The US vs. James Kopp:A Conclusion in Search of its Evidence

The United States of America vs. James Charles Kopp
A Conclusion in Search of its Evidence

On October 23, 1998, abortionist Dr. Barnett Slepian was killed by a sniper while standing in the kitchen of his Amherst, New York, home. James C. Kopp was indicted for this murder and later arrested in Dinan, France. This document does not purport to be a defense of Mr. Kopp, but instead documents what appear to be serious improprieties, and possibly criminal actions, committed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Amherst Police Department.

Information contained here was gathered from the federal indictment filed against Mr. Kopp, as well as articles published in secular newspapers, and from our own investigation. However, the primary sources are the documents in support of extradition supplied to the French government by the State of New York and the United States. You will see that these extradition affidavits contain assertions that range from the plausible, to the contradictory, to the utterly absurd.

This report consists of a timeline of the major events related to this crime. Included with each day and description on the timeline, we present a brief analysis of that event. As you review this report, keep the following considerations in mind.

1. In many instances, the problem with the case against Kopp is not what the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Amherst Police Department (APD) documents assert, but what they omit. Time and again, they suggest conclusions for which they provide little or no supporting evidence.

One could argue that just because the FBI / APD didn’t include a particular piece of evidence in these documents, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have that piece of evidence. It could mean that someone made a conscious decision that it was not needed. In some cases that may be what happened, but American law enforcement officials, especially those in the FBI, are fully aware of how difficult it is to extradite someone from France. That makes it highly unlikely that they would purposely or inadvertently leave out of their extradition documents anything that might be even remotely significant.

Additionally, time was not a factor in deciding which information was included and which was not. The United States had forty days to file extradition papers with the French, and they actually took thirty-nine of those days to do so. If Kopp had been a low-profile suspect in a low-profile case, an argument could be made that the extradition process fell through the cracks and the documents were rushed through at the last minute. However, Kopp was on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list, accused of an extremely high-profile crime, and was the subject of an international manhunt.

One theory to explain missing evidence might be that the FBI / APD made a conscious decision to hold some evidence until later, and only reveal the bare minimum needed in order to achieve extradition. According to this theory, their goal would be to blind-side the defense by introducing their best stuff at trial. However, the well-known difficulty of French extradition makes this approach extremely risky. Both the FBI and the APD know they would look pretty foolish if they lost extradition because they tried some kind of grandstand play like this. There is also no reward for trying this maneuver since, during the discovery process, Kopp’s defense would eventually receive all of the “held-back” information anyway.

The fact is that the FBI / APD had every incentive to invest the time and effort necessary to make the best possible case for extradition, and absolutely no incentive not to do so. Given that reality, they would have been far more likely to err on the side of providing too much information rather than too little. Holes in their case against Kopp should not be seen as indicators that pieces of evidence were omitted, but that pieces of evidence were either non-existent or counterproductive to the prosecution’s case.

2. In the evidence against Kopp, it is alleged that he did several things in carrying out this crime which defy all logic. Some of these things would have only been done by a person with very low intelligence or an incredibly defective thought process. To the contrary, Kopp has a bachelors degree in biology, a masters degree in embryology, and while employed as a laboratory technician at The University of Texas he scored high enough on his MCAT tests to be admitted to medical school. He was also published in the European scientific publication, International Journal of Invertebrate Reproduction, and worked at Stanford University in California on a project related to nerve reconnection for veterans who sustained spinal-cord injuries during the Vietnam war.

Without exception, everyone we talked to who personally knows him, insists that he is an extraordinarily intelligent individual whose approach to decision-making is very analytical and strategic. The point here is not that intelligent people don’t commit crimes, but that certain parts of the FBI / APD case make absolutely no sense unless Kopp is a borderline idiot. The fact that he is not, causes some of the evidence against him to seem rather suspicious.

3. There seems to be a consistent effort on the part of law enforcement officials and the media to portray Kopp as some sort of knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the photo of him which was distributed by the FBI and the media. The problem is, it looks nothing like him. One person with whom Kopp had lived, told us that when he saw the photo in his newspaper he was convinced it wasn’t him. Similar statements were made to us over and over by people who have known Kopp for years.

The photo is indeed of Kopp, but it is a mug shot taken following a pro-life “rescue” at which Kopp had been physically assaulted and maced by police. It also shows him without his extremely thick eyeglasses. The question is why the FBI and the media would choose to distribute a photo that looks almost nothing like the person being sought. The FBI had other photos, and on their website they displayed two others that far more accurately depicted Kopp. So if the FBI wanted the public’s help in catching him, and the media was truly interested in accuracy, then why did they purposely choose to distribute the one photo that looked nothing at all like him?

The answer is obvious. The FBI wasn’t using this photo in an effort to catch Kopp and the media wasn’t interested in accuracy. Both used it for one reason and one reason only: it projected an image of Kopp they wanted the public to have. (see the photographs included at the end of this site)

4. Another issue is whether Kopp is the kind of person who would shoot another human being in order to stop abortion. In short, does he fit the profile of a shooter? In modern law enforcement, criminal profiling is a well accepted and widely used investigative tool. When trying to capture a serial killer, rapist or other violent criminal, law enforcement officials routinely attempt to create a personality profile in order to identify the kind of person they’re looking for. Often, when a perpetrator is eventually apprehended, the profile of him proves to have been eerily accurate.

If you examine the patterns established by anti-abortion people who have shot abortionists in the past, two common characteristics emerge. To begin with, all had a history of openly saying that the use of force, even deadly force, is morally and theologically permissible in order to stop abortion. However, in the case of Jim Kopp, he has consistently and vehemently decried the use of such violence. Without exception, every person we interviewed in preparing this document insisted that he had always made his feelings on this issue crystal clear. Moreover, his history in the anti-abortion effort has always been non-violent, even to the point of not defending himself while under brutal attacks by police or pro-choice activists. As a result of these instances, he has suffered numerous injuries without retaliating, including broken bones, crushed ribs, and beatings severe enough to leave him with permanent physical disabilities. Today he has a pronounced limp, a bad back that sometimes requires him to use a cane, and an ankle that frequently pronates (rolls over).

Kopp’s philosophical aversion to violence is tied directly to his Catholic beliefs about salvation. Among the many people we talked to who were close to Kopp, each told us that, even though he is strongly pro-life, he believes that abortion is a lesser tragedy than someone dying in an unrepentant state. Kopp’s religious view is that killing an abortionist takes from him the opportunity to ever be converted to Christianity, and thereby sentences him to an eternity in hell. To him, that is a far greater sin than the abortions being committed by this person, and makes him a seemingly unlikely shooter of someone he perceives to be unrepentant and unsaved.

The second characteristic of previous anti-abortion shooters, is that when caught they don’t deny their actions, they defend them. That is not what happened with Kopp. Since his arrest, he has never wavered in his insistence that he did not shoot Slepian. While some might contend that this is no different than the person who commits an armed robbery saying he didn’t do it, in reality it is totally different. If Slepian was killed by someone who is pro-life, it was an ideologically motivated act committed by a zealot who became so committed to a cause that he would kill for it. Regardless of the issue, the one thing we know about zealots is that they do not “wimp out” when they get caught.

Of course, the fact that Kopp doesn’t perfectly fit the profile of previous anti-abortion shooters does not prove that he didn’t kill Slepian. However, the FBI can’t have it both ways. They cannot claim on one hand that profiling is a useful and accurate tool for tracking down criminals, and then ignore the fact that someone they catch doesn’t fit the profile of a person who would commit the crime being investigated.

According to FBI / APD extradition affidavits, on this date an SKS rifle was bought from the A to Z Pawn Shop in Old Hickory, Tennessee, by a person using the name B. James Milton. The FBI alleges that Kopp and B. James Milton are the same person. They also claim that this rifle was eventually recovered from the wooded area behind the Slepian home, and that it was used by Kopp to kill Slepian.

1. We have obtained sworn affidavits from several eyewitnesses who state that they saw Kopp, or participated with Kopp, in construction projects taking place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, every day during the week of July 14, 1997. This includes July 16, the day that the FBI says the gun was purchased over 550 miles away in Old Hickory, Tennessee. We also have records from the City of Pittsburgh confirming that these witnesses are not mistaken about these dates. Obviously, if Kopp was in Pennsylvania on July 16th of 1997, he is not the person who purchased the SKS rifle which the FBI claims was used to shoot Slepian.

2. Extradition affidavits filed by the FBI and the APD don’t provide one single witness, or one single piece of evidence, to indicate that Kopp and B. James Milton are the same person. If such evidence exists, it would be incomprehensible that they wouldn’t include it in these documents.

3. In their extradition documents, neither the FBI nor the APD provided one single witness or one single piece of evidence to connect Kopp to this SKS rifle. Early in the investigation, the FBI stated that Patricia Osborn, owner of the A to Z Pawn Shop, identified Kopp as the purchaser. However, on April 5, 2001, Osborn told Associated Press reporter, Amber Austin, “I barely remember the transaction, could never have identified his face. I only know what the FBI told me.”

The APD extradition affidavit states that Osborn testified about the sale of this gun based on her business records. Oddly, however, the affidavit never mentions whether she was asked to identify a photo of Kopp or give a description of him. If such a question were asked, and she had identified Kopp, there is absolutely no doubt that this information would have been included in the extradition documents.

4. This date (July 16, 1997), is 15 months prior to the Slepian shooting and neither the FBI nor the APD provided one piece of information about where the gun was during these 15 months. Additionally, they did not produce one witness to say that during this time period they saw Kopp with either the gun or a container large enough to accommodate the gun, nor did they identify a place where the gun or such container might have been stored. This seems odd considering that during this period of time Kopp lived with several different families yet no one noticed this rifle.

