05/18/10 – James Bovard – The Scott Horton Show

It's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
I will mention to you, we're still trying to raise money for our quarterly fund drive at Antiwar.com.
So, if you have any and you appreciate what you hear on this show and what you read at Antiwar.com, you know, check out Antiwar.com slash donate, please.
All right, now, next guest on the show is my friend, the great James Bovard.
His most important and best book that I know of, and he's written a bunch of books, but the crown jewel, the magnum opus is Attention Deficit Democracy.
It's awesome.
You've got to read it.
You've got to read it.
It's so good.
Welcome back to the show, Jim.
How are you?
Hey, doing good, Scott.
Thanks for your kind words in the book.
Well, you know, it really is great.
I wish I had more time to say more good things about it.
And, you know, everybody, you should know, Jim, he wrote Freedom in Chains and Feeling Your Pain and the Fair Trade Fraud and the Bush Betrayal and Terrorism and Tyranny and on and on and on.
He's got the best essays in the world at the Future Freedom Foundation.
That's FFF.org.
And Jim, you know, after all this time and all this confusion, it turns out that it wasn't Richard Guthrie and it wasn't Michael Brescia.
In fact, it wasn't even Rachel Maddow.
You, James Bovard, are John Doe number two, the guy that helped McVeigh blow up that building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Well, yeah, some people seem to think that, you know, it just you know, it just makes it hard for me to keep my good name clean.
Yeah, well, I would think so, with one hundred and sixty eight and a half dead there, one pregnant woman at least.
Well, you know, that's why I have trouble sleeping.
Yeah.
Well, OK.
So so what's the point here?
You really did get blamed for the Oklahoma City bombing in a way, didn't you?
Well, it was fascinating.
There was a book review in the Los Angeles Times in early 1999 after Freedom in Chains came out that was just so so angry as far as the gist of my thinking.
And I've always said that the that the folks who did the Oklahoma City bombing deserve the death penalty.
I mean, it was a horrendous crime.
There was no excuse for it.
And I've never offered any excuses for it.
And yet there were some there were some people who felt because of things I wrote about Waco and Ruby Ridge and about people's right to stand up against government abuses, that I was, you know, a co-conspirator with Timothy McVeigh.
Well, we just saw last month, you know, the reason I throw Rachel Maddow in there is because she would have us believe that everyone in this entire society to the right of her are all John Doe number two, which makes her a far bigger terrorist than any of us, if you ask me.
But the entire, you know, Democratic Party left, at least climbed on board for this thing, including Bill Clinton, wrote an essay for The New York Times blaming you, me and everybody for the Oklahoma bombing, except his own administration.
Well, there were just so many levels of fraud on this.
And it was it was fascinating to see how how the folks like Bill Clinton were playing the demagogue years and years later.
And it's it's almost well, to see how folks like like Clinton totally separate Waco and any culpability, any personal culpability he has for being the person in charge when the FBI tanks help bring that building down on top of the people inside.
Somehow that's a non-event.
I mean, it's something which he throws in and he he had practically a parenthetical mention of that in his New York Times piece in which he was, you know, bashing the people's people being paranoid of government violence.
How about that?
Maybe that's, you know, you know, people are supposed to think, well, the government, even when the SWAT team is smashing down their front door at 5 a.m.
Right.
Well, you know, it's funny in the last year, maybe the last two years of the Bush administration, he admitted in a deposition with Judicial Watch that he ordered the attack, that Reno and them came to him.
And of course, we know, don't we, Jim, the rule of law and everything as it controls the actions of government in this country, that Janet Reno, the attorney general, has no authority whatsoever over the Delta Force, the Army's combat applications group.
Those guys are the president's private army.
And only Bill Clinton could have ordered them to attack the Branch Davidians, as it is a proven fact they did on April 19th, 1993.
And yet Clinton is treated, still treated by the mainstream media as if he was a victim of the Oklahoma City bombing.
And yet to see how to see how Bill Clinton exploited the Oklahoma City bombing, it was very similar to how George W. Bush exploited 9-11.
I mean, both of them raced to put government on a pedestal afterwards and to make people angry at any criticism of government power.
Well, you know, in The Secret Life of Bill Clinton by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, it begins with and this was multiple reports.
It's not just Pritchard.
