Jim Bell Rage

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Received from anonymous July 26, 1998:

The Columbian (Oregon), No date.

Written by John Branton, Columbian staff writer

Eleven months in prison - and counting - haven't muzzled
James Dalton Bell's rage about what he calls government
"black operations" against him. "This story has more
government misbehavior than Watergate", Bell wrote in a
recent letter to The Columbian.

He added in a phone call"I'm in a little bit of danger.
These people don't want me talking to you."

Bell is the 39-year-old McLoughlin Heights man who wrote
an Internet essay, "Assassination Politics", that
proposed the bounty-driven murder of "government
slimeballs". The former electronics engineer hadn't
spoken to The Columbian for about a year, until recently.
He was released from federal prison in April.

Bell served 11 months after pleading guilty to using
false Social Security numbers and obstructing the
Internal Revenue Service by trying to intimidate agents
and stink bombing their Vancouver office. Bell returned
to his parents' home this spring but was free only
about two months. Currently, Bell is back in a federal
prison in Seattle, awaiting a July 31 hearing on charges
that he violated his probation conditions. He's alleged
to have refused a court-ordered mental-health evaluation
and search of his parents' home.

Who is this man, many people have asked, who lives in our
midst when he isn't in prison - and if the IRS is to be
believed, dabbled with things such as nerve gas, botulism
toxin and sodium cyanide? IRS agents say Bell published a
"hit list" of agents' home addresses on the Internet for
his anti-government "patriot" friends, and discussed
contaminating water supplies with a buddy.

Is IRS Inspector Jeff Gordon correct in comparing Bell to
Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski and saying the IRS
interrupted him in plans to commit murder? No, says Bell. 

"They knew I wasn't planning to kill federal agents",
Bell said this month. "They were scared because I had
written something that shows a way to eliminate
government. They were afraid I could convince the public
that I could replace existing government for no more than
a 10th or 20th of its current cost."

His wariness of the federal government is understandable
- they put him in prison. But his words reveal a view of
governmental duplicity like the fictional world of X-
Files agents Mulder and Scully. "Paranoid would be a good
word", said Bell's federal probation officer, Matthew
Richards. Bell, asked why he doesn't obey his court-
ordered probation terms to stay out of prison, made a
reference to the political imprisonment of Nelson
Mandela, South Africa's president. "I believe that when
the federal government decided to spy on me, simply
because of my political opposition to their tyranny and
terrorism, it dramatically diverged from what the average
American citizen would be inclined to tolerate", Bell
wrote recently.

Beginning in late 1995 or early 1996, Bell said, federal
agents read his "Assassination Politics" essay, posted on
the Internet. The essay described a computerized system
to ward "untraceable digital cash" to anyone who
correctly predicted the exact time of a federal agent's
murder. In Bell's words, "Imagine for a moment that, as
ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they
see an act by a government employee or officeholder that
they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's
trust or misuses the powers that they feel should be
limited. What if they could go to their computers, type
in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount. If
0.1 percent of the population, or one person in a
thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some government
slimeball dead, that would be in effect, a $250,000
bounty on his head."

Alarmed, Bell says, federal agents used two homes near
his parent's home, one on Corregidor Road and the other
on Mississippi Drive, for a clandestine and possibly
illegal surveillance operation. Agents supposedly
installed thousands of dollars worth of sophisticated

equipment, possibly using microwave technology, to spy on
Bell. "None of that occurred", said federal probation
officer Richards. "Absolutely not true", said the owner
of one of the houses. "I wouldn't let the feds in my
house."

Bell said he suspects the agents bugged his phone
illegally - and followed him when he got out of prison
briefly in April. "We never bugged his phone", Richards
said. "No tailing whatsoever". Once, Bell said, he
spotted someone following him and turned the tables on
them. Bell followed the car to Rixen's Enterprises, 2700
N. Hayden Island Drive, which he suspects is a secret
front for a federal "black operation".

"No spooks here", said the owner, Jim Rixen, 40, who said
he deals in heating systems for boats and recreational
vehicles. "I've had this company for 13 years. You can
ask anybody on this island. You're more than welcome to
come here and go through everything I've got. He might
have followed some customer of mine here. I've never
heard anything about it."

In his upcoming hearing in the U.S. District Court in
Tacoma, the government will charge Bell with additional -
so far undisclosed - probation violations, Richards said.
If Bell has any actual evidence of illegal practices by
the government, that would be the place to bring it up.

=end of article=