Adam Holland: Republican Leader Met With Holocaust Museum Shooter

General Wedemeyer and the China Lobby, a fascist front on intimate terms with the John Birch Society (Birch served under Wedemeyer in China): "The 'China Lobby' evolved from American military and intelligence personnel who served in China during the war. Most important of these was General Albert C. Wedemeyer.... Educated (in part) at the German military academy in Nazi Germany, Wedemeyer rented his apartment from Gerhard Rossbach. Along with Ernst Rohm, Rossbach had commanded the SA and worked for the CIA after the war. Wedemeyer remains the chief suspect in the deliberate betrayal of the U.S. mobibilization for World War II to the Chicago Tribune, bitterly opposed to both FDR and the prospect of American entry into the war. Its publication fundamentally compromised U.S. military preparation for war. Wedemeyer became a lynchpin of the China Lobby and a darling of the far right in the 1940’s and 50’s. In the 1980’s, Reagan appointed the reactivated Wedemeyer to a special military position. ... The [Birch Society] functioned in a manner roughly analogous to the German Nazi Party in the 1920’s. ... Elements of the John Birch Society participated in the assassination of President Kennedy, functioning in conjunction with fascist and Nazi elements dating from World War II."
http://spitfirelist.com/anti-fascist-archives/rfa-10-13-the-aryan-nations/

- AC
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Adam Holland: Republican Leader Met With Holocaust Museum Shooter
Source: Adam Holland Blog (10-28-09)
History News Network
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/119134.html
(Revised 1:07 pm)

James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi accused of killing security guard Stephen Johns in an attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10, 2009, corresponded with and visited the home of General Albert C. Wedemeyer, a major figure in the U.S. military and in Republican politics during the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Von Brunn's meeting with Wedemeyer took place in the spring of 1981 at Wedemeyer’s home, and their correspondence lasted for a year after that, until March, 1982. During this period, in December, 1981, von Brunn was arrested for entering the Federal Reserve Board headquarters in Washington, D.C. armed with guns and a phony bomb, stating that he intended to conduct a "citizen's arrest" of the Fed’s board members for treason. (He was arrested and tried for this and served a six year sentence in a federal prison.) After von Brunn's arrest, Wedemeyer broke off their friendship.

Largely forgotten now, Wedemeyer had at one time been a prominent figure in politics and in the military. Before the U.S. entered World War II, General Albert C. Wedemeyer was the author of the Victory Plan, which served as the basis for U.S. strategy in the war. During the war, Wedemeyer served in a number of key positions in East Asia, rising in 1944 to be commander of the China theater. He later played key roles in two Republican presidential campaigns (those of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater), and would serve as a key fundraiser for and adviser to Ronald Reagan. He was on the original board of directors for both the John Birch Society and the magazine The National Review. Wedemeyer also played a major role in framing the debate over “who lost China” – an issue which was central to the McCarthy era anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

Wedemeyer met with von Brunn at the general's farm in Boyds, Maryland in the spring of 1981 and corresponded with him sporadically for about 10 months thereafter. Their correspondence is collected in Gen. Wedemeyer’s papers at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. While Wedemeyer's ties to far-right groups were public and well-known, historian Joseph W. Bendersky in his 2000 book The "Jewish Threat": Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army, found extensive evidence that, behind the scenes, Wedemeyer worked to promote anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist policies within the U.S. military establishment. Wedemeyer's correspondence with von Brunn shows just how extreme Wedemeyer's politics were.

In June and July of 1981, the two exchanged letters concerning von Brunn's belief that a Zionist conspiracy had taken over the United States in order to "destroy the White Race". Von Brunn wrote to Wedemeyer that he believed that Jews were conspiring to send African-American soldiers to Germany in order to "destroy the white gene pool". The only remedy for this, Von Brunn wrote, was "DESTROYING THE ZIONIST OCCUPIED GOVERNMENT" (caps in original). Shockingly, General Wedemeyer wrote in response that he was "in complete accord with (this) objective", but felt that it was not achievable.

In January, 1982, one month after his arrest at the Fed Board headquarters, von Brunn sent Wedemeyer a description of the attack in the form of a detailed military mission report which he apparently also sent to a number of other recipients.

In March, 1982, von Brunn sent General Wedemeyer a rambling five-page political manifesto in the form of a memo to his attorney planning a legal defense for the Fed Board attack. Von Brunn justified the attack as an attempted citizen's arrest for various "crimes" he accused the Federal Reserve of having committed. On the back of this memo, von Brunn wrote a handwritten apology to Wedemeyer for an angry outburst, indicating that the two had a conversation around the time of the Fed attack. (Based on this note, it seems possible that von Brunn attempted to contact Wedemeyer after his arrest, was rebuffed by Wedemeyer and grew angry in response.) Von Brunn's note also states his belief that the U.S. government was controlled by evil "illuminati" intent on instituting "One World Gov't", and expresses his belief instead in "One World with Western Man uber alles".

Von Brunn’s attempts to continue his correspondence with Wedemeyer were discouraged in a polite letter from Wedemeyer’s secretary in March 1982. This letter stated that Gen. Wedemeyer had "no interest in the matter described in (von Brunn’s) letter", and that he believed that political change should be pursued only by legal means.

The Wild West: Livingstone for Governor [?]

Related: Livingston-founded GlobalOptions, Inc. has Zero-Max and 9/11 Ties, also see Neil Livingston's link to DAN MOLDEA (an author who can't seem to find the CIA in anything), and LARRY FLYNT ...

By Ken Silverstein
Harper's
October 30, 2009

Neil Livingstone worked with Oliver North during the Iran/contra period and is now a beltway security consultant and terrorism pundit who publicly advocated for the war in Iraq and then made money advising companies doing business there. His controversial clients have included the powerful daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan and he once helped a hired gun representing “a post Soviet entrepreneur indicted on 45 counts by the Feds” broker high-level meetings at the Justice Department.

“Think of us as a McKinsey & Company with muscle, a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges,” he said when his current firm, Executive Action, opened for business.

Livingstone is also mulling over a run for governor in Montana. Current governor Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, cannot seek reelection in 2012 due to term limits.

Last July, Livingstone reserved the domain name livingstoneforgovernor.com. He told my colleague Ted Trautman that he’s “in the early stages” of a potential run because he’s “been approached” by people suggesting it. He said he wouldn’t make any formal decision until after the 2010 mid-term election, but “presumably” he’d be running under the banner of the Republican party.

Livingstone is originally from Montana and says he maintains close ties there. “I feel I can make a difference,” he said, “and if other people feel I can, too, I’d like to give it a try.” His platform is necessarily vague, but he said that Montana had “not prospered in the way that other Rocky Mountain states have” in terms of business development. He mentioned an interest in “helping the state move forward in pragmatic ways,” such as coal mining, energy drilling and tourism.

Should be an interesting race if Livingstone throws his hat in the ring.

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90006013
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Security expert eyes political run
billingsgazette.com
October 30, 2009

HELENA - Neil C. Livingstone, president of a global investigative and security business in Washington, D.C., said he is being asked by people to return to Montana to run as a Republican for governor or U.S. senator in 2012.

Livingstone, who had just returned from a trip to Pakistan, said in an interview Thursday, "This took me a little by surprise. It's very early at this point."

He said he is "flattered" by the interest of those wanting him to seek office in Montana and will consider the possibility.

Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer is term-limited and cannot seek re-election in 2012. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., is up for re-election then.

His possible candidacy was first reported by Intelligence Online [a pay site] on the Internet. In its Oct. 29 edition, the newsletter had a story headlined: "Gumshoe to Run for Governor."

It said Livingstone is thinking about running for governor, bought a house in Helena on Oct. 5 and, since this summer, has owned this Internet domain name: Livingstoneforgovernor.com.

Livingstone was raised in Helena. He is president and chief executive officer of ExecutiveActionLLC. He was founder and until November 2006, CEO of GlobalOptions Inc., which went public in 2005 and has sales topping $80 million annually.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_0ad4990a-c514-11de-b6d2-001cc4c002e0.html

Obama's Real Death Panels

By Ted Rall
www2.hernandotoday.com
October 30, 2009

Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed two executive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law.

They still do.

The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone — including an American citizen — an "unlawful enemy combatant." A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush administration — and now to the Obama administration — he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it — well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it.

In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said "enemy combatants" — again, including American citizens.

These two documents first came into play on Nov. 3, 2002, when a CIA-operated Predator drone plane violating Yemeni airspace fired a Hellfire missile at a car containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly al-Qaida's No. 1 man in Yemen at the time.

U.S. officials didn't know that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, was riding along. (You know what they say about hitchhiking.) "The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal … this is legal because the president and his lawyers say so — it's not much more complicated than that," CBS News reported at the time. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here," said Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, after the CIA assassinations. "He's well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority."

It's right there in the Constitution between the right to tax and the repeal of Prohibition.

Anyway, Congress tried to clarify matters in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, part of which — the section that eliminated the writ of habeas corpus — got struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year. But the rest of the MCA remains in force, including a passage that defines an enemy combatant as anyone who provides "material support" to the "enemy." And who is the enemy? The enemy is anyone the president says it/he/she/they is.

Again, there is no distinction between foreigners and U.S. citizens.