This was ABC and CBS and whoever all was there on the plane with Bill Clinton right after he got re-inaugurated.
And he said, quote, the Oklahoma City bombing saved my presidency.
And he went on to say that all the people rallied around the country, meaning him, our head of state.
Yeah, he just thought this was great.
In fact, I'll go ahead and throw in one more thing for your comment, too.
And I'm surprised that you had missed this.
I know it would have ended up in your article here at FFF.org.
But Bill Clinton just told Foreign Policy magazine two months ago in an interview that, quote, terror means killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority.
End quote.
Yeah, that is a wonderful line.
It's interesting going back to 2002, I was writing about the perverse definition of terrorism.
I dealt with that at fair length in Terrorism and Tyranny back in 2003.
Clinton's statement was one of the best ever as far as that.
And it was really great that Antiwar.com highlighted that.
I think that's the kind of thing that people get from Antiwar.com they probably don't get from any place else.
And that's one of the reasons, that's part of what makes Antiwar.com so special.
But that's a magnificent quote.
Yep, I should have had that in my article, and I didn't.
Well, that's all right.
But you know what's funny, and thanks for your kind words about antiwar on behalf of everybody there.
But you know, it's funny to me because if terrorism, or terror, which I think he meant terrorism, means killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority, then that makes the Oklahoma bombing not terrorism after all.
Because we all know that the Aryan Republican Army plot to blow up that building was riddled with government informants in and out, ATF, FBI, perhaps even CIA.
And if it was a government operation, then it's not terrorism, Jim.
How much evidence is there that it was a government operation?
Oh, I think there's plenty now.
Well, not necessarily that it was a government operation from the get-go, but at least that the participants in it were a bunch of informants, undercover cops, flip states witnesses, and that there was probably more prior knowledge about the upcoming Oklahoma bombing than there was about the upcoming 9-11 attack back in 2001.
Yeah, is there any book or...
And a lot of this is, in fact, I'll send you the link.
I have a collection of court files from Jesse Trenadue, whose brother was murdered in a case of mistaken identity.
They thought he was Richard Guthrie that I mentioned at the top of the show there.
And so they murdered him in his cell, thinking he was John Doe, too.
And well, his brother's a lawyer and has sued the government under Freedom of Information Act.
File after file after file from the Secret Service timeline that has them describing the two men getting out of the truck, not one, the edited videotapes that show everything but the truck driving up and exploding, and all kinds of evidence, documents by Andre Strassmeier, the undercover agent provocateur, and the Aryan Republican bank robbery ring, et cetera, et cetera.
And so, yeah, I mean, this is actually, the reason this is especially a pet peeve of mine is because not only did they basically try to make it seem as though the Branch Davidians had done the Oklahoma bombing, or in some other metaphysical way, it had justified what they'd done at Waco after the fact.
But in fact, there was a giant, massive cover-up, probably the biggest cover-up in American history up until that point anyway, about what really happened there.
And they literally had Dan Rather tell the world that there is no John Doe II, go back to your O.J.
Simpson trial, and the world bought it, or at least the American people bought it.
Well, you know, I'm surprised the Washington Post hasn't put this on their front page.
I'm not.
But I sure would like to see a Jim Bovar treatment, although I understand it's not exactly timely anymore.
Well, no, this is something which I have not followed for a long time.
I've been chasing other rabbits, but I'm glad that you've kept an eye on it.
It sounds like you've got some fascinating stuff on this material.
It was fascinating how the Clinton administration played the Waco card in the summer 1995 hearings, when Congress finally had some hearings on the Waco abuses.
And they were just trying to smear the motives of anybody who doubted law enforcement.
During those hearings, Charles Schumer was way out there with the sarcasm and sneering, and how could anybody doubt the FBI or the ATF or whatever?
And most of the GOP just turned and ran.
Yeah.
Indeed, they did.
Well, I'll tell you what, I'll give you $70,000 if you'll ghostwrite my book for me.
Well, you know, a dollar a word, you know, yeah, you know, I mean, let me see, what could that be referring to?
Yeah, as I mentioned, as I posted a note in the blog recently, I've got a lawsuit against the Barr 2008 presidential campaign, because those folks contracted for a ghostwritten book for Barr, which they liked and which they published, but they've not paid the large majority what they owe on that.
