The Turner Diaries
September21, 1991. Every muscle in my body aches.
Yesterday we spent 10 hours hiking, digging, and carrying loads of weapons
through the woods. This evening we moved all our supplies from the old
apartment to our new hideout.
It was a little before noon
yesterday when we reached the turnoff near Bellefonte and left the
highway. We drove as close to our cache as we could, but the old mining
road we had used three years earlier was blocked and impassable more than
a mile short of the point where we intended to park. The bank above the
road
had collapsed, and it would have taken a bulldozer to clear the
way. (Note to the reader: Throughout his diaries Turner used so-called
"English units" of measurement, which were still in common use in North
America during the last years of the Old Era. For the reader not familiar
with these units, a "mile" was
1.6 kilometers, a "gallon" was 3.8
liters, a "foot" was .30 meter, a "yard" was .91 meter, an "inc. ' was 2.5
centimeters, and a "pound" was the weight of .4s
kilogram-approximately.)
The consequence was that we lad
nearly a two-mile hike each way instead of less than half a mile. And it
took three round trips to get everything to the car. We brought shovels, a
rope, and a couple of large canvas mail sacks (courtesy of the U.S. Postal
Service), but, as it turned out, these tools were woefully
inadequate
for the task.
Hiking from the car to the cache with our
shovels on our shoulders was actually refreshing, after the long drive up
from Washington. The day was pleasantly cool, the autumn woods were
beautiful, and the old dirt road, though heavily overgrown, provided easy
walking most of the way.
Even digging down to the top of
the oil drum (actually a 50-gallon chemical drum with a removable lid) in
which we had sealed our weapons wasn't too bad. The ground was fairly
soft, and it took us less than an hour to excavate a five-foot-deep pit
and tie our rope to the handles which had been welded to the lid of the
drum.
Then our trouble began. The two of us tugged on the
rope as hard as we could, but the drum wouldn't budge an inch. It was as
if it had been set in concrete.
Although the full drum
weighed nearly 400 pounds, two of us had been able to lower it into the
pit without undue difficulty three years ago. At that time, of course,
there had been several inches of clearance all around it. Now the earth
had settled and was packed tightly against the metal.
We
gave up trying to get the drum out of the hole and decided to open it
where it was. To do that we had to dig for nearly another hour, enlarging
the hole and clearing a few inches all around the top of the drum so we
could get our hands on the locking band which secured the lid. Even so, l
had to go into the hole headfirst, with Henry holding my
legs.
Although the outside of the drum had been painted
with asphalt to prevent corrosion, the locking lever itself was thoroughly
rusted, and I broke the only screwdriver we had trying to pry it loose.
Finally, after much pounding, I was able to pry the lever out from the
drum with the end of a shovel. With the locking band loosened, however,
the lid remained as tightly in place as ever, apparently stuck to the drum
by the asphalt coating we had applied.
Working upside down
in the narrow hole was difficult and exhausting. We had no tool
satisfactory for wedging under the lip of the lid and prying it up.
Finally, almost in desperation, I once again tied the rope to one of the
handles on the lid. Henry and I gave a hard tug, and the lid popped
off!
Then it was just a matter of my going headfirst into
the hole again, supporting myself with one arm on the edge of the drum,
and passing the carefully wrapped bundles of weapons up past my body so
that Henry could reach them. Some of the larger bundles-and that included
six sealed tins of ammunition
were both too heavy and too bulky for
this method and had to be hauled up by rope.
Needless to
say, by the time we had the drum empty I was completely pooped. My arms
ached, my legs were unsteady, and my clothing was drenched with
perspiration. But we still had to carry more than 300 pounds of munitions
half a mile through dense woods, uphill to the road, and then more than a
mile back to the car.
With proper pack frames to distribute
the loads on our backs we might have carried everything out in one trip.
It could have been done easily in two trips. But with only the awkward
mail sacks, which we had to carry in our arms, it took three
excruciatingly painful trips.
