ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Three

 

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Lyndon Baines Johnson 1964.

It's poison bore fruit again in 1951 and in South Carolina. Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater was born on 27 February, in Atlanta, Georgia, but in April his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina (above). 

And on 12 July, William Robert Horton was born near the little segregated sand hill farming town of Chesterfield, South Carolina (above). Lee Atwater was white. William Horton was black. But it was the personality traits they shared which shaped the story that would follow.

William's father was a trash collector and an alcoholic. When William was 5 the police locked up his father for shooting his mother. Shortly thereafter the battered Mrs. Horton left the little boy with his maternal grandmother and disappeared. William grew up in a state still tied to cotton, hand picking it or processing the crop in local textile mills. Despite being warned he would end up on a chain gang like his father, William Horton dropped out of school in the 8^th grade.

In 1956 Lee Atwater's father - an insurance adjuster - moved his family to the Savanna River town of Aiken, on the Georgia border, just down the street from ex-Governor Strom Thurmond. Lee trick-or-treated at Thurmond's home and remembered, "He came out and gave me a Snickers candy bar. That was the best thing I got that year.” Working after school, the hyperactive Lee seemed destined for success, and when his 8^th grade class took a trip to Washington, D.C., Lee Atwater (above) posed sitting at the feet of Senator Thurmond.

William Horton was first arrested at the age of 15 in 1971. He was convicted of breaking and entering, and served 6 months in a juvenile facility. Shortly after his release he was arrested again for assault with a knife, with intent to kill. This time he served 3 years in a penitentiary. Upon release William left South Carolina and headed north to connect with family. 

In 1974 he was charged with 11 offenses in and around the old mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts (above)  including public drunkenness, assault and battery and selling drugs.

After high school, Lee Atwater attended a private Lutheran college in Newberry, and in 1968 helped register voters pledged to support Richard Nixon. But as his younger brother Eric pointed out, party philosophy held little interest to Lee. “He liked politics because he could kick the other guy's ass.” Then in 1973 Atwater transferred to the University of South Carolina. A college girl friend recalled, “...the opportunist in him...would almost always overrule the nice guy...” 

That year Atwater ran the campaign that elected his friend Karl Rove (above) as President of the College Republicans. In 1977 Lee Atwater graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Master's degree in Communications.

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About 9:30 pm on Saturday, 26 October, 1974, William Horton along with two other drug dealers, Alvin Wildman and Roosevelt Picket,  left a party in Lowell, Massachusetts. Fifteen minutes later their car was seen parked near the Mobile gas station on Marston Street. 

About 9:50 pm the attendant, 17 year old Joseph Fournier (above), was found stabbed 19 times in the neck and chest. He bled to death, stuffed bent double into a trash bin with his feet against his face. The total amount stolen from the station was $276.37. In September 1975 Horton and the others were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Lee Atwater (above right) confessed, “I probably would have never even gotten into politics if it weren't for Strom Thurmond (above, left) .”  It was at Thurmond's suggestion that 36 year old State Senator Carroll Campbell hired Atwater to manage his 1978 campaign for the South Carolina 4^th Congressional District seat. His Democratic opponent was the popular mayor of Greenville, Max Heller. There was also a third party candidate, an itinerant preacher named Don Spouse. 

Polling indicated Heller had a 14 point lead until the final week, when Spouse held a well attended press conference to announce, “I believe in Jesus Christ...Mr. Heller does not.” Spouse added that a Jew should not represent South Carolina. Spouse won only 1,693 votes, but Campbell beat Heller by 5,893 votes. Lee Atwater later took credit for recruiting Spouse, who never ran for office again.

In the summer of 1979 Ed Rollins (above, right) was hired to assemble a staff for Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign. He remembered, “ Strom Thurmond was trying to get Lee a job.” Rollins agreed to interview Atwater (above, left),  and was surprised. “Here's this young kid without a real resume...but there was something about his eyes. He had these piercing eyes...the eyes of a killer.” Rollins hired Lee as a political consultant.

William Horton's first months in prison were difficult, and he was written up almost a dozen times by the staff. But by his 6^th year William had become a model prisoner. Beginning in 1985 William Horton was given 10 two day furloughs. Most state prisoners at the time were eligible for weekend furlough programs, as a way of rewarding good behavior and to further rehabilitation.  Massachusetts was the only state which extended this privilege to convicted murderers. 

