Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
As Kahl, his son, Yorie, and friend Scott Faul drove on the rural
highway that fateful day, U.S. Marshalls were waiting. Their hope
was for a peaceful surrender, but Kahl’s threat had not been made
in vain. The shootout that ensued left two officers dead and
several others, including Yorie, wounded. Subsequently convicted
for his part in the incident, he is currently serving a life sentence.1
His father, meanwhile, was now a fugitive.
Three days later, Gordon Kahl’s wife, Joan, appeared at a news
conference to plead with her husband to turn himself in. His
belated response came in the form of a sixteen-page letter bearing a
Texas postmark. In it, Kahl offered his version of the shootout,
arguing that it was the government’s attempt to execute him:
1
At this writing, Yorie Von Kahl (Register #04565-059) is incarcerated
at the United States Penitentiary (USP) in Terre Haute, Indiana. His
scheduled release date is February 12, 2023.
See http://www.bop.gov/iloc2/LocateInmate.jsp.
2
James Corcoran, “Details of alleged Kahl letter revealed,” (Fargo,
ND) Forum. 8 March 1983, pp. A-1, A-3.
2
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
3
Ibid
4
Corcoran, “Details of alleged Kahl letter revealed.”
3
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
4
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
5
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
5
The following background information is derived from James
Corcaran, Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus: Murder in the
Heartland, (New York: Viking Penguin Books, USA, Inc., 1990), 43-68.
See also
http://www.nebraskastudies.org/1000/frameset_reset.html?http://w
ww.nebraskastudies.org/1000/stories/1001_0115.html.
6
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
would rally the American public into support for the war effort.
Reinforcing such talk was Kahl’s reading list, which included The
International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, a series of articles
published in the Dearborne Independent in 1920. The Independent was a
small newspaper owned by automobile mogul Henry Ford and
used to espouse his political views.. The International Jew,
meanwhile, was an English translation of The Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion, published in Russia in 1905. More on the Protocols
and their influence on Kahl’s worldview will be said below.
Kahl was discharged from active service in September of 1945,
and immediately returned with his wife to Heaton, ND. Soon
thereafter, he enrolled in the North Dakota Agricultural College
(now North Dakota State University), but quit after a clash with an
English professor, whom he claimed was a Communist.
Soon, Kahl began a migrant-worker style of living, helping to
work his father’s small plot of land during the growing season, and
traveling to California to find work as a mechanic during the winter
months. It was during one of these trips that Gordon was
introduced to the ideas of Christian Identity theology, which would
become part of his central belief system. Supplementing his Bible
readings with such anti-Semitic works as Sheldon Emry’s Billions for
the Bankers, Debts for the People, Kahl soon came to agree with his
father and with Senator Joseph McCarthy in their belief that
Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government at all levels.
Thoroughly disgusted with the “liberal” Congregational Church,
Kahl and wife Joan joined the Mormon church, which held a firmly
anti-Communist stance. However, Gordon soon came to believe
that the Mormon religious ceremonies were simply copies of the
Bavarian Illuminati and the Masons, whom he believed were
“pawns of the Jews and children of Satan.” According to
Corcoran, the Illuminati was formed in Bavaria, Germany, in 1776,
with the intention of replacing “religion and superstition” with
dependence upon reason and philosophy. The group was outlawed
by authorities and ordered disbanded ten years after its formation,
but far-rightists contend the group’s members simply infiltrated the
Masons to continue their “un-Godly work.” As proof, Gordon
Kahl would later point to the back of the one-dollar bill, where he
7
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
believed the symbol of the pyramid with an eye at the top was a
symbol representing the Illuminati slogan, “Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity,” and was therefore proof that the Jews, by controlling
the Illuminati and the Masons, were now in control of the U.S.
monetary system.6
Kahl next joined forces with the John Birch Society, but soon
rejected them as well, thinking that their ideas were not close
enough to his own. Finally, Gordon joined the North Dakota
Constitutional party, established by Dr. Clarence Martin of Medina.
