Activist Who Staged Gun Interview At Obama Event
Was Prominent Defender Of '90s Militia
By Justin Elliott - August 18, 2009, 6:47PM

Ernest Hancock, the online radio host who staged an interview with an
assault rifle-wielding associate at the Obama event in Arizona yesterday
-- and was himself armed with a 9 millimeter pistol -- was a vocal
supporter and friend of right-wing anti-government militia members who
were convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s.

And in an interview today with TPMmuckraker, Hancock said he still
believes the Viper Militia case was "manufactured" by the same
government that manufactured Waco and lied to its people about 9/11.

The federal government initially accused the Arizona Viper Militia of
plotting to blow up federal buildings, which the twelve-member group
cased on videotape.

In July 1996, after a grand jury indicted the suspects, federal agents
"seized about 90 high-powered rifles and hundreds of pounds of a
bomb-making compound from the shabby bungalow of a man whom officials
identified as the ordnance specialist of a local paramilitary group,"
the New York Times reported at the time.

Hancock, who in recent years designed the famous "Ron Paul rEVOLution"
graphic, was an oft-quoted defender of the militia members. The tapes of
the government buildings, he said at the time, were purely "educational."

"They don't have criminal records," another press account quoted
Hancock, who knew all twelve militia members, as saying. "They just like
their guns. And in Arizona, gosh darn it, that's normal."

Reached by TPMmuckraker at his home in Arizona today, Hancock said he
continued to believe the Viper Militia case was a fraud.

"I was good friends with Dean Pleasant, one of the guys that did five
and half years," Hancock said, who added the entire case was "made up."

"I've been feeling this coming again," he continued. "It's the same
people. It's Rahm Emanuel, it's Janet Napolitano. It's Hillary Clinton.
All these were the same people that were doing it back then."

Napolitano, who later became Arizona governor and is now secretary of
the Department of Homeland Security, was the prosecutor in the Viper
Militia case.

"This militia scare is what got them their crime ban. It was all
manufactured," said Hancock, scoffing at the term "White Al Qaeda,"
which he said he's been seeing in the local press.

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Pals of Herring, BAR, JustHate, and the rest of the right-wing trash
around here...