OpinionJanuary 28, 1996

Quick, someone rush out and see if Kamiah is still there. As I write this, I'm not so sure the community on the Clearwater will see Sunday. If that sounds nuts, it's because you haven't been warned and I have.

The warning came in the form of yet another colorful letter to the most colorful letters column in the region. I'm sorry to say that is no longer in these pages. The Clearwater Progress, published in Kamiah, now attracts letters not even the writers of "Saturday Night Live," let alone cherished Tribune readers, could come up with on their best day.

The Jan. 17 edition had at least three, including the warning from Chad R. Erickson that Kamiah was about to be, well, zapped. But let's let Erickson, father of the wildly unpopular "Constitutional Rule Initiative," tell it in his own words.

"Through a conference with patriots in Montana," Erickson writes, "one being an ex-government agent with ties intact, we have learned that federal agencies are planning a strike against the patriots in the Kamiah, Idaho, area. Reportedly it will involve helicopter-borne microwave weapons that fry households without photogenic smoke and flame."

Talk about being nuked. After seeing what my kitchen microwave does to a bag of Orville Redenbacher's finest, I can tell you I haven't set foot in Kamiah since.

Erickson goes on to say that "some feel that armed confrontation is justified, and many want to hide." I don't know about Erickson, but I'm with the latter group. I have no idea how to fight those big microwaves in the sky, other than to wrap myself in aluminum foil. I understand that plays hell with the ovens at any rate.

But enough of just one letter. As I said, the Progress serves a multi-course feast. Immediately preceding Erickson's warning, Flora Teachman offers some equally alarming news about last year's bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. (Teachman used to send her letters to the Tribune as well, but I'm afraid I queered that deal when I told her we wouldn't publish any more under the pseudonym she had been using without our knowledge, Eros Hunt. Sorry, readers.)

Anyway, Teachman says that as an artist "with at least 30 portraits to my credit I feel somewhat qualified to compare human facial features." She goes on to say that she took a magnifying glass to a photograph published in an article about the raid on David Koresh's compound at Waco, Texas in Soldier of Fortune magazine. The photo depicted two named men and a third identified only as an "unidentified agent ... who sat in the press sections of court with a burp gun under his trench coat."

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After closely examining that unidentified agent, Teachman says she trained her glass on a photo appearing in Parade magazine, distributed in the Sunday Lewiston Tribune, of Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh is the man alleged to have planted the bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City last year. And even though the "unidentified agent" portrayed in the first picture was seen from the right, and McVeigh from the left, Teachman reached a stunning conclusion.

"Either Timothy McVeigh is the unidentified BATF agent or he's an identical twin," she writes. BATF is the by-now well-known acronym for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is of course working hand in glove with the FBI, the BLM, the IRS, the EPA, the PDQ, the SAT and the U.N. to put us all in detention camps run by the evil One World Government.

But I digress. Teachman doesn't, setting the stage as follows:

"Try this plot: McVeigh, BATF agent, contacts Terry Nichols through former military buddies, infiltrates militia group, then sets up the Ryder van scenario as a red herring to draw attention from the artist' who actually placed charges at strategic points in the federal building and to point the finger at dangerous militia groups.' McVeigh knows he's safe and Nichols will be the Lee Harvey Oswald of JFK fame. Militias will be blamed and this country's sheep will go bleating off behind Janet Reno to defame any patriotic groups who uphold the U.S. Constitution.

"Maybe the militias (Reno could hope) would rise up against a government out of control so martial law could be declared!"

Scared yet? If not, there's yet another letter, a call to arms from six people who identify themselves as Freemen Patriots.

"Dear people," it says, "you are witnessing the beginning of a new Revolution! The battle cry has been lifted up! The warriors are assembling! We have not come to hide, we have come to fight for the Constitution and fight we will! If any of you newcomers have come here to hide, be advised, you are hiding on the front lines!"

As I said, after all this enlightenment, I'm not sure whether Kamiah still exists. But if it does, I'd drive through quickly on my next trip if I were you.

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