An Interview with John Trochmann/Randy Trochmann

Conducted by David Neiwert

Note: John Trochmann and Randy Trochmann are two of the founders of the Militia of Montana, one of the country's first neo-militia groups.

Feb. 14, 1996

Hereford Cafe, Noxon, Mont.

Have you guys been staying busy?

It’s very busy. It’s worse -- worse or better, depending on how you look at it.

[Hands me a copy of ``Enemies: foreign and Domestic’’]

That’s the high points. There’s just so much that goes to waste, so much good, precious information.

I’d like to know what you think of your opposition.

Why doesn’t the opposition ever call us and talk to us and try to settle differences, or try to find out where the rest of us are coming from. That’s the problem with America now. People don’t talk to each other.

I don’t know what it takes to get people to realize what we’re really all about. I mean, we wear our heart on our sleeve. You look at my car -- we don’t take an excessive amount of money out. Sometimes we get paid $200 a week, sometimes we don’t get anything. We get just enough to pay our bills, and that’s it. You’ve got to live as inexpensively as possible. This is all somebody else’s clothes I’m wearing, it’s nothing new.

If people don’t pitch in and try to do something, we’re not going to have a country for our children to do as they please, abiding by the laws of our own land. It’s changing, it’s changing real fast. Internationalists are altering our way of life. They’re doing it through the biospheres, through the value of our dollar.

That’s another issue -- the dollar. This so-called balanced budget thing.. How do they balance the budget? If I were a banker -- now I’m not talking about the little Joe Blow bankers around the country here that are probably just as naive as anybody, but the internationalists that have set up this regime that we call the Federal Reserve -- if I were the Federal Reserve and you were my customer, and I issued ten dollars -- or ten million, or ten of something else -- and at the end of that year you owed me that ten, plus ten percent interest, where in the dickens would you get that eleventh dollar from? Where would it come from, Dave? I’d just have to print some more for somebody else down the road and you’d have to get it from him, so when it’s time for him to pay it back, he’d only have nine dollars out there and he owes eleven. So where does he get the other two?

Somebody’s coming down. That’s this pyramid debt system that we have here. Somebody’s coming down, and it’s America that’s coming down. They can milk us and milk us and milk us until there’s nothing left. If all wealth comes from the land, and we’re the serfs that serve it, why are we building it? I said that in Mount Vernon.

People who you see at the bottom of the pyramid are working class people, people like you find out here in Montana.

The bedrock of America.

A lot of them are looking for answers, and you offer them some.

The normal news media is not offering them anything but half-truths and lies, and omissions are worse than nothing sometimes. Omissions are worse than a lie, because saying nothing doesn’t make them privy to there being something out there that may be wrong.

Right after the bombs went off, for the next three weeks, there were at least 360 different media here. Out of that 360, about 300 were U.S., and out of that 300, ninety percent of them had the same questions and the same orders, just like the gerbils of Germany. Who’s the propaganda minister here?

It was asinine. It was absolutely sickening. People would just sit there -- reporters would just sit there as I told them what their next question would be.

Right after the bombs went off, we hired a man by the name of Senator John DeCamp, our attorney, to get a court injunction, to stop the demolition of the evidence. The harder we pushed, the faster it came down. After it came down, they hauled it out of town, put a barricade around it, and put armed guards on it. Why, David, why?

Do you think there was anything to Gritz’s `Rembrandt’ remark?

It was a Rembrandt, you bet it was. It certainly was. You think an outside bomb could do damage like that? If it was an outside bomb, where is the debris that should have been on top of the roof? Why did the director of the Department of Agriculture make the comment, `The building shook, I thought it was an earthquake, so I got under my desk’? How does it take to do that? Then the glass came past. It does not compute, sir.

The video footage of the initial bombs indicate way more than what was told to the American public after they cleaned or censored that up. I’m not saying the government did or didn’t do the initial bombings, but they sure as hell destroyed the evidence.

They did burn Waco, and they did shoot a mother in the face, and I believe wholeheartedly they shot a marshal in the back in northern Idaho, too. Marshal Degan, long before the Weaver family knew they were there.

You think Degan was already dead?

