Louisiana Voice

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Long before anyone ever heard of such right-wing zealots as Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, David Duke, Pat Robertson, or Ted Nugent, there was a bona-fide mouth-frothing, fire-breathing purveyor of conspiratorial fascist-speak who could put them all to shame.

(Well, maybe not ALEX JONES. He probably has no peer for sheer detestable stupidity but you get the idea.)

A say all this as a preface to the story of a current-day fear-monger named John Guandolo, a former FBI agent once assigned to New Orleans and who figured prominently in the investigation and prosecution of former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson when he became romantically involved with a witness in the case. But I’ll get to Guandolo in a bit.

It was back in the very early 1960s that a Tulsa radio evangelist named Billy James Hargis exploded onto the nation’s airways with his daily 30-minute Christian Crusade broadcasts which were introduced by the full-throated strains of a choir singing, “Glory, glory Hallelujah.”

What invariably followed was anything but any Scripture-based sermon but a ranting, screaming diatribe directed at the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy and all those “godless communists” running our country. Hargis, if you can imagine it was even possible, advanced his communist conspiracies even further than had Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

For those too young to remember, the communists were the target of the hate groups after the Native Americans and blacks and before the invasion of those hordes of Mexicans and Islamics took their place as threats to the white man’s rule. (On that note, I have to wonder how the Native Americans might feel about border protection against undesirables encroaching on their land and their way of life.)

Paranoia, in fact, seems to be ingrained into the American culture these days, especially whenever it involves anyone with dark skin pigmentation.

I caught a Billy James Hargis address upstairs in the Louisiana Tech Student Center (the Tonk) back about 1961 and he was everything I had imagined—namely a lunatic—as I listened to his noon broadcasts over KRUS, that throbbing 250-watt AM station where I would later find employment as a manic disc jockey (people knew my voice all the way to the edge of the city limits).

But there was one small problem with the good reverend. Well, actually two problems but that second one would not arise until more than a decade later, after Hargis had already fallen somewhat out of favor.

The first came after Hargis allied himself with GEN. EDWIN WALKER, another darling of the right ordered against his will by President Eisenhower to enforce the historic 1957 desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. Walker would join the John Birch Society two years later and would then go on speaking tours with Hargis.

The problem was that in 1960, Hargis became a suspect behind a series of five bombings of Little Rock public schools. The bombings were a message to civil rights leaders even as Walker was supposed to be keeping the peace. FBI special agent Joe Casper believed Hargis was planning to bomb the Methodist Church-affiliated Philander Smith College in Little Rock, a historically black university.

Then, in 1974, Tulsa, the so-called “Christian Fundamentalist Capital of the World,” was rocked when it was revealed that two students at Hargis’s Bible college married and on their wedding night, confessed to each other that each had had sexual relations with the good reverend. Hargis was forced into premature retirement by the scandal.

Now to JOHN GUANDOLO, the former New Orleans FBI agent-turned hysteria-spreading-profiteer-of-Islamophobia in the grand style of Hargis, Alex Jones, et al.

Guandolo, who has made his Understanding the Threat presentations to law enforcement groups in Hammond, Alexandria, and St. Charles Parish—you know, the really troublesome hotspots for Islamic activity—at a cost of about $12,500 a pop.

But here’s the real kicker responsible district attorneys and sheriffs should be concerned about:

Guandolo recently (on May 4) held one of his SESSIONS for 27 “students,” primarily police officers and sheriff’s deputies in a San Angelo, Texas, Baptist Church (ministers were allowed to attend free of charge).

Trouble is, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), which serves as the state’s law enforcement accreditation agency. DECLINED TO APPROVE Guadolo’s course for credit, saying the daylong course (during the event, Guandolo repeatedly plugged his more expensive three-day and week-long courses and offered to sign copies of his book at his “product” table) “painted an entire religion with an overly-broad brush” and “provided no training value for law enforcement attendees.”

Besides enlightening attendees on ways to spot jihadis in their midst (beards without mustaches, apparently, are a dead giveaway), Guandolo shared his interpretations of 14^th-century Islamic law, gave tips on how to identify a jihadi job applicant, and how to thwart the Muslim Brotherhood in its conspiracy to topple America.

Pretty exceptional qualifications for a former FBI agent who couldn’t seem to keep his pants zipped around a star federal witness he was supposed to be…. well, handling.

All of which should really embarrass law enforcement officials in Rapides, Tangipahoa, and St. Charles parishes.

But probably won’t.

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