We had to stop every hundred
yards or so and put our loads down for a minute, and the last two trips
were made in total darkness. Anticipating a daylight operation, we hadn't
even brought a flashlight. If we don't do a better job of planning our
operations in the future, we have some rough times
ahead!
On the way back to Washington we stopped at a
small roadside cafe near Hagerstown for sandwiches and coffee. There were
about a dozen people in the place, and the 11 o'clock news was just
beginning on the TV set behind the counter when we walked in. It was a
news broadcast I'll never forget.
The big story of the day
was what the Organization had been up to in Chicago. The System, it seems,
had killed one of our people, and in turn we had killed three of theirs
and then engaged in a spectacular - and successful - gunfight with the
authorities. Nearly the whole newscast was occupied in recounting these
events.
We already knew from the papers that nine of our
members had been arrested in Chicago last week, and apparently they had
had a rough time in the Cook County Jail, where one of them had died. It
was impossible to be sure exactly what had happened from what the TV
announcer said, but if the System had behaved true to form the authorities
had stuck our people individually into cells full of Blacks and then shut
their eyes and ears to what ensued.
That has long been the
System's extra-legal way of punishing our people when they can't pin
anything on them that will "stick" in the courts. It's a more ghastly and
dreadful punishment than anything which ever took place in a medieval
torture chamber or in the cellars of the KGB. And they can get away with
it because the news media usually won't even admit that it happens. After
all, if you're trying to convince the public that the races are really
equal, how can you admit that it's worse to be locked in a cell full of
Black criminals than in a cell full of White ones?
Anyway,
the day after our man-the newscaster said his name was Carl Hodges,
someone I've not heard of before-was killed, the Chicago Organization
fulfilled a promise they'd made more than a year ago, in the event one of
our people was ever seriously hurt in a Chicago jail. They ambushed the
Cook County sheriff outside his home and blew his head off with a shotgun.
They left a note pinned to his body which read: "This is for Carl
Hodges."
That was last Saturday night. On Sunday the System
was up in arms. The sheriff of Cook County had been a political bigwig, a
front-rank shabbos goy, and they were really raising
hell.
Although they broadcast the news only to the Chicago
area on Sunday, they trotted out several pillars of the community there to
denounce the assassination and the Organization in special TV appearances.
One of the spokesmen was a "responsible conservative," and another was the
head of the Chicago Jewish community. All of them described the
Organization as a "gang of racist bigots" and called on "all
right-thinking Chicagoans" to cooperate with the political police in
apprehending the "racists" who had killed the
sheriff.
Well, early this morning the responsible
conservative lost both his legs and suffered severe internal injuries when
a bomb wired to the ignition of his car exploded. The Jewish spokesman was
even less fortunate. Someone walked up to him while he was waiting for an
elevator in the lobby of his office building, pulled a hatchet from under
his coat, cleaved the good Jew's head from crown to shoulder blades, then
disappeared in the rush-hour crowd. The Organization immediately claimed
responsibility for both acts.
After that, it really hit the
fan. The governor of Illinois ordered National Guard troops into Chicago
to help local police and FBI agents hunt for Organization members.
Thousands of persons were being stopped on Chicago streets today and asked
to prove their identity. The System's paranoia is really
showing.
This afternoon three men were cornered in a small
apartment building in Cicero. The whole block was surrounded by troops,
while the trapped men shot it out with the police. TV crews were all over
the place, anxious not to miss the kill.
One of the men in
the apartment apparently had a sniper's rifle, because two Black cops more
than a block away were picked off before it was realized that Blacks were
being singled out as targets and uniformed White cops were not being shot
at. This White immunity apparently was not extended to the plainclothes
political police, however, because an FBI agent was killed by a burst of
sub-machine-gun fire from the apartment when he momentarily exposed
himself to hurl a teargas grenade through a window.
We
watched breathlessly as this action was shown on the TV screen, but the
real climax came for us when the apartment was stormed and found empty. A
quick room-by-room search of the building also failed to turn up the
gunmen.