I don’t think so, I know so. He was dead two hours before. He was dead at 8 something in the morning. The transmissions coming over the police scanners indicated the same thing.

Back to Oklahoma City. What the seismologists say they recorded was the impact of the debris hitting the ground.

Then tell me, David, what does the seismic event look like from the demolition of the rest of the building? There’s a man we contacted in Oklahoma. His name is Pat Briley. He’s done tremendous research with and without government agencies. He’s uncovered a tremendous amount of information, including eyewitnesses to many things. Including government agents that have been involved in the coverup.

You can’t be too happy with your friends in Jordan right now.

Schweitzer told me over the telephone that he was issuing an arrest warrant for me. And then he hung up, so I never got to ask why or anything. But from his people that called up and said they wanted to be taken off our mailing list, and no longer wanted to get our newsletter, I asked them what is the problem over there? And he says, you’ve been tampering with the grand jury? What does that mean? Tampering with the grand jury? Who is the grand jury? How can I tamper with the grand jury if I don’t know who they are?

He said, well, that’s everybody in Montana. I said, sir, that would be tampering my First Amendment rights now, wouldn’t it?

A lot of the things that Schweitzer and Skurdal talk about, I think, are legitimate -- the concerns of growing government.

What do you think of the common law courts?

The newsletter that’s coming to you will address that 100 percent. We have a real large concern about the common law courts -- who controls them. Much as we do about the courts that are out there now -- who controls them? They seem to do as they darn well please. Justice is for sale. Crime’s not for everyone; it depends on how much money you have. That’s the kind of justice you get nowadays.

Their common law courts, their courts, at least as they have proceeded in eastern Montana, from Schweitzer, is the personal vendetta court. A person who can sit in the position of judging should not have a leaning in any direction, should not be affected personally.

My chief impression of the common law courts is that they are self-appointed.

Sure, that’s the point that we make in our newsletter. If you don’t take the public with you, your cause is doomed. You have to have your movement go with the public. That is the movement. If you don’t include the public, it becomes a bowel movement.

It becomes a kind of vigilantism, which is a charge leveled against the militia movement in general.

The militias have not hurt anyone. They have not shot a mother in the face, or a son in the back, and shot a marshal in the back. We’ve not burned babies at the stake as in Waco. Everything that’s been done in this country is either unsolved or has been blatantly done by government agents, against the law they’ve sworn to uphold.

The Posse Comitatus Act is not supposed to have any military involvement against civilians in our country, unless, of course, in times of national emergency, which has never been declared. Or are we under a continuing national emergency? How can they justify doing this? Somebody broke the law. Somebody broke the law up at Weavers’, somebody broke the law at Waco. And now it sounds like they did it again in Florida.

What happened there?

U.S. Marshals raided two K mart stores while they were in operation. Took all the money -- $43,000 out of the till.

It got the attention of a lot of bystanders who got shoved around and put on the floor with a face in their gun. Not much difference between here and Germany, is there -- or Russia?

What do you think of the way the FBI is handling the Freemen case so far?

The FBI is caught between a rock and a hard place with the financial thing Schweitzer is doing over there.

How so?

The issuing of these CMOs, these money orders that they’re doing. They’re using the same basic steps the Federal Reserve is using. So, one’s wrong, is the other wrong? Why are they arresting one and not the other?

This fraudulent money system goes back to 1913, when it was given away from our Treasury Department of our nation to a bunch of private people called the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is just as private as Federal Express. And to pay the national debt, all we have to do, under presidential order, is to have the Treasury Department print, print thousand-dollar bills at three cents a bill, and pay off the national debt. That’s how they made it in the first place. That’s how they made it. The cost of the printing. Our Treasury Department prints it for the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve issues it. And all they pay is the cost of the printing.

In looking at this ``True Bill’’ Dale Jacobi sent out, there are a lot of references to Adam, Israel, people of Israel, Yahweh, the white race, that sort of thing. It’s pretty obviously Christian Identity. I wanted to know your views on all that.

Religion doesn’t enter into this at all. Religion has been the curse of this nation. We have one Bible and seven hundred religions that divide us, at least?