5. According to relatives and acquaintances, Kopp has no military or law enforcement background and no firearms history of any kind. However, neither the FBI nor the APD produced even one witness or piece of evidence indicating that Kopp spent any time in preparation for this crime. They provided nothing to even suggest that he spent any time on a shooting range, took any instruction in the use of firearms, or purchased any firearms manuals, books or videos.

6. The A to Z Pawn Shop is approximately a days drive from where Kopp was living on this date. Even if you ignore the fact that the authorities never provided evidence that Kopp and Milton are the same person, and even if you ignore the affidavits of witnesses saying that Kopp was over 550 miles away on the day the FBI says the gun was being purchased, the question becomes why Kopp would drive this distance to buy an extremely cheap, widely available gun from a pawnshop where he is required to fill out federal firearms documentation. The reality is, with far less effort he could have bought it from an individual through the newspaper or at a gun show and left no paper trail whatsoever.

A female neighbor of Slepian’s (identified by the APD as an assistant professor at a local medical school and identified by the FBI as Citizen 1) claims to have seen someone get out of an unfamiliar car and start slowly jogging or “plodding” through the neighborhood sometime after 5:30 A.M. She claims that the “whole scene was so unusual” that she recorded the license plate number of the car. On the ABC news program, Primetime, broadcast on April 5th, 2001, she is reported as having made an entry into her journal describing the man and noting the license plate number of the car. In this journal, she also left a note to her husband which read, “If anything ever happens to me, this guy did it.” Later, she provided authorities with a description of the man’s vehicle, including its license plate number. The plate number was identified as belonging to Kopp.

1. It seems bizarre that from simply seeing a stranger jogging in her neighborhood, this woman immediately leaps to the conclusion that he poses a threat to her life. Then, having perceived this threat, it seems even more illogical that she would record the episode in a journal, but never report it to the police. This is especially odd considering that this woman lives in a neighborhood with a high-profile abortionist who is often the target of anti-abortion picketing. Generally, people in these circumstances become hyper-vigilant about any unusual activity in their neighborhood and show little reluctance to alert law enforcement about any concerns they have about safety, whether real or imagined.

2. According to FBI / APD extradition affidavits, all other witnesses were shown photos of Kopp to identify. However, there is no mention in these documents that this woman was ever asked to identify a picture of Kopp, even though she claims to have seen him well enough to write a description of him in her journal. If she had been able to identify Kopp, it would have strengthened the FBI / APD case and been included in their documents for extradition. This omission suggests that (a) she didn’t identify him as the person she saw, or (b) she identified someone else.

3. The authorities did not conduct a “show-up” of cars similar to Kopp’s and ask her to pick out the one she thinks was in her neighborhood. Instead she is shown a picture of Kopp’s vehicle and asked whether or not that’s the car. This indicates that the authorities already “had their man” and simply used this woman to bolster that position.

4. According to the FBI / APD affidavits, the license plate number this woman provided was for a car registered to Kopp. However, on December 23, 1998, CBS News reported that when Kopp’s car was found at the Newark airport, it had a New Jersey license plate that didn’t belong on it. (When asked about this plate by CBS, FBI agent, Monica Patton, stated that she couldn’t say whether or not it was stolen.) Given that the car had a different license plate on it when found at the airport, it may be that this witness didn’t really have a license plate number, and Kopp’s was “suggested” to her by the authorities while she was being questioned. That would again indicate that the FBI and the APD believed that they already “had their man” and were now just filling in the gaps.

A male witness (identified by the APD as a high school teacher and identified by the FBI as Citizen 2) claims that on this date he saw a man jogging slowly in Slepian’s neighborhood. This man says he noticed this person because his awkward gait made him appear to be someone who didn’t normally jog. According to FBI / APD affidavits, from photos published in the media he later identified the man he saw as Kopp.

1. If someone saw Kopp in person in their neighborhood, it is quite unlikely that they would connect him with the photo circulated by the media. As discussed earlier, the photo most commonly published actually looks nothing at all like Kopp.

2. Given Kopp’s physical problems, reports suggesting that he was jogging, trotting or even plodding are very suspect.

A woman (identified by the APD as a female witness and identified by the FBI as Citizen 3) said that on two occasions during this time frame she saw an unfamiliar man trotting through Slepian’s neighborhood. She said that in both cases, these incidences occurred in the early morning hours. According to FBI / APD affidavits, she later identified the man she saw as Kopp.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, this woman did not make a positive identification of Kopp. Among the photographs shown to her by authorities, she only identified his photograph as the one “most closely matching the person she observed on her walking route.”

A male witness (identified by the APD as a lawn-care worker and identified by the FBI as Citizen 4) says that from his truck he saw a white male jogging or plodding in the direction of Slepian’s home sometime early in the afternoon. After seeing photos published in the media, he identified the man he saw in the neighborhood as Kopp.

Review the information contained in the analysis section for October 18, 1998, above.

At approximately 10:00 P.M., Slepian’s wife claims that she heard a popping noise and saw him fall to the floor. After noticing a hole in a kitchen window that faced the wooded area behind the residence she called for emergency help.

At 10:07 P.M., APD officer Ted Dinoto says that he received a radio call about a possible shooting at the Slepian residence and that he arrived on the scene in approximately two minutes.

APD officer Robert Stephens accompanied emergency personnel to the hospital where Slepian was pronounced dead.

According to the extradition affidavit filed by the APD, a 14-year-old girl and her mother were jogging in the Slepian neighborhood when they heard sirens and saw police cars in the area. They then went to a location where they could see the Slepian residence. The fourteen-year-old testified that she saw a man dressed in a dark hooded sweatshirt crouched behind bushes in front of a house on the same side of the street as the Slepian home. She testified that the man ran from behind the bushes to a car waiting in the driveway of the house, got into the passenger side, after which the car sped away.

1. If accurate, this 14-year-old-girl’s testimony makes it obvious that a second person was involved. If Kopp did this alone using his own car, it is virtually certain that he would not have gotten into the car on the passenger side. A Chevrolet Cavalier is a very small vehicle with a floor shift and a center console between the front seats. For someone with normal agility it would take a relatively long time to get from the right side to the driver’s side. For a person with Kopp’s physical disabilities, this would be quite arduous and consume valuable time that someone fleeing a murder scene wouldn’t waste.

The most compelling reason that this 14-year-old’s testimony eliminates the possibility of a single perpetrator is related to time. Whoever made this shot could not afford to assume that his target was going to be available quickly, so he had to be prepared to be at the scene of the crime for more than a few minutes. Knowing that, he is not going to leave his car in a stranger’s driveway where it could be towed away if discovered, or blocked in by another car.

The more likely scenario is that the driver was some distance away, and went to the driveway to pick up his accomplice upon hearing the gunshot. The only real alternative to this theory, is that the person jumping into this car in the middle of the night and speeding away is totally unrelated to the crime, and that the whole event is just a gigantic coincidence. And while that is theoretically possible, the odds against it are astronomical.

2. This episode is remarkable because (a) despite being the only two known eye witnesses at the crime scene, neither of these people are mentioned in the FBI’s extradition affidavit, (b) comments made by the mother of this girl are never mentioned in the APD extradition affidavit, (c) there is no mention in the APD extradition affidavit that the 14-year-old girl was ever asked to identify either Kopp or his car, and (d) in neither the FBI nor the APD extradition documents are there any indications that there was ever any follow-up investigation involving these witnesses.

Apparently, this girl’s testimony was offhandedly dismissed by the authorities and her mother was completely ignored.

A representative of the Erie County Central Police Services Laboratory, ballistics expert Michael Dujanovich, sets up a ballistic alignment laser at the scene of the crime. Also on site was APD Captain Michael J. Melton to supervise the collection of evidence.

Melton located a bullet lying on the hearth of a fireplace that is adjacent to the kitchen. He also went to a tree in the wooded area behind the house where the laser indicated the shot was fired, and recovered potential hair and fiber samples from the tree and the area around it.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, “on or about” this date, the FBI interviewed someone they identify as Citizen 5. The APD extradition affidavit identifies him as E. James Gannon, a resident of Whiting, New Jersey. Gannon told agents that he had known Kopp since 1989, but had not seen him since June or July of 1998. He said that the last time Kopp visited him, he allowed Kopp to store some personal items in his attic. These items included boxes and a blue knapsack type bag. Gannon agreed to voluntarily turn over these items to the FBI. After obtaining a search warrant, FBI agent Michael Ferrari (as identified by the APD extradition affidavit) finds, among other things, a tooth brush in the blue bag. Additionally, he found that one of the boxes contained a hand-drawn map to the A to Z Pawn Shop in Tennessee, as well as several telephone numbers of pawn shops in Kentucky, Georgia, and Tennessee. The FBI subsequently determined that fingerprints on the map matched those of Kopp. They also found a letter written by Kopp in which he stated that God was calling upon him to do more about stopping abortion. The letter was dated February 12, 1993, and was written to Father Leach.

1. Why — less than 24 hours after the shooting — is the FBI even involved? Murder is not automatically a federal crime, and according to their own documents, at this point they have no evidence whatsoever that any other federal crime was committed. Moreover, why are they seizing Kopp’s private property when they have absolutely no evidence that either Kopp or Gannon was involved?

2. In the media, and in the FBI’s affidavit, the FBI dishonestly attempted to make it appear that Kopp’s letter to Father Leach was an admission that he was preparing to use violence to end abortion. However, this letter was dated February 12, 1993, and written in the past tense. He was explaining his metamorphosis from a pro-life letter-writer into a non-violent pro-life rescuer and crisis pregnancy counselor. This letter is clearly an analysis of past activities, not what he intends to do in the future.

According to the FBI extradition affidavit, trace evidence was retrieved off the tree near where they believe the shooter was located.

