raising a private military force to accom- local units. Minutemen are also exhaus- DePugh, now in his 70s, is a fervent plish by violence whatever objective the tively trained in the techniques of dandes- supporter of his son's political activities citizen decides in his judgment is best tine intelligence and security. According and a charter member of the Minutemen.) for the country. Such a military force is to the California attorney general's re- Son Robert attended the University of improperly labeled guerrilla; the more port, "The Minuteman organization is Missouri for three semesters and then precise term is insurgent." designed to function as a secret under- enlisted in the Army in 1942, serving as Other states, alarmed by increasing po- ground network, and its routine opera- a radar operator in the Signal Corps litical violence, have also initiated inves- tions in these times of peace are conducted until he was discharged in 1944 on the 242 tigations of paramilitary organizations, along the lines of a training program recommendation of a panel of medical • examiners, who diagnosed him as suffer- trolled one third of the earth's land sur- 5. The minority-vote blocs, con- • ing from a "psychoneurosis, mixed type, face and population. I realized that if trolled labor unions and corrupt severe, manifested by anxiety and depres- this kept up, my children—or at the most political machines, so completely sive features and schizoid personality." optimistic estimate, my grandchildren— monopolize the American polit- 104 It was during his stint in the Service would be living under the Marxist boot. ical scene that there is no chance that DePugh's interest in politics was ▪ I decided that it was my duty to do some- for the average American citizen ri first sparked, as the result of his encoun- thing about it, and stop sitting back on to regain control of his destiny ter with a number of radar scientists at my butt preoccupied with how much at the ballot box. Po t–h e coast-artillery installation at Fort more money I was going to make this 6. Any further effort, time or money Monroe, Virginia, who "seemed not to year over last." spent in trying to save our coun- hold allegiance to the same flag I did. DePugh and a small cirde of like- try by political means would be I was really quite naive politically in minded friends began discussing the sor- wasted. those days," he recalls. "I knew there was ry state of the world at weekly political 7. The leaders of most other con- an unbridgeable gulf between our posi- seminars, and all soon joined the John servative organizations privately tions, but I didn't suspect they were Birch Society. But by the beginning of agree that it is politically impos- Communists or at the very least Commu- 1960 disillusionment had set in and they sible to elect a conservative Gov- nist-oriented, as I can now see in retro- came to the reluctant conclusion that the ernment. spect was the case. It was just a kind of Birchers were "all talk and no action" 8. We conclude that the American visceral reaction; I knew in my guts that and could never be politically effective. people are moving inexorably to- these people weren't loyal Americans." The idea of the Minutemen first came to ward a time of total control and After leaving the Service, DePugh re- DePugh during a duck-hunting expedi- frustration such as must have turned to college, attending Kansas State, tion on the shore of an isolated Missouri been felt by the people of Buda- the University of Colorado and Topeka's lake with nine of his right-wing friends pest and East Germany when Washburn University—all in rapid suc- in June 1960, at the height of the U-2 they finally staged their suicidal cession. He was a bright student but had crisis. As they crouched in a muddy revolts. Therefore, the objectives a quicksilver attention span and didn't duckblind, one of the party expressed of the Minutemen are to aban- stay at any one school long enough to apprehension over the international situ- don wa,steful, useless efforts and earn a degree. He was particularly inter- ation and another jokingly reassured begin immediately to prepare ested in chemistry and genetics, however, him, "Well, if the Russians invade us, we for the day when Americans will and during his days at Kansas State or- can always come up here and fight on as once again fight in the streets for ganized "The Society for the Advance- a guerrilla band." There's no record of their lives and their liberty. We ment of Canine Genetics," which at its DePugh's crying Eureka!, but he began feel there is overwhelming evi- dissolution several years later had 2000 discussing the idea seriously, and ducks dence to prove that this day must dog-breeding members across the country were soon forgotten. "We got to talking come. and was affiliated with the International about how bad off the country would be Genetics Society. in case of invasion," he recalls, "and how At last, DePugh and his right-thinking In 1954, DePugh founded the Biolab a group such as ours could become a friends were convinced, the only effec- Corporation in Independence, a pharma- guerrilla band. We were just talking at tive defense against "the Communist ceutical supply house specializing in vita- first, kicking it around. But somehow the menace" had been found: They would min supplements for dog-food products; idea caught on." fight fire with fire. In justification of his it foundered in 1955, after "differences of One of the sportsmen, a veteran of the decision to launch the Minutemen, he opinion" among the stockholders, and U. S. Army Special Forces, dusted off his cites the 1960 Annual Report of the DePugh worked for a dog-food company instruction manuals and the group began House Committee on Un-American Ac- until 1959, when he revitalized Biolab conducting twice-weekly seminars in tivities, which concluded: in partnership with his brother Bill and guerrilla warfare, with each member as- moved company headquarters to its pres- Events of the past year have pro- signed a particular field of political vided convincing evidence that the ent site in Norborne, Missouri. Within study and instructed to prepare a posi- a year, Biolab was a thriving venture, American people cannot rely com- tion paper on its relationship to the pletely on this country's Armed producing dozens of veterinary-medicine establishment of an "extralegal" para- products and worth over $250,000. At 35, Forces to protect themselves from military opposition to the awaited leftist Communist domination and slavery. DePugh was Norborne's leading citizen take-over of the nation. After several and a prototype small-town-America suc- This is not because our military months of study and research, DePugh forces lack the power or the will to cess story. With a prosperous business, a synthesized the results into the first devoted wife and six handsome children, defend this country, but rather be- Minuteman manifesto, which postulated cause the nature of the attacks being he appeared to have everything he eight key conclusions in terms oddly wanted. But DePugh was restless and dis- made on the United States by its evocative of the current revolutionary major and only significant enemy satisfied. jargon of the ultraleft: "Until the late Fifties," he remembers, are so designed as to render conven- "I was so preoccupied with getting an 1. Our diplomatic war against com- tional military forces as ineffective education and earning a living that I munism has already been lost by as possible for defense purposes. bunglers or traitors within our didn't have any opportunity to think From the outset, DePugh was undaunt- seriously about politics and foreign own Government. 2. This diplomatic war has been and ed by the odds against him. "We knew affairs. It was only after Biolab became that the road ahead wasn't going to be a success and I found myself with some continues to be lost by appointed easy," he says. "But-'we also remembered leisure time on my hands that I began to Government officials beyond the reach of public opinion. Edmund Burke's dictum that 'The really think about the way the world was 3. We cannot win a diplomatic war only thing necessary for the triumph of heading—and I didn't like what I saw. I against communism abroad until evil is for good men to do nothing.' We began to study anti-Communist litera- we first establish a genuinely pro- were prepared to put our businesses, our ture and, suddenly, I grasped the phe- American Government at home. freedom, our very lives on the line—and nomenal success of the international 4. A pro-American Government can we have." Communist conspiracy. Within 50 years no longer be established by nor- DePugh's nine fellow duck hunters 244 after the Russian Revolution, it con- mal political means. were transmogrified overnight into the

