"The cover letter had Blair's fingerprints on it. In ink, so you couldn't miss them," Alex Neumann explained. Now he's going to ask how the Journal staff could verify whose they were without calling the Bureau Neumann thought.

"Then how the hell did the editorial staff at a goddamn newspaper check them, without us knowing what they were up to?"

"We're still looking into that, sir."

"This makes us look like fools, Alex."

"Sir, I don't think it does. We have never said anything for publication about this subject. The only things we've put in print are generic comments about the investigation. It's Dwight Greenwell who's apt to be pissing blood, sir." The FBI Director listened to this comment, then smiled in spite of himself.

"I can't say I feel particularly sorry for him."

"Your breakfast, sir, and the four newspapers you wanted."

"Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to stay in a place with such excellent room service," Henry said with a faint French accent. "Here," he said, slipping the waiter a twenty.

"Thank you, Mr. Kreyder. Just ask for me if you need anything. My name's Jimmy."

"I'll do that," he agreed as the young man closed the door behind him.

"You are such a ham," Cindy Caswell said as she walked out of the bathroom. She wore a man's white terrycloth bathrobe, belted at the waist. "What did you order for me?"

"Little bit of everything. Fruit, melon, pancakes, toast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, juice, coffee." Henry held the chair for Cindy as she sat down at one end of the wheeled cart, then he picked up the stack of newspapers to scan the headlines. USA Today sat on top of the pile. Henry stared at the headline.

$50M REWARD FOR TERRORIST LEADER.

"Looks like they're trying to get our attention," Henry said.

"Fifty million?"

"Yeah. They're a little vague on the terms, though," he added after scanning the article. "Like what exactly has to happen for someone to get it." He read further. "It also doesn't say if it would be considered taxable income or not." He tossed Cindy the paper and looked at the New York Times and the Washington Post.

"Hm. Here we go." At the bottom of the page of the second newspaper was a short article.

SITEMAN SLAIN IN GEORGETOWN.

MOTIVE UNKNOWN IN CONGRESSMAN'S DEATH.

"Nothing here," he said after he had skimmed the article. "That they're printing, at least ." "Is that good?"

"Who knows?"

"Henry?" Cindy said slowly.

"What?"

"Does it...ah...is it a turn-on for you?"

"Last night?" he asked, startled by the question but not enough to get careless and talk about murder while sitting in a hotel room. "No." But I think I know what you 're talking about he thought to himself. "Why?" "Just wondering. I didn't think it was for you, or anything. I didn't mean that. It's just that, well...that first time, in Las Vegas, it was..."

"It was different. The whole thing."

"Yes. You're right. It was." Cindy looked off at a point in space a few feet in front of the opposite wall, then shook her head and turned to look at her friend. "The President got anything to say about this reward business?" Cindy asked.

"Not much. Mostly talk about the task force meetings."

"Be nice if we could know what's going on in them."

"I got an idea about how to do that," Henry said as he picked up the Wall Street Journal and glanced at the front page. Then he turned to the editorials inside the back of the paper's first section. "By God, they printed it," he said in a voice that held a tinge of disbelief. "And they didn't tell anyone they were going to." Cindy cocked an eyebrow. "Take a look," he said, and handed her the paper.

Free-Market Terrorists?

By Wilson M. Blair This piece arrived at WSJ offices shortly before the ATF press conference yesterday. We believe it came either from Wilson Blair or from someone who was at one time in close contact with him. The Journal does not normally provide a forum for those who commit violent crimes. In this case, we have made an exception.

Since I first condemned ATF and explained my intentions, media comment has taken three forms: 1) Outrage that any American might use systematic murder to effect a paradigm shift; 2) Horror that some American citizens do not share this outrage, and 3) Speculation as to whether ATF Agent Wilson Blair is really the one leading the charge.

Conspicuously absent is a rational discussion of the philosophy behind the killings or the fundamental beliefs of the killers. The 'terrorists' are invariably assumed to be either white supremacists, paranoids who believe in m assive government conspiracies, or weird loners who would trade their lives for the elusive fifteen minutes of fame.

The unspoken and unchallenged assumption is that anyone who kills employees of the U.S. Government is at best an irrational, paranoid, right-wing fanatic and at worst certifiably insane. The idea that the killers might be logical people acting in a reasoned manner is too horrible for guardians of the status quo to contemplate. Unfortunately, dismissing a growing movement as irrational and ignoring the basis for its existence will not make it go away. Like it or not, our leaders are going to have to examine the reasons behind our actions.

