"V" for Vigilante

For months, Ada County Sheriff David Updyke had been investigating a secretive group of armed extremists living at the periphery of his southwest Idaho jurisdiction. When an informant provided him with a membership list of the armed band, Updyke wasted no time. He obtained arrest warrants, organized a large, heavily armed strike force, and made a beeline for the Payette River Valley. 


The warrants were a ruse. Updyke wasn't planning a mass arrest; he was plotting a massacre. His quarry was a group of about two dozen law-abiding citizens who had organized a private "Vigilance Committee" under the leadership of an equable local farmer named William J. McConnell. 

William J. McConnell

Some of the Vigilantes had welcomed Updyke's election as Ada County's first sheriff in 1864, only to discover in short order that he was a predator, rather than a peace officer. Historian Randy Stapilus summarizes the matter quite tidily in his slender but fascinating book Outlaw Tales of Idaho: Ada County's new sheriff "was moonlighting as a stage robber." 

Updyke's inspiration was Henry Plummer, a New England native who carved out a criminal career that spanned several states and ran up a fairly sizeable body count. Swept into northern California just as the gold rush was waning, Plummer -- who was blessed with glibness and a certain facile charm -- was elected a town marshal. 

After gunning down two men for no defensible reason, Plummer spent a few years in San Quentin before being paroled and exiled from the state. News of mining opportunities in northern Idaho sent Plummer to Lewiston, which at the time was Idaho's territorial capital. He quickly fell into the company of thieves and rustlers and did a pretty brisk business in robbery until he was forced to flee to Bannack, Montana, where he once again sought out the company of the local criminal element.

Following a brief flirtation with local politics, Plummer found more honest work as a pimp. His business partner was a prostitute posing as his wife. This was a profitable arrangement until Plummer and his "wife," while visiting a saloon, encountered a man named Cleveland who knew of the ex-convict's dealings in California. Within a few days Plummer had killed Cleveland and forced the sheriff to flee, creating a vacancy he eagerly filled. 


Plummer moved with dispatch to make the most of his new position. As sheriff he was provided with detailed information about local ex-cons and criminal suspects, whom he treated as potential recruits for his road agent syndicate. He also was able to gather intelligence on potential victims. He used those assets to great advantage in arranging the October 1863 robbery-murder of Lewiston dry goods dealer Lloyd Magruder, who was one of five members of a pack train slaughtered by a team of Plummer's road agents at a camp in the Bitteroot Mountains. 

Magruder, who had made the trek from Lewiston to Bannack in order to sell goods to miners in Montana, made the fatal mistake of hiring some local help for the return trip. Plummer, who was aware that Magruder was headed back to Idaho with a large quantity of money, arranged for several of his thugs to hire on with the merchant. The robbers made off with an estimated $18,000 in gold dust. 

A few months later, a well-respected young rancher named Nicholas Thiebalt was murdered during another robbery carried out by a road agent gang. Puzzled and infuriated by the sheriff's apparent indifference to the onslaught, local ranchers created a Vigilance Committee and set out to find and punish the robbers. One of the perpetrators, a man named Erastus Yeager, informed the Vigilantes that Sheriff Plummer was actually the kingpin of the criminal syndicate. 


In January 1864 -- seven months after the road agent gang had begun its depredations --- Sheriff Plummer was marched up the steps of a scaffold he had built himself. Just before the noose was put around his neck, Plummer reportedly made a desperate final offer to the Vigilantes: "Give me two hours and a horse. I can bring back my weight in gold." He wasn't given the opportunity.


Sheriff Plummer's history is worth reviewing, since it eerily prefigured the career of Sheriff Updyke. While Plummer was busy organizing a criminal syndicate in Montana, his former colleagues in Lewiston drifted south. Once it had oozed its way into Boise, Plummer's old gang quickly congealed into a political elite.

Boise City, as it was called, was a fair approximation of Mos Isley Spaceport. In their book Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West, historians Vardis Fisher and Opal Laurel Holmes describe the town as being in thrall to "a splendid assortment of murderers, robbers and tinhorn gamblers ... the offscourings of all the abandoned and worn-out mining camps in the Territory...." In other words, it had all the necessary ingredients to create the engine of misery called a "government."

Henry Plummer

As Augustine pointed out long ago, a "government" is simply a gang that "acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples," and then obtains supposed respectability  "not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity." 

In 1864, Plummer's old criminal syndicate followed that time-honored formula with admirable fidelity by taking control of Boise's Democratic Party apparatus and electing David Updyke to be Ada County's first Sheriff. 