Come on, let’s put that away. We have a country at stake. We have a nation full of people that needs help. Instead of dividing and separating us from each other, we need to rub shoulders with each other.

Put away this religious thing. Put away the political thing, the economic thing, the race thing -- we’re all in this together, dammit. We all share the same enemy.

We measure it like this, Dave. Good people, bad people. Good people are those that would help the five of us and the widow, and the bad people are going to be taking what’s left. More’s not enough, the bastards haven’t got it all. That’s how we look at it.

But you’re churchgoing man, aren’t you?

No sir, I’m not. I don’t believe in prostitutes anymore.

They used religion to destroy Mexico and now they’re doing the same thing in America. We have the same economic base coming at us, and the same people, trained by the same people that run Mexico now operate America. Bill Clinton and the president of Mexico went to the same schools; they knew each other well. They married the same kind of women with the same economic training. So if you want to know what’s going to happen this country, take a look across the border.

Some people were talking about NAFTA in that regard.

Sure, they ought to be. A lot mainstream newspapers are finally jumping over the line to say NAFTA’s wrong, it’s bad. And naturally so. The Grand Forks Herald was doing that last Novembers when we were in North Dakota speaking.

John, you moved here in what, ‘86?

‘88. From Minnesota. We had a business and it employed 60-some people. Dave, my brother Dick and myself ran it.

John Bohlman talked to somebody who was from the same town -- what was it?

Delano.

-- He talked to somebody who apparently was from there, and she told Bohlman that you guys lost that business because of your beliefs -- that people stopped patronizing you.

Let me get this straight. This stupid ass that told Mr. Blowman [sic] that had no concept of what we had. We didn’t have anybody ever stop coming to us. Our religion was no part of why we moved. We sold the business because we got tired of all the little rules those bastards in the federal bureaucracy made us stick to, all the hoops they made us go through just to run a business. It was sickening.

So you came out here to get away from that?

I retired. I came out here semi-retired. As a matter of fact --

What was it about Noxon that caught your eye?

Peaceful. Clean water, fresh air, lots of greenery. It was nice. I’d been looking for a lot of year. It just so happened my brother David sold his place first in Minnesota, before I did, and moved out here. I decided to look around here when I came to visit him, and said, `Yeah, Dave, you chose a good spot here.’ I’d been all over the country before, many times.

You understand I’m just trying to check out things people say about you guys.

The information you’re getting is absolutely pathetic. It’s sickening.

What about Butler and his letter?

Butler’s letter said that I had been there twice. That’s not true. They got their information out of the Missoulian. The gal that printed it in the Missoulian didn’t print it right. I hadn’t told her that I was there only twice. I was there five times, maybe six times total. The first time I was there it was to pick my children up that I had sent over with friends. The second time I was there was to preach about the morality. The third time I was there was to help them put some ground rules together. And the fourth time I was there was either to attend a wedding, a bagpipe wedding -- and I love bagpipes -- it’s pretty hard to find them in this neck of the woods -- I love bagpipes, and so we went there. And the other time was to drop off air conditioner stuff, or a refrigeration unit, they were taking to Thompson Falls, and I was going that way with my truck anyway. And it was no big deal to drive a couple miles out of my way to drop it off.

That’s the extent of my visits. That was all in 1990 -- or late ‘90, early ‘91, whatever. About a year span.

But I don’t see anybody else going over there. If they think they have a problem with the Butlers, why don’t they go over there and try to help straighten them out instead of condemn them all the time? If I think you have a problem and all I do is go out in the countryside and bad-mouth you all the time, how the hell does it help you? Why don’t these jerks get off their duffs and go over there and try to help them? That’s what I did. But instead, I get condemned for it constantly.

But these Human Wrongs Task Forces around the country -- this ADL that never finds out what the truth is. Instead, they report it six or four times a year to every law enforcement in America as gospel truth, and these fools in law enforcement gobbled it up.

It’s a sick society when it runs on rumor.

What about Bible studies? Did you do that over there?

No. No more than what they usually have going over there. I went over one night to help them put that together.

You met Randy Weaver there, didn’t you?

I met Randy there the day that I spoke, in 1990.

