Chapter XX

  July 7, 1993. Looks like I'll be here till morning, so I can take an hour or so now to record the events of the last few days.
  This is really a swanky place. It's a penthouse apartment from which we can see most of Los Angeles-which is why we're using it as a command post. But the luxury is unbelievable: satin sheets; genuine fur bedspreads; gold-plated bathroom fixtures; 0 wall taps which dispense bourbon, scotch, and vodka in every
room; huge, framed, pornographic photographs on the walls.
  The apartment belonged to one Jerry Siegelbaum, a business agent for the local Municipal Employees Union-and the star subject of the dirty photos on the walls. Looks like he preferred blonde, Gentile girls, although his partner in one picture is a Negress, and he's with a young boy in another. Some representative of the workers he was! I hope someone moves him from the hallway outside soon; there's been no air-conditioning since Monday, and he's beginning to stink pretty bad.
  This huge city presents quite a different aspect now from the last time I had an overall view of it at night. The blaze of lights outlining all the main streets is gone. Instead, the general blackness is broken only by hundreds of fires randomly scattered through the city. I know there are thousands of vehicles moving down there, but they are driving without lights, so they won't be shot at.
  For the last four days one has heard the practically continuous scream of sirens from police and emergency vehicles mixed with the sound of gunfire and explosions and the whirring clatter of helicopters. Tonight there is only the gunfire, and not much of that. It looks like the battle here has reached a decisive stage.
  At two o'clock Monday morning more than 60 of our combat units struck simultaneously throughout the Los Angeles area, while hundreds of other units hit targets all across the country, from Canada to Mexico and from coast to coast. I haven't heard yet what we accomplished elsewhere, because the System has clamped a total censorship on all the news media-the ones we haven't seized ourselves, that is-and I haven't had a chance to talk to any of our own people who've been in contact with Revolutionary Command. But here in Los Angeles we've done surprisingly well.
  Our initial assault cut off all water and electrical power into the metropolitan area, knocked out the main airports, and made all the major freeways impassable. We took out the telephone exchanges and blew up every gasoline storage depot. The harbor area has been almost a solid mass of flames for four days now.
  We seized at least 15 police stations. Mostly we just took their weapons, destroyed their communications equipment and whatever vehicles were not on patrol at the time, and then pulled out. But apparently our people are still holed up in several police buildings and are using them as local command posts.
  At first the cops and the firemen were running around like chickens with their heads cut off-sirens and flashing lights everywhere. By Monday afternoon, however, communications had broken down so badly and there were so many fires and other emergencies that the police and fire departments were being much more selective in their responses. In many areas our teams were able to go about their work practically without interference. Now, of course, most emergency and police vehicles are out of fuel and can't move at all. And the ones which still have gas seem to be lying low.
  The whole key to neutralizing the police-and to everything else, for that matter-was our work inside the military. It was apparent to everyone as early as Monday afternoon that something big was happening inside the military establishment. For one thing, other than the troops and tanks guarding power stations, TV transmitters, and so on-as always-no military units were deployed against us. For another thing, there were obvious signs of armed conflict inside all the military bases in the area.
  We could see and hear jet fighter-bombers swooping low over the city, but they were not attacking us-at least, not directly. They were strafing and bombing the dozen or so California National Guard armories in the metropolitan area. Those jets were apparently from El Toro Marine Air Station south of here. Later we saw several dogfights in the sky over Los Angeles and heard that Camp Pendleton, the big Marine Corps base about 70 miles southeast of here, was being hit by heavy bombers from Edwards Air Force Base. All in all, a very confusing scenario for everyone concerned.
  But Monday evening, quite by chance, I ran into Henry, of all people, and he explained quite a bit of the military situation to me. Good old Henry-how glad I was to see him again!
  We met in the KNX transmitter building, where I was helping our broadcast team get the station back on the air after we seized it. That, by the way, is what I've been doing for four days: repairing shot-up transmitters, shifting transmitter frequencies, and improvising equipment. We now have one FM station and two AM stations on the air, all operating from emergency generators. In all three cases we cut the cables from the studios and installed our broadcast teams directly at the transmitter sites.
  Henry came roaring up to KNX in a jeep, wearing a U.S. Army uniform with colonel's insignia and accompanied by three soldiers carrying machine guns and anti-tank rockets. He was bringing the text to be broadcast-a text directed primarily at military personnel.
  As soon as I had finished splicing our microphone and audio equipment into the transmitter input, Henry and I stepped to the side to talk while his message was being read over the air by our announcer. It consisted of an appeal to all White military personnel who had not already done so to join our revolution, together with a warning to those who failed to heed the appeal. The message was very well designed, and I am sure its effect on both military and civilian listeners was powerful.

  Henry, it turned out, has been in charge of the Organization's entire recruiting effort in the armed forces for over a year, and he has been concentrating his efforts on the West Coast since he was transferred here last March. The story he told me was a long one, but, together with what I have learned since then its essence is this: '
  We have been recruiting inside the military on two levels since the Organization was formed. At the lower level we operated semi-openly before September 1991 and clandestinely afterwards That involved the dissemination of our propaganda among enlisted personnel and non-coms, mostly on a person-to-person basis. But, Henry told me, we have also been recruiting at higher levels, in the utmost secrecy.