The on 6 June, 1986 William went on yet another furlough. He saw a movie and stopped at a convenience store, where he bought a winning lottery ticket. The money funded a drug binge, which led to William crashing a car. Horton now ran. Using buses and stolen cars he got to Florida, where he found construction work. A year later William lost his job, and moved to Baltimore where he stayed with friends, until the 4th of July weekend of 1987,  when he went looking for a house to break into in Maryland.

In the March 1980 South Carolina Republican primary, Ronald Reagan (above, right) had two opponents – John Connally and George Bush.  Lee Atwater (above, center) “leaked” negative stories about both sides to both sides.  Connally supposedly tried to buy 100,000 votes from black churches, and Bush was accused of being a member of the infamous “Trilateral Commission”.  Lee Atwater would later claim, with some support, to have played both sides against the other, so that Reagan would win what the Washington Post described as a “mean and dirty”, campaign, “'..in the worst tradition of the politics of the Old South.” 

In November of that same year Lee confessed to winning another election via a smear, “Well, I said that he had been hooked up to jumper cables, in reference to a bout he had with mental illness in college...”

It would be foolish to assume that William Horton  (above) committed only those rapes and assaults for which was arrested and convicted, such as the July 1987 break-in assault and rape of Angela Miller and Clifford Barnes. 

It would be equally foolish to assume that Lee Atwater was responsible for all of the reprehensible attacks he would later claim credit for. However it also seems obvious these two sons of the Palmetto state shared a certain set of personality traits - they both, “habitually and pervasively disregard or violated the rights and considerations of others without remorse.”

The 5^th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says persons such as Atwater and Horton, “...may be habitual criminals....or they may...manipulate and hurt others in non-criminal ways which are widely regarded as unethical, immoral, irresponsible...Those with APD often possess an impaired moral conscience and make decisions driven purely by their own desires without considering the needs or negative effects of their actions on others.” The syndrome is defined as antisocial personality disorder.

It was the decision of the Republican party to accommodate racism in order to assemble a winning coalition. It was the choice of the Republican party to elevate those with an “impaired moral conscience” to leadership roles because they produced success. The profit from those decisions would be reaped in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century by Ed Rollins (center) and Lee Atwater (right).  And the bill would be deferred until the second decade of the 21^st century, delivered by Republican operative, Roger Stone (left)

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter Two

 

“The question everyone wants answered is how a cold-blooded murderer ever got out in the first place,”

The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune April, 1987

One afternoon in late May of 1988, the 6' 9” Jim Pinkerton, leader of the 35 “nerds” doing Opposition Research for the Vice President George Walker Bush Presidential campaign, was reading the transcript of the New York Democratic Presidential Primary debate. 

By then it was clear Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis would be the Democratic nominee, and early polls gave him a 17 point lead over Bush. 

But Jim read something in Al Gore's remarks which tweaked his interest. He called Reagan White House Staffer Andrew Hill "Andy" Card  (above) who was from the bay state, to ask about the “furlough issue.”

Jim Pinkerton explained later, “Card said, Yes, this has been a huge thing up here...The Boston Globe had run stories on this, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune had run something like one hundred thirty stories.   They won a Pulitzer Prize (abive) ... it was just sort of totally hiding in plain sight...it was just like discovering gold.” 

When Pinkerton told his boss, campaign manager, “boy wonder” Lee Atwater said, "By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate.”  And  Communications Director Roger Ailes promised to “Strip the bark off that little bastard (Dukakis)”, adding, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it.” Within days, Horton's threatening mug shot was hanging at Bush''s 15^th street, D.C. headquarters.

Roger Eugene Ailes (above) came into politics as a two time Emmy winning talk show producer with a "boundless propensity for fabulism and a bottomless ego.” 

The talk show brought Ailes (above, left) into contact with Richard Nixon (above, right), who after a few hours listening to Roger, appointed him his Executive for Television.  Privately Ailes had a cynical view of his new client. “He looks like somebody hung him in a closet overnight and he jumps out in the morning with his suit all bunched up and starts running around saying, ‘I want to be president.’"

In the words of Jim Pinkerton, with Nixon, Ailes was,  part Don Rickles, part psychiatrist and part motivational football coach".,  During the 1968 campaign,  instead of doing standard interviews with heavyweight journalists Ailes designed “town hall” meetings,  hosted by local anchors and filled with carefully chosen voters who would ask Nixon softball questions. Historian Rick Perlstein explained the events were not staged, rather, “They were fixed”.