Disappointment at this outcome was evident in the
TV newsman's voice, but a man sitting at the other end of the counter from
us whistled and clapped when it was announced that the "racists" had
apparently slipped away. The waitress smiled at this, and it seemed clear
to us that, while there certainly was no unanimous approval for the
Organization's actions in Chicago, neither was there unanimous
disapproval.
Almost as if the System anticipated this
reaction to the afternoon's events, the news scene switched to Washington,
where the attorney general of the United States had called a special news
conference. The attorney general announced to the nation that the Federal
government was throwing all its police agencies into the effort to root
out the Organization. He described us as "depraved, racist criminals" who
were motivated solely by hatred and who wanted to "undo all the progress
toward true equality" which had been made by the System in recent
years.
All citizens were warned to be alert and to assist
the government in breaking up the "racist conspiracy." Anyone observing
any suspicious action, especially on the part of a stranger, was to report
it immediately to the nearest FBI office or Human Relations
Council.
And then he said something very indiscreet,
which really betrayed how worried the System is. He stated that any
citizen found to be concealing information about us or offering us any
comfort or assistance "would be dealt with severely." Those were his very
words-the sort of thing one might expect to hear in the Soviet Union, but
which would ring harshly on most American ears, despite the best
propaganda efforts of the media to justify it.
All the
risks taken by our people in Chicago were more than rewarded by provoking
the attorney general into such a psychological blunder. This incident also
proves the value of keeping the System off balance with surprise attacks.
If the System had kept its cool and thought more carefully about a
response to our Chicago actions, it not only would have avoided a blunder
which will bring us hundreds of new recruits, but it would probably have
figured a way to win much wider public support for its fight against
us.
The news program concluded with an announcement
that an hour-long "special" on the "racist conspiracy" would be broadcast
Tuesday night (i.e., tonight). We've just finished watching that
"special," and it was a real hatchet job, full of errors and outright
invention and not very convincing, we all felt. But one thing is certain:
the media blackout is over. Chicago has given the Organization instant
celebrity status, and we must certainly be the number-one topic of
conversation everywhere in the nation.
As last night's TV
news ended, Henry and I choked down the last of our meal and stumbled
outside. I was filled with emotions: excitement, elation over the success
of our people in Chicago, nervousness about being one of the targets of a
nationwide manhunt, and chagrin that none of our units in the Washington
area had shown the initiative of our Chicago units.
I was
itching to do something, and the first thing that occurred to me was to
try to make some sort of contact with the fellow in the cafe who had
seemed sympathetic to us. I wanted to take some leaflets from our car and
put one under the windshield wiper of every vehicle in the parking
lot.
Henry, who always keeps a cool head, emphatically
vetoed the idea. As we sat in the car he explained that it was sheer folly
to risk calling any attention whatever to ourselves until we had completed
our present mission of safely delivering our load of weapons to our unit.
Furthermore, he reminded me, it would be a breach of Organization
discipline for a member of an underground unit to engage in any direct
recruiting activity, however minimal. That function has been relegated to
the "legal" units.
The underground units consist of members
who are known to the authorities and have been marked for arrest. Their
function is to destroy the System through direct action.
The
"legal" units consist of members not presently known to the System.
(Indeed, it would be impossible to prove that most of them are members. In
this we have taken a page from the communists' book.) Their role is to
provide us with intelligence, funding, legal defense, and other
support.
Whenever an "illegal" spots a potential
recruit, he is supposed to turn the information over to a "legal," who
will approach the prospect and sound him out. The "legals" are also
supposed to handle all the low-risk propaganda activity, such as
leafleting. Strictly speaking, we should not even have had any
Organization leaflets with us.
We waited until the man who
had applauded the escape of our members in Chicago came out and got in a
pickup truck. We drove by him and noted his license number as we pulled
out of the lot. When the network is established, the information will go
to the proper person for a follow-up.
