http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2006/berkowitz1106.htmlIn late April Chris Simcox, head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the anti-immigration organization that set up citizen patrols along the U.S.-Mexico border, showed up in Bellingham, Washington to testify at a Washington Human Rights Commission hearing. According to a post by author David Neiwert on his blog, Simcox was “rather impressive: clean-cut, very straightforward seeming, very smooth. He seemed almost preppy with his new clean-shaven look and crew sweatshirt.”
The old Simcox, “who liked to alternate between camos and jeans and sport an American-flag cap, spout endless conspiracy theories, quasi-racist fearmongering, and demonstrate his utter idiocy to anyone familiar with gun safety by holstering his pistol down the front of his jeans,” was “it appears...ancient history...buried under the careful coaching of the DC-based public relations firm that Simcox hired,” Neiwert wrote. “They’ve done a pretty good job of making Simcox over completely.”
Three months after he cleaned up his act, several former Minuteman members went public with charges that Simcox was not being accountable for the money the organization had raised. In addition— and apparently unbeknownst to many of its members—the organization began to call itself “a project” of the Declaration Alliance, a group controlled by Black con-servative Alan Keyes.
Despite an appearance with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, where Simcox assured the talk show host that everything was on the up-and-up financially, all is not well in the border-vigilante community. snip
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project described the Minuteman Border Fence as “a slick fundraising campaign with a stated goal of $55 million.” The money was earmarked for construction of “a high-tech security barrier along 70 miles of private ranchland on the Arizona border.” The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps sent out direct mail solicitations and placed full-page color advertisements in the Washington Times “promot{ing} the Minuteman Border Fence as an ‘Israeli-style’ barrier ‘based on the fences used in Gaza and the West Bank.’ Fundraising illustrations depict a 6-foot trench and coils of concertina wire backed by a 15-foot steel-mesh fence crowned with bulletproof security cameras. Estimated cost: $150 per foot.”
The story in the Washington Times pointed out that, “The Minuteman organization has not made any financial statements or fundraising records public since its April 2005 creation. It also has sought and received extensions of its federal reporting requirements and has not given the Minuteman leadership, its volunteers, or donors any official accounting.” Evidently, Simcox failed to deliver a financial statement promised to the Times by May.
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