(This same Dr. Martin would later treat Yorie Kahl after the
shooting.) The summer after the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy, Gordon attended a meeting of the Constitutional party in
Fessenden, ND. Here Gordon heard about the Jewish-led
conspiracies to take over the government, how the illegal income
tax was really the second plank of the Communist Manifesto, how the
Internal Revenue Service was a private corporation controlled by
Jewish bankers, how these bankers were intent on destroying
Christianity and the white race, and how President Kennedy had
been killed because he had learned of the plot and planned to
expose it to the American public.
Aside from his political and ideological beliefs, Gordon Kahl
was a devoted family man, strongly committed to his wife and
children, particularly his son, Yorie, who believed his father’s every
word. Yorie was so indoctrinated in these ideas that Corcoran
reports Yorie’s high school teacher becoming very angry with him
in class, as he blathered on about Jewish-Masonic conspiracies to
take over the world. After an incident in which his high school
civics teacher disputed this world-view, Yorie quit school to join
his father in the oil fields of Texas, continuing to hold sacred every
word that fell from Gordon’s lips. “The voice was pitched a bit
higher and was less assured,” Corcoran writes, “but the words were
Yorie’s.”7 After his conviction for murder, Yorie would write a
letter to United States Senator Quentin Burdick (D-ND),
explaining how the Jews had taken over the country and asking for
6
Corcoran, 49-50.
7
Corcoran, 65.
8
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
Burdick’s help in the fight. The ideas in this letter are identical to
those expressed by his father, and replete with the hatred and
bigotry that Gordon Kahl held firmly.
Despite his views, Gordon Kahl was reputed to be very
personable. He had a reputation for being a quiet man with a
strong sense of loyalty to family and friends and a knack for fixing
machinery. He didn’t smoke, drink or curse, and was good with
children (he and Joan raised five children during their thirty-eight-
years marriage). At sixty-three years old, he was five-feet seven
inches tall, 160 pounds; his receding hair was gray and cut short,
and he looked like a typical grandfather figure, a role he filled five
times over. People close to him (family, friends, neighbors) seemed
to look past the political and religious ideas to see Gordon as an
honest, hard-working, simple man. He was a good neighbor and a
good friend, and was always willing to talk, provided you avoided
certain “taboo” subjects (religion and politics) which were seen as
private. Some even saw Gordon as a war hero who had fought
hard for the right to express political views, no matter what they
were. No one, I suspect, saw him as a killer.
What people did not see was the fire that burned inside of
Gordon Kahl, a fire which reached to the very fiber of his being.
Gordon strongly believed that the Jews were attempting a world
take-over, and he was prepared to fight and die for these ideas,
much as (he would say) the early Christians were martyred for their
beliefs. Gordon saw himself as a “Christian patriot,” a modern-day
Crusader fighting for the survival of his country, his religion and
his race. Nothing was going to stop Kahl in this regard, not law
enforcement (the “agents of Satan”), not anyone. As I shall show,
it was these beliefs—some call them “fanatical,” some call them
“righteous”—which led Gordon Kahl in making decisions
throughout his life, and which culminated in conflict with U.S.
federal marshals on a lonely stretch of North Dakota highway.
9
–2–
THE SEED IS SOWN
10
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
8
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, A Mentor Book, (New York: Published
by the New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1958), 80.
9
Hoffer, 86.
11
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
10
Hoffer seems to suggest that a “true believer” is unable to act alone,
but must always be part of the larger whole. Gordon Kahl did both, and
thus, Hoffer’s definition must be amended at this point.
11
In Italy, Mussolini’s followers were called Blackshirts.
12
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful
to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a
posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of
executing the laws, except in such cases and under such
circumstances as such employment of said force may be
expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of
Congress…12
12
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/baker1.html
13
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
A LIE SO OFT-REPEATED
Josef Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Hitler’s Nazi
regime, is credited with stating: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it
becomes the truth.” There has been no greater lie in the history of
propaganda against the Jews than the Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion. Discredited in the West (at least outside the racist subculture
that continues to republish and propagate its content as truth), the
Protocols have been translated into myriad languages and are widely-
disseminated in Islamic countries, especially the Middle East, where
it helps to bolster the radical Jihadist worldview that sees a Jew
behind everything that is bad in the world. Especially powerful is
the degree to which the Protocols is used in the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians.