Prior to the advent of state-imposed "civilization" in southwestern Idaho, crimes against persons and property were an occasional problem. The arrival of government law enforcement resulted in a tsunami-magnitude crime wave. 

Armed robbers, operating out of Updyke's livery stable and under his protection, preyed on stage coaches and plundered local farms. The syndicate also defrauded local merchants and businessmen by passing bogus gold dust -- lead shavings covered with a thin layer of gold. This racket was, in some ways, a frontier-era foreshadowing of the officially sanctioned counterfeiting carried on today by the Federal Reserve System: The gold dust fraud ring enjoyed the protection of the "legitimate" government, which profited from its crimes. 


William McConnell was among those who initially welcomed the arrival of "legitimate" law enforcement. His opinion changed abruptly after a horse that was stolen from his materialized in Updyke's stable. McConnell was forced to hire an attorney and spend two days in court to retrieve his stolen property, spending more in legal fees than the market value of his horse. 

As a weary and frustrated McConnell departed the courtroom, a gang of Updyke's "Roughs" taunted the mild-mannered farmer. His patience finally exhausted, McConnell confronted the gangsters and warned them that the next time one of his horses went missing, he would track down the thief and "there will be no lawsuit about it."


A few days later, McConnell and two neighbors discovered that five horses and four mules -- livestock worth more than two thousand pre-Federal Reserve dollars -- were missing. McConnell and his neighbors took off in pursuit of the rustlers, returning two weeks later with the missing animals and a few honorably earned battle scars. This was, for all intents and purposes, the Payette Vigilance Committee's first campaign. 

Updyke continued to abet armed robbery and shelter criminals. He refused to investigate crimes plausibly suspected to be the work of his political confederates. Practically the only attention law-abiding people received from their local sheriff was when he or his deputies would pay a visit to collect taxes -- a form of "legal" theft used to underwrite the local government's clandestine crimes.  

As Albert Jay Nock pointed out in his definitive work Our Enemy, the State, government doesn't seek to abolish or suppress crime, but rather "claims and exercises [a] monopoly of crime .... [and] it makes this monopoly as strict as it can." In principle, this means that the government must also claim a monopoly on the use of force, and treat as criminals anyone who would undermine that monopoly. This is why the most urgent priority for the Ada County Sheriff's Department was to eliminate McConnell's Vigilance Committee, once the identity of its leader became known. 

Updyke's crack-down was "to be conducted in legal form," observed Nathaniel P. Longford in his 1890 account Vigilante Days and Ways. However, "in making the arrest, Updyke and his posse proposed to shoot the leaders of the Vigilantes and screen themselves under the plea that they had resisted."

Thus it was that Updyke gathered a posse composed of "fifteen of the worst men in the Territory" and headed to Horseshoe Bend, where they were to join with another group similar in size and identical in composition before heading to the Payette River settlement. 


Sheriff Updyke's plan may have succeeded were it not for two critical developments. First, a Boise resident sympathetic to the Vigilantes learned of the plot: While Updyke's posse took a longer route to join up with reinforcements at Horseshoe Bend, the Vigilante sympathizer raced ahead to warn McConnell.  Secondly, Updyke's would-be allies in Horseshoe Bend failed to materialize. 

Thus when the Sheriff and his gang arrived at Payette River, they had lost the advantage of surprise and were outnumbered at least two-to-one. The surprised and frustrated sheriff was forced to parley with McConnell, and "was obliged to comply with all the terms prescribed by the Vigilantes," records Longford. 

"City of Rocks," near the scene of the Portneuf massacre.

McConnell and his men agreed to travel to Boise to answer the warrants, but they refused to surrender their weapons or be taken into Updyke's custody. With the help of legal counsel the Vigilantes were able to get the criminal complaints dismissed, leaving Updyke humiliated and vulnerable. 


A few months after the debacle in Payette River, a stagecoach bound from Montana to Utah was ambushed by a gang of "road agents" in southeast Idaho's Portneuf Canyon. Five passengers were murdered, and $86,000 in gold was taken from the coach. Stage driver Charlie Parks and a passenger who survived the attack made their way to Boise, where they another positively identified Updyke and a "Rough" named Brockie Jack as two of the robbers. Neither was ever prosecuted for the crime, and the gold -- which was marked and numbered -- was never found.