• against their own Government, which they consider riddled with card-carrying Reds and fellow travelers. After poring over hundreds of pages of Minuteman literature—including De- Pugh's Blueprint for Victory, the movement's Mein Kampf—this reporter realized that little could be learned of the organization's real strategy or ulti- mate aims through its propaganda \and even less through newspaper account's of Minuteman activity, which amount to little more than a running account of arrests and convictions. To unravel the skein of the group's operations and dis- cover how serious a menace it actually constitutes—as well as to find out what makes individual Minutemen tick—I phoned DePugh at his office in Independ- ence, Missouri (national headquarters of his Patriotic Party), and requested an interview. I'd been warned by several journalists that as DePugh's legal prob- lems multiplied he had grown increasingly chary of the press, which he viewed as a "handmaiden of the Communist con- spiracy." But I was greeted with unex- pected cordiality: "I'm tied up for the next five days, but I'll see you next week and give you as much time as you need," he promised. "No later, though. After that "Don't he a spoilsport, Chester. How can I go to I'll be—tied up." a spouse-swapping party without you?!" In the interim, he suggested I speak to Roy Frankhouser, Jr., in Reading, Penn- sylvania, Grand Dragon of the Pennsylva- nia Ku Klux Klan and regional political National Coordinating Council of the conservative waters. The catch, though coordinator of the Minutemen. He gave fledgling Minutemen of America, and initially small, was promising. "We me Frankhouser's number and rang off. I DePugh appointed himself national co- needed men ready to kill or be killed for reached Frankhouser that evening, and ordinator. All were rank amateurs at their country," DePugh says of the lean after some initial sparring managed to political organization and, at first, the early years, "and we found them." De- convince him that I had no ideological group's progress was halting. "Our own Pugh's life now had new direction and ax to grind. We arranged to meet two naivete was our biggest obstacle," De- purpose; he had discovered the road for nights later; one of his men would pick Pugh remembers. "None of us had any which he'd searched and he was prepared me up at Reading's airport and drive background in even local politics; I was to travel it to the end. me to an unidentified destination where a chemist, another founder was a veteri- It is not an easy task for an outsider to Frankhouser would be waiting. It sound- narian and the rest were real-estate map that road, for DePugh had avoided ed mildly melodramatic, but I agreed. agents, insurance men and autoworkers. public comment on the ultimate destina- "We've got something laid on for that We would have had difficulty getting a tion of his movement: armed revolution. night," Frankhouser said enigmatically. new Kiwanis post off the ground, much The stated motivations and aspirations "If you're lucky, we might even let you less organizing an effective clandestine of the Minutemen, as set forth in De- in on it." resistance movement." Pugh's voluminous propaganda, appear The Reading trip wasn't one I would As a result of their political inexperi- simple: to prepare for a Communist in- easily forget. I was met at the airport by ence, few on the ultraright fringe had vasion or uprising that can be resisted a small-eyed man who identified himself even heard of the Minutemen a year only by an underground paramilitary as "Roger." Half an hour later, after after its formation, and those who had, force. Minuteman leaders claim private. changing cars twice, we rendezvoused dismissed the group as an ineffectual ly, however, that their aim is not to with Frankhouser and his aide, Bob cabal of crackpots issuing grandiose establish "self-defense" civilian auxil- Richland, the Imperial Nighthawk of the pronunciamentos on guerrilla warfare iaries to aid the Armed Forces in a na- state K. K. K. in the darkened parking lot from the padded comfort of their arm- tional emergency but to overthrow and of a Pennsylvania roadhouse. As Frank- chairs. But slowly, a hard core of disci- replace the United States Government houser and Richland jackknifed into the plined activists began gravitating to through insurrection; and the Minute. back seat beside me, Roger was restive DePugh: disgruntled anti-Semites chafing men confidently predict that the day is and impatient. at the John Birch Society's "soft" posi- approaching when they will be able to "You're twenty minutes late," he said, tion on Jews, trigger-happy American come out of hiding and forcibly seize the in a hoarse whisper I'd at first thought Nazis disgusted with George Lincoln reins of power in a nation wracked by was an affectation but later learned was Rockwell's "do-nothing" approach and racial violence and economic chaos. In his normal speaking voice. "They're ex- disillusioned dropouts from "responsible" the ensuing struggle, Minutemen leaders pecting us at eleven." outfits such as the Reverend Billy James say they are quite prepared to utilize all "There was a wreck down the road," Hargis' Christian Crusade. Surrounded the tools of subversion—sabotage, assassi- said Richland. "They had some girl by this handful of faithful apostles, the nation, terrorist attacks—not against a laid out on the highway with her face 246 paramilitary messiah spread his nets on hypothetical Communist invader, but bashed in. Her nose must have been

smashed all the way back into her skull; nalist included on such an "action laced window, but Frankhouser waxed the whole top of her head looked like mission," as opposed to standard training loquacious, studiously disregarding the pink jelly." He was visibly upset. A well- drills, and Frankhouser cautioned me to cautionary looks Roger occasionally groomed, lanky man in his late 30s, he stay in the background. darted over one shoulder. sat hunched over, tugging nervously at "Some of the guys didn't want you "We've got hundreds of bunkers like the knot of his regimental-stripe tie— along," he explained, "and they're liable this all over the country," he boasted, I wondered how his Ivy League taste had to be a little edgy." He smiled and "all of them packed with machine guns, survived the change to Klan regalia— added: "Some of them think it might be mortars and automatic weapons—and and wiping a crumpled silk handkerchief that's in addition to the caches of arms back and forth under his chin. "It was a good idea if you didn't come back. It's pretty wild country up there and you we wrap in plastic and bury under- terrible. They'll never save her looks, ground. Our men do twenty-four-hour and she must have been a pretty girl, can hide a lot of things—even nosy reporters." guard duty in shifts over each bunker to too. White," he added. ensure security. When D day comes, we Obviously discomfited by his lieuten- His little joke over, he slapped my won't be in the streets with popguns." ant's squeamishness, Frankhouser reached shoulder with bonhomie. "Don't worry," "When will over to slam the car door shut and told he said heartily. "We don't mind publici- D day come?" I asked. Frankhouser shrugged. "Who knows?" Roger to get going. "We'll have to kill ty this time." he replied. "But one thing is certain: lots of young girls before this fight is As Roger's mud-spattered gray Ford For the first time since Huey Long, the over," he grunted. "Black and white." pulled into the snowy foothills, Frank- stage is set for the rise of an American He was a slight young man of 29 with houser finally explained the purpose of brand of fascism. Not that right-wingers close-cropped black hair, a pencil-thin the mission: "We've got an underground can take any credit for it. The race riots mustache and one good eye. Articulate bunker up there we use for storing heavy have done our work for us; the black and sophisticated, he was a type more arms and a printing press. We just found nationalists are our biggest recruiting likely to be found debating Marcuse in out yesterday that some fink in another agents; I wish there were a hundred campus New Left salons than regaling unit tipped off the FBI, so we've been Stokely Carmichaels and Rap Browns. red-necks in the satin sheets of a K. K. K. cleaning everything out of the place be- After each Watts, each Detroit, we get Grand Dragon. fore they move in." He lit a cigarette thousands of new backlash members— Richland didn't reply and Roger and chuckled expansively. "Tonight we and best of all, a big slice of them are pulled the car out onto the highway lead- blow the place up." disgruntled cops and National Guards- ing to Pottsville. It was an overcast, bit- By now we had left the main highway men. Multiply those figures in light of terly cold night in late February and we and were careening precipitously up the what's going to happen in the big cities were headed for an as-yet-unexplained mountainside. The Imperial Nighthawk, over the next three or four summers Minuteman maneuver in the Appalach- still shaken by his brush with nonide- and you've really got the makings of a ian Mountains. I was to be the first jour- ological violence, stared out the sleet- revolutionary situation. Under those

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tu circumstances, anything and everything enough to impose order. That's what fantastically exciting age—an age of • is possible—including a right-wing take- most people really want, you know—or- race war, where the color of your skin over." der. Not abstractions like freedom and is your uniform." al "Have Minutemen been involved in equality and justice. That's all right for Roger interrupted to tell us we were D inciting the race riots?" I asked. the fat times, but when the pinch is on, within a half mile of our destination, "You mean shooting at both sides to they want their property and their lives and to speak softly. He had switched the heat things up?" He smiled. "Not yet. protected and they don't give a damn headlights off, and we now inched along Right now we can afford to just stand how it's done or who does it. That's why at less than ten miles an hour. Frank- • back on the side lines and pick up the we're working and organizing now—not houser, rapt in his vision of the future, pieces; we're the inheritors of social to take over tomorrow or the next day, continued in muted tones. bankruptcy, you might say. And the which would be impossible, but to be "Hitler had the Jews; we've got the same holds true for the black national- ready when the time comes, and even a niggers. We have to put our main stress ists; after each bloody riot they get a lot small, tight-knit and well-trained nucle- on the nigger question, of course, be- of uncommitted niggers going over to us of men can play a role all out of cause that's what preoccupies the masses their side. It's sort of a symbiotic situa- proportion to its numbers. It only takes —but we're not forgetting the Jew. If tion. Let them shoot the Jews on their one wolf to terrorize a herd of sheep, the Jews knew what was coming—and