“No credible threat”?
would be assassins?Letter to the Los Angeles Times – let’s hope the paper prints it:
To the Editor:
It’s unsettling that the story of the so-called “white supremacists” arrested in Denver during the Democratic National Convention has all but disappeared. Here were three guys with high-powered rifles, a sniper scope, wigs, fake identity cards, walkie-talkies and enough ammo for a firefight in Iraq—making threatening and racist remarks about Barack Obama, who at the time was only a few miles away preparing to accept his party’s nomination for president of the United States. Somehow, this doesn’t sound like sportsmen looking for recreation.
The Feds dismissed the apparent menace (“no credible threat)” and some news stories may have left the impression that the suspects were just strung out losers, guys in tatoos talking trash. Quite possibly. But we have yet to see detailed police reports and other background information.
You have to wonder whether the Denver story would have been downplayed if these guys were black or brown, or if they came from the Middle East. Thirteen years after a white man named Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, it still seems hard to accept the prospect of homegrown, American terrorism.
Yours truly,
Haskell Wexler
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