FBI Ignores Antiabortion Terrorism ... On 9/11
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Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 03:32:08 AM EST
Photobucket - Video and Image HostingThis man is David Robert McMenemy. He freely admits that on the morning of September 11, 2006, after scouting clinic locations in Midwestern states for several weeks, he used his car as a weapon in an attempt to fire bomb an abortion clinic. Luckily, on this September 11, events did not unfold as planned.  

Based on what he told police, David McMenemy's plan to destroy an abortion clinic worked out much differently in his head from what played out Monday in Davenport, Iowa.

McMenemy ... admitted dousing the interior of his silver 2004 Saturn with gasoline he had in a Gatorade bottle and plunging the vehicle into a women's health clinic early that morning. And he told police he planned to die in the ensuing fire.

But the clinic whose lobby the native Detroiter drove into -- the Edgerton Women's Health Center -- doesn't perform abortions or even provide referrals for them. And the impact wasn't enough to cause a fire, so McMenemy had to pour more gas on the car.

And once it was ablaze, he scratched his plan to kill himself when he realized it was going to be painful.

Aside from those minor quibbles, McMenemy's attack on the Davenport clinic would have made Eric Rudolph or Clayton Waagner proud. But according to an agency spokesman, the FBI couldn't care less.

Both local and federal law enforcement agencies admit that they have no idea whether the 6-foot-5 and 270 pound McMenemy had spent the last few months "scouting the Midwest for abortion clinics to destroy" because he's affiliated with some known domestic terrorist group, or whether he acted on his own. And they have even less idea whether McMenemy deliberately chose the September 11 date to use his car as a fire bomb, or whether he even knew what day it was.

But at least Scott County Prosecutor William Davis would like to find out: "Is he just a fruitcake, or is he better connected? We don't know. We're hoping to get better information on him." According to Davis, investigators have begun tracing credit card receipts and any other available details to find out whether McMenemy is connected with individuals or groups who could be planning further attacks on abortion-providing clinics.

But although both state authorities and the local U.S. Attorney's Office have asked the FBI for help in their investigation, an FBI spokesman refused, explaining that that the Bureau was "unlikely to get involved."

To those involved in abortion care, this lack of interest on the part of the FBI comes as no surprise. There was a time when things were different, when the Bureau took an interest in antiabortion violence, and maintained close liaisons with providers of abortion care around the country. There was a time when Special Agents from the Counterterrorism Division were available to our clinic on an around-the-clock basis.  But that was then, and this is now.

This was the day that the FBI seemed to relax its concern regarding antiabortion terrorists who self-identified as Christians, and who openly proclaimed that their religious beliefs motivated their crimes.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingThe seven-year hunt for the chief suspect in the Atlanta Olympic bombing has ended after police arrested him behind a stack of milk crates in a remote hunting village in North Carolina.

Eric Robert Rudolph, 36, had apparently been living rough in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina for several years, and appears to have survived by killing wildlife and stealing food from rubbish bins at night.

He went on the run in 1998, after police named him as the chief suspect in the Olympic bombing and three other bombings that killed two people and injured 150.
Photo: Reuters

Rudolph didn't make the Most Wanted list simply because his deadly shrapnel bombs went off at a gay bar and at two women's clinics, but because his first bomb exploded in Olympic Park -- after which the feds focused all their attention on the wrong man.

Rudolph is accused of bombing a park adjacent to the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, using an massive and elaborate pipe bomb loaded with nails and screws for extra killing power, an M.O. that was repeated in most of the cases now connected to Rudolph.

The bomb was hidden in a knapsack, which was found by security guard Richard Jewell before it detonated. The device went off while security teams were trying to evacuate the area, killing one woman and injuring more than 100.
:::
[T]he police and media zeroed in on Jewell as a convenient scapegoat. Jewell was crucified in the press but eventually vindicated. In the meantime, Rudolph escaped scrutiny entirely, and he allegedly continued his bombing campaign before the dust of the Olympic bomb had settled.

But the FBI was on the case -- because Rudolph was a terrorist.

And then there was Clayton Waagner. Remember him?  Claytie was pretty high up on the FBI's Christmas wish list, too, once upon a time -- and they captured him just before the holidays.

DECEMBER 5, 2001

Arrest of Anti-Abortionist Clayton Lee Waagner

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingOn December 5, 2001, Clayton Lee Waagner was arrested without incident by the Springdale (Ohio) Police Department at a local copy center. On September 14, 2001, Waagner had been placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List, stemming from a series of crimes related directly and indirectly to his violent anti-abortion activism.
:::
Waagner was apprehended as a result of a nationwide manhunt; he has been accused of mailing hoax anthrax letters to reproductive health clinics nationwide during September and October 2001. On September 18, 2001, Waagner was indicted for firearms violations in Tennessee and a carjacking in Mississippi. Additional charges may surface against him in connection with additional bank robberies in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Photo: FBI

Since the still-unknown perpetrator of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks was also at large in late 2001, it isn't hard to figure out which of Waagner's crimes elevated him to the FBI Ten Most Wanted list. The Special Agents from the Counterterrorism Division made that quite clear to us . . . once upon a time. And for mailing those fake anthrax threats, he is still extolled as a "hero of the faith" by the Army of God, as well as by Neal Horsley, who now -- five years after publishing his own account of his thinly veiled collusion with Waagner -- is free to rub elbows with such luminaries of the Christian right as Dr. James Dobson.

