Chapter 23

Tommy Johnson lived in a completely different social strata than Senator Thurston. Although the areas were not separated that far by distance, they were thousands of miles apart financially.

Tommy Johnson lived in Daly City. Daly city is predominantly Filipino. The area Johnson lived in was well kept. The lawns were trimmed and the houses looked in good repair. Given his involvement in the Aryan Majority, I'm sure it irked Johnson to be living where he was.

We found Johnson's house with no problem, but we didn't find Johnson. We figured he must be at work, but since he was a construction worker, we had no idea where he might be working. At least we found where he lived.

We got the whole family together after dinner to talk about the Aryan Majority. I thought we'd have a hard time convincing Annie of what we needed to do, but I got a real surprise.

Is this about the Aryan Majority? Annie asked before anyone else could say anything.

Yes, Annie, I said.

I've spent a lot of time on this in the last couple of weeks, she said. I spent several hours scanning Thurston. I followed Johnson to his work one morning and scanned him as he worked. I tracked down Thurston's and Johnson's seconds in command and scanned both of them.

Okay, I said.

I think you were right to begin with, Mike. All four of them are bloodthirsty sons-of-bitches. All four of them will do everything in their power to see that any influential person in a minority group is killed. I don't see any alternative to killing them.

Mike, I've just had an idea, Cindi said. You know what we did to that pimp a while back. Why couldn't we do something like that to these guys?

I'm not sure we could, honey. Prejudices are pretty deep seated. We might prevent them from killing anyone, but they'd still hate them.

But, isn't it their right to hate someone if they want, as long as they don't do anything violent about it? Sharon asked.

I suppose it is. I do hate to think the ones who are in public office can still work against the minorities, even if they can't kill them.

How about something like this, Jude said. How about we put it in their heads that they have to go to the police and confess to what they were going to do?

Okay, I like that, I said.

We could make it so they had to tell the absolute truth to anyone who asked them a direct question, or to the police, Cindi put in.

We should also make them tell the police and the news media what they were planning to do and who all was in on the plot, Melly said.

I looked over at Annie and I could see her smiling. This just keeps getting better and better, I said.

My suggestion is, Ken said, that tomorrow morning, first thing, my family will get close to one of the leaders. Your family should get close to the other one, Mike. When we both have contact with our target, we'll let each other know, then we do it at the same time.

That sounds reasonable, I said. Tim, could you guys find this John Griscom tomorrow morning and monitor him until we know what's going on with the rest of the group?

Sure, Mike. We've talked it over and we're agreed we'll take a more active part if we need to.

You'll probably get your chance once the new leaders are in place, I told him.

I think we all felt a lot of relief that we weren't going to have to actually kill these idiots. I know I certainly did.

Tuesday, December 18, 1979

It was decided we'd go after Thurston and Ken's family would go after Johnson. Annie was with Ken's family and I suspected she'd be a part of it soon.

We were all up very early and were in position before 7:00 AM. Are you guys ready? Ken asked.

Yeah. Let's go over what we're going to do one more time though. First, we're going to have them write out a list of the names of everyone they know who is in the Aryan Majority. Then we're going to have them write out a confession as to what the group's plans are and what they were planning to do.

Right, Ken said. Then we're going to make sure they tell the truth to anyone who asks them a question about the Aryan Majority or about their actions. After that, they'll go to a local TV station and give them a copy of the list and the confession. We'll let them stay there and answer questions for a reasonable length of time, then they'll have to go to the police station and turn themselves, the list, and the confession in.

Did we leave anything out?

Not that I can think of, I said. Let's do it.

We did. I must say, the news media had a field day that day. The confessions by Senator Thurston and Mr. Johnson were the lead story on every local TV and radio news broadcast. The newspapers in the area ran it with two inch headlines. There was even a large splash on the national news about the California Senator and about his allegations about a cabinet member and several congressmen.

I don't know if you've thought about it or not, Jude said, but we're going to have to do something about the people at the national level too. The original plan for the San Francisco operation came from our Secretary of the Interior.

Yeah, I know. It's going to be a little harder to get close to the big wigs in Washington. So far at least, to mess with someone's mind we've had to be within a couple of hundred feet of him. The people in D.C. are going to be guarded by the FBI. That's going to make it a lot harder.