Jose Padilla, the so-called would-be "dirty bomber" held in a Navy brig since 2002, was tried and convicted of such "material support" charges in 2007. (The government couldn't prosecute Padilla for their original dirty bomb charges because they had tortured him so severely that he had been reduced to mental mush.)

Now that times have supposedly changed, it's time to ask: Why hasn't President Barack Obama abrogated Bush's controversial executive orders? If Obama truly seeks a break with the lawlessness of the prior administration, what better way to enact it?

Simply put, no one man — not even a nice, articulate, charismatic one — ought to claim the right to suspend a person's constitutional rights. Not in America. Certainly no one man — not even a young, handsome, likeable one —- should be able to have anyone he wants whacked. Even in dictatorships, the right of life and death is reserved for judges and juries operating under a system purportedly designed to support impartiality and a search for the truth.

But that's not the case here in the United States. In 2002 Scott Silliman, director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University asked: "Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under [the Bush] theory? The answer is yes, you could."

Nothing much has changed since then. Obama has eliminated the use of the phrase "enemy combatant," but The New York Times reported that the change is merely meant to "symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies." The words may have changed, but Obama attorney general Eric Holder's definition of who can and cannot be held, said the Times, is "not significantly different from the one used by the Bush administration."

These days, Obama has ramped up the assassination of political opponents of the U.S. and the U.S.-aligned authoritarian regime in Pakistan, deploying more Predator drone plane attacks than Bush. But that's just for now. Obama could still personally order a government agency to murder you.

Which is weird. But not nearly as weird as the fact that you probably don't care enough to do something about it.
------
Ted Rall is the author of "To Afghanistan and Back," the first book about the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Among its chapters is one titled "How We Lost the Afghan War."

http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2009/oct/30/obamas-real-death-panels/

Did Texan Help Nazi Goring Cheat the Hangman?

Also see: "Who Really Poisoned the Goebbels Children?"

by BARTEE HAILE
www.dibollfreepress.com
10-28-09

The Oct. 28, 1946 issue of Time magazine posed the question the whole world was asking: “How did Hermann Goring kill himself?”

How the last surviving member of the Nazi “Big Four” took his life mere minutes before he was scheduled to hang for his monstrous crimes was not, in fact, the issue. By the end of October, everyone knew he had swallowed a lethal dose of cyanide. The burning question was how did Adolph Hitler’s wouldbe successor get his hands on the poison while under 24-hour surveillance in the most secure prison on the planet?

Even though Hermann Wilhelm Goring was one of the most infamous villains of the twentieth century, younger readers may benefit from a brief introduction. As a fighter pilot in World War I, he shot down 22 enemy aircraft, won the “Blue Max” and was the last commander of “The Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922, built the Luftwaffe into the most formidable air force in the world and played a vital part in Hitler’s twin policies of aggression and genocide.

With the Russians hot on his heels, Goring gladly surrendered to the U.S. Army on May 9, 1945. American officers gave him a shamefully warm reception eating, drinking and singing late into the night with the war criminal. Their disgraceful behavior brought a stern reprimand from an outraged Gen. Eisenhower.

With Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler all dead by their own hand, Goring was the lone Nazi leader left alive to face the music. Twenty-one other high-ranking defendants joined him in the dock at Nuremberg for the trial of the century, which began on Nov. 21, 1945.

To Goring, who always loved being the center of attention, the courtroom was just another stage. Throughout the ten months of the historic tribunal, he seemed to be having a wonderful time and rarely acted like a man on trial for his life.

The verdicts announced on Oct. 1, 1946 brought Goring crashing back to earth. He was not among the three defendants acquitted nor even the seven given prison sentences of ten years to life. The “reichmarshall” would hang along with 11 others.

Late on the night of Oct. 15, guards went to fetch Goring for his last meal and final preparations. They found him lying in bed on his back in his death throes with two envelopes on his stomach. One contained a cartridge with a removable cap and the other four suicide letters.

A quartet of ranking officers, including the prison commandant, cleared the cell and debated the merits of hanging Goring anyway. They finally discarded the wild idea after agreeing that the truth was bound to get out. There was no alternative but to have the body taken to the execution chamber, where the assembled witnesses could see for themselves that Hermann Goring was dead.

The official inquiry into the sensational suicide was a sham. Goring’s assertion that he had brought the cyanide into the prison with him and succeeded in hiding it for nearly a year was accepted without question. That dubious version of events conveniently let prison personnel from the commandant down to the guards off the hook.

Theories about what actually happened were a dime a dozen. Goring hid the cyanide capsule in a tiny incision in his abdomen or back, in his navel, in a tooth, in his pipe stem or in a book. His wife passed the poison to him with her goodbye kiss. He faked imminent death so the German doctor could come to his bedside and administer the poison.

The hard-pressed prison authorities and their superiors counted on it all blowing over and it did. After all, Goring was no more and that was what really mattered.

Then in 1978 Ben E. Swearingen, a public-school administrator living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, added to his collection of WWII memorabilia the brass cartridge that once contained the cyanide capsule. He knew at first glance that it was much too big for Goring’s navel or anyplace else on his person.

Swearingen remembered a conversation with the widow of an Army lieutenant on duty at the Nuremberg prison during the trial. She had in her possession an inscribed silver wristwatch, gold fountain pen and cigarette case Hermann Goring had given to his friend Jack G. Wheelis, whom he called “the great Texas hunter.”

The former Mrs. Wheelis added, almost as an afterthought, “They thought my husband gave Goring the poison.”

A seven-year investigation convinced the amateur historian that Wheelis, the officer in charge of the prison property room, allowed his Nazi pal access to his personal belongings on the eve of his execution. And that was how Goring got his hands on the cyanide.

Swearingen presented his findings in the book The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide published in 1985. Historian and biographer Joseph E. Persico reached the same conclusion nine years later in Nuremberg – Infamy on Trial that was made into a television mini-series.

“Secession & Civil War” – brand new “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX.

http://www.dibollfreepress.com/news/2009-10-28/Local_History/Did_Texan_help_Nazi_Goring_cheat_the_hangman.html

Jewish Passivity (Take that Tarantino)

By Ami Eden
Jewish Telegraph Agency
October 6, 2009

Between "Defiance" and "Inglourious Basterds," plenty of people have concluded that Jewish vengeance is in. But here come a few developments to remind us of the other side of the debate, that sometimes the better course is passivity in the face of, if not outright cooperation with, the enemy.

Later this month "Killing Kastzner" will hit U.S. theaters.

Over at the Huffington Post, Richard Chesnoff offer a thumbs up to the documentary and a sympathetic take on Rudolf Kasztner, the Hungarian journalist and Zionist who bargained with the Nazis to save about 1,500 Jews, including several members of his family.

To those he saved and their descendants, Kasztner became a hero, a Jewish Oskar Schindler who made a difficult but responsible moral choice. To others, especially those whose families were not chosen to be saved, Kasztner became an unforgivable villain, a man who played God, consorted with the devil and actually caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews by withholding crucial information from the general public about the Auschwitz death camp .

Accused after the war of being a collaborator by another Hungarian Jew, he was the center of a tendentious libel trial that rocked Israel during the early 1950s and eventually was gunned down in Tel Aviv by a man convinced Kasztner had betrayed his own people.

But had he? For more than 50 years, there has been little or no discussion of Kasztner. While Schindler, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and others became icons of righteousness for their role in saving Jewish lives, Kasztner was almost a taboo subject. His work was unmentioned in Israeli textbooks. Holocaust museums paid scant if any attention to him. When his name was raised, it triggered rage and bitter debate. Indeed, in "The Final Days," Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning documentary about the Hungarian Holocaust, Kasztner's name is never heard, his face never seen.

Was Rezso Kasztner a heroic rescuer of his people or a cold-blooded rogue collaborating with its worst enemies? Through reenactments of his politicized trial, accusations after 50 years by Kasztner's assassin, Ze'ev Eckstein, that there was a conspiracy, and a stunning confrontation between the now free killer and Kasztner's daughter, audiences can finally judge this forgotten man for themselves.

The film "Tickling Leo" probes the Kastzner controversy through a dramatic lens, focusing on three generations of a Jewish family, with roots in Hungary and branches in New York and Israel.

Adding fuel to this fiery debate, the rerelease of Edwin Black's "The Transfer Agreement":

The Transfer Agreement is Edwin Black's compelling, award-winning story of a negotiated arrangement in 1933 between Zionist organizations and the Nazis to transfer some 50,000 Jews, and $100 million of their assets, to Jewish Palestine in exchange for stopping the worldwide Jewish-led boycott threatening to topple the Hitler regime in its first year.

This updated edition includes the author's stunning new introduction and a powerful new afterword by Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman.

Finally, last week saw the passing of Marek Edelman, the last surving commander of the Jewish forces in the Warsaw Ghetto. Essentially the precursor to Quentin Tarantino's band of Jewish G.I. tough guys, Edelman and his fellow fighters have long served as the Zionist archetype of how Jews should meet their oppressers -- with gun in hand, ready to fight to the death. But the lengthy obituary in The New York Times noted that Edelman had espoused a more nuanced view:

Then, in 1976, he suddenly spoke out, telling Hanna Krall, a Polish writer of Jewish origin, what he had so carefully remembered. The recollections were stark and surprising. He challenged those who claimed that there had been many more than 220 ghetto fighters. Most provocatively, he insisted that it was not more meaningful or heroic to die with a gun in one’s hands than to perish in apparent submission to an overwhelming and invincible evil.

