Oath Keepers Member Writes Senator Expressing Concerns About FBI Targeting Preppers for Surveillance and Senator’s Staff Reports His Letter to the FBI

Below is a letter sent in to Oath Keepers by Mark Matthews, who is a lawyer, veteran, and Oath Keepers member from Richmond, Virginia:

Stewart,

I read your article on the Oath Keepers website about the Colorado FBI surplus store flyer, and I was so incensed that I sent a copy of the flyer to Senator Jim Webb of Virginia asking him to look into the FBI’s behavior. Little did I know that my request for my Senator’s oversight over the FBI would result in me being reported to the FBI.

What really concerned me about the flyer was that many of the items listed on the flyer as suspicious are actually items that FEMA encourages folks to buy as preparedness supplies. FEMA’s website Ready.gov encourages citizens to purchase waterproof matches (http://www.ready.gov/america/getakit/index.html) and nonperishable food that requires no refrigeration, preparation, or cooking such as MREs (http://www.ready.gov/america/getakit/food.html).

FEMA’s own website encourages Americans to be prepared for natural or man-made disasters. But now, normal citizens can be caught in a catch-22 where they are deemed suspicious by the FBI for purchasing items that FEMA says they should purchase.

Senator Webb’s office got my letter. First off, the staffers who got ahold of it misread it, because the response from Senator Webb’s office seemed to think the flyer was distributed by the surplus stores, not by the FBI. But even worse, the response stated ‘I am sending your letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their consideration and response and have asked that they keep me informed of their progress in this matter.’ I was amazed when I read that, because the last line of my letter asked my Senator to look into the FBI’s actions before the country reached a point where merely writing my Senator was enough to make me suspicious. I was not expecting my letter to be sent on by my Senator to the very law enforcement agency I am criticizing.

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