Re: McVeigh

[Hallam-Baker <hallam@ai.mit.edu>]

Anonymous wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 02, 1997 at 05:34:55PM -0500, bennett_t1@popmail.firn.edu wrote:
> > Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts today.  I am not
> > surprised.  People will believe anything the govt. says, and besides,
> > the governments lawyers were obviously more expensive than McVeigh's.
> > This is a sad day for all anti-government haters.
> 
> Yes, poor Tim Mcveigh.  If he's innocent then he is one more victim
> of the OKC bomber.

I'm surprised at the concern. After all I've not noticed militia
supporters and appologists speaking out against the death penalty.

If one is driving away from the scene of the biggest single terrorist
incident on US soil one is probably well advised to both have 
license plates on the car and not be carrying unlicensed firearms.
If one is arrested its probably not advisable to counter interrogation
by refusing to give more than name rank and serial number, a request
to see a lawyer is probably a more sensible choice.

The one problem I have with the trial is the leaking of the
defense notes. I suspect that they are genuine and that McVeigh 
really did confess. In the UK publication would be barred for
the duration of the trial and heavy jail sentences imposed since
the right to a fair trial is considered a reasonable justification
for a temporary bar on the right to free speech. However I would
not argue that the trial be halted as a result since one 
possible explanation is that the defense saw that there was no 
chance of aquital and gambled on gaining a mistrial. 

$10 million for 5 days of defense evidence tends to suggest that 
there was not much evidence to show. 


Appologists for McVeigh should consider that his actions did not 
advance the militia cause an iota, it destroyed it and along with 
it much of the right wing fringe. It forced Rush Limbaugh off 
television and many right wing hosts off radio. The sympathy
shown for the bomber's motives made the country aware that it
did not share the anti-government sentiment. Clinton's poll 
recovery dates precisely from the moment of the Oaklahoma 
bomb. If you read the propaganda being generated durning the
budget impasse its pretty ovbvious that Clinton was successful
in portraying Newt as a legislative version of McVeigh, Newt
had of course alligned himself with the most extreme of the 
talk show hosts Liddy and Limbaugh when he became speaker. 

McVeigh ripped the heart out of the militia movement, he demonstrated
what it was really about. Ironically the Oaklahoma bombing may have
had precisely the effect McVeigh desired but in a very different 
sense. It was a wake up call to defend the country from fascism 
but the fascist threat was McVeigh and the millitia movement.


The millitia movement have only two possible scripts at this
point and one might well be denied them. They can either admit
the nature of their cause and claim McVeigh as a martyr, this
probably guarantees them extinction but then again Hitler 
recovered from the beer hall putsch. Alternatively they can 
loudly claim that McVeigh was "framed" in the same way that
other neo-NAZIs on the net claim the holocaust a fake, i.e.
so that nobody really believes it. I suspect that this script
will be denied them because it would require McVeigh to go
to the execution chamber proclaiming his innocence and this
is something he has curiously failed to do so far. I'm not
a trained psychologist but my experience in this area suggests
that a claim of responsibility and publication of some 
document that serves as a political manifesto is very likely.
It an ego thing...


	Phill