“These people went quietly and with dignity,” he told Mrs. Krall, speaking of the millions killed in the Nazi gas chambers. “It is an awesome thing, when one is going so quietly to one’s death. It is definitely more difficult than to go out shooting.”

After the book appeared, Dr. Edelman was often sought out by visitors from around the world, whose questions he would sometimes wave aside gruffly, saying that people who had not been there could never understand the choices made in the ghetto. He would cite the example of a nurse in the ghetto hospital who he said was greatly admired, and deservedly so, for smothering newborn children to save their mothers the inevitable pain that would come when the babies starved to death.

He would dispute the use of the word “uprising,” saying that it normally implied some slight prospect of victory. In the ghetto, he said, there was no such prospect.

“It was a defensive action,” he would say, or, “We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths.”

http://blogs.jta.org/telegraph/article/2009/10/06/1008351/jewish-passivity-take-that-tarantino

Bonner & Associates CEO Apologizes to House Climate Panel for Forged-Letter 'Scheme'

Lobbyist Apologizes to House Climate Panel for Forged-Letter 'Scheme'
By ALEX KAPLUN of Greenwire/October 29, 2009

A lobbyist told a House panel today that his firm mishandled its response to forged letters it sent to members of Congress on a climate legislation but maintained that the forgeries were an "anomaly" perpetrated by a temporary employee.

Jack Bonner, chairman of Bonner & Associates, repeatedly told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that he took "full responsibility" for the forged letters and should have been more proactive in contacting lawmakers once the forgeries were uncovered.

"I am personally very sorry that I immediately did not go to the three members involved, sit in their office and tell somebody exactly what happened," Bonner told Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who asked Bonner several times why he waited until after the House vote on the global warming bill to reveal the forged letters.

Bonner said the letters were created by a temporary employee who has fired immediately after the letters were discovered. Bonner said he is unable to explain why the employee had decided to forge the letters and that the matter has been referred to legal authorities.

"What this individual did was wrong, and we should have caught him before he perpetrated this scheme," Bonner said.

Bonner worked as a subcontractor for the coal industry advocacy group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, generating letters to lawmakers from community groups that raised concerns about the cost of a proposed cap-and-trade system for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. A dozen of the more than 50 letters sent by Bonner just before the House vote in late June were later identified as forgeries that used the names of community organizations that did not actually sign the letters.

Documents provided to the committee by Bonner reveal that the firm uncovered the forgeries on June 22 and notified Hawthorne, which the informed ACCCE, over the next few days.

But the same documents also show that Bonner did not try to contact members of Congress about the forgeries until July 1 and did not reach two of the three congressional offices -- those of Reps. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) and Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.) -- until July 13. The third office to receive letters -- that of Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.) -- was never contacted.

The timing of the letters -- and specifically the notification of congressional offices -- was a major focus during the opening stages of today's hearing. "The coal coalition was willing to pay millions to peddle a point of view, but they were unwilling to spend a few cents to call the U.S. Capitol and clear the air," Markey said. "This point of view was based on scare tactics and misleading figures and had zero to do with educating the public on key issues."

Bonner offered no explanation about why his firm failed to contact members of Congress until after the vote. But he also claimed that he did not know the timing of the House vote nor that the lawmakers who received letters represented swing votes.

"We're a grass-roots firm, we're not a lobbying firm," Bonner said.

Markey expressed skepticism about Bonner's explanations. "You say that you didn't know when the vote was going to occur, but that was as well advertised of legislative activity as could possibly exist," he said.

Bonner went on to say that the group felt its first responsibility was to contact the organizations whose names were used on the forged letters.

Meanwhile, Steve Miller, president and chief executive of ACCCE, told the committee his group had no prior knowledge of the forged letters and was "appalled" by the forgeries. "ACCCE did not play any role in the generation of false letters," Miller said.

Miller later said that it did not reach out to lawmakers sooner to inform them of the forgeries because it believed Bonner was already taking such a step.

"I was convinced that because the Bonner folks had found the letters ... that it was in their personal interest, their company's reputational interest, to address this issue," Miller said.

Miller went on to say that his organization did not oppose the House cap-and-trade bill sponsored by Markey and Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, saying that the group only wanted to see specific changes to legislation. "Our organization has never opposed the Waxman-Markey bill," he said.

Miller also said ACCCE would not pay Bonner for its work on the House bill, nor would it hire the firm again.

Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved. For more news on energy and the environment, visit www.greenwire.com.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/29/29greenwire-lobbyist-apologizes-to-house-climate-panel-for-89713.html

Holocaust Survivor Sued by Holocaust Denier; Says Memoir is "Vicious Lies"

Eric Hunt, 25, a Holocaust denier known for his 2007 attack on peace Nobelist Elie Wiesel, is suing Irene Weisberg Zisblatt, age 80. He says her ordeal in Auschwitz, which she recounted in her memoir "The Fifth Diamond," is a bunch of "vicious lies."

He said her "fantastical tales" are targeted at non-Jews to torment them, and makes haters out of Jews. Zisblatt was the only survivor in her family; they were all taken by boxcar from Hungary. Hunt's libel suit demands "not less than $60 million."

Hunt said at his trial in 2008 for assaulting Wiesel that he had a "severe mental breakdown" and was "sucked into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on the Internet." He added, "I don't believe any of that garbage now that I'm taking my medication."

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=81274

The U.S. Chamber of Conmmerce vs. Honesty

At war with the truth, and with its own constituents

Washington Post Editorial Page
October 27, 2009

THE U.S. CHAMBER of Commerce has been airing expensive TV ads in Northern Virginia lately involving the race for governor. The ad's first words are "Traffic's worse." Its last words are "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce paid for this ad." Most of the intervening words -- about 70, by our count -- are blatant distortions.

The TV ads, matched by a similar radio spot, rely heavily on an editorial we wrote in July about Virginia's transportation mess. In it, we credited Robert F. McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for the specificity of his road-building plan but noted in the very next sentence: "Unfortunately, the new revenue he identifies is one-time-only, many years distant or paltry."

We went on to skewer Mr. McDonnell's plan, both in that editorial and in a half-dozen others since then, as a sham whose torrent of words tries to mask the fact that it would produce little new money for roads -- this as the state's spending on secondary and urban roads in Northern Virginia is fast approaching zero. The Chamber's ad tries to leave the false and dishonest impression that The Post has backed Mr. McDonnell's ideas on transportation; we haven't.

The Chamber ad also quotes us, from the same editorial, as criticizing state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee, for having failed to formulate a policy on transportation. That was true in July. But starting in mid-August, Mr. Deeds has said repeatedly that he will support a bill with bipartisan backing that includes new taxes for transportation.

Like it or not -- and we realize that many don't -- that's the only realistic means of dealing with a transportation funding deficit estimated at $100 billion over the next 20 years. The Post has repeatedly praised Mr. Deeds for having the guts to speak this truth on the campaign trail; again, the Chamber dishonestly portrays our position.

What is most astonishing about the Chamber's ads is not that they twist a newspaper's editorial line for the Chamber's own purposes. It's that they are at odds with the interests of business itself -- supposedly, its own constituents. In a resolution published Oct. 1, a coalition of 17 of the biggest business groups in Northern Virginia explicitly embraced new taxes as the only rational means of getting roads built; in other words, it echoed Mr. Deeds's own stance. The groups also said that ruling out new taxes, as Mr. McDonnell has done, "is not prudent."

So not only is the Chamber of Commerce indifferent to the truth; it's also hostile to the business community in the most populous and economically dynamic part of the state. In positioning itself as an arm for the Republican Party, the Chamber has cast doubt on its own credibility.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102602714.html

Chamber of Commerce Suing Yes Men For "Commercial Identity Theft"

Zachary Roth
TPMMuckraker
October 27, 2009

Calling last week's hoax by the Yes Men "nothing less than commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism," the Chamber of Commerce is suing the prankster group and its allies for trademark infringement, unfair competition and false advertising, reports Mother Jones.

The Yes Men -- actors Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (who also use the names Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, respectively), last week held a fake press conference in Washington DC, along with activists from the Avaaz Action Factory, in which they impersonated Chamber executives and announced that the group had shifted its opposition to real efforts at tackling global warming. A press release announcing the event fooled Reuters and other news outlets into reporting that the Chamber had changed its stance.

The Chamber's complaint charges that the stunt was an effort to promote the new Yes Men movie, The Yes Men Fix The World.

In the wake of the prank, the Chamber said it would be asking "law enforcement authorities to investigate." That suggestion of a criminal probe doesn't seem to have materialized. But the Chamber may still get its day in court.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/chamber_suing_yes_men_for_commercial_identity_thef.php?ref=mp

Report Uncovers Stealth Strategy by US Chamber of Commerce to Influence Elections: Examines Documents in Washington State Attorney General Race

The Center for Justice & Democracy archive on the signally fascistic Chamber of Commerce is here. - AC
----
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=69108

NEW YORK, July 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A major new report released today by the Center for Justice & Democracy finds that U.S. Chamber of Commerce provides substantial financial and strategic assistance to local front groups to influence state elections, including funding major media buys to smear local candidates.