We didn't realize it at the time, but other things were going to make it harder still.

Before we went off to bed, Ken announced that Annie had accepted their proposal of marriage and would be joining his family. That pleased all of us. I ended up making love to every one of my wives before we finally went to sleep.

Wednesday, December 19, 1979

Missy, Jude, Sharon and I were snuggled together, drinking coffee the next morning when Jude asked, When are we going to do something about the national level of the Aryan Majority?

I think we need to make sure the immediate threat in the bay area is over first, I said. The police have confessions from Thurston and Johnson, but they only have accusations about any of the other leaders of the group. We need to make sure that anyone who moves into a position of power goes in and confesses as well.

Yeah, I kind of figured that. Maybe we should let Ken and Tim's families take care of that, though, and we could start taking care of national.

We could probably do that. Let's talk it over with the rest of the family this evening and see what everyone thinks of the idea.

Well, it turned out that the rest of our family didn't agree at all. Ken's family wanted to be the ones to go to Washington. So did Jude, Cindi, and Sharon. Bonnie, Missy, and Tiffie were ambivalent. I didn't actually want to go at all, so I just kind of stayed out of the argument.

Finally, Jude, Cindi, and Sharon agreed it would be more fair for Ken's family to go since our family had made the last excursion away from home. Everyone agreed that the trip shouldn't be made until after Christmas.

Tuesday, December 25, 1979

Christmas just doesn't seem to mean as much when the cost of the things you are buying isn't significant to you. I think O. Henry had the right idea when he wrote of Della and Jim in "The Gift of the Magi". If you have to sacrifice something that is meaningful to you to buy a present for another, then that present is truly meaningful.

For our family, money has ceased to mean much at all. That's why we decided that any present we gave this year would be something we made ourselves. We spent over a month just preparing for Christmas.

Unfortunately, my talents for making presents are severely limited. I will say we had a wonderful time and we had a lot of laughs at the presents.

Tuesday, January 1, 1980

We spent the week between Christmas and New Years just being lazy. We closed down MBBS completely for the week, and gave all of our employees a paid holiday.

Wednesday, January 2, 1980

Today was the day when Ken, Thelma, Mellie, Beth, and Alice started making preparations for a trip to our nation's capitol. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

What did I know? I mean, I'd have never thought that each and every female would have to have a complete new wardrobe for the trip. Another thing I didn't take into consideration was how far in advance they'd have to book tickets for them to all be able to fly in first class.

I wasn't really worried about how long it was going to take to get them to Washington. I wasn't exactly sure when Congress would be in session again, but I knew it wouldn't be immediately after the first of the year.

Monday, January 21, 1980

Well, we finally got Ken's family headed out to DC. We really have no idea how long it is going to take to accomplish everything they want to do, so they set it up so they'd be in Washington for two weeks. I don't begrudge them the vacation time.

It's just about a month and a half until Missy is due to deliver our first child. All of us are excited about it. I'm still a little worried about the birthing process, but none of the women in the family seem to be concerned at all. I hope they're right.

Saturday, February 2, 1980

San Francisco to Washington, DC was a little out of range even for Cindi. We talked to Ken's group a couple of times on the telephone, but we were afraid to say too much.

That doesn't mean we didn't know what they were up to. The first indication of what they were doing came from Congressman Charles DeGraff. Congressman DeGraff got up on the floor of the House of Representatives and confessed his membership in the Aryan Majority.

The very next day, Senator Elkwood did the same thing in the Senate. These two congressmen were followed rapidly by another Senator and six Congressmen.

The last of the DC bigwigs to fall prey to Ken's family was Secretary of the Interior, Paul Gates. The Secretary requested an interview with the President, where he confessed his sins. The President's bodyguards immediately arrested the Secretary, only to find that he had held a press conference just before he confessed to the President.

To say that Washington was in an uproar would have been a major understatement.

All of our families greeted Ken's group at the airport. We spent Saturday evening just relaxing. Everyone wanted to know what had gone on in DC, but Ken's family was tired, so they put us off until tomorrow.

Sunday, February 3, 1980

Actually, it all went pretty easily, Ken informed us.