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The fires at Vail last week brought to mind an event in the early 80s -- an act of violence which shattered the calm of a small mountain town one night when I was managing editor of the local daily.
We were working late that night to produce the next morning's paper when we heard an explosion. The police scanner started to squawk and the phones began to ring.
The explosion was a pipe bomb a few blocks from the office. It didn't hurt anybody, and the damage consisted of broken windows and one destroyed garage door. The garage sat behind a state patrolman's house.
This trooper was notorious for issuing tickets for driving 57 mph in a 55 mph zone, writing citations for cracked tail-light lenses and otherwise pestering the public that he was supposed to serve and protect.
Got any suspects?
I asked the police chief.
Anybody who might have a grudge against this
guy?
The chief sighed. Pick up a phone book,
he
said.
The phone book is probably a good place to start on the
Vail investigation, even though last Wednesday some group
had taken credit
for the fires that started atop
Vail Mountain early Monday morning and caused $12 million
in damage to four ski lifts and three buildings.
A day before the Earth Liberation Front
sent its
email to a radio station, our lame-duck governor was
leaping to conclusions: It's a tragedy that an act of
terrorism like this would occur.
Now, how was he to know then that it was an act of
terrorism
? Suspicious, isn't it?
Actually, he's probably trying to position himself for a
job in Washington when he leaves office next January, and
one way to get in good with the Clinton Administration is
to inflate a suspected arson into an act of
terrorism.
Fighting terrorism is one of those governmental policies that gets wide public support, and thus justifies all manner of intrusion and expansion of governmental power.
For instance, TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Long Island, killing 230 people on July 17, 1996. Investigators have concluded that the tragedy was almost certainly caused by mechanical failure.
Immediately afterward, rules were issued so that you can't board an airplane without a photo ID -- this in an allegedly free country which used to brag that it wasn't like the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, which required internal passports.
While this might have been justified as a temporary emergency measure (an American barracks in Saudi Arabia had been bombed the month before, and so our authorities were understandably edgy), more than two years have passed and there's not a shred of evidence that terrorists had anything to do with the crash of Flight 800. But even if the justification has evaporated, we still have the ID requirements.
Given the long list of folks who might have something against corporate Vail -- for starters, not just lynx lovers, but Minturn residents who saw Vail assault their small town's water rights; Clear Creek County citizens who don't need a bigger Interstate 70 ripping through their communities to serve Vail; Lake County taxpayers tired of providing social services to Vail slaves; Vail town innkeepers and publicans who see the ski company trying to put them out of business by acquiring hotels and restaurants and steering skiers there -- our governor should do more than just jump to conclusions if he wants a Washington job.
Mere words won't suffice to protect corporate investment in Colorado and Vail's continued ability to generate handsome returns in a flat skier market. Roy Romer has to get serious here.
To make sure he gets that Washington job, he should call out the state militia and establish checkpoints along Interstate 70. All vehicles will be searched for incendiary material like gasoline, and all passengers without a photo ID will be detained until the authorities can identify them.
Those with IDs will be run through a computer, and if it
shows up that they ever so much as grunted about paying $50
for a lift ticket, they will be arrested as suspects under
the new corporate hate-crime law
that Romer will
push through a special session of the General Assembly next
month.
Granted, Romer didn't call out the militia when his billionaire friend Phil Anschutz flagrantly violated the state constitution that Romer had sworn to defend. But this is different, and if he acts promptly and forcefully, he might be the next head of the FBI, DEA or ATF.
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