  Revolutionary Command's strategy hinged on our success in winning over a number of high-ranking military commanders, : and on Monday we began playing that hidden trump. That's why the armed forces haven't been used against us and also why various military units have been shooting and bombing each 0 other the last four days.
  The intra-military conflict started with units commanded by our sympathizers on one side and those loyal to the System (by far the majority) on the other side. Another aspect to the conflict soon developed and overshadowed the first, however: Black against White.
  Military units commanded by pro-Organization officers began disarming all Black military personnel as soon as we launched our Monday-morning attack. The excuse they used was that Black militants had launched a mutiny in other units and that their orders from higher up were to disarm all Blacks to prevent the j spread of the mutiny. Generally, White servicemen were ready and willing to believe that story and did not need to be told twice to turn their guns against the Blacks in their units. Those few whose liberal predispositions made them hesitate were shot on the spot.
  In other units our enlisted personnel simply began shooting any Blacks they saw in uniform and then deserted to units commanded by our sympathizers. The Blacks, naturally enough, reacted in such a way as to make the story about a Black mutiny come true. Even in those units commanded by pro-System officers heavy fighting between Blacks and Whites broke out.
  And, since some of these units are nearly half Black, the fighting has been bloody and prolonged. The result has been that, although the units commanded by our sympathizers initially had only about five per cent of the strength of the pro-System units, most of the latter have been paralyzed by internal fighting between Blacks and Whites. And now Whites are coming over in increasing numbers to our units because of this.
  Our broadcasts have helped this process along greatly. We have exaggerated our own strength, of course, and have told White servicemen who want to join our units where to go. And to help convince them-as well as to keep the niggers spooked and doing their thing-we have turned one of our transmitters into a phony "soul" station and been broadcasting a call for a Black revolution, telling the Blacks to shoot their White officers and non-coms before the Whites can disarm them.
  About the only military units in the Los Angeles area able to offer any effective opposition to us have been some Air Force fighter and bomber units-and the Marine air unit at El Toro. They have been attacking military units believed to have come over to us. But, according to Henry, they have been doing about as much damage to the pro-System forces as to ours.
  Henry chuckled as he explained to me that the Organization had been unable to make sufficient headway in its recruiting in the California National Guard to be able to count on any Guard units coming over to us. So the Organization kidnapped the local Guard commander, General Howell, just before the Monday morning attack, as a preventive measure.
  When the System couldn't locate Howell, they were apparently afraid he had joined us. Their fears were undoubtedly confirmed when they heard that he had hurriedly left his home with three strangers after midnight Monday, less than an hour before everything hit the fan. Anyway, their suspicions got the better of them, and so they ordered all the National Guard armories and depots bombed by loyal air units Monday afternoon.
  And at Camp Pendleton we were nowhere near having the upper hand before the System panicked and ordered in the bombers. I am sure that move is what tilted things in our favor. There is still heavy fighting in the Pendleton area, but we are apparently on top there now.
  I don't know from which base the column of tanks came that neutralized the main Los Angeles police headquarters for us today, but they were certainly a godsend. We never could have done it without them.
  From the beginning the L.A. cops have been our only really organized opposition. The smaller police forces in surrounding jurisdictions have not been a particular problem. Some we knocked out of action completely; others decided to lie low and mind their own business after a few early skirmishes. But the 10,000 or so men in the L.A.P.D. were very much in action against us until a few hours ago, and the going was very rough. We've had at least 100 KIA's here in the last four days-between 15 and 20 per cent of our local combat strength.
  I don't know why we failed to do the same thing with the police here we seem to have done with the military. Perhaps it was just a shortage of cadres on our part, and military recruiting was given a higher priority than police recruiting. In any event, the main police headquarters here almost immediately became the center of counter-revolutionary resistance.
  The L.A. city cops were joined by some sheriff's units from the county and even by some state highway patrol units, and they turned their main headquarters building into a fortress that was impregnable to anything we could bring to bear against it. In fact, it was almost certain death for any of our people to venture within a couple of blocks of the place. They had a large store of fuel, more than a thousand vehicles, and emergency power for their communications equipment, and they outmanned us by a large factor.
  Using helicopters for reconnaissance, they pinpointed our various strong-points and the buildings we had seized, and they sent out raiding parties involving as many as So vehicles and 200-300 men. Our demolition of virtually every highway overpass had limited their mobility to a large extent, but their airborne observers were able to route them around many obstacles.
  We managed to protect certain really vital points-including the radio stations we had seized-only by having well-dug-in machine-gun crews covering the avenues of approach. Fortunately, the cops had only a few armored vehicles, because most of our people had no weapons for dealing with armor. It was only today that anti-tank weapons became generally available to our combat teams.