Newspaper articles report that, sometime in the afternoon of this date, an APD officer questioned two out-of-state strangers found in Slepian’s neighborhood. Robert Stauber and Michael Gingerich, told police that they had borrowed a car and had driven from their homes in Cleveland to attend a prayer vigil being held for Slepian. They claimed that they were misdirected to Slepian’s residence rather than his clinic, which was the actual site of the event. According to them, this erroneous information came from a local pro-choice organization.

1. Immediately following the shooting of Slepian, many pro-lifers in the area were suspicious that the shooter(s) may have actually been from the pro-choice side. These suspicions emerged because several recent developments had indicated that Slepian may have been about to convert to the pro-life position. According to local pro-life picketers, Slepian’s tone toward them had softened dramatically in recent months, and Slepian had even invited one anti-abortion activist, Bob Behn, into his home for breakfast. Behn was also in the process of setting up a meeting between Slepian and a local pro-life pastors’ association. Slepian had already agreed to a meeting with the leader of Operation Rescue, Flip Benham, but it was postponed because of a death in Slepian’s family. Picketer Eva Boldt told us that Slepian’s attitude toward her was far more respectful than it had been in the past, and that he had actually sought her out to talk. She, and another picketer, Amy Ashbery, said that their conversations had become so prolonged and amiable that clinic escorts actually began to tell Slepian to “move along” when they observed him visiting with the pro-lifers while sitting in his car.

2. According to a Buffalo News article of October 27, 1998, children living near Slepian’s home 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 APD issued a pick-up request for a white car described as possibly being a Ford Taurus with Ontario license plates. Then, on November 21, 1998, the New York Times reported that on the 19th of November, the FBI stated that Stauber and Gingerich may be traveling in a Ford Taurus with blue and white license plates, possibly from either Ontario or Ohio. (License plates from both areas are white with blue lettering.)

3. Stauber and Gingerich are members of a radical pro-abortion group called Refuse and Resist. This organization is openly dedicated to doing “whatever it takes” to protect the right to abortion, including thinly-veiled references to violence. They have often expressed open contempt for pro-choice organizations which they apparently perceive as too passive and non-confrontational. They are also avowed Communists associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party, a group that Salon Magazine described in May of 1999 as “a small Maoist group with a well-known loathing for the U.S. government.” Since Stauber and Gingerich are both over 50, and since Americans seldom, if ever, gravitate toward Communism after their youth, it is safe to assume that these two have a history with radical far-left politics probably starting in the sixties. It would not be at all unlikely that they have had associations with organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or The Weather Underground.

The point is, in no way do these two fit the profile of people who would borrow a car and drive four hours to another state to attend something as innocuous and completely out of character as a prayer vigil.

4. The claim by Stauber and Gingerich that they were misdirected is highly unlikely. First, these kinds of events are almost always held at the clinic of the abortionist or some other relatively public site, not in a quiet up-scale residential neighborhood where a murder has just occurred. Second, the pro-choice groups in the area had to know where the event was being held. The possibility that they would give out a bad address is slim, at best. Third, it stands to reason that if this pro-choice organization was giving out bad information, they would have given it out to more than just these two people. However, there is no indication anywhere that anyone other than Stauber and Gingerich showed up at the Slepian neighborhood looking for this prayer vigil.

5. It is a well recognized phenomenon that criminals are often drawn back to the scenes of their crimes, especially violent crimes such as arson, rape, and murder. If Stauber and Gingerich were involved in the killing of Slepian, this could explain why they were found hanging around Slepian’s neighborhood the next day.

6. Stauber and Gingerich are middle-aged males and it seems odd that they would have to borrow a car to make this relatively short trip. It is obviously possible that neither had a reliable vehicle, but it is also possible that their car had already been seen in the Slepian neighborhood and they didn’t want to risk being identified with it.

7. On November 23, 1998, the Buffalo area ABC affiliate broadcast a story in which Gingerich was apparently caught in an unnecessary, and therefore suspicious, lie. Talking about the FBI’s questioning of he and Stauber, he said, “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?”

The problem is that the television station then asked a Planned Parenthood representative in Cleveland about these two, and was told that they never heard of them, and a check with five or six other local pro-choice organizations failed to produce anyone else who knew who they were. The Planned Parenthood representative pointed out that if Stauber or Gingerich were in fact aggressive pro-choice activists, one of these organizations would have heard of them. What’s interesting about this is the fact that in the media coverage which followed the revelations about them being questioned, as well as in bulletins subsequently put out by Refuse and Resist, Stauber and Gingerich never claimed that they couldn’t have killed Slepian because they were in another city, nor did they offer any other alibi. The only reason they ever gave for why they shouldn’t have been suspects in the first place is because they are so publically pro-choice.

8. According to newspaper accounts, after the initial questioning by the APD in the Slepian neighborhood, nothing is reported about an ongoing investigation. In fact, the FBI apparently didn’t investigate this situation until November 13, 1998, when they went to the home of the woman who loaned them her car. On November 19th, the FBI issued a nationwide bulletin to law enforcement that they were seeking Stauber and Gingerich for questioning. Then, shortly after a November 20th meeting between FBI agents, Stauber and his attorney — during which Stauber refused to answer questions — the investigation was evidently halted.

9. In the FBI / APD extradition affidavits, nothing related to the questioning of Stauber and Gingerich is ever mentioned.

According to the APD affidavit, a New York State Police officer, James G. Probst, runs the plate number given to them by the female witness labeled by the FBI as Citizen 1. It is determined that this plate is for a black 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier registered to Kopp in St. Albens, Vermont. In addition, Probst discovered that Kopp had been arrested numerous times for anti-abortion activities. From the documents related to these arrests, the authorities were able to obtain several physical descriptions of Kopp.

This is the first time that either the FBI or the APD provide evidence even remotely connecting Kopp to the crime. Again, that raises the very serious question of why the FBI was at Gannon’s house three days earlier seizing personal property owned by Kopp. As stated earlier, at that point — less than 24 hours after the shooting — they had absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this was a federal crime, or that either Kopp or Gannon was involved in it.

A Piermont, New York, resident, Richard Bruno (described as Citizen 6 in the FBI affidavit) tells the APD that, on this date, he had a conversation with Kopp. Bruno says that based on this conversation his expectation was that he and Kopp would continue working on previously scheduled construction projects.

Bruno says that on this date Kopp called in sick and said that he would call back when he was able to return to work.

The FBI says that on this date the Associated Press, Nassau / Suffolk editions of Newsday, The Buffalo News, and the New York Post, reported that a Vermont man was being sought in connection with the Slepian murder.

At 11:00 A.M. the FBI holds a press conference and announces that a material witness warrant for Kopp was issued by the Federal District Court in the Western District of New York. This information, and a photo of Kopp, was then widely distributed by the national media.

According to the FBI extradition affidavit, FBI investigators returned to the crime scene to “comb the woods” behind the Slepian home.

At a spot approximately 140 feet from where they believe the shooter stood, they found a black plastic bag similar to a garbage bag, buried in the ground on top of a trowel. Inside they found an empty Remmington cartridge box for 7.62 cartridges, a pair of Tasco binoculars, a pair of ear muffs, a flashlight, a green baseball cap, a wrist watch, and a black belted storage bag (commonly called a fanny pack). This material was sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, APD Captain Melton was called to the scene to supervise the collection of the above evidence. Interestingly, his listing of the items collected matched the FBI listing, with the exception that it did not include the black belted storage bag.

1. Nowhere in the FBI / APD extradition affidavits do they explain what caused them to return to the crime scene — 13 days after the shooting — for an additional search.

2. A mini-timeline shows the following: (a) on October 23, 1998, an initial crime-scene investigation begins that fails to produce anything linking Kopp to the crime, (b) on October 24, 1998, despite the fact that there was absolutely no evidence that Kopp was involved in this crime, and absolutely no evidence that a federal crime was committed, the FBI seizes a collection of Kopp’s personal belongings, then (c) on November 5, 1998, (13 days after the shooting) and with no explanation for why they were returning to the crime scene, a hole is discovered containing a collection of Kopp’s personal belongings, all carefully preserved in a plastic bag.

3. This was a high-profile case receiving national media coverage involving both local law enforcement and the nation’s premier criminal investigative agency. It is totally illogical to believe that an exhaustive inch-by-inch search of this area was not conducted at the time of the crime. Nowhere in the FBI / APD extradition affidavits do they explain what allowed them to find these items during this subsequent search when they didn’t find them during the initial search.

4. Every item found in the plastic bag (a cartridge box, a pair of binoculars, ear muffs, a flashlight, a baseball cap, a wrist watch, and a fanny pack) is either wearable or easily pocketed. Interestingly, none of these items are illegal to possess, nor would they implicate him in the crime if he were later caught with them. The only way these items could cause Kopp to be linked to the crime is if they are found at the scene of the crime.

The question then becomes, why would he leave them behind? Why would Kopp take off his watch, ear muffs, fanny pack, and cap, then throw them in a hole on top of a trowel along with his flashlight and binoculars? Even more bizarre, why would he take the time to put all these things in a plastic bag? Was he trying to preserve them for the forensics team?

5. Even if you ignore the fact that it would have been counterproductive and pathetically stupid for Kopp to bury an assortment of his personal belongings at the scene of the crime, you’re still left with one seemingly unanswerable question. How does a man who just shot someone in the middle of the night in a quiet residential up-scale neighborhood, have time — before the police arrive, and even if you assume that he pre-dug the hole — to fill the hole and camouflage it so well that a team of professional investigators from the APD and the FBI don’t discover it for thirteen days?

6. According to the FBI extradition affidavit, the cartridge box found at the scene was intact enough that its lot number was easily readable. Despite this, there is no indication in any of the documents that an attempt was made to identify where this box of cartridges was purchased, or by whom.