list, we'll shoot the Jews on ours, and you know. Cigarette?" believe me, it's coming as surely as the then we can shoot each other!" I declined. "The first thing we've got dawn—they'd realize that what's going to The idea amused him; he waved his to do," lie continued, "is disassociate happen in America will make Nazi Ger- hand magnanimously when Richland ourselves from old-fogy conservatives many look like a Sunday-school picnic. gestured suspiciously at the whirring like the John Birch Society. We've got We'll build better gas chambers, and tape recorder balanced on my lap. "It's to develop a radical revolutionary pro- more of them, and this time there won't all right. Let him print what he wants to. gram that will appeal to the working- be any refugees. The average American I don't have anything to hide—at least, man on the two levels where he really has only a thin veneer of civilization not anything I'd tell him!" lives—bread-and-butter issues and race. separating him from the savage, you I asked Frankhouser how the Minute- We've got to convince the worker that know—far less of a veneer than the men planned to accomplish their seizure he's being economically oppressed by the Germans had: When that's stripped of power. powers-that-be and only we can save him. away and Ile really goes wild, when this "Look at Germany and Italy," he said. It's the carrot and the stick, in a sense; thing really explodes, there'll be a rope "When the people see their society dis- the niggers and the fear they breed are hanging over the lamppost for every Jew solving into chaos, when they're threat- the stick, and the carrot is the promise of and nigger in America. Jesus, I'd hate to ened on every side by riots and violence not only the assurance of safety from be in their shoes! But you remember and economic convulsion, they'll turn to them but all the economic advantages what Napoleon said about revolutions any force tough enough and ruthless we can deliver. We're really entering a —you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." He paused and seemed to brood for a few seconds. "Of course, there are some good Jews, you know, Jews like Dan Burros, who was a friend of mine. Yeah, print that some of my best friends are Jews. Dan Burros was one of the most patriotic, dedicated Americans you'll ever meet in your life." Frankhouser fell silent. Burros was a fanatic American Nazi who served as Rockwell's lieutenant for years, then re- signed in 1962 to edit a magazine called Kill! and finally became a Klan leader. Nib • ... •104. He had rushed into Frankhouser's house *s 4.. 1 111.. in October 1965 brandishing an issue of dr% 400 • ' 4 It • "*.'11.1'..: v.* 1,4 4 The New York Times that exposed his 4 *A. ..t ,.,: 4,,, 4' -1%,,, it" e ei Jewish ancestry, snatched a loaded pistol '' from the wall and blown his brains out. 1!"?* 4 i.., ...1", ‘? .0. ' * r• , :.?... 0 a: A.1: "' a " Frankhouser's reverie was interrupted ''' di ''' * • *. '4 as the car came to a stop. After turning .... %a 4.. .4 4,, ...../41 ... ,.... S off the engine, Roger motioned the three lb , 40 411 r. 0. -.- db. 0, ii 0,410, 0 of us to remain in our seats while he ■i• OD 0, 4. VIII• .11,1 11, got out, holding what looked like a :0- ',. to .6. •■• 'll' i ■ it' , •••• 41. 411 40 IS Oh 4, pair of castanets. Two loud, high- 0 ash 10 o.f pitched clacks resounded through the * *A thickly forested mountain slopes and were edioed almost instantly from up the road. I didn't see the two men, both dressed in plaid hunting jackets and matching caps, until they were within five feet of us. Both were young, with healthy outdoor faces, and both cradled "Take . . . good . . . care . . . of . . . yourself, . . . you . . . 12-gauge shotguns under their arms. They

248 belong . . . to . . . me-e-e. ." said nothing, but Roger nodded to them, and then to us. We climbed out rial Nighthawk. Jordan and the others ties, filled with a homemade napalm mix- and stood beside the car, shivering in remained outside. ture of two-thirds gasoline and one-third the still, moonless night. "These rockets are little beauties," Duz, fill the bottles and cap them with "This is him," said Roger, jerking a Roger told me, picking one up in his an inexpensive bottle capper available at thumb in my direction. "He's got a tape right hand like a toy. "They have a most drugstores. Tape a regular Tam- recorder, so if you don't want to say range of thirty miles with the right pax sanitary device to each bottle with anything, don't." launching tube and carry one hell of a masking tape." One of the men didn't acknowledge pay load. You could sit on a roof in New Frankhouser laughed as I finished my presence, but his companion, a York and lob one of these on Newark reading it aloud. "We should really set tanned six-footer in his early 20s, walked and wipe out half a city block with up joint training sessions with the nig- forward and pumped my hand vigorous- nobody the wiser. It took us two years of gers, shouldn't we? A community of com- ly, introducing himself as Tom Jordan. experimenting and a lot of dose calls mon interest, and all that shit." "You just write the truth about us, before we got them operational, but I asked him what else was manufac- mister, that's all, and we'll be real good now we're stockpiling them all across tured in the bunker's laboratory facilities. friends." His smile was warm and open, the country. They're light, portable and "You'd be surprised at the wide range his eyes empty. "We just hate to make deadly—the ideal weapon for our kind of killers you can produce with rela- enemies." of resistance movement." tively unsophisticated equipment," he He turned and motioned us to follow Frankhauser called my attention to a replied, referring me again to the Min- him off the road and into the tangled small makeshift laboratory built into the uteman manual, where novitiates were underbrush. The snow was several back wall. "This is the chemical closet," instructed that "A good cheap explosive inches deep and the going was difficult, he said, pointing to a jumble of Bunsen can be made by distilling iodine crystals. doubly so since no one used a flashlight. burners, beakers and empty test tubes. When kept in ammonia they are very We walked for about 20 minutes, most "Every bunker is equipped with one, no stable, but when dried out, become of the time in what appeared to be spirals matter how rudimentary. We mainly use highly explosive. . . . Pure sodium metal —evidently to ensure that I would never it for making nitroglycerin and nitro- while dry is perfectly stable, but when be able to retrace our steps—and finally glycol." placed in water is a terrific explosive. It halted in a small clearing sentried by I asked if that wasn't pretty volatile burns with intense heat and gives off a snow-laden pines. Roger clacked his material to play around with, and deadly gas." noisemaker again; this time four men Frankhouser appeared offended. The manual contained instructions materialized out of the shadows, all "We're not amateurs, you know. for even more imaginative lethal agents: dressed in identical hunting outfits, all Every man in this unit goes through "Methane gas (or nerve gas) is obtained carrying shotguns. Roger—who had lost intensive training in the manufacture of when small slivers of [a common com- nitroglycerin. If you've got the right a leg in Vietnam as a Green Beret— mercial plastic] are inserted in a ciga- chemicals and the right measurements, limped up to the group and spoke quiet- rette. The results are always fatal, and anybody with a fair degree of intelligence ly for a moment, then called me to his almost immediate. The only known can do it." antidote is atropine, which must be side. He walked over to a half-empty steel taken immediately." There were no introductions this time. filing cabinet, riffled through the draw- I asked Frankhauser if these sorts of He dug one booted foot into the ground ers and extracted a sheaf of papers. weapons had been used by Minutemen and said, "Here it is. We've got every- "These are a few of our confidential in the terrorist attacks and bombings thing out but the rockets. You can go training manuals," he said, "but it won't that have plagued civil rights and peace take a look before we set the fuse." do any harm for you to take a look." He groups in recent years. I glanced down, but could see nothing handed me a three-page mimeographed He grinned and said, "Let's just say but frozen earth. Roger's thin mouth pamphlet titled "Nitroglycerin." It be- we're not doing all this for our own grinned. gan: "Basically, the production of nitro- amusement." "Not bad, huh?" He reached over, glycerin involves the gradual addition of Roger glanced at his watch and told pried his fingers into the ground and glycerol to a mixture of nitric and sul- us the fuses were ready. As we turned to pulled up a dirt-covered trap door. A phuric acids, followed by separation of go, Frankhouser gestured to a small bar- three-foot square of light glowed at my the nitroglycerin from the waste products. rel at the foot of one bunk, from which feet. The following directions will serve for two wires extended out the tunnel and "The Feds could be standing on it the laboratory preparation of NG in small up the ladder. and they'd never guess it was there," he amounts." It concluded with the admoni- "That's filled with hydrogen gas," he said, as close to good humor as I ever tion to be careful in handling the solu- explained. "We use the wires to spark it saw him. "Go down and see for yourself." tion, since "Nitro in its liquid form has off electrically. This whole place will I climbed with difficulty about 12 from 30 to 60 times more explosive power disappear without a trace. And the noise feet down a wooden ladder and into a than in dynamite form." of the explosion is a damn sight less narrow tunnel leading into a room ap- Roger slumped on one bunk in appar- than dynamite, too; you won't be able proximately 22 feet long and 18 feet ent boredom, but Frankhauser leaned to hear it more than a half mile away." wide. The air was dank, and light flick- over my shoulder, eagerly, indicating Lugging the last of their cached weap- ered from three kerosene lamps hanging other points of interest in the Minute- ons, the three Minutemen led the way up on the root-laced dirt walls. The bunker man ordnance manuals. the ladder. I was the last to go, and Frank- was equipped with electric light fixtures, "That one is about Molotov cock- houser turned to look back over his but the generator, also underground, had tails," he said. "They're the crudest com- shoulder at me as he reached the top been detonated earlier. There were two ponent of any resistance arsenal, but rung. bunks built into a wall, a number of don't underestimate them on that ac- "All we'd have to do is slam this empty rifle racks and several lethal- count. They're still damn useful in trap door shut and leave you here to go looking red-finned rockets, each four feet street fighting or in terror bombings." up with the bunker." He smiled boy- long, reclining on roughhewn pine He handed me a booklet informing ishly. "Unless somebody knew just shelves. the student that "The best setup for where to look, they'd never find your Roger clambered down behind me, making 'Molotov cocktails' is as follows: body in a thousand years." 