When we arrived
back at the apartment, George and Katherine were as excited as Henry and
1. They had also seen the TV newscast. Despite the exertions of the day, I
could no more sleep than they, and we all piled back in the car, George
and Katherine sharing the back seat with part of our greasy cargo, and
went to an all-night drive-in. We could stay in the car and talk safely
there without arousing suspicion, and that's what we did-until the
early-morning hours.
One thing we decided was that we
would move immediately to new quarters George and Katherine located
yesterday. The old apartment just wasn't satisfactory. The walls were so
thin that we had to whisper to one another to avoid being overheard by our
neighbors. And I'm sure that our irregular hours had already caused the
neighbors to speculate on just what we do for a living. With the System
warning everyone to report suspicious-looking strangers, it had become
downright dangerous to us to remain in a place with so little
privacy.
The new place is much better in every way except
the rent. We have a whole building to ourselves. It is actually a
cement-block commercial building which once housed a small machine shop in
a single, garage-like room downstairs, with offices and a storeroom
upstairs.
The place has been condemned, because it lies on
the right-of-way for a new access road to the highway which has been in
the planning stages for the last four years. Like all government projects
these days, this one is also bogged down-probably permanently. Although
hundreds of thousands of men are being paid to build new highways, none
are actually being built. In the last five years most of the roads in the
country have deteriorated badly, and, although one always sees repair
crews standing around, nothing ever seems to get fixed.
The
government hasn't even gotten around to actually purchasing the land it
has condemned for the new highway, leaving the property owners holding the
bag. Legally, the owner of this building isn't supposed to rent it, but he
evidently has an arrangement with someone in city hall. The advantage for
us is that there is no official record of the occupancy of the building-
no social security numbers for the police, no county building inspectors
or fire marshals coming around to check. George just has to take $600-in
cash-to the owner once a month.
George thinks the owner, a
wrinkled old Armenian with a heavy accent, is convinced we intend to use
the place for manufacturing illegal drugs or storing stolen goods and
doesn't want to know the details. I suppose that's good, because it means
he won't be snooping around.
The place really looks like
hell on the outside. It's surrounded on three sides by a sagging, rusty
chain-link fence. The grounds are littered with discarded water heaters,
stripped-down engine blocks, and rusting junk of every description. The
concrete parking area in front is broken and black with old crankcase
oil.
There is a huge sign across the front of the building which has
come loose at one end. It says: "Welding and Machining, J.T. Smith &
Sons." Half the window panes on the ground floor are missing, but all the
ground-floor windows are boarded up on the inside
anyway.
The neighborhood is a thoroughly grubby light
manufacturing area. Next door to us is a small trucking company garage and
warehouse. Trucks are coming and going at all hours of the night, which
means the cops will not have their suspicions aroused if they see us
driving in this area at odd hours.
So, having decided to
make the move, we did it today. Since there was no electricity, water, or
gas in the new place, it was my job to solve the heating, lighting, and
plumbing problems while the others moved our things.
Restoring the
water was easy, as soon as I had located the water meter and gotten the
lid off. After turning the water on I dragged some heavy junk over the
meter lid so no one from the water company would be likely to find it, in
case anyone ever came looking.
The electric problem was a
good deal more difficult. There were still lines up from the building to a
power pole, but the current had been shut off at the meter, which was on
an outside wall. I had to carefully knock a hole through the wall behind
the meter, from the inside, and then wire jumpers across the terminals.
That took me the better part of the day.
The rest of my day
was occupied in carefully covering all the chinks in the boards over the
downstairs windows and in tacking heavy cardboard over the upstairs
windows, so no ray of light can be seen from the building at
night.
We still have no heat and no kitchen facilities
beyond the hot-plate we brought over from the other place. But at least
the john works now, and our living quarters are tolerably clean, if rather
bare. We can continue sleeping on the floor in our sleeping bags for a
while, and we'll buy a couple of electric heaters and some other amenities
in the next few days.