http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/some-neighborhood-watch-fordes-minut

Remember how all those right-wing pundits proclaimed the Minutemen as being just like a neighborhood watch? Michelle Malkin called it "the mother of all neighborhood watches." Lou Dobbs labeled it "this country's biggest neighborhood watch program". Bill O'Reilly declared: "Talking Points applauds the Minutemen. They are in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups."

Boy, that sure is some neighborhood watch:

Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.

"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.

Here is a recording of the 911 call made by the victim who survived -- the mother of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, who was shot "two or three times" while her mother lay nearby. As she's on the phone, you can hear the killers return and open fire on her again, and hear her return fire:

[Courtesy Arizona Star]

The accused shooter, Jason Eugene Bush, was charged Friday in the 1997 murder of a sleeping, homeless Hispanic man in Wenatchee, Wash.

"Bush has had long-standing ties to the Aryan Nations," Sgt. John Kruse of the Wenatchee police wrote in a statement filed in Chelan County Superior Court.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department arrested Forde, Bush and Arivaca resident Albert Robert Gaxiola on Friday and accused them of killing Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter Brisenia, 9, during a home invasion. Flores' wife was injured during the attack and returned fire, wounding Bush, investigators said.

Forde, 41, who has lived primarily in Everett, Wash., was the executive director of Minutemen American Defense, and she had named Bush the "operations director" for the group's border-watch activities along the Arizona-Mexico border.

... Forde's brother, Metzger, worked for the organization at its inception years ago, but he quit, he said, "when it started to get too deep."

He and other family members grew suspicious of Forde and started talking to police about her after her husband was shot in their Everett home in December.

That's why, Metzger said, he had an audio recorder running when she visited his Northern California home in early May.

"She sat right here on my couch and told me that she was going to start an underground militia. This militia was going to start robbing drug-cartel dealers — rob them and steal their money or drugs," Metzger said.

... Investigators think the May 30 robbery was intended to be the first in a series of such attacks intended to fund the border-watch group and a new venture, O'Connor said. Forde planned on starting a business of helping free kidnap victims in other countries, he said.

She also spoke of the venture to her brother, he said.

"She was telling me that they were going to start some sort of militia that was going to go overseas and aid and abet those who are kidnapped. She said she was going to go to Syria," he said.

I warned some time back that this was precisely the arc of flight that the Minuteman movement was taking:

This is, after all, an organization that has indicated it intends to expand its purview. And the concept of the Minutemen as a right-wing citizen vigilante force has uses well beyond even border patrols. These endorsements may wind up giving the Minutemen more than their 15 seconds of fame -- and that could be a problem for many years to come.

The problem, as always, is its inherent vigilantism:

The reality-based picture of the Minutemen that's emerging is not of a friendly "neighborhood watch" for the border, but of a chaotic collection of hatemongers who seem intent on a kind of populist mob rule fueled by angry paranoia. It becomes a cover not for law and order, but for the ugliest kind of brutal authoritarianism.

That, in fact, is the face that vigilantism has always revealed eventually, even in Montana. As the history of the vigilantes revealed later, their early "victories" over predators like Henry Plummer soon gave way to a vicious lawlessness in which people were summarily hanged not just for horse theft but for drunken misbehavior or breaking out of a jail.

... You see, vigilantism always claims to be about law and order and preserving "traditional values." It is always, in the end, about the brutal imposition of mob rule without regard to the humanity of its targets. The proof, in the end, lies in the strange fruit it inevitably produces.

Tags: CNN, drug cartel, Minutemen, Shawna Forde

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/some-neighborhood-watch-fordes-minut

Records show suspect in Arizona, Washington murders not who he claimed to be

By Scott North and Elaine Helm

Herald Writers

He called himself "Gunny" and reportedly told his pals in the Minutemen American Defense border-watch group that he was a decorated Special Forces veteran who'd survived combat in Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Instead, there is no record that Jason Eugene Bush served in the military as he claims, spokesmen at the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Court records reveal Bush, 34, to be a sometimes-violent ex convict who spent much of his teens and early 20s behind bars, and once told the court he had long-standing problems with debilitating mental illness.