250 followed by Frankhauser and the Impe- Using the small disposable-type beer bot- Forcing a smile, I climbed out into the icy night air. Roger led us back to Kansas City. When I checked in at the be my guest while you're here. There's a 0 the edge of the clearing, stopping on the airport motel, DePugh was waiting for lot I have to say, and not much time to way to angrily snatch a cigarette from Iq me as arranged. Tall and heavy-set, he say it in." the Imperial Nighthawk's mouth and was dressed casually in khaki slacks and At the time, I missed the significance grind it out under his heel. Jordan was a red wool pullover. His jet-black hair of that last remark, and merely won- crouched over the wires that snaked out was receding, and he sported a luxuriant dered how he had earned his reputation of the bunker's mouth. He looked up beard, "for my home town's centennial for taciturn hostility to the press. at Roger, waited for his nod, and then celebration"—an explanation I had no DePugh drove me to Norborne in touched the two wires together. There reason to doubt at the time, although I his dusty station wagon, crammed with was a soft muffled blump and the earth later discovered there was a different and unopened correspondence and cartons in the clearing rippled for a few seconds far more practical reason. DePugh's stamped with the name of his veterinary- and then ebbed to its familiar contours. features were handsome in a rawboned medicine firm. He appeared preoccupied In the silence that followed, three of the fashion, but his skin was unusually pale on the ride and chatted desultorily men patted down the disturbed ground in the muted light of the motel coffee about his impending four-year sentence with spades while Jordan cut off the shop where we had an early lunch before for violation of the Federal Firearms wires with a pair of shears where they driving to his office in Norborne. His Act, assuring me that the cache of ma- extended from the earth. dark eyes were deep-set and commanding, chine guns discovered on his property by Federal agents was planted there as Frankhouser, the Imperial Nighthawk with a disconcerting habit of dancing part of a "political frame-up." I asked and I turned to follow Roger back to around and beyond mine as he spoke the car. him if he would peacefully surrender to and then suddenly fixing on me with a serve his sentence when and if his ap- "A shame that place was compro- baleful stare to punctuate a point. In the peals to the higher courts were exhaust- mised," Frankhouser murmured as we time I spent with him, DePugh was in- ed. "I'll cross that bridge when I come trudged through the snow, "but we've variably friendly and accommodating, to it," he replied. got plenty more." but I never felt completely comfortable DePugh's spirits seemed to lighten As I left the car, back at my downtown under that gaze. when we left Highway 10 and pulled hotel, Frankhouser told me, "What Sipping a lemonade—he neither drinks into Norborne, a dusty farm community you've seen tonight may not seem too nor smokes, but sucks constantly on of 950 people, most of whom seem not impressive in a military sense. But re- medicated throat lozenges--DePugh went to have decided whether their celebrated member, it only takes one match to out of his way to put me at ease. neighbor has put the town on the map ignite a tinderbox." With a sure flair for "From what the press prints about or blackened its name with notoriety. melodrama, he lit a cigarette and flicked us, you probably expected me to be The Biolab Coiporation, a seedy seven- the match into the gutter. Roger didn't waiting for you with a Thompson sub- room, one-story white stucco building say good night. machine gun," he said, smiling. "But on Main Street, doubles as Minutemen Five days later, I took a plane for I'm glad you came, and I want you to headquarters, and the front room was piled high with literature and back cop- ies of the organization's house organ, On Target. The sickly sweet smell of a vitamin A preparation clung heavily in the air and, in the back, veterinary medi- cines were being mixed in two huge vats by white-smocked lab technicians. DePugh introduced me to his wife, a small apple-dumpling woman with a sweet smile and haggard eyes, and to his daughter Christine, a pert red- head who had recently been elected high school home-coming queen and was now addressing envelopes at an overflowing desk. He then ushered me into his private office, a windowless room lined with floor- to-ceiling bookshelves. DePugh slumped into the leather swivel chair behind his desk—ornamented with an antiaircraft shell and littered with clips of .30-caliber ammunition and unopened letters—and I a shouted for coffee, which was served us ts: by a teenager with a scraggly beard whom sat ta sat III he proudly introduced as a Minuteman fit infiltrator in the national headquarters tit% as of the leftist W. E. B. DuBois Clubs. :11:1111:111, As we sipped our coffee, I glanced at some of the books on, his shelves: Texts on guerrilla warfare by Che Guevara, General Giap, Mao Tse-tung and Gen- eral Grivas of the Cypriot resistance movement adjoined H. C. Lea's three- volume occult classic Materials Toward "As we look back over the course of four a History of Witchcraft, the Department years, we realize that the university is a living, growing of State's four-volume Documents of German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, As- 252 entity—never stagnant, forever in transition...." sault Battle Drill by Major General J. C. Fry, On War by Von Clausewitz and as- of insurgents can topple a government there are certain individuals who are O sorted volumes of Kant, Nietzsche, with the strongest military force at its the keystones of the state structure Schopenhauer, George Orwell and Boris disposal." —and if they're surgically removed, one Pasternak. If nothing else, DePugh's I listened, absorbed. Despite his fanat- by one, the whole edifice could collapse." tog reading tastes were catholic. icism, and the patent absurdity of his He smiled. "When you really think He watched me cataloging his library Weltanschauung, the man emanated a about it, assassination is a relatively hu- and then smiled indulgently. "If you're disturbing aura of power and purpose. I mane means of effecting political change. looking for Mein Kampf, it's not there," had traveled to Kansas City expecting to Instead of riots and revolutions and street 0. he said. "I read and reread it when I encounter a corn-belt Robert Welch, an battles that would kill hundreds of thou- was a teenager. I could quote it to you untutored hick demagogically peddling sands, you merely eliminate a policy by from memory." the tired nostrums of the ultraright, eliminating its architects. Quite a pro- "Were you impressed?" I asked. leavened with a fillip of paramilitarism gressive concept, actually." "I'm a compulsive reader," he said. "A to titillate the lunatic fringe; instead, I "Are you training Minutemen as po- lot of things impress me." had found an urbane, intelligent, even litical assassins?" I asked. As my tape recorder spun quietly on mildly cynical political theorist who ap- He loOked through a mound of pa- the desk between us, I told DePugh peared seriously to envisage the day pers on his desk and tossed me a four- about my icy foray into the Appalachians when his followers would seize power in page mimeographed pamphlet stamped with his "troops," and asked how the a nation bled dry by foreign wars and CONFIDENTIAL. "When using telescop- caches of arms they were stockpiling ravaged at home by racial strife and ic sights," the paper began, "the across the nation would ultimately be economic upheaval. sniper aims his rifle by placing the top used. He continued: "A key factor in the of the post reticle (the cross hairs in "Those stockpiles are being laid away U. S. is that in the crunch we could most civilian-type scope sights) on the for the time when the struggle reaches count on support from sizable segments aiming point. But the sniper's final the point of armed confrontation. In of the Armed Forces and police; in fact, concentration should be on the retide the interim, we intend to continue our if you break down Minuteman member- rather than the target." Every problem campaign of overt political propaganda ship into employment categories, you'll confronting the aspiring assassin, from and proselytizing." find more cops than any other single adverse wind's to crowds surrounding his "Do you really believe a handful of group." victim, was covered; and particular at- men with machine guns, mortars and "You mentioned