Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 13:12:28 -0400 Reply-To: SILBERGD%[SNYNEWVM bitnet] at [cunyvm.cuny.edu] From: Donald Morison Silberger Subject: Federal moles in the militias Helen Johnson of the Ohio Unorganized Militia has posted several times concerning a person paid more than $1700/month in money robbed from the tax-paying public to serve as "liaison" between the federal government and the citizen militia movement. Before this person was "liaison", he was perhaps a simple mole and potential agent provocateur. Or, putting the best possible light on the matter, perhaps he is *eactly* what he says and possibly believes he is: a person in the pay of the feds who are intent on defusing potentially dangerous situations which may arise when "ignorant armies clash by night" (if I may borrow from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"). With your permission I will try to shed light. The patriot/militia movement's membership absolutely *must* have known from the very beginning that there would be federal moles operating in its midst. It must constitute itself and comport itself in such a way that the harm to that movement which may be caused by those moles is minimized. It should *not* react by scratching itself to death over those impossible-to-avoid fleas. It must not react by producing schisms and breakdowns in internal communication, but should calmly understand that *anyone* in that movement could be a mole, and should conduct its policies and make its plans accordingly. It should assume that the government will know everything that it is doing, and should do only those things which are perfectly justified at all times. From my casual observation the patriot/militia movement has been following this advice before I offered it. It should continue exactly that way. History repeats itself endlessly. During the Forties and the Fifties it was well known that fully half of the people who attended Communist Party cell meetings were agents of the FBI, who were there to keep tabs on that Party's activities, and to disrupt those activities or to provoke the cells to take foolish and even suicidal actions whenever possible. Does the patriot movement assume that because it is the good guys and those Fifties Communists were bad guys that exactly the same sort of thing won't happen again and happen in fact to *them*? Well, I've got some news for you in that case. Not only were not all of those Fifties' Communists bad guys, but not all of the Nineties' Patriots are good guys. That's the first thing to note. The second remark is this: Very bad things happened to innocent people on the "left" in the Fifties, and very bad things are going to be happening to the "right" in the Nineties. It should be expected, and contingency arrangements should already be in place. Intensive *open* communication should be maintained within the patriot movement, and serious outreach to the American populace should be ongoing. Far from seeking to limit its membership to the purportedly pure of heart, one of the patriots' principal attempts should be to recruit members. There are damned few perfectly pure people, and none of them reliable so. Large membership is an aid to survival. If there were a well-organized, well-disciplined, and exceedingly well-behaved 20 million person militia movement in place in this country then we would perhaps be seeing some compromise and accommodation coming from official sources in Washington, and a definite change in some of Washington's hysterical agendas. With the movement number at less than a million members, it is vulnerable not only to the constant vilification which we now note, but to military attack, with the jailing and murdering of people in the movement who are among the more articulate and sensible and... believed in. Consequently, the "leadership" of the movement should be as diverse and as ambiguous as possible, so that there are no clearly visible "heads" to be lopped off. Finally, let me remind you how FBI agent "members" of the Communist cells in the Fifties were mainly identified: They were the members who actually kept up on their dues payments to the cells. Well... that FBI money (i.e., taxpayer money spent on spying and disruption) was as good as the dues money paid by the naively idealistic cell members... even if the tender *was* in the form of "bogus" Federal Reserve Notes. Who cares, so long as one's neighborhood grocer too is deluded enough to accept them? Bob Dylan put it this way in one of his songs: "Those who live outside the law/ They must be honest." It's a placid enough world for the sheep who remain inside their assigned pasture. But on the other side of the fence there are wolves to be anticipated. And some of those wolves will be wearing sheeps' clothing. Yours for liberty, Donald Silberger NRA Life BCJ7873J Hudson Valley Libertarians [silber g d] at [npvm.newpaltz.edu]