7. The FBI / APD extradition affidavits contain no mention that DNA tests were performed on the wrist watch or ear muffs — two items virtually certain to contain DNA samples — and there is no mention that an attempt was made to lift fingerprints from any of the items recovered.

In a press release dated April 2, 2001, the FBI disclosed that it retrieved trace evidence off the tree near where they believe the shooter was located. They also confirmed that this material was sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C.

1. Again, no reason is given for what caused the FBI to return to the crime scene — 13 days after the shooting — for an additional search.

2. On the day of the shooting (October 23rd), the high temperature was over 55 degrees and there were average wind speeds exceeding 14 MPH, with maximum sustained wind speeds over 27 MPH, and gusts exceeding 35 MPH. The following day was approximately the same. During the time between October 23rd and November 5th, there were two days when it rained, two days when it snowed, and several days with relatively high wind gusts. On November 5th, there was rain and snow.

Given these conditions, it is extremely unlikely that usable trace evidence (hair, fibers, etc.) could be collected off a tree 13 days after the initial search.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, FBI agent William Waldie testified that he and agent Daniel McKenna met E. James Gannon (Citizen 5) at Gannon’s residence where Gannon gave them permission to collect a blue knapsack type bag that Kopp had left behind in Gannon’s attic. Waldie testified that on the following day he and McKenna returned to Gannon’s residence where they collected, again with Gannon’s permission, four boxes of materials that had also been left behind by Kopp. They sealed this material and forwarded it, along with the blue knapsack type bag recovered the day before, to the FBI office in Buffalo, New York.

1. This represents a turning point in the case against Kopp, because it is the first indication that the FBI may have been involved in fabricating evidence against him. Agent Waldie’s testimony is totally contradicted by the FBI’s own affidavit in which they state they were at Gannon’s home “on or about October 24th, 1998, not November 7th and 8th.”

To begin with, this “on or about” language is suspect. FBI agents keep detailed notes about these events, including travel vouchers and time sheets. It is literally impossible for them not to know the exact date they were at Gannon’s home. This rhetoric is a smokescreen. The reality is that someone is being purposely deceptive, and the most plausible explanation is that the FBI was trying to insulate themselves from a charge that they were the ones who planted the mysterious plastic bag of Kopp’s personal belongings found at the crime scene. If, in fact, they had Kopp’s belongings on October 24th, it would have been clearly possible for them to bury these items before finding them on November 5th.

2. When evidence collected by the FBI is to be scientifically analyzed, it is always sent to their forensics lab in Washington, D.C., and in every other circumstance involving this case that is precisely what happened.

In this instance, however, Kopp’s personal belongings were first sent to the FBI’s field office in Buffalo, New York. That raises the question: What was the motive behind diverting Kopp’s personal belongings to the Buffalo field office instead of to the lab where it could be analyzed?

3. According to the APD extradition affidavit, Gannon testified that in November of 1998 he allowed Kopp to store some personal items in his home. If that were so, then clearly the FBI could not have retrieved them on October 24th.

However, in the FBI’s own affidavit, they state that Gannon told them that he had not seen Kopp since June or July of 1998, and that he stored these items for him at that time. This is further corroborated by a sworn affidavit Gannon provided us in which he states that Kopp had not been in his home since the summer of 1998.

United States Attorney General, Janet Reno, establishes a federal task force to investigate the possibility that Slepian was the victim of a widespread anti-abortion plot. This effort was run by the FBI and was comprised of 12 Justice Department lawyers and members of several law enforcement agencies. Ostensibly, the group’s purpose was to investigate the Slepian shooting and how it fit into a larger pattern of organized violence by anti-abortion individuals and organizations.

1. Immediately after it began, some senior FBI officials began expressing serious misgivings about this campaign, and pointed out that a similar Justice Department effort in 1994 had turned up nothing. These concerns were the subject of a November 15, 1998, New York Times article entitled, ”Where the FBI Fears to Tread.” In this article it was reported that some officials within the FBI were privately saying that this new task force was turning the FBI into a political entity rather than a judicial one. One FBI employee stated that, “We should investigate violations, we shouldn’t investigate groups.” The article went on to say that, “Bureau officials fear that expanding the investigation could drive the agency over the ill-defined boundary that separates inquiries into criminal activity from those into political causes and unpopular ideas.”

Later, there were revelations about a secret Justice Department investigation of non-violent anti-abortion organizations. This campaign was made public following a tip by an angry source inside the FBI, and appears to reinforce the possibility that pro-abortion bias was a driving force within the Justice Department at this time.

According to a July 2, 2000, New York Post article, the FBI carried out a two-year long investigation into an alleged nation-wide pro-life conspiracy to commit violence. The inquiry included thousands of documents covering pro-life organizations and individuals, including ones that had never before been implicated in violence. This investigation was called Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAPCON) and was first exposed by the watchdog organization, Judicial Watch, from information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and from a source inside the FBI.

FBI investigators complained that they were being required to look into pro-life organizations with no known relationship to violence against abortionists or clinics. After several months of monitoring the mail and phone calls of pro-lifers and finding no evidence of a conspiracy, the FBI wanted to drop the investigation. However, orders from the Clinton-Reno Justice Department insisted they continue, and the investigation dragged on for another year. Finally, the investigation was called-off without discovering any conspiracy.

One FBI source contacted for the New York Post article confirmed the investigation, pointing out that, "this is a highly political, highly corrupt administration." Officials at the Department of Justice minimized the claims, asserting that "the bottom line is we have very, very strict guidelines on investigations of groups. We do not and cannot investigate a group unless there is a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed." That was a lie. Individuals and groups reported on the VAAPCON database included the late John Cardinal O'Conner (Archbishop of the Diocese of New York), the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the National Council of Catholic Bishops, and Feminists for Life, all of which had explicitly renounced violence and had no history of connections with illegal activity.

2. In several places, we have suggested that the FBI / APD may have manufactured the case against Kopp. The question is, what reason would they have for doing such a thing. First, law enforcement officials often have a case in which they are absolutely convinced of someone’s guilt but lack the evidence to prove it. In such circumstances, it is not at all unheard of for evidence to suddenly materialize. That may explain how the most damaging evidence against Kopp was missed during the initial search of the crime scene, and then mysteriously turns up later at the same location.

Second, there had been several shootings of abortionists in Canada, and Canadian authorities had struck-out trying to identify a suspect. That could have motivated the FBI / APD to want to avoid the same embarrassment. In the Clinton / Reno Justice Department, one can logically assume that the unsolved shooting of an abortionist was probably not acceptable. Additionally, the truncated investigation of Stauber and Gingerich, the two pro-abortion activists found lurking in Slepian’s neighborhood, may be a signal that the word was out that the suspect in this case better be pro-life. If true, someone in the FBI may have decided that in the absence of any evidence for which particular pro-lifer did this, the nearest pro-lifer would do.

Third, for many years Kopp had been a thorn in the side of law enforcement. Among pro-life “rescuers” he was known to be the most intelligent and innovative. He is the one who devised, among other things, the Kryptonite system called “lock and block” which had stymied police and shut down abortion clinics across the country. If someone was going to be selected as a suspect, he would make a logical choice.

For someone who thinks we are overstating the scale of the FBI’s vendetta against the pro-life movement during the Clinton administration, please read the New York Times and New York Post articles mentioned in the preceding section. Also consider the following: Bill Clinton sent a letter that was read to the attendees of Slepian’s funeral, and one of the FBI agents involved in the Slepian investigation was a keynote speaker at the National Abortion Federation’s convention in Chicago in the spring of 2001.

According to the FBI extradition affidavit, Citizen 8 (identified in the APD extradition affidavit as Seth Grodofsky), is the owner of an apartment building located in Jersey City, New Jersey. He told FBI agents that a man known to him as “Clyde Swenson” lived at his apartment building from September of 1998 until early November of 1998. Grodofsky identified this man as Kopp, and said that the last time he saw him was in late October of 1998. He also told these agents that Kopp had left behind a number of personal belongings and had never contacted him in an effort to retrieve them.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, FBI agent Barry Lee Bush testified that on November 13, 1998, he searched Kopp’s apartment in the building owned by Grodofsky and found a notebook that included references to Slepian’s office. Testimony revealed that this notebook, along with other personal property owned by Kopp, was sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C.

1. It is notable that the personal belongings taken from this location were sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C., while the personal belongings collected at Gannon’s home were sent to the FBI’s Buffalo field office.

2. According to the APD extradition affidavit, FBI agent Michael Ferrari, testified that he traveled from the FBI’s Buffalo field office to “examine the notepaper retrieved from the closet shelf of Mr. Kopp’s residence.” The question is why an FBI agent would travel almost 400 miles to look at a piece of paper that could have easily been faxed. Remember, according to the FBI, this piece of paper contained personal information about Slepian, and the suggestion is that it links Kopp to Slepian. Another question is why agent Ferrari would feel it necessary to physically have his hands on this piece of paper before it was sent to the FBI lab in Washington for forensic analysis. Interestingly, this is the same agent Ferrari who examined Kopp’s personal items that were taken from the Gannon residence and, inexplicably, shipped them to the FBI’s Buffalo field office before they were sent to Washington.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, FBI agent Arthur Durrant testified that he examined a 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier found abandoned at the Newark, New Jersey airport. When found, it had a license plate that didn’t belong on it, but he determined by the vehicle’s identification number that the car belonged to Kopp. Another FBI agent declined to say whether the plate was stolen. According to the FBI extradition affidavit, agents searched this vehicle and found a Tasco binocular case and also vacuumed it for trace evidence. This material was sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C.

