|
New York Times December 13, 2003
Our Enemies at Home
By DANIEL LEVITAS OP-ED
CONTRIBUTOR - author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right.
Excerpts--
In April, as Baghdad fell and American soldiers began searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, federal
officials uncovered a cache of deadly chemicals much closer to home — in the eastern Texas town of Noonday. The stockpile
included a fully functional sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing hundreds, as well as neo-Nazi and antigovernment literature,
illegal weapons, half a million rounds of ammunition, and more than 100 explosives, including bombs disguised as suitcases...
The Noonday case shows just how serious a threat we face from domestic terrorists. Consider this year's other high-profile
incident involving rightist causes: the arrest of Eric Rudolph, accused of bombing abortion clinics and the 1996 Olympics. ... Law
enforcement officials have linked him to two national movements: the Army of God, a biblically inspired underground network
of anti-abortion extremists; and the Christian Identity movement, whose members believe that Jews are the literal children
of Satan, nonwhites are sub-human, and that Anglo-Saxon Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.
The examples keep coming. ...
Americans should question whether the Justice Department is making America's far-right fanatics a serious priority.
..."Unfortunately, keeping track of right-wing and neo-Nazi hate groups isn't necessarily a path to career advancement in
the Bureau," a Justice Department official told me not long after the Oklahoma City attack. "Agents get ahead by solving real
crimes, like bank robbery, espionage and murder." ...
Daniel Levitas is author of "The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
The complete article
may be purchased at-- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/opinion/13LEVI.html
|
 |
|
.
|
FAIR USE NOTICE |
|
| |
This site contains copyrighted material
the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available
in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social
justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section
107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|