The Posse Rides Again
AIkire, Tom G.
The Posse Rides Again TOM G. ALKIRE During the summer of 1974, an Internal Revenue Service agent was assaulted and briefly held prisoner in a Wisconsin city while Posse Comitatus members called...
...They regard the income tax one example of government infringement on individual rights...
...That about sums it up...
...Action means writing letters, issuing indictments, and making arrests...
...If the sheriff knows of a crime and doesn't act, then that makes him an accessory to the crime...
...During the same summer when the Wisconsin Posse assaulted the IRS agent, some members also formed a "Christian Citizens Grand Jury" in Spooner, Wisconsin, which issued "indictments" against forty-three state and local officials, including Governor Patrick J. Lucey, for letting the state's department of natural resources become too powerful...
...Just as its members believe government should be on a county basis, so their own organization consists of independent county chapters...
...Early in 1975, the Snohomish County, Washington, Posse sponsored a two-day conference at the Sea-Tac Holiday Inn south of Seattle...
...Beach has also established the Citizens' Law Enforcement and Research Committee, which publishes the official Posse manual...
...Our republic has already gone down the drain," he said at a Posse gathering in Stockton, California...
...In Oregon during May 1975, the Posse took action on land-use planning...
...it has made little headway in the South, where the Ku Klux Klan serves a similar function...
...The issues that prickle Posse members most are gun-control legislation, land-use planning, licenses of all kinds, income taxes, "left-wing agitators," the United Nations, and encroachments on private property...
...Despite this official retraction, copies of the original version continue to be distributed by some Posse chapters...
...We try to find out who the members are, if any laws are being broken, and if there's any potential threat to the community," said John O'Rourke, FBI agent in charge in Oregon...
...The group's leader, Thomas F. Stockheimer, unsuccessful American Party candidate for the state legislature, was arrested and released on bail...
...He cited the concluding paragraph of the official Posse manual, which reads: "In some instances of record the law provides for the following prosecution of officials of government who commit criminal acts or who violate their oath of office...
...The habit of some Posse members of wearing hol-stered revolvers in public has caused law-enforcement officers to keep a close eye on this militant group...
...Posse membership often overlaps with the National States Rights Party, the Sons of Liberty, the American Party, the National Alliance to Keep and Bear Arms, and George Wallace supporters...
...requirements...
...A policeman who was present at Sampson's trial had this to say about the Posse: "They don't have I.Q...
...Although Posse Comitatus chapters are autonomous county-based units, they do owe their existence to the pioneering efforts of their founder, Mike Beach, who is the nearest thing to a national Posse leader...
...Surveillance of Posse action is difficult, however, because the Posse has no centralized structure or command...
...As the Lane County, Oregon, Posse leader, Dean Kennedy, says, "The people can form a posse with or without the sheriff's consent...
...of kiddie matinee Westerns and the fascism of the National States Rights Party, and you have it: the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus...
...The Posse Rides Again TOM G. ALKIRE During the summer of 1974, an Internal Revenue Service agent was assaulted and briefly held prisoner in a Wisconsin city while Posse Comitatus members called him a traitor for enforcing income tax laws...
...They photographed the agent and asked him to sign a "public service questionnaire...
...The major speaker was Colonel Arch Roberts, former aide to General Edwin Walker, a leading voice on the radical Right...
...If you are indicted for treason or other charges by the citizen grand jury, you will be tried on the appropriate charge...
...Most Posse members tend to be blue-collar workers...
...He claims the organization has 500,000 members in forty-nine states, but FBI sources put the group's number at closer to 10,000...
...He continues to sell charters for $21 and individual Posse badges for $6.50...
...Posse Comitatus means, in Latin, the power of the county...
...A few pantywaists felt that was going a little too strong," he said...
...The Posse is strongest in the Midwest and West...
...A Newsweek article quoted David Duke, national director of the KKK, as saying, "We work with the posses wherever we can...
...we will subpoena you before a citizen grand jury...
...If one person has the right to make a citizen's arrest, then two or more persons can also make an arrest," he says...
...They believe that their individual rights are threatened, that they are being forced to subsidize welfare chiselers, and that the country is run by an interlocking conspiracy of international bankers, communists, and government dupes...
...Sampson is now a self-appointed sheriff and lay preacher...
...The county has always been, and remains, the "true" seat of government, the manual states...
...The sheriff can mobilize all able-bodied men into his posse, and according to the manual, "others can volunteer...
...Herb Breed, head of the Klamath County Posse, sent a letter to State Senator Ted Hallock and other legislators advising them to repeal the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) Act of 1973...
...We believe in the rule of law," says Kennedy...
...Unlike the posses of the Old West which chased horse thieves, this modern-day unofficial posse chases after government officials who, in their view, are subverting the law...
...When Judge Allen Kinney refused to take action on their charges, they indicted him, too...
...Strains of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, and racism color Posse literature and conversation...
...Beach's right-wing ties go back to the 1930s, when he was a member of William Dudley Pelley's pro-Nazi Silver Shirts...
...Hallock asked authorities to investigate the letter because he considered it a threat to his life...
...Across the Midwest and the West, Posse Comitatus members are busy upholding the Constitution, they say...
...The county sheriff is the only legal law-enforcement officer...
...By definition, the Posse is a locally based group...
...And they're pissed...
...Parasites have come in and destroyed our republican form of government...
...The letter read in part, "if you vote to fund Tom G. Alkire is a free-lance writer in Eugene, Oregon...
...A few months later, at a public hearing on land-use planning, he was arrested for using Mace against security guards...
...they don't test for mental stability, and they are armed...
...The republican form of government that Beach and other Posse members believe in is outlined in the Posse manual...
...That makes them dangerous...
...An editorial in the Des Moines Register observed, "To the political philosophy of the John Birch Society, add the gunplay (and I.Q...
...According to Beach, the country has fallen prey to subversive elements...
...In Petaluma, California, a Posse leader, Howard G. Sampson, was found guilty of operating his paving contracting business without the necessary licenses...
...the LCDC...
...Beach, seventy-two, a retired laundry salesman, founded the first Posse Comitatus in 1968...
...Roberts told the Posse members that Senator Henry Jackson is a "trained agent of the Conspiracy" which plans to lead the nation into a Federal "dictatorship...
...Later, Stockheimer was convicted of assaulting the IRS agent and sentenced to sixty days in jail...
...He shall be removed by the Posse to the most populated intersection of streets in the township and at high noon be hanged by the neck, the body remaining until sundown as an example to those who would subvert the law.' " That passage has since been deleted from the manual, said the Posse's founder, Mike Beach of Portland, Oregon...
...Their avowed purpose is to protect citizens from government harassment...
...After investigating Hallock's charge, Klamath County district attorney James Spindor told Hallock that the letter itself was not sufficient grounds for filing a criminal complaint against the Posse...
Vol. 40 • October 1976 • No. 10