The Protocols purport to be meeting notes from the gathering of
a clandestine body called the Elders of Zion, the Jewish overlords
who control the financial and political systems of the world. First
published in Russia in 1905, the Protocols were the product of Sergei
Nilus, who claimed to have received it from an unnamed friend.
Since translated into many languages and published and distributed
13
James Wickstrom, The American Farmer: 20th Century Slaves.
Published by James Wickstrom, n.p., n.d.
14
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
14
http://archive.adl.org/special_reports/ij/dearborn_independant.asp
15
Online: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/intern_jew.htm
16
Scans of the reprint volumes (1920-22) are in The Internet Archive:
Vol 1: http://www.archive.org/details/internationaljew01dear
Vol 2: http://archive.org/details/jewishactivities00dearuoft
Vol 3: http://www.archive.org/details/jewishinfluences03dearuoft
Vol 4: http://www.archive.org/details/aspectsofjewishp04dearuoft
17
[citation]
18
[citation]
15
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
19
Herman Bernstein, The History of a Lie, (New York: J. S. Ogilvie
Publishing Company, 1921), 17-18.
20
Philip Graves, “Jewish World Plot: An Exposure,” London Times,
(August 16-18, 1921). Scanned pages and transcript retrieved from
http://emperors-clothes.com/antisem/graves-text.htm, March 2, 2013.
21
That is, A Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesque
16
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
BRITISH ISRAELISM
AND CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
The idea of a world conspiracy is only part of the ideology held
by white supremacists such as Gordon Kahl. Whatever else can be
said about this idea, it is a political and prejudicial (racist) notion at
its core. Often accompanying this is a religious worldview that
molds Christian language into a Whites-Only understanding of the
Bible, salvation history, and the (impending) End of Days. That
worldview is Christian Identity, the roots of which extend back to
the 19th century movement known as British Israelism.22
British Israelism took root in the social-Darwinism of figures
such as Charles Gobineau, who first conceived of scientific racism,
the idea that some races are naturally stronger and healthier than
others. The pseudo-science of eugenics gave credence to calls for an
increase among healthy races and a decrease of unhealthy ones, the
policy to be implemented by sterilization and other techniques of
population control. Eugenics was originally concerned with so-
called “undesirables” such as the mentally or physically infirm, but
the leap from “infirmity” as defined by physiological attributes to
one defined in ethnic or racial terms was not difficult to make.
With this came a view of Europe as composed of different
races—Nordic, Celtic, Mediterranean and Alpine—and a new
desire to study their “racial history.” This “racial history” which
would lead eventually into the Christian Identity movement.
British Israelism argued that Abraham had in fact been Nordic,
one of many Nordics who had inhabited Mesopotamia during
ancient times. Accordingly, the religion of Abraham was an
“Aryan” religion, as W.H. Fasken wrote in his booklet, Israel’s Racial
Origin and Migration:
22
The following summary of British Israelism and Christian Identity is
taken from Leonard Zeskind’s The “Christian Identity” Movement: A
Theological Justification for Racist and Anti-Semitic Violence, (Published by the
Division of Church and Society of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the USA, 1986), 11-21.
17
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
23
W.H. Fasken, Israel’s Racial Origin and Migrations. (Published by New
Christian Crusade Church, n.p., n.d.), 31.
18
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
As for the Jews, who claimed that they were the People of God,
“racial history” had proven that
24
“Thy Servant People,” (Destiny Publishers, n.p., 1946), 5-7.
25
Destiny [newletter], (Second quarter, 1969): 196.
26
It was this same radio station, KTTL-FM of Dodge City, which
aired the Sheldon Emry program “America’s Promise,” on which Gale
urged supporters to “start making dossiers, names, addresses, phone
19
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
numbers, car license numbers, on every damn Jew rabbi in this land…”
(Corcoran, Bitter Harvest, 31).
27
Corcoran, 53.
28
Corcoran, 55.
20
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
29
Corcoran, 57.
21
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
22
–4–
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO GORDON KAHL
It was Sunday, February 13, 1983. Kahl’s 1970, brown, two-
tone station wagon was parked in front of the Medina clinic
(commonly known as “Doc Martin’s” clinic). Inside, Kahl was
attending a meeting to discuss the formation of a Continental
Township, which, according to Len Martin,30 would prepare the
community for the bank failure, government collapse and threat of
“outside invaders” believed to be fast approaching.
