Eric Rudolph is a convicted and confessed domestic terrorist. As summarized by the Associated Press, “Rudolph is scheduled to be sentenced to multiple life terms July 18 after pleading guilty in April to the deadly bombings at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and a Birmingham abortion clinic in 1998. He also admitted bombing a women’s clinic and gay bar in Atlanta in 1997.”
Rudolph spent five years simultaneously on the FBI’s Most Wanted List and on the lam in the backwoods of North Carolina, hiding out from the feds. Now he has published part of his story of life on the lam on the web site of the Army of God, a group many consider to be a domestic terrorist organization. Many of its members have been convicted of crimes against abortion providers, including murder, attempted murder, arson, bombing and kidnapping. They are hailed on the site as “Heroes of the Faith.”
Rudolph is listed among the “Prisoners For Unborn Children” who are defined as “Those incarcerated for saving unborn babies about to be murdered by babykilling abortionists.”
The AOG reports that the 5,500 word piece is “Eric Rudolph’s story while on the lam. Recently transcribed from a handwritten copy he sent.”
Its the tale of a survivalist and a revolutionary — acquiring the food he needed to survive in the woods, eluding capture, and living to fight another day. “Preparation is the key to success in most human endeavors, Rudolph writes, “but this is especially true when attempting to move two tons of grains twenty miles with no transportation or equipment, and doing this right under the noses of the two hundred F.B.I. agents who were looking for me.” Rudolph also discusses how he had planned to attack another abortion clinic as well as the FBI’s Rudolph-hunting headquarters, but he was unable to do so.
Rudolph suggests that his first story, won’t be the last. “But just wait until you hear about the time the cops took me to get some gas for my stolen truck. Maybe next time.”
The A tlanta Journal Constitution reports that Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Charles Stone, who was one of the lead investigators in the Rudolph case, says “Based upon the information contained in this, there’s no doubt it was written by Eric.”
Curiously, the newspaper reported only that the story “was posted on a Web site operated by an anti-abortion group head quartered in Virginia.” But it was not hard to guess which one. Rudolph’s are not the only writings by major criminals published by the Army of God.
Currently, the AOG has posted the entire text of a book by convicted murder Paul Hill, titled Mix My Blood with the Blood of the Unborn.
In 2001 AOG posted stories by Clayton Waagner while was on the FBI’s most wanted list. I wrote at the time on Salon.com: “Waagner, who escaped from the DeWitt County Jail in Clinton, Ill., in February and has eluded capture since, says he’s been driving across the country stalking abortion clinics, assembling a cache of weapons and compiling dossiers on clinic staff in order “to kill as many of them as I can.” Clayton made his threats on the ‘Clayton Waagner Message Board,’ hosted by the antiabortion Army of God.”
“‘Pray,’ he asks his supporters, ‘that every one I kill causes a hundred to quit.'”
…”‘Thanks to some very generous bank financing’ — an apparent reference to the Harrisburg heist (and, the FBI believes, possibly others), Waagner says he is ensconced in a ‘very secure safe house’ and has assembled ‘the tools I would need to wage war.'”
“Waagner is far from a populist antihero, merrily thumbing his nose at the cops. His beliefs and plans are more comparable to those of the grimly methodical Timothy McVeigh, the Aryan Republican Army and other violent far-right revolutionaries of the past decade, including, of course, the Army of God, a shadowy, loosely affiliated band of antiabortion terrorists who’ve taken responsibility for assorted clinic violence. Waagner envisions himself pitted against ‘the most powerful country in the world'” — a country that views him as a terrorist.”
“They’re right,” he declares. “I am a terrorist. And that’s the reason I’m posting this letter.”
The Army of God continues to celebrate the criminal exploits of the likes of Hill, Rudolph, and Waagner. Meanwhile, prochoice leaders, and former undercover FBI agent Mike German, believe that the support network that spawned and supported them needs to be further investigated.
[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]
There is a large support network for antiabortion criminals in the United States.
If this were any other issue; and in many other countries, this would be called a support network for terrorism.
there was a virulently active anti-abortionist named Regina Denwitty, if I remember correctly. She admitted to giving refuge to Paul Hill.
I agree that there is a large hidden network of support out there.
Regina was featured in an HBO documentary a few years ago titled Soldiers in the Army of God.
It bothers me greatly that our government’s listing of terrorist organizations did not include the organizations that support the likes of Rudolph, Tim McVey, and other American terrorists. Makes me think the protection of those groups reaches pretty high into the government.
Of course not.
People like this are their base.
Want to know why the right-wing flew off the handle at Al Qaida? Not because they’d killed Americans, as such, but because they were cutting into the right-wing’s turf.
The War on Terror looks quite a lot like a gang war…
well, actually… although it might seem that way, I
‘m sorry to say that this is quite far from the truth of the matter.
The violent wing of the antiabortion movement has no use for the Bush administration whatsoever and says so all the time. A visit to the AOG web site or reading Eric Rudolph’s “statement” or his story of life on the lam will show this clearly.
These folks are revolutionaries. Those that have a party affiliation, may be in the Constitution Party, but party affiliation is irrelevant here. They are revolutionaries. It is the Bush administration prosecuting them. They are revolutionaries and terrorists. The federal counter terrorism taskforce is on thier case.
But do the actions of the administration help or hurt them? After all, they draw a lot of their strength from the perception that they’re persecuted crusaders for right. By quietly cracking down on them (as opposed to cracking down on them and making a big fuss about why they’re doing so), they help fuel the perception that there’s a secret war against Christianity going on.
The actions of the adminstratio overwhelmingly hurt them. They have been severely squished since 9/11 and the reorganization of the counter terrorism program. It was coming anyway, but post 9/11, terrorism, even prolife terrorism, was no longer cool by just about anyone’s yardstick.
There was a time when AOG members could brazenly strut around claiming to be terrorists and mug for the cameras. No more.
Sure they see themselves as persecuted Christians. Nothing new there. But these folks are very very different than people like Pat Robertson. Very different.
Between seeking to apprehend and prosecute those who materially aid the crimes, and “investigating” all over the anti=abortion movement.
For perspective, consider the implications in justifying wholesale Fed operations on environmental advocates for the occasional SUV trashing.
sorry, Ben. There is nothing in anything that I wrote, or that any responsuible person in the prochoice movement or in law enforcement or anywhere elese that I know of has ever said that there should be indiscriminate “investigating all over the antiabortion movement.”
I think if you knew more about the cases and the nature of the support network, you would see that this is not a slippery slope in the least. The violent antiabortion underground has largely recieved a free pass for a quarter century due to neglect and turning a blind eye by law enforcement for most of that time.
In the 1980s for exampel, then director of the FBI William Webster infamously told a national television audience that if its banks being bombed its terrorism, if its abortion clinics, its not.
What I am talking about here is righting the double standard in the administration of justice, and recognizing that there is indeed a dedicated, openly revolutionary movement, operating under the rubric of the Army of God, and it has commmitted a host of crimes that by any reasonable definition is domestic terrorism.
There are laws against for example, harboring fugitives from justice, that could have reasonably been applied in some of these cases — and in one case actually was. There is lots, lots more.
i was throwing up a yellow caution flag, not a red stop.