1. Recall that Citizen 1 told police that on October 14, 1998, she saw an unusual jogger in her neighborhood and wrote down his license plate number. According to FBI / APD affidavits, the number she provided was for a car registered to Kopp. What all this suggests is that Kopp checked out the crime scene, and possibly committed the crime, using his real plates, and then afterward changed the plates in order to abandon the car and flee the country. That scenario seems implausible at best. If someone is casing a neighborhood in anticipation of committing a murder, it is far more likely that they would change out the plates beforehand to avoid being linked to the scene of the crime, than it is that they would change the plates after the crime is committed. It simply makes no sense for someone who is going to change a license plate to avoid detection, to wait until after committing the crime to do so, having already used his real plate while casing the neighborhood.

2. Ironically, the fact that Kopp’s car was found with an illegitimate license plate makes more sense if he is actually innocent. When he heard he was wanted for questioning and decided to flee, it would not be at all unrealistic for him to change plates just to get to the airport without being stopped.

3. An interesting thing is that, although license plates can be identified in a matter of seconds, nowhere is the real owner of the plates that were found on Kopp’s car identified.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, APD Captain Melton was again called to the wooded area behind the Slepian home to supervise the collection of additional evidence found during yet another search of that area by the FBI. The evidence recovered this time consisted of a semi-automatic rifle with telescopic site and a cartridge catcher along with two pairs of gloves. The rifle was loaded with six live rounds, one in the chamber and five in the magazine. Melton noted that a wooden extension had been added to the stock. According to the FBI extradition affidavit, this gun was buried approximately 162 feet from the shooting site, wrapped in a rubber material and inserted in a cardboard tube. It was identified as a Russian-built SKS carbine and was sent to the FBI forensics lab in Washington, D.C.

1. As before, no explanation was given for why the FBI would be returning to the crime scene, this time more than five months after the date of the shooting.

2. No explanation was given for why the FBI didn’t discover this gun during the two previous times they — using their own words — “combed the area.” When they found Kopp’s personal items on their second trip, it seems only logical that they would have concluded that they may have missed other evidence and conducted an even more intensive search. In a New York Times article of April 13, 1999, law enforcement officials claimed that “weather and ground conditions” in the days after the crime prevented them from finding the rifle at that time. They also say that they used metal detectors, but that “metal detectors don’t work all the time” and that using them is a “hit or miss” proposition.

These claims are absurd. To begin with, a check of the weather for that time period reveals absolutely nothing that would have hampered their search in any way. As for these assertions about the use of metal detectors, a private investigator and former prosecutor, Michael Cherkasky, was quoted in the same article as saying, “If you’re looking for a gun, it’s one of the easiest things to use a metal detector to find.” The owner of a California company that distributes metal detectors, Sean Rabbani, was also quoted, saying that even a conventional quality unit could have found this rifle. He went on to say that a properly adjusted metal detector can be “unfailingly accurate” and that he could have found the gun within eight hours — even if it had been buried in an area as large as two acres.

Finally, neighbors who witnessed the initial search said that they saw a line of at least a dozen investigators going over the area “shoulder to shoulder” and sometimes on their hands and knees. To have missed this gun under those conditions, and to make these utterly outrageous statements about weather and metal detectors, suggests that either the FBI is the worst investigative organization in the world, or the gun wasn’t there at the time of the first or second search. And of those options, the latter seems far more plausible.

3. Some questions raised by this newest discovery are similar to those raised when Kopp’s personal belongings were dug up during the FBI’s previous trip to the wooded area. To begin with, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for a sniper to bury his weapon at the scene of the crime, especially if it could be traced to him. In a New York Times article of April 14, 1999, Erie County District Attorney, Frank Clark, stated that, “I’ve been in this business 27 years and worked directly or indirectly on thousands of homicides, and in not one did the perpetrator bury the gun at or near the scene.”

Second, even if you assume that he pre-dug the holes, how does a man who just fired a high-powered rifle in the middle of the night in a quiet residential up-scale neighborhood, have time to bury a collection of his personal items in one hole, and his gun in another one, then fill the holes and camouflage them so well that a team of professional crime-scene investigators from the APD and the FBI don’t discover them for up to five months? Moreover, why use two holes at all? Why not throw everything in one?

Third, why would Kopp install a cartridge catcher on a gun, which is specifically designed to keep cartridge shells from falling to the ground, when he was planning on leaving the gun in the ground with the cartridge catcher attached? And why would he go to all the trouble to put the gun in a rubber material inside a cardboard tube? Why wouldn’t he just toss the gun into the hole? Was he trying to preserve it for the forensics team? (An interesting observation here is that a rifle wrapped in a rubber material inside a cardboard tube is exactly how rifles are shipped for ballistics testing.)

4. The clear implication in both the FBI and APD affidavits is that this rifle was purchased by Kopp and used to kill Slepian. What’s interesting is that no one from either the FBI or the APD ever makes that statement outright.

5. Neither the FBI nor the APD could show that the bullet which killed Slepian was fired from the rifle they found at the scene. Although that connection is strongly implied, they admit that “a conclusive connection between the Slepian bullet and the rifle could not be reached since, with high-powered rifles like the one recovered, it is not uncommon for the rifle barrel’s interior to change with each shot, thereby precluding the finding of an absolute connection.”

Their basic claim is that the similarity between the Slepian bullet and the FBI bullet is that they were both 7.62 rounds fired from guns with four grooves in the barrel, like an SKS. That means absolutely nothing. While it is true that SKS rifles have four-groove barrels, the majority of all guns which fire this type of round have four-groove barrels.

More important is the assertion that this rifle was used to kill Slepian, and the very next time it was fired during the FBI’s ballistics test, the bullets didn’t match because the barrels of high-powered rifles change with every shot. That is utterly preposterous. If it were true, then the FBI / APD obviously knew that the bullets weren’t going to match before the gun was tested. So the question becomes, why test fire this rifle at all? Moreover, if this assertion were true, then the whole concept of ballistics testing is a fraud. American law enforcement will never be able to use it in court again, and our judicial system is going to have to grant new trials to every person ever convicted of a crime in which high-powered rifles were used, and ballistics testing was introduced into evidence.

Perhaps their argument is that not every high-powered rifle barrel changes with each shot, just SKS rifle barrels. If so, that assertion flies in the face of reality. If an SKS rifle had the ability to fire a round that even the ballistics experts at the FBI couldn’t positively tie back to the rifle, every criminal in America would want an SKS and their black-market value would be astronomical. However, the reality is that SKS rifles are shoddy old carbines that were manufactured in China and the Soviet Union, went out of production over forty-years ago, and are readily available at pawn shops across the country for between $ 50.00 and $200.00.

Additionally, in a very brief search, we were able to locate court cases in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Missouri in which convictions were obtained from ballistics tests comparisons on SKS rifles and bullets fired from them. The fact is, this claim that consecutive bullets fired from a common rifle might not match because the barrel changes, is complete nonsense. The only unanswered question is why the FBI would make such an outrageous and easily discredited statement in the first place.

According to the APD extradition affidavit, agent Mark Hoback of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) testified that he went to the A to Z Pawn Shop in Old Hickory, Tennessee, and retrieved a Federal Firearms form indicating that this rifle was purchased by B. James Milton on July 16, 1997. According to the FBI extradition affidavit, the Social Security number and the Virginia drivers license used to identify B. James Milton were fraudulent.

1. Review the information contained in the analysis section for July 16, 1997, above. Pay particular attention to the evidence that Kopp was in Pennsylvania working on a construction project on the day the rifle was being purchased in Tennessee. Obviously, this is one of the biggest holes in the FBI’s case. It means that Kopp cannot be the person who purchased the SKS rifle which was found buried behind Slepian’s house, and which the FBI claims was used to shoot Slepian. It also raises serious questions about the FBI’s integrity in their investigation of this case.

2. As pointed out earlier, extradition affidavits filed by the FBI and the APD don’t provide one single witness, or one single piece of evidence, to indicate that Kopp and B. James Milton are the same person. In fact, the only place where it is even suggested by either the FBI or the APD that Kopp and Milton are the same person is in the list of Kopp’s aliases on the front of the FBI’s extradition affidavit.

However, the FBI employs a kind of circular logic to make even this connection. They begin by assuming that Kopp killed Slepian. Then, since a gun supposedly purchased by Milton was found behind Slepian’s house, Kopp has to be Milton, and if Kopp is Milton then that proves he killed Slepian. Beyond that bizarre leap in logic, they did not offer one shred of evidence that Kopp and Milton are the same person.

3. If it turns out that Kopp and Milton are not the same person, the FBI has some serious and possibly incriminating questions to answer. First, who really is B. James Milton? Second, what was the reason the FBI concluded that Milton was Kopp to begin with? A lack of convincing evidence for that conclusion would be a powerful indicator that Kopp’s status as a suspect was based on persecution rather than evidence. Third, who had this gun for the 15 months between its purchase from the A to Z Pawn Shop and Slepian’s killing? Fourth, how did this gun end up being buried behind Slepian’s house? Fifth, if Kopp is not Milton, how did fibers linked to Kopp end up on this rifle?

Finally, and most condemning, if Kopp isn’t Milton, how can the FBI explain that as early as October 24, 1998, and no later than November 7th, they claim to have retrieved from Kopp’s personal belongings a piece of paper with his fingerprints on it, containing a map to the pawnshop and its phone number? In other words, why would Kopp have a piece of paper in his possession with information about the A to Z Pawn Shop if he isn’t Milton? Either this is one of the most incredible coincidences in world history, or this piece of paper is very likely a forgery designed to connect Kopp to this rifle. And if it is a forgery, the only people with the ability to be the forgers are going to be people within the FBI, since they are the only ones who had control over this piece of paper during this time period.