Medina lies in a small valley just off Interstate 94, about 125
miles west of Fargo, ND. Aside from a sign bearing a pelican,
announcing the town’s presence to passers-by, there is little to
distinguish Medina from the other small towns of North Dakota.
It is a small town, with a small-town feeling, and everyone basically
30
Len Martin, no relation to Dr. Martin, was schoolmaster of a small
Christian alternative school in Ashley, ND. Martin also served as the
“scribe” for the group and like Gordon Kahl, actively supported the
Posse and Christian Identity cause. The school was later closed by the
state of North Dakota because it was not accredited, but Martin
continued to work for an alternative to the “anti-Christian” education he
said was being taught in public schools.
23
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
24
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
31
Len Martin, Why “They” Wanted to Get Gordon Kahl, (Moorhead, MN:
Constitutional Law Center), copyright pending, 5.
25
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
connection between the Jews and Adolf Hitler, in which Hitler was
“hired” by the Jews to “see that Germany was destroyed.” Kahl
was convinced that Hitler was working for the Jews throughout
World War II, and that his intention was never to win the war. To
support his claims, Kahl pointed to Hitler’s actions at Dunkirk,
saying that Hitler could have easily destroyed Britain, but chose not
to. Rather, Hitler wanted to make peace with the British in order
to attack Russia. But Hitler had a problem: while he wanted very
much to destroy “Jewish Communism,” he was also working for the
Jews, who anxiously awaited the economic and social collapse of
Germany.
Furthermore, said Kahl, Hitler used his power in order to bring
about the defeat of the German army at every possible chance.
When Rommel was in Africa, for example, Hitler sent him on the
offensive, promising supplies and precious war materiel which
never arrived. But to truly understand Hitler’s circumstances, said
Kahl, one must study the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,
which he claimed was started and financed by Jewish International
Bankers. With this Jewish-Banker backing, Trotsky (the “Jewish
revolutionary”) was smuggled into Russia to engineer the Jewish
takeover of Russia and the establishment of a Communist
government.32 Now, with Russia in Jewish-Banker hands, the only
remaining problem was Germany: “the only power that stood in
the way of conquering Europe.”33
In Germany, meanwhile, the Rothschilds (a prestigious British
banking family, whom Kahl contended was in control of the
German money system) arranged for the issue of unsecured paper
money, meant to weaken the German economy. When the
German economy finally collapsed, the stage was set for a “savior”
to lead the German people out of their hardships; this is where
“smooth talking Hitler” entered the picture. Backed by Jewish
bankers, Hitler took power and began a buildup of the “German
war machine”; when all was ready, Hitler started the second world
32
It is interesting to note here that nowhere in his discussion of the
Russian Revolution does Kahl mention Vladimir Lenin.
33
Martin, 7.
26
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
[us] stupid non-Jews and the lowly Jews … pay back this
borrowed money to the Jewish bankers, and it is we [sic]
Christians and other non-Jews who are maneuvered into
killing each other in these planned wars.34
The Jews also use these “planned wars” to further extend their
grip over the world political systems. World War I, Kahl
contended, allowed the Jews to establish Communism in Russia.
During and after the second world war, this was spread to other
countries in Eastern Europe. But in order to get the United States
into the war, the Jews “arranged” for strained relations between the
U.S. and Japan, strains which eventually led to the attack on Pearl
Harbor. In addition,
27
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
This same “source” also said that about 15,000 Jews were
executed because they “had been found guilty of spying or
espionage.” In addition, about 50,000 inmates of the work camps
starved to death or died from disease, and Kahl insisted that there
was “plenty of other evidence uncovered by historians” which
“tends to prove” that the Holocaust never happened.37 In short,
the Holocaust is a Jewish-created fable which is spread by the
Jewish-controlled media to gain sympathy and acceptance from
non-Jews (“goyim”). The Holocaust never actually occurred, Hitler
never planned exterminate the Jewish race, and Kahl was convinced
that this, like everything else, was simply part of the world take-
over conspiracy.
