Posted on 05/08/2002 12:08:46 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
The FBI would float only two other names in relation to the killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian, and the two men named all but volunteered for the charge. From afar, one might be tempted to think of Robert Stauber and Michael Gingerich as the Rosencranz and Guildenstern of the case, hapless innocents who stray into harm's way like the two couriers in Hamlet and pay for it dearly. But on closer examination, they deserved at least the attention they got, if not more.
On the afternoon of Oct. 24, mere hours after the murder had become news, these two middle-aged men showed up in Roxbury Park, Slepian's single-entrance subdivision. An Amherst Police Department officer questioned the out-of-state strangers as to their reason for being there. They told police that they had borrowed a car and had driven from their homes in Cleveland to attend a prayer vigil being held at Slepian's home. They claimed that a local pro-choice organization had given them this information. In fact, the vigil was being held at the Buffalo clinic. The Amherst police gave them the right directions and sent them on their way but only after taking basic information on Stauber and on the car the pair rode up in.
According to a Buffalo News article of Oct. 27, 1998, children living near Slepian's home have told police that they had seen a suspicious white car in the neighborhood several days prior to the shooting. On the night of the shooting, the Amherst Police Department issued a pick-up request for a white car described as possibly being a Ford Taurus with Ontario license plates.
On Nov. 13, according to the two men, the FBI questioned the owner of the car they had borrowed and "quickly began harassing her and our attorney, Mark Kaiser." The FBI wanted to know who told the pair about the vigil for Slepian and how they could have gotten to Amherst on such short notice, Cleveland being four hours away by car.
On Nov. 19, as reported in The New York Times, the FBI Cleveland office sent a bulletin to police departments across the country to be on the lookout for Stauber and Gingerich. Authorities reported that the pair might be traveling in a Ford Taurus with blue on white plates, possibly from either Ontario or Ohio. In a moment of fine irony, the National NOW Times took this information and rushed to press with it, reporting in its Winter 1999 issue that "Ronald Stauber and Michael Gingrich (sic) were also wanted for questioning in connection with the slaying."
On Friday, Nov. 20, Stauber and attorney Kaiser met with two agents of the FBI. Kaiser apparently told the FBI that they had no information about the Slepian murder, that they had attended a vigil "to honor him," and that any further inquiries should go through Kaiser. Kaiser also pointed out to the agents that they had no material evidence against the men and that he had advised them not to answer questions.
"Why would the FBI take two people who are some of the most public people in the pro-choice movement in Cleveland and say we have something to do with this heinous crime?" asked a wounded Gingerich on a Buffalo area ABC affiliate program that aired on Nov. 23.
Why? Well, for starters, almost everything about their story rings false, including their claim of being among "the most public people in the pro-choice movement in Cleveland." On that same ABC presentation, for instance, the reporter asked a Cleveland Planned Parenthood representative about the two men and was told that no one there had ever heard of them. A check with five or six other local pro-choice organizations failed to produce anyone who knew them either.
The men's claim of misdirection also raises eyebrows. As pro-choice activists, they should have known that doctors and their families dread any kind of personal attention and that events of this sort are almost always held in public places, not in quiet neighborhoods still ringed by yellow warning tape and police cars. The pro-choice groups in the area had to know where the event was being held. And if they had given out false information, chances are they would have given it out to more than these two. One also has to wonder why two grown men had to borrow a car. Did they not have a car of their own or were they unwilling to show it in Slepian's neighborhood?
With just a little bit of checking, the FBI would have learned that Stauber and Gingerich were both proud members of a radical leftist group called Refuse and Resist. In addition to the usual pastimes like freeing Mumia and resisting the World Trade Organization, Refuse and Resist also calls for "abortion on demand and without apology." Its stated position on this subject deserves some scrutiny.
"We cannot look to courts, cops and politicians to protect women's rights. We have to cast away illusions and deal with reality. Women and men across the country have to thunder our outrage, organize a real defense of the clinics and go on a new footing against the forces of misogyny. We ourselves have to create both a political climate and a practical situation where it is impossible for the Christian fascists to wage their attacks on women and their clinics. No one is going to do this for us. We Must Rely on Ourselves, Fight for Abortion Rights, and Stop the Anti-Women Thugs!"
If one were to "go on a new footing" – an avowedly extra-legal one – to alter the "political climate," shooting an abortion doctor and blaming it on the opposition would be one sure way to do it. Unlike the Canada shootings, the Slepian shooter apparently shot to kill, a murder having far more political impact than a wounding.
