"In re U.S. vs. Olofson": A second Open Letter to Eric Holder, this time explicating the obvious about misadventure, "decapitation" and spasm.

15 October 2009

"In re U.S. vs. Olofson"

Dear Eric,

When I began this letter some days ago, I was pleased to hear at the time that the subject of my first letter to you back in May -- the case of that friend of mine whose life was threatened by your employees -- was thought to be shortly coming to a safe, legal resolution. It was expected then that the ATF would have to throw one or two perjured employees under the bus, the agency was going to have to change the way they do business and that your department would have to pay a bunch of money to people you would rather not.

Still, I thought then, if we all get out of it alive that's more than some of your employees had cooked up before your intervention. That's a good thing.

However, while I still thank you for your hands-on response, I learned today that my optimism may have been premature. This is extremely unfortunate, for as I have said before, there will be no more free Wacos.

This is doubly discouraging coming on the heels of the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the final appeal of David Olofson, the Wisconsin father of three whose malfunctioning semi-automatic rifle was used against him by your employee, ATF Agent Jody Keeku, to attack and imprison an innocent man under color of law.

There are two things about this case that bode future evil. First, there is now no legal way out for anyone who has a malfunctioning semi-auto rifle. Can they legally take it to a gunsmith to have it fixed? What is to prevent anyone with such a broken weapon from going to jail at the lowliest ATF agent's whim?

Here’s what folks are having trouble digesting:

- By your department's failure to restrain Keeku's outrageous conduct in returning the weapon to the ATF Testing Branch after it had been found by them NOT TO BE A MACHINEGUN but simply a malfunctioning semiauto rifle, with the demand that they retest it until they came to her opinion;

- By the trial judge's refusal to allow defense experts to even examine the weapon; and

- By the appellate court's blind refusal to allow a new trial based on these and other prosecutorial misdeeds,

the Federal government -- that's you, Eric, as the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer -- has put every owner of a semi-auto rifle on notice that they cannot count on the protections of the rule of law.

Secondly, and even more dangerously, if we can no longer count on a fair trial in a case of obvious ATF misconduct, then rationally, we have no reasonable expectation of a fair trial at all. In that case, we then are faced, when approached by any law enforcement officer attempting to enforce any gun law, with a Hobson’s choice:

- Submit, and be railroaded unfairly into prison, or

- Resist, and endure not only the personal consequences of that defiance, but also the likely consequences of a regional or even national conflagration.

As Attorney General and loyal servant of the President, you will, of course, dispute our conclusions. But Eric – only a fool would deny these unintended consequences of this patently unfair case. You are not a fool. As such, you need not believe that we are correct in our conclusions, but make no mistake -- WE believe we are correct, and are thus adjusting our options accordingly.

This practical reality, added on top of your department's previous misadventures going back to Ruby Ridge and Waco (and the subsequent successful cover-ups), make inadvertent violence, even accidental civil war, ever more likely.

Look, I'm not a leader of any organization. I'm just an Internet scribbler who sees things more clearly than most. It happens that a number of folks agree with me. Yet, on a good day my blog gets only about 5,500 hits. In Internet terms that's miniscule. Chump change. But I have had certain experiences in dealing with out-of-control government agencies over the past 16 years which gives me insights into possible futures, most of which scare the crap out of me and ought to scare the crap out of you, too.

Back in the Nineties, my friend and New Mexico militia leader Bob Wright learned that the ATF planned a raid on some innocents in his area. He asked the FBI Special Agent in Charge to meet him and when he arrived at the appointed place Bob opened with these words:

"You know, back in the Sixties, the left in this country advanced the opinion that if the people who actually fought the wars could sit down and talk things over, there wouldn't be any wars . . . We're here to test that theory."

I write to you today with the same desire to avoid conflict, and precisely because the threat of accidental causation is there, I will speak as bluntly to you now as Bob did then to the FBI. We do not have time for faux politeness and insincere pretense. For we are potentially, thanks to your employees and their reputation over the past twenty or more years, on the brink of a spasm of violence unlike anything this country has ever seen.

