The outrage at intelligence agencies calling out right wing extremism were spot on, even if the reports themselves were a bit generic and bland. Information about the Tiller assassin indicates he wasn’t a single issue fanatic:
“He told me about a lot of conspiracy stuff and showed me how to take the magnetic strip out of a five-dollar bill,” Leach said. “He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money.”
Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the “Freemen” movement.
“Freemen” was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.
In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff’s deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.
If there’s any good to come of this, hopefully it’ll be that people will realize this isn’t some sort of game and pull back before the body count rises. Certainly after Oklahoma City that happened. One indicator of how things will go, I believe, will be if Roeder is regarded as a kook or a martyr by the far right. If the former, this event might just be an anomoly. If the latter, get ready for more of the same.
