1. Would you care to comment about the reasons why you continue to reference your faith in emails to your son when you know he is being forced by the FBI in his witness statements to mischaracterize those references as delusional?
Answer: Yes, I will comment. When an individual fights against a totalitarian threat, faith is necessary. That faith may be a faith in human kindness and compassion. It may be a faith in the sovereignty of the human spirit. It may be a faith in God. But one must have faith in a benevolence greater than oneself. Without this, it is not possible to endure.
2. Are you attempting to teach him how to resist totalitarianism?
Answer: I'm simply attempting to tell him the truth, which is that my faith has sustained me -- and to suggest that, should he need support at this time, when I cannot offer it in person, his faith might sustain him as well.
3. Are you commenting on the allegation that your son's FBI handler, Tom Lyons, has forcefully directed your son to engage in unlawful activity?
Answer: My son is twenty-six years old. Imagine how difficult it would be, at twenty-six, to be receiving death threats from your FBI handler suggesting that you will be killed if you fail to follow his unlawful directives.
Human beings are only so strong. In troubled times, we rely on the benevolence of other people to render support. But if we have a faith, we can also turn to God.
And that's not a delusion or evidence of religiosity within psychiatric pathology.
That is, quite simply and transformationally, the power of faith.
4. What do you want your son to know about your faith, then?
Answer: Obviously, my life and the lives of my family members are under active threat from the FBI and its affiliates.
If I live, I want my son to know what I stand for.
If I die, I want my son to know what I stood for.
5. And what do you stand for?
Answer: The freedom of mankind. The sovereignty of nations. The sanctity of the human spirit.
6. The Phoenix Program appears to have preyed upon many law-abiding Americans.
Answer: It appears to have ended the lives of many law-abiding Americans, yes.
Beyond this, we need to recognize that Phoenix has likely had profound international impacts as well, although likely deployed primarily through the domestic security forces of individual nations.
7. What are your thoughts about these facts in relation to your faith?
Answer: For mankind to dole out death toward innocent civilians as a long-term institutional prerogative -- this represents a human atrocity.
Those who seek to be the arbiters of life and death for millions of innocent human beings are, in effect, attempting to usurp an omnipotent role.
8. By murdering innocents, they're trying to be more powerful than God.
Answer: It would seem so, yes.
9. And how might God view that attempt, in your opinion?
Answer: The texts of every religion make clear for us that God is not indifferent to the suffering of innocents.
10. You credit your faith with driving your advocacy of other's human rights.
Answer: Again, a person's faith might manifest quite directly as a belief in human kindness and compassion.
11. But your faith involves God.
Answer: It does, yes. In my opinion, God has the ability to transform the most desperate circumstances into those of significance, meaning, benevolence, and healing for others.
Wherever these gifts are possible, we should strive for them to manifest.
12. What do you want your son to know?
Answer: That, in confronting malevolence of the magnitude present within the FBI's unconstitutional "target of interest" program, one should allow oneself to have a human response.
It's alright to rail and shout against autocracy within the privacy of one's own home. It's alright to feel discouraged or disheartened.
But it's not alright to give up.
And a profound faith can ensure that we never do.
Lane MacWilliams
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