Kahl also insisted that Jewish-led Communists had planned a
“Russian-type revolution here in the United States during [the]
depression era.” President Roosevelt was scheduled to give a
speech on the day in question, during which time he would speak a
code word which would signal the beginning of the revolt. The
plan was never enacted, however, because the Jews feared that if
the revolution here in America failed, it might threaten the
36
Martin, 10; emphases in original.
37
Martin, 10.
28
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
38
Martin, 12.
39
Martin, 12.
40
Martin, 14.
41
Here, Kahl seemed to indicate that the Jews had created the Masons
from the start. In contrast, other literature I read portrayed the Masons
29
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
how these Masonic lodges were to be spread all over the world to
do work as “front men” for the Jews. In summary, Kahl stated, “A
Jew is born a Jew and a Mason is an artificially-created Jew.”42
According to Kahl, Masonic lodges use blackmail to “recruit”
new members. Prostitutes are hired to seduce victims, who are led
to a motel room where they are photographed; these photos are
then used to blackmail the men into joining the Masons. When
such evidence is not available, the Jews simply fabricate it.43 The
Elks, Eagles, Lions, Moose, Rotary, Kiwanis and others are what
Kahl calls “sub-Masonry,” since they appear to be good on the
surface, but almost always have Mason leaders. Kahl also said that
the “rank and file” of these organizations often do not know the
truth of what is happening.
Every Communist that Senator Joseph McCarthy was
investigating during the 1960s was a Mason. But there was a
problem: McCarthy’s own staff was over-run with Jews.44
According to Kahl, McCarthy was operating under the assumption
that Jews were God’s Chosen People, a fact that Kahl emphatically
refuted. Soon enough, Jews found his “snooping” too dangerous
to allow any longer, and he was killed.
Kahl emphatically dismissed the idea that the Jews are the
Chosen People of God. The Jews are not one people, said Kahl,
but two separate peoples: the Shephardic and Ashkenazi Jews. The
Shephardic Jews are natives of the Middle East (British Israelism
would say these are the descendants of the Southern Kingdom of
Judah), while the Ashkenazi Jews came out of Eastern Europe and
30
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
are not really Jewish at all. An Eastern European tribe called the
“Khazars” chose Judaism as their religion at some unspecified
point in history; the Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of this
group, according to Kahl.
It was the Ashkenazi Jews who, in the middle and late 1800s,
began the “political, atheistic movement” known as Zionism.
These Jews also started Communism, and presently lead the
“Communist/Socialist” state of Israel45; in recent years, they have
also succeeded in taking control of the United States. But since
these Jews are not really “Jews,” they have no claim to the title
“God’s Chosen People.”46 Rather, Kahl quoted from the Bible:
Fearing the rising power of the Masons, the Catholic Church (at
some unspecified time) created the Knights of Columbus as an
army which would destroy the Masons forever. However, due to
the Jewish infiltration of Roman Catholic and other churches, this
plan was never carried out. Kahl also claimed that after the year
1000 (he does not explain the significance of this particular date),
45
One resource associated with the anti-Semitism subculture is Jack
Bernstein, described as a Jew who became a Christian after spending
several years in “racist, Marxist Israel.” In his book, My Farewell to Israel,
The Thorn in the Mideast, Bernstein claimed that Israel is a Communist
police state, where prostitutes run rampant and the Jewish world take-
over is planned and plotted. Bernstein’s writings are popular among both
white supremacists and leftists organizations, both of whom decry the
Zionist foundations of the modern state of Israel. Radical websites also
contend that Bernstein was the victim of an assassination plot by Mossad
for daring to express and publish his views publicly.
46
It should be kept in mind that the definitive characteristic for Jews
and non-Jews in Kahl’s ideological system is a racial, rather than religious,
identification.
47
Revelation 2:9, quoted from The Holy Bible (King James Version), (New
York: Oxford University Press), 1945.
31
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
However, warns Kahl, these shelters are meant only for the
“elite Jews”; the rich Jews don’t care about their fellow Jews, or
about the Masons. These “lower Jews” and Masons are simply
“tools to be used … to help them achieve their goal of world
domination.” Many “lower Jews” do not like what the elites are
doing, but support them in order to get better jobs. Also, many
non-Jewish “goyum”50 are willing to “sell their souls” in order to
gain special favors from the elites.