The Portneuf heist was Updyke's swan song as a career criminal. The same County Commission that had appointed Updyke moved to expel him. While they were motivated, at least in part, by a desire to placate an infuriated public, the commissioners -- who belonged to the same criminal band -- were probably more enraged that Updyke had been skimming from their take by keeping roughly $11,000 in tax revenues for himself. 

Updyke soon found himself behind bars, in the custody of the newly elected sheriff, John Duvall. After Updyke bailed himself out, allies on the County Commission arranged for one of his criminal cronies, a deputy named William West, to be appointed interim sheriff until the end of the year.


In February 1866, a conflict with local Indian tribes presented Updyke with another career opportunity: His old road agent network re-constituted itself as a "militia" and elected Updyke its "captain." Backed by the "full faith and credit" of the local government, Updyke's militia purchased horses and supplies on credit. By April, the crisis had passed without this valiant band of heroes seeing action.



"The expedition ran its course, and, like all expeditions of the kind, was barren of any marked results," reports Langford's history. Just as he had been reticent to remit the taxes he had collected as Ada County Sheriff, Updyke wasn't eager to return the supplies he had requisitioned for his militia; accordingly, he "cached a large portion of the stores on the Snake River for future use of his road agent band." 

One of the men who had sold horses to Updyke sued him for non-payment. During the trial, one of Updyke's lieutenants, a young man named Ruben Raymond, admitted under oath that the "militia" was simply a front for Updyke's criminal band. Within a few hours Raymond was murdered by one of Updyke's loyal henchmen, a man named John Clark.  

Unfortunately for Updyke, the sheriff's office was no longer occupied by his erstwhile comrade William West: John Duvall had begun his term a few weeks earlier, and since he owed no loyalty to the Updyke gang he couldn't see any reason not to keep Clark behind bars until he could be tried for murder. Things were going very badly for Updyke, who couldn't resist making matters just a bit worse by openly threatening to go on a murderous rampage if Clark wasn't released.


Rather than being freed, Clark -- or what was left of him -- was soon seen dangling from a gibbet constructed on the future site of the Idaho State Capitol Building. Worried about what Clark might have disclosed to Sheriff Duvall before being dispatched to eternity, Updyke fled Boise in the company of an ally named Jake Dixon.


For several weeks Updyke and Dixon were pursued by the Payette Vigilantes, who eventually overtook them in a cabin near Syrup Creek on the western slope of the Sawtooth Mountains. The following day their bodies were found swinging from a makeshift gallows.


A notice pinned to Updyke's clothing announced that the Vigilance Committee had tried the former sheriff and found him guilty of being an accessory and accomplice to numerous murders and robberies (including the Portneuf stage robbery) and of "aiding and assisting" murderers and other criminals while serving as Ada County Sheriff.

Unlike a government agency, the Vigilance Committee didn't seek out new rationales for its continued existence. Updyke's demise had a chastening effect on the criminal oligarchy that had propelled him into office. Once government-sponsored crime abated, the Vigilantes disbanded. After Idaho became a state in 1890, McConnell was chosen to represent the Gem State in the U.S. Senate. He was later elected the state's third governor. In 1895, McConnell's daughter Mamie married future senator William Borah. 

For those who understand the moral superiority of society's non-coercive sector, McConnell's political career is a bittersweet coda. His most valuable public service came as a nominal outlaw who employed defensive violence in order to protect life, liberty, and property from the criminal onslaught of the territory's "legitimate" government.

Like its counterparts in Montana and elsewhere, the Payette Vigilance Committee was  representative of the private "protective agencies" created by settlers, miners, and ranchers during the westward expansion to protect property rights and settle disputes. 


Admittedly, vigilante action, like any kind of applied violence, is problematic. As Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo points out in a recent essay for The Independent Review, one advantage of private protective agencies is that, unlike government entities, they don't claim "a legal monopoly on keeping order." Most frontier-era groups of this kind -- McConnell's Payette Vigilantes among them -- were created to confront criminal gangs who had been granted a limited franchise within that government monopoly.

"One of the most pejorative terms one can use in reference to law and self-defense is `vigilante," notes Dr. William L. Anderson, who teaches economics at Maryland's Frostburg State University. "Indeed, if one is called a vigilante, it is tantamount to being declared a criminal. Public officials, newscasters, and those in law enforcement solemnly tell us `there is no room in this country for vigilante justice.' Instead, we must wait for the `justice system' to work, and if it doesn't, well, that is simply a price we pay for having a free society."