The report, "The Secret Chamber - The Inner Workings of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Hijacking of an Election," draws from the cache of newly-released papers and deposition testimony uncovered in connection with litigation surrounding the failed 2004 election bid of Deborah Senn for Washington State Attorney General. Senn, a former pro-consumer insurance commissioner, was viciously attacked in an advertising blitz, which contributed to her defeat. It was only later revealed that the ad campaign was funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its Institute for Legal Reform. Litigation arose after the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission concluded that the ads violated state election law and the participation of the Chamber and the ILR was revealed.

According to author Laurie Beacham, "This report shows that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is involved in an organized, aggressive, covert and nasty effort to infiltrate local election campaigns. While the Chamber tries to disassociate itself from the negative campaigning conducted by its local front groups, it remains actively involved in elections, pursuing all the trimmings of a full-out political campaign."

"Most people believe the Chamber is an apolitical and innocuous business support organization. But it is anything but," said Joanne Doroshow, Executive Director for the Center for Justice & Democracy. "This group has its hands in just about every level of electoral politics, dipping into the very foundations of our democratic process. It is important that this effort, which has largely stayed under the radar, become known to the public," Doroshow added.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2384429

Who Really Poisoned the Goebbels Children?

Murder in Hitler's Bunker
By Georg Bönisch
Spiegel
10/09/2009

To this day, the murder by poisoning of the six children of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels remains a mystery. Newly discovered records show that a doctor confessed in the 1950s to having been an accomplice, but that the judges in the case let him go unpunished.

These are the last days of their lives, but the children don't know it. There is 12-year-old Helga, who has the eyes and dark hair of her father, Joseph Goebbels. There is Hilde, 11, who is more of a brunette; anyone looking at her quickly realizes that she is about to blossom into a true beauty. And then there are eight-year-old Holde, six-year-old Hedda and the youngest of the girls, four-year-old Heide.

H for Hitler. The name of each child evokes the name of the Führer, for whom Goebbels works as propaganda chief. The family's only son is named Helmut, a slightly languorous nine-year-old.

Berlin, the end of April 1945, the Reich Chancellery. Hitler's bunker, deep underground beneath the Chancellery, is a place of gray concrete, narrow passageways, iron doors and cold light. It isn't a welcoming place, particularly not for children who, only a few weeks earlier, were living a seemingly carefree and innocent life, playing with cats and dogs on a farm far away from Berlin.

Russian soldiers are only a few hundred meters away, and everyone in the bunker is urging the parents to finally take the children to a safe place. Hanna Reitsch, a celebrated German aviator, says: "My God, Mrs. Goebbels, the children cannot stay here, even if I have to fly in 20 times to get them out."

But the Goebbels remain unyielding.

"It is better for my children to die than to live in disgrace and humiliation," says their mother, Magda. Their father fears that Stalin could take the children to Moscow, where they would be brainwashed into becoming communists. "No, it's better that we take them along."

Unpunished Crime

On April 30, at about 3:30 p.m., Hitler shoots himself in the head, and his companion Eva Braun dies with him. The double suicide is a signal for the others. By the next day, the six Goebbels children are also dead. After receiving morphine injections to render them unconscious, they are poisoned with cyanide, a substance that causes rapid death by suffocation.

Six dead children, and yet the act was never punished. Astonishingly, no historian has ever truly delved into this tragic crime, which was part of the final act of the Third Reich. To this day, the episode remains the subject of speculation and misinterpretation.

However there was a remarkable judicial sequel in the late 1950s, involving a case that was heard by a regional appeals court in the western German city of Hamm. The case files are stored at the national archive in nearby Münster. They have remained unnoticed until now, even though they highlight the "leniency and questionable argumentation with which the courts addressed Nazi crimes at the time," says chief prosecutor Maik Wogersien, who recently stumbled upon the documents, more or less by accident. Wogersien is conducting research on precisely this subject at the Legal Academy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the documents, the judges who prosecuted the Goebbels case were former members of the Nazi Party, as was so often the case in trials dealing with Nazi crimes in the newly formed Federal Republic of Germany. For example, the judges managed to disregard a completed indictment for infanticide, using incorrect and possibly even illegal arguments. The defendant was acquitted.

The newly discovered records now make it possible, for the first time, to reconstruct what actually happened.

Fateful Moment

The man who is the focus of all the documents was Helmut Kunz, who was born in the southwestern town of Ettlingen in 1910. After studying law, he went on to obtain a doctorate in dental medicine, writing a doctoral thesis titled "Studies of Dental Caries in Schoolchildren as Related to Their Feeding in Infancy." In 1936 he opened a dental practice in Lucka, south of the eastern city of Leipzig. Kunz was also a member of the Sturm 10/48 unit of the SS.

When Hitler began the war, Kunz served as a medical officer in the SS's notorious Totenkopf (Death's Head) division. He was seriously wounded in 1941, and after his recovery he was transferred to the medical unit of the Waffen-SS, the SS's combat arm, in Berlin. In April 1945, at the rank of Sturmbannführer, Kunz was transferred again, this time to the Reich Chancellery. For Kunz, who a confidant of Hitler had described as having an "erect soldierly bearing," it was to become a fateful moment.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,653981,00.html

Vanderbilt Professor Slammed for Backing Film that Calls Racism a Myth

" ... the goal of the Hatewatch blog posts about the film was to 'spare (Swain) the embarrassment of continuing to endorse the work of a man who has referred to black people — including the president — as monkeys.' ... "

By Janell Ross
THE TENNESSEAN
October 17, 2009

An organization that tracks hate-group activity in the U.S. is accusing Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, a black scholar known for her conservative stances on race and immigration, of being an apologist for white supremacists.

The incident started last week when the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center posted a blog item critiquing the documentary A Conversation About Race, mentioning that positive comments by Swain lent the film an air of legitimacy.

Swain fired back, making her case against the advocacy group in a blog submitted to the news site The Huffington Post and in a string of messages she sent to followers on her Twitter account.

"There aren't enough new hate groups 2 keep the #SPLC busy, so they target individuals & conservative organizations 2 raise money," Swain wrote in a Twitter update Thursday.

Swain, a professor of law and political science, said in an interview with The Tennessean that she feels as if she has "been attacked" by the group. Mark Potock, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, responded, "If that is what she believes, she is suffering from some sort of low-grade megalomania." Potock said the goal of the Hatewatch blog posts about the film was to "spare (Swain) the embarrassment of continuing to endorse the work of a man who has referred to black people — including the president — as monkeys."

The film in question, A Conversation About Race, opens with a clip of then-Sen. Barack Obama's campaign speech on race followed by words from the filmmaker, Craig Bodeker.

"I agree with Senator Obama. … I can't think of another issue facing our country that is more timely or more important today than the issue of racism," Bodeker says in the film. "I also can't think of another issue that is more artificial, manufactured and manipulated. … It's used too often as a tool of intimidation like a hammer against Caucasian whites. "

The Hatewatch blog post described the film as a "a hit among white supremacists looking for a smart-sounding defense of their beliefs. Contrary to its title, A Conversation about Race … (is) a slick 58-minute documentary devoted to proving the thesis that racism is a bogus concept invented to oppress whites."

Swain is quoted as saying the film is, "Outstanding. … Meticulously done. … I highly recommend this film." Bodeker lists the blurb as the first one on the film's Web site.

"Why is her review valuable? Why is it important? Because she is an African-American woman," Bodeker said in an interview. "A member of the Vanderbilt University faculty and the National Council on Humanities and she has a Ph.D. — you better believe I put her quote on the DVD box, on the poster. That's how this is done. You try to attract attention."

For her part, Swain contends that the documentary is a valuable tool that could be used in classrooms to initiate a conversation on race that includes the perspective of what may be a growing number of white people.

"I just think that if we do not discuss these things … you are creating the conditions for ethnic violence and unrest," Swain said.

But Potock said the film's premise, that racism is a myth, is ridiculous in a country that practiced chattel slavery for 200 years and allowed Jim Crow laws to stand for 100 years thereafter. The idea that white people are oppressed by conversations about racism or allegations of racism is insidious, Potock said.

Swain's endorsement of such ideas, he said, is shocking. "What it made clear is that Carol Swain is an apologist for white supremacists," said Potock, adding that her endorsement represents a kind of cover that can funnel extremist ideas into reputable publications and ordinary people's conversations.

Swain sees things differently. If there are going to be conversations about race, she thinks they have to include what the Southern Poverty Law Center may consider extremist or hateful positions.

"The new white nationalism that I fear that I see … is not about groups," Swain said. "It's about white people, individuals, thinking that they are under threat and that they have to ban together to protect themselves. My fear is that unless we create forums for people to safely and openly express themselves, then you are going to drive more young people into these extreme groups."

http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=apologist&cf=all&start=40

Alleged Intelligence Adviser Makes Lurid Claims About Prince Albert

By ELIZABETH BANICKI

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (CN) - A man who claims to be Prince Albert of Monaco's former intelligence adviser says the prince owes him money for handling issues that jeopardized the prince's image, including illegitimate children and a rape accusation. Robert Eringer says he spent 8 years investigating people in the prince's social orbit and providing him with information about Russian and Italian organized crime, arms dealers, Freemasons, money left in Monaco by Jews sent to Nazi concentration camps, and a long list of other allegations, and the prince owes him 40,000 euros for it.