It also highlighted Roger's insight into the creation of news, what came to be called his “Orchestra Pit Theory". “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” Or as Roger rephrased it during the '84 campaign, “ What would a journalist rather cover? New TV ads or the latest proposal to change the capital gains tax?"

Working closely with Ronald Reagan, Ailes became known as “Dr. Feelgood” because of his ability to reassure and coach the candidate through difficult situations. It was Ailes who counseled that facts were not important. “You get elected”, he told Reagan, “on themes”. As Mary Matalin, a longtime Republican campaign strategist remembered, “"Roger always had the clearest vision...When you came to a strategy impasse...I can’t remember a single incident where he lost a fight."

Having chosen to highlight the issues of furloughs – among others - the next step was to convince their client, Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush (above) that he needed to play rough. The Bush family had been wealthy since Samuel Prescott Bush took over the Buckeye Steel Company in 1908 and bought a summer vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. 

And although Bush had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II (above) and been a successful businessman, and politician, he was what Atwater called a "cocktail party Republican", a large step removed from the blood thirsty front line fighters like himself.. 

So Ailes rented an office in a shopping mall in the "quintessentially suburban” town of Paramus, New Jersey (above), where he ran a series of focus groups, testing the public impressions of Bush and Dukakis. It seems likely that while these groups were also “fixed”.

As expected and intended the groups did not have good news for Bush. They reinforced the “Curse of Martin Van Buren”, the last Vice President who had won election to Presidency in his own right back in 1836. Atwater explained the current dilemma. “We’re 17 points back,” said Atwater, “and (Dukakis will) pick up 10 more points at their convention and we won’t win. Even with a good campaign, we won’t win.” After this presentation, Atwater said, “it was an easy sell.”

Atwater (above) would later explain to an interviewer what “it” was. “You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say "nigger"...So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now...fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes...” When the interviewer asked if Atwater was admitting the “conservative strategy” was just racism dressed up in new clothes, Lee responded, “You all don't quote me on this.”

By now, William Horton (above)  was inmate number 189-1821 at the Jessup Correctional Institute, south of Baltimore. He had been sentenced to 2 life terms plus 85 years by Maryland Judge Vincent Fema. 

Massachusetts had requested Horton's return to finish his life sentence, but Judge Fema said, "I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again." It was as if the judge were writing ads for the Republicans.

And Horton's victims were still trapped in prisons Horton had created for them. They never returned to their home, selling it at a loss. Although they went ahead with their marriage plans 2 months after the assault, Angela Barnes constantly carries a knife in her purse, and keeps one in her beside table. She admits to even taking the weapon into the bathtub with her. She thinks, if faced with a similar situation, with a gun to her head, “I think I'd say 'Go ahead, shoot me'. I don't want to go through this again”. 

Since that horrific night in 1987, Clifford Barnes has never gotten a full night's sleep.  He would later demand, “Ask Dukakis if he wants Willie Horton in his basement”  But when the couple had approached Governor Micheal Dukakis to discuss the state's furlough program, he refused to meet with them. It was as if Dukakis was writing ads for the Republicans.

Now all the Bush team needed to find the right person to create the perfect ad that mixed race and prison furloughs to destroy the Democrat candidate,

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ORIGINAL SIN Chapter One

 

“White Democrats will desert their party in droves the minute it becomes a black party.”

Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969

Having climbed through a basement window, the 35 year old intruder explored the home for over an hour, pilfering drawers and ransacking closets. But the thrill of the violation fell short this time, and after carrying an answering machine and a coffee maker to the basement the trespasser returned to the kitchen. He stole a knife from the kitchen drawer and a beer from the refrigerator and went upstairs. In the bedroom he found a handgun. And twenty minutes after seven he heard the front door open. William Horton pulled his ski mask down and slipped behind the bedroom door.

It was Friday, 3 July, 1987, in the suburb of Oxon Hill, Maryland, 2 miles south of the District of Colombia. The 35,000 residents were mostly middle class apartments dwellers but lately included a growing number of Young Upwardly Mobile couples in “starter” homes. A generation later the process would be described as “Gentrification”.

Clifford Barnes locked the front door behind him and removed his tie and shirt while climbing the stairs to the 2^nd floor bathroom. The 28 year old white male was undressing to shower, when he heard movement in the hall. He called out, “Angi?” In response the door exploded inward, and a 6'3” tall man burst into the bathroom, screaming. Horton knocked Clifford down and pistol whipped him with his own gun.

