Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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July 24, 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
I’m an investigative journalist and the author of 19 non-fiction books. Since 1985, I’ve been writing about that line where religion crosses over into criminal behavior. In early 2006, my wife, Joyce, suggested that I look into the story of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS, because she believed that women in particular would be interested in this story. She was right, and this is a significant point. Historically, societies can be measured by how they treat women and children.
That spring, I began traveling to Colorado City, Arizona, interviewing townspeople, ex-church members, and law enforcement. In 1953, Arizona had raided this community to root out the FLDS polygamous lifestyle, and had failed both legally and in terms of public opinion. Fifty years later, the state was employing criminal investigation techniques to target specific individuals who were breaking the law, and they were having success. Both Arizona and Utah were building a new approach to tackling what many have called religious terrorism.
One victory came with the capture of fugitive Warren Jeffs, the Prophet or leader of the FLDS. In September 2007, he was convicted on two counts of accomplice to rape for forcing a fourteen-year-old girl to marry her first cousin. Back in the 1970s, Jeffs was the principal of the FLDS-run Alta Academy, just outside Salt Lake City, and students there later described how he’d abused them emotionally and physically. His nephew, Brent Jeffs, eventually sued Warren and two of his brothers, alleging that when Brent was five, they’d repeatedly sodomized him in a bathroom in the school basement. Brent’s brother, Clayne, another victim of these attacks, committed suicide. In 2004, when Brent filed a lawsuit against the Prophet, Jeffs responded to this legal action the same way he had to the American government and our criminal justice system: he’d ignored them. As the FLDS Prophet, he’s also ignored:
1) The child labor laws of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. Young FLDS boys were sent off to work in the church’s construction companies, and because they were hardworking and unpaid, the sect could underbid the competition and generate both private and government business. One FLDS-run company, New Era Manufacturing, has a Department of Defense contract for aircraft wheel and brake manufacturing worth $1.2 million. JNJ Engineering has an $11.3 million deal with the Las Vegas Valley Water District. A third FLDS company, Paragon Contractors Corporation, has been fined more than $10,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing twelve-to-fifteen-year-old boys, and not paying them.
2) Jeffs ignored the Mann Act, which makes it illegal for minors to cross state lines for sexual purposes. As the Prophet, he routinely commanded men to marry women and teenage girls in secret ceremonies in Caliente, Nevada, across the border from the FLDS home base in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona.
3) Jeffs ignored the laws against bigamy and underage marriage in Arizona and Utah, selecting the men who’d receive new brides and joining them in “spiritual marriages.” These “plural wives” with dependent children then became eligible for welfare payments -- and welfare fraud. Colorado City has received eight times the welfare assistance of comparably-sized towns in the area. Despite violating these laws, Colorado City has been awarded $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave the streets and improve the fire department and water system; more than $12 million a year from Arizona in health insurance premiums for the poor; and a $2.8 million airport from Washington, D.C. The FLDS openly despises the American government while taking its money, a tactic they call “bleeding the beast.”
4) Jeffs ignored the fate of hundreds of teenage males in his community -- known as “Lost Boys” -- after they rebelled against forced child labor and his other harsh rules. He tossed them out of Colorado City and Hildale, leaving them to fend for themselves on the streets of St. George, Utah, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. Some of the young men broke laws and were arrested, burdening local police departments and publicly-funded social services.
5) Jeffs ignored outside law enforcement because the border towns’ police force was made up of FLDS members utterly loyal to their Prophet. After Jeffs had gone underground to avoid arrest, Colorado City Police Chief Fred Barlow wrote him the following letter: “Dear Uncle Warren, I would first like to acknowledge you as the one man that was and is called of God to stand at the head of his priesthood and the Kingdom of God on the earth in this day and time. I rejoice in the peace that comes over me when I follow the directives that you have sent to me through Uncle William Timpson...I am praying for you to be protected and yearn to be with you again...And I know that you have the right to rule in all aspects of my life...”
6) Jeffs ignored the genetic disorders caused by the sect’s inbreeding. In Colorado City and Hildale, Phoenix pediatric neurologist Dr. Theodore Tarby uncovered the largest occurrence in the world of a rare disease called Fumarese Deficiency, which produces overly large heads, misshapen brains, deformities, seizures, and even death. The severe condition was one more drain on public monies needed for medical care.
7) Following his arrest, Jeffs and his lawyers successfully fought efforts to get at FLDS financial records, stored on computers in the vehicle in which the Prophet had been traveling. No complete picture exists of the FLDS income streams that supported Jeffs’ lavish fugitive lifestyle, paid his colossal legal bills or other vast expenses. In 2003, the FLDS bought the Texas ranch for about $700,000. Today it has an assessed value of $20.5 million. Where did all the funds come from for these improvements, and for other purchases of land in South Dakota and more recently in Colorado? Has money been laundered or taxes evaded?