Tell me about Randy.

He’s a happy-go-lucky guy that would rather stand at a campfire and tell jokes to the children than sit around and talk. I had the deep talks with his wife, not him. That’s why they assassinated her, because she was the power in the family.

I don’t think all of that’s come out -- that what really inspired the federal agents to come after Randy Weaver like that. Was it something from his military career? What really happened when he was down South? Was he privy to gun trafficking by high officials in government? Why did they come down on him like this?

Doesn’t make any sense. A sawed-off shotgun by a quarter of an inch, to cause all those lives? That’s a bunch of bull.

Maybe they wanted to make an example out of him.

Well, they made examples. The examples are going to be the destruction of these law-enforcement agencies in America. Good Americans won’t put up with that. Neither will good law-enforcement personnel. They won’t put up with these agencies doing these foolish things.

The FBI came to me last summer and asked, `John, are you going to quit before the FBI is destroyed?’ I said, `Sir, it is not my objective to destroy the FBI, but to help them put their act back together.’ And he said, `I can believe that.’ He said, `I believe that the agencies should be held to a much higher standard than that to which we enforce.’ It was a good statement.

I said, `Your people that are trigger-happy, egotistical fools played right into the hands of the New World Order and have betrayed the public trust.’ Now they’re looking for a different answer, and it just so happens that the New World Order has that answer -- it’s called Force 2000. The melding together of law enforcement and the military, which is what we see now today all over America -- they’re training together. They’re working hard on their house to house search and seizure.

This is something endemic to SWAT teams all over the country.

Listen now, these doggone black-clad SWAT teams -- how would you like to tell your kid on the street corner to go to the local cop -- Johnny, he’s there to help you -- when he’s wearing black mask. People with black masks used to get shot in the face before, because they were there to rob somebody.

Now they’ve got the same kind of a hooded system, a masked system? What’s America come to? Same with Germany, same with Russia. Matter of fact, the gun laws, according to the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms.

I was talking with Dave and Randy in Maltby about the Bible studies and Christian Identity.

Well, Dave and Randy and I don’t get along on it either. We just don’t talk about it.

When people want to bring it up in regards to -- I just flat don’t talk about it. If you want to burn a friendship, or burn a group, you get religion involved. It’ll shut it down every time.

Religion is the destruction of our country. The truth is in nature. If it doesn’t fit Nature’s laws, then don’t buy it.

How do you describe Nature’s laws?

For every action there’s a reaction. For instance, if you put herbicides and pesticides and all the other suicides into your soil, where do you expect that to lead? You’re gonna have unhealthy children. It’s the laws of action and reaction -- a blessing or a cursing. You treat your land right, it’s going to respond to you right. Nature. Nature’s laws.

I’m still trying to get a handle on this concept of the `organic Constitution.’ Do you believe in this?

What does `organic’ mean to you, Dave?

It means natural, something created by nature.

The organic Constitution, or the original Constitution that our country was founded on? You know, the roots of America are the militia. They’re the ones that put this country together. You wouldn’t be sitting in front of me here tonight under this so-called freedom of speech. It would be British laws, and they’d want half back again.

So are you willing to do your share and put your country back together again or not?

Certainly.

I’m not sure what organic law means to other people. To me, organic law means the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as it was intended for our nation. But now it seems like these people -- remember, the first three words of the Constitution are `We the people.’ The Constitution is not for us -- it’s not for you and I, it’s from us. It’s in our public servants.

But yet it seems like most of our public servants in the past, the first thing they do when they get into office is they start changing the job description. How long is that going to work before America is changed to something that it was never intended.

They’ve been trying real hard to change America and they’re succeeding.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights --

I know where you’re headed with this: the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, I believe, took freedom away from everyone. The papers that I put coming out against the 14th Amendment, and declaring my sovereignty that’s filed in the state of Montana here, was totally in regards to authority that may be over me with that amendment. It had nothing to do with any race at all. People misconstrue that.

Jacobi brings the same concepts up in his `True Bill.’

I don’t know what Jacobi’s got there. It’s got nothing to do with Jacobi. As far as I’m concerned, he’s done a few things that are a little out in left field.