assassination as a tention was given to targets in moving homemade bombs could ever overcome particularly effective method of terroriz- vehicles: "At an average speed of 2100 the United States Army, the National ing the opposition," I said. "Are the feet per second, it will require one-half Guard and local police forces?" I asked. Minutemen prepared to liquidate their second for the bullet to travel 350 yards. "First of all, we'll have a lot more political enemies? Have they already be- During this half second an automobile than a handful of men ready to fight gun to do so?" would move about seven feet for each when the time comes. Of course, we DePugh seemed prepared for the ten miles per hour it was traveling. At could never overwhelm the Govern- question. "You could hardly expect me 50 miles per hour the vehicle would ment's military power in conventional, to tell you if we'd removed anybody in travel 35 feet in this one-half second. set-piece battles; but the whole purpose the past," he said. "We don't volunteer Since the average passenger car is about of revolutionary guerrilla warfare is to that kind of information. In fact, up till 12 feet long, it will be necessary to lead so terrorize and demoralize the state now the Minutemen have adhered to the front edge of the car by three and apparatus that it'll collapse from its own what I call the principle of deliberate one half lengths for the bullet to strike internal stresses and contradictions. Cas- delay. The past eight years have been in the vicinity of the driver's seat." tro didn't conquer Cuba militarily; at used to marshal our strength, to train Two more pages of detailed instruc- the time Batista fled into exile, the and harden our cadres for the time tions on firing distances and velocity government forces still had overwhelm- when we'll be dealing in bullets instead ensued, complete with diagrams, fol- ing military superiority and could have of pamphlets; any premature action lowed by exhortations on accuracy when wiped out the rebels in a traditional such as assassination could only give the sniping at targets moving on foot. As I state a perfect excuse for cracking down military battle—but Castro and Guevara finished reading, DePugh leaned back in on us, and I've deliberately discouraged blended political persuasion and terror- his chair. "That's just the basic instruc- it." ism with guerrilla warfare so effectively tions every one of our members starts that they undermined the state's morale "Then you've refrained from resorting to assassination only for strategic rea- out with," he said. "We follow it up and its capacity to defend itself. Even sons?" I asked. with months of training and firing at after Dien Bien Phu, the French still "I have no moral qualms whatsoever moving and stationary targets. Man for maintained military supremacy in Indo- about political assassination. The stakes man, we probably have better marksmen china and could have fought on for years in this struggle are too high,, for both than the Army or Marines." against the Vietminh; but Giap's bril- America and all of Western civilization, I started to hand the document back liant use of insurgency tactics eroded the for us to forgo any means, however to him, but he waved it aside. French will to resist and they scuttled brutal, that could tip the scales in our "Keep it as a souvenir," he said. and ran. At the height of his effective- favor. In fact, of course, we're entering a "Maybe some day there'll be somebody ness on Cyprus, General Grivas had only praetorian age of assassination and you want out of the way, and it'll come one hundred full-time terrorists—but by counterassassination, where political in useful." selective assassinations and terrorism questions won't be decided by the qual- He crunched his, lozenge. "Actually, and dynamic use of psychological war- ity of your argument, but by the quality you know, a rifle is a relatively crude fare, he brought the British to their of your marksmanship." means of killing a man. We go through knees." He plucked the silver foil from a damn thorough arms training, but guns He steepled his fingers thoughtfully. throat lozenge and popped it into his are only one small element in a really "The success of any guerrilla insurgency mouth. "You know," he went on, "one modern resistance arsenal. All this stress is predicated on two factors: discontent man with a telescopic rifle can have on gun control and registration has al- among the population and irresolution in more impact on the course of history ways given me sort of a chuckle; I've the state apparatus. Ruthless exploitation than a hundred political treatises or a often thought of writing a book called 254 of those elements by even a tiny minority dozen political parties. In any society 1001 Ways to Kill a Man Without Using Firearms—dedicated to Senator "Yes, we've done it right here at Bio- where they hold a regular job during Dodd, of course." 0 lab, and elsewhere across the country." the day and have an opportunity to "Would you care to name a few?" DePugh smiled as he added, "Though moonlight a few hours in the evening Iti "Well, the most lethal weapons at our our initial experiment got me into hot on projects of their own. I'd suspect that disposal are chemical- and bacteriologi- water with my kids. A few years ago, we some C.B.W. agents researched by us are cal-warfare agents. The man in the street developed our first batch of nerve gas even further developed than anything seems to believe there's something sci- and decided to try out a sample on the the Regular Army has; we've gone into a.' ence-fictional about these devices—that family pet, a one-hundred-eighty-pound such advanced phases of biological war- they can only be manufactured in ultra- Irish wolfhound. We diluted it down to fare as the selective breeding of various sophisticated, top-secret Government lab- approximately one tenth of what we pathogens in order to increase or de- oratories. But the unique thing about thought would trigger a noticeable physi- crease their virulence and to render C.B.W. agents is that they can be pro- ological response and gave him a whiff; them resistant to antibiotics. You know, duced with a minimum of laboratory he walked about six steps and fell over a knowledge of bacteriology coupled with facilities, and at surprisingly low cost. dead as a doornail. We tried artificial a knowledge of genetics can produce All that's needed is a certain level of respiration and gave him oxygen, but education and training and relatively pathological agents that are unique, that none of our efforts could revive him and exist nowhere in nature; and a number rudimentary equipment; almost any my children didn't speak to me for a of these have qualities particularly well competent chemist, for example, could week!" suited to the activities of a resistance synthesize deadly nerve gases of various The smile faded, and he stroked the movement. They're portable, inexpen- types." antiaircraft shell on his desk pad ab- sive to manufacture and easy to conceal; I knew DePugh was a trained chemist, stractedly. one man with a test tube in his pocket and his Biolab facilities were far from "Of course, our techniques are much could wipe out a whole Army base. We rudimentary. "Have you ever tried to more sophisticated now. We have a would obviously never unleash suds produce nerve gas yourself?" I asked. number of our own physicians and bac- agents among the general population. Through the open door I could see teriologists working on the production This would only turn public sentiment his pretty teenage daughter laughing of biological agents and, just as impor- unalterably against us. But by control- coquettishly with the hippie-Minuteman tant, antitoxins to immunize our own ling virulence and range, we've got a who had brought our coffee. My ques- men. Most of this research goes on after selective death-dealing weapon that could tion struck me as unreal. hours in public and private institutions effectively terrorize the opposition." Mrs. DePugh entered the room to in- form us that dinner would be at six and that she was going home now to bake a blueberry pie—"Bob's favorite dessert." DePugh tossed her the car keys. With a deepening sense of unreality, I resumed our conversation. "What spe- cific biological agents are the Minutemen currently working on?" "There are fifty or sixty possibilities," he said, "but we've narrowed our sights down to seven that we feel are particu- larly well suited to guerrilla activity. Pneumonic-plague bacillus is one hell of a killer, but it's difficult to reduce the plague's virulence sufficiently to use it on specific targets without infecting the innocent. We've had the most success to date with equine encephalitis virus. We've developed three unique strains of it that we feel hold substantial promise and offer many interesting op- portunities. One strain in particular, developed by a doctor in Oregon, is really a honey." "When do you plan to put these bio- logical agents to use?" "Certainly not at this stage of the game," DePugh replied. "We'd only em- ploy C.B.W. when the struggle had reached the final point of armed con- frontation between us and the state. Right now we're essentially still in a premilitary phase, a 'period where ter- rorism and assassination may play a growing role, but not as in open, all-out struggle. For one thing, the population isn't ready to support an underground resistance movement yet; the economic and racial situations haven't deteriorated "As I understand it, the guaranteed annual income sufficiently. This is the time for the stiletto, not the howitzer. A poison that 256 would come to about a quart a day." will kill one key man is more valuable to us now than a pathogen that can easiest thing in the world to kill a man. see here is only our California records. O neutralize five thousand." More coffee?" The master files—containing over one "Are you manufacturing poisons. too?" I looked down