However, continues Dr. Anderson, "the so-called threat from vigilante justice is like the threat we face from private companies delivering the mail or from home schooling: it undermines an established government monopoly." 

The innate danger posed by vigilantism is the temptation to dispense with the non-aggression principle and engage in "preemptive" action. This is why some Vigilante groups -- among them elements of Montana's Vigilance Committee -- ended up being assimilated into the the state's apparatus of official coercion. 

The November 1879 murder of Helena shopkeeper John Denn inspired the creation of a subterranean Vigilante group. Its identifying sign was the cryptic inscription "3-7-77," which began to appear on fences and walls around the city. 

Unlike the Vigilantes of 1864, those who organized in 1879 didn't focus on redressing officially sanctioned crimes; instead, they harassed and intimidated people suspected of being "bad elements," often using their enigmatic signature as a notice of banishment. 


Given that this latter vigilante group was little more than a gang of sanctimonious, opportunistic bullies, it's entirely appropriate that the legend "3-7-77" has been incorporated into the insignia of the Montana Highway Patrol. 


Honorable and peaceful men like William McConnell were driven to vigilante action by the besetting corruption and criminal aggression of the government that presumed to rule them.  Henry Plummer and David Updyke each ruled over a criminal fiefdom that was in many ways a microcosm of the malignant Robber State afflicting us today. To cite merely the most obvious example: The "road agents" employed by those "rogue sheriffs" are unmistakably the ancestors of the paramilitary "forfeiture gangs" employed by police agencies to plunder motorists and property owners today.


Many of the State's agents of wealth extraction are dispensing with any pretense that they are involved in protecting and serving the public. Modern analogues of Henry Plummer and David Updyke abound. It's not difficult to imagine circumstances in which the heirs of William McConnell would make their presence known as well.

Update: As If To Illustrate My Point ....

Police in Aurora, Illinois "forfeited" -- that is, stole under the supposed authority of "law" -- a total of $190,000 from residents Jose and Jesus Martinez on the pretext of a narcotics investigation. Neither of the brothers has a criminal record of any kind, and there is no evidence that they were involved in drug trafficking or possession. 

Officers working with a "road agent" syndicate called the North Central Narcotics Task Force had tapped the brothers' home telephone, and were keeping them under surveillance as drug suspects. The actual robbery took place when Jesus, during a traffic stop, made the mistake of consenting to a search of his vehicle. No drugs were found, but the police seized the cash and gave Jesus a worthless receipt. Within hours the stolen money had been turned over to the task force, which in turn delivered it into the hands of the Cheka (aka the Department of Homeland Security). 

Laundering the money in this fashion allows the police -- which will get a large cut, thanks to the federal "equitable sharing" racket -- to defy a court order demanding that it be returned to its owners.

The victims claim that the money was family savings earned from a remodeling business -- but that detail is inconsequential: This was a literal, undisguised act of highway robbery that differs not one whit from the crimes committed by Henry Plummer, David Updyke, and their minions. (H/T The Agitator.)

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Take Pity on Goliath

“Oh, it is excellent to have a Giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.” 

Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, II:2

How does one simultaneously swagger and simper? Is it possible for someone to beat his chest even as his lip quivers in self-pity? Apparently so, given the evidence provided in Charles Krauthammer’s December 3 column.

Krauthammer is a conservative of the post-George W. Bush variety — that is, an unreconstructed totalitarian nationalist. In an essay calling for the execution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (after a show trial, if possible, but by extra-judicial means if necessary), Herr Krauthammer blusters about the majesty of the Imperial State even as he whines about the besetting dangers it faces and the consummate injustice that has been done in exposing a handful of its criminal secrets. 

Exhibit “a” in the column is the disclosure, by way of WikiLeaks, that Washington allowed its Yemeni puppet regime to take the blame for a hideous atrocity — the December 2009 cruise missile massacre of dozens of civilians, including 21 children.

“The Yemeni president and deputy prime minister are quoted as saying that they’re letting the United States bomb al-Qaeda in their country, while claiming that the bombing is the government’s doing,” Krauthammer complains in a Goebbels-worthy misrepresentation of the matter.  “Well, that cover is pretty well blown. And given the unpopularity of the Sanaa government’s tenuous cooperation with us in the war against al-Qaeda, this will undoubtedly limit our freedom of action against its Yemeni branch, identified by the CIA as the most urgent terrorist threat to U.S. security.”

Perhaps we are to believe that the 21 Yemeni children slaughtered via remote control belonged to an al-Qaeda youth auxiliary.  Then again, for a militarist like Krauthammer the operative principle in dealing with Muslim children appears to be “nits make lice.” 

