Copyright Clayton R. Douglas 2009

Clayton Douglas’ commentaries are copyrighted and may be republished, reposted, or emailed providing the person or organization doing so does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and that the column is copied intact and that full credit is given and that Clay's web site address is included (http://freeamerican.com). Editors or Publishers of publications charging for subscriptions or advertising who want to run these columns must contact Clayton R. Douglas for permission and payment. Radio or television Talk Show Hosts interested in scheduling an interview with Clay should contact clay@freeamerican.com

Note: This started out as a suicide note.  It may still be one but I don’t think so. I think the Patriot community will rise to the occasion and that we will all work together to stop this New World Order takeover. These little boys, Bandit on your left and Packy on the right, have kept that from happening. What started as an explanation of my state of mind and the circumstances that led up to it expanded into a series of articles. For the last four years I have been struggling each and every day to restore the Free American, pay all of the bills that accumulated during my hospitalization. I have been aided by the love of these two little dogs, true Service Animals in every sense of the word.  I believe my story needs to be told. I am submitting this to major publications. I am asking you to submit it to your local paper. Perhaps the mainstream will pay for a look into the essence of the Patriot Movement. You may forward it to all of your friends and lists. I have assembled a new team that includes RTR Radio who helps broadcast my daily shows. Any donations or advertising that you can send my way would be greatly appreciated. It was your donations over the past thirteen years that have made it possible for the Free American to keep growing and to rebound after my near demise.   You can make a donation by going to the paypal link or Free American shop on my website or mail one to the address above.  Maybe I am crazy or paranoid or suffered brain damage from my “Accident” I truly do not know. You be the judge.  But I can tell you that everything I have said here is absolutely true to the best of my ability and recollections. The latest issue of the Free American is up on http://freeamerican.com/.  I can print it if I can fill 10 pages with advertising. Thank you and God bless you and my country. Clayton R. Douglas 

I think I can answer that question because this started out as a suicide note. 

Every morning for the last four years I have awoke from a dreamless sleep staring at the pistol that is always beside my bed and considered how easy it would be to place the barrel in my mouth, squeeze the trigger as I was taught and end the waking nightmare that my life has become. Beside the gun there is a tiny, compact cell phone that no longer works because I failed to pay the bill. It has a game of Solitaire that still works. I lay there and play it as if were a tarot deck. If I win, then I take it as a sign from the digital gods that I might make it through another day. Maybe they are trying to tell me that it will not get any worse today. Maybe someone, somewhere outside this narrow, isolated, moveable shelter that houses my bed, will read what I have written, or hear in my broadcasts my carefully crafted cries for help and turn into an angel. God uses us that way. Some days it takes 30 minutes or more to break the losing streak on my old phone.

Some weeks things seem to have worked out. Some weeks, life assumes a semblance of normality. The last month I experienced a Christmas miracle and never looked at the gun or the game for a month into the New Year. Then God’s smiling face turned into a leering Lucifer and I was back in the woods, with a broken water system and alone again with the only angels I could really count on, my two faithful black and white dogs who have gotten me kicked out of more bars than I can count despite their ID cards that proclaim them to be service animals.

            No one could know that I am alive today because of those animals. They are there when I finish the game. Without me, they would not get to go outside and no one would feed them. They need me and they love me without question. I cannot pull the trigger because it would kill them too. 

            Last week I found these stories on my e-mail:

Army Reports Rise in Suicides Will Likely Outnumber Combat Deaths Source: Fox News

WASHINGTON — The Army is investigating a stunning number of suicides in January — a count that could surpass all combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan last month.

An unpublished manuscript, Vietnam Veterans, by Tom Williams, University of Denver School of Professional Psychology, April 1979, concluded that "More Vietnam veterans have died since the war by their own hand than were actually killed in Vietnam."

Testimony presented to the Massachusetts Commission on the Concerns of Vietnam veterans in Greenfield, Massachusetts on May 4, 1982, declared that "Vietnam veterans have nationally averaged 28 suicides a day since 1975, amounting to over 70,000.

These were headlines from stories I scanned while preparing for my show and the next issue of my Free American magazine. There are many factors attributed to these startling figures. Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome etc. But I know that the cause of this rash of suicides is something much more basic, loneliness! It is the feeling of being abandoned, by your friends, your lover, and your country. Of being alone in a foxhole without backup, surrounded by enemies. The feeling that no matter how hard you try, how much you cry, the answers to your dilemma cannot be found.

            When I heard that under the Veterans Disarmament Act, a Vet diagnosed with PTSD could be forced to give up his right to bear arms in America, I commented, “If a Veteran of Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan DID NOT has PTSD, then there was something wrong with them!” Such a man would have to have no conscious after killing innocent civilians or young men fighting for the safety and security of their own people while fighting wars based on lies by our own government. We Veterans have had the backs of our government turned to us.