  If the L.A. cops had been able to link up with any military units remaining loyal to the System, that would have been the end of us. Fortunately, a dozen old M60's from a unit which had come over to us got to them first. They rolled right over the roadblocks the police had set up around their headquarters, riddled the building with HE and incendiary shells, and liberally sprayed the hundreds of police vehicles in the area with machine-gun fire.
  The cops' communications and power were knocked out, and their building was set afire in d dozen places. They had to evacuate the building, and we rained 81-mm mortar fire down on the surrounding parking lots and streets until the area became untenable for them. The place is deserted now and still burning. Most of the cops seem to have made their way to their homes and changed into civilian clothes.
  Now that most of the organized resistance against us here has been neutralized, everything hinges on whether we can get this area effectively under our control before military units from other parts of the country are sent in. I don't understand why that hasn't already happened.
  I was told just a couple of hours ago to report in the morning to a group of our technical people who will have the task of planning the details of restoring some electrical power and some water to the area, reestablishing routes for vehicular traffic, and locating and securing all remaining supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel. Sounds like more of a job for a civil engineer than for me.
  It also sounds a little premature, but it is encouraging to know that Revolutionary Command seems to be confident of the future. Perhaps I'll find out more about the overall situation tomorrow.


  July 10. Well, well, well! Things have really been happening- some good things and some bad things, but mostly good, so far.
  The military-and-police situation seems to be essentially under control here-and, in fact, for most of the West Coast, although there is apparently a lot of fighting still going on around San Francisco and in a few other areas.
  And there are still a few armed groups here-some cops and some military personnel-roving around and causing a little mischief. But we've secured all the bases and military airfields here and will round up stray personnel in another day or two. The order is out now to shoot on sight anyone carrying arms unless he is wearing one of our armbands.
  That's a welcome switch from a few days ago, when we were the ones liable to be shot on sight. After years of hiding, slinking around in disguises, and getting sick with fear every time we saw a cop, it's a wonderful feeling to be out in the open-and to be the V ones with the guns.
  The big problem here has become a civilian one. The civilian population has gone completely amok. Actually, one can hardly blame them, and I'm surprised they behaved themselves-more or less-as long as they did. After all, they've been without electric power and without a water supply for a week. A very substantial portion of them have also been without food for several days.
  For the first couple of days-Monday and Tuesday-the civilian population did just what we expected them to do. Hundreds of thousands of them piled into their cars and onto the freeways. They couldn't go very far, of course, because we had blown up a number of key interchanges, but they did manage to create a collection of the most monumental traffic jams imaginable, thus finishing our task for us of making ground travel almost impossible for the police.
  By Tuesday afternoon most of the White population had returned to their homes - or, at least, to their own neighborhoods-many of them leaving their stalled cars on the roads and hiking back. They had discovered, first, that there was no feasible way for them to leave the Los Angeles area by automobile; second, that they couldn't buy gasoline, because the electric pumps at the filling stations weren't working; third, that most stores and businesses were closed up tight; and fourth, that something really big was happening. They stayed home, kept their transistor radios on, and worried. There was remarkably little crime or violence, except in the Black areas, where rioting, looting, and burning began early Monday afternoon and grew progressively more intense and widespread.
  By early Thursday, however, there was a good bit of looting in White areas as well, mostly of grocery stores. Some people had not eaten for more than 48 hours by then and were acting from desperation rather than lawlessness.
  Since it wasn't until Thursday night that we began to feel sure we had the police licked, we did nothing to discourage civilian disorder. The more of them in the streets, hungry and desperate, smashing store windows and stealing food, looking for drinkable water and fresh batteries for their radios, getting into fights with other people looking for the same things, the less time the police had for us. That, of course, was the principal idea behind our knocking out power, water, and transportation at the very beginning.
  If the police had had only us to cope with, we couldn't have won. But they couldn't handle us and a general breakdown of public order at the same time.
  Now, however, we're the ones with the job of restoring order, and it's going to be a bitch. The people are absolutely out of their minds with fear and panic. They are behaving in an entirely irrational manner, and a great number of lives are bound to be sacrificed before we get things under control. Partly, I'm afraid, starvation and exhaustion are going to have to do it for us, because our manpower and other material resources are entirely inadequate for the task.
  Today I went out with a fuel recovery team, and I got a close look at our civilian problem. It really shook me. We were driving a big gasoline tank truck, with an armed jeep escort, from filling station to filling station in the Pasadena area, pumping the gasoline out of each station's tanks and into our truck. There's enough fuel in the area to meet our own needs for quite a while, but the civilians are just going to have to get along without their cars for the duration.
  Pasadena used to be mostly White a few years ago, but it has become substantially Black now. In the Black areas, whenever we ran into Blacks near a filling station, we simply opened fire on them to keep them at a distance. In the White areas, we were mobbed by hungry Whites begging us for food-which, of course, we didn't have to give them.
  It's a damned good thing they have no firearms, or we'd be in a hell of a jam now. Thank you, Senator Cohen!
  Oops! No more time to write now-have to go to a meeting. We should get a briefing there on the national situation.