Until the FLDS is thoroughly investigated by those with subpoena power, the full extent of the sect’s sexual abuse, forced marriage, underage marriage, and financial schemes will remain unknown. A nationwide network now exists of people who’ve escaped the FLDS and understand its workings from the inside out. They’ve spent years trying to get law enforcement to investigate the sect more fully, are willing to testify against Jeffs and his church, and they’d welcome federal action. The FLDS has become both a national phenomenon and a national problem -- creating generations of victims spread across the Southwest. None of this is about religious freedom or faith, and FLDS members should not be treated any differently from any other American citizen. This is about uncovering and prosecuting individual criminal behavior by those who’ve violated state and federal laws, which is the best way to stop those who terrorize in the name of God. I respectfully ask you to consider these words and warnings from someone who’s spent more than two years investigating this sect. Thank you.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
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On July 11, 2008, I received a call from a lawyer in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office who invited me to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing planned for July 24. Senator Reid had followed through on his commitment to launch a federal investigation and introduce a bill in the Senate regarding crimes associated with polygamy. He'd also invited the Attorney Generals from Texas, Arizona, and Utah to testify, along with two U.S. Attorneys. I was on a panel that included Dr. Dan Fischer, whose family Warren Jeffs had torn apart, and Carolyn Jessop, an ex-FLDS wife. We all presented written statements and were then questioned by several members of the Judiciary Committee. Senator Reid himself delivered the opening remarks and pushed forward his theme that this sect resembles organized crime. The day before, he'd submitted a bill asking for money for a task force to investigate the FLDS and other funds for victims of the sect. In the days leading up to the hearing, the FLDS launched fierce criticism against Senator Reid and those who were testifying. The Senator was unfazed and his commitment to this issue has been unwavering.
On July 22, Warren Jeffs and five other men were indicted in Texas for allegedly committing bigamy and underage marriage. By July 28, all had been taken into custody. Jeffs may be extradited to Texas for these criminal proceedings.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
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After reading "When Men Become Gods," Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) called our house and wanted to speak with me about the book. I was in San Angelo, Texas attending the second round of hearings in the child custody case, after 460 children had been removed from the FLDS compound near Eldorado. Senator Reid was very enthusiastic about the book and asked me to write him a detailed letter outlining the potential crimes of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS sect. He wants to launch a federal investigation of the FLDS and wanted to give my letter to Senate and House committee heads who would be looking into this issue. When we were speaking, Senator Reid said this about the book: "This book shines much needed light on the disturbing activities of these outlaw communities. I only wish it had been written years ago." He's moving forward to start the investigation.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
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I’m often asked how the FLDS generates money. Where did all the financial resources come from to support Warren Jeffs when he was on the run from law enforcement for two years? How did the sect pay for the 1,700 acres and huge limestone temple down on the ranch just raided in Texas? One answer is that FLDS men are highly industrious and very successful in the construction business. They have numerous companies spread across the Southwest, which until recently has seen a building boom, and their earnings are funneled back into the church and its leadership. The sect excels at underbidding other construction outfits, because it employs boys from its own community without having to pay them much -- or nothing at all. Some have called this “slave labor.” The FLDS has undercut its competition not just in the private marketplace, but also in government contracts. Many men in the sect have been officially married to one wife, but might have a dozen or more unofficial “spiritual wives” who could qualify for welfare payments -- another way to drain money from the government. The sect calls this tactic “bleeding the beast.”
The raid occurred in darkness and changed many things, literally overnight. After the authorities entered the compound outside of Eldorado, Texas, Representative Kay Granger, a Fort Worth Republican, wrote to her fellow Congressional members requesting a hearing to look into a Department of Defense contract awarded to an FLDS company. A contract worth $1.2 million had been given to New Era Manufacturing, formerly based in the FLDS hometown of Hildale, Utah, before it relocated to Las Vegas. New Era supplies wheel and brake components for military aircraft. The “Fort Worth Star Telegram” reports that New Era has employed church followers at little or no pay.
“As a Member of Congress,” Granger wrote, “I am concerned that federal tax dollars may have been misused to fund this sect’s illegal activities.”