The point here, I suppose, is that those children are simply invisible to Krauthammer. Their deaths should play no role in the calculations of imperial power, and the real scandal is not that they were annihilated but rather that the crime and attempted cover-up were publicly disclosed. 

The course of boldness and valor for the Regime in Washington, Krauthammer apparently believes, is to cower behind a tiny, embattled Arab puppet government that is expected to take the blame when the CIA slaughters innocents.

Appropriately, Krauthammer is featured in a new book entitled Underdogma: How America’s Enemies Use Our Love for the Underdog to Trash American Power. The book is a manifesto of sorts (Unser Kampf, perhaps?) for the Beltway-controlled “Tea Party Patriots” group. It was written by Michael Prell, a neo-con PR whore who has been employed by the likes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Prell’s book peddles the conceit that “America” — meaning the Regime in Washington — is the victim of those who resent its power. The author complains that “some people’s natural love for the underdog has warped into an automatic, blind, irrational hatred for those who have more power.” That  “hatred” is supposedly manifest every time someone complains about the innocent people killed, maimed, or tortured as a result of State policy, or — in the case of WikiLeaks — when whistle-blowers expose a handful of the Empire’s crimes.

In his contribution to the book, Krauthammer condemns Barack Obama’s purported desire to “curtail the power” of the American State. Given that Obama has escalated the Afghan war, expanded the use of Death Drones, claims the power to order the summary execution of American citizens suspected of terrorism, and has dramatically enhanced the domestic police state, one is led to wonder where he has curtailed government power in any way. 

It’s also worth wondering why Krauthammer wouldn’t want to curtail the power of someone he considers an ideological enemy. But of course, the real problem for Krauthammer and his ilk isn’t the accumulation of dictatorial power in the presidency, it’s that the power currently resides in the “wrong” hands. As Lenin would put it, the only relevant question to them is “who does what to whom.”

 Back in the 1980s, when Krauthammer was George F. Will’s understudy in the role of the conservative punditocracy’s pedant-in-chief, he would occasionally recite from the wisdom of 18th century British statesman Edmund Burke. In a 1793 address, Burke expressed the sentiments of an authentic patriot who understood that loving one’s country does not mean celebrating the unlimited power of the government ruling it.
 
“Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one against our own,” warned Burke. “I must fairly say I dread our own power and our own ambition. I dread our being too much dreaded… Sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.”

About a century and a half later, American patriot Garet Garrett updated that admonition and applied it to the emerging American empire. “Is it security you want?” asked Garrett of the architects of the national security state and those who supported that monstrosity. “There is no security at the top of the world.” 

Krauthammer, who celebrates the might of the Imperial State even as he insists that it faces a dire — nay, existential — threat from a handful of Yemeni rebels, unwittingly embodies the paradox Garrett described. To be a pundit in the imperial power structure one must be willing to play Grover Dill to the Regime's Scut Farkus -- that is, to be the vicious little punk who orbits the neighborhood bully, taunting and threatening his victims and whining piteously when someone dares to strike back. Few have played that role more convincingly than Charles Krauthammer.

“Nobody roots for Goliath,” observed Wilt Chamberlain, who spoke from experience. Krauthammer and others who peddle the toxic amalgam of bullying jingoism and collectivist self-pity -- more than a few of whom profess to be Bible-believing Christians -- insist that Goliath is the virtuous victim. 


Author's note: The horribly mutilated child in the photo above was a victim of the Regime's humanitarian venture in Iraq. That youngster was not among the dozens who were murdered and mangled in the more recent drone strikes in Yemen. My point in using that photo was to illustrate the human cost of the imperial politics so callously promoted by the likes of Charles Krauthammer. I regret causing some confusion on that matter.

(An earlier version of this essay was published at Lew Rockwell's blog.)

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From G-Men to Pig-Men: The FBI's Stalinist Homeland Security Theater

Paramilitary "Security Organs": An FBI recruitment ad.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." 

-- George Orwell, Animal Farm


A few days after bombs ripped apart two apartment buildings Moscow, residents of Ryazan -- a town 100 miles southeast of the Capital City -- were alarmed to find several suspicious-looking figures loitering near a 13-story apartment complex. After police arrived on the scene they extracted three large sugar sacks from the high-rise. An examination of the sacks found that they contained hexagen -- the same high-yield explosive that had been used in the Moscow terrorist bombings just a few days earlier.

