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Cult Watch Title: '9/11 Conspiracy Theorist' Gunned Down By Security Guards In Pentagon Shoot-Out; Did Right-Wing Extremism Lead To Shooting? An armed man has been shot dead after opening fire on security guards at an entrance to the Pentagon. The gunman, identified as John Patrick Bedell, 36, died in hospital after the guards at the U.S. Defence Department headquarters returned fire. He is said to have harboured resentment against the military and posted online comments expressing doubts about the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York. Two security guards were also injured in the firefight, but their wounds are not said to be life-threatening. Bedell, from California, is said to have walked up to the entrance after getting of a subway train in Arlington, Virginia, before pulling out a handgun and shooting at security guards. In an internet posting, a user going by the name of JPatrickBedell wrote that he was 'determined to see that justice is served' over the death of Marine Colonel James Sabow, who was found dead in the back yard of his California home in 1991. John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting? By Peter Grier Staff writer / March 5, 2010 www.csmonitor.com/USA/201...xtremism-lead-to-shooting John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as the gunman in the Pentagon shooting on Thursday, appears to have been a right-wing extremist with virulent antigovernment feelings. If so, that would make the Pentagon shooting the second violent extremist attack on a federal building within the past month. On Feb. 18, Joseph Stack flew a small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. Mr. Stack left behind a disjointed screed in which, among other things, he expressed his hatred of the government. (For more on this incident, click here.) Details of Mr. Bedell’s case are still emerging. But writings by someone with his same name and birth date, posted on the Internet, express ill will toward the government and the armed forces and question whether Washington itself might have been behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. However, law enforcement officials have yet to publicly state their theories as to Bedell’s motives. “I have no idea what his intentions were,” said the chief of Pentagon police, Richard Keevill, in a Friday press conference. According to Mr. Keevill, Bedell was a California native who slowly made his way to Washington by car over the past several weeks. At about 6:40 p.m. on Thursday, Bedell, dressed in a business suit, approached an entrance to the Pentagon that is linked to the Washington’s Metro system. Asked for identification, he pulled out a semiautomatic weapon and opened fire. At that time of day, that particular Pentagon entrance is teeming with people, as it is a main connection with both subway and buses and with the building’s vast commuter parking lots. Because of this, it is one of the most fortified points of a fortified building. Bedell would have had to make his way past several lines of security to reach the Pentagon interior. He did not get far. Two officers immediately returned fire, with a third running to their assistance. Bedell was fatally wounded in the exchange. Two officers were wounded but have since been released from the hospital. “He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun, and started shooting” at point-blank range,” Pentagon police chief Keevill said. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.” According to the Associated Press, an Internet posting made by someone using the name JpatrickBedell expressed a determination to see justice served in the case of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in his California home in 1991. Authorities have ruled this case a suicide, but it has become a cause célèbre among extremists who consider that ruling a coverup by the government. The posting expressed general hatred of Washington and added that exposing the Sabow case would be “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolition,” according to the AP. The Pentagon attack and the destruction at the IRS building in Austin, Texas, come at a time of explosive growth in extremist-group activism across the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such organizations. The number of US extremist paramilitary militias grew from 42 in 2008 to 127 in 2009, according to a just-released SPLC annual report. So-called “Patriot” groups, steeped in antigovernment conspiracy theories, grew from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009 – an increase that the SPLC report judges as “astonishing.”
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
jpatrickbedell also sought to use cannabis as a monetary system, using digital transactions to back it up. James Patrick Bedell based his economic theory on the work of Ludwig von Mises, who supported total economic laissez-faire and unrestricted rights to private property. Ludwig von Mises would greatly influence the Libertarian movement.
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