If they are worth what you are paying them, your analysts must be telling you how dangerous is the mood in this country right now. And if their reports are not reaching you, then certainly the monthly tallies of firearm and ammunition sales are.

This march towards the abyss did not happen overnight, and it will not go away of itself. Smart, capable people are looking at the world around them, and here is what they see:


- The suppurating wound of Waco and its aftermath is still festering;

- The prospects for armed government misadventure (be it ATF, FBI, DHS, or any of the other hordes of armed Federal agents stalking the land) growing day by day;

- The increasing realization on our side that the “Waco rules” (i.e., “kill as many witnesses to government malfeasance as possible, indict and convict any survivors, and obstruct any attempts at independent investigation”) still obtain;

- By the recycling of former Clinton Administration officials in the current Administration, the present Federal law enforcement mechanisms remain staffed by people who believe, as they did in the Nineties, that they can do anything we can't physically stop them from doing; and

- Unprecedented levels of electronic surveillance, both within and without the traditonal Constitutional restraints against governmental overreach, being directed against all American citizens, especially who those dare to criticise Leviathan government.

Eric, it doesn't take a social scientist to understand that things are quickly going to get out of hand unless somebody pulls back from the brink.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Eric, but that somebody is you. YOU are the nation’s highest-ranking law enorcement official. YOU must restrain your employees from illegal actions. YOU must get a handle on not only out-of-control agencies like the ATF, but the entire panoply of Federal law enforcement agencies. And, most importantly, YOU must reassure us that you will return these agencies to the rule of law and the constitutional restraints that the Founders put in place.

You must understand that as firearms owners we are done backing up. For 75 years, since the National Firearms Act of 1934, the federal government has encroached upon our tradional rights to liberty and property and each time we backed up, grumbling.

No more.

It is YOU who need to consider backing YOUR employees out of OUR faces.

Almost a month ago, I wrote this on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars:

Today I read some internal ATF documents that cannot be publicized for now, yet they convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the agency is as rogue at this moment as it ever was.

The failure of successive administrations of both parties to rein in these armed bureaucrats can only lead to deadly, bloody misadventure which will trigger a murderous spasm unlike anything yet seen in this country's long history of periodic civil strife.

The thing is, once started, the regime will find it almost impossible to stop on any terms besides their own unconditional surrender as they would be fighting an enraged but dispersed network insurgency. It is likely that after a few weeks of such blood-letting, the administration will be unable to find anybody left alive with sufficient influence among the insurgents with whom they can negotiate an end to the horror. The fact of the matter is that they would have done their best to kill the folks they would need to stop what they started.

And they will want to stop it, oh, yes, out of concern for their own miserable hides if nothing else.

For they will have provoked a conflict that will not be directed at the war-fighters, the grunts, even those in the outnumbered federal police, but rather at the war-makers, i.e. themselves.

In this they have only Bill Clinton to blame. When the Philanderer in Chief, frustrated with Serbian intransigence in 1999, changed the rules of engagement to include the political leadership, news media and the intellectual underpinnings of his enemy's war effort, he accidentally filed suit under the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Serbians knuckled under, yes. But the rest of the world took note, including us. I assure you, the appeal to the higher court of history in that case has yet to be decided.

These awful thoughts, Eric, were not only provoked by the ATF documents, as bad as they were, but also by the current popularity in government circles of "decapitation strategies." Indeed, it was the original warnings about my friend, borne out in these documents, that convinced me that the ATF, an alleged "law enforcement" agency, was interested in their own decapitation strategy when it came to people they found bureaucratically threatening or even merely inconvenient to the way they have done business these past decades.

These dark impulses of your own employees may, if unrestrained by you, start a chain reaction, a spasm, that would be difficult if not impossible to stop once started.

In this same essay, I offer a hypothetical speculation that pulls no punches. This is not about the rule of law, after all. United States vs. Olofson convinced us of that. As with Waco, this is about raw, unrestrained government power, and how free men and women who wish to remain free may deal with it at a time when politics and the courts have failed utterly to do so.