Another very suspicious aspect of this is, if this piece of paper is legitimate, why did the FBI wait until after they found the gun to contact the A to Z Pawn Shop? Why would it take the nation’s premier law enforcement agency over five months to follow-up on this seemingly crucial lead? Also, notice that nowhere in the FBI / APD documents is there a mention of whether a handwriting analysis was ever done on this piece of paper, and there was no mention about fingerprints or DNA evidence on the rifle.

A federal grand jury indicts Kopp for violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and for using a firearm to commit violence.

As stated at the beginning of this publication, our goal is not to defend Jim Kopp. Nor did we set out to prove that he is innocent. At Life Dynamics, we accepted early on that we may never know the answer to that question.

Our goal in producing this report, is to educate the American people about what appears to be a grotesque abuse of power in the battle over abortion. While some may try to claim that our investigation has little to do with the abortion issue itself, the reality is that it has everything to do with abortion. To remain legal, hard-core abortion defenders have long known that it must be blindly defended in all circumstances, by whatever means, and to whatever level is necessary.

What the Kopp situation illustrates is that adherence to this philosophy is universal. Among these people, the party line is not to be questioned even by those at the very highest levels of American law enforcement. If the eight years of the Clinton presidency proved anything, it is that Bill Clinton and Janet Reno had a vision of turning the United States Department of Justice into a private police force for the abortion industry. This document is a look at what happens when such a vision is carried out in the real world. In the final analysis, the case against Kopp is not a disease, but a symptom. The disease is a justice system spinning out of control.

If that seems hyperbolic, read the articles on pages 32 through 35 of this book. Then remember that the revelations contained in this report came to light only because of the discrepancies between what the Amherst Police said in their extradition documents, and what the FBI said in theirs. If Kopp had been apprehended in the United States, there would have been no extradition documents, these discrepancies would have been secretly “worked out” before trial, and Kopp would be awaiting lethal injection right now.

The fact is, regardless of whether Jim Kopp actually committed this crime or not, the Clinton-Reno Department of Justice was going to have a pro-life scalp and his was as good as any. In a nation governed by amoral people who see the judicial system as an instrument of politics rather than justice, that’s just the way the game is played.

Life Dynamics Incorporated
Post Office Box 2226 • Denton, Texas 76202
(940) 380-8800 • fax (940) 380-8700

May 6, 1999 Fugitive James Kopp is finally charged in the killing of an abortion doctor after the FBI harasses the wrong men. - - - - - - - - - - - -

By Jeff Stein salon.com/news/feature/1999/05/06/abortion

Thursday's indictment in the assassination of a Buffalo abortion doctor comes as cold comfort to two other men who were wrongly sought for questioning in the high-profile case.

James Kopp, a well known anti-abortion demonstrator, was charged Thursday with the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, director of Buffalo's most prominent abortion clinic, last October 23. Authorities said DNA tests linked a hair found near Slepian's house to the 44-year-old suspect, who vanished shortly after a rifle shot struck the doctor as he stood in his kitchen. Kopp's car was later found abandoned at the Newark, N.J., airport, but he remains at large. The investigation has been criticized for delay -- especially for a six-month lag time in finding a scoped rifle, buried in the woods behind Kopp's house, that investigators now believe was the murder weapon. The Federal Bureau of

Investigation has yet to release any ballistic test results on the rifle.

One detail linking Kopp to the case was a report that Kopp was spotted cruising Slepian's neighborhood in the days leading up to the doctor's murder. And in a curious sidelight to the case, two other men were spotted in Kopp's neighborhood the night after his killing. Weeks later they were soon subjected -- wrongly -- to the intense, chilling, and perplexing attention of the FBI.

The two men, longtime left-wing activists in their 50s, suspect they were picked up for Driving While Political.

The twisted tale of mistaken identity began on Oct. 24 when Robert Stauber and Michael Gingerich, of Cleveland, Ohio, borrowed a friend's car and drove to Buffalo to attend a vigil for Slepian, who ran western New York's primary abortion facility, which served women from as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio, where there are restrictions on the procedure.

With the wrong directions, they drove to Slepian's home in suburban Amherst, N.Y., instead of to the city clinic where memorial services were scheduled. Seeing no vigil on the dark street, they inquired of a passing patrol car. The police asked for identification, which they supplied, and sent them on their way. They attended the vigil and returned to Cleveland the next day.

In the ensuing weeks the FBI announced it was seeking Kopp for questioning in connection with Slepian's murder. On Nov. 13, however, the official finger of fate pointed to Stauber and Gingerich. Several FBI agents showed up outside the apartment of Debbie Szemborski, owner of the car that Stauber and Gingerich had borrowed to drive to Buffalo. Questioned tersely through the intercom, because she refused to let them in, Szemborski explained why her car had been spotted there.

Meanwhile Stauber, 52, a skeptical man with the wisp of a goatee, quickly got word the FBI was looking for him. He immediately called a lawyer, Mark A. Kaiser, who notified the FBI he would arrange a meeting with his client. Apparently, that was a red flag for the hard-charging G-men -- especially because of Stauber and Gingerich's affiliation with the Revolutionary Communist Party, a small Maoist group with a well-known loathing for the U.S government. Or, as Kaiser put it, people who "harbor serious distrust of the FBI and an unwillingness to talk to any FBI agents."

Handed a bad script, the FBI played to type.

The agents went back to Szemborski's apartment, pounded on her door, and demanded to be let in for questioning, according to Kaiser's account. She refused. Then they showed up at the lawyer's house, even though -- or maybe because -- he'd called the local FBI office, explained a scheduling conflict for that evening, and arranged for the agents to meet his clients the next day.

The agents rushed back to Szemborski's building, let themselves in and began pounding on her apartment door.

"I have nothing to say to you," she said. "Call my attorney. Go away."

"If something comes of this matter," the agent allegedly said, clearly meaning the Slepian killing, Szemborski could be charged "as an accomplice."

When Szemborski told them to leave, the agents began working the hallway, pounding on her neighbor's doors.

Kaiser says he finally arranged for the agents to meet Stauber in a downtown restaurant at 10:30 a.m. the next day. They showed up at noon, after Kaiser called several times. Ever tactful, they tried to brush aside Kaiser and interrogate Stauber at the table.

No deal, Stauber and Kaiser said. Is he a suspect? the lawyer asked the agents. No, they said. A material witness? No. Then, Kaiser said, Stauber has nothing to say.

End of story.

Or it should have been. Instead, less than 24 hours after the restaurant parley with the FBI, a Cleveland television broadcast opened dramatically: "The FBI says there are two more men they think might have information about the sniper slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian."

According to the FBI press release, "The FBI office in Cleveland asked police across the country Friday to look for Ronald Stauber and Michael Gingrich [sic]." The broadcast said, "the FBI report indicates a connection between the two men and Kopp, who was reportedly sighted in Mexico recently."

The Associated Press filed an account, quoting an Amherst, N.Y., policeman saying, "there's a tie-in there, that's all it says." That was enough. The story circled the globe in an instant, picked up by radio and television stations, the New York Times and other leading papers. And, of course, the Internet. Months later the newsletter of NOW, the National Organization for Women, repeated the erroneous report, although it later issued a correction. No one else has.

State police cruisers everywhere, meanwhile, still had the "BOLO" -- "be on the lookout" --bulletin in their computers. It may still be there. The FBI won't say. In an interview last month in Buffalo, where he'd gone to protest anti-abortion demonstrations, Stauber remained genuinely puzzled by what had happened to him.

"It was not clear where they were going with this, or what they were trying to accomplish," he said. As a hardened leftist, he suspected some sort of political motivation. But he can't understand how the FBI could pull a frame-up since he hadn't the remotest connection with Slepian, beyond paying respects to the dead man and his family the night after his murder.

According to the FBI, it was all just a misunderstanding, a mistake. "A rookie screwed up," was one exasperated explanation from an agent who asked not to be identified. Another FBI source suggested blithely that it was probably just a clerical error.

"Those [bulletins] are handled by clerks and secretaries," the source said. "They have a whole pile of them to type up. They just take them from the pile and put them in the system. Sometimes they don't catch up for days." Stauber, for his part, still gnaws on the events that gave him unwanted notoriety.

"They had hundreds of leads they were following up. How come just our names got into the paper?" he wonders. "And after we had talked to them? It doesn't make sense." He shakes his head.

The FBI says it's looking into it.
salon.com | May 6, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Jeff Stein covers criminal justice and national defense issues for Salon News.

LifeSite News Special Report - December 14, 1998

The following significant article was published in the Dec. 10 issue of the U.S. The Wanderer newspaper. It presents the case that James Kopp, the prime suspect in the shooting death of abortionist Barnett Slepian, is an unlikely personality to have done the deed and may have been set up as the fall guy for a murder committed to protect the presidency of Bill Clinton. The article also reveals that much violence and criminal activity related to the abortion industry comes from within the seamy industry itself.

Investigators Cast a Wide Net To Find Abortionist's Murderer

By Paul Likoudis
Reprinted with permission from The Wanderer.

BUFFALO, N.Y.—Since the Oct. 23rd assassination of Buffalo area abortionist Dr. Barnett Slepian, investigators from the FBI, the New York state police, and the Amherst Police Department have chased down hundreds of leads and interrogated hundreds of America's pro-life citizens in their effort to find James C. Kopp, sought as a material witness.

Performing abortions is a high-risk business, with abortionists often dying by suicide, gangland style executions, alcoholism, drug overdoses, and many other noteworthy causes.

But police are convinced that Slepian's murder is a pro-life "hit" and not just a typical end for an abortionist.