The police arrested two of the mysterious strangers, who immediately produced credentials issued by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. Within a few hours high-ranking FSB officials intervened to free their operatives, claiming that they had been involved in an innocuous "training exercise."

"This was not a bomb," insisted then-FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev. "The exercise may not have been carried out well, but it was only a test, and the so-called explosive was only sacks of sugar."


There was at least one lapse in efficiency on the part of the FSB: The agency neglected to retrieve the detonator, which remained in the custody of the local police. Leaving aside the fact that tests had confirmed the presence of hexagen inside the "dummy" bomb, Patrushev didn't explain why the FSB would attach a genuine detonator to phony explosives. Nor did he explain why the Security Organs insisted on collecting the "sugar sacks" and keeping them under armed guard at a nearby military base.

Patrushev's account didn't satisfy one of the paratroopers given that peculiar assignment. The soldier smuggled a small sample collected from one of the sacks to a laboratory, and the resulting analysis confirmed that the substance was hexagen, not sucrose.

Devil in the details: The Ryazan detonator.

The Ryazan "training exercise" took place on September 22, 1999. During the previous two weeks, hundreds of people had died in the Moscow apartment bombings. The FSB, acting with what could charitably be called indecent haste, destroyed both of those crime scenes before critical evidence could be collected.  

Shortly thereafter, six Chechen separatists (five of them in absentia) were accused of plotting the terrorist rampage. Invoking the need to avenge the innocent dead, Moscow carried out a punitive invasion of Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim province whose population has long sought independence from Russia.

This series of events struck many in Russia as bit too tidy. In a house editorial published the day before the "training exercise" in Ryazan, the Moscow Times observed that "the bombed-out shell of the apartment block on Ulitsa Guryanova was destroyed in a controlled implosion, reducing to rubble the remains of the building and irreparably buying beneath it any remaining traces of evidence  -- just ten days after the explosion. Workers at Kashirskoye Shosse, meanwhile, began clearing the rubble from the site as early as September 13 -- the day of the bombing."

As the Times pointed out, the FSB's insistence that the case had been "solved" was impossible to reconcile with the fact that "untold traces of chemical residue, fingerprints, technical fragments, [and] hair and DNA samples that were present at the [bombing] sites are now irrevocably lost."

False Flag in Moscow: The FSB demolishes the evidence.

"Is this ignorance?" asked the Times. "In the capital city of a country where the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, was once its top security official, the assumption sells the FSB short. The Federal Security Service has the equipment, the know-how and political clout required to perform a proper investigation."

Imputing guilt to shadowy Chechen separatists "has proved both viable and convenient for federal authorities," the Times observed. "Are they playing it safe and making sure no other options show up?"


The case made by the Moscow Times was skeletal and circumstantial; the discovery of the FSB's abortive apartment bombing -cum -"training exercise" on the following day put some substantive flesh on the bones of that theory. A few months later the "theory" was fleshed out even further when former Russian Prime Minister (and career KGB officer) Sergei Stepashin disclosed that the invasion of Chechnya that took place subsequent to the bombings "had been worked out in March," and that the military campaign "had to happen even if there were no explosions in Moscow." 

The London Independent, which published Stepashin's accusations, noted that they were an admission against interest, since the former Russian Prime Minister "played a central role in organizing the military build-up before the invasion" -- and would thus be morally and legally liable for his role in the criminal conspiracy. 


When we review those events in Russia from more than a decade ago, it's difficult not to see parallels to the federally controlled "terrorist plots" that figure so prominently in the official narrative of the Homeland Security State ruling America today.

There are at least two significant differences, however. First, the FSB prefers to plant real bombs, rather than the dummy devices favored by its American counterpart, the FBI. Second, at least some local police and media organs in post-Soviet Russia, unlike their counterparts in America, have achieved a measure of independence from central government control. Although they are ruled by a gangster state, many Russians display an admirable cynicism regarding official fictions, an attitude Americans must acquire in a hurry if we want to arrest our descent into unalloyed totalitarianism. 


Six years before he blew the whistle on the FSB's false flag bombing campaign in Moscow, Sergei Stepashin played a significant role in a key event in the development of America's police state apparatus: On July 4, 1994, while Stepashin was head of the FSB, he signed a cooperation pact with FBI Director Louis Freeh. 