That impact was immediate. Two days after the shooting, Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic candidate for New York State attorney general, made no bones about his strategy.
''Eliot is going to make a huge priority of this,'' his campaign manager gloated to the New York Times. In the race for the U.S. Senate seat from New York, challenger Chuck Schumer was only slightly more discreet. His aides told the Times that Schumer "would most likely mention the slaying in campaign appearances as a way of emphasizing the importance of the abortion issue." The pair unseated incumbents Dennis Vacco and Al D'Amato, respectively, just one week later.
No one had more at stake in the congressional elections of that year than President Clinton. He was facing impeachment if the Republicans did well in the House and removal from office if they did well in the Senate. His precarious hold on the office all but assured that the Slepian murder would get political play in key races across the country. "All that mattered was his survival," Clinton aid George Stephanopolous would write of his former boss. "Everyone else had to fall in line: his staff, his cabinet, the country, even his wife."
At Slepian's memorial service, the Rabbi began by saying that "this is not a time for politics" then proceeded to read a letter from Clinton, the irony of which was not lost on niece Amanda Robb. Still, as she noted, "I have a thick-throated patriotic moment – my grandfather would have been so proud."
Whether by chance or by design, the timing of Slepian's death was exquisite. Lest the story fade, someone in government leaked the fact that a "Vermont man" was being sought for the killing of an abortion doctor just in time to make the morning news on Nov. 3, Election Day.
The Democratic strategy seemed to work. In his New York Times column of Nov. 8, Bob Herbert visited with Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado abortion provider. After casually linking the Christian right with the militias and the "white supremacy movement," Herbert allowed Wren to get in the last word on the Slepian-influenced outcome of the election.
"It seems that the radical right lost a lot of ground in the election, and that's very encouraging," said Dr. Hern. "There clearly are Republicans out there who don't agree with that agenda, and they should be running the party. Then people can get a little balance back."
From a purely political perspective, the pro-choice side had a much greater motive to kill Slepian than did the pro-life side. Still, the FBI does not seem to have investigated Stauber and Gingerich until Nov. 13, ten days after the election. Despite Stauber's refusal to answer any of the FBI's questions a week later, the FBI appears to have dropped this line of inquiry altogether, possibly under pressure from the Justice Department. In its extradition documents, the FBI makes no mention of the pair.
If these veteran radicals seem too noisy and eager to be taken seriously, the FBI had good reason to look leftward, and election politics was just the half of it. A second possible motive, a more profound one, was the fear among abortion supporters that Slepian was turning into another Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
Tomorrow: "Slepian softens before his death"
Once a person accepts killing children for being inconvenient, what can one rule out as unthinkable — except that he might act contrary to his own wants and wishes?
Dan
If one were to "go on a new footing" – an avowedly extra-legal one – to alter the "political climate," shooting an abortion doctor and blaming it on the opposition would be one sure way to do it.
Nothing is beneath any individual or group of individuals who believe killing a baby is okay.
Artist, WOW! Thank you for the ping!
JH2, your royal highness, THIS article should have made your ping list!
Especially if the former baby is an abortion doctor who (as the end of the article foreshadows) may have been falling off the plantation.
Personally, I cannot imagine a person who calls themself a Christian or a follower of Jehovah/I AM/ etc. supporting such a hideous practice. Well, actually, I can. Someone claiming to be a Christian directed me to a site that took specific scriptures completely out of text and then twisted and turned the meaning to claim that murdering unborn children wasn't a sin.
Just like the anthrax letters being sent to Democrat politicians.
I don't believe in murder, especially the innocent unborn, but I would NOT pray for the dead abortion priest. His afterlife had been sealed long ago. Only pagans and athiest would try that.
BTW, is this the same FBI office which sucked up the foofoo dust spread around by the SUNY lady professor about 'right wing extremists' doing the Anthrax thing? Or was it ANOTHER upstate NY FBI office??
If these veteran radicals seem too noisy and eager to be taken seriously, the FBI had good reason to look leftward, and election politics was just the half of it. A second possible motive, a more profound one, was the fear among abortion supporters that Slepian was turning into another Dr. Bernard Nathanson.
Tomorrow: "Slepian softens before his death"
Evidently the 'massive force' got lost.
Almost everything else WND runs has been factual, but some of it has been a bit one-sided.
I always check WND against CNS News and NewsMax.
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