In recent years, with the FLDS drawing more and more negative publicity for its marital practices and allegations of sexual abuse, the federal government finally took notice. In 2007, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic Majority Leader and highest-ranking Mormon in U.S. history, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate the sect. At the time, Warren Jeffs was in jail in Utah awaiting trial for accomplice to rape. Senator Reid was dissatisfied with how Utah and Arizona had handled the potential criminal activities of the FLDS and wanted the Department of Justice to launch a comprehensive probe of the church, including its finances. Reid basically called on the feds to approach this as they might an investigation into organized crime. Gonzales failed to respond, but after the Texas raid the Senator made the request again, this time more forcefully, calling on new Attorney General Michael Mukasey to take action. Mukasey is considering the options.
There are parallels between how Michael Corleone gained power over his fictional Mob family in “The Godfather,” after Don Corleone began to falter, and how Warren Jeffs took control as the Prophet of the FLDS, when his father got sick and then died. Will there be more parallels between these stories -- with the feds investigating a religious community as if it were a crime family?
Friday, April 25, 2008
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When I began looking into the Warren Jeffs’ case in the winter of 2006, I wasn’t much interested in rehashing Mormon history or even the history of polygamy among consenting adults. Like the states of Utah and Arizona, I felt that adults should basically be able to pursue their own lifestyles. I wanted to explore the place where fundamentalist religion meets criminal behavior, which I’ve done in previous books. As it turned out, this was a fortunate approach. Not only did Warren Jeffs end up on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and get arrested and then convicted for accomplice to rape in September 2007; but as everyone knows by now, his compound in Texas, known as the Yearning for Zion Ranch, was raided by law enforcement on the night of April 3 and 462 children were removed because of allegations of sexual abuse and underage marriage. The story has exploded into headlines and the basic issue centers on where religious freedom ends and crimes against children begin. The book features the adventures of a private investigator who tailed the fugitive Jeffs for 100,000 miles without ever catching up with him, and those of a criminal investigator who took on a town of 6-8,000 fundamentalists Mormons who despised him (the police in town are also polygamists). Their efforts to uncover crimes - - rape, incest, physical violence, forced labor for kids, tearing up of families, reassigning wives and children to other men, slaughtering animals, banishing 1,000 teenage boys from the community, and bleeding the American government of welfare payments and other financial scams -- are heroic, as are the women who’ve come forward over the years and tried to get law enforcement to stop Jeffs’ reign of terror. The two states finally launched an investigation and now he’s serving two five-to life terms in Utah, while awaiting another trial for incest in Arizona.
On a larger scale, I wrote the book because for nearly seven years our federal government has been fighting a global War on Terror against religious extremists across the planet. With more than 4,000 American soldiers dead, possibly half a million other victims, and the cost of the war estimated as high as $3 trillion, there’s little indication that this conflict has any end point and no one seems to be able to define victory, let alone achieve it. In decades past, Arizona and Utah tried using force to stop polygamy and change the fundamentalists’ beliefs and lifestyles -- it ended in disaster. This time they took a much more intelligent and comprehensive approach. The book is about how this strategy has been implemented -- and how it’s succeeded in extremely difficult circumstances. Those two states have a lot to teach us about combating the problems of religious terrorism, but this isn’t a book of theory. It’s filled with courageous characters, a nasty villain, and plenty of action.
It was my wife, Joyce, who first told me to go down to southern Utah and look into the Warren Jeffs’ case. She understood that women in particular would be fascinated by the details of this closed society operating inside our own country. She’s been right about these things before, and her instincts were on target again. Sometimes, it really pays to listen.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
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In When Men Become Gods, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Singular casts a light on a dark corner of religious extremism. He reveals a group of fundamentalists operating in the present-day United States, where teenage girls are kept in virtual bondage in the name of upholding the “sacred principle” of polygamy.
As the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, a sect of Mormonism based in isolated southern Utah, Warren Jeffs held sway over thousands of followers for nearly a decade. His rule was utterly tyrannical. In addition to coercing young girls into polygamous marriages with older men, Jeffs reputedly took scores of wives, many of whom were his father’s widows. Television, radio, and newspapers were shunned, creating a hidden community where polygamy was prized above all else.
But in 2007, after a two-year manhunt that landed him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, Jeffs’s reign was forcefully ended. He was convicted of rape as an accomplice for his role in arranging a marriage between a fourteen-year-old girl and her nineteen-year-old first cousin.
In When Men Become Gods, Edgar Award nominee Stephen Singular traces Jeffs’s rise to power and the concerted effort that led to his downfall. It was a movement championed by law enforcement, private investigators, the Feds, and perhaps most vocal of all, a group of former polygamous wives seeking to liberate young women from the arranged marriages they’d once endured. The book offers new revelations into a nearly impenetrable enclave---a place of nineteenth-century attire, inbreeding, and eerie seclusion---providing readers with a rare glimpse into a tradition that’s almost a century old, but that has only now been exposed.
