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As it happens, one fine former combat officer is the current hero of almost all the rightest groups. He is Major General Edwin A. Walker, 52, who resigned from the Army last month after being transferred from his command in West Germany under charges of indoctrinating his troops with John Birch pamphlets and attempting to influence his men to cast absentee ballots for conservative U.S. political candidates. Questioned by an Army inspector general, Walker declined to answer certain questions, pleading that he was protected by Article 31 of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice—which, like the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, offers a refuge from forced answers to questions that may be self-incriminating. Since his return to the U.S., Walker has been much in demand by right-wing groups, has scheduled his first speaking engagement for Dec. 12 in Dallas.
The Umbrella. Under the umbrella of antiCommunism, many of the ultra-rightists pursue their own special goals and grind their own axes, ranging from respectable conservative politics and economics through segregation, anti-fluoridation, isolationism, higher tariffs and income tax repeal. Federal income tax, says Dr. Carleton Campbell, a veteran ultra who organized the recent Greenwich meeting, is "one of the steps on the Communist chart to take over a country" by taxing the middle class into impotence. "Our goal is to prevent world government," says Merwin K. Hart, president of the National Economic Council. "And we don't like fluoridation." "The United Nations," says Wichita Oilman Fred Koch, "was conceived by Communists in Moscow during World War II." Others believe that urban renewal is intended to wipe out the property rights of loyal American citizens, that integration is a deliberate program for the mongrelization of the nation.
With such views of fact and history, the ultras are able to find plots just about everywhere. According to some of their literature, recent revisions of the Bible are the works of Communists who want to pervert the Gospel. The Canadian Intelligence Service, a right-wing outfit that sells a newsletter south of the border, warns that mental health programs are designed to remold men's minds and put those who resist in the booby hatch. As one of the sins of the Kennedy Administration. We, the People! claims that "All FBI agents have been ordered to cease their investigations of Communists." And Greenwich's Dr. Campbell insists that there are 2,000 Communists in the Defense establishment and that the cables going in and out of the Pentagon are being monitored by a Communist agent. When asked why the man is not arrested, the doctor says despairingly: "You tell me."