So that's getting some attention, and it's going to get some more attention, because Mr. Barr is the keynote speaker at the Libertarian National Convention two Saturdays from now.
That's okay, nobody's going to show up for that anyway.
Really?
Well, I can't imagine why they would.
I mean, all of the libertarian movement has nothing to do with the Libertarian Party anymore.
I mean, I don't know why they would.
But you know, the reason I decided to bring that up really is because when you mentioned the Waco hearings, it reminded me that Bob Barr really does represent a hell of a lot of wasted potential, doesn't he?
He really was one of the few who stood up for the Branch Davidians at all during those hearings.
Well, you know, I'm not sure I'd say that he stood up for the Branch Davidians.
I would say that he made some excellent challenges to the ATF, I think also to the FBI.
Barr had worked as a U.S. attorney in northern Georgia, and I think he was, I think he'd seen enough of the FBI operations up close that he was not overly enamored of them.
And he was a very good prosecutor-type questioner, whereas most of the GOP folks sat there and mumbled about how much they loved law enforcement.
There were some other folks, John Shattuck did some good stuff, there was a guy, Micah from Florida was good.
But most of them didn't do very well at all, but you know, there were a handful of things like that.
Barr was very good at some of the Second Amendment stuff in the late 1990s.
Well, you know, the best clip out of Waco, the Rules of Engagement of Barr is him getting the head of the ATF to admit that a flashbang grenade is a grenade, contra Charles Schumer.
This thing is designed to help kill the suspect to protect the life of the law enforcement officer.
And he has the guy read, isn't this a destructive, lethal device under U.S. code section ABCDFG?
And the ATF guy says, yeah.
And of course, Jim, this is the same grenade that they threw at that seven-year-old little girl that they then shot a moment later in Detroit the other night.
This is standard Waco raid tactics for all of us now.
Well, and it's amazing to see how things that were taken as an aberration in the 1980s have now become standard procedure.
And it's good there's some controversy over the 70-year-old girl and her killing in Detroit.
But let's see if that sticks.
I've been amazed to see how the cops around here in Maryland, Prince George's police, have gotten away with their murder time and again, and how they've, you know, sometimes killing dogs, sometimes killing humans.
But the cops never seem to have any liability and never any personal liability, never any criminal liability.
Right.
Well, you know, I'm from Austin and now I'm in L.A. and the same can be said absolutely about both of those places.
I can't say I'm a world traveler.
But in Austin, Texas, if a cop shoots a black guy in the back, I mean, that's basically his defense.
Yeah.
But it was a black guy in the back.
So who cares?
And they go, yeah, you're right.
Who cares?
And they don't even convene a grand jury for murderer cops in Austin, Texas.
They don't even pretend.
Well, none of us have any rights that they are bound to respect.
Well, I'm surprised it's that bad in Austin, because I would think that, you know, isn't there a law school there?
Is there?
Yeah.
Well, hey, there was even a Kevin Spacey movie about it and everything.
OK.
OK.
And it just goes on.
It's the same.
And in fact, all last week, all across this country was, you know, SWAT raid.
Here they are killing dogs.
Judge in California decides that an innocent bystander's shooting was justified.
I mean, that's the headline in The Washington Post.
Yeah.
There was a very nice blog, which you did, I think, at Antiwar.com on that.
I also saw it on your thing on Facebook.
But it was it was really great how you nailed that.
And there was there was a similar headline in The Washington Post today to the effect that a nighttime raid was to blame for the killing of a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan.
And I'm thinking nighttime raid.
OK.
So it was God's fault because the sun went down.
Right.
Yeah.
Just like in Detroit.
In fact, boy, I got to I got to do this.
The original headline.
Well, I don't have in front of me anymore.
If you if anybody looks at my Facebook Facebook dot com slash antiwar radio and page down, you'll find the original headline when I link to the ABC News story about Detroit, which was cops shoot seven year old girl in home raid.
They changed it to seven year old shot in home rain in home raid when officers weapon fired and the whole story now is that people don't kill people.
Guns kill people.
This is this is the same thing which I've seen in a number of cases in which cops killed innocent people.
It's like, you know, you know, it's just hard to understand how that gun went off.
You know.
Well, OK.
His finger was close to the trigger.
But otherwise, hell, it must have been a malfunction.