The social changes in Oxon Hill, mirrored the 20 year old predictions of Republican strategist Kevin Price Phillips. Early excerpts from his first book, “The Emerging Republican Majority” were shared within the 1968 Richard Nixon Presidential campaign. As Phillips later explained his “Southern Strategy” to the New York Times, “The more Negroes who register as Democrats... the sooner the “Negrophobe” whites will...become Republicans. That's where the votes are.” He offered only one caveat: Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened the new Voting Rights Act. 

Ignoring that warning Nixon's Chief of Staff Harry Robinson (H.R.) Halderman (above, left)  enunciated the policy in his own way. “The whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognized this while not appearing to".

Binding Clifford's hands behind his back, Horton dragged the dazed man to the basement, where he strung him up to a floor brace. Then Horton jammed the gun into his victim's eyes and dragged a kitchen knife across his stomach 19 times, drawing blood. He spent 6 hours torturing Clifford Barnes, until he heard the front door open again.

The Southern Strategy was targeted at “Dixiecrats” like South Carolina's James Strom Thermond (above, center).   In 1948, when fellow Democrat Harry Truman ordered the integration of the U.S. military, Thurmond ran against him for President as a States Rights Democrat, telling one crowd, “... there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra' race into our theaters...our swimming pools...our homes, and into our churches.” Thermond won 4 states and 39 electoral votes. In 1954, as a U.S. Senator, he staged a solitary 24 hour filibuster against Republican President Eisenhower's 1957 Civil Rights Act.

Angela Miller, Clifford's fiance, came home at 2:30 on the morning of Saturday, 4 July. She had been attending a girlfriend's birthday party and assumed that Clifford would be asleep. But when she walked into the 2^nd floor bedroom she noticed a broken beer bottle and Clifford's eyeglasses lying on the floor. She retreated into the hallway, where William Horton shoved the gun into her face. He dragged her by the throat back into the bedroom, and threw her onto the bed. After tying her hands behind her back and blindfolding her, he ripped her shirt off and then using the knife sliced off her jeans. Then he beat and raped her.

Arizona Senator Barry Morris Goldwater  (above) won the contested Republican nomination in 1964, in large part because he had argued against Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Voting Rights Act. Goldwater did not endorse racism but rationalized supporting it in order to court the racist Strom Thurmond, who sited Democratic support for the new law to justify switching to the Republican Party. 

That November, while Johnson won a landslide victory nationwide, Goldwater carried only his home state and the segregated deep south – Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Strom Thurmond's South Carolina.

After the rape Angela Miller struggled to hold onto her sanity. She asked her masked attacker for a beer. Horton walked her downstairs to the refrigerator. Then she asked him if they could watch some television, and, again, Horton agreed. As they sat in the living room she made a grab for the gun. Horton beat her again, and raped her again. In the basement Clifford could hear his fiance's screams.

When the 1968 Republican Convention opened in Miami Richard Nixon (above right) was still 11 votes short of 667 needed to secure the nomination. When Strom Thermond (above, left) suggested that Nixon name Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his vice President,  Nixon agreed. The 22 votes from South Carolina secured Nixon's victory on the first ballot. From that point forward, Thurmond was the "indispensable man" in the Nixon administration and the poison pill of racism was now baked into Republican ideology.

Having raped and badly beaten Angela twice in a few hours, a rested William Horton felt the need to return his attention to his basement prisoner. But once downstairs he discovered that Barnes had escaped. Suddenly not in control, Horton panicked. Forgetting his female victim he shoved the few stolen appliances through the basement window, and loaded them into Barnes' Camero, He then drove off in the car.

It was the stolen car that was spotted by Prince George County Police Corporal Paul Lopez. He chased the Camero at high speed. When it crashed, a man emerged holding a hand gun. Corporal Lopez ordered the suspect to drop the gun and when he didn't the officer fired, hitting the suspect in the stomach and arm. Shortly thereafter one year veteran Corporal Yusuf Mhuammad  (above) arrested the wounded suspect in the backyard of nearby home.  

He was taken to the hospital for treatment, where he was photographed and eventually identified as William J. Horton. But he would become famous as “Willie Horton”.  And just like Strom Thurmond, he was from South Carolina.

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