If I Had a Son' Read online

  ‘If I Had a Son’

  JACK CASHILL

  ‘If I Had a Son’

  RACE, GUNS, AND THE RAILROADING OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN

  ‘IF I HAD A SON’

  WND Books, Inc.

  Washington, D.C.

  Copyright © Jack Cashill 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Book Designed by Mark Karis

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  First Edition

  ISBN 13 Digit: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

  Library of Congress information available.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Contents

  PART 1: THE SHOOTING

  1 BRAVING THE TANK

  2 GATHERING THE FACTS

  3 BRACING FOR THE STORM

  4 MOBILIZING THE PLAYERS

  5 MANAGING THE HYSTERIA

  6 MANNING THE GATES

  7 WASHING ONE’S HANDS

  8 HOGGING THE STAGE

  9 CHASING THE TRUTH

  10 RUNNING OF THE BULLS

  11 OBLIGING THE MOB

  12 BEGETTING A SON

  13 REMOVING THE SCALES

  14 PICKING THE WRONG FIGHT

  15 NETWORKS BEHAVING BADLY

  16 DEFENDING THE DEFENSELESS

  17 DECONSTRUCTING THE DECEIT

  18 AWAITING THE NAZIS

  19 GRABBING FOR THE GUNS

  20 CHANNELING ORWELL

  21 HOWLING FOR GEORGE’S HEAD

  22 LOOKING FOR DEE DEE

  23 LOOKING FOR CAUSE

  24 DUELING WITH DERSHOWITZ

  25 SHOOTING ONE’S FOOT

  26 LOOKING FOR SOME LEAN

  27 TAKING THE SHOW ON THE ROAD

  28 STRAIGHTENING THE STORY

  29 REMEMBERING LEO FRANK

  30 THE UNRAVELING OF TRAYVON

  31 EXCLUDING THE UNPLEASANT

  PART 2: THE TRIAL

  32 FILTERING THE POOL

  33 F-BOMBING THE BOURGEOISIE

  34 FRETTING OUT THE FALSEHOODS

  35 ECHOING THE AGITPROP

  36 PROFILING THE PROFILER

  37 THROWING DOWN, MMA–STYLE

  38 SCORING FOR THE OPPOSITION

  39 SOURCING THE SCREAMS

  40 RESCUING SCIENCE

  41 FIXING THE FIGHT

  42 MAKING CRIME REAL

  43 CONCOCTING A CLOSE

  44 STATING THE OBVIOUS

  45 SAVING THE SYSTEM

  46 DENYING REALITY

  47 LEARNING NOTHING

  48 MISLEADING AMERICA

  49 DOUBLING DOWN

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Part 1

  THE SHOOTING

  1

  BRAVING THE TANK

  ON JUNE 5, 1989, a lone young man in a white shirt stood defiantly in front of a column of Type 59 tanks heading east on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace. The tanks stopped. They had to. Too many people around the world were watching for the tanks to just run the man down.

  Among those following events in Tiananmen Square was a fellow now known to friends as “Sundance,” a recent college grad then back at home in Florida.1 The outrageous bravery of the unknown Chinese man fascinated him. Although not at all political at the time, and an insignificant witness to the tragedy, Sundance found himself drawn deeply to Tank Man and the other young dissidents under fire. For the first time, Sundance watched the news intently, Ted Koppel’s Nightline in particular, and tuned in to talk radio as well.

  Sundance remembers listening to a radio show in his car on which a panel of guests weighed in on “the right wing crackdown” in China. The oppressors were communists, thought Sundance. How could they be right wing? When he got home—this was before cell phones or the Internet—Sundance turned on the show, got the call-in number, and dialed. He had never done anything like this before. “I just need to correct the host,” he told the producer. “The oppressors in China are hard-line communists. They’re on the far left.”

  Next thing Sundance knew, he was on the air. He repeated his assertion to the panelists about the misinformation they were spreading. For a few excruciating seconds, no one quite knew what to say—dead air weighs heavily on radio. Finally, one panelist spoke up. “You’re right,” he conceded. With that admission, he made Sundance aware that the individual citizen can sometimes see the world more clearly than his supposed betters in the media.

  Slowly, tentatively, Sundance began his transition from passive bystander to intellectually engaged participant in American democracy. That much said, life kept him on the political sidelines. He returned to the grocery chain where he had bagged his way through his adolescence and worked his way up to very near the top. He also started a family. In the meantime, the Internet was opening doors for activists that had never been opened before. By the 2008 election, Sundance was a regular on a few key blogs. He had found his voice in their “comments” section and met people with similar views and who also wanted a voice. The readers of these blogs were creating a genuine community “downstairs.” Often, they would direct their comments to the posts of others rather than the article itself. Alliances formed. Friendships grew out of the alliances.