Until his arrest last week on multiple murder charges, Bush was "operations director" for the anti-immigration group directed by Shawna Forde, 41, of Everett.

On the now defunct Web page for the group Forde ran, Bush -- or "Gunny" as former members say he was known -- was introduced as someone who had served six overseas tours and had received the Purple Heart and the Silver Star.

In a January 1998 declaration in Chelan County Superior Court, Bush said he'd been treated for bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia since the mid-1980s, when he was 12. At the time, Bush said he worried that mental problems would hinder his ability to assist in his own defense in a stolen property case.

"For most of my life since the age of eleven or twelve, I have had an experience of being outside myself, of watching another person take over my body," Bush said in a 1998 court declaration. "I start going haywire and I don't know what I'm doing or why. It's like being in a daze. I don't know why it happens and it scares me. It's like someone else crawls under my skin. It is very frustrating."

Bush was examined by mental health experts 11 years ago, and found competent to stand trial. He wound up serving nearly five years in prison for a variety of charges, including auto theft and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Bush now finds himself jailed in Arizona along with Forde and another man, all charged with first-degree murder in connection with a May 30 home invasion.

The trio are accused of having passed themselves off as law enforcement officers to force their way into the home of an Arivaca, Ariz., man they suspected of drug trafficking.

The intruders, all dressed in camouflage, and one of them with his face painted black, fatally shot Raul Flores, 29, wounded Flores' wife, and killed the couple's 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia.

Bush also is charged with second-degree murder for a 1997 stabbing death of a Wenatchee man. He allegedly was connected to the killing earlier this year based on genetic tests on evidence collected nearly a dozen years ago.

Wenatchee police say they've found Bush has "long-standing" connections to white supremacists, including people associated with Aryan Nations, according to court papers.

The nickname "Gunny" often is applied to people who have earned the rank of gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps.

There are no service records matching Bush's name and date of birth, Marine Corps spokesman 1st Lt. Brian Block said at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Army spokesman Richard McNorton also said he found no matches for Bush in Army personnel records.

Chuck Stonex of Alamagordo, N.M., a Minuteman who earlier supported Forde but has since broken ties, said he only met the man who called himself "Gunny" a couple of times.

Once was May 30, Stonex said, when Forde asked him to provide first aid to a minor gunshot wound on Bush's calf. Forde and Bush misled him about how the wound was received, he said.

Stonex said he met Bush not long after at a Tucson, Ariz., restaurant. He said Bush showed him what appeared to be military paperwork documenting Special Forces training as well as medals from combat operations.

"He claimed that he got hit twice; once in Iraq and once in Somalia," Stonex said.

Stonex described himself as a veteran of combat in Vietnam.

Bush's deception about prior military service "makes a mockery of us veterans, I think," Stonex said Monday. "It is really, really poor taste. It is like impersonating a priest."

Court papers show that Bush has been in trouble with the law since 15, when he was prosecuted for felony property crimes in northern Idaho. He was convicted in Kansas in 1994 for burglary as well as assault on a female corrections officer and attempted escape, documents show.

His Washington state criminal history includes juvenile and adult convictions for property crimes and assault, including a March 1998 beating of another inmate at the Chelan County jail. The victim in that case suffered broken bones in the face. The victim believed the attack occurred because of his sexual orientation, but Bush denied that motive, court papers show.

Before he went to prison in the late 1990s, Bush had worked as a welder, according to court papers.

It is unclear when Bush met Forde. Arizona police allege that he participated in a plan orchestrated by Forde to raise money for their group through crime. In addition to the Arizona killings, police in Arizona, California and Washington are investigating the pair for potential connections to robberies and other violent acts.

When he was introduced on Forde's Web page not long ago, Bush promised to have an impact on border-area crime, eschewing "beer, binoculars and lawn chairs" for "boots on the ground, recon, surveillance and ACTION."

He was quoted at the time: "My goal is to bring the full force of our collective abilities down on the bad guys. This will make waves."

Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com