Product Description

'Something big, something really big is coming', the leader of extremist group Rescue America warns reporter Jerry Reiter. It is the first hint of new terror to come in Pensacola, Florida-already 'ground zero' for the nation's Culture War. As Reiter goes there to cover the murder trial of the first doctor slain in the holy war over abortion, he meets radicals from the Ku Klux Klan, Operation Rescue, and a militia man with duffel bags filled with semiautomatic weapons. Each person Reiter interviews offers up a different part of a frightening puzzle pointing to a plot with the potential to be the nation's worst act of domestic terrorism. The trail of blood that Reiter uncovers both takes him back to the mysterious circumstances of the first slaying, and down a road that will eventually lead him to become a reluctant informant for the FBI. With help from the FBI he will later witness a merger between militias and militant anti-abortionists that will send chills down your spine. Reiter's own life is changed forever by his experiences in the nation's culture war and his subsequent role as a leader in a movement called 'The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice'. Where he comes out at the end of the journey will surprise both pro-life and pro-choice people. Reiter, a founding member and activist in the Christian Coalition, shows that there are shockingly close (albeit indirect) ties between radicals and respectable conservatives, including such national figures as Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and the 'compassionate conservative' philosophy of George W. Bush. For instance, the legal defence for anti-abortion assassin Paul Hill is provided by an attorney working full-time in Robertson's legal machine, the ACLJ, the religious right's version of the ACLU. And by the end of the book, the reader will know where the religious right went wrong.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #789979 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 270 pages

Buffalo Beat, October 19, 2000
"...reading [this book] is as necessary an experience as it is a creepy, unsettling one."

From the Inside Flap
On the eve of the nation's first abortion-related murder trial, a journalist receives an ominous and frightening tip from an antiabortion leader: "Something big, something REALLY big, is coming."

LIVE FROM THE GATES OF HELL is a bone-chilling first-person account that reads like a gripping murder mystery. Author Jerry Reiter's eye-opening journey takes you into the antiabortion underground--a journey set off by Rescue America leader Don Treshman's foreboding words. Each person he meets--from Klan members to Operation Rescue antiabortion radicals to militiamen--offers a piece to a puzzle that points to a deadly