For some people this does refer to race. So you’re saying that this kind of declaration, for you, doesn’t have be about race.

It’s jurisdiction. The whole thing is jurisdiction. As far as I’m concerned, the blacks were under slavery before the 14th Amendment. And all that happened with the 14th Amendment was to put everyone under slavery. It just shifted for the blacks from the plantation owners to the federal government.

From involuntary servitude to voluntary?

There’s no voluntary servitude. Try not filing your taxes. Is that voluntary? Try not paying your IRS taxes, try not paying your local property taxes and see how long your house lasts. There’s nothing voluntary about it. You either pay or you’re gone.

Some common-law court proponents argue that paying your taxes actually is voluntary.

Well, I think it should be voluntary. That’s what the IRS code. That’s the first paragraph -- a voluntary system. Right out of the IRS operator’s manual that the people get that work for the IRS. Right inside the cover, in the foreword, that’s the first paragraph. Of course, it’s voluntary at the point of a gun. It’s Amerika with a `k’ today.

[Discussion of book contents]

Instead of looking at the nitty picky shit, like everybody’s trying to throw in our faces, to vilify the messenger, instead of getting out the message, why don’t you try getting out the message? Because that doesn’t sell books.

You ought to get on the bandwagon of selling books, because those are the books that are selling now -- what’s really happening to our country, instead of this stupid, stupid stuff like you’re trying to put together now.

But it accomplishes nothing. All it does is divide America even further.

I write about people. That’s what I do. I’m not going to sell anybody’s message. But I think the issues you guys raise touch a nerve for a lot of people.

Sure they do, because they’re not getting it from mainstream media. They want to get it somewhere. They know something’s wrong, and they’re not getting the answers. A lot of mainstream media has already admitted to having lost 53 percent of the information highway, and rightfully so. If they’re going to lie, and not tell anything, they deserve to lose it. And that’s what’s happening. Hallelujah. Wow.

Yes, but you know that a lot of the information on the Internet is bad information -- not factual at all.

Yeah, well, I wasn’t necessarily referring to the Internet as the information highway. Some of it’s coming on there. And people that grab it off of there try to search it out further. And they end up with things like this [points to `Enemies’ packet] or the documentation, or real things that affect real life.

It all boils down to something that’s real, and not something that’s electronic or in print -- that isn’t real. That isn’t real.

That’s why I said, Nature’s laws. What’s real, what isn’t. What’s common sense? I mean, common sense is something that relates to nature. I mean, if you stick your finger on a hot stove, it’s gonna hurt. That’s common sense. You don’t do that anymore. You learn once, you learn the hard way.

You go square dancing here in town, don’t you?

We used to, but we don’t have a club anymore. Quite a few of the people got either killed on the highway out here, or died of some disease or another. A lot of them couldn’t hang in there.

I have recreation every day. I take a walk with my dogs. Gotta unwind once in awhile.

Are folks in town still friendly to you?

Sure.

I’ll bet they got tired of the media horde.

Oh yeah, especially as vicious as the media got for awhile. Insisting on tramping right on into business that asked them to keep their cameras out, walking right into them, sticking the camera in people’s faces, you bet they got upset. Most of those places don’t even allow them into the businesses at all anymore.

I gather you’re no happier with the print media than with the electronic.

No, Bill Morlin’s done a good job at the Spokesman-Review to make me feel that way. Oh, these last few issues they had they did a nice job. But every time they do something like that, it helps us, it doesn’t hurt us. It gets more people interested in what’s really going on: `I wonder what’s really at the bottom of this lying article?’ So every time they open their mouth scurrilously against us, it helps us. So we’ve taken the stance -- we don’t care what they say, so long as they talk. It’s too late to shut it off because they can’t shut it off.

I would think your main concern would be that they quote you accurately.

Yeah, but they don’t quote us accurately.

You note I’m using a tape recorder.

Yeah, use tapes and save the tapes, because someday if you print something that may be out of line, somebody may want to be dragging you to court, and that’s what will save your ass. We’re real close to doing that with some agencies right now. Cover your ass. I mean it.

