Outpost of Freedom
August 14, 1995
An Interview with Michael Fortier
The circumstances surrounding this interview will be explained at the end of the interview. It is more important that the words are heard, and heeded.
OPF: Hello. Mike! How are you today?
MF: Well, all things considered, I'm doing all right. How about you?
OPF: Fine! Well, let's get on with it. Okay?
MF: Sure, but first let me say that I am extremely disappointed in what calls itself the patriots in this country.
OPF: I'm curious as to what you mean by that, but let's go back to the beginning. You met Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols while serving in the army. Did you have any common interests with them?
MF: Yes, all three of us were marksmen and enjoyed shooting. We had a friendship that got us into a lot of conversations and, well, they led to our feelings about government. Terry seemed to have most of the information about what was going on at first. But, Tim started collecting information, tapes and videos and things, and sharing it with Terry and I. Even after we got out of the army we stayed in touch, real close with Tim, and Terry came along sometimes. Tim, when he heard about Waco just went bananas. He had this video, Waco, The Big Lie, and he showed it to me and says we gotta do something. He played me some tapes of a radio show by the person who made the video, that was Linda Thompson, the attorney. She said things like "we gotta take out government agents. No questions asked." Tim was really hot over what the government did in Waco.
OPF: What led to the bombing?
MF: Well, I can't say a whole lot, but what I've said I guess I can say. We heard lots of tapes and saw videos and read things. There is this guy with a radio station in Arizona, Bill Cooper. He keeps calling people "sheeple" and says that they ain't doing anything to change things. Well, we got to thinking that things need to change. This guy from - Mark from Michigan talks about all of this stuff we gotta do. He said, last year, that Operation Agile Provider was going to be the beginning of them taking our guns. And those guys from Montana --twice now they have called the militia out. There was that thing where they were going to take the guns from the people in Aurora, Illinois and then when the MJTF was going into Catron County, New Mexico. Well, we figured that the best defense is a good offense. That goes along with what Col. Bo Gritz says. So we started thinking up what a good offense was. We had a list of lots of targets - the Federal Reserve Banks, Congress, the White House and Federal buildings around the Midwest. Well, with the limitations - money- that we had we had to go with the federal buildings. They weren't very well protected, but, hey, we didn't know there was a child care center in the building. That's kind of a dumb thing to do. After all, what the government said about the Davidians keeping their children where there was danger. So, we scoped out a couple of different places. The building in Oklahoma City was right next to the road, with parking right there almost against the building. It was the closest and it had all windows in front of it. So, we decided, oh, I guess just a couple of weeks before Christmas that it would be the target. We thought that April 19 would be a good day because of Lexington and Concord, and then Waco. What we were doing was striking back cause the government keeps striking at us -- one at a time, but they keep doing it. There's lot's of people in prison, and some dead cause of the government. If you don't go along with their trip to the one world government, they're gonna get you. But, not us -- It's time to strike back.
OPF: Tell me about the bomb.
MF: Well, that was Tim and Terry's thing. We played around out here but they did all the studying up on it. We blew some things here and they had gotten the mixture pretty right. It started out they just made little holes in the ground when they blew. But, after a while they were leaving craters, and I mean craters. It's amazing what a little fertilizer will do. We had no idea how big to make it. Didn't know how to figure that out. Thought maybe we would blow all of the windows out -- never thought the whole damned building would come down. Gee, we did a job!
* * * * *
OPF: Why did you decide to talk?
MF: Well, we thought we would get away with it. Had everything planned out. The truck was with a forged driver's license, the fertilizer was bought out in farming country. All the stuff came from different places. We thought that they would never track us down. After the bomb went off all these people that said we should do something started saying we were cowards -- all kinds of bad s.... They, the people we had listened to and believed we would be fighting side by side with turned against us and said we should be hanged. When they caught me I was ready to fight it out. It only took a second of hesitation before it was too late. Well, they, the FBI, threatened me with the death penalty. They showed me all kinds of pictures of dead kids, burned and mangled, and they made posters with my picture on them saying "Wanted for Terrorism and Murder" They said I would get the death penalty, and that they would all come to watch me fry. They said that Lori, that's my wife, might get lucky and just spend the rest of her life in prison. Well, Lori didn't really know what was going on. She knew that something was going down, but she never knew what. They said that she is as much a part of it as everybody else, and that she could even got to the chair with the rest of us. Man, it was crazy. All the stuff they said they would, and could do. The worst part, though, was that the people that we were fighting for -- the patriots -- they just turned their backs on us. They were worse than the other people, The government and the patriots were yelling, "Hang them." The rest of the people weren't saying that. Who are these guys that say that we will be in a war and then run away when the battle starts? All the ones I told you about, Mark and Linda and Bill and Bo and the Montana Militia start believing a guy that was in the FBI for twenty-eight years. Hey, that guy's the enemy. They just can't believe what they've been preaching is coming true. They are all hype, and those that listen to them are all hype, too. So, I think Tim and Terry know that they are hung. I don't think that they will mind that I talk. I hope not, but I'm the only one with a wife, and, after all, Hey, they abandoned us after we did what they said had to be done.
-END-
The interview that you just read was made up. I have never spoken to Michael Fortier, but I have seen the governments tactics and I have heard the cries of the patriots, both before and after the bombing. The interview is presented to provoke thought. Is it possible that McVeigh, Nichols and Fortier planned and executed the bombing? Is it possible that what they did they perceived as a preemptive strike against the government? Is it possible that the condemnation of those who set of the bomb in Oklahoma City will cause other patriots to reflect before they take any action against government -- at least until the government comes to get them? Is our patriot leadership telling us that the only violence allowed is in self-defense? We all know the outcome of that sort of engagement, as do the Davidians, the Weavers and Gordon Kahl, just to name a few. When does war begin? After the last soldier is taken? Or does it begin when the hostilities have reached a point of no return, and you, with your meager resources, have to strike in any way that you can.
Those of you that believe that if there is war in this country, it will be fought according to some Hollywood script -- no blood, no violence, no innocents killed -- try reading history, or even the newspaper.
Those that recognize what the stakes are and whose side you are really on should recognize that Tim, Terry and Mike, whether they were involved in the bombing, or not, are held as PRISONERS OF WAR. If we turn out back on our allies, our soldiers, then we turn our back on ourselves. We shall surely hang separately. Our outrage should be directed at the government, and no time spent on speculating, or trying to prove that the government did it. You will never find the evidence if it were true. Try Kennedy, Weaver and Waco. The evidence is held, and hidden, by the government. Let us rally behind our own. The outcry, as Patrick Henry so eloquently put it, "the war has begun" and the moral support the OKC Three deserve. Whether they lit the fuse, or not, they deserve our support, for they, like the Davidians, were willing to put their lives on the line to fight for our Constitution, and against the one world government that permeates the US government.
If we don't recognize what time it is now, we never will until it is too late!
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