Received from anonymous July 26, 1998: The Columbian (Oregon), No date. Written by John Branton, Columbian staff writer Eleven months in prison - and counting - haven't muzzled James Dalton Bell's rage about what he calls government "black operations" against him. "This story has more government misbehavior than Watergate", Bell wrote in a recent letter to The Columbian. He added in a phone call"I'm in a little bit of danger. These people don't want me talking to you." Bell is the 39-year-old McLoughlin Heights man who wrote an Internet essay, "Assassination Politics", that proposed the bounty-driven murder of "government slimeballs". The former electronics engineer hadn't spoken to The Columbian for about a year, until recently. He was released from federal prison in April. Bell served 11 months after pleading guilty to using false Social Security numbers and obstructing the Internal Revenue Service by trying to intimidate agents and stink bombing their Vancouver office. Bell returned to his parents' home this spring but was free only about two months. Currently, Bell is back in a federal prison in Seattle, awaiting a July 31 hearing on charges that he violated his probation conditions. He's alleged to have refused a court-ordered mental-health evaluation and search of his parents' home. Who is this man, many people have asked, who lives in our midst when he isn't in prison - and if the IRS is to be believed, dabbled with things such as nerve gas, botulism toxin and sodium cyanide? IRS agents say Bell published a "hit list" of agents' home addresses on the Internet for his anti-government "patriot" friends, and discussed contaminating water supplies with a buddy. Is IRS Inspector Jeff Gordon correct in comparing Bell to Timothy McVeigh and Theodore Kaczynski and saying the IRS interrupted him in plans to commit murder? No, says Bell. "They knew I wasn't planning to kill federal agents", Bell said this month. "They were scared because I had written something that shows a way to eliminate government. They were afraid I could convince the public that I could replace existing government for no more than a 10th or 20th of its current cost." His wariness of the federal government is understandable - they put him in prison. But his words reveal a view of governmental duplicity like the fictional world of X- Files agents Mulder and Scully. "Paranoid would be a good word", said Bell's federal probation officer, Matthew Richards. Bell, asked why he doesn't obey his court- ordered probation terms to stay out of prison, made a reference to the political imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's president. "I believe that when the federal government decided to spy on me, simply because of my political opposition to their tyranny and terrorism, it dramatically diverged from what the average American citizen would be inclined to tolerate", Bell wrote recently. Beginning in late 1995 or early 1996, Bell said, federal agents read his "Assassination Politics" essay, posted on the Internet. The essay described a computerized system to ward "untraceable digital cash" to anyone who correctly predicted the exact time of a federal agent's murder. In Bell's words, "Imagine for a moment that, as ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's trust or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. What if they could go to their computers, type in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount. If 0.1 percent of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be in effect, a $250,000 bounty on his head." Alarmed, Bell says, federal agents used two homes near his parent's home, one on Corregidor Road and the other on Mississippi Drive, for a clandestine and possibly illegal surveillance operation. Agents supposedly installed thousands of dollars worth of sophisticated equipment, possibly using microwave technology, to spy on Bell. "None of that occurred", said federal probation officer Richards. "Absolutely not true", said the owner of one of the houses. "I wouldn't let the feds in my house." Bell said he suspects the agents bugged his phone illegally - and followed him when he got out of prison briefly in April. "We never bugged his phone", Richards said. "No tailing whatsoever". Once, Bell said, he spotted someone following him and turned the tables on them. Bell followed the car to Rixen's Enterprises, 2700 N. Hayden Island Drive, which he suspects is a secret front for a federal "black operation". "No spooks here", said the owner, Jim Rixen, 40, who said he deals in heating systems for boats and recreational vehicles. "I've had this company for 13 years. You can ask anybody on this island. You're more than welcome to come here and go through everything I've got. He might have followed some customer of mine here. I've never heard anything about it." In his upcoming hearing in the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, the government will charge Bell with additional - so far undisclosed - probation violations, Richards said. If Bell has any actual evidence of illegal practices by the government, that would be the place to bring it up. =end of article=