Eringer says Prince Albert hired him in 2002 as his intelligence adviser for about 80,000 euros a year, though a formal agreement was never drawn up. He claims he spent the next 8 years investigating the Prince's friends and associates, creating liaisons with intelligence departments of other nations, including the United States, and acting as the prince's "eyes and ears."

Eringer says he traced arms dealers, Russian and Italian money launderers, including Vladimir Putin, and people in direct contact with Saddam Hussein, who were involved in shady oil deals. Eringer says he warned the prince to keep his distance from dubious characters, including the man who was "reputed to be French President Jacques Chirac's secret channel to Saddam Hussein," and the prince initially heeded his warnings because he wanted to rid Monaco of corruption.

Eringer claims he warned the prince about a man who was being considered as Monaco's Consul to Russia, because the man "had been a KGB officer in the 1980s whose specialties were labor unions and disinformation," and because he was "connected to Petro trade, a company in Monaco believed to be laundering Russian money for Putin. (Eringer possesses documents on these matters.)" [Parentheses in original.]

Eringer claims he also negotiated with the mothers of Prince Albert's illegitimate children, and discovered a woman who claimed the Prince had kidnapped and raped her.

According to Eringer's Superior Court complaint: "In August 2004, HSH [His Serene Highness] asked Eringer to assist a young woman resident of Nice, France and [sic] aspiring children's book author and illustrator. Much later, this woman told Eringer that she had been lured to a yacht to meet HSH, who expressed an interest in helping her. This young woman claims that she was kidnapped and raped by HSH on the boat. She has sworn an affidavit, which Eringer possesses."

Eringer says he exposed one of the prince's so-called friends who had a videotape of Prince Albert engaged in a sex act with a young stripper on his 44th birthday. He claims the man was showing the tape at parties around Monaco, saying, "This is what I have on your prince."

Eringer claims he introduced the prince to ranking officials in the CIA and the FSB, the successor to the KGB, and cultivated relationships for the prince with other powerful U.S. and foreign representatives. He claims he worked tirelessly to protect the prince's image in the public eye.

He claims that in a meeting about the prince's "as yet unrecognized illegitimate daughter," the prince asked him, "Could you arrange for her to have an accident?"

Eringer claims the prince stopped responding to him toward the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, and never paid him for his final quarter of work. He claims the prince owes him 40,000 euros and has not responded to several requests for payment.

Through the 31-page complaint, Eringer claims he "possesses documents" on his allegations. He demands his paycheck, alleging breach of contract and misrepresentation. He is represented by Brigham Ricks.

The defendant is His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco aka Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/10/23/Alleged_Intelligence_Adviser_Makes_Lurid_Claims_About_Prince_Albert.htm

FBI Records: Late Senator Linked to Klan

Jerry Mitchell
blendzpolitik.blogspot.com
October 18, 2009

Nearly a quarter century after U.S. Sen. Jim Eastland's death, Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen still talks about the many jobs he did for the veteran lawmaker.

Former inmate Larry Ellis told the FBI that Killen talked repeatedly of tasks he did for Eastland, quoting Killen as saying, "There was not anything I would not have done for him. He made miracles happen for me. He was and will always be my No. 1 hero."

Killen is serving 60 years in prison following his conviction in 2005 in Neshoba County for orchestrating the Klan's June 21, 1964, killings of three civil rights workers.

Eastland's nephew, Hiram Jr. of Greenwood, said he doesn't believe Killen's claim that he knew Eastland. "I know for a fact the senator did not associate himself with people like that," he said. "And I guarantee he wasn't having Killen do anything illegal."

The senator regarded the killings as shameful, he said.

But in the days following their disappearances, Eastland repeatedly tried to convince President Lyndon Johnson it was a publicity stunt, telling him there was no Ku Klux Klan in Neshoba County. A month later, Eastland took to the Senate floor, saying a hoax was a real possibility if the trio remained missing.

Ellis told the FBI that Killen talked of thwarting communists in his work for Eastland, going across Mississippi and across the South.

Chris Myers Ash, author of The Senator and the Sharecropper about Eastland, said he wouldn't be surprised if "there's a kernel of truth" in what Killen is saying.
Eastland "had sources all over the place," Ash said. "He was such good friends with (FBI Director J. Edgar) Hoover that he could get access to FBI files."

That information, in turn, was shared with Mississippi's now defunct Sovereignty Commission and others, he said. "It would not surprise me at all that Edgar Ray Killen could operate under the radar and report back from hot spots. Eastland was very well informed about politics and civil rights activities."

In documents Killen wrote to Ellis, Killen talked of secret files he obtained through an unnamed friend in the Justice Department. "My friend never violated any laws by giving secrets away," Killen wrote.

His friend then forwarded them to another friend "who legally could see and use them," Killen wrote. "He gave them to me."

FBI records confirm Eastland had a relationship with the Klan.

Informants told the FBI that Eastland met with Klan leaders and courted the Klan's vote in his 1966 re-election race. The senator also talked with suspects in the Neshoba County case, including then-Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and defense lawyers, getting updates on the case.

In 1965, U.S. District Judge Harold Cox of Jackson - whose appointment to the bench Eastland engineered - threw out the indictments of all the suspects, except Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price.

An FBI memo said Eastland, who was a college buddy of Cox, "has been taking credit for the federal government dropping charges against those indicted in the Neshoba County slayings."

According to the FBI, Rainey penned a letter saying, "I know for a fact that James O. Eastland helped prevent the trial of 16 other men."

On March 28, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the indictments.

A "prominent local Klansman" in Meridian told the FBI that Eastland had appeared at a rally in Forest and invited Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers to speak with him: "Eastland stated that he would help the 17 defendants in the Neshoba County case and that he has been 'pulling strings for them.' "

In a motion filed last year in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Killen discussed his relationship with Eastland, saying the senator called him shortly before the 1967 federal conspiracy trial and was told he was on his own.

Seven were convicted. Killen and Rainey were among those who walked free.
After the trial, Killen wrote that Eastland brought him FBI documents about the relationship between the FBI and defense lawyer Clayton Lewis. FBI documents show Lewis shared information with the FBI in 1964.

Killen's attorney, Rob Ratliff of Mobile, said Killen has shared stories about him and Eastland. "If they're even half true, they're incredible."

In documents identified as Killen's handwriting, he wrote he was never an Eastland employee, "but, yes, I worked for him."

As the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Eastland successfully blocked civil rights legislation. His committee became known as the "graveyard of civil rights legislation."

In his later years, he softened his position and hired an African American to his staff, Ed Cole, who later headed the Mississippi Democratic Party. In 1985, months before he died, he wrote a letter to the late Mississippi NAACP President Aaron Henry, commending Henry for his persistent leadership "that has made recognition of a life that includes all mankind possible. I personally thank you for helping me to see the whole picture." He enclosed a $500 check for the state NAACP.

Eastland grew up in Hillsboro and was buried in Eastern Cemetery in Forest.

Killen, who grew up in neighboring south Neshoba County, said he developed a relationship with Eastland after becoming friends with Leander Perez, an arch-segregationist in Louisiana.

Documents from the Eastland papers at the University of Mississippi show Eastland and Perez shared information on purported communists.

Ellis told the FBI that Killen said his work for Eastland was "to stop the communist Jews or their soldiers."

Micki Dickoff, who interviewed Killen extensively for her award-winning documentary, Neshoba, said these statements attributed to Killen are consistent with what Killen told filmmakers.

Killen called Eastland "a second father," she said. "He told us he worked for Eastland for many years, 'bringing him proof,' and would do anything Eastland asked."

Killen made sure "we understood just how powerful Eastland was and that even President Johnson had to go to Eastland when he wanted something," she said. "There was no doubt in our minds that Killen had a close and personal relationship with the senator."

Deke DeLoach, a former deputy director for the FBI, said he knew nothing about his friend Eastland having any relationship with Killen.

Eastland never objected to the FBI's Neshoba County investigation, he said. "He was upset this happened in his state."

But longtime FBI agent Joe Sullivan, who headed the investigation, told The Clarion-Ledger before his 2002 death that Eastland complained to Hoover after the FBI started "an infiltration of Klan-type groups in Mississippi."

A lot of what Eastland did was not recorded, Ash said. "There was a back-room, verbal understanding."

http://blendzpolitik.blogspot.com/2009/10/fbi-records-show-late-senators-link-to.html

No Boundaries: Shawna Forde and the Minutemen Movement

By Scott North
HeraldNet (Everett, WA)

Shawne Ford

Many people met Shawna Forde through the Minutemen movement. Many tell similar stories.

It doesn't matter if they are national leaders or "boots on the ground" activists, private detectives or political strategists, they all say Forde, 41, comes on strong, makes big promises and in time tries to twist their relationships to promote herself.

The Everett woman showed up on the Minuteman scene in 2006 with boundless energy, expressing heartfelt love for the United States. The Minutemen were looking for people like her. She spent hours spreading the word, talking about border security and illegal immigration. She showed others how to make their voices heard at rallies, in city council meetings and on television.

