interesting-people message

Subject: IP: The real "fifth column"

From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 15:26:46 -0500

Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2001 09:18:36 -0800
From: Paul Saffo <psaffo@iftf.org>


Gentle colleagues,

The more conservative among you will likely be annoyed by the following,but if you can ignore the opinion and read the history he cites, you mayfind it of interest nonetheless. (And liberals take note next time I sendsomething from Araina Huffington, you should keep an equally open mind.)

Note that Conason is far from alone in his allegations of links betweenOBL and the far right. Simon Reeve in his 1999 book The New Jackals :ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism makes a strongcircumstantial case that McVeigh and Terry Nichols may have learnedbomb-making from Yousef. And Nichol s attorneys of course tried to arguethis in court, positioning their client as a mere patsy.

-p
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http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/11/01/fifth_column/index.html

The real "fifth column"
While conservative pundits whine about treacherous lefty intellectuals, a real
 group of far-right traitors may be striking at America from within.

 - - - - - - - - - - - -
By Joe Conason

Nov. 1, 2001 | The war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, a single enemy with

two names, is not only a just war, but a war that bears some strikingparallels to

the last great conflict between democracy and fascism. Among those haunting

similarities is the apparent presence within the borders of the UnitedStates of

enemy sympathizers and potential agents -- with the important difference that
this time, the "fifth column" may be responsible for acts of terror as well as
propaganda.

The real fifth column is not, as some overwrought writers have suggested,
represented by minuscule antiwar demonstrations or the handful of academics

scribbling anti-American screeds. Such misguided people are of littleconsequence

 today and few, if any, of them have demonstrated a propensity for
 violence. Their right to dissent must be respected and protected.

 The true domestic threat is posed instead by an unknown number
of organizations and individuals on the farthest
 fringes of the right, with ideologies that echo Nazism and rap
sheets that include every crime from bank robberies to bombings.
Having repeatedly declared their determination to overthrow the
United States government and exterminate the "racially impure,"

these outfits hailed the Sept. 11 attacks as the opening salvo in aconflagration

 they hope will engulf us.

A candid reaction was voiced that very day by Billy Roper, a top official
of the National Alliance, one of the  largest neo-Nazi groups in the

United States: "Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building tokill Jews is

all right by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude."


 At first glance, the apparent affinity between domestic far-rightists and
Islamic fundamentalists seems incongruous. The crude racism of the Klansmen
and neo-Nazis who infest certain corners of the United States has always
 included Arabs, South Asians and Muslims among the despised

"sub-humans." In recent years, right-wing skinheads have perpetratedhorrific

 attacks on precisely those peoples both here and in Europe.

 But while Western neo-Nazis hate dark-skinned immigrants, they also share
 longstanding strategic and ideological aims with Islamic extremism.
Aside from their vilification of Jews and Israel, both camps adore death

and bloodshed as much as they abhor secularism, individualism, feminism,capitalism,

 socialism, human rights, democracy and every progressive concept in the
modern world. If they disagree about  religious mythology, they both
idealize bygone barbarisms and despise modernity itself.

 That common outlook first found concrete expression during the
Third Reich, when Hitler embraced the Grand  Mufti of Jerusalem
as his guest in Berlin and established a Muslim SS legion. The alliance
continued during the  murky era of the Cold War, when fleeing Nazi
officials found refuge in the secret services and military ranks of
 Syria, Egypt and other authoritarian Arab regimes. Independent
observers and government officials believe that  Nazi-linked organizations
in the West have been reaching out to Muslim extremists both openly
and covertly for  decades. As recently as last year, for example,
an infamous Holocaust-denial "institute," based in California, invited
 leading anti-Semitic activists from around the world to a
conference hosted by its contacts in Beirut.

What makes all these obscure relationships relevant now, of course,
is the anthrax assault inflicted on East Coast cities in the wake of
Sept. 11, which has now claimed four lives. Although some conservatives
insist that the  likeliest suspect is a foreign power such as Iraq,
there is just as much evidence to suggest that America's
 homegrown enemies could be responsible. The lengthy list of terrorist
acts and plain old felonies by these groups demonstrates their
deep criminality; and in recent years, the racialist right has shown
an increasing interest in  biological warfare.

The most notorious case is that of Larry Wayne Harris, an Aryan Nations
adherent arrested in 1998. Although the government eventually
dropped most of the charges against Harris, there is no doubt that
the anti-Semitic extremist  spent much time and money experimenting
with biological weapons. As Jeff Stein reported in Salon, Harris told a
 former government biowarfare expert that he had isolated cultures
of anthrax, bubonic plague, tularemia and cholera. He insisted that
he was interested only in "civil defense," but his claims to have worked
for the  government were vehemently denied by the Pentagon and the CIA.

 In any case, Harris is hardly the only extremist who harbors an obsession
with anthrax. Other Aryan Nations nuts have played around with cyanide

and other deadly toxins such as ricin. Their literature is full ofreferences tobiological and chemical warfare against their racial and politicalenemies.

For several years, terrorists with apparent  links to the "militia" movement

have threatened Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers withanthrax --

when they haven't been planting actual bombs and shooting doctors.

There are still many more questions than answers about the sources
of the anthrax attacks, and there is as yet no known basis for accusing
any individual or group of culpability. But there is ample reason for
Congress and the Justice Department to open a wide-ranging investigation
of the enemy within.

 salon.com
 - - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Joe Conason writes about political issues for Salon
News and other publications. For more columns by
Conason, visit his column archive.



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