at the dregs in my cup 00 hundred thousand names from all fifty I asked. for a long moment before shaking my states—have been buried underground De "Our medical-research teams have also head. in several places across the country, and done exhaustive research in toxicology, "Personally," he continued matter-of- cross-indexed lists broken down by state, and have selected a number of poisons factly, "I have a distinct preference for county and city have gone out to local that could be quite productive under nicotine sulphate, a common liquid alka- branches. In recent months, we've totally the proper circumstances. There's really loid that can be administered orally, decentralized our intelligence system so no such thing as a poison that doesn't intravenously or through direct absorp- that if something should happen to me leave a trace, you know, but there are tion by the skin. What's lovely about it or this headquarters, our records will still poisons that are extremely difficult to is that it's almost instantaneously fatal be intact." detect in the system. Take insulin, and leaves no traces except in the blood He took a key from his pocket and which is readily available from any stream—and even in an autopsy, it's opened the top drawer on the end cabi- pharmacist and is a natural ingredient very rare to take a blood analysis, be- net. It was packed with hundreds of of the body. A dose of insulin that lieve it or not. Nicotine sulphate is three-by-five-inch white file cards, ar- would have no effect on a diabetic readily available in a wide range of ranged in alphabetical order. would kill a healthy human being. But gardening solutions; all you'd have to "Each of these file cards has a corre- how would an autopsy ever be able to do is distill the mixture, slip some into sponding dossier in California regional determine that it was murder, since any your target's beer, or refill his after-shaving headquarters." He selected a card at traces of insulin discovered in the system lotion with it. It's absorbed quickly, par- random. "Here's a Commie who lives in could just as well belohg there naturally? ticularly if he's nicked himself while shav- Sausalito. The card lists his name, ad- Another dandy poison that's extreme- ing, and unless it's washed off with cold dress and phone number, and California ly difficult for a pathologist to detect is water within sixty seconds, it'll cause diz- headquarters has a comprehensive port- succinylcholine. You may remember that ziness, collapse, respiratory paralysis and folio containing all the information this is what the prosecution claimed Dr. death." we've gathered on his movements, his Coppolino used to kill his wife, but the He then described another poison so job, his personal tastes—women, liquor, murderer messed things up by injecting easy, to manufacture that I am unwilling boys, drugs, etc. When and if the time it all in one place on the visible skin sur- to write about it for a wide-circulation comes to neutralize him, we'll have all face. If he'd been more cautious and dis- magazine. After this I asked: "Do you the information down pat." persed it in two or three spots, preferably have any other favorite poisons?" He returned the card and slammed under the scalp, nobody would have been He thought a moment. "Well, the Rus- the drawer shut, locking it and carefully the wiser, because the likelihood of detect- sian K. G. B. has done great things with testing the handle. ing succinylcholine in a routine autopsy a cyanide gas gun. You may remember "We have eighteen thousand names in is virtually nil." that one of their assassins who defected the California file alone. Now, needless to He fiddled with a clip of .30-caliber to the West in Berlin a few years ago, a say, we've had to break these down accord- ammunition. "But you don't even have guy named Bogdan Stashinsky, confessed ing to the importance of the individual to be that sophisticated; there are a to having liquidated two prominent in the over-all scheme of things and number of common household items Ukrainian exiles with an ordinary water establish a set of priorities." He tapped that make fine poisons. Take ordinary [he pistol filled with cyanide. All you have the first drawer. "File A contains the named a common automotive fluid], for to do is wait on a stair well till your names of the run-of-the-mill fellow example," DePugh said, "which has an victim passes you, cover your nose and travelers and parlor pinks, the types who ethylene-glycol base. Ethylene glycol has mouth with a damp handkerchief and join different Red fronts or show up on a pleasant, sweetish taste and can easily spray him in the face. The first inhala- picket lines but aren't full-time opera- be added to a soft drink or a slice of tion is fatal, and within sixty seconds all tives. They're essentially dilettantes and, custard pie without your victim ever de- cyanide smell in the air will be dissipat- although they have to be kept under tecting it before it's too late. One half ed. Since the target has died climbing a surveillance and someday dealt with, to one ounce is a fatal dose, and there's flight of stairs, death is invariably diag- they don't constitute a really serious no known antidote. It does leave ob- nosed as heart failure—as was the case threat." He rapped his knuckles on the with the two Ukrainians." servable lesions that can be detected second drawer. "File B here contains the "Have you actually stockpiled any of in a medical examination, but the cru- cards of those who are the next step up these poisons and viruses?" cial point to remember is that in most the subversive ladder—full-time Party His face was expressionless. "Those— members, draft-card burners, civil rights cases of sudden death, an autopsy is and more." agitators. Whenever we have the man not performed and death is attributed "Whom do you intend using them power, we try to keep diem under full- to natural causes. There aren't enough on?" time surveillance, but they're still fairly doctors in the country to perform an "On the enemies of this country," he small fish." His eyes narrowed, and he autopsy on everybody who appears to said gravely, pushing his chair back and reached down and unlocked the bottom have died of heart failure or shock or walking to my side. "Come in here, and drawer, which contained fewer cards. kidney disease or diabetic seizure or liv- I'll show you something I haven't "Now this is file C—the really danger- er hemorrhage. Let's say you've slipped showed any other journalist." ous types, the big-time operators, the a dose of ethylene glycol into some- I followed DePugh from his office most dedicated enemies of our country body's food. The average doctor would through a dusty storeroom heaped with in this particular state. These sons of examine the outward symptoms and in- empty jars labeled "Biolab, Vitamin bitches we give special attention." variably diagnose the cause of death as Supplements" and into a large room "If you're convinced that these people heart failure—which it was, of course, littered with old newspapers and maga- are all traitors, what action do you pro- but artificially induced. Even when you zines. There was no furniture other than pose to take against them?" do have a post-mortem, unless the au- eight steel file cabinets, each drawer se- He smiled enigmatically. "Effective ac- thorities have reason to suspect foul curely padlocked. He stood in the middle tion—when the time comes." play, it's a pretty slipshod, pro forma of the room and gestured toward them. "Would that include assassination?' I affair: Believe me, if you select the right "We're in the process of dispersing all asked. 258 poison and go about it carefully, it's the our subversive files," he said. "What you His voice was neutral. "Anyone listed • in file C has betrayed his country to about the principle of deliberate delay?" with apparent impunity. (Underground Bulletin No. 2, issued from "somewhere O the most ruthless enemies it has ever he asked. "Well, that phase of the struggle known. The penalty for treason is is just about over. The Minutemen are in the United States" after the election, death, and if the execution of the sen- now entering the revolutionary stage of charged that George Wallace's Ameri- d tence is left to us—well, we accept the our activities, and from now on no holds can Independent Party is Communist- • responsibility." He smiled. "Don't wor- are barred." He released my arm abruptly controlled. When the "enemy" failed to ry, your name isn't on the New York and pulled the wrapper off another gain control of his Patriotic Party, De- list. I checked before you came out lozenge. "No holds at all. We're through Pugh wrote his followers, it turned to ▪ the A.I.P., which today "is controlled at ▪ here." talking." A spare, wiry man with a grizzled I asked him what had caused this the top by the same hidden hand that mustache whom I hadn't seen before sudden change of tactics, but he just controls the Democratic Party and the entered the room. "Seattle's on the shook his head wordlessly and walked Republican Party.") His FBI "Wanted" line," he said expressionlessly. on in silence. Suddenly, his eyes bright- circular cautions that "DePugh reported- "I'll be right back," DePugh mur- ened. "Here's my place. You're going to ly carries a pistol and has access to other mured, his jaw tightening as he followed love the wife's blueberry pie!" types of weapons, including hand gre- the other man out. After DePugh dropped me off at my nades. Consider extremely dangerous." Alone for a moment, I began copying motel later that evening, I was unable Even if DePugh is apprehended and down some of the names in the Minute- imprisoned, there is little doubt that the to sleep. Throughout dinner and during man C file. Each card in the file was Minutemen will continue to function; the ride back from Norborne, he had a photostatic copy, the names and ad- well before he went into hiding, he elaborated messianically