There are a lot of promises in the Constitution, but only one thing guarantees these promises: The Second Amendment. A large *number of people in America believe that honest adults have a fundamental right, which they possess by merely drawing breath, to buy, sell, borrow, own, transport, carry, lend, or give away whatever small arms they want without any restrictions whatsoever. It does not matter to them how long the buttstock is, whether there are threads on the barrel, how many shots the gun holds, or what date the gun was made.

To these people, murder, robbery, and assault are made no more or less despicable by dint of the instrument used. A knife-wielding murderer should receive no less punishment nor less speedy trial than one who uses a gun.

These people believe government has no more authority to restrict their gun rights than it has the right to ban the sale of automated printing presses. For years, these people have grudgingly submitted to ever more ludicrous measures, and then been vilified as fanatics any time they tried to say "enough!" Most importantly, when these people disobey these laws they so detest, they do not believe they are doing anything wrong.

The printing press parallel is not made idly; If you want to really understand these people, imagine your reaction if the government enacted the same laws on books as it has on guns.

What if the government required every book to have a serial number? What if it were a felony for any person to sell a book at a profit without a federal license? What if anyone (except government agents) who bought a book from a federally-licensed book dealer had to fill out a federal form listing his name, address, and the book's serial number, then wait five days before taking possession? What if anyone (except government agents) who wanted a book under a certain size had to pay a $200 federal tax, get fingerprinted and photographed, and wait months for government approval, and the penalty for non-compliance was 10 years and $10,000? What if it were a felony for anyone (except government agents) to buy or sell books whose pages were made out of anything other than a specific type of paper? What if some states made it a felony (except for government agents) to buy more than one book a month, and banned outright (except to government agents) books with more than a certain number of pages? What if it was a common occurrence for government agents to destroy someone's house, seize all his property, and imprison him for suspected violations of these book laws? What if government agents planted banned books in people's homes and shot the citizens or burned them alive?

You may think this comparison is crazy, and that is your privilege. Like it or not, however, millions of intelligent, rational people think guns are exactly the same as books.

Like it or not, millions of intelligent, rational Americans think guns are exactly the same as books.

Any gun? you ask. What about an atomic bomb? Should [ATF] has made millions of citizens the people have those? The Federalist Papers discussed this realize that they have nothing left to very issue. Freedom will always be assured if the people have the same basic arms as are issued to a soldier in a lose.modern military. In 1789, that was muskets but not field pieces. Two centuries later, it's Ml6s, not nukes. Prior to

June of 1934, the federal government understood this.

Who are these people that hold such radical beliefs? Not white supremacists. State antigun laws took root in the Jim Crow era after the Civil War. White supremacists want to strengthen their hold over hated minorities, not diminish it.

Nor are these people conspiracy theorists. They don't think the world is run by the Trilateral Commission-they know it is all but impossible to get a half-dozen egotists to agree on anything, let alone keep their mouths shut about it. They know there was no huge conspiracy when General Douglas MacArthur burned indigent WWI vets out of their D.C. camp in 1932. No secret 'master plan' when U.S. government doctors conducted radiation experiments on unwitting citizens in the 1940's, and gave poor blacks with syphillis a placebo so that they could be the 'control' group in a VD experiment. No complex plot when the Philadelphia mayor dropped a bomb on some irritating residents and burned ten square blocks of his city to the ground in 1985. No overarching scheme when federal agents killed an Idaho man's wife and son (over the length of a shotgun buttstock) in 1992, or burned eighty citizens alive over a $200 tax in 1993.

These events were all simply powerful government officials exercising that power the way they wanted to. The people who view guns like you view books understand this. They understand Lord Acton's simple, fundamental truth: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those in power will always try to maintain and increase that power, and try to crush anyone who challenges it.

The Constitution may enumerate the areas where the government has no authority to pass laws, but many legislators think a 51% majority vote negates any basic human right. Americans want to live in a free society. ATF jails them, seizes their property, and even kills them over things that do not merit even a one dollar fine. We have made millions of reasonable citizens realize they have nothing left to lose.

Final point: Some will continue to claim that Wilson Blair, former ATF Supervisor, would never say these things, and that this author is really someone else. Rather than debate the issue, ask yourselves this: Does it matter?

"Think it'll help?" she asked after reading the piece.

"Can't hurt," Henry said as he pulled up a chair and dug into the food on the cart.

"So what's our schedule?"