            This is becoming apparent to more than me as illustrated by this headlined story:

WASHINGTON — At least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. military have deserted since the Iraq war began, Pentagon records show, although the overall desertion rate has plunged since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

            This figure and the problem that created it will, in my opinion, only get worse as troops are withdrawn from Iraq and reassigned to the United States in preparation for civil unrest brought on by the realization that the trillion dollar Bailouts and Stimulus program to counter a recession and coming depression are merely more lies by those in power and in reality nothing more than convoluted dialog to cover for the largest rip off in History. What will happen when Iraiq veterans are forced to confiscate weapons from their own people and met with resistance from Americans unwilling to do so?

            One of the first stories I covered after starting the Free American was that question being put to our troops at 29 Palms, California, “Would you fire on American during gun confiscations?”

            Writers, researchers, honest reporter and talk show hosts like Bill Cooper and me, aided lately by the Internet, have been trying to bring a dose of reality to those with ears to listen and eyes to see. We understand there is a war on but is a war for your mind and the war on terror is a war against all who remain loyal to the Constitution and the Liberty it afforded us. My friend Bill Cooper was one of the first casualties in the real war. Set up and shot outside his home in Eagar Arizona on November 6, 2001 a few weeks after our last meeting.

"...God bless my family. I love my wife & children more than life itself. Everything I do is for the future of all my children. They may not understand why I have sacrificed so much, why I am so dedicated to this work; but someday they will. I want them to know they are the most important People in my life, and how very, very much I love them..." - William Cooper          

. Bill’s death was tragic but nothing we had not expected. A few months before, Bill sent his family outside the US. We were both on Shortwave Radio. We both had magazines. We both had been targeted and demonized by the ADL and SPLC in the booklets they put out. I started the Militia and ADL featured me in their “Armed and Dangerous” I worked on my friend Charles Collins’ campaign for President in 1996 on the Republican ticket with Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keys and Richard Lugar. But you never heard of him, because every time he got up to speak every cameraman took a smoke break and in two primaries they unplugged his microphone so the Republicans could not hear Charles tell them that we could buy back the Federal Reserve!

            Bear in mind the following: neither Neither Cooper nor I had done anything wrong. The militias we helped start are part of our US code and by law includes every able bodied man between the ages of 18 and 45. We both knew that the IRS and income tax were tools of the International Banksters. There is no law that requires Americans to pay a tax on our income.. Every check sent to the IRS comes back stamped, “Pay to the Order of the Federal Reserve."

           We knew that 911 was our version of the Reichstag Fire that Hitler used to consolidate power and Bin Laden worked for the CIA when Russia invaded Afghanistan. I made the statement, “I don’t believe that Arabs in a cave in Afghanistan made the U.S. Air force stand down!”

            When the ADL pushed the FBI to put out a booklet that was distributed to every police agency in New Mexico entitled “Guide to Right Wing Extremists listing me and the Free American, I made two phone calls.

            The first was to Governor Gary Johnson who told me not to worry about it. The second the next day was to the Chief of the State Police. He also told me “not to worry about it.”

           I became a little agitated. “That is easy for you to say but I think someone is trying to get me killed here!” But his next words had a calming effect.

        “Clay, I have been reading your magazine for ten years. You don’t have a thing to worry about from me or any of my men. Besides, the Governor just recalled every one of those booklets in the state.”

       Just as it is today and throughout history, there are good cops, good politicians for every bad one out there. Thomas Jefferson was for the people; Alexander Hamilton was the banker’s man. Jesus rallied the people and the Pharisees killed him for it. This is an eternal war we fight. It is always been a part of our existence, a war against good and evil. We may never win it totally but we can never stop fighting. I know many veterans and police feel the same way.

     So there is a war and we are warriors. We accept that there is danger and that we could be killed in battle.  Why then do thoughts of suicide enter our heads?

      I often told my friends and audience if I ever turned up dead, it would be murder, that I would never take my own life.

That changed for me near the end of 2004. I cannot speak for anyone else. But I am sure that others, while fighting their own personal battles after surviving a war, have had the same emotional reactions, depression, the feelings of betrayal and abandonment.

As long as I had my lady and my family, I could enjoy the battles and weather the misfortunes. The negativity began when there were circumstances beyond my control.

My descent into madness began on May 29^th, 2004.

CRD Publishing

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Continued in

“The Decline”

Delusion? Paranoia? Drugs? Accident? Or is Someone Trying to Destroy Me?

This section is the hardest to write. Because of my style of writing and the nature of the Free American, many of my readers and listeners may stop reading here because they “have heard all this before!” But for the millions of people that never picked up a copy or went to my http://freeamerican.com Internet site, who want to understand how a successful, intelligent man could be driven to consider suicide, this is required reading.