on his hopes dresses triple spaced. I had time to jot selected a "second string" of leaders to for the future, occasionally ranging off down 11 potential victims before De- run the organization in the event of his into such disparate topics as the respon- Pugh returned. Most of the addresses death or incarceration. But the basic sibility of the, existential philosophers were in the Stanford area and none of question remains: Can DePugh and his ("the cult of nausea," as he character- the names familiar. I heard DePugh's Minutemen really do what they say? Weltschmerz, and footsteps and slipped my pad and pencil ized them) for modern The answer seems to be that they can- the contradictions of Keynesian eco- away seconds before he opened the door. not by themselves—but they are not He appeared preoccupied, no longer avid nomics. He was a civilized, frequently alone. Other paramilitary groups are to display his intelligence records. witty conversationalist, and only once burgeoning across the country under the "Let's go eat," he said, returning the did the mask slip—when I asked him stimulus of growing racial unrest. Some file to the drawer and locking it. "It's how enduring he thought Martin Lu- of these are leftist, and some black, such been a long day." ther King's nonviolent philosophy as the Black Panthers. But there is little As we left the building, I asked De- would prove in light of rising black doubt that the largest and most organ- Pugh how he could be certain that his militancy. "That phony bastard!" His ized groups cluster around DePugh's end information on more than 100,000 knuckles on the steering wheel were of the political spectrum. He is on par- names across the country was accurate. white. "He's been a Red agitator for ticularly close terms with the Reverend "Suppose you were to give the order to years. And they give the Nobel Peace Kenneth Goff of Englewood, Colorado, Reverend Martin liquidate somebody in your C file," I Prize to that fraud, the leader of the Soldiers of the Cross, an Luther King!" He spat out Revetend as suggested, "and it turned out subse- organization of between 3000 and 12,000 if it were a dirty word. quently that he wasn't a subversive at members, operating primarily in Cali- The next morning, DePugh failed to all. How would you feel about sending fornia and the Southwest. Goff, who keep his appointment at my motel, and an innocent man to his death?" graduated from the Communist Party no one answered the phone at his home He shrugged. "About as guilty as Lyn- to Gerald L. K. Smith's Christian Anti- or office. Later that evening, I learned don Johnson feels sending thousands of Communist Crusade and went into the from a friend in the Associated Press kids to die in Vietnam," he replied in a witch-hunting business on his own several that a Seattle grand jury had issued a bored tone. "And anyway, our files are years ago, blends Protestant funda- warrant for his arrest on bank-robbing- constantly checked and double-checked mentalism and anti-Semitism (his oft- conspiracy charges the day before and, If we put somebody on the repeated theme is that "The United for accuracy. one step ahead of the law, DePugh had belongs there." Nations is as Jewish as Coney Island") C list, he gone into hiding. I suddenly realized the "Are there any prominent names on with judo, karate, savate, torture, muti- real reason for the beard and, more the list?" I asked as we walked along lation and such desert survival techniques importantly, for DePugh's uncharacteris- Norborne's streets toward his house. as the eating of toads and grasshoppers. tic frankness with me: He viewed our He chuckled. "There are names on Another group on good fraternal interview as his last public appearance, that list that anybody who reads a news- terms with the Minutemen—and with his swan song before entering what he Goff's outfit—is the California Rangers, paper would recognize." termed the "underground phase of the "Would you care to name a few of commanded by Colonel William P. resistance." It may also have accounted Gale, U. S. Army (Ret.), who organized them?" for his statement, shortly after receiving Strange Philippine guerrilla forces against the "Why not? Secretary Robert the phone call from Seattle, that the McNamara," he replied, hissing the mid- Japanese in World War Two as an aide principle of deliberate delay was a to General Douglas MacArthur. Gale dle name sibilantly, "Hubert Humphrey, thing of the past and the Minute- William Fulbright, Bobby Kennedy and views the Communists as tools of "the men were now entering a new phase of Martin Luther King. [This was early international Jewish conspiracy: You terrorism and assassination. March 1968—one month before King's got your nigger Jews, you got your In the months since our final meeting assassination, three months before Ken- Asiatic Jews and you got your white nedy's.] They're the most dangerous men —marked by the assassinations of Dr. Jews. They're all Jews and they're all in America, though God knows they're King and Senator Kennedy and a new the offspring of the Devil." The colo- not alone." spate of terror attacks on peace and civil nel's favorite aphorism is, "Turn a nigger His face suddenly hardened, and he rights advocates—DePugh has successful- inside out and you've got a Jew"; and halted and gripped me by the arm. ly eluded the police, issuing under- he contends that Adolf Hitler's repu- tation as a war criminal is all a 260 Remember what I told you earlier ground news bulletins to the faithful misunderstanding: "I can show you top- George Lincoln Rockwell whip up whites groes and Jews. The party first broke secret documents that prove the six against Negro open-housing demonstrators. into the news on October 12, 1958, when million Jews Hitler was supposed to have Informally linked to both Swift and a dynamite blast destroyed a Jewish syn- killed are right here in America. And if DePugh is the National States Rights agogue in Atlanta; five men were arrest- we run them out of here, they'll go down Party, with headquarters in Savannah, ed and tried for the crime, all of them to South America and start screaming Georgia, and, next to the Minutemen, N.S.R.P. members. In 1963—the same about how we burned them in gas cham- the largest paramilitary organization in year the party launched a "Fire Your bers. I've got two ovens ready for them the nation. The N.S.R.P. has chapters in Nigger" campaign to drive more Negroes now." every state of the Union, but refuses to out of the South—a scuffle erupted in The Rangers are one component of release its membership figures; a con- San Bernardino, California, between uni- an intricate network of religio-paramili- servative estimate is 2000 members and formed N.S.R.P. pickets and high school tary groups operating in California and 8000 to 12,000 active sympathizers. The students, during which one of the storm the Southwest. A report by the Califor- party was formed in 1958 by Dr. Edward troopers shot and wounded a student. On nia attorney general reveals that the R. Fields, a chiropractor—who had pre- September 15, 1963, Birmingham's 16th Rangers "have intimate connections viously initiated an "Anti-Jew Week" in Street Baptist Church was shattered by a with the Ku Klux Klan, the National the course of which he plastered the dynamite blast during Sunday services, States Rights Party, the Christian Defense windows of Jewish-owned shops with and four Negro children died. An League and the Church of Jesus Christ anti-Semitic stickers—and Jesse B. Ston- N.S.R.P. member was arrested in connec- —Christian," in addition to the Min- er, an attorney whose prior ventures tion with the bombing, charged with il- utemen. The Church of Jesus Christ— into politics were as kleagle of the K.K.K. legal possession of dynamite and—in the Christian, founded in 1946, has blossomed in Chattanooga and founder of the absence of conclusive eyewitness evidence into a string of affluent parishes from short-lived Stoner Christian Anti-Jewish placing him at the scene—sentenced to California to Florida. Its founder, the Party, which advocated making Judaism six months in prison. After an N.S.R.P. Reverend Dr. Wesley Swift of Lancaster, a capital offense. His subsequent activities rally in Anniston, Alabama, in late 1965, California, reaches over 1,000,000 listen- include legal representation of James in which speakers urged patriots to drive ers with his weekly radio broadcasts, Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Dr. "the nigger out of the white man's which artfully blend racism and evange- Martin Luther King. Membership in the street," one of,the galvanized party sym- lism. His subordinates faithfully carry N.S.R.P. is, predictably, restricted to pathizers in the audience took off in his out their concept of the Christian mis- "white Christian Americans," and the car with two friends and fatally shot the sion: The Reverend Oren Potito, minister Negro is described in the party organ as first Negro he saw. of the sect's St. Petersburg, Florida, parish "a higher form of gorilla." In recent years, the National States and representative of its Eastern Confer- This rabid racist group was initially Rights Party has solidified its links with ence, was arrested in Oxford, Mississippi, political in orientation and contested other right-wing paramilitary organiza- in October 1962 while organizing demon- local elections—running on a platform tions—including the Minutemen—and strations against the admission of James of deportation for America's entire Jew- urged its members to increase their Meredith to the University of Mississip- ish and Negro populations--in several stockpiles of weapons. The N.S.R.P. is Southern states. But by 1960, Fields re- pi; police confiscated a small cache of still relatively small, but growing—and so constructed the party along paramilitary is its potential for violence. Its member- firearms in his car. The church's most lines: A party uniform (white shirt, charismatic