Evidently, Minutemen Founder Gilchrist Doesn't Like Us

Jim Gilchrist and Shawna Forde patrolling the Arizona desert together

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I mentioned the other day that Minuteman movement cofounder Jim Gilchrist has been adamantly denying to everyone in sight the truth of what I reported about him earlier this week -- namely, that not only was he tightly associated with child killer Shawna Forde right up to the moment of her arrest, but he was aware of the crazy schemes she had in mind well before she tried enacting them.

It seems that yesterday, he posted in the comments of the AlterNet piece where I reported all this -- and I guess we can call this definitive:

Dear Readers,

David Neiwert's attempt to glorify the murder of a nine-year-old girl and her father for the purpose of bogus journalistic acclaim and the financial gain he anticipates from
selling books represents perhaps the lowest form of "dirty" journalism.

I just got off the phone with private investigator Mike Carlucci and we both agree that David Neiwert has made up most of the so-called facts in his article. I, nor Mr. Carlucci ever had any discussion with Shawna Forde about her agenda to rob drug dealers.

Furthermore, the Minuteman Movement was not seriously interfered with by whatever Shawna Forde and her two accomplices did. The Minuteman Movement was put into a temporary tailspin by some selfish opportunists posing as immigration law enforcement advocates whose true interest was in hijacking the movement for their own financial and egotistical interests, in my opinion.

David Neiwert is a fiction writer who should be forthright with his readership and disclose that his selfish agenda is to sell books and be falsely heralded as "one of the great thinkers of our time."

Shawna Forde and her two thugs were lone wolves who operated their own organization distinct and separate from other immigration activist groups. She also regularly communicated with many of the hundred or so similar groups established around the country. Simply, the murderous trio used a feigned participation in the immigration law enforcement movement as a convenient veil to cloak some sinister plans to rob drug dealers and coyotes.

David Neiwert knows this, yet he revels in the opportunity to hang as many innocent persons as possible...all the while salivating at the glossy-eyed, delusional thought that such unprofessional behavior will somehow bring him recognition and money.

Not so.

There are professional journalists, and there are "dirty" journalists. David Neiwert, and his counterparts in the Southern Poverty Law Center who cooperated with him in his propaganda efforts, are dirty journalists. The veracity of their writings should be accorded the appropriate skepticism due a propaganda mill.

Sincerely,
Jim Gilchrist, Founder and President, The Minuteman Project
--a multiethnic immigration law enforcement advocacy group--

I'm not going to bother responding to much of this, other than to say I've conversed with Carlucci after his conversation with Gilchrist, and I'm quite certain Gilchrist is lying through his teeth about Mike's views of my reportage. But that should not surprise anyone here.

If Gilchrist were so confident that I reported even a single false fact, he and his attorneys would be lining up the libel suit as we speak. But he's not, because I didn't, and therefore he can't. He's stuck, he knows it, and is now relegated to blowing off steam in my general direction. Which bothers me not even the slightest.