Unfortunately for them, in the situation the administration would find itself after Waco Two, the "decapitation" strategy would for them more resemble Russian Roulette played with an automatic pistol.

Hypothetical: They kill some of us, at first accidentally perhaps, but almost immediately thereafter intentionally. The spasm of defensive killing begins, targeted at their leadership. They spasm in return. They would not be able to scuttle into their "green zones" fast enough. For each clumsy attack on us, they receive a lesson in the 500 meter war, one bullet (or many bullets) at a time. They commit "collateral damage" of our innocents, we stay within the rules of engagement and kill only war-planners and war-wagers.

I have asked this question before. They will fight to the last ATF agent or to the last oath-breaking soldier. Will they fight to the first senior bureaucrat, the second Congressman, the third newspaper editor, the fourth Senator, the fifth White House aide? Can they stand Bill Clinton's rules of engagement?

These are the stakes for them, though they do not understand it.

And once they start it, they will find it impossible to stop, until they surrender unconditionally or personally face the music themselves.

Forgive me these dark thoughts, my friends, on this Constitution Day. They are occasioned by my glimpse today inside the minds of some taxpayer-supported jack booted thugs. They really are as venal, stupid, arrogant and dangerous as I feared.

As I read their innermost thoughts, freely expressed among themselves, I realized that all my efforts to prevent this madness from happening will very likely be mere cruel, futile self-deception on my part.

And given the arrogant, narcissistic master they now nominally serve, it is unlikely this will end with mere politics, but rather by what Clausewitz called "politics by other means."

May God forgive them.

For whoever is left standing with a rifle after the initial spasm that they start certainly won't.

"Leadership decapitation" indeed.

Their leadership. . . and their decapitation.

These are the darkest of thoughts, Eric, and I do not relish them. Yet someone must say them, and say them to you, for it is your employees we are talking about.

Only if everyone understands the consequences, personal and societal, to further deadly misadventure by your employees may civil war be averted.

Yes, we are that close. Ask your analysts. Unless they have fertilizer for brains, or fear to tell you the truth, they will confirm the imminent danger.

We have no desire to go down this bloody road, the mere fact of my writing you on this subject should tell you that, but we will not be shoved back any further and we will not allow any more free Wacos. The choice, then, is yours.

However, if worse comes to worst, and your employees once more get out of control, by miscalculation or deliberate action, I would like to give you a means of communication with the men and women you will have provoked to defensive violence.

As I do not expect to survive the first round of this ghastly horror, I make my gift in advance, and you will find it enclosed with this letter.

When the spasm you initiate by attacking some innocent has escalated to the point that you wish it to stop, you should understand that this can only mean your unconditional surrender to the forces of restoration of the constitutional republic.

Enclosed, then, is the battle flag of the Three Percent. Your analysts will certainly have explained to you by now who we are. In any case, when you sincerely desire the shooting to stop and you wish to indicate your unconditional surrender, take this flag and run it up the pole at Main Justice. Your tormentors will see it, and understand, and the firing will taper off, then stop. Then you will have to take your chances with the war crimes trials, but as I expect to be dead by that point, I can't make you any promises.

Of course this is all hypothetical. It may even be that I'm off my rocker and imagining the whole thing. But can you count on that? You're betting the whole farm on it, if you do. You are in fact betting all our farms and all our futures, even those of our children's children.

Maybe I AM a loon.

But then, I'm not imagining your employees' venal acts, am I? We both know that. Nor am I making up the continuing run on firearms and ammunition. Do you really want to find out what that's all about?

Because the one thing I know I'm not imagining is that the American people are fed up with being victimized by the same federal employees they are supposed to be paying to protect them from real criminals.

So, please, Eric, get your gang under control, for all our sakes. You're their boss, for crying out loud. Suck it up and prove it.

As always, I wish you a full, successful and safe term as Attorney General.

Your friend,

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson AL 35126]
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com