This book focuses on the criminal investigation into the FLDS that started in 2004 in Arizona and has now exploded with law enforcement entering the compound in Eldorado, Texas, and removing more than 400 children from the property. The book is not an account of one or two individual's escape from polygamy, but confronts the larger issue surrounding this subject: where does religious freedom end and criminal behavior begin? When Men Become Gods is the story behind the stories now coming out of Texas.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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One cold February morning in 2008, I was reading my worn copy of the U.S. Constitution -- something I do every year or so -- when I happened to turn on the radio for the eleven o’clock news. A CBS reporter said that the American government had just announced that it was seeking the death penalty for six men accused of planning the September 11, 2001, attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York City, which killed nearly 3,000 people. The men were being imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and would be tried by a secret military tribunal. They’d be given neither the rights of criminal defendants in American courtrooms nor the protections granted under the Constitution. Their leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, had confessed to these charges after being subjected to water-boarding: simulated drowning until a suspect breaks down and starts to talk. Michael Mukasey, the U.S. Attorney General and the nation’s highest-ranking legal official, had refused to acknowledge during questioning by Senators that water-boarding was torture and therefore illegal. He did admit, however, that it might be torture if it were being done to him.
A few days before this death penalty announcement, Vice-President Dick Cheney had vigorously defended water-boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques at a Republican fundraiser in Pennsylvania, calling them a “tougher program for a very few tougher customers.” Right after declaring its intention to kill the six men, the Bush Administration ordered its diplomats around the world to explain this decision by comparing it to the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg after World War II, a very weak comparison.
It would take a while for the full impact of the news bulletin to hit me. In the meantime, I returned to studying the Constitution. The small pamphlet in my hand spelled out, in Article V of the Bill of Rights, that defendants accused of crimes in the United States could not be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Article VI stated that in “all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and District wherein the crime shall have been committed.” The Nuremberg trials had been open so that the world could see and hear the evidence presented against the Nazis, and try to learn something from the conditions and people who created the Holocaust. The Guantanamo proceedings would be closed.
Article VIII said that no “cruel and unusual punishment” should be inflicted on the accused. The men on trial at Nuremberg had not been tortured into confessing about the war crimes that made them responsible for at least 20 to 30 million deaths. Not to mention the wounded and damaged. At age 24, my father, a bombardier pilot over Germany, was shot down and then held as a prisoner of war in that country for almost a year. He came home with a dislocated hip and permanently shattered nerves. On his death bed at 83, he was still mumbling about following the orders of his prison guards who told the captive soldiers to line up and march in the snow. No one at his POW camp was tortured by the Nazis to reveal information about the American armed forces, and throughout his life, my father opposed and despised these interrogation techniques on prisoners of war.
After the German surrender in 1945, some of the Allies called for the immediate execution of those in the Nazi high command, but the U.S. stood firm against this and prevailed. Our nation believed in public courtrooms and due process for the very worst offenders on earth. The guilty should be convicted by testimony and evidence, not emotion. Once the German leaders had been convicted at Nuremberg, several were put to death and the case was properly closed. The American victory in World War II was complete. We’d not only defeated the Axis powers on the battlefield, but adhered to our principles in pursuing justice for the conquered.
In 1996, the U.S. reaffirmed its commitment to international law by passing the War Crimes Act, making it illegal for Americans -- including the country’s civil and military leaders -- to violate the standards set forth in the Geneva Conventions for conduct during wartime. Torture and death for criminal suspects or POWs were outlawed. But in 2002, Bush Administration lawyer Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo to his boss showing how the U.S. could sidestep the 1996 law, as well as the Constitution, by allowing Americans to engage in various forms of torture, such as water-boarding. The memo helped further the Bush agenda and the president later made Gonzales the new Attorney General, making him the nation’s top legal official. Then in 2006, the administration drafted amendments further weakening the 1996 War Crimes Act, so that political appointees, CIA officers, and military personnel could not be prosecuted for “humiliating and degrading treatment” of suspects.
The confessional statements from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed about September 11, 2001, obtained during torture, would now be used in a secret courtroom to establish the truth behind the most heinous crime ever committed on American soil. Our national history -- a non-partisan issue -- was being sealed away from us, one piece at a time. How strange that I’d heard this CBS news report while reading the words of those who’d founded our nation. Their commitment to open and balanced government, along with their efforts to check official abuses of power, flowed through every passage in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. We were, as John Marshall, our longest-running Supreme Chief Justice, famously said, “A government of laws and not men.”
Turning off the radio, I closed the document in my hand and peered out the window at the chilled winter sky, unable to shake the haunting sense of what it now felt like to be an American citizen.