Among some of the more grisly—though not exactly atypical—deaths of prominent abortionists are these few from the files of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago, provided to The Wanderer for this report: • Abortionist Lynn D. Weller of Kansas City was shot to death in his home in September, 1973 by two masked gunmen, hired by rival abortionist Dr. William Carlos, who was angry that Weller was having an affair with his ex-wife.

• Notorious Chicago abortion mill owner Kenneth Yellen literally died in the gutter after his gangland-style execution in November, 1979: five shots in the head as he walked to work. Police discovered that Yellen—who also was involved in the gambling, prostitution, and pornography- businesses —was more than $1 million in debt.

• George Patterson, who operated abortion mills in Alabama and Florida, was gunned down outside a porn theater in downtown Mobile in august, 1993, where he was a regular customer.

But wanted by the authorities as a federal material witness in the Slepian case is a man who—as everyone who knows him will attest—is fundamentally incapable of committing a violent act.

"If I had a nickel for every time someone told me it couldn't be James C. Kopp," one Amherst police investigator told The Wanderer, "I'd be a rich man. But the fact is, his car was seen in Slepian's neighborhood and we want to talk to him."

"James Kopp is wanted as a federal material witness only:” insisted the Amherst Police's Assistant Chief Frank Olesko, "and that is the scope of our wanting him at this time, so that he could be talked to about what he saw and did in the neighborhood at that time and what he knows."

In their effort to find Kopp, police investigators have set up a nationwide dragnet with a zeal that Buffalo News Washington correspondent Doug Turner described as "not seen since the Communist scares of the 1940s and 1950s, and J. Edgar Hoover's curiosity about black leaders of the 1960s."

"Just about everyone I know who has ever participated in a rescue has been questioned," Joan Andrews Bell told The Wanderer in a telephone interview from her New Jersey home.

Noted pro-life attorney John Broderick told The Wanderer that he knows at least a half-dozen New York City area pro-lifers who know Kopp—as he does—and who have received subpoenas to testify before a grand jury in Buffalo investigating the murder.

Both Broderick and Bell cannot believe that Kopp was involved in any way, shape, or form.

Bell said she has known Kopp since 1988, when he began writing letters to her while she was serving time in a Florida prison. They subsequently rescued together in Vermont, where they both served a three-month prison sentence.

"Kopp is a very gentle person," she said. "He has an arrest record for nonviolence. He is the most low-key, quiet, spiritual person I know. He is very Catholic, very contemplative, and the main focus of his life is praying for souls. He would never shoot an abortionist. He would never endanger a soul in jeopardy....

"I don't think Kopp ever held a gun," she continued. "I don't even think he has ever held a mousetrap. He's just a very gentle person."

Attorney Broderick concurs. "James Kopp was a guest in my home three, four, five, maybe six times," he said. "He is an absolutely tremendous guy, the exact opposite of a shooter—and in this case, we're talking about a professional shooter who calculated and carried out a well-thought-out plan.

"Kopp is a very dedicated pro-lifer, a saintly person, and totally nonviolent."

Then why, The Wanderer asked Broderick, doesn't Kopp come forward?

"I think—but I don't know— he's afraid they'll fabricate a case against him."

According to a member of the Amherst Police Department's task force investigating Slepian's murder, Kopp is only sought for questioning as a federal material witness because his car, bearing Vermont license plates, was seen within a half-mile of Slepian's home near the time of the shooting.

A person suspected of being a material witness, said Broderick, "can stay in jail a long time."

Also caught in the wide net cast by the federal, state, and local investigators for questioning are any individuals who ever rescued with Fr. Norman Weslin's Lambs of Christ, because Kopp rescued with the Lambs on at least three occasions, though he wasn't a Lamb "per se," according to Bell.

Officials involved in the investigation can neither confirm nor deny that there are any suspects in the murder, but the Buffalo media, led by the avidly pro-abortion Buffalo News, cranks out—almost daily—stories that portray pro-lifers as conspirators conducting a campaign of terror, murder, arson, and bombings.

Typical of the News' anti-prolife agitprop is a Sunday, Nov. 8th front-page story,

"Radical Fringe's Violent Bond Born in Confinement." The story by staff writer Phil Fairbanks opened:

"Shadowy and secretive, they operate as an underground, close-knit and tight-lipped, using names like Iron Maiden, Baby Huey, and Ann the Lamb.

"They preach guns, explosives, and butyric acid, and their targets are clinics and doctors, all of it in the name of protecting God's children....

"[James] Kopp is viewed as one of the leading activists in a small network of anti-abortion radicals born ten years ago in the jail cells of Atlanta.

"It was there, during a 40-day prison sentence, that extremists formed alliances and the roots of violence took hold."

Fairbanks' report conveniently ignored the fact that the Lambs had twice been cleared of engaging in a "violent anti-abortion conspiracy" by the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) after investigations in 1985 and 1992.

Accompanying Fairbanks' report was a quarter-page graphic depicting "anti-abortion violence" in the United States, with gun sights marking shootings, flames marking arson attacks, dynamite marking bombings, and flasks marking acid attacks.

But the News did not report on the findings of a BATF inquiry which determined that many of the clinic arsons and bombings were staged either by staff or by angry patients or their boyfriends. For example, when the perpetrator of four bomb attacks on abortion mills in Portland, Ore., was nabbed, his motive was determined to be anger that his girlfriend had an abortion without his prior knowledge or consent.

After an investigation into clinic arsons in 1992, Special Agent Jack Killoran of the BATF stated: "No conspiracy theory survives the arrests we've made. The connections would have been found. We're looking for these kinds of connections."

Lambs' founder Fr. Weslin was so outraged by the News' slanted coverage that he called a press conference on the steps of the federal courthouse in Buffalo to state that no one he knows has any notion of who killed Slepian.

“Civil disobedience,” he continued, “is not violence. Both labor and civil rights activists have always used peaceful means to stop social evils. Therefore, it [the press] has no cause to castigate and hold public lynchings of decent people who have no connection to a homicide.”

He said Slepian's murder "took place conveniently at a time when William Jefferson Clinton's presidency was in trouble, an election was at risk, and seems to be the work of a trained professional."

The Other Side

What Buffalo-area readers won't find in their pro-abortion, pro-pornography, pro-homosexual, pro-population control newspaper owned by multibillionaire Warren Buffet is the truth that abortionists are often cut down by their competitors, by hit men demanding a cut of their cash earnings, and even by their victims.

At the time of his death, Chicago abortion clinic owner Kenny "The Creep" Yellen was in debt $1 million, was being investigated for the arson of a second abortion clinic he owned, was being investigated for the "mysterious deaths" of several women who had abortions at his mills, was gambling away his enormous earnings, and was living in fear that a rival abortion profiteer was planning to eliminate him.

One of Yellen's clinics, the Women's Medical Facility, was shut down by the Chicago Board of Health after it was determined that the mill was operating without a license and its staff was performing abortions on women who were not pregnant.

Yellen, stated The Chicago Sun-Times in a report on his death (Nov. 4th, 1979), was also sued for impersonating a doctor, medical malpractice, performing illegal abortions, reckless conduct and theft by deception, and battery for squeezing a woman's breasts during an "examination."

There wasn't much public wailing in the abortion establishment when Yellen was murdered, but when George Wayne Patterson was killed outside an adult porn theater he'd been frequenting regularly for years, abortion advocates immediately charged that he was the victim of a pro-life hit.

But as the facts emerged after the August 20th, 1993 slaying, press interest evaporated. Patterson, who owned four abortion mills, in Pensacola and Ft. Walton Beach in Florida, and in Bay City and Mobile in Alabama, was shown to be not only addicted to pornography and gambling, but was deeply in debt. He was also the defendant in several lawsuits: two by the families of women who died after he attempted abortions on them, the other for a botched abortion.

Legal Racket

Veteran journalist and publisher Kevin Sherlock has authored two books that highlight the inherent corruption of the abortion industry, Victims of Choice and The Scarlet Survey (Brennyman Books, P.O. Box 2629, Akron, OH 44309; $20.00 each).

In The Scarlet Survey, Sherlock provides summaries of thousands of lawsuits culled from courthouses across the country against abortion clinic owners, abortionists, and clinic staff for deaths caused by abortion, medical malpractice, fraud, health code violations, sexual abuse and other crimes.

Sherlock is the first to admit that the lawsuits he lists are only a sample—the tip of the proverbial iceberg—because it's just not possible for one person with limited resources to go into every county, state, and federal courthouse in the country to gather the documentation.

Nevertheless, his sample is depressingly impressive.

Among the more notable cases:

• Dr. Edward Allred, the notorious L.A. abortionist, attempted to bury a woman who died after an abortion without first turning the body over to the county coroner (Los Angeles County Coroner Case N. 84-16016 and Los Angeles County Superior Court Case N. C575154).

• Abortionist Nabil Ghali lost his license to practice medicine in Kentucky after numerous lawsuits were filed against him for medical malpractice (including killing a woman) and sexual abuse of patients, including children, and moved on to do abortions in Florida, and then Ohio, where he racked up similar records.

Among the numerous lawsuits against Ghali for botched abortions was one by a woman who had her bladder removed without her permission.

• Florida abortionist Theodor Lehrer was charged with aborting his wife's child without her consent after he handcuffed her to their bed. He was angry that she refused his sexual advances.

• A number of abortionists, including Richard Ragsdale in Illinois and Milan Chepko in Mississippi, were charged with child pornography—in Ragsdale's case, of his own three-year-old foster child.

• Howard Silverman, the largest abortion provider in Massachusetts and the owner of a chain of clinics (Repro Associates; 10,000 abortions in four clinics per year), was the subject of a 1995 federal probe for rigging ultrasound tests in order to overcharge women for their abortions.

