The Legalized Murder of Gordon Kahl and
The Official Cover-Up

By Pat Shannan

Gordon Kahl was murdered by those sworn" to serve and protect," and the evidence shows that it happened on the second official try, three and a half months after U. S. Marshal Kenneth Muir and his deputies failed in a sneak attack at Medina, North Dakota. Federal agents and their State and local lackeys, believing that they could operate with impunity - and up until now they have - carried out the assassination in rural Lawrence County, Arkansas on June 3, 1983.

Getting the distorted truth trumpeted to the TV and newspaper personnel was a piece of cake: Kahl was dead and the only other two witnesses on the side of truth - Norma and Leonard Ginter - were being held incommunicado in jail. The reporters had nobody's word to take except that of Jim Blasingame, exalted Special Agent in Charge of the Little Rock FBI office. J. Edgar Hoover had been dead for more than a decade, but his unwritten rule stressing the need for keeping the sterling image of the FBI above everything else was still deeply entrenched. SAC Blasingame initiated the public cover-up with his first on-camera report when he said, "As we approached the house, Kahl started shooting." But the facts of this affirmation proved to be impossible, once an unbiased investigation was completed.

Medina (N.D.) Police Chief Darrell Graf was appalled as he sat at his desk and listened to two federal officers argue about who would get to kill Gordon Kahl - the FBI or the U.S. Marshals Service. It was Valentine's Day 1983, the day after the shootout, but this conversation had nothing to with love, hearts, and flowers. "It was more like two five-year-olds fighting over a new toy," said Chief Graf.

Deputy U. S. Marshal Mike Steinfeldt said, "He killed two of ours, so we get to kill him."

"No," said the FBI agent whose name Graf cannot remember. "If you kill him, it will look like revenge, and the public won't go for it. You've got to let us take him out so it will look like another gun battle."

So the facts have been documented from Day 1 of the manhunt: Gordon Kahl was not to be captured alive. The federal constabulary wanted him dead on arrival.

This message seemed to have been passed down to every office of both agencies, because when the case fell into the Arkansas bailiwick, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI office, Jim Blasingame, did not hesitate to step right into the prearranged game plan.

Blasingame Interviewed

From his retirement home in Athens, Georgia, the arrogant Blasingame today seesaws between avoiding the question and complete disingenuousness. Twenty years after the fact, he still appears to be terrified of the truth coming out. Indeed, if it does, it will be Blasingame who will be called on the carpet first. It was his baby, and he drowned it.

At first he boasts, "The Kahl case? I know everything about the Kahl case. How much time have you got? I was the Special Agent in Charge of the operation. I did the aerial surveillance the day before, and I led the team into the farm the next day for the arrest."

But the moment Blasingame is asked one of the penetrating, more detailed questions, he discards his gloating attitude and begins to tap dance like a politician trapped by the record of his own lies.

"I'm not sure I want to talk to you because I don't know who you are," he said at least five times during the ten-minute conversation.

We wondered what difference that would make.

"Well, sir, I am just a journalist attempting to sort out the truth as I write about this very perplexing story that is now twenty years old. The facts just don't seem to mesh with the official report.

It was the wrong buzzword. Truth does not fear exposure, but apparently Jim Blasingame does, and he suddenly did not like the idea of speaking with someone who just might know more about the truth than he cared to hear. He finally hung up and asked that we not call him anymore.

Who went through the door first on that murderous rampage? Blasingame said it was Sheriff Gene Mathews "like a bull in a china shop." But if this was true, it would have made it impossible for Kahl to have been killed the way the evidence proved: by a .38 caliber slug through the back of the head, and the only officer carrying a .38 Police Special was U. S. Marshal Jim Hall.

However, Blasingame's fabrication about Mathews did fit the official scenario of Mathews shooting Kahl, after Medical Examiner Fahmy Malak "discovered" a .41 magnum slug barely inside the entrance wound in the burned body of Kahl. This was days after several officers had recorded in their notes at the scene the fact that they had already found the .38 slug, which had nearly exited the head at the front.

Malak Corrupt

But this was not the first nor the last time that Fahmy Malak's rulings had caused controversy. In 1985, a north Arkansas man was killed with four gunshot wounds to the chest, and Malak subsequently ruled it a suicide.

In a 1986 case, Malak's ruling was "accidental drowning." Further examination showed that the victim had been shot in the head. In 1992, a man's body was found with five bullet wounds and Malak ruled it a "suicide." When two boys stumbled on a drug drop near the Mena Airport -- an operation long protected by authorities -- their bodies were found on the railroad track after a train had run over them. Malak said that they had gone to sleep on the tracks, despite the gunshot wounds.

In his most incredible ruling, Dr. Malak concluded that a James Milan had died of an ulcer. However, when the man's skull was recovered it was obvious that he had been decapitated with a sharp knife.

That Malak survived in Arkansas throughout the Bill Clinton years as governor is a testament to Clinton's power. When Clinton announced for the presidency in 1992, Malak was quietly moved to another state job. Shortly thereafter, he and his wife were lured by a phone call to a distant location to meet someone who never showed up. When they returned they found that their home had been firebombed.

Malak took the torching as a message to keep quiet about what he knew. He later told close friends that if were to be found dead, they should not believe that it was a suicide.

Why was Jim Hall's .38 Police Special not tested for ballistics? It is standard operating procedure in any law enforcement investigation when a fugitive has been killed. Why did he sell the weapon shortly after the incident? Where can Jim Hall be found today?

Independent Investigation

In 1987, retired Phoenix cop Jack McLamb organized a team of 12 investigators from nine states, with over 180 years of combined experience as professionals. They met at the scene in Lawrence County, Arkansas with one purpose in mind: sort out the truth of this massive government cover-up. One of these investigators was none other than retired U. S. Marshal Harold "Bud" Warren of Fargo, North Dakota. This was the same one who warned Kenneth Muir not to go after Gordon Kahl and who refused the invitation from Muir himself to go along that fateful Sunday afternoon. (When Warren hung up the phone that day, he told his wife, "Someone is going to get killed today.") Warren was known and respected by the Kahl family as one of the "good guy" marshals who was far more interested in seeing the truth come out than protecting the image of the FBI or the Marshal's Service.

McLamb and some or all of his team went five separate times to Arkansas and were able to piece together a minute-by-minute re-enactment of the case as it happened. However, they found legal roadblocks at every juncture. Instead of seeking the facts, the county prosecutor ordered state, county, and city police to not talk to them or grant any kind of interviews.

But the McLamb team pressed on and once its evidence was compiled, they met with only more frustration from the local level all the way to Governor Bill Clinton. It seemed that everyone knew what the truth was but were afraid to face it. Malak later admitted to McLamb that two federal agents stood over him as he did the Kahl autopsy and that they "pretty much directed" what was to go into the official report. One of these distortions was the alleged finding of the .41 caliber slug.

Of the twelve independent investigators, Officer Rick Dalton was one who was still on active duty at the time in Arizona.

"We have proved that Gordon's gun did not kill Sheriff Mathews, and we have proved that Mathews' gun did not kill Gordon Kahl. Not only that but there is more evidence that we would want to make public - but only through a grand jury first - that points to certain unnamed suspects as the real killers."

After twenty years, the question still looms. Will the people of Arkansas ever exert enough pressure to force the Lawrence County prosecutor to do his job?

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