Monday, October 15, 2007
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In early October, I was contacted through this website to speak to a criminology class at Denver's Westwood College. I've always enjoyed public speaking regarding high profile criminal murders.The students had been studying cold cases which included the killing of JonBenet Ramsey and the OJ Simpson case. In the past thirteen years I'd written books on both of these topics. I was struck, as I stood before the class, by how these homicides had become historical subjects on college campuses. My wife, Joyce, accompanied me to this lecture, as she's been involved in the research of many of my true crime books. It was a great learning experience for both of us.
The books I wrote on these two cases went strongly against the grain of what was commonly perceived about these murders. Joyce and I were both amazed at how open-minded and perceptive this upcoming generation of students was when hearing new information about these infamous crimes. They taught us as much as I hope we taught them -- not just about these homicides, but about the workings of the modern media, the extraordinary power of propaganda as fed to audiences through talk shows, and the disheartening cost of law enforcement failing to investigation numerous significant leads. Unlike so many police officers, FBI agents, and other professional investigators I've dealt with over the years, these young men and women were eager to explore new avenues and they gave me hope.
The whole process sent me back into the many dusty boxes of documents I have relating to these cases and I was reminded once again that the worst way to solve a mystery is to assume at the outset that you know everything about it. Maybe the students who are becoming criminologists and investigators now will start looking at cold cases without prejudice and be able to help solve them.
It was one young woman who dug into the Ramsey case and read several books on the subject who initially contacted me and brought about the lecture. She wasn't satisfied with staying on the surface and wanted to know more. This is the kind of mind that will eventually penetrate the most difficult crimes and bring out the truth.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
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All week long the two men had been sitting outside of town watching tornadoes form and fall apart. Nothing much had come of any of them. Greg Ellis was the fire chief and Ray Affeldt the assistant fire chief for Coldwater, Kansas, 30 miles north of the Oklahoma line. When twisters started to roll up Tornado Alley, the pair slipped in behind them in Ray’s pickup and reported what they saw to the National Weather Service. Their goal was to get as close as possible to the damage path without getting sucked into it -- creeping within half a mile of a column of air rotating up to 200 miles per hour, and knowing exactly when to back off. People said that an F-3 or an F-4 tornado (on a scale of 1 to 5) couldn’t eat a brick house or a church or school or hospital made of brick, either, but people could be wrong. This evening, the men had their eyes on a small formation, no more than 1/8 of a mile wide, with a couple of tails that were flirting with the ground but not hitting it.
“We figured,” Greg says, in a flat Midwestern drawl, “that it would just rope out and go back up into the sky.”
“Like all the others had that week,” Ray adds. “Fact is, you never know what they’re gonna do.”
Starting his truck, Ray decided to tag along as the twister made its way north up Highway 183, just another routine Friday night in May 2007, in Comanche County, Kansas.
The sun had already set and dusk was settling over the countryside, dotted with power lines, wheat fields, farmhouses, and oil wells. Black clouds were mounting and darkness was coming fast. The wind was picking up and it was harder to see the funnel spinning in front of them, but they were certain of one thing. Every time lightning flashed around the tornado, it looked bigger.
“For a while,” Greg says, “we’d been able to view the whole thing, but by now it must have been half a mile wide.”
As the men moved in closer, the funnel began spitting out more and more debris: hedge trees, oil rigs, telephone poles, fence posts, and barbed wire. Rain had begun falling, then hailstones. Highway 183 was getting slicker, with Ray dodging branches and live electrical lines shooting off sparks.
“Things were startin’ to feel un-comfortable,” he says.
“The storm was turnin’ ugly and we were right in the middle of it,” Greg laughs. “That’s why we get paid the big bucks.”
Because somebody needed to provide the surrounding rural communities with an early warning system that was nearer the action and more accurate than either the National Weather Service or local TV stations, the men did this work on a volunteer basis.
The twister hit a natural gas line and spewed flames into the air. If a bolt of lightning struck the gas, the hills could be set afire.
“I told Ray he had to back off now,” Greg says. “If that gas line blows, our truck was gonna turn bright red and we’d be goin’ a helluva lot faster than before.”
Ray exited 183 and zigzagged behind the tornado on gravel roads, as the twister jumped across the highway and turned right, on course to go in between the two small towns of Mullinville and Greensburg. But it kept turning, hitting an electrical transmission plant and a couple of farms, as lightning kept flashing around it.
“It was way too big to see all of it now,” Greg recalls.
“It was hissin’ real bad,” his partner says. “It was the biggest, meanest, loudest damn thing I’d ever seen. Had to be a mile-and-a-half wide on the ground.”
