After returning from a synagogue in October 1998, 52-year-old Dr. Barnett Slepian walked into his kitchen and began cooking soup. When he moved in front of his kitchen window, a single bullet from a high-power rifle tore through his body. Slepian, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider, died shortly thereafter.
Suspected triggerman and anti-abortion activist James Charles Kopp, 46, allegedly fired the fatal shot from a wooded area behind Slepian’s home in upper New York. Kopp is a domestic terrorist, a member of what former FBI director Louis Freeh called “special interest extremists.” Kopp was apprehended in France and is waiting extradition following the United States’ pledge not to seek the death penalty.
“There are extremists in this country just as there are everywhere else in the world,” said George Bolds, spokesman for the Memphis FBI.
The FBI views domestic terrorism as the unlawful use or threat of use of violence by a person or group operating entirely in the United States without help from foreign entities with the purpose of intimidating the government or its citizens to further its political or social views.
In a speech before the Senate Appropriations Committee in May, Freeh identified three distinct groups of domestic terrorists: special interest extremists, right-wing extremists and left-wing extremists.
“Special interest extremists continue to conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including the public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to their causes,” Freeh said. “These groups occupy the extreme fringes of animal rights, pro-life, environmental, anti-nuclear and other political and social movements.”
Kopp is just one member of a growing number of militant anti-abortion activists who have resorted to bombings and assassinations in their attempt to end abortion.
In September, Clayton Lee Waagner, a vehement opponent of legalized abortion and self-proclaimed abortion terrorist, was spotted in and around Memphis after escaping from a federal prison in Illinois.
Eric Robert Rudolph, charged with clinic bombings in Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Ga., and the Centennial Park bombing during the 1996 Olympics, and Waagner both have been linked to the militant Army of God. Bolds described the operations to catch both men as an “ongoing effort” and both remain on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List
After the Birmingham bombing, a letter was sent to news agencies in which the Army of God claimed responsibility for the act.
“The bombing in Birmingham was carried out by the Army of God. Let those who work in the murder mills around the nation be warned once more you will be targeted without quarter you are not immune from retaliation,” the letter said. “Death to the New World Order.”
The Nuremberg Files, a web site affiliated with the Army of God, identifies abortion providers by picture and, more recently, streaming video. The pictures and videos also show people entering and leaving abortion clinics. The site provides users with addresses and phone numbers of abortion providers and even blueprints of various clinics. The site categorizes the doctors as “working,” “wounded” or “fatality.”
According to the FBI, other special interest extremists include the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, or the ELF. The ELF claimed responsibility for a series of 1998 arson fires in Vail, Colo., which caused $12 million in damages. The ELF web site greets you with the image of a burning building and the phrase “Every day is Earth Day.”
Right-wing terrorists often advocate racial superiority and are outspoken critics of what they claim is an intrusive government.
Stephen Jones, the attorney for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, said three reasons exist for the militia or “freemen” movement that gained steam in the early 1990s.
Jones said the federal government’s farm credit policy led to “an absolute incredible hatred and distrust of the government,” especially in the Midwest. Government raids on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and the killing of the wife and son of Randy Weaver on his Ruby Ridge, Idaho, farm convinced some people to protect themselves against what they viewed as an overzealous government.
“It made a difference in their lives,” Jones said.
“Right-wing extremists continue to represent a serious threat,” Freeh said. “Two of the seven planned acts of terrorism prevented in 1999 were potentially large-scale, high-casualty attacks being planned by organized right-wing extremists.”
In one of the foiled attacks members of the Southeastern States Alliance, a group of militias from Florida, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia which combined forces, planned to steal weapons from National Guard armories and attack power supplies and federal law enforcement officers. According to the FBI, the plotters’ goal was to cause the federal government to declare martial law, an act the group hoped would lead to “a violent overthrow of the American government by the American people.”
Several media outlets have reported that right-wing extremists could be responsible for the recent anthrax mailings.
“It certainly is possible, but no one has clear knowledge of who is responsible,” Bolds said.
Jones believes the movement is on the wane and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that fights hate, intolerance and discrimination, 194 “patriot” groups were active in 2000, down from 858 in 1996. But when asked if there were others like McVeigh, Jones said, “Yes, they are still out there.”
According to the FBI, left-wing extremist groups consist mainly of people who protest global capitalism and imperialism. Freeh characterized these groups of extremists as “extremist socialist groups” and said they were responsible for much of the damage during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
CNN’s Mike Boettcher, FBI agent James Ingram and Linda Slater, an investigative journalist from Little Rock, will discuss international and domestic terrorist threats and how the media covers them at 5:30 tonight in room 100 of the Meeman Journalism Building.