Let's review the FBI's own definition of terrorism, taken from the same FBI source that features an account of the agency's all-out manhunt for Clay Waagner.

Terrorism is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as "...the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85)
:::
Domestic terrorism refers to activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. [18 U.S.C. § 2331(5)]
:::
A terrorist incident is a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, in violation of the criminal laws of the United States, or of any state, to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

Now let's review what happened in Davenport, Iowa, on September 11.

"He was using his car to torch the building," Davenport police Detective Mike Bowers said.
:::
"He drove into the clinic and set his car on fire using an accelerant. He knew what he was doing. He planned it. It wasn't an accident," Bowers said.

Bowers said McMenemy has no ties to the Davenport area and has been driving around the Midwest since August.

"He has admitted looking them (abortion clinics) up in phone books and online," Bowers said. "I have no idea why Iowa."

And no one else has any idea, either.

McMenemy is being held without bond, and has been charged with second-degree arson, a Class C felony for which he could be sentenced to a maximum prison term of 10 years and a fined up to $10,000. On October 5, he will be arraigned on that charge in Scott County District Court.

However, Prosecutor Bill Davis is of the opinion that federal charges should be filed, since McMenemy traveled across three states before he rammed his car through the front doors of a women's clinic in Iowa. And last Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of Iowa, Davenport, and the Rock Island office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms consented to assist local authorities in the investigation and prosecution of David Robert McMenemy.

But as far as the FBI is concerned, those agencies will be pursuing this case all on their own. The U.S. isn't hosting the Olympics this year, and it isn't as though McMenemy had a vial of anthrax stashed under the front seat or anything. Hey, all the guy wanted to do was use his car to fire bomb an abortion clinic.

And for the FBI -- as already has been noted in some quarters -- antiabortion violence just doesn't seem to qualify as terrorism anymore.

[Title photo: Quad-City Times]




Display:
It seems that, anymore, any form of domestic terrorism that is of a dominionist-sympathetic bent is not being investigated.

Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, at least sixty separate and distinct right-wing domestic terror plots have been foiled from 1995-2005 by local authorities--NOT by the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, who seem only to consider left-wing domestic terrorism as worthy of pursuit.

Sadly, this isn't terribly shocking; Congressmen are literally addressing groups connected to the violent "Christian Patriot" movement, both neo-nazis and dominionists have infiltrated the US military (the latter to the point that the chaplaincy has largely been hijacked and ongoing religiously motivated harassment is occuring on military bases--and are the major forces behind massive human rights abuses including torture which appears to have been specifically religiously motivated; policies at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were in fact architected by one of the highest-ranking dominionists to have infiltrated the military).

We won't even get into the fact that even mainstream dominionist groups have a very long and unhealthy relationship with right-wing domestic terrorists including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and "Christian Patriot" militia groups in particular including modern associations with such groups.  This unhealthy relationship extends to training them from the cradle, including a major producer of dominionist "homeschool" correspondence-school material being closely linked with the "Christian Patriot" movement (as a related aside, for those of you who are not walkaways from dominionism, I would strongly recommend you go see the movie Jesus Camp as it gives a horrifying look at the "inner face" of the spiritual warfare movement targeting kids; I myself find it too triggering, as may most walkaways from dominionism, but it's a valuable educational tool); the fact that Ken Hovind (young-earth creationist and darling of the hardline "spiritual warfare" set) is linked to the "Christian patriot" and tax-protester movements and literally has sold Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a virulently antisemitic book) online; the literal setup of domestic terrorism groups themselves that actively solicited help from Klansmen; and more.

Lest one think that the terror attacks are restricted to women's clinics, think again.  There are multiple reports indicating that the exact same tactics of terrorism and harassment used against women's clinics are now being used to target stores selling adult novelties.  These include literal chemical warfare on adult bookstores (similar to the butyric acid attacks against women's clinics often performed during the 80's and explicitly described in the Army of God terrorism manual) and surveillance of patrons of adult novelties stores for purposes of targeted harassment.

by dogemperor on Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 10:42:11 AM EST


...seems to be limited to right wing fanatics.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has a better track record against right wing terrorists than the FBI.
By the way, where's the anthrax killer?

Pathetic!



by justintime on Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 11:04:53 AM EST

must not be quite terrible enough to matter anymore.

While we all can be thankful that McMenemy didn't kill or injure anyone, it seems incredibly negligent for the FBI to refuse to assist in investigating his possible connections with others who could be planning similar attacks.

by moiv on Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 03:42:47 AM EST


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