Humorless FBI agents interrogate publisher of Columbine satire

[Declan McCullagh]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43175,00.html

   FBI Crashes Parody Party
   By Declan McCullagh (declan at wired.com)
   12:21 p.m. Apr. 19, 2001 PDT
   
   Depending on who you ask, Karl August Mueller is either one of the
   Web's funniest satirists, or a malevolent threat to society.
   
   From his side-splitting letters to Virginia newspapers purporting to
   be a right-of-Rush conservative to his fictitious Lobster Liberation
   Front that encourages readers to free tank-trapped crustaceans,
   Mueller has made an art of encouraging visitors to think twice about
   whether what they're reading is real.
   
   But the Feds don't appreciate his humor. Mueller, a 33-year-old Web
   programmer in Los Angeles who goes by the online name of "Gus, said
   two FBI agents paid him a surprise visit at 7:30 a.m. PDT Thursday.
   
   "I was in the shower and, knock, knock, knock, my housemate's knocking
   on my shower telling me there are two FBI agents on the door," Mueller
   says. "They wanted to talk to me about this website. They were like
   "We're having trouble with shootings and schools throughout the
   country and you're promoting this, you know."
   
   The portion of his website Mueller is talking about is the "Trench
   Coat Mafia" page -- a parody he placed online soon after news broke
   about the Columbine massacre. It says: "Hello and Heil Hitler! My name
   is Eric and this is my Web page! I hate jocks, Jews and jiggaboos. I
   loathe wops, spics and blood-engorged ticks."
   
   It pretends to be written by a white supremacist Goth geek obsessed
   with two things: Pipe bombs and getting even with the "jocks" in his
   high school. "Our master plan is to kill at least 500 people at our
   high school, besiege the local neighborhood, seize the airport, and
   then crash a plane full of jocks and cheerleaders into the Pentagon,"
   the page says.
   
   [...]

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