Bitter Harvest

A very intense and well researched book. It shows a great insight to the dark side of America that too few of us do not realize is right here with us.

Gordon Kahl was a hard-working farmer, a war hero, a religious patriot who had obeyed and respected the government for most of his life. He was also a leading member of the ultra-right-wing Posse Comitatus and a fierce tax protestor. Imprisoned once for tax evasion, he vowed never to go back to jail. When Kahl broke probation, federal marshals came to arrest him again, and there was a shootout. Kahl and his son killed two marshals and Kahl became a fugitive from justice, finding refuge in the homes of sympathizers throughout the Midwest. The violence in Medina, North Dakota, wounded an entire community. Lifelong bonds were broken over conflicting sympathies about Kahl; families were ruptured. Some thought Kahl was a cold-blooded murderer, a terrorist taking the law into his own hands. Others thought he had given those representing a gluttonous, interfering government precisely what they deserved. Kahl had been a charismatic spokesman, raging against the IRS, the federal courts, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Eastern banking interests that conspired, he said, to take from him and his fellow believers their farms, their land, their way of life. The trial of Kahl's wife and son became a battle for the soul of the heartland, as the chief counter-insurgence for the Posse Comitatus threatened to storm the courtroom and "finish the job Kahl started."

Make no mistake, Kahl is no hero. By his actions he disgraced his military record and the country he stood for. Corcoran certainly provides a thorough backgrand into what was happening to the rural communities in the eighties and how such times made farmers like Kahl ripe for recruitment by right-wing paramilitary zenophobes. Kahl and the Posse stem from the same roots that created homegrown terrorists like Tim McVeigh. For Kahl, a man who had served his country in WWII, the treatment of rural America in general and farmers in particular, must have been a bitter betrayal. While some have critized the local sheriff and federal agents for the way they handled the arrest, it is important to note that Kahl had a choice, to go peacefully or to take up arms. He chose violence, and in the end, there were no winners, only victims.