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Inside U.S.A.: Sniper Veteran of the Gulf War
Posted on Thursday, October 24 @ 23:13:39 UTC
Topic: Sniper Suspect
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 By Andrew Gumbel, Oct. 25 2002
www.independent.co.uk
Veteran of the Gulf War who trained for notoriety with the chilling motto: One shot, one kill
The man suspected of being the sniper who has killed 10 people in the Washington area, was trained by the best. Not only did John Allen Muhammad serve in the US military in the 1980s and 1990s, including a stint on active duty during the Gulf war; he was also, for many years, attached to a West Coast army base famous for its sniper training programme.
The programme's motto: "One shot, one kill." A Defence Department official who spoke to reporters yesterday said Mr Muhammad was an expert marksman who earned several badges and ribbons during his years in the army and was known to be particularly proficient with an M-16 assault rifle.
In the swirl of information that spilled out in the first hours after the arrest of Mr Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, the 17-year-old believed to be his stepson, it was not entirely clear what the suspect had learned during his years in the military, or what sorts of psychological and behavioural testing he had undergone before being given the skills to exercise lethal force on his fellow human beings.
But the wall-to-wall media coverage of his case and the troubling questions it raises are likely to cause considerable embarrassment to the military establishment, especially at a time when Americans are being asked to throw their support behind the flag for a possible invasion of Iraq.
After all, it wasn't so long ago that another Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh, used his military skills to commit mass murder on a horrific scale with the Oklahoma City bombing. Could Mr Muhammad, like McVeigh, have been brutalised by his experiences of combat and transformed from a govern-ment-trained killing machine into an anti-government, anti-American radical?
The first signs certainly point that way. The young Mr Muhammad, born John Allen Williams, was described by his first wife yesterday as quiet, friendly and non-violent. By the time he split up with his second wife in 1999, however, it was a different story. Court records show that his spouse twice accused him of domestic violence and sought a court protection order against him. She also accused him of stealing their three children once their divorce proceedings were underway.
"I am afraid of John," Mildred Green Muhammad wrote in a complaint on 3 March 2000. "He was a demolition expert in the military. He's behaving very, very irrational. Whenever he does talk with me, he always says that he's going to destroy my life and I hang up the phone."
Other acquaintances described how he became a drifter after leaving the army in 1995. He converted to Islam after the break-up of his first marriage 17 years ago hence the name change and may have taken on more radical political views in the recent past. He became involved in Louis Farrakhan's black separatist movement, the Nation of Islam, and volunteered as a security guard at the Million Man March on Washington a few years ago.
The police officials who tracked him down said he spoke approvingly of the 11 September attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre and the radical anti-American ideology behind them. Officials do not believe, however, that he had links to al-Qa'ida or any other radical Islamic group.
Gleaning details of his army career was difficult yesterday, not least because the military chose to divulge absolutely nothing about him. In the 1980s he served at Fort Lewis, outside Tacoma, Washington, whose sniper assessment programme is used, amongst other things, to select candidates for the Army's élite Sniper School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Fort Lewis course teaches snipers to work in pairs, with one man acting as the trigger and the other as a look-out the pattern apparently followed in the Washington-area shootings.
It is not yet known whether Mr Muhammad participated in the sniper programme, and if so whether he tried and failed to get into Fort Benning. (McVeigh's anti-government resentment began with his failure to qualify for the Special Forces.) Few details were forthcoming on his role in the Gulf war, or on a brief postwar stint he served at the now defunct base at Fort Ord in California.
One friend said yesterday he had served in the Green Berets, a branch of the Special Forces which has a group stationed at Fort Lewis. Military officials said, however, that he was not in the Special Forces. They said he had undergone basic firearms training and had expertise in combat support missions. Another Pentagon official said he had served as a combat engineer. They said nothing about the demolition expertise mentioned by his former wife.