The agreement, which was signed at the Lubyanka Square headquarters of the KGB, envisioned close collaboration between Russian and American secret police in combating terrorism and international organized crime -- that is, unsanctioned use of the same criminal means employed by the political elites that control those security organs. Thus it should hardly come as a surprise to see a strong similarity in the priorities that govern those secret police agencies, or the methods they employ in the service of official fictions. This family resemblance has been displayed to good advantage by two recent terrorism-related cases in the state of Oregon. 

Stalin's regime made an official hero out of Pavlik Morozov, the Ukrainian child who betrayed his father to the secret police. In the case of Mohamad Mohamud, the Somali-born U.S. citizen cast as the patsy in the FBI's most recent pseudo-terrorism plot, the roles were reversed, with the father of the 19-year-old Oregon resident calling the political police to express concerns about his son's political and religious views. 

At the time, Mohamud hadn't done anything that could be defined as a criminal act by even the most emancipated definition. This changed after the young man was radicalized by two specialists from the FBI's vast and experienced corps of professional provocateurs, who successfully engineered a supposed terrorist plot and manipulated Mohamud into triggering what he was told was a powerful explosive device at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland. 

The FSB: Is it the "ex"-KGB, or Russia's FBI? Yes.

“Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale,” intoned FBI Special Agent Arthur Balizan, who gets the "Producer" credit for the most recent Homeland Security melodrama. “At the same time, I want to reassure the people of this community that, at every turn, we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack."

Even the Devil can cite scripture to his purpose, and even a Fed is capable of telling an isolated truth in the service of a larger lie. Balizan was entirely correct in saying that the FBI "denied" Mohamud the ability to carry out an attack, because the Bureau -- following a familiar and tiresome script -- supplied both the motivation and the means for this plot, once a suitable stooge had been identified.


Balizan insists that nobody was ever in danger as a result of the Bureau's most recent charade. While it's true that those who assembled in Pioneer Courthouse Square for the Christmas event were never in peril, the same can't be said for those who attend the Salman al-Farisi Islamic Center, where Mohamud occasionally joined in worship services. Shortly after the FBI closed the trap into which it had lured Mohamud, the Muslim house of worship was the target of an arson attack -- a bit of blow-back that was both eminently predictable and entirely useful to the FBI's purposes.

Blowback: Debris from an arson attack on a Corvallis mosque.

The evidence presented in the FBI affidavit offers no reason to believe that Mohamud intended to harm anyone before he fell under the influence of two undercover operatives from the Bureau's Homeland Security theater troupe. 

Court-authorized surveillance of the teenager's e-mail suggested that Mohamud was in touch with someone residing in northwest Pakistan, "an area known to harbor terrorists." The affiant, FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer, recounts that Mohamud and his correspondent "communicated regularly, and in December 2009 I believe, using coded language" -- presumably understood only by the wise and perceptive people employed by the Bureau --"they discussed the possibility of Mohamud traveling to Pakistan to prepare for violent jihad."

Mohamud allegedly tried to contact another Muslim radical to make travel plans, but sent his e-mails to an inoperative address. Shortly thereafter, an FBI undercover operative contacted Mohamud and did what a federal operative will always do in such cases: He acted as a "terrorism facilitator" (a term actually used by a federal prosecutor in an earlier FBI-orchestrated plot), carefully nourishing whatever spark of potential radicalism he found in his subject.

This is the same template from which the FBI has created dozens or scores of ersatz terrorist plots. There is one critical and telling detail in this case that distinguishes it from the others: Prior to being approached by the FBI's provocation squad, Mohamud attempted to travel to Alaska to work at a legitimate job, but was prevented from doing so when the Feds -- who had him under surveillance -- put him on a no-fly list. The teenager was then approached by a covert FBI operative who "hired" him to carry out a terrorist attack, providing the unemployed young man with $3,000 in cash. 


Attorney General Eric Holder insists that Mohamud "chose at every step to continue" with the bombing plot orchestrated by the Feds -- once other avenues of employment had been cut off, that is. And since the FBI's undercover operative conveniently "failed" to record the original contact with Mohamud -- which took place after he had been prevented from taking the job in Alaska -- there's no way to assess the extent to which the Bureau controlled his "steps" from the very beginning.


The confected bombing plot in Portland came just days after federal prosecutors sought a "terrorism enhancement" to the prison sentence given to Pete Seda, an Iranian-born resident of Ashland, Oregon who was convicted on tax evasion charges. Seda, an arborist and prominent peace activist, was president of the Oregon branch of the Al-Harimain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charitable organization that has been accused of disbursing money to jihadist groups overseas. 