  By 2009 Sundance felt most at home at Hillbuzz, an unorthodox and oddly conservative blog overseen by eccentric Hillary Clinton supporter and openly gay Kevin Dujan. For Hillbuzz regular “Stella,” a Detroit-area grandma and IT professional, Dujan’s site proved to be a hospitable “watering hole” until that “terrible Saturday in November 2010.” Explains “Sharon,” a sixty-something farmer’s daughter from Montana and a fellow Hillbuzz devotee, “Dujan went weird on us.” He started insulting guests, many of whom had been supportive. After some harsh words, visitors like Sharon and Stella found themselves being driven away or even formally “banned.” Stella remembers being “horrified at the real possibility that [she] would be separated from [her] friends forever.”2

  By that time, though, the collective had made enough e-mail contacts to regroup at a side room called the Connection. There they talked among themselves—Sundance, Ytz4mee, Sharon, Stella, Finch, WeeWeed, Bijou, Garnette, Ad Rem—and concluded they were ready for something more. “I was tired of being nice,” says “Ytz4mee,” a military spouse and full-time mother of four. “We needed a space where we could be ourselves and teach others how to deconstruct the mainstream media narrative.” And so, in February 2011, the blogging collective known as the Conservative Treehouse found a cyber home all its own.

  Like Sundance, all the “Treepers,” as the Treehouse participants called themselves, can define with some precision the moment when they switched from passive witness to active participant in the life of the republic. For a few, the transition was even more dramatic as they morphed, like Ytz4mee, from “raving socialist” to stalwart constitutionalist. But none of the eight “admins” who run the site, Sundance included, ever expected that one day they would be standing, metaphorically at least, where Tank Man stood.

  They have stared down a powerful hydra-headed force that the mainstream media, out of fear or ideological complicity, refuse even to acknowledge. “We Ain’t Backing Down,” Sundance head-lined a post in bold red letters after the opposition began to pound them. “Get That Through Your Thick Sk
ulls.”3 It was Ytz4mee who first labeled this force “the Black Grievance Industry,” or just BGI. The BGI is not as scary as the Chinese army, but if the Treepers are just about all that stands between you and it, the BGI can be pretty damn frightening. Those with doubts need only ask the family of the man whose rights the Treepers have spent more than a year defending, the besieged “white Hispanic,” George Michael Zimmerman. George and his family will put those doubts to rest.

  2

  GATHERING THE FACTS

  ON SUNDAY NIGHT, February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman sat down with Sanford Police Department (SPD) detectives and wrote out in longhand his account of the shocking incident that had just left him rattled and bloody. Zimmerman, who writes well, began with background information. In August 2011 his neighbor’s house had been broken into while his neighbor was home with her infant son. She barricaded herself and her child in an upstairs bedroom and called 9-1-1. The SPD quickly responded, and the intruders fled. Zimmerman’s wife, Shellie, saw them fleeing and “became scared of the rising crime.”1 Zimmerman promised that he would do what he could to keep her safe. One result was that he and some of his Retreat at Twin Lakes neighbors formed a Neighborhood Watch Program. The SPD gave them a nonemergency number to call if they saw anything suspicious.

  At 7:09 p.m. on that Sunday evening, Zimmerman followed through on the advice the police had given him. Upon driving to the neighborhood Target to do some grocery shopping, he spotted “a male approximately 5’11” to 6’ 2” casually walking in the rain and looking into homes.” Zimmerman was driving slowly behind the suspect when he called the number he had been given:2

  SPD:

  Sanford Police Department [garbled recording], this is Sean.

  GZ:

  Hey, we’ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real suspicious guy, uh [near] Retreat View Circle. The best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. [00:25]

  SPD:

  Okay, and this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?

  GZ:

  He looks black.

  SPD:

  Did you see what he was wearing?

  GZ:

  Yeah, a dark hoodie, like a gray hoodie, and either jeans or sweat pants and white tennis shoes. He’s here now. He’s just staring. [00:43]

  SPD:

  Okay, he’s just walking around the area . . .

  GZ:

  Looking at all the houses.

  SPD:

  Okay . . .

  GZ:

  Now he’s staring at me. [00:48]

  SPD:

  Okay, you said that’s 1111 Retreat View or 111?

  GZ:

  That’s the clubhouse.

  SPD:

  That’s the clubhouse. Do you know what the . . . he’s near the clubhouse right now?

  GZ:

  Yeah, now he’s coming toward me.

  SPD:

  Okay.

  GZ:

  He’s got his hands in his waistband. And he’s a black male. [1:09]

  SPD:

  How old would you say he looks?

  GZ:

  He’s got a button on his shirt, late teens.

  SPD:

  Late teens, okay.

  GZ:

  Uh-huh. Something’s wrong with him. Yep, he’s coming to check me out. He’s got something in his hands. I don’t know what his deal is. [01:26]

  SPD:

  Let me know if he does anything, okay?

  GZ:

  [anxiously] See if you can get an officer over here.

  SPD:

  Yeah, we’ve got ’em on the way. Just let me know if this guy does anything else.

  GZ:

  Okay. These a**holes. They always get away.

  Zimmerman was driving from a point near the clubhouse to a spot further east on Twin Trees to keep an eye on Martin. The sounds suggest that Zimmerman got out of the truck at this point, but had not yet begun to follow Martin on foot.