• Some abortionists, such as California's Suresh Gondrata, simply flee the country after they cause the death of a woman. Gondrata, who killed a young Mexican woman, Magdalena Rodriguez, on Dec. 8th, 1994, fled to his homeland, India, before authorities could charge him with murder.

Gondrata was convicted in 1990 in Orange County Superior Court on 17 felonies and misdemeanors ranging from grand theft and Medi-Cal fraud, to providing dangerous drugs without proper authority and aiding the unlicensed practice of medicine.

Unfortunately, the common thread running through the bulk of this.documentation is the ability of abortion providers to evade conviction, and often prosecution for their crimes, because of their unlimited financial resources for legal protection and the complicity of judicial bodies in the abortion protection racket.

Another of the fascinating facets of Sherlock's work is his meticulous compilation of lawsuits filed against the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, on a wide range of issues. These include: violations of health codes, equipment and utility deficiencies, medical record deficiencies, patient care deficiencies, sanitation deficiencies, staff and procedure deficiencies, professional deficiencies (such as altering lab reports), labor complaints, fraudulent billing, use of government "family planning" funds for political purposes, sex offenses, and so on.

Sherlock also persuasively argues that the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control is engaged in covering up the number of abortion-related deaths in the United States each year. By checking CDC statistics against state and local records, he shows that 30%40% more women die from abortion than are reported by the government, and is willing to go to court to prove it if challenged.

He also proves how difficult it is to gain access to government documents. When he asked CDC officials in 1990 to give him a list of abortion-related deaths, they charged him $13,000 for 11,000 pages "of censored documents" which eliminated the names of the abortionists and their victims.

In 1996, when he renewed his request, the charge was $24,000 for 16,600 pages of fatal statistics, or $26.00 per hour for 845 hours so clerks could black out the names on the documents.

In Victims of Choice, Sherlock documents the tragic deaths of hundreds of women who have been, as he says, "sacrificed on the altar of sisterhood."

Sherlock shows how possible it is that many women who died from botched abortions might be alive today if state regulatory and licensing officials would do what they are charged to do: protect the public from medical butchers.

For example, a young Honduran woman, Guadalupe Negron, died at the hands of Dr. David Benjamin, who performed an abortion on her at his Metro Women's Center in Queens on July 9th, 1993.

Benjamin's license had been revoked a month earlier for "gross incompetence and negligence" in rupturing the uteruses of five other women, but medical officials allowed him to continue his practice. But as early as 1980, after he was dismissed from a Utica hospital for substandard work, New York health officials already knew that he was a public health menace.

And there is the case of Angela Nieto Sanchez, 27, who died on the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Jan. 22nd, 1993, in an unlicensed San Diego clinic, Clinica Feminina de la Communidad, while her children awaited her return from the clinic in a borrowed car. While Nieto Sanchez lay dying on a clinic table, a staff member gave the children some money to run out for some lunch. Later that night, when Nieto Sanchez's family came back to get her, wondering why she didn't come home, they found her dead body in the parking lot.

Unsafe, Illegal, And Common

According to some medical professionals contacted by The Wanderer, it is statistically impossible for "professional" abortionists who often practice Third World medicine under Third World conditions to escape involvement in the inevitable consequences of the trade.

Abortion is not only a highly dangerous and unnatural procedure (can you imagine going to a freestanding, unlicensed, unequipped, unregulated, unstaffed, unclean office for an appendectomy?), but, like all organized crime- controlled, profit-and-sex- oriented businesses, it is mired in graft and corruption, protected and tolerated, aided and abetted by officials from the highest to the lowest levels of every social institution, including the courts, legislatures, medical associations, and the churches.

LifeSite Daily News is a production of Interim Publishing Contents may be freely reproduced provided source is noted.

Comments or questions: lsn@lifesite.net LifeSite Daily News archived at http://www.lifesite.net

A day to remember? BY JEFF STEIN
http://www.salon.com/news/1998/11/11news.html

POLICE AND FEDERAL AGENTS BRACE FOR VIOLENCE AS ANTI-ABORTION FORCES OBSERVE A NEW "HOLIDAY."

(ME: Slepian was murdered two weekends before the 1998 Congressional elections. Senator Schumer and Eliot Spitzer easily defeated D'Amato and Att Gen Vacco in New York because of the hysteria created against pro-lifers after this murder.NARAL had an ad running the day after Slepian was murdered. Coincidentally, Canadian elections are around Remembrance Day!!)

Federal and local police are bracing for a spike in anti-abortion rhetoric and threats on Veterans Day, two days after the Justice Department announced it was forming a task force to combat a surge in "right-to-life" terror. Nov. 11, observed as "Remembrance Day" in Canada, has in recent years been embraced by anti-abortion forces to commemorate "the unborn." Three times since 1994, right around Nov. 11, snipers have fired into the homes of doctors who provide abortions in Canada. A U.S. federal agent said security precautions have been taken around Atlanta and other Southern cities as the hunt for two assassins linked to anti-abortion killings intensified in New York and North Carolina. Federal officials are also investigating a recent rash of letters said to contain anthrax that have been mailed to schools, churches and abortion clinics in seven states.

"Tomorrow's a big one in Canada, but it's used here south of the border to remember not only the fallen (in war), but those who have fallen among the unborn," said a senior federal agent in Atlanta.

"It's become something of a focal point, not so much for violence -- I'm not so sure how well some of these people can read a calendar -- but for a ratcheting up of the rhetoric. Then we begin to see more threats being called into clinics." (ME: If you call an abortion clinic and ask them to stop killing tiny children, that is considered a threat!!)

Police are beefing up patrols and federal agencies are on heightened alert for any violence, the official said. "We tend to ratchet up, too. You may be demonstrating in a clinic every day," he added, "but on Nov. 11 you'll notice a patrol car coming by every 15 minutes. That's a significant deterrence."

Meanwhile, a federal task force on anti-abortion terror unveiled by Attorney General Janet Reno Tuesday said investigators so far have found no evidence of a conspiracy to attack clinics and doctors. Much of the anti-abortion violence has been claimed by the so-called Army of God, the nom de guerre taken by anti-abortion killers, but the "Army" is no more than a name anyone can claim, says a senior federal agent.

Which has presented law enforcement with a problem over the past 20 years of anti-abortion mayhem: There was nobody the FBI could arrest and squeeze to turn on the others. "If we'd found a conspiracy, we would have crushed it," the agent said. "The Army of God is whatever people who choose to wear that T-shirt say it is."

Yet the Army of God has published an underground manual for anti-abortion violence. Among those the manual was dedicated to was "Atomic Dog," the nickname for James Kopp, who is being sought in connection with the Oct. 23 assassination of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian in Amherst, N.Y. Kopp has a long history of anti-abortion protests associated with the group Operation Rescue.

The shot that killed Slepian as he stood in his kitchen at home passed through double window panes, an accomplishment normally associated with a military-trained sniper. But the U.S. military records center in St. Louis said it had no records on Kopp.

The Army of God has claimed responsibility for at least four bombings in the South over the last three years, according to federal officials and private analysts. Three were in Atlanta in 1996: the Olympic park bombing, an explosion at a lesbian bar and an abortion clinic bombing that killed a policeman. Last Jan. 29 an off-duty policeman employed as a security guard at a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic was killed by a remote-controlled bomb, which also gravely injured a nurse.

Federal officials say all four were the work of a North Carolina man, Eric Rudolph, 32, who has been indicted in those bombings and is the object of a massive manhunt in the forests of western North Carolina.

Rudolph learned to make bombs while assigned to the 327th Infantry Air Assault Regiment at Fort Campbell, Ky., where his "gung-ho former Green Beret commander" taught him how to make explosives with objects discarded around the base, a federal official involved in the case said.

One of the three Atlanta bombings Rudolph allegedly carried out that was claimed by the Army of God, he said, "employed high explosives in a military ammunition can."

While there may be no firm evidence of a "conspiracy" among the nation's violent anti-abortion extremists, analysts have noted a repeated association between suspects like Rudolph and an extremist religious group called Christian Identity, which in turn is said to sponsor independently operating underground cells called the "Phineas Priesthood."

Christian Identity, which has Web sites on the Internet, believes that white Northern Europeans are the true Israelites and all other races are "mud people." In 1985, Rudolph's mother took Eric and one of his brothers to a Christian Identity commune in Schell City, Mo. She arrived at the Church of Israel in an old car with balding tires, "in a desperate, destitute situation," according to Pastor Dan Gayman, who helped the family get on its feet. Gayman has since distanced himself publicly from the Christian Identity movement, but at the time the commune was a beehive of white supremacist militancy, with the pastor proclaiming that "the Jews are the devil's seed and the children of the anti-Christ." The boys were enrolled in religious studies and Eric immersed himself in the commune's book list, from Oswald Spengler to "Holocaust: The Hoax of the 20th Century." When he returned to North Carolina he was full of anti-government, anti-Semitic and racial rhetoric, according to those who knew him.

A federal agent who has studied the Army of God said its manual for anti-abortion violence "started out as a public relations ploy -- 'look how big and bad we are' -- and it got passed around to be used." No one has been identified as its author.

A reliable source inside the extremist movement, meanwhile, said the Phineas Priesthood "was real, for sure," and has "learned lessons from Oklahoma City, which was to go underground and stay underground." Federal officials believe violent extremists are as likely to target police and federal agents as abortion clinics and doctors as the battle intensifies. Some agents expressed frustration with the time and money the government has had to put into the anti-abortion threat. Asked how much had been spent on the Rudolph case alone, which has employed hundreds of agents, an official declined to give a figure but said:

"Well, it's under Mr. Starr's $40 million."

SALON | Nov. 11, 1998 Jeff Stein covers criminal justice issues for Salon.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

The photo at right is the one that was distributed almost exclusively by law enforcement and the media. The three photos below show what Kopp actually looks like.