Posted on 04/15/2006 11:28:54 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
DANBURY There are no Grey Wolves. The man who claimed to be the Wolves' spokesman is, by his own admission, "an idiot."
"I'm a fool," the man said Friday. "I apologize to the people of Danbury."
The man, who refused to give his name to The News-Times, had disrupted plans by Christian groups to hold a rally on Danbury Green by claiming that the neo-Nazi Grey Wolves would join in to support the rally's aim to dissolve the barriers between church and state in the United States.
In fact, the man admitted, he made up the name of the group as a prank.
"There are no Grey Wolves," the man said ruefully on Friday. "I feel terrible about this."
With the threat of neo-Nazi violence removed, Danbury police said Friday they would issue the Christian groups a permit to hold the rally on Tuesday. However, the groups said they would move the rally to the Amber Room in Danbury.
"We do not anticipate any problems with this event," Danbury police said in a statement Friday. "But we will have appropriate resources on hand to deal with any crowd control concerns."
Danbury police said Friday night that the man is in his 40s and from the Danbury area, but declined to reveal anything more about the man.
The brouhaha began Wednesday when The News-Times posted a brief article on its Web site announcing that Minutemen United, an Ohio-based Christian organization, planned a rally on the Danbury Green. The group believes the walls between church and state must be removed.
Shortly thereafter, the man who identified himself as Rick Renage on the phone and Rick Regado in e-mails contacted The News-Times to say three busloads of Grey Wolves would show up to support Minutemen United. He described the group as having about 200 members who dressed in "black pants, black boots, red sox with black jackets and the swastika branded on the back."
"I personally am not looking for any confrontations, but if we are provoked, we will react very strongly," Renage/Regado wrote.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States, said Wednesday it had no knowledge of the Grey Wolves. "We follow these things very closely," Mark Potok, director of the Center's Intelligence Project said Friday. "We never heard of this guy."
This is understandable, since the group does not exist except, briefly, in the mind of a man who says he lives in southern Fairfield County.
When the Danbury Police Department tracked him down Friday, he said he came to the police department immediately to apologize profusely. After going public with his story, he was not charged with any crime.
Through the police, the man then called The News-Times to apologize both to reporter Elizabeth Putnam, whom he lied to, and to the entire newspaper. "I read it all the time," he said. "It's a great paper."
The man described himself as "a liberal, a Democrat and a Christian. It's hard to be all three nowadays."
After reading about the rally, he said, he became incensed.
"I'm sick of people mixing politics with Christianity and Christianity with politics," he said. "I have very strong convictions about the separation of church and state. These people want to create a theocracy."
As a prank, he said, he e-mailed the paper about the Grey Wolves. "I'm an idiot," he said. "Sometimes I do things that just don't make sense."
"It's a prank?" Potok said disdainfully "What's it supposed to accomplish? What did he think? That when he contacted the newspaper and said the Nazis were going to rally, they wouldn't report it?"
Potok said the Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked many hate groups that claim to have thousands of members "but end up being one guy, his computer and his dog." He said the center also has dealt with "people who claim to be Nazis, but are Jewish or gays the type of people the Nazis would have killed.
"But I have to say, in 10 years of doing this work, this is a first for me," Potok said.
When he read the first account of the Grey Wolves in the News-Times on Thursday, Renage/Regado said, "I hoped it would end today." By Friday, when he learned the city was planning to withdraw the rally permit, he said, "I felt terrible."
The man apologized not only to the city, but to the ministers planning the rally. "I've been through hell and I deserve what I got," he said.
Contact Robert Miller
at bmiller@newstimes.com
or at (203) 731-3345.
Yeah, no kidding.
I think those who he slandered should hire a lawyer. Owning his house would just be the bonus on top of making this jerk's name public...
The leftists have all sorts of paranoid fantasies about Christians turning America into a theocracy, yet these same leftists ignore or even support it when Islamists say they want to ban all religion in America and Europe except Islam and impose Sharia on everyone. The fact that the Islamists borrowed most of their political philosophy from the Nazis does not bother the average leftist. Indeed, anyone opposed to Islamofascism is a "Nazi," in their twisted thinking.
"I'm an idiot," he said. "Sometimes I do things that just don't make sense."
--
It may not be much comfort to him, but he is not alone, he should move to Hollywood.
I figured the Grey Wolves were a group of seasoned citizens.
You betcha! Hollywood IS the home of paranoid leftwing delusions! :-)
They are one-upping the Nazis, they're "transnational" socialists. Jews aren't going to fare any better though if that crowd gets its way.
"Potok said the Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked many hate groups that claim to have thousands of members "but end up being one guy, his computer and his dog." He said the center also has dealt with "people who claim to be Nazis, but are Jewish or gays the type of people the Nazis would have killed."
Maybe they won't release his name , because it is Howard Dean.
LOL...could be!
You're absolutely right. And neither will Christians...at least Christians who are actually salt and light.
Was his name John Bachelor?
On Bachelor's 13 April show his guest (an expert in matters of "white supremacy") failed to provide Bachelor with proof that "anti-immigrant bigots" -- especially the Minute Men -- were all white supremacists.
Bachelor had to settle for just issuing a warning to "anti-immigrant bigots" that they had better watch their language. More than once he mentioned the Minute Men claiming possible connections to something called Stormfront.
Standard MO for lying leftists. See Phelps, Fred
We were thinking the same thing...I think the harmless group of older retired guys with whom my father meets for coffee call themselves the Gray Wolves or something! It would make a great name for a music band comprised of oldsters.
~ Blue Jays ~
In Chicago, we used to call the aldermen of the City Council the Grey Wolves - grey because of their corruption, wolves for their rapaciousness in seeking to profit illegally from their offices.
;-)
Sadly, I've seen a few here on FR use pretty much the same tactics.
I'm wondering why the reporter for the newspaper didn't check out the story before it was put up on the website.
Also, why would that newspaper protect his identity? If someone tried to cause a panic in my town, I'd sure want to know who it was, and why that person would set out deliberately to upset people.
I don't live in Danbury, CT but I am interested in knowing who manipulated the local press like that, and got away with it. That is just plain wrong.
Acknowledging the problem is the first step to recovery...
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