I always knew these “truthers” were totally nuts and had the potential to explode in a violent rage. Well, now it’s happened. John Patrick Bedell opened fire with two handguns at pre-screen area outside the Pentagon metro station and was subsequently shot and killed by security personnel.
The WSJ reports:
Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency said Mr. Bedell emerged from the Pentagon subway station Thursday evening and made his way to a nearby guard post. When officers asked for his identification, Mr. Bedell, who was wearing a white button-down shirt and blazer, pulled out a pistol and started shooting.
The investigators said Mr. Bedell, who had studied physics and engineering, drove to Washington from his parents’ home in Hollister, Calif., in the days before the assault. Mr. Bedell’s 1998 green Toyota Avalon was recovered from a garage at the Pentagon City Mall hours after the attack. Additional ammunition was found in the car, authorities said.
Mr. Bedell’s parents reached out to law-enforcement officials after growing concerned about their son’s mental health. According to police in San Benito County, the Bedells filed a missing-persons report about their son on Jan. 4 after not hearing from him for several days…
On Jan. 11, Mr. Bedell’s mother told police her son had made a $600 purchase at a Sacramento-area gun range. The police don’t yet know if Mr. Bedell bought his guns there.
Concerns about the safety of U.S. military installations have been running high since a November shooting at Fort Hood in Texas killed 13 troops, and an earlier incident outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station killed one soldier and badly wounded another. Authorities said both of those incidents were religiously motivated.
Mr. Bedell’s actions, by contrast, appear to have been prompted by his anger at the U.S. government, and belief that far-reaching conspiracies were behind events as big as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a Nov. 25, 2006, podcast called “Directions to Freedom, Part Two,” Mr. Bedell said the “seizure of the United States government by an international criminal conspiracy” was a “long-established reality.” He criticized the military and intelligence services, which he said had become tools of an illegitimate regime. “This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control,” he said.
Now it’s just a matter of time for liberal and conservative pundits to claim this guy was either a right-wing or left-wing extremist. Yet the “truthers” cut across the partisan divide and include kooks from both fringes. One thing they all share in common is a conspiratorial world view and an extreme apprehension of reality.
Speaking of which, expect the conspiracy sites to claim this was a CIA (or other government agency) psyops action intended to make the “truthers” appear violent and insane in order to turn the American public against them. I hate to break the news, but we did not require something like this to happen to know ya’all are nuts.
“Directions to Freedom, Part Two” is available here. Part One here.