And it was headed straight for Greensburg. Cell phones had been knocked out by the storm so the men radioed the National Weather Service and the Greensburg police with a frantic warning: a monster funnel cloud was coming right at them. At 9:30 p.m., when the tornado sirens went off inside Greensburg, nearly all of its 1,400 citizens ran down to their own basement or someone else’s. People’s ears were starting to pop from the approaching pressure and their pets were acting strangely. Glass was shaking in the windows above their heads and nails were screeching inside of boards. Rain and hail were slamming rooftops as the night began to howl.
The firemen stopped at a couple of farmhouses to check for injuries before jumping back in the truck and chasing after the tornado, moving northeast at 20 miles per hour. It hit Greensburg at exactly 9:50 because that’s when clocks all over town came to a dead halt. Eight minutes later, the twister had moved on, but the clocks never restarted.
Greg and Ray drove into Greensburg about 10:10 and all the electricity was out. It was pitch black except for the headlights of ambulances and police cars converging on the town from every direction. The two men parked in front of the first house they came to, but most of it was gone. The couple living there had been picked up with their house, blown north, and dropped into a ditch filled with water. As the firemen began searching for victims, they were surrounded by the sounds of people crying out for help, or just crying, or those begging for their lives in the darkness. One woman had fish lures stuck up and down her back. Every time lightning flashed now, it revealed a slice of Greensburg to the men and nothing around them was left standing.
They set about pulling people from the rubble and handing them off to ambulance drivers who took them to the makeshift triage center in the tavern on Main Street, the only unharmed business in town. They worked all night, along with hundreds of others, locating the dead and shipping off the wounded to three regional hospitals. The tornado -- an F-5, the most powerful on the Fujita scale of magnitude and referred to as the “Finger of God” -- had destroyed the local hospital, but it was still too dark to say how much more of Greensburg was gone. At six a.m., the sun came up and the answer was stunning: 95% of the town had disappeared or was damaged beyond repair. Seven churches had vanished, along with the county jail and the entire school system. The courthouse remained standing, but a Pontiac was perched on its roof. The community measured 1.7 miles wide and so had the twister at full force. It had fit perfectly inside the city limits and carried away nearly all of Greensburg -- dropping some open coffins in a muddy field outside of town and other objects a hundred miles away. Along the streets and sidewalks, trees had been stripped not just of their limbs or leaves but also their bark, and they were bleeding sap.
“That morning,” Ray says, “people were walking around carrying bags full of their possessions. They were so dazed they didn’t speak or look at you when you came up and offered them help. They didn’t seem to hear or see anything. It was the eeriest feeling.”
“What I’ll always remember most,” says Greg, “was the sweet smell after the storm. Many of the houses were made of pine and the air smelled like fresh-cut pine boards. Like everything there had been put through a saw mill.”
Miraculously, because of the warnings from the firemen and a handful of others, the town had taken cover and had only ten fatalities. The number was unbelievably low for what, in terms of property damage, was the most destructive tornado in American history.
Sometimes as a journalist, you have to go someplace without knowing why. The twister hit seven days ago and I’ve just driven 430 miles from Denver in the hope that the police barricading the road up ahead will let me into the ravaged town. Earlier in the week, President Bush came to Greensburg to declare it a disaster area. He said you couldn’t fully appreciate what had happened here from photos or TV coverage -- one reason I’d wanted to see it for myself -- but I’m looking for something more than direct visual evidence of the destruction. What I’m after may be inside those blocked-off city limits, but I’ve got to get past the cops first.
An hour earlier, I’d stopped in Dodge City for gas and spotted a newspaper headline saying that Greensburg was holding its first town meeting since the tornado, starting this evening at five p.m. All day long as I’ve driven across eastern Colorado and western Kansas, I’ve been listening to the AM radio broadcasts that saturate this part of the country. They’ve delivered a constant stream of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck talking about red states versus blue states; my values are superiors to yours; and about how Americans are divided by their political or religious beliefs. In 2004, Thomas Frank wrote a book called “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” describing how Midwesterners had been duped by rightwing talk show hosts and the neo-conservatives in the Republican Party. The GOP had used racial, religious, and sexual fears, Frank argued, to get the rubes in Kansas and throughout the heartland to vote against their own economic self-interest. The neo-cons had played the faith card as a political weapon to defeat the opposition.
Approaching the policemen, I see rows of naked trees up ahead, bending toward the north, like rider-less horses on the horizon. Their exposed sap is lacing the air with an acrid smell, and the odor evokes death. At ten minutes till five, I reach the cops, who’ve been turning away nearly every vehicle in front of me. Rolling down the window, I show them a business card and the paper I just bought in Dodge City.
“I’m a reporter,” I tell them, “and I’m supposed to cover this town meeting.”
