CYNTHIA MCKINNEY ON HIT LIST

Cynthia McKinney offered Justice Department protection after assassination threat

By Wayne Madsen

Opinion Maker

November 19, 2011

Former Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney was offered "victim witness" special protection by the FBI after the indictment of four men in northern Georgia for plotting to kill McKinney, Attorney General Eric Holder, and, according to FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Brian Lamkin of the bureau's Atlanta office, President Barack Obama.

Frederick W. Thomas, 73, and Dan Roberts, 67, were charged in the U.S. District Court in Gainesville, Georgia with conspiracy to buy explosives and possession of a silencer, while Samuel Crimp, 68, and Ray Adams were charged with conspiracy to manufacture and disperse the deadly toxin ricin. Federal law enforcement officials seized 52 weapons, including assault rifles, and 30,000 rounds of ammunition, including special sniper rounds, from Thomas's Toccoa, Georgia home.

Lamkin called McKinney at her mother's home in Georgia on November 9 and informed her that she was on the target list for the four arrested men, along with Obama and Holder. A Department of Justice official offered to provide special "victim witness" protection to McKinney, who, unlike Obama and Holder, does not have special security assigned to her.

McKinney said that while she is not afraid of the four Georgia men arrested in the alleged assassination plot, she remains concerned that the FBI had on its payroll a hate radio host who announced to his listenership in 2006 that McKinney should be lynched on her way to vote.

The radio host, Hal Turner, was found guilty in 2010 of making threats against three federal judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. It was also discovered in 2008 that Turner, who often called into the WABC-AM New York radio programs of Bob Grant and Sean Hannity, was a paid FBI informant.

McKinney said in reaction to the offer of protection services by the Justice Department,

"the government agency that was paying the shock jock to threaten me rings to inform me that I now qualify for victim witness services."

McKinney added that the arrest of the four white extremists in north Georgia comes at a time when she has been reaching out to white conservatives.

She said, 

"Recently, I have been reaching out to conservative white individuals and organizations for dialogue and I will continue to do so.  The people I've been reaching out to are hearing my message and it is getting through:  if you and I fail to talk about our problems, we will never resolve them and the same old culprits who have skillfully divided us on the false basis of race will continue to steal opportunity from both of us.  Let's at least talk to each other and keep our eyes together on the ones stealing the people blind."