As for the “invisible government” which the Jews have
established, Kahl recalled that
48
Len Martin, Why “They” Wanted to Get Gordon Kahl, 21.
49
Martin, 22.
50
Kahl claimed that “goyum” was a Jewish word for “human cattle.”
32
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
the Zionists who run Israel are looking for some excuse to
continue their acts of aggression against the Arabs…If a
major war breaks out in the Middle East and the United
States gets involved, you can be sure that the Zionist Jews,
who control our government, will have planned it.52
51
Martin, 23.
52
Martin, 28.
33
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
53
Martin, 29.
34
FRIENDS AND FOES
When she met with the FBI, Karen Robertson told them that
Gordon Kahl was in contact with two associates, Leonard Ginter
and Ed Udey, about using their connections with the CSA54 to
obtain weapons and ammunition.
Leonard Ginter had been a member of the Posse while living in
Wisconsin. After moving to Arkansas, he joined the Association
for Constitutional Enforcement, a group similar to the Posse in tax
protest ideology and Identity teaching, where he met Gordon Kahl
for the first time. Ginter considered Kahl a true patriot and true
Christian, and promised to provide whatever was needed to help in
the fight against the government.
It was also not surprising that they had ties to the CSA. Earlier
in his “crusade” against the Jewish-Communist conspiracy, Kahl
had traveled to the CSA encampment in Mountain Home,
Arkansas, where a private army was being trained in preparation for
the final Battle of Armageddon, which would be followed by
Christ’s return to earth. A small group of farmers, truckers,
machine workers and others, these paramilitary patriots had
stockpiled food, water, and weapons in a secured compound while
work was completed on a “safe haven” which would protect them
54
“Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord”—a paramilitary arm of the
Identity movement that believed the world had already entered the time
of Tribulation as described in the book of Revelation. They had been
chosen by God to lead the battle against the “Jewish-led anti-Christ
forces that repeated violated God’s law” (Corcoran, 238).
35
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
36
–5–
BROKEN SILENCE
Outside the clinic, Stutsman County deputy sheriff Bradley
Kapp sat in his 1982 green Ford pickup, where for over two hours,
he had watched the clinic for any signs of Gordon Kahl. Earlier
that day, he had made a pass of the clinic and spotted a car which
he believed was Gordon Kahl’s. Kapp then called state radio to see
if the warrant for Gordon’s arrest was still outstanding; it was, and
three U.S. marshals were en-route to Medina to make the arrest.
David Broer (another of Kahl’s friends) had spotted Kapp’s
truck when he walked outside; he now returned to the meeting
room to inform the others. Following several moments of debate,
it was decided that Gordon and Yorie would exchange coats; that
should confuse the police and allow them some extra time to
escape. Gordon also accepted Len Martin’s brown stocking cap,
and the group left the clinic in two vehicles: Gordon rode in David
Broer’s AMC Hornet, while Yorie, Joan and Scott Faul and Vernon
Wegner rode in Gordon’s station wagon. They headed north, away
from town.
Within minutes, however, Gordon found himself looking
through the sites of his mini-14 as several officers trained their own
weapons on him, Yorie and the rest of the group. A road block
had been set up on the highway just north of town; it was hoped
that Gordon would come peacefully, and that no one would get
37
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
55
Susan and Wayne Reardon, who lived in the farmhouse just off the
highway from where the shooting occurred, were eyewitnesses to the
entire incident.
38
GORDON KAHL’S CULT OF RACIAL PURITY
39
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
40
–6–
AFTERMATH
Gordon Kahl’s ideology, particularly the idea that Jews were in
control of the country and the world, led inevitably to his clash
with the government he feared was “out to get him.” Kahl was a
“true believer,” a fanatical believer in his own “inferiority” and
minority position with respect to the “Zionist-Communist
occupiers” which had taken hold of this country. Such a man,
when confronted by law enforcement, is not likely to give himself
up peacefully. Rather, it is better to die “honorably” with gun in
hand than to bow to the will of the “agents of Satan.”
41
JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
42
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Corcoran, James. Bitter Harvest: Gordon Kahl and the Posse
Comitatus: Murder in the Heartland. New York: Viking Penguin
Books, USA, Inc., 1990.
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JOHN AUGUST SCHUMACHER
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