American Politics Journal

Birds of a Feather
...are pretty flocked up together
by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Dec. 24, 2001 -- MT. SHASTA (ZeppNews/APJP) -- Treason, Benjamin Franklin once reportedly said, is mostly a matter of timing. I would add the element of luck to that, as well. In Franklin's case, he was lucky that the English treasury wasn't so depleted after the French and Indian war, and they decided to save a few quid by outsourcing the military repression. Otherwise Ben might have been a footnote in history, a rebellious colonist hanged for treason against the Crown. Instead, he's a Founding Father.

Had the American revolution gone the way most revolutions go, he might have hanged anyway, since revolutions tend to consume their own as they fall apart.

Good luck.

Good timing.

Instead of waltzing with a hemp rope, he wound up on the hundred dollar bill.

As luck would have it, we have two people who are under arrest right now.

One is widely accused of committing treason despite the fact that there is no evidence that he took up arms against America or even intended to.

The other isn't, but instead declared himself at war with America and swore to kill as many Americans as it took to fulfill his holy mission.

John Philip Walker Lindh, John Walker, "the American Taliban" is in a military jail somewhere while the administration tries to figure out a rationale by which they can put him to death, presumably as an example to anyone else who might want to run off and join a brutal and corrupt theocracy. The trouble is, he doesn't appear to be guilty of much more than being in the wrong camp when America "declared war." He joined the Taliban before September 11th, and it's impossible to know if he even knew the Taliban was fighting American troops, or why.

Right wingers have been having a field day with him, holding him up as a bad example of Californians, of seekers, of "liberals". But liberalism doesn't usually induce people to join outfits like the Taliban -- yet the trash media of the right isn't interested in such niceties.

A glance around the web showed the lapdogs of the right were parroting the party line that Walker wound up the way he did because Marin County was full of "liberals" who were "tolerant of diversity". Tolerance of diversity makes you ripe for outfits like the Taliban, apparently, and if any right wingers noticed that Marin county hadn't become a fundamentalist Islamic state from the 13th century, they kept carefully quiet about that.

So I asked if Walker represented liberalism, did this mean that the guy who was arrested for making cowardly anthrax threats against women's clinics represented Christianity?

This turned out to be an immensely unpopular question among right wingers, so I started repeating it. And decided to take a closer look at both men.

Walker appears to have been a spiritual seeker who derailed into a cult mentality. Most of us know people who are exactly like him: restless, searching for something to explain life and give it meaning, and some simply become more and more extreme as they search, and either end up in cults, or become free-lance extremists. Granted, we may not know anyone who wound up in the Taliban, but we all know people who joined the Moonies, or the Jehovah's Witnesses, or became Buddhists, or any of a variety of other things ranging from faintly odd to flat-out lunatic. Some of them actually benefit from it; one person I know joined a rather bizarre basement Protestant cult, and it cured her of some severe behavioral problems and probably saved her marriage. It's not a "solution" I would want, and talking to her puts my teeth on edge, but she seems happy and secure, so who am I to question it?

That brings us to Walker's counterpart, Clayton Lee Waagner, a.k.a. Jack Avery, Mike L. Buchanan, Allan Waagner, Mike L. Bochanan, Roger Allan Clay, Roger Allan Waagner, Clayton A. Waagner, Robert A. Waagner, Rodger Allen Waagner, Roger A. Waagner, Roger Allen Waagner, Robert Allen Waagner, Roger Alan Waagner, Roger Wagner, Steve Bruenberg, Randy Miller, Jack Fisher, Kenny Logan, David Gillies, John Logan, William Small, Steve Grumby, Charles Moore, Steve Bruenbard, Robert Payne, Robert Mills, Eric Oswald, David Long, Rick Mullins, Ronald Johnson, Robert Sales, John Roner, Randy Taylor, Steve Vetter, Steve Gruenberg, John M. Baker, John Michael Baker, Roy Mason, Bryan Butler, Brad Outlaw, Ryan Murphey, Anthony Lowe, Scott Wesley McKenzie, Scott W. McKenzie, Leon Maifield, Tim Stephens, Colin Joseph Vincent, Colin J. Vincent, Jeff Lear, Darren L. Barthel, Rex H. Turner, Jon M. Baker, and Jon Michael Baker -- at least, that's how the FBI and ATF knew him. He might have used other names as well. Most folks called him "Clay."

If you're looking for a model Christian to put up as an example of moral superiority over the fundamentalist Islamic extremists with whom Walker fell in, then Clay probably isn't your first choice. From the ATF wanted sheet, the following emerged:

In 1975 he was convicted of stealing a motorcycle in Virginia.
In 1978 he was convicted of burglary in Georgia.
In 1979 he was sentenced to 4 to 25 years in prison in Cuyahoga County, Ohio for two felony counts of Aggravated Burglary.
In 1992 he was sentenced to 4 to 10 years after pleading guilty in Preble County, Ohio to Attempted Robbery.
September 12, 1999 he was caught with several stolen firearms. He later told an ATF Agent he would have killed the arresting officer had his (Clay's) family not been present at the time.
On December 6, 2000 he pled guilty in Federal court for being a felon in possession of a firearm and to transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines.
On February 22, 2001, he escaped from custody in DeWitt County, Illinois. He was subsequently placed on the U.S. Marshal's Top 15 Wanted Fugitive's List.
After being suspected of robbing a bank in Pennsylvania, he was later placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.
On May 19, 2001 he supposedly rented and tested two firearms in Knoxville, Tennessee.
He was profiled on "America's Most Wanted", which didn't prevent him from purchasing a Beretta pistol in Franklin, Tennessee on July 15, 2001.
On September 7, 2001 he was involved in a car accident in Memphis. He fled the scene, but left behind a pipe bomb, a rifle, a shotgun, ammunition, black powder, and a dash-mounted revolving blue light.