From 1994 until earlier this year, he is believed to have lived in Tacoma, with periods of drifting around the country in between. Among other things, he helped to run a karate and martial arts school, where his partner Felix Strozier described him as a "pretty nice person" at least until they fell out over an unpaid debt of Mr Muhammad's and closed down the school in 1998.
The Pentagon said he also spent eight years in the Army National Guard, attached to stations in Louisiana, where his brother and first former wife live, and Oregon.
It was one of his Tacoma homes that was raided by police on Wednesday after reports from the neighbours that he had fired weapons there nearly every day in January.
"It sounded like a high-powered rifle such as an M-16," said his neighbour Christ Waters, a army private stationed at Fort Lewis. "Never more than three shots at a time. Pow. Pow. Pow." The police removed a tree stump from the property after finding it was peppered with bullet holes.
Mr Muhammad and Mr Malvo were also traced to Bellingham, about 120 miles north of Tacoma, where Mr Malvo was briefly enrolled at the local high school. Both were reported to have moved to the East Coast earlier this year. Their last known address was in Clinton, Maryland, where some of their relatives also live.
democracynow.org (Real Audio)
POLICE ARREST SNIPER SUSPECTS: A CONVERSATION WITH FILMMAKER MICHAEL MOORE ABOUT BALLISTIC
FINGERPRINTING, MILITARISM AND US GUN CULTURE
Police have arrested two men in connection with the Washington-area sniper.
John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were arrested Thursday morning as they were sleeping in their car at a
Maryland rest stop.
Investigators confirmed the car in which the two men were arrested contained the .223 caliber Bushmaster telescopic
rifle used in the killings. Authorities said last night ballistics tests have matched the gun to the bullets used in
the attacks.
Ballistics tests are at the crux of the case. But the Bush administration opposes most forms of ballistic
fingerprinting. The Bush administration and the National Rifle Association believe in most cases, investigators
should not be allowed to trace a bullet back to its gun. They believe investigators should only be allowed to use
ballistic fingerprinting technology to link the bullets in separate crimes. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says
tracing a bullet to the gun would invade the shooter's privacy.
Well today on Democracy Now! we're going to talk about gun violence in America. As today's sniper killings have come
at a time of heightened war-mongering, with the Bush administration calling for war at all hours of the day,
filmmaker Michael Moore observes that the Columbine High School shootings came on the heaviest day of the bombing of
Kosovo.
Moore has spent the last several months asking why the US is such a violent, gun-happy country. His latest film,
"Bowling for Columbine," documents this exploration. The film won a special 55th anniversary prize at the Cannes
Film festival. A limited release in Los Angeles and New York resulted in sold-out theaters on both coasts.
Guest:
- Michael Moore, Filmmaker, "Bowling For Columbine".
Related links:
More news:
- All men are equal in the sniper's sights Oct. 26
Americans are having to face up to some frightening home truths
- Muhammad is African American Muslims' Worst Nightmare
Oct 25 - Authorities have repeatedly said that they have found no link between John Allen Muhammad and Al Qaeda, and if he is in fact the beltway sniper, that they have as yet have no clue as to why he launched his one-man terror rampage. No matter. African Americans fear a witchunt.
- A Man Named Muhammad Oct 25
Imposing an agenda on the Maryland sniper
- An Angry Telephone Call Provided One Crucial Clue nytimes
Oct. 24 — The first real break — the one that sent investigators scurrying from an Alabama liquor store to a backyard in Tacoma, Wash., and finally to a blue Chevrolet Caprice at a highway rest stop in Maryland — came on Oct. 17 in an angry telephone call from a man claiming to be the sniper.
- Suspects' gun linked to sniper attacks
Oct. 24, CNN: Ballistic tests on the gun found in the car of the men authorities believe are involved in the Washington-area sniper attacks have matched that weapon to the bullets used to kill 10 people, senior administration officials said Thursday evening.
- Bush and The Bushmaster Oct. 24, buzzflash.com
It may come off to some Americans as a horribly tragic and tasteless pun that the assault weapon allegedly used by the assumed sniper in the Metro D.C. area was manufactured by a firearms firm called Bushmaster.
- Police arrest sniper suspects Oct. 24, BBC
Police swooped on the rest stop after a tip-off
US police believe that two men arrested in Maryland could be responsible for sniper shootings in the Washington DC area.
- Man, Stepson Held in Sniper Case Oct. 24, foxnews.com
Police swooped down and arrested a man and his stepson at a Maryland rest stop Thursday morning in what sources say is a major break in the Beltway Sniper case.
- Two arrested in sniper case Oct. 24, cnn.com
Former soldier named in federal firearms warrant
- Deployment of Army planes breaches Posse Comitatus law
By Bill Vann, 18 Oct. 2002, www.wsws.org
Bush seizes on Washington sniper attacks to use military for domestic policing
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Sniping Frenzy Bumps Off Politics (Score: 1)
by Akinkawon (akinkawon@webmail.co.za) on Friday, October 25 @ 11:04:13 UTC
(User Info ) | Published on Thursday, October 24, 2002 by FAIR's Media Beat
by Norman Solomon
You can't call it an October surprise. Late in the month, with Election Day not far off, the television news channels have been true to form.
Leading the TV race to the bottom, national cable outlets fixated on sniper attacks while giving scant coverage to key election issues. Every once in a while, anchors and correspondents -- as though disassociating from their own roles -- paused to marvel at how the sniping story was deflecting public attention from the stretch drive of the 2002 campaign.
Yes, the cable networks attracted some highbrow company. For instance, on Oct. 21, viewers of the PBS "NewsHour" could hear the host Jim Lehrer present -- as the top story of the day's news summary -- the latest hazy developments in the sniping investigation. But it was the round-the-clock cable frenzy that seemed to be driving the boys and girls on the media bus.
Like countless other overblown crime stories, the sniping tragedies were perfect fodder for cable outlets. The execs who call the programming shots calculated the benefits -- including endless opportunities for talking heads to speculate; lots of live news conferences with officials in police uniforms; low costs in the quest for high ratings; ghoulish titillation playing to the macabre strengths of such dubious journalistic luminaries as CNN's Connie Chung and MSNBC's Jerry Nachman; and, overall, an aura of danger and excitement.
"The serial sniper story gave the 24-hour cable news networks some of their highest ratings of the year, feeding the hunger for fresh information and increasing pressure on law enforcement officials to tell all on television," noted an article in the New York Times. But the newspaper of record was hardly above gratuitous pandering in the snipe-o-rama media spectacle.
"It was the New York Times that ran a graphic pinpointing the location of every traffic surveillance camera in the vicinity of the shootings," Boston Globe writer Eileen McNamara observed. "That information assists who, exactly, besides the shooter?"
The same question is applicable to vast quantities of the sniper coverage.
Jabbering reporters and assorted experts on television usually seemed clueless. But we can already say that the serial sniping -- in tandem with media priorities -- went a long way toward hijacking news coverage at a time when appreciable numbers of Americans were casting absentee ballots and millions of others had yet to make up their minds about how they'd vote on Nov. 5.
While the number of people watching each cable channel is often quite low, the aggregate effect can be outsized. Cable news is nonstop, frequently redoing its own coverage while duplicating what's on other networks. The effect is wall-to-wall repetition, hyping itself and distorting the windows on the world provided to viewers and reporters alike.
At times, during the weeks and months after 9-11, journalists and other observers spoke disparagingly -- and, in the case of some familiar cable TV personas, sheepishly -- about the obsessions of the previous summer. In retrospect, the on-air preoccupations with the likes of Gary Condit and shark attacks seemed not only trivial but also injurious to the social and political health of the country.
In the years ahead, we're likely to look back on the pre-election days of autumn 2002 in much the same way -- not because the shootings in Maryland and Virginia weren't important, but because the revved-up machinery of the cable news networks had the effect of propelling news editors, and media consumers as a whole, to lose perspective.
The choices made on Election Day will determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate and the House of Representatives. The decisions made by those legislative bodies wi
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