Enough is enough. And what’s happened with the media, the way they’ve done things in the last recent couple of years has jeopardized lives. By the lies they put out, they’ve gotten a lot of law enforcement to believe those lies, and those law enforcement are the ones that are at the trigger. They have the license to kill.

So what the media has done has hyped up the people that kill.

What about the deputy who comes across the guy with no license plate -- he’s got to pull them over --

Sure he does. That’s their job.

-- And that’s a volatile situation. Some of these guys are carrying a gun.

They have the right to carry their guns. What I think they’re making a mistake at is, now they say they have a right to travel, versus the privilege to drive, which is the age-old argument. I wouldn’t waste time with that. It’s too small of an issue, it does not bode well with the public. It burns your relationship with the public. They don’t understand that: `Hey, I have to have a driver’s license, why doesn’t he?’

Go to more important issues that the public can relate to. How come there’s nothing left of their paycheck at the end of the week when they go to pay their bills? How come their children have no future? Those are viable issues that they better find some answers for.

Obviously, the last election told the politicians that there is a problem out there. They ain’t seen nothing yet. You wait till this one.

You think they’ll throw more of them out?

Oh, it’s boiling, it’s boiling big time.

In my travels in rural areas, it’s pretty obvious there’s broad disenchantment with the federal government.

They’re way out of line. Even Edwin Meese wrote an article recently, something about how Washington, D.C., is subverting the sheriffs, or coming against the sheriffs of America with all this federal law enforcement -- which used to be all state issues. There were no lines crossed, there was no threat to the federal government. Why are the federal government people involved in state issues? They’ve gone way over the line, David, way over the line.

[Gets up to fetch Randy Trochmann, who has just entered the cafe. The two return to the table.]

John [to Randy]: I think Dave here is trying to write about whether or not we’re racists. He’s been asking a lot of questions about Identity.

John, do you expect me not to ask about it? It’s the chief criticism of you guys.

You’ll never find it, or you’ll find a lie, I’ll guarantee you. I had good friends in the military that were black. We have good friends in the militia that are black. They share the same enemy that we do. It’s about time we forgot differences. I recommend putting away any differences that there are and resolve the situation at hand and put America back together.

The people that were screwed over first in America were the Native Americans and the blacks. Now it’s our turn. So we better line up with them. They know more about it than we do.

You know why I have to ask these questions --

Bluntly, it pissed me off. You’re getting your information from people that don’t apparently care about America, like the Human Rights Task Force over there, Ken Toole. He could give a rip less about the American way or the laws of our land that he’s advocating breaking every day.

A lot of the media come back to us and get our side of it, and they’ll twist it, they’ll put a spin on it. So much worse than if you’d said nothing. When you say nothing, then they’ll put their own spin on that. It’s a lose-lose situation, dealing with what I call the lying lips of Satan.

We’re damn near out of time. When you see this and this [pointing to `Enemies’ packet] you’ll see why.

Randy: We see it again in the paper this morning, where the U.S. Marshals go in and raid K mart. We called Senator Burns’ office, said, `We gotta put a muzzle on these guys.’ Holy smokes! People wonder why people are joining the militia.

John: They’re our best recruiters. Clinton and Janet Nero have been our best recruiters.

I was talking recently to a sheriff in Idaho who’s in a conflict with BLM officials over their agents taking on law-enforcement work, doing marijuana busts in his rural county.

They’ve tightened up the economy and given people ways to make money illegally, and that’s one reason the marijuana’s going, although I think most of it is done by government itself.

This same sheriff is also encountering a lot of common law court activity, though, and he draws a line on that.

I don’t blame him at all. Although part of the common-law stuff is what he’s studying for, is against the intrusion of the federal government into his jurisdiction, when he’s supposedly the top officer in the county. The common-law courts are right along side of him on that. I don’t know what common the people there are using.

[To Randy] Did you see David Newman’s piece on you?

What a piece of crap. [To John] It was all about my supposed Identity ties.

John: What the hell does Identity mean? To identify your ancestry? Blacks can have their `Roots’ on television, and have a whole series about it. But a white man can’t find out what his ancestry is? That’s all it means to me. It doesn’t tie anything with anything.