Clay stated in court that his lone regret was that he did not shoot a physician who provides abortions.

For some reason, the right wing talk show hosts and commentators seem to think that Walker came from a background that provided lots of danger signals, such as liberalism, but that Waagner didn't. Go figure.

It may be that Waagner, after he was captured, expressed his admiration and respect for John Ashcroft, the Crisco Kid of the Justice Department, the Jesus-weaving, ever-lovin' Attorney General of these heah United States. He felt that Ashcroft was a kindred courageous soul, out to do the Lord's work. Walker, being a Moslem, wasn't going to talk about the Lord's work, and might not have even known who Ashcroft is. Right wingers always appreciate people who show proper respect for authority, and perhaps that's why they were so quick to condemn Walker's background and religious beliefs while ignoring Waagner's.

That fine upstanding Christian website, armyofgod.com, which had condemned the FBI for calling him a terrorist, had a message appear on their website during the summer, before the terrorist attacks but after Clay escaped from prison. The message, believed to have been sent by Clay, included the following:

IP: 216.34.244.106
Posted on June 18, 2001 at 04:21:46 PM by Clay Waagner

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord:
...
[snip tons of witnessing for the lord for letting him escape and
commit crimes]
...
The government of the most powerful country in the world considers me
a terrorist. That label set me aback at first. Then it struck me:
They're right. I am a terrorist. To be sure, I'm a terrorist to a
very narrow group of people, but a terrorist just the same. As a
terrorist to the abortionist, what I need to do is envoke [sic]
terror. Thus the reason I'm posting this letter. I wish to warn them
that I'm coming. Sure they're on alert, but in their back rooms they
all agree that I'm not really after them. They slap each other on the
back and say I'm just a criminal that will either lay low or leave the
country now that I'm free. This letter is to put them on notice: I
will not leave the county and I will not try to start a new life under
another name. You have my word on that. God did not rescue me from
life in prison for my pleasure. He freed me that I might lay down my
life for His will. He freed me to make war on His enemy. He freed me
to make war on those who profit from the merciless murder of His
children. And a war it shall be.

I do not believe I will live long enough to see this war to its end,
but I do believe I will see it become charged. I believe that is my
mission, to charge the war. I believe God will use me to escalate the
war and increase the awareness of the tragedy in the minds of His
people.

So the abortionist doesn't get the wrong idea, I don't plan on
talking them to death. I'm going to kill as many of them as I can. I
will use every talent I have and draw on every resource I can get my
hands on. I consider this a war and in war there are few rules. One
of the rules that I'm changing from those that came before me is that
I'm not targeting the abortion doctor. I have discovered the hard way
just how difficult these "doctors" are to get to. They have the money
to buy heavy protection and they use it well. No, I'm leaving the big
guys alone. I'm going after every one else. Anyone who works at an
abortion location or Planned Parenthood (I don't care if their
location actually performs abortions or not. ALL Planned Parenthood
locations are targets.). It doesn't matter to me if you're a nurse,
receptionist, bookkeeper, or janitor, if you work for the murderous
abortionist I'm going to kill you.

[...]

As a sidebar, I'd like to clarify something. I was surprised to read
that the Secret Service had tightened security around President Bush
because I'd been spotted seventy miles away. I do not hate the
government of the United States of America. Nor would I harm
President Bush, even if I could. President Bush hates abortion as I
do. Though our methods of combating this crime are different, I'm
confident that he will do everything in his power to stop the
murderous practice.

Ultimately, I believe President Bush could be instrumental stopping
abortion. I would never harm this man.

Nice to know he supports the President-alleged. Like Ashcroft, another kindred soul, no doubt.

The right wing, so caught up in the traps of their own morally and intellectually bankrupt ideology, hammer away at John Walker, dissecting his background and speculating endlessly on his motives and aims.

And yet, on the more demonstrably guilty Clay Waagner, they are forced to maintain a profound silence. They can't rave for hours about how he planned to kill innocent Americans and wished to kill thousands more. They can't go on for hours about his sense of simpatico with the Attorney General and the President of the United States (just imagine if some dangerous felon -- Ted Kazcinsky, say -- had spoken approvingly of Janet Reno and Bill Clinton). They can rave for hours on end about the confused and troubled John Walker, and damn his family, his friends, and his community, even as the rest of us wait to see if he actually did anything wrong.

But on Waagner, they have to remain silent.

He's one of them, you see.