Informant: Gartstein-Ross.

Seda was accused of "laundering" a $150,000 donation from an Egyptian businessman, most of which was converted into traveler's checks and allegedly sent to Saudi Arabia. The Regime claims that the money ended up in the hands of Chechen rebels.

All of this allegedly took place in early 2000 -- shortly after Russia invaded Chechnya, slaughtering thousands and creating a humanitarian crisis that attracted understandable concern from Muslims world-wide. 

Aftermath of a massacre in Chechnya.

The key witness for the prosecution was an accountant named Thomas Wilcox, a former IRS employee who claims that Seda instructed him to falsify an important tax record in order to conceal the nature of the transaction. Wilcox also testified that in his opinion Seda was never "intentionally dishonest" in managing the charity's funds, but this testimony was suppressed during the criminal trial. 

Another witness against Seda was Daveed Gartstein-Ross, a former intern-turned-salaried employee at Al-Harimain. During his year with the foundation, Gartstein-Ross supervised the group's prison outreach program, which provided Korans and other religious literature to inmates. Seda, who is close to Gartsein-Ross's family, encouraged the young man to attend law school. 

Tree doctor, humanitarian -- terrorist? Pete Seda.

Seda wasn't aware that his helpful young protege was a paid federal informant, who would later testify that the foundation was using its literature program -- the same one he supervised, remember -- to promote a "harsh" and "militant" view of Islam. Even then, under cross-examination, Gartstein-Ross testified that Seda was opposed to terrorism as an offense to both his religion and to common human decency.

During Seda's criminal trial, the court disallowed "evidence" provided by the Russian FSB purportedly illustrating that the money sent to Saudi Arabia wound up in the hands of armed rebels. Yet the Feds were permitted to use essentially the same testimony in the sentencing phase of Seda's trial in order to demonstrate that he was "philosophically and financially" linked to Chechen terrorists.


FSB Lieutenant Colonel Sergey Nikolayevich Ignatchenko recorded his original testimony at Lubyanka Square on December 3, 2008, and provided it to the U.S. Justice Department for use at Seda's criminal trial. The deposition was taken according to the terms of the Russian Federal Criminal Procedural Code. Obviously, no defense counsel was permitted to cross-examine the witness during that deposition.

Citing communications intercepts and other intelligence sources, Ignatchenko accused the Al-Harimain foundation of funding people connected to Islamic insurgencies in the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. However, he never mentioned Seda's name or the name of anyone directly connected to him, nor did he describe tangible institutional connections between Oregon's branch of the charity and those allegedly involved in jihadist activities overseas. 

When cross-examined via video feed during the November 23 sentencing hearing, Ignatchenko admitted that he no information directly connecting Seda to any terrorist group in Chechnya or anywhere else on the planet. "I never knew about him, I never heard of him," Ignatchenko told the court. Nor could he connect the funds received by Chechen rebels to Seda's charitable foundation in Oregon: "We didn't know which country it [the donation] came from." 


Under cross-examination, Ignatchenko was also forced to admit in open court something he had acknowledged in his original December 2008 deposition at KGB headquarters -- namely, that the evidence supporting the theory that Al Harimain had provided financial support to Chechen rebels doesn't exist. As he acknowledged near the end of his original deposition:


"I have to mention that according to Russian FSB standards that are currently in effect, recordings of various communications that were not used for preliminary or court hearings are erased after 5 years. Therefore, the communications I referred to are retained only as hard copies.... However, I have an audiotape of recordings made after 2001 and I can provide it to our American counterparts. I can assure you that the deciphered communications I mentioned in this interview are original and I quoted them almost verbatim."


So this key piece of recorded evidence isn't available, because it is more than five years old. However, the helpful man from the KGB (as the body that employed Ignatchenko was known during the first several years of his career) can provide recordings made a year after the crucial events allegedly occurred, because that recording -- which is also more than five years old -- somehow still exists. 

This leaves us with irrelevant hearsay testimony offered by a fellow who lists his home address as 2 Bolshaya Lubyanka -- that is, just down the street from KGB headquarters. But the Feds insist that this is good enough to establish Seda's connection to terrorism, you see, because Chekists are just as honest as their counterparts in the American FBI. Oddly enough, that last part is entirely true. 

Author's note: The original version of this story mistakenly referred to Corvallis -- where Mohamad Mohamud attended a mosque -- as the target of the FBI-orchestrated "bombing" plot, rather than Portland. That error, which I deeply regret, has been corrected above.

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