I know where I came from, I know my ancestry. That’s all it means to me. It shouldn’t be Identity anyway. I mean, Jewish people have their identity, everybody has their identity. Yet certain people -- it’s taken so out of context it’s absolutely ridiculous. Including those that claim this word Identity and take it for something that it isn’t. It may be that’s what they think it means. But it doesn’t mean that to us. At least to me.

Has the portrayal of your beliefs affected your friendships much?

It’s even made them better, because they see through that -- they’re making a list and checking it twice, trying to out down who the bad guys are too. And most of them end up being media.

What about Bob Fletcher?

Oh, he went down south, we’re not sure where he is now.

Did you have a falling-out?

No. We couldn’t afford him anymore. He was a good researcher. That’s the best way to put it, we just couldn’t afford him.

Watching the situation with Skurdal and Schweitzer, I’m concerned we’re going to have another shootout there.

There might be a big shootout if somebody comes to their door, yes. Just leave them alone, let them winter away, there’s not going to be a shootout. Leave them the hell alone.

Randy: I personally don’t think they’ll do it.

John: The feds are being pushed and hyped and shamed by the media over there. They shame them if they don’t react to them like they think they should. That’s one reason the raid happened on Randy Weaver, is because of the Spokesman-Review and the television channels over there after Geraldo Rivera got through with it.

Randy: Any of it -- they did a poll on it throughout the state, should the feds go in and raid them? What do you think? All that does is just -- it tightens it. It’s competition, that’s all.

What do you think of Sam Sherwood’s idea of making the militias part of a smaller-government move -- state sanctioned, etc.?

That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Here we’ve got the second article of the Bill of Rights that says, `A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ Yet when we talk to the National Guard, they say they are the militia. So let’s just change that to `well-regulated National Guard,’ right? ‘being necessary to the security of the free state, the right of the --’ Excuse me, now what the hell are going to use? `The right of the National Guard to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,’ that’s the only thing you can use, Dave.

See, if they change one, they have to change them all, and that’s where the lie is exposed. Period.

We the People: Who has a better vested interest to protect this country than those that have children playing in their own back yards? They’re the ones that are supposed to defend from enemies foreign and domestic. We swore an oath when we went in the military -- I don’t know if you were in military or not --

No.

We swore an oath to defend from enemies foreign and domestic. Why were we asked to swear an oath against domestic enemies? Who’s a domestic enemy? Anyone that would take away the rights of American citizens that were put together by our forefathers. That’s why this nation grew so well, because there was freedom.

Sherwood’s emphasis is more on working with politicians; yours seems to be in reaching the public.

We work with people on these people on Capitol Hill by the hundreds on a daily basis.

Randy: Today we just did a report for a state legislator out of Minnesota who’s putting up a proposed bill over there. They wanted our input, we made a report on it

John: We’ve been doing this every day, all across America. We work within the system to help put the system back together. That’s why went and addressed the U.S. Senate. That’s why we addressed Yale University. That’s why we were on the David Brinkley show. That’s why address colleges and high schools all across America, is to try to inform people what’s going on, and the direction we’re headed, and what we ought to do to change it.

Randy: I’m generally on the phone with one or two congressional offices every day. Getting input on this, or giving them input on things. Letting them know what Clinton’s up to.

John: Many are uninformed, or misinformed.

When we were down at Denver, Colorado, prior to what’s coming down there, we got some ads on the radio stations, et cetera, come see us, whatever. It was very successful. The media just went nuts -- I mean, it was feeding frenzy, there was no end to it. You’d think there’d be bloodshed if we appeared.

So Saturday morning, we were invited to be on the one-hour talk show, prime time on the local talk station. It was a two-hour deal, and some of Wassmuth’s people were down there. And they were asked to be on the same program as we were for two hours. They refused. They wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

So we were there, and we did the first hour, and then they did the second hour. So we got no chance for rebuttal. But during the interim, as we walked out of the office, they walked in. When they saw us coming out, they turned and stuck their face in the corner so no one would see them.

What kind of a righteous, upright American is this? A slimy person that won’t even show his face? How sick have they got to be?