By this June, after she was arrested on double murder charges in Arizona, those in Forde's circle described somebody who seemed part action figure, part petty criminal.

There was Forde the self-described patriot who claimed to be the leader of a national Minutemen organization, who signed off her e-mails with a crisp, military "10-4" or "Copy out." She dressed in high heels and camouflage, accessorizing with a .380-caliber handgun tucked into her waistband.

There also was Forde the teller of tall tales, the abuser of trust, the trickster who, several acquaintances suggest, couldn't be trusted around loose cash, prescription pain pills or another's reputation.

Forde now awaits trial in the killings of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia. She's accused of leading a May 30 raid on their Arivaca, Ariz., home because she suspected Flores was a drug smuggler. Police say she planned to use any drugs and money she found to bankroll her Minutemen American Defense group. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. The case isn't likely to go before jurors until 2011.

Minutemen around the country have raced to distance themselves from Forde. She really wasn't one of them, they contend. Her agenda was preying on others, not protecting the country.

Without doubt, Forde's is a crime story and a close look at her trail turns up interlocking lies. Separating Forde from her work with the Minutemen movement, though, denies much of what happened.

Multiple interviews and dozens of e-mails sent by Forde over the years detail how she inserted herself into a loose-knit, fractious network that needed volunteers enough to set aside skepticism. Some found their faith and friendship abused. Many seemed willing to overlook what today seem like clear warning signs. Those include wild tales Forde told last winter in Everett, when she suggested that gang members from Central America had nearly shot her ex-husband to death and in separate attacks raped her and put a bullet through her arm in retaliation for her Minutemen activism.

Forde used to joke that she one day would be martyred and that that would galvanize people to take action, said Bob Dameron of Yakima, who is among those in the Minutemen movement who has known Forde the longest.

"I think she wanted to be famous," he said. "I think she made it to infamous."
***
God placed a challenge before Bob Dameron. So did Shawna Forde.

In the middle of summer 2007, with little besides a pup tent and the goodwill of strangers, the Minuteman from Washington found himself for five weeks in the Sonora Desert, guarding the Arizona side of the border.

This exercise of his patriotism tested his faith.

"That was the most humbling experience of my life," he said. "I learned to trust God."

The Yakima man and his wife, Kathy, joined Minutemen Civil Defense Corps because of their beliefs. They are devout Christians. They are open about their love for family and the United States. They worry that porous borders invite criminals and erode U.S. sovereignty.

They met Forde in 2006 during a border watch operation along the U.S.-Canada boundary not far from Bellingham. Dozens of people gathered at the home of the state's Minutemen leader, to get to know each other and to join in a common cause.

During a dinner visit, Forde was caught alone in a bedroom, rummaging through a dresser, the Damerons said. Her explanation didn't wash and she was banned from the house -- not from the Minutemen. Every ally mattered, and her defenders believed she could contribute.

In the months that followed, the Damerons saw a lot of their Everett counterpart.

"She was adamant about the country, patriotism," Bob Dameron said. "She was constantly going all over the state getting things done."

While the Damerons were leading Minutemen efforts in the Yakima Valley, they welcomed Forde's statewide involvement. She spent days helping organize rallies, protests outside day-labor sites and presentations at city council meetings.

They were convinced Forde cared about the cause, and, in time, about them. They eventually invited Forde to stay at their home.

"She called us 'Mom and Dad,'" Kathy Dameron said, "and that was probably to get what she wanted."

They got to know about Forde's family and learned that her marriage was ending. They met her teenage daughter, a sweetheart who seemed to like staying with them. The girl called Kathy Dameron "Grandma."

Forde's conduct raised questions from the start, said Hal Washburn, vetting officer for the state's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps chapter.

Forde often used The Line, a Minutemen e-mail list, to share stories that were hard to believe.

For example, in a lengthy Aug. 20, 2006, e-mail she described being attacked by a group of men -- she said they were Mexicans -- outside a Seattle Starbucks. The men were enraged after seeing signs against immigration piled inside her car.

Forde wrote about finding herself "face to face with a pair of dark brown eyes ... filled with pure hate."

One man, she wrote, wanted "to rape me or kill me probably both." Just before the confrontation got physical, though, Forde said she was saved by a group of U.S. Army soldiers, in full uniform, who happened to be in the area.

She acted as the group's spokeswoman but often fought with other Minutemen who were not as impressed as the Damerons with her efforts. She also claimed to have more authority in the Washington organization than she actually had. Some leaders wanted her out.

Bob Dameron was instructed to fire her on Nov. 14, 2006, after she was done with a Yakima public television station's town hall forum about illegal immigration.

Dameron broke the news before Forde left the next morning to return to Everett. "I told her I was told to fire her," he said. "I also told her I couldn't do it."

As she drove out of the Yakima Valley, Forde's Honda Civic slammed into a guardrail. She was taken to the hospital, shaken but not seriously hurt. The car was totaled.

Forde told the Damerons she was run off the road by truck drivers -- she claimed they were Mexicans.

The Washington State Patrol's report on the incident notes Forde said she crashed after a truck pulled in front of her. Troopers determined the trucks were driving 55 mph and Forde lost control. The report contains no information about the truckers.

The accident temporarily halted the effort to fire Forde.

Then in December she sent out an e-mail to raise money for an ailing Minuteman. She didn't name him, but said he was too sick to work and too proud to ask for help. Forde asked people to send her cash or checks, made out in her name.

Fundraising is supposed to go through the group's chain of command, Washburn said, and Forde had crossed the line again.

Meanwhile, she secretly approached Chris Simcox, who at the time was the group's national director and now is a candidate in Arizona for U.S. Senate.

Minutemen leadership in Washington was ineffective and listless, Forde told him in January 2007 e-mails. She had a plan to restructure the organization.

A few days later Simcox sent out an e-mail saying he was promoting Forde to a statewide leadership post. It was to a job she urged him to create.

Leaders among Washington's Minutemen threatened to quit and bombarded Simcox with angry messages.

"I feel that somewhere this has just gone wrong," Forde wrote Washburn and others. "You ... think I just want to be in charge. In fact I don't want to be in charge! I'm terrified for our future and the country that my children will be forced to live in. All I ever wanted to do is get out there and 'DO.' "

They voted her out of the group the next month.

She started her own group, Minutemen American Defense, or MAD.

"She had maybe 15 or 20 members, but it gave her a lot of credibility," Washburn said.

A Web site was cobbled together, at her request, by Bob Dameron, who still felt Forde meant well and had promise.

Forde wanted to use the Web site to promote herself. She wanted it to feature photographs and video of her in the desert, mixed with accounts of undercover investigations she claimed to be conducting involving drug cartels, human smugglers and prostitution rings.

That summer, Forde persuaded Bob Dameron to join her in Arizona at a gathering of Minutemen who planned a vigil on the Mexican border.

The plan was for Dameron to act as the cameraman for Forde, creating a documentary film "by Minutemen about Minutemen."

They drove down together. Forde led him to a desert camp and drove away. He spent five weeks living in a small tent, joining Minutemen on desert patrols and relying on the kindness of strangers for rides into town to buy food.

That was the last time he did anything on the border, or put his faith in Forde.

But Kathy Dameron's relationship continued, mostly out of love for Forde and her teenage daughter.

A disturbing pattern soon developed, of Forde telephoning just when, she claimed, her life was in danger. The calls often would cut off in the middle, leaving Kathy Dameron sick with worry.

In November 2008, Forde e-mailed photographs of drugs and cash she said she found at an Arizona stash house. That's one reason why the Damerons didn't immediately doubt Forde when she said her family had been targeted by the drug cartels.

Forde's ex-husband was shot by an intruder at his Everett home on Dec. 22, 2008, in a case that remains unsolved. A week later, Forde claimed she was raped by a Latino gang. Police dropped that case for lack of evidence.

Then, on Jan. 15, Kathy Dameron was on the phone with Forde when the Everett woman said she had been shot while walking in an alleyway. Dameron heard no gunfire and she now believes Forde staged the attack.

Their friendship soon ended. Kathy Dameron's prescription pain medication seemed to disappear whenever Forde was visiting. It happened again in March. She found her pills in Forde's purse and confronted her.

"She said, 'I've been busted, haven't I?' " Kathy Dameron recalled. "I said, 'Yes, you have.' She said. 'I'm sorry, Mom.' I said, 'Not good enough.'"
***
Doug Parris is director of The Reagan Wing, an Edmonds-based political action group that promotes principles of limited government and unapologetic support for moral convictions.

It was a successful formula that resonated with voters under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan.

Parris always is trying to help Republicans reconnect with blue-collar voters. He agreed with strategists who believed border security could galvanize people who weren't inclined to wait for government to fix their problems.

Who could argue against enforcement of laws to thwart drug traffickers, human smugglers and people seeking to enter the country illegally? Shawna Forde presented herself as uniquely qualified to help, Parris said. And she had support from some Republican leaders in Snohomish County.

Forde knew Minutemen. She was the leader of Minutemen American Defense and owned a company specializing in "Take Back America" T-shirts.

Enter Jim Gilchrist. The founder of the California-based Minuteman Project was willing to speak and wanted to recruit Washington allies for his brand of border-watch activism.