But, you know, it's easy to imagine.
OK.
The editor at ABC saying, no, no, stop.
Rewrite that headline and make it the gun's fault instead of the cop.
Well, the the thing that would be fascinating to see and perhaps there'll be some lawsuit which could dig out some of the stuff is some of the internal emails back and forth at the there at ABC or wherever it was on on on the rationale for changing that headline.
Yeah, it would be interesting, but I don't think we'll ever know.
Well, probably not.
Kind of like in the 1990s, there's a giant anti-government right wing populist movement.
And yet it's right wing in so many ways.
Can libertarians lead the out of power populist right?
The so-called Tea Party movement?
You know, that's a great question.
And I wish I had a better answer.
I went to a Tea Party rally here in Rockville, Maryland, last month, and it was pretty discouraging because there was there was a speaker who was gung ho for torture and he was upset that Obama is apparently not torturing the U.S. government under Obama says it's not torturing anymore.
And is that making us safe?
No.
And he was gung ho for attacking, you know, for U.S., you know, doing anything necessary to stop Iran.
There was just a lot of nasty demagoguery, right wing demagoguery.
And the thing that struck me was that these, you know, these Tea Partiers, that some of the Tea Partiers are opposed to big government, except when it's warring, wiretapping or waterboarding.
And but flip side is there are other places in this country where I think that the Tea Party movement or folks involved with Tea Parties are more principled and perhaps a lot sharper.
So what is your impression of Rand Paul right now?
I mean, I know he's that he's probably going to win the primary today, from what I hear.
Well, that's what they say.
I'll tell you what.
Here's how I want to answer that.
OK.
I love watching the people on TV just so blatantly frustrated and so ignorant that they don't even know that they're supposed to be hiding this at all.
But they just can't stand the idea that primary challengers apparently are going to do really well all across the country today.
And oh, my God, what in the hell is the matter with you American people that you don't love the government?
You got that.
You don't worship every senator and every congressman that you already have.
Oh, my God.
They're wringing their hands, asking their expert guests.
What does this mean that a challenger could win over the guy that Dick Cheney and the Republican Party establishment want?
Your opinion, expert guest.
And that's the amazing part to me.
And and as you can tell, I'm ducking your Rand Paul question because I don't want to say out loud, Jim.
Oh, OK.
Well, well, you know, Scott, Scott, it's fine to answer off the record.
Well, I'll tell you what.
Once he's actually in office, it's on.
OK.
All right.
Now I'm trying to be polite.
OK.
I mean, it's it's neat to see how how he's made a lot of bad folks really angry.
Yeah.
Well, they keep quoting.
They keep beating him over the head with things he said on my show, which really anybody listens to my show.
Yeah.
And Grayson even brought up, oh, I didn't go on antiwar radio and say we ought to get out of Iraq in their debate last week.
And yet anybody listens to that show, I think, will be as disappointed as I was by the end of it.
I don't know what hippie piece, Nick, they thought they heard in that interview, but I sure didn't meet him.
I didn't know that you were the kingmaker there in Kentucky.
Yes.
Well, I've played a very important role.
Well, you know, by God's finally, you know, I've been waiting for this ever since, you know, for the last four or five years.
Once you've you know, it's nice to see how your visibility is there raised.
Yeah.
Well, you're a nice guy, Jim.
I appreciate it.
No, but as far as whether whether libertarians can get in front of this, I don't know.
I mean, it's it's hard for me to figure out what the libertarian movement is up to these days.
And I think you've got a better sense on that than I do.
There are some great folks in the party there.
Some of the state parties have gone around, talked to them, and very impressed at how the principled, conscientious, well-informed people are.
I'm kind of frustrated how it seems to be going at the national level.
And I'm kind of amazed at one of the candidates for national chair.
But it's like, you know, my goodness.
I don't know.
I mean, it's it's hard to know what libertarians stand for.
I was very surprised that so many libertarians either took a powder on the war in Iraq or or were actively in favor of it or and it seemed like so many, at least beltway libertarians, have either muffled themselves about the issue of torture or either or that or come out and endorse the warrantless wiretapping.
And so if you're not, you know, if you're not in the barricades against torture and you're in favor of illegal wiretaps, what kind of libertarian are you?
Right.
