🚀 go-pugleaf

     May 12 Neal Knox Update -- It is most unlikely that the FBI's
release of 3,100 pages of documents, tapes and photos related to
the Oklahoma City bombing will do more than delay Timothy McVeigh's
execution -- probably well beyond the announced one month
postponement.  After all, he's now admitted that horrible crime.

     However, it could result in a wider investigation that goes
far beyond FBI defenders' claims that sloppy record-keeping is the
reason the Justice Department failed to comply with a Federal
Judge's order.

     Michael Tigar, lawyer for convicted co-conspirator Terry
Nichols, told a reporter "you bet your life I think it was
deliberate."

     According to an article in the first version of today's
Washington Post quite a bit of the material not given to McVeigh
and Nichols' defense lawyers concerned the early hunt for "John Doe
No. 2."

     According to some Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiratorialists,
"John Doe No. 2" was a BATF undercover operative who was an active
player in the bombing plan, which was to have been stopped at the
last minute in a dazzling display of Federal law enforcement
competence.

     But there supposedly was a glitch, and the bomb went off
killing 168 innocents -- or, according to one version, 167
innocents plus another conspirator supposedly planting secondary
high explosives around internal pillars of the building.

     I haven't seen the slightest bit of evidence that would
confirm such tales.  But if it were even slightly true, you could
bet the government would do everything they could to cover it up.

     What I do know is that the search for "John Doe No. 2"
suddenly came to a screeching halt, and I know that Federal agents
have engaged in other massive coverups.

     Consider that only last week one of the killers of those four
little black girls in a Birmingham church three decades ago was
convicted -- on the basis of information that the FBI didn't bother
to share with earlier prosecutors.  I'm still wondering why it
wasn't shared.  Could it have been that an FBI informant knew in
advance, or was involved, in that bombing?

     (There was a time, I'm told, that half the people attending a
KKK meeting were government informants.)

     I know that friend Dave Hardy has a new book detailing the
four Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in which he forced FBI to
cough up pertinent but hidden information on Waco.

     I know the BATF has never explained the miraculous failure of
every one of their video and still cameras at the time of the
initial raid -- which just might have shown who started the shooting.

     I know that friend Mike McNulty forced FBI to admit they had
lied for six years about not using any pyrotechnics at Waco, after
he got a peek at the remaining evidence.  And I know that Bill
Johnson, the assistant U.S. Attorney who let Mike look at that
evidence, and warned AG Janet Reno that she wasn't being told the
truth, was the only one the Justice Department prosecuted despite
recommendations of the Texas Rangers.

     And I know that Special Counsel John Danforth took the FBI's
word that standard M-16's were carried at Waco, when pictures of
FBI HRT agents showed them with 14 1/2-inch carbine versions that
produce far more muzzle flash.

     And I know that, unlike a judge faced with conflicting expert
witnesses who allows a jury to hear both sides, Danforth chose to
accept the word of only government experts that the stacatto
flashes at Waco couldn't have been gunflashes.

     That mere handful of the many examples of FBI covering up the
truth is more than enough to cast doubt on the FBI's "explanation"
that the OKC bombing files weren't released only because of a
screwup.

     And it's just one more example of why FBI Director Louis
Freeh's replacement must not be someone with close ties to Federal
law enforcement.

------------------------

     The Senate is still wrangling over the Education bill.
There's an agreement that it won't draw any gun amendments, but
that agreement will hold only if the bill continues to go
forward as at present -- with hundreds of amendments making it more
what the Liberal Democrats want and less like Conservative
Republicans want.

     Right now, even Ted Kennedy likes it, so the Dems are not
going to weight it down with any gun sections -- with the
possible exception of some "minor technical amendments" that Dianne
Feinstein wants to the Gun Free Schools Act.

------------------------

     The battle has begun over President Bush's appointments to
Federal Appellate Courts.  The Democrats have dropped the ancient
facade that they wouldn't challenge court appointments on the
grounds of ideology.

     The Dems' point man on court appointments, Sen. Charles
Schumer, told lefty columnist E.J. Dionne that Democrats are united
because they believe they're fighting "an actual overt attempt to
make the judiciary more ideological."

     Could it be that the President is simply trying to correct the
ideological imbalance on the courts?

-----------------------

     Spanish-speaking immigrants are now the largest minority in
the country, and we gunowners have made no visible effort to inform
these new voters of their rights -- our rights -- under the Second
Amendment.

     Last weekend, by coincidence at the same time President Bush
was reading his radio address in Spanish, webmaster son Chris was
posting the first of a series of brief articles in Spanish.

     The first is a Spanish translation of the Second Amendment
essay that National Public Radio asked me to write and read in 1991
as part of their bicentennial celebration of the Bill of Rights.
It was translated by Jose M. Gomez del Castillio, a Phoenix
attorney and gun rights activist.

     That brief essay touches on the basics of the Second
Amendment: what Thomas Jefferson said about arms and free men, how
the first Senate rejected an effort to reduce an individual right
to "a collective right," and why it is a freedom insurance policy
-- one which we pray will never have to be used to protect our
homes, families and freedoms, but like a homeowners' insurance
policy must not be canceled simply because we don't want our houses
to burn.

     These principles are not taught in citizenship classes.

----------------

     Next Friday, from 2-4 p.m., I'll be doing a live chat on
Shooters.Com from the NRA Exhibit Hall floor in Kansas City.  It
will kick off our new closer relationship with the largest and one
of the oldest internet firearms groups.

     To tune in, and ask questions -- which I hope you will in
advance, so we don't have any "dead air time" -- go to
www.shooters.com and register now.  I hope we'll have an
interesting session talking about what's going on in Washington and
at the NRA convention, and we may even talk about the new guns.

     It will be my 35th consecutive annual meeting.  I never miss
an opportunity to see old friends.

-----------------

     Speaking of NRA, I don't have the hard numbers yet but I'm
told the two bylaws amendments Dr. Bill Davis and I sponsored went
down by 5-1 margins -- about as we expected.

     But almost 20,000 voting members liked the idea of at least
one director elected by and from their states, and prohibiting NRA
contractors from funding NRA election campaigns.  It would take 50-
55,000 votes in most elections, so it's certainly winnable with some
advertising and promotion.

     Also as expected, no one except officer-endorsed Nominating
Committee-blessed candidates were elected to the board.  Two N.C.-
blessed directors weren't re-elected, David Coy and John Milius;
they will exit with two non-N.C.-blessed Directors, Brian Johnson
and David Jones.

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