"Shawna came in and was dynamic, engaging, flashy; made all sorts of claims about what she could produce in terms of the Minutemen side," Parris said.

She also told him a compelling back story about being abandoned as a toddler and growing up in the care of the state; years supposedly spent as a wild-child promoter of rock 'n' roll bands; parenthood; and a steady drift toward conservative ideology.

"Here was a person I felt sorry for in a lot of ways," he said. "Never concluding or even suspecting really that this was all a con."

By the time Gilchrist finished speaking in Everett -- June 30, 2007 -- Parris wanted nothing more to do with Forde. He'd pegged her as a ruthless self-promoter who simply took what she wanted.

The trouble started almost immediately. Most traced back to her.

Without Parris' permission, or even consulting him, Forde made decisions about who would be invited to speak and how tickets would be sold.

When he raised questions, Forde got angry, made a scene and quit.

The day of the forum, though, she was there and took the stage.

He didn't object. The event, and what it meant for connecting with voters, was more important.

But Forde wanted to rearrange the speakers' lineup.

Parris said "no."

She walked up behind him, snatched the event clipboard from his hands and headed off to tell others she was changing things.

Parris grabbed the clipboard back and maintained control of the event.

"It was at that moment that our relationship was over," he said.

It would have been anyway, after Parris learned that Forde apparently had pocketed money from sales of forum tickets, which went for $30 each. He went to Everett police to report what had happened, but decided against pursuing a complaint after detectives showed scant interest.

On reflection, Parris realized Forde had attempted to make off with something far more precious: his reputation. Forde's meddling had a purpose beyond money, he said. She was trying to network at his expense. "She's the kind of person who shows up at a meeting with important people, invites herself, and makes you think she is aligned with me, and makes me think that she is aligned with you, and is basking in the glow of credibility," he said.

Forde was able to pull it off, Parris said, because she can "very precisely duplicate" real connection to a cause.
***
Jim Gilchrist counts himself among those fooled by Forde.

He stuck with her when some questioned her methods. He stood by her through the blood and tumult in Everett that started last December. He remained her ally right up until the day she was arrested in connection with the two murders in Arivaca, Ariz.

"If she hadn't been able to use me she would have used somebody else," Gilchrist said. "It is so unfortunate because I really thought this person, in spite of her checkered past had, in lieu of a better term, 'found Jesus' and really wanted to be a do-gooder."

Gilchrist said he was oblivious to the behind-the-scenes drama at his 2007 speech in Everett. He'd never met Forde before she e-mailed to arrange his travel. He was impressed by her and her fledgling Minutemen operation and donated the money he was paid to cover his travel expenses to Everett -- cash that actually came from Parris.

Gilchrist gave that money to Forde.

Forde arrived in Gilchrist's life at a time when his running feud with Simcox and other Minutemen leaders left him in need of allies.

He communicated with Forde largely by e-mail, telling her he admired her dedication. Forde praised Gilchrist for being controversial.

"You are a powerful man when in name only you can stir a state," Forde wrote. "I just am amazed sometimes. I've never been attacked so much for a associate. But you are my friend and I'm proud to be associated with you so (expletive) 'em!!"

By early 2008 Gilchrist had made Forde the Minuteman Project's border patrol coordinator. He sent volunteers her way, telling them she "is one tough lady." Forde's role in bringing Gilchrist to Everett was noted in a profile of Minutemen figures around the country prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a high-profile Alabama-based civil-rights watchdog group.

Gilchrist now says his only concerns about Forde revolved around her claims that she was using "undercover" tactics to infiltrate border-area drug traffickers.

"I really thought that she was getting into the wrong crowd and was going to end up murdered," he said.

Gilchrist stood by Forde when her ex-husband was shot, after her reported rape and after her mysterious shooting, when she was wounded in the arm. When The Herald in February revealed Forde's history of childhood felonies and teenage prostitution, Gilchrist said what mattered more was her ability to overcome a troubled past.

"She is no whiner," he wrote at the time. "She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community and a yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego."

Gilchrist remained in touch with Forde after she left Everett without giving detectives a chance to question her closely about the attempted murder of her ex-husband.

On the Minuteman Project Web site, Gilchrist continued to post press releases and Forde's dispatches detailing her Arizona border exploits.

One of the last arrived on May 31, just hours after the Arivaca killings.

Forde reported that she and her group had been in "boots on the ground" patrols of the border for eight days and had observed thousands of pounds of dope being smuggled into the country.

"A (sic) American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl," Forde wrote. "Territory issue's (sic) are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases."

In a few days Gilchrist began receiving e-mails from a Minuteman in Tucson who had previously let Forde's teenage daughter live at his home. The man asked Gilchrist why a SWAT team had shown up at his door looking for Forde.

"I called her," Gilchrist said. "She was as calm as can be."

Forde told him there was no cause for worry. The man, she said, was a disgruntled former member of her group.

At the same time, though, she was sending out a list of 17 people around the country she wanted contacted if she was arrested or killed. After her arrest, Gilchrist learned he was 10th on her list.

He and Steve Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, almost certainly were among the last people Forde e-mailed before her June 12 arrest. They talked about adding her and her officers to their Web site's list of national Minutemen leaders.

"The border is going to be HOT. Good things to come my brother," Forde wrote Eichler that morning. She was in police handcuffs later that day.

Gilchrist has since scrubbed references to Forde from his Web site. He says she appears to have cloaked her true self behind the Minutemen movement.

"We all have to be aware that there are individuals who have motives other than altruistic ones," he said. "But you don't know until they present themselves."
***
Many Minutemen who encountered Forde in the Southwest deserts expect to be called as witnesses in her upcoming murder trial.

Among them are two Colorado men who tried to get investigators near Denver to look at Forde's activities in Arivaca. In April, they say, Forde tried to recruit them to help commit home-invasion robberies of people she suspected of drug trafficking.

Their concerns weren't taken seriously until after the Arivaca killings, they said.

Joe Adams also has been talking with law enforcement about Forde. He is a former private investigator from St. Louis whose tough-guy credentials include combat tours with the Marines and federal prosecution for his activities linked to the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

Forde was fascinated with Adams' "Project Bluelight," which he ran in the desert south of Tucson. Instead of simply observing from lawn chairs, Adams' cadre of well-equipped former Marines went on patrols, looking for people who were up to no good. He told people his operation had the blessing of federal officials, including the Department of Homeland Security.

Adams and Forde at one point were on friendly terms, and she even appeared to brag about the connection during a Feb. 5 interview with The Herald.

E-mails examined by The Herald show that Adams didn't particularly welcome the attention.

Around the time she allegedly was trying to recruit people for drug-house robberies, he told her to get lost.

"Here is what I am suggesting," he wrote in a May 11 e-mail. "1. Stop dropping mine and Project Bluelight's name to give you and your amateur operations credibility. 2. Stay in Washington and off the border for the good of the movement. Shauna (sic), you are a dangerous sociopath and anyone who would listen to your (expletive) is an idiot. You do not know what you are doing, and you put people in the border movement in harms way. ... Go away. Good luck in prison."

Adams refused to be interviewed about that e-mail or others he exchanged with Forde. He confirmed the contents of several messages, including some in which he warned Forde that federal officials had been asking questions about her for roughly six months.

He confirmed that Forde at one point tried to convince him that she had been born into an Italian New York crime family -- "the Gambinis." He also believes she was behind phony messages he received from somebody who claimed to be a former Marine running border teams just like those fielded by Adams.

The messages, sent from an e-mail account controlled by Forde, warned Adams not to threaten her, bragged about Forde's commitment to the country, and suggested she had links to "big brass" in the government.

"I give her projects to work and they get done," one message read. "She uses her good looks to all of our advantage she can get Intel like I have never seen haha."
***
For months, others in the Minutemen movement received messages from the same e-mail account. Forde led them to believe the e-mails came from Scott Shogren, a former Marine aviator who is now an airline pilot.

Shogren, who now lives Florida, said he hasn't had contact with Forde for years.

He sent none of the e-mails, he said.

They met in 2007 in the Yakima Valley, where Shogren's family is well known. He was drawn to her because she talked about the link between border security and thwarting terrorists.

Shogren's military service took him to Lebanon, and he knew some who died in the 1983 terrorist truck bombing that devastated a Marine compound in Beirut. At least 240 Americans died, most of them Marines.

People who don't worry about border security in the U.S. "are just ignoring the fact that bad guys are coming across, too," he said.

He encouraged Forde to form Minutemen American Defense after she was kicked out of Minutemen Civil Defense Corps.

He later spent thousands of dollars bankrolling her failed attempt to film a documentary about Minutemen on the border.

Forde seemed charming and well-meaning, he said. But she also was a source of personal drama and tall tales, like her claim that guitarist Eddie Van Halen was her ex-boyfriend.

He put up with most of it because they were working for the same goals. But one day she tried to give the former Marine major an order, he said, and that was the end.

He sent Forde a text message telling her he wanted no more contact.

Shogren got a phone call from Gilchrist in June, after Forde's arrest. Shogren was told that Forde had claimed he was the person who truly called the shots for her group.

Others gave him e-mails that appeared to be sent by him but actually were from Forde's e-mail account. Those e-mails took Forde's side in internal Minutemen squabbles, threatening legal action, or worse, against anyone who challenged her leadership.

