Last month, Salon's Justin Elliott explored Joe Miller's ties to the Alaska militia, or "patriot" movement.
"It's safe to say that Joe Miller is a friend of patriots," Norm Olson, commander of the Alaska Citizens Militia, told Salon. "His beliefs and platform favor Second Amendment rights as well as the power of nullification when the federal government intrudes into the private lives of Alaskans."
Olson, who lives on the Kenai Peninsula, claims that his group has several hundred members and supporters, adding, "what fuels the militia is fear." The militia's ideology is outlined in a list of 17 "acts of war." The list includes "firearms restrictions or other disarmament," "mandatory medical anything," "federal patrols," "taking control of children under duress or threat," "federalization of law enforcement," and "surrender powers to a corporation or foreign government."
That emphasis on opposition to federal power meshes with Miller's central message: get the federal government out of our lives.
With all the other Joe Miller stories that have popped up over the last month--the numerous cases of hypocrisy highlighting his essential nature as a grifter, the circumstances of him employment and termination from the Fairbanks borough--this one sort of took a back seat. Until now, in the aftermath of his private security detail detaining a journalist. That incident has brought greater scrutiny to the contractors Miller chose--DropZone Security. TPM has a comprehensive overview of the ties William Fulton, owner of DropZone Security, has with the Alaska Citizens Militia.
p>As some local outlets have already reported, Fulton himself is a repeated poster on the Alaska Citizens Militia Google Forum, which can be found here. All of his postings are here....
The ACM was started by Norm Olsen, who the Southern Poverty Law Center reports also started the Michigan Militia, though he was kicked out after touting this theory about the Oklahoma City bombing: "The Japanese government had bombed the federal building there as a return favor for the sarin gas subway attack that he said the U.S. government carried out in Tokyo."
And though Fulton denies being a member of the ACM, Olsen is among those Fulton communicates with on the ACM message board. Writing under the username "bob bob" but signing his posts "DropZone Bill," Fulton has posted 42 times since January, according to Google.
One of those postings TPM quotes particularly pops out:
In this post from October 16, Fulton writes about militia groups communicating with each other:
what I don't agree with is getting involved with what ifs, triggers, internal politics, or communicating tactical information with other groups/units the less technical details we know about each other before the ballon goes up the better that way if one goes down for being stupid or set-up or both, the rest of us are clean. I'm not saying we should hide in the shadows by any means I just think tactical planning should stay within individual groups.
That rings a bell because of something a reader, who got curious about Fulton and DropZone and did some research, sent to me. He found a newsletter from the LoneWolf Resistance [pdf] in which DropZone has a prominent ad. DropZone is also featured in the LoneWolf Resistance Manual Links. What Fulton is writing above, along with the obvious connection to LoneWolf Resistance, suggests that Fulton truly isn't part of the Alaska Citizens Militia, because he's a "lone wolf" adherent. Dave Neiwert wrote about this last year, after the fatal shooting of the Holocaust Memorial security guard by "lone wolf" James Von Brunn. The "lone wolf" concept advocates "leaderless resistance," individuals or small cells that act independently, so they can't be tracked as easily by government.
As [Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark] Potok explains, the "lone wolf" concept was popularized in the late 1980s by an Aryan Nations leader named Louis Beam as an extension of his strategy of "leaderless resistance." One white supremacist, a fellow named Alex Curtis, even went so far as to develop a "point system" for lone wolves....
The strategy was also inspired by at least one "lone wolf" shooter: Joseph Paul Franklin, a racist sniper who in the late 1970s and early 1980s killed as many as 20 people -- mostly mixed-race couples -- on a serial-murder spree, and attempted to assassinate both Vernon Jordan and Larry Flynt. (Franklin was also the inspiration for William Pierce's Hunter, the follow-up novel to The Turner Diaries.)
There has been no dearth of lone wolves in the years since Beam set the strategy for the radical right: Eric Rudolph. Buford Furrow. Benjamin Smith. James Kopp. Jim David Adkisson. And now add Scott Roeder and James von Brunn to the list.
That's quite a trail of "isolated incidents," isn't it?
Lone wolves and small terrorist cells are what the Department of Homeland Security assesses as the "most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States." Fulton advertises with LoneWolf Resistance. The quote TPM featured above suggests it's a philosophy he adheres to. And that's who Joe Miller chose to provide "private security."