Then I hold my breath, absolutely not wanting to turn around and retrace the 430 miles back home.
The officers exchange glances and one shrugs.
“Go on in,” he says.
“Thank you,” I nod with appreciation and relief, driving slowly into Greensburg.
Roofs are sitting flat on the ground and 18-wheeler trucks lie upside down, like kittens waiting for their bellies to be scratched. Along Main Street, the shelves of several businesses are standing, but the outside walls are missing. A few nights ago, four soldiers from nearby Fort Riley were arrested for looting cigarettes and beer from an open storefront. Police and armed National Guard personnel are everywhere patrolling the streets, strictly enforcing the eight p.m. curfew. The town is mostly silent, except for some crows cawing in the denuded trees that rise above the wasteland. World War II comes to mind, specifically Hiroshima in August 1945. Greensburg has no running water, no food, no banks or money or jobs, no official records or electricity or phones, but a few portable toilets have been planted on street corners. I don’t drive far because the asphalt is covered with bits of glass and twisted nails.
FEMA trailers are parked around the courthouse, with federal employees already taking control of the cleanup and whatever comes next. Following the tornado, the agency leaped into action -- seeing Greensburg as the chance to redeem itself after the Katrina failures in New Orleans. The feds’ presence in town will eventually grow to scores of work trailers and as many as 350 mobile homes for temporary housing for the locals, should the town decide to rebuild and the scattered people choose to return to live here. FEMA will be helped by Mennonite farmers who live outside the town, by Mexican immigrants from across the region, by African-Americans working for the government, and by more than a thousand local volunteers from nearby communities. Over the next two months, FEMA would oversee the removal of nearly 40,000 truckloads of rubble, at a cost of more than $50 million, while scrambling to make up for other governmental shortages.
In late 2005, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius had told Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that because her state’s National Guard unit and military equipment were so heavily deployed in Iraq, Kansas wouldn’t be prepared if an emergency struck inside its borders. Rumsfeld ignored her. A month later, in a face-to-face meeting with President Bush, she’d told him the same thing.
“We’re working on it,” he replied, but nothing changed.
The day after the twister leveled Greensburg, Governor Sebelius ordered the Kansas National Guard into the town and delivered some stinging words for the Bush Administration: because Midwestern soldiers and material were occupied in Iraq, they weren’t available to help her people during a crisis.
“I don’t think,” she said, “there is any question if you are missing trucks, Humvees, and helicopters that the response is going to be slower.”
Tony Snow, the President’s Press Secretary, fired back at Sebelius, blaming her for not asking the administration for enough assistance.
In 2005, “Time Magazine” had named Sebelius, a progressive Democrat, one of nation’s five best governors. Instead of backing down from Snow, she now reiterated her stance on the lack of National Guard personnel. Then she went further, proclaiming that Greensburg should not only come back, but be recreated as “the greenest small town in America” -- coining the slogan “the greening of Greensburg.”
No community in the 21st Century, she pointed out, got the opportunity to start over, until now. She’d work to come up with state dollars for such a project and the federal government had begun looking for ways to implement green ideas. City planners could provide Greensburg with the latest energy-efficient technology and the most advanced environmental infrastructure. The village could become a model for towns not only around the nation, but the world. This would bring in money, attention, and tourists. It could serve an educational purpose at a time when global warming and other “green” issues were becoming important parts of our political and economic dialogue. Instead of giving into the despair caused by the disaster, maybe this was the moment for trying something entirely new.
Sebelius didn’t sound much like the governor of the state Thomas Frank had written about half a decade earlier. And she didn’t sound anything like what Limbaugh and his radio brethren so confidently proclaimed about the people and politicians in rural or conservative states. Another reality -- subtler and more complex than the one portrayed on talk radio -- was emerging in the aftermath of the twister. Things were not exactly black and white, or red and blue. The tornado had ripped the façade off of Greensburg, by blowing away its homes and businesses, and would expose many other things as well.
Walking toward the huge red-and-white tent where the town meeting is about to begin, I steel myself for what I’ll encounter: anger, depression, post-traumatic stress, bitterness and a sense of victimization, maybe even paranoia. I duck into the tent, jammed with 500 people, as a local female minister is delivering a prayer of gratitude for all those who survived. Every head is bowed. Everyone looks humbled. Nobody needs to be reminded of the value of taking the next breath or the sheer joy of being alive.
