A-Infos (en) Anti-Abortion Violence Defines `Army of God'

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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     ANTI-ABORTION VIOLENCE DEFINES `ARMY OF GOD'
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     The Christian Science Monitor
     Wednesday February 4, 1998
     http://www.csmonitor.com/todays_paper/
     Christina Nifong, Staff writer of The Christian Science
     Monitor. Send email to: nifongc@csps.com
 
     ATLANTA -- One name has popped up time after time in
connection with abortion clinic violence. It's been spray-painted
on walls and signed in letters. And this week, the Army of God
has surfaced again, claiming responsibility for the bombing of an
abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala.
       
     But what is the Army of God? Is it really an organization,
or simply individuals using a single name? What's its agenda?
       
     Federal officials and militia-tracking organizations have
only a vague understanding of the Army of God. But they say the
evidence leads them to believe that the name is used to denote a
variety of violent anti-abortionists rather than a cohesive
group.
       
     "What's very unclear is whether the Army of God is a real
organization or is essentially a state of mind, though it appears
to be more the latter," says Mark Potok, who follows domestic
terrorism groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center in
Birmingham, Ala.
       
     The name, Army of God, has been used for nearly two decades
and in states from Oregon to Virginia. People claiming to be part
of the Army of God have vandalized, burned, shot, and bombed.
Some have been captured, others are still free. What all actors
using the name Army of God share is a desire to end abortion
through violence.
       
     THE term Army of God was first coined in 1982, when a man
kidnapped an abortion doctor and his wife in Edwardsville, Ill.
He called the Federal Bureau of Investigation claiming to be from
the Army of God. He was later captured and convicted of both the
kidnapping and three clinic bombings in Florida and Virginia.
       
     Other waves of violence - never solved - were attributed to
the Army of God in 1983 and '84. Then in 1993, a woman from the
Pacific Northwest was arrested for shooting an abortion doctor in
each arm in Wichita, Kan. Investigators dug up her backyard
looking for evidence and found an Army of God manual, which
describes dozens of ways to attack abortion providers.
       
     No major acts of abortion violence were traced directly to
the group between '93 and '97, when a letter signed by the Army
of God claimed responsibility for bombs set off at an Atlanta
area abortion clinic and a lesbian nightclub.
       
     Federal investigators say the key to understanding the Army
of God - and perhaps the only link among all the violent acts
committed in its name - is the manual. The 125-page book with a
spiral binding and picture of a child clutching a doll on its
cover gained notoriety in 1993, when it was discovered in the
Oregon yard. Today, whole chapters of it can be found on the
Internet.
       
     Experts believe the manual has several authors, all of whom
have remained anonymous. It is a how-to book on disrupting the
work of abortion clinics, describing in detail methods for
everything from shooting glue into door locks to cooking up a
bomb.
       
     Those close to the Alabama investigation say that while one
person or group may be responsible for the bombings in Atlanta
and Birmingham, they know of no link between these attacks and
previous violence attributed to the Army of God.
       
     Many details of the Atlanta and Alabama letters are similar.
Both were sent to Reuters news agency and The Atlanta Journal and
Constitution. The penmanship is nearly identical: handwritten in
block, capital letters. Federal agents have said that a code
established in the Atlanta letter is repeated in the Alabama
letter.
       
     The appearance of the letter suggests, if nothing else, that
there is some level of networking among the violent members of
the anti-abortion movement, pro-choice activists say. "This
letter, above all, compels us to go back and look at links
between various extremist groups," says Ann Glazier, director of
Clinic Defense at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
 
     Copyright 1998 The Christian Science Publishing Society. All
     rights reserved.
 
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