  GZ:

  When you come to the clubhouse, you come straight in and you go left. Actually, you would go past the clubhouse. [1:53]

  SPD:

  Okay, so it’s on the left-hand side from the clubhouse?

  GZ:

  Nah, you go in straight through the entrance and then you would go left. You go straight in; don’t turn and make a left. Shit, he’s running. [2:08]

  Martin meanwhile headed east along an east-west cut-through between the two streets Twin Trees Lane, where Zimmerman was parked, and Retreat View Circle. He then turned south on a dog walk that inter-sects the cut-through and runs between the backs of the buildings on either street. The town house where he had been staying was only a few hundred feet down that dog walk.3

  SPD:

  He’s running? Which way is he running?

  GZ:

  Down toward the other entrance of the neighborhood. [2:14]

  SPD:

  OK, which entrance is that he’s headed towards?

  Zimmerman knew the general direction in which Martin was headed but could no longer maintain a visual from the area of the truck. Ambient wind sounds suggest he started walking swiftly, roughly in the same direction Martin was running.

  GZ:

  The back entrance. It’s f***ing cold. [garbled, much disputed]

  The dispatcher obviously heard the wind sounds.

  SPD:

  Are you following him? [2:24]

  GZ:

  Yeah.

  SPD:

  Okay. We don’t need you to do that. [2:26]

  GZ:

  Okay.

  SPD:

  All right, sir, what is your name? [2:34]

  GZ:

  George. He ran.

  At this point, Zimmerman’s breathing relaxed, and the sound of wind abated.

  SPD:

  All right, George, what’s your last name?

  GZ:

  Zimmerman.

  SPD:

  And George, what’s the phone number you’re calling from?

  GZ:

  407-435-2400.

  SPD:

  All right, George, we do have them on the way. Do you want to meet with the officer when they get out there?

  GZ:

  Yeah.

  SPD:

  All right, where are you going to meet with them at?

  GZ:

  Um, if they come in through the gate, tell them to go straight past the clubhouse and, uh, straight past the clubhouse and make a left and then they go past the mailboxes; they’ll see my truck. [3:10]

  SPD:

  All right, what address are you parked in front of? [3:21]

  GZ:

  Um, I don’t know. It’s a cut-through so I don’t know the address. [3:25]

  SPD:

  Okay, do you live in the area?

  GZ:

  Yeah, yeah, I live here.

  SPD:

  Okay, what’s your apartment number?

  GZ:

  It’s a home. It’s 1950—oh, crap, I don’t want to give it out—I don’t know where this kid is [inaudible] [3:40]

  SPD:

  Okay, do you just want to meet with them at the mailboxes then? [3:42]

  GZ:

  Yeah, that’s fine. [3:43]

  SPD:

  All right, George, I’ll let them know you’ll meet them at—

  GZ:

  Could you have them call me and I’ll tell them where I’m at? [3:51]

  SPD:

  Okay, that’s no problem.

  GZ:

  My number . . . you’ve got it?

  SPD:

  Yeah, I’ve got it. 407-435-2400?

  GZ:

  Yeah, you got it.

  SPD:

  Okay, no problem. I’ll let them know to call you when they’re in the area. [4:02]

  GZ:

  Thanks.

  SPD:
/>
  You’re welcome.

  The call ended four minutes and change after it started. “The dispatcher told me not to follow the suspect & that an officer was on the way,” Zimmerman picked up the narrative. “As I headed back to my vehicle the suspect emerged from the darkness and said, ‘You got a problem?” When Zimmerman answered “No,” the suspect said, “You do now.”

  As I looked and tried to find my phone to dial 9-1-1 the suspect punched me in the face. I fell backwards onto my back. The suspect got on top of me. I yelled “Help” several times. The suspect told me, “Shut the f*** up.” As I tried to sit upright, the suspect grabbed my head and slammed it into the concrete sidewalk several times. I continued to yell “Help.” Each time I attempted to sit up, the suspect slammed my head into the sidewalk. My head felt like it was going to explode. I tried to slide out from under the suspect and continue to yell “Help.”

  As I slid the suspect covered my mouth and nose and stopped my breathing. At this point I felt the suspect reach for my now exposed firearm and say, “Your [sic] gonna die tonight Mother F***er.” I unholstered my firearm in fear for my life as he had assured me he was going to kill me and I fired one shot into his torso. The suspect sat back allowing me to sit up and said “You got me.”

  At this point I slid out from underneath him and got on top of the suspect holding his hands away from his body. An onlooker appeared and asked me if I was ok. I said “No.” He said “I am calling 9-1-1.” I said “I don’t need you to call 9-1-1. I already called them. I need you to help me restrain this guy.” At this point a SPD officer arrived and asked “Who shot him.” I said I did and placed my hands on top of my head and told the officer where on my persons [sic] my firearm was holstered. The officer handcuffed me and disarmed me. The officer then placed me in the back of his vehicle.4