White supremacy vs. white nationalsm
An Op-Ed by Ben Olson Reader Staff
In the wake of the tragedy at the Unite the Right demonstration in Charlottesville, there has been an attempt by some to redefine the term “white nationalism” into something innocuous and separate from white supremacism. Here’s what the terms mean. Their definitions haven’t changed.
Remembering Ruby Ridge A rare exclusive interview with E. Michael Kahoe, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for obstruction of justice after Ruby Ridge E. Michael Kahoe
White Supremacy
A racist ideology that believes the white race is superior and should ultimately control all other races. Proponents of white supremacy often attempt to back up their beliefs with pseudoscience that reaffirms the idea that different races are genetically disposed to particular traits or behavior. White supremacists also believe that white people should be the primary beneficiaries of political, economic and social policies.
White Nationalism
A version of white separatism that believes in a country “built by and for white people,” as Mark Potok with the Southern Poverty Law Center told CNN. According to the SPLC website: “White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites. Groups listed in a variety of other categories - Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, and Christian Identity - could also be fairly described as white nationalist. White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies.” The argument that these two terms are somehow different is not only wrong, but despicable. Idaho is too great for hate. Call it out by its right name when you see it.
By Ben Olson, Reader Staff E. Michael Kahoe is the former head of the FBI’s violent crimes section and a 27year veteran of the Bureau. In 1997, Kahoe was sentenced to 18 years in prison for obstruction of justice. It was found that Kahoe destroyed an after-action memo on Ruby Ridge and then lied about it. He spoke to the Reader via telephone last week. His responses have been lightly edited for space. It was a total screw up on the part of the federal government going back a long way. I have a lot of sympathy for (Weaver). ... They trumped that whole thing up with the sawed-off shotgun. It’s horrible what they did, I think. ... I think it started to go wrong when we created BATF. They started looking around for things to do. They came up with this, the sawed-off shotgun stuff. They wanted to get into domestic terrorism. That’s what they needed to get into. They didn’t have any jurisdiction in domestic terrorism. They thought Weaver would be an informant and get them into the Aryan Nations. It didn’t happen and they bailed on it. The poor Marshals got stuck with it and lost a guy. (When I first heard of this) I was in D.C. at our HQ. It was getting close to quitting time. (The “red line” phone rang). It was a fellow named Larry Potts, the assistant director of the FBI at that time. He said, “Do you know anything about a U.S. marshal and a couple other people being killed on top of a mountain in northern Idaho?” I said this is the first I’d heard about it. He said, “Start finding out about it. ... Looks like it’s going to be a big deal.” I got on the phone started calling around. Sure enough, it was a big deal. There were a bunch of things that could’ve been done differently. We never even had to go up that mountain. We could’ve just waited. Randy would’ve come down that mountain
one of these days. ... The plan was, after the BATF thing went away, there was a plan to dismiss the indictment against Randy Weaver - to publicly dismiss it. Get a lot of the information out there on the press. ... I thought hell, this is a pretty good plan. They dismiss indictment, Randy comes down off mountain, they re-indict him, then they arrest him. No big deal. But for some reason, the U.S. attorney said “That would be deceitful, we can’t do that.” That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It just seemed like a tragic loss of life for something that could’ve been handled a bunch of different ways. Soon after Ruby Ridge, there were a couple of internal inquiries. They all ended with, “Nobody did anything wrong.” Of course that’s how they ended. I think Congress jumped into it and said, you can’t do this, you have to take another look. Once again, they said, “Nobody did anything wrong.” Finally, they did something, and this was the first time that I was ever asked about this memo, the after-action memo. And what happened with this was there were two people above me: Larry Potts and Danny Coulson. Both of these guys deferred on anything that had to do with the Rules of Engagement (ROE), which was the big deal. They were the ones who were making the decision about ROE. It came time for the after-action conference, and there was only one thing to be discussed at that and that was. It came time for the after-action conference. And everybody is there, the guys in the field are there waiting for this conference. And I’m there, and the guys who I worked with are there. Now Coulson calls in sick that day. And Potts walks into the meeting and says he’s got another meeting he has to go to and can’t go to this one. I don’t know what other meeting in the FBI is more important that day than Ruby Ridge. Now there’s nothing to discuss. The only people that can talk about the ROE are the two people that are not there. The guy in charge of Ruby Ridge – Gene Glenn, who I think is now passed away. Soon after the thing started, he brought up the ROE. He said, “Are we going to talk about ROE?” I said, “I don’t know anything about ROE. It wasn’t my deal. I wasn’t operational.” We wrote up a memo, which was nonsense. It had to be nonsense because there wasn’t anything to be talked about. The guy that wrote the memo, I sent it back to him and said “There’s nothing in here.” He said, “Of course, it was all nonsense. The two guys that had anything to contribute didn’t show up.” That was the first time that it hit me. I let the memo sit and eventually I threw it in the trash.
That was pretty unorthodox. Particularly on something like this. Something that the people above me were always asking about: “Where’s this memo?” The guy above me was Danny Coulson, which was the guy that bailed on the after-action. The guy above him was Larry Potts – the guy who bailed. What are they going to say? If I put in there what happened – we can’t write this memo because the guys who know about it didn’t show up for the conference. ... I think they were concerned with this ROE stuff, and they didn’t want that to come up. It was well after Ruby Ridge, when they had these internal inquiries to see what the hell happened. At one of these, they asked, “Where’s the memo for the after-action conference?” And once again it was the first time it hit me, I said, “I don’t remember” then I remembered that I threw it away, in the trash. And of course, that was pretty much it. I think they are the people that have to find somebody to blame for this thing. They’re looking for somebody. This memo really gave them that opportunity. Even though it was a big nothing. It didn’t contribute anything to the operation at all. It was just a big nothing. I pled to one count of obstruction of justice and initially thought, “Jesus, it can’t be too much here. If anybody reads this memo they’ll see it’s just nonsense.” But it turned out to be more than I thought. I was sentenced to 18 months in jail. I ended up serving a year and twenty days. ... I don’t want to be painted as a victim or a martyr. I was there. I did it. I’m not a victim, I’m not a martyr. I’m not going to say I am. I never lied. I never deceived anybody in anything. It is what it is. Somebody had to take the fall, that’s why they kept doing these inquiries over and over again. They said, “We gotta find something here. Then all of a sudden, they came up with this memo that I threw away. There are individuals who should’ve been charged, but I’m not going to tell you who. It shouldn’t have stopped at one – that’s all opinion and speculation. I have no real facts to support any of that. (Asked what he would do differently). I think I would’ve taken sick leave that day, too. I would’ve called in with the flu on the day of the after-action conference, too. This whole thing is politicians. Politicians came up with this ATF organization. It was a failure to begin with. I think now they switched it over to the DOJ, it used to be DO treasury. It was a disaster. I think I would’ve called in sick that day.
E. Michael Kahoe is currently working on a book about his experiences with Ruby Ridge. August 17, 2017 /
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