March 5, 2010 in Nation/World

Angry anti-government writing linked to Pentagon gunman

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived outside the military headquarters armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind angry, anti-government Internet postings airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks.

John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was named as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack. Authorities said he’d had previous run-ins with the law.

Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism. The attack that superficially wounded two officers guarding the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of “a single individual who had issues,” Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said Friday.

Hints of those issues emerged in anti-government Internet postings linked to Bedell. One blog linked to Bedell’s page on the social networking site LinkedIn contained a two-part treatise on big government, including its vulnerability to being controlled by a criminal organization.

“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,” the blog post read.

Keevill described Bedell as “very well-educated” and well-dressed, wearing a suit that blended with commuters when he showed up at the Pentagon’s subway entrance about 6:40 p.m. But he was concealing two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition, Keevill said.

When Bedell seemed to reach into his pocket for worker identification, he was instead reaching for a gun, Keevill said.

“He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting” at point-blank range, Keevill said. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.”

Bedell died Thursday night from head wounds received when the two injured officers and another officer returned fire, Keevill said.

Although the gunfire near the subway exit in Arlington, Va., lasted less than a minute, Keevill said, numerous shots were fired. Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added.

One officer suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said they were superficial injuries, and both have been released from the hospital.

There was more ammunition in Bedell’s car, which authorities found in a local parking garage.

“He came here from California,” Keevill said. “We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast.”

Keevill said he did not know what motivated the shooting: “I have no idea what his intentions were.”

On a Wikipedia page linked to Bedell, a user by the name JPatrickBedell revealed ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces.

JPatrickBedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up. Sabow’s family has maintained that he was murdered because he was about to expose covert military operations in Central America involving drug smuggling.

That posting can be linked to Bedell through court documents matching the shooter’s birth date but Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made “a final determination” that the shooter was the same Bedell.

The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”

That same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., involving allegations of cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.

The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.

Transit officials said the subway station would remain closed at least part of the day Friday while the FBI continued its investigation.

Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

“There was no distress,” he said. “When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun.”

Keevill added: “We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hurt anyone.”

Ronald Domingues, 74, who lives next door to Bedell’s parents in a gated golf course community in Hollister, said he doesn’t know the family well. But he said Bedell sometimes lived with his parents and struck him “like a normal young man.”

“I wouldn’t suspect he would be involved in anything like this,” Domingues said.

Domingues described the neighborhood as middle-class. He said the Bedells live in a one story Southwestern-style stucco home, which was dark Thursday night.

Nine comments on this story so far. Add yours!

empyrius on March 05 at 9:28 a.m.
The unholy tyranny of this Wall Street controlled evil U.S. government cannot totally extinguish truth.
The massive American government may have enough weapons to destroy the entire world over and over again; but they cannot destroy the God-fearing freedom that is alive in every mans’ breast!
You should have allowed Bedell to freely cultivate some herb, then he probably would have just got stoned and paid no attention to this evil government, but no, the government had to persecute him for growing our Lord’s good green herb.
A 2nd American Revolution is nigh at hand, and if you evildoing lawyers in Olympia and D.C., and your corporate sponsors, step down peacefully we can avoid further bloodshed . . .
But if you continue to live by the sword, well, not all freedom-loving Christians practice nonviolent resistance like me.
Praise Jesus
leekinny on March 05 at 9:49 a.m.
I always find it disturbing to hear such vitriolic anger connected with the name of the Lord. Hate is evil; it always has been the biggest obstacle to fitting through the needles eye.
from the words of Christ….
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Mt 5:43-48
Trust is the more difficult, greater part of faith.
SugarShane on March 05 at 9:56 a.m.
Funny how people get it in their heads that they can somehow change Washington with a gun. For some reason it makes me think of Terminator, when they go and destroy Cyberdine and it changes nothing, they find out “its in the system” you cant stop it. That is the perfect analogy of this incident.
empyrius - you give the mundanes too much credit. America has grown fat and lazy, and is way too apathetic to EVER start another revolution. We somehow collectively decided to roll over and take it. Some people cant, like this guy and will be blown off as “crazy”.
I dont agree with the method, but I can certainly understand the feeling of futility.
horse_feathers on March 05 at 10:49 a.m.
This guy was a left wing nut job nothing more.
CharlesBillford on March 05 at 11:00 a.m.
People are just getting tired and frustrated with the government and now are just taking it out however they feel they can.
Diana on March 05 at 11:01 a.m.
Is it the left wing that is usually associated with hatred of government? How about just plain nut job?
leekinny on March 05 at 1:17 p.m.
Diana is right.
The violent rhetoric coming from Conservatives, hate radio and the tea party is allowing those with less than honorable goals to proceed guilt free in their belief that blood must be shed to restore their delusional vision of America.
horse_feathers on March 05 at 1:32 p.m.
2 more for the jar that the wing nuts are kept in.
Diana on March 06 at 7:06 a.m.
horse feathers, commenting on other posters rather than the story only proves you’ve got nothing.