Mayor Lonnie McCollum briefly addresses the crowd and, amidst cheering and applause, he declares that Greensburg will stand again. Next is City Manager Steve Hewitt, who grew up here before relocating to Oklahoma City and working in its parks system. Young, vibrant, and ambitious, Hewitt has a crew-cut and a rapid-fire voice. Last year, he came home to Greensburg because he wanted a job with more hands-on involvement and to play a larger role in his community. As he looks out at the audience, he tries to speak, but falters, bursting into tears for the first time since the tornado. He lost everything last Friday night -- his house, car, and possessions -- but he, his wife, and their 20-year-old son were unscratched. He hasn’t slept more than two nights in the past seven and his eyes are crimson.
“We’re gonna build it back,” he says softly, as the gathering explodes into more clapping and whistling. “Better than before.”
Smiling up at him is Judy McIntosh, the spouse of the Methodist minister in Greensburg. Last Friday afternoon, she drove into town and saw several amateur storm chasers lurking at the city limits, not giving them a second thought. Those people were always sniffing around for tornadoes that never came. A day or two before, her sister had told Judy that she wasn’t grateful enough for the material things in her life -- she took them all for granted. That evening, Judy got her Bible, went out to her front porch, and began studying how to express more thanks for her blessings. A few hours later, her home and nearly everything she owned were gone, but her family also survived without injury.
“That afternoon before the storm,” she says, “I asked God to give me a more grateful heart. I never imagined how grateful I could be to have just one unbroken candle.”
Near Judy is State Representative Dennis McKinney, a Republican and the Minority Whip in the Kansas legislature. The only thing left of his house was a closet in a back bedroom. He survived by lying down in the bathtub in his basement, holding onto his teenage daughter, while she clung to their small terrier. When McKinney came upstairs that night at 10:15, he heard someone screaming next door and ran over and found a mother and baby trapped under debris. He was certain the infant was seriously hurt or dead. He rescued them and when the unharmed baby grinned at Dennis, he’d never in his life felt so strongly the presence of God.
McKinney is a fourth-generation farmer with 2,000 acres of wheat south of town, and known as a staunch conservative in the legislature. He has nothing but good things to say about Governor Sebelius and what she’s done for his town in the past week. He’s also backing the “greening of Greensburg.”
“Who wants to pay more for energy than we have to?” he says. “Who wants to be more dependent on foreign oil than we already are? Who doesn’t want to help the environment?”
I glance at the crowd, taking in the faces and body language, observing something strange or at least unexpected. These folks don’t appear miserable or outraged or fearful or victimized.
The man sitting next to me, Pastor Marvin George of the American Baptist Church, shakes my hand and says, “When I learned that everyone in my congregation was all right, everything else was just about the stuff that blew away. My life is not about stuff.”
I’d come here in search of the kind of crystallizing moment journalists are always after, and it has arrived. In this place on this evening, the citizens are not divided by artificial distinctions or conflict manufactured and sold for political ends. They’re not pitted against each other and these people seem -- it feels like heresy even to think it -- happy. Something is stirring in Greensburg, something that goes far beyond cultural warfare, talk show opinions, religion as a tool to control people politically, and the unreality or trivia that now colors so much of American public life. I’ve grown sick of hearing about Paris Hilton and her petulant mother, tired of listening to people spout condemning viewpoints on the radio, and am hungry for something more. I’m happy to be inside the tent too. Talk show labels, like the photos of Greensburg after the twister, don’t do justice to the richness of who were are and how we live.
In these devastated circumstances, one’s sexual orientation, political party, and the brand of one’s particular faith have as much meaning as a smashed doll. The people under the tent have all met a common enemy and found a common cause in surviving and going forward. Looking around once again, I haven’t felt as much a part of my own country for two or three decades, and I want to dig further into this phenomenon.
At the town meeting, nobody is quite ready to come out and say it, but the thought is floating through the tent and coloring the words of the speakers and the cheers of the audience: the tornado could be the most creative thing that’d ever happened to Greensburg, Kansas.
Or as City Manager Hewitt will soon tell me, “We now have the chance to do something that’s never been done before -- build a town the way we want it. But it’s up to the people. What will they choose? What do they really want?”
Governor Sebelius challenged celebrities, politicians, and others who liked to promote “going green” to step up and help the devastated community.
Hollywood has answered her call.
In mid-July 2007, at the Television Critics Association summer press tour at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Discovery Communications president and CEO David Zaslav announced a partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio and the debuting of Discovery’s “Green Channel.” It will feature a 13-part-series called “Eco-Town,” chronicling the re-building of Greensburg.
Through his company, Appian Way, DiCaprio is the show’s executive producer and Zaslav laid out the vision for the new series.
“The centerpiece of the launch of Planet Green is going to be our effort to help the Governor of Kansas and the town of Greensburg to rebuild the town green,” he said. “It’s not just about entertainment. We’re going to put our resources into Greensburg and Planet Green and try to make a difference.”