So their vilification message went on and on and on. So as a result we had thousands of extra people show up at the show, which was great, except they came with a vengeance to meet John Trochmann -- the people that were doing the country so much harm and hear what they had to say.

When they met John Trochmann, that changed their attitude, and now they hate the media down there because they let that human rights task force for doing what they did. One man came up to me and he was just beet red, and his ears were just pumped, you could see the pressure in his ears. He said, `I want to meet that damned white supremist racist bastard.’ And I said, `Well, how do you do, sir? I’d like to introduce you to my friend,’ and I took him across the aisleway to introduce him to J.J. Johnson, the black man who’s also in the militia. And he said, `Them son-of-a-bitches lied to me again.’

Point two is, back in May of this year, we addressed Nightline in regards to weather modification and the HAARP program, et cetera. And in June we addressed the Senate with that issue. In July we had it in our newsletter. In September Popular Science had a five- or six- or eight-page spread about the HAARP program and weather modification.

On our video we did a whole deal on it, the HAARP program and weatehr modification, for so many people across the country, including very prominent scientists. The last bit in this whole thing was when a program called Cycles did a whole thing on the HARP program, and they put it as one of the top 10 ignored or covered-up news stories of 1995. So tell us how wrong we’ve been.

Seems like everything we get our hands on, the news media eventually, one group or another, picks up on it. So when we say there’s a food shortage coming, you can bet on it.

Randy: They’re even admitting it. We’ve been saying that for two years now. And now an erg consultant came right out and made the statement, `I don’t think we have to worry about going to the grocery store and hoarding food -- yet.’

John: What was the statement they made, that if Argentina doesn’t produce grain this year, we are toasted?

Randy: They also stated that if this year’s farm crop has another disaster, all of the reserves will be used in ‘96 grains.

John: So it all boils down to this: Would you like to eat today? Give me your guns. Food control is people control. Water control is people control. It doesn’t matter if there’s too much or not enough.

Look, I’m a hard-core skeptic. I’ve got to tell you I’ve never seen any of the evidence you offer be anything other than painting something legitimate as something evil.

It’s a two-part story, it’s a coverup story that they have to use. A legitimate excuse? It may be right now, but watch how it fits the picture tomorrow and next week.

A firearm can be used for many things, for good or for evil. A detention center can be used for good or for evil. Our railroad trains can be used for good or for evil. A tank could probably be used for good, too. But it’s usually used for evil. Why are all these tanks around here? Chemical wagons -- why are there so many chemical wagons in the country? What is on their agenda?

They’ve never been built here before, they’ve never been stocked here before. Now they’re being stocked here from foreign countries and built here? What’s the program here?

Just wait until the tank comes up your driveway. Then we’ll see if you’re a skeptic.

The reason we have common-law courts in the first place is because the courts we have don’t work. When they start obeying the law and become real honest-to-goodness judges again, the common-law courts are going to disappear, and so will the militia.

We’re here only because there’s problems with this country.

Randy: They’re bringing it to the fore, they’re bringing it out in the open and saying, `Hey, we got a problem here, so if you’re not going to react to the people’s wishes, we’ll just have to do it ourselves.’

[John leaves]: Well, you take care. I gotta go.

[Randy and I discuss ``spobbins’’ conversation in Maltby with Dave Trochmann, in which Dave explained to me that they’re opposed to race-mixing because ``it’s not natural.’’ ``You don’t see sparrows and robins mixing, do you? We don’t have a bunch of spobbins flying around.’’]

We all have our own brand of religion.

Are you a religious guy?

Not really. If I can’t find something I view as common sense to something, I don’t even want to look at it. I’ll analyze things, but if it turns into mysticism for me, but I’ll look at it.

My main point is, myself, I’ve got a job to do, and that’s to help America get back to where she was when it was founded. As far as the justice, the laws, the morality, et cetera. Whoever wants to jump on board with me, I don’t care.

Say we’re going along five years from now, we reach 2000 and things are pretty much the way they are now, what are you going to do?

I’ll probably be working a nine to five. Either that, or in a public position somewhere. I’m might run for office. John might run for office. Who knows?