preacher is the Reverend ship reflects considerable cross-pollination black tie, black trousers and arm bands with the Klan and the Minutemen, Connie Lynch, a peripatetic anti-Negro emblazoned with a thunderbolt insignia demagog who wears a Confederate flag but its leaders fail to exercise even the reminiscent of the Nazi SS emblem) was comparative verbal restraint of the pre- as a vest. Also a member of the Ku Klux designed, arms were stockpiled and strict underground DePugh. The California Klan and the Minutemen, Lynch was military discipline imposed on all mem- Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un- the chief organizer of the bloody anti- bers. American Activities has warned that Negro riots in St. Augustine in 1964, and N.S.R.P. activists have been involved "This organization is . . . more poten- in 1966 he traveled to Chicago to help in a number of terrorist attacks on Ne- tially dangerous than any of the Ameri- can Nazi groups." The Ku Klux Klan, despite its long record of violence, has not until recently become a genuine paramilitary organiza- tion. The Klan has traditionally been an instrument of local terrorism rather than national revolution. Its murders, beatings and tortures have generally been carried out as vigilante acts of vengeance against "uppity" Negroes and real or imagined white traitors to the "Southern way of life," rather than as part of an orchestrated program of sub- version. But all that is changing. Today there are over a dozen Klans functioning across the coun- try. According to political historian George Thayer, "Each one guards its individuality most jealously, refusing to subordinate itself to any one man's rule. The current strength of all Klans to- gether is estimated to be from 50,000 to 100,000, with an additional 1,000,000 "I don't care what the vote was, Miss Finch—the sympathizers." The largest and most vio- senior-class play will not be 'Hair.' " lent Klan—and the one most closely IN linked to the Minutemen—is the United If the niggers push us too far, we won't violence. But with each new race riot, Klans of America, run with an iron be burning crosses—we'll be burning with every deepening of the bitter divi- hand by Robert Shelton of Tuscaloosa, cities." sions between black and white, left and III Alabama. Shelton's Klans have at least But Frankhouser denies any formal right, young and old, with each new IN 40,000 members—some estimates run as organizational unity between Shelton's economic convulsion and social upheaval, 4 high as 85,000—scattered through 48 Klan and the Minutemen: "We work their numbers and determination will states, including Pennsylvania, New independently, but we also complement almost certainly grow. York, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, each other, and the lines of communica- The paramilitary right has no realistic al Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Indiana. tion are always open between us. The hope of ever seizing power in America (Pennsylvania Grand Dragon Roy Frank- Klan's military committees are doing ex- —even an America convulsed by racial houser, Jr., claims—possibly with some actly what the Minutemen are doing: war. If there is a right-wing take-over, it truth—that there are currently more training men in weapons equipment will almost certainly be validated at the Kluxers in Wisconsin than in South and handling, in caching weapons, in all polls, and its leaders will be respectable Carolina.) the tactics of clandestine warfare. We've men of the middle forced to uphold Under Shelton's leadership, the Klans got the same enemies, the same friends "law and order" by curbing the tradi- have adopted a distinctly paramilitary and the same goals. We're fighting un- tional democratic liberties of freedom of orientation. Large caches of arms, includ- der different leadership, but we're press, speech and assembly. Thus, the ing automatic weapons, have been stock- fighting together just the same." Minutemen and their allies are outsid- piled across the country; Klan "military In addition to the major paramilitary ers, and will remain so. But the Minute- committees" have been established to organizations, a host of lesser groups man is very much a child of this society, teach members the techniques of guerril- have appeared on the national horizon nurtured and shaped by the political la warfare; "rifle clubs" and "sportsmen's in the past two years—primarily in demonology and hysterical anti-Commu- clubs" have been established as fronts; response to the deteriorating racial situ- nist rhetoric of the Cold War, shadowed and Klansmen are instructed by Shelton ation in the ghettos of the major cities. through life by the Bomb and squeezed to join the National Rifle Association, After the devastating Detroit riots, local into an increasingly depersonalized, bu- thus allowing them to buy Government- right-wingers formed an outfit called reaucratic computer world he didn't subsidized ammunition at low prices. Breakthrough, which urges members to make and doesn't understand. It is a Klansmen have been holding more and arm and organize their neighborhoods sociopolitical atmosphere that easily more field exercises, Minutemen style, block by block into a cohesive vigilante breeds paranoia—and elevates it into a where members are taught sniper and force. In late 1967, Breakthrough leader life style. But the implications of the rapid-fire shooting and instructed in Donald Lobsinger organized the Gen- Minuteman mentality transcend para- mortar firing and the construction and eral Douglas MacArthur Shooting Club noia. The Minuteman addresses himself handling of dynamite, fuses, Molotov cock- and admonished his followers to join to very real problems—racial chaos, eco- tails and booby traps. (A recent Klan both it and the N. R. A. in order to nomic' unrest and a bloody and incon- exercise taught trainees how to sabotage receive arms training in anticipation of clusive war in Asia that daily increases radio stations and power plants.) One the next racial holocaust. Lobsinger has national frustration and exacerbates po- paramilitary Klan group—Nacirema, Inc. attracted thousands of Detroiters to his litical divisions. His response to these —is even alleged to specialize in assassina- rallies, and recruited hundreds of mem- problems may be irrational, violent and tion. Its members are composed of the bers in racially tense neighborhoods. In vicious, but it is unquestionably a re- elite of Klan toughs, and are exhaustively the event of future disturbances in the flection of the extremity of the social trained in the tactics of terrorism and Negro areas of the city, Breakthrough's crises confronting us. If American cities sabotage. The "VIP Security Guard," an potential for violence is real and men- continue to burn, if our best leaders organization of bodyguards for Klan ral- acing. continue to fall under snipers' bullets, if lies, outfitted in white helmets and gray In Newark, a similar armed vigilante thousands of young men continue to die shirts and slacks, is also reportedly being group was formed in the aftermath of —spiritually as well as physically—in enlarged into a well-armed private po- racial rioting—the North Ward Citi- nameless rice paddies, the sickness that lice force. In plain clothes, its mem- zens Committee, led by a demagog has spawned the Minutemen will grow bers served as bodyguards for George named Anthony Imperiale. The, group in virulence, and may spread through- Wallace at his American Independent encourages all members to own firearms out society. Party rallies; when Wallace visited and train in their use, and has estab- Philosopher Daniel Bell has written Pennsylvania in 1967, K.K.K. Grand lished squads of armed citizens to patrol that ours "is a fragile system. If there is Dragon and Minuteman chief Frank- the streets at night in cars dubbed "jun- a lesson to be learned from the downfall houser organized his "security detail." gle cruisers." The committee has an esti- of democratic government in Italy, "In the old days," Frankhouser ex- mated membership of 1500, at least 1000 Spain, Austria and Germany . . . it is plains, "the Klan was a means of ter- of whom belong to a local gun club. that the crucial turning point comes ... rorizing the niggers and carpetbaggers Imperiale is also rumored to have estab- when political parties or social move- and protecting local institutions. But lished a central cache of arms some- ments can successfully establish 'private that way of life has been destroyed for- where in Newark, but he denies the armies' whose resort to violence—street ever, and the Klan has had to stop allegation. The committee has been de- fighting, bombings, the breakup of fighting a futile rear-guard action and nounced by New Jersey Governor Rich- their opponents' meetings, or simply in- change with the times. We're not out to ard Hughes as a "potential threat to timidation=cannot be controlled by the conserve the system now, but to change peace and law and order in New Jersey." elected authorities, and whose use of it in ways that will protect the white With all its constituent organizations, violence is justified or made legitimate race—even if that means a revolution. the paramilitary right in America is still by the respectable elements in society." The Klan is a nationwide organization numerically small.. Including the Klan, The Minutemen are among the symp- today, not a regional defense force, and the total membership probably amounts toms, not the causes, of the malaise that our tactics and strategy are attuned to to no more than 150,000—and of that afflicts America, a mirror in which to view the Twentieth Century. Along with the number only a minority of zealots will the worst side of our society and ourselves Minutemen, the Klan is developing ever be willing to jeopardize their per- before it's too late—if we care to look. 264 thousands of dedicated guerrilla fighters. sonal security by engaging in overt acts of El