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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tried and convicted, Steele now has plenty to say

Edgar Steele is taking off the muzzle.

He’s writing. Talking to the press. Setting the record straight.

“There are things in life that defy belief,” Steele writes in a new online missive. “Seeing them often is enough to set one on a path toward seeing unbelievable things at every turn.”

He ought to know. Steele, the Sandpoint attorney who made his name as the defender of the Aryan Nations and then as a hero of the “politically incorrect,” sees unbelievable things everywhere.

Like that audiotape with him discussing his plans with a man he hired to kill his wife and mother-in-law? A complete fabrication. Like the government’s evidence that he sent thousands of messages to a would-be mail order bride? Merely research for a book, “Love and Other Four Letter Words: The Invasion of Planet Earth by Teenage Russian Mail-Order Brides from Cyber-Space.” Like the four federal convictions that leave him facing decades in prison? Persecution for being a relentless and persuasive truth-teller.

Steele’s attitude toward belief might be summarized by something he told his wife, when he called her from jail, begging her to deny that the voice on the tape plotting her murder was his.

“Like a rhinoceros in the road,” he said, “you have to stand your ground and refuse to say anything but that.”

Steele and his wife, Cyndi, have been rhinoceros-like in sticking to their story. They say they were set up by a man trying to cover up his theft of silver they had buried in the backyard. Like all “political prisoners,” they have the proof of their innocence, but the judge wouldn’t let them use it.

Steele did not testify in his own defense – against his better judgment, he says – but now he’s speaking out. He did an interview with the Coeur d’Alene Press from the Latah County Jail, in which he reiterated his belief that he was railroaded for saying unpopular things in a “particularly persuasive manner.” He talked about his plans to write books and blog posts. He’s written and posted online the first installment of “Seeing is Disbelieving,” his unaccountably breezy, true-life account of the real story behind the government’s lies.

“Now we are going to do it my way,” Steele writes, “which likely will involve a good deal of sound and fury.”

He makes a big point of saying how deeply he loves his wife.

“Let me try, first, to tell you of my love for Cyndi,” he writes. “She is my mate, pal, helper, lover, buddy, partner, mother of our kids … my first and last wife … my best friend. The love of my life. She is so much better than I deserve. I could go on.”

But why go on? A good writer knows when to stop – when to suggest, rather than bludgeon.

“I recall the moment I first laid eyes on Cyndi and the spontaneous burst of surprise and pleasure that crossed her face” – isn’t that how we all would act, the first moment Edgar Steele laid eyes on us? – “just before she cast her eyes down and first smiled for me that impish little grin of hers that I love so much. In less than two minutes, I was swept away, though I did my manly best to seem inaffected. It was love at first sight and 27 years later, my heart still leaps up every time I catch sight of her again.”

There is something so authentic in this account. He couldn’t have done what the Zionist Occupied Government accuses him of doing – not to a woman he loved instantaneously and then for 27 years with unchanging devotion!

Like all the greats, he knows how to leave a reader hungering for more.

“There is so much more to come in this story: Russian Mafia intrigue, teenage beauty queens, official (and unofficial) corruption, mail-order brides, Hannibal Edgar, the Tao of Ed, private jets, Tahiti … and more, believe it or not,” he writes.

This is not Steele’s first foray into storytelling. In his book “Defensive Racism,” Steele argues that the “real racists” are people who claim there is racism, and that affirmative action has brought about larger racial divisions than at any time in our history – including during slavery.

He says that people must prepare for the “wheels coming off” – the racial apocalypse that will resemble, he says, the Rodney King riots. Be sure to hang onto your gold and silver. Stock up on bullets.

“I expect that whatever survives of White America to be carved from the Northwest and the heartland,” he writes.

In that book, Steele left little doubt as to his intended audience.

“If putting on a clown costume and urinating on the White House rose bushes will get a result that we need, then that is what we should do,” he writes. “Nothing should be deemed too outlandish. Not even something as outrageous as getting a normal haircut, eschewing tattoos and buying a decent suit. No sacrifice should seem too great, even if it entails moderating our rhetoric, getting a normal job, living in a normal neighborhood, driving a normal car and acting normal at all times. We must make sacrifices in pursuit of our objective.”

Act normal, everybody. Pretend to be normal.

Ain’t exactly the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

But at least he’ll have some time to work on getting better.  

Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vestal13.