Well, and that's really the problem is any jackass from Glenn Beck to Neil Bortz to whoever can call himself a libertarian.
And then it reflects poorly on the rest of us who actually believe in the non-aggression principle.
And that's just the way it's going to be, I guess.
Well, I mean, but, you know, I would say here that and I need to follow my own advice, obviously.
I don't have the man's class whatsoever.
But the clear answer here is be like Ron Paul, for that matter, be like James Bovar.
You know, what the Libertarian Party, for example, obviously should have done the entire first decade of this century was been the vanguard of the anti-war movement and just done nothing but attack the Republicans from the right on the war issue the whole time and just talk like Ron this whole time.
It would have been they'd be 10 times bigger than they are right now.
The libertarian movement in general would be 10 times bigger.
It's really the same thing I'm about to talk with Bob Murphy about a little bit in that, you know, the libertarians have to be the best on being against the capitalists due to our dedication to actual capitalism, since they are all sick, evil welfare cheats and war profiteers.
You know, we have to be the best against them or else who's going to take us seriously?
You know?
Well, that's a good point.
I'm not sure if the libertarians, libertarian parties should have focused solely on the war in the last 10 years, but that they certainly should have done a lot more on it.
I don't know if they'd be 10 times bigger than they were, but I think it'd be a lot healthier, a lot more, have a lot more vitality.
And I think that they would not be tolerating the edge of, you know, wrapping their arms around somebody who is basically pro-war.
And it's fascinating to me to see that so many people in the Libertarian Party don't understand that they have to be at least as principled as Ron Paul.
It's not necessary to take the same stance as Ron Paul.
It's okay to criticize him.
It's okay to disagree.
But the whole idea of being less principled than Ron Paul and thinking that that's going to be the ticket to success.
I mean, Paul's, you know, Paul's sincerity and his long history, especially since he's been in Congress since 1996, I mean, he's been almost perfectly consistent.
And almost nobody else out there in the political arena comes anywhere close.
Right.
And you know what?
I mean, as far as the LP, I really don't pay that much attention to it, but I know that there's always kind of been this argument about, well, what's our purpose to educate people or to try to get elected?
And everybody always makes this a dichotomy.
But that to me on its face is the dumbest thing in the whole world.
If if trying to get elected means abandoning principle and sounding like some washed up has been, has no chance Republican.
Why in the world wouldn't people just vote for the Republican who actually has a chance of winning the, you know, uh, if the libertarian party wants to do well, it's the same thing for, for Rand Paul.
If the people are wrong, you don't go, oh, when and, and moderate all your positions and become a statist and a warmonger and come out in favor of prison without trial and a bunch of nonsense, you lead the people and you tell them, no, you're wrong.
The fifth and the sixth amendment are in violet.
How do you like that?
And then you lead them.
That's what Ron does.
That's what the libertarian movement needs to be doing.
That's how you win.
That if you want support, it's gotta be real support.
Seriously.
Imagine any average voter showing up at a polling booth and they got Democrat, Republican, and then Republican light who has no chance.
How are they going to vote for him?
Right.
I mean, and you know, it's, it's frustrating as hell to see so many people in the LP thinking that they can be the junior GOP and get, and get lots of money.
And if they just talk about economic issues that there'll be, you know, have that, have that pocketbook appeal.
I mean, it's something that the GOP has done forever, total hypocrite that, but most voters are not well enough informed to recognize much of the GOP's frauds on this.
So it's frustrating.
I mean, I mean, last eight, nine years since nine 11, it was a golden opportunity for the libertarian party.
And, and instead they're in a weaker position now than they were when Harry Brown was a nominee last time.
So, yeah.
All right, Jim.
Well, I'm proving here that it's about impossible for me to stay on schedule and do six interviews in one show.
Six interviews in one show?
So I'm going to have to let you go here.
Oh my, well, Hey Scott, Scott, I hope they're paying you by the interview.
Yeah.
Well I need to start.
And listen, I really appreciate you waiting until after lunch to get drunk today.
Happy hour starts in six minutes.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Jim.
Hey, thanks Scott.
Appreciate that.
All right, everybody.
That is the great James Bovard.
One of the most successful libertarian journalists in world history.
Go and read his 15 books.
We'll be right back with, uh, who's next?
Ooh, Bob Murphy next.
Chaos Radio 95.9.