Shogren said he has no idea why Forde apparently picked him.

"I can't say I really knew Shawna very well," he said. "And I don't think anyone knows Shawna at all."
***
Mike Carlucci is a Seattle-area private investigator and security consultant. Over the years, Forde told reporters and others that the big, gravel-voiced detective was her link to legal muscle and even how she got dirt on her enemies.

That is a lie, Carlucci said. It's one of many that apparently went down easy in Minutemen circles, he said.

Some within the border-watch movement seem particularly susceptible to manipulation and fraud, Carlucci said. Their groups are largely volunteer, emotional about patriotism and love of country. They can't agree how to conduct themselves and, he said, for some that ambivalence extends to whether they should follow the nation's laws.

"I think it is a user-friendly environment for folks who aren't necessarily accountable because there are not hard and fast standards of accountability," he said.

Carlucci said Forde first came to him in early 2007, seeking advice on security procedures for her Minuteman group.

Forde never hired him, he said, and ignored his counsel. He suggested she conduct criminal background checks on everyone in Minutemen American Defense.

She said no, because "she was familiar with a number of people who had made mistakes in their past and had paid for them, and were some of the hardest workers she knows," he said.

Forde has her own criminal past. So do some of her associates. For example, the man she introduced in Everett last winter as both her boyfriend and a Minuteman is now in prison serving time on the latest of his 15 felony convictions.

Carlucci also told Forde to retain a lawyer if she wanted to make sure the group stayed out of trouble.

She never did.

Still, Carlucci said Forde kept trying to involve him, and before and after her arrest arranged from jail to provide him access to her personal e-mail accounts.

Dozens of e-mails show Forde was in regular contact with Minutemen leaders around the country, right up until her arrest, and that she was relentless about making her Minuteman activism pay her bills.

With police on her trail, the messages show Forde was negotiating a publishing deal to tell her life story to Laine Lawless, an Arizona border-watch figure who now writes on a Web site proclaiming Forde's innocence.

Carlucci said he never took money from Forde, not even when Forde asked him to provide a security escort to Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project when he spoke in Central Washington in February 2008.

He said his last conversations with Forde were earlier this year, when she called to discuss the violent incidents in Everett involving her ex-husband and her.

Forde seemed to have trouble keeping details straight, Carlucci said, and he confronted her about it.

Suspicious, he said he sought out the lead detective Everett had assigned to the case at the time and told him Forde should be investigated in her ex-husband's shooting.

He's been in contact with Arizona detectives since the murders there.

Carlucci is convinced Forde was desperate to be recognized and that the Minutemen movement was a means to that end.

"She had an insatiable need to be validated and it truly didn't matter by who or how," Carlucci said.
***
Andrew Ong went to the Arizona desert to document not what Minutemen think or say, but what they do.

One night, tagging along with a few of Shawna Forde's team, the young photojournalist witnessed something that still troubles him.

The patrol stopped to check a brushy area for smugglers.

In the dark, Forde picked up a couple of rocks and tossed them over the heads of her Minutemen.

One rock hit something hard. It sounded like a ricocheting bullet.

Convinced they were being shot at, the Minutemen scrambled for cover. Forde quietly laughed behind their backs.

Ong was appalled. "'Have some fun, Andrew,'" he said she told him. "'Have some fun.'"

Later, Forde had her group report to the U.S. Border Patrol that they had been shot at. She also posted a video of the incident on YouTube as evidence of the risks Minutemen were taking to protect the nation's borders.

Ong met Forde in October 2008, not long after graduating from college. He decided the Minutemen movement would make an interesting subject to photograph. He learned about Forde on the Internet and contacted her.

They struck a deal: She'd let him hang out and take pictures if he was willing to give her some photos to use on her Web site.

Ong spent close to two weeks with Forde in the desert, living at a campground south of Tucson that different Minutemen groups were using as a staging area for their border activities.

From what he'd been told, he expected to find a couple dozen people, a command post, a communications hut, a chain of command. Instead, it was just Forde and about five others who didn't seem to have a plan or any notion of how best to patrol the desert.

None of the patrols Ong went on turned up smugglers. The only illegal immigrants he saw were a couple of hapless, dehydrated men from Central America who wandered into camp, begging for water. The men were taken into a cool mobile home and the Border Patrol was called to collect them, he said.

After the ricochet hoax, Ong wondered about other stories she passed along to Minutemen.

One unfolded in Arivaca's lone cantina, a place where some say the locals make sport of visitors by getting them to buy beer for a burro, who drinks from a mug.

"We walked into there and it felt like it was almost out of a movie," he said.

Every head swiveled toward the door when the Minutemen entered.

Then the regulars went back to their beers. Nothing happened, and before long Ong went back to camp.

Forde showed up a few hours later. She claimed a drug kingpin took her, blindfolded, to the house where he'd stashed cash and drugs. She showed Ong a small knife she said the man gave her as a memento of his respect.

Forde told a similar story in a Nov. 3, 2008, e-mail to supporters.

She attached what appeared to be photos of drugs and money.

"Do not share these!!!!!!!!!!!! It would be my life," Forde wrote in the message subject line.

She claimed to have won over the trafficker by agreeing to use drugs with him, and by flashing her signature tattoo: the Minutemen American Defense logo, inked across most of her back.

Forde seemed to spend most of the time on the border laboring over e-mails or articles intended for her Web site, Ong said. She also met with journalists interested in the border-watch story.

In a series of photos, Ong documented Forde on patrol, checking an abandoned home. She pointed a handgun toward the shadows, her uniform a short skirt and high-heeled sandals. Forde was locked and loaded, ready for the bad guys.

Ong said he had a hard time determining precisely what Forde was doing on the border.

"It was very, very bizarre," he said. "It was not at all what I expected."

Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.

Epilogue

Andrew Ong last heard from Forde in an e-mail a few months before her arrest. She wanted to post some of his photographs on her Web site. After her arrest, bloggers stole many of his photographs and spread them illegally around the Internet.

Mike Carlucci continues to work as a private investigator, chased at times by journalists put on his trail by Forde.

Joe Adams is a source of intense interest for some bloggers. It started after an Internet talk show host suggested Adams' past ties to the CIA may somehow factor into Forde's fall. He recently told an Arizona newspaper that Forde was a nuisance.

Doug Parris continues to lead The Reagan Wing, blogging regularly about liberals, conservatives and the importance of the rule of law.

Jim Gilchrist remains embroiled in lawsuits over control of the Minuteman Project. Earlier this month, an invitation to speak at an immigration forum at Harvard University was withdrawn by the event's organizers. Investigators haven't approached him about Forde, he said.

Bob and Kathy Dameron are no longer active in the Minutemen movement. They recently provided Everett police with a statement about their time with Forde.

Claims of attacks

Over the years, border-watch activist Shawna Forde has made repeated unproven claims that she and her family have been targeted for violence by Hispanics. Here is a list of some of those events:

Aug. 20, 2006: Forde e-mails other Minutemen, claiming she was attacked by a Mexican man outside a Starbucks in Seattle. She claims he was driven off by a group of U.S. Army troops who happened to be in the area.

Nov. 15, 2006: Forde's car crashes into a guardrail on a highway near Yakima. She claims she was run off the road by Mexican truck drivers.

Feb. 4, 2008: Forde reports her teenage daughter missing and suggests the girl had fought off two prior abductions by Hispanic gang members in Everett. The teen turns up within days, unharmed.

Dec. 29, 2008: Forde reports being beaten and raped in Everett by Spanish-speaking people she claims are linked to drug cartels. The attack comes a week after the near-fatal shooting of her ex-husband inside the same home. The rape investigation ends for lack of evidence.

Jan. 15, 2009: Forde is found in an Everett alleyway with gunshot wounds to her right arm. She says the shooting is linked to the other recent incidents. Later, Forde acknowledges telling police she believes local street toughs, not drug cartels, are behind the violence. Police say there is no evidence to support her Dec. 29 rape claim. They continue to investigate the shootings.

Minutemen groups associated with Shawna Forde

Minutemen Civil Defense Corps: Forde was a member from the summer of 2006 through February 2007, when she was tossed out. Founded by Chris Simcox of Arizona, the group aims to secure the nation's borders ÃÆ'Æ’Ãâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ÃƒÆ'¢âââ€Ã※¡Ã‚¬Ã※¡Ãâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ'※âââ€Ã※¡Ã‚¬Ã※â€Ã※“against the unlawful and unauthorized entry of all individuals, contraband, and foreign military.ÃÆ'Æ’Ãâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢ÃƒÆ'¢âââ€Ã※¡Ã‚¬Ã※¡Ãâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÆ'¯Ãâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¿Ãƒâ€Ã※¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚½ MCDC members engage in protests and border watches and have lobbied for the creation of a security fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Minuteman Project: Forde never was a member, but she was the group's border operations coordinator from February 2008 through her arrest in June 2009. Founded by Jim Gilchrist of Orange County, Calif., the group has a high profile, in part because of controversies and lawsuits.

American Border Patrol: Forde never was a member of the group, which monitors border security using airplane surveillance. Founder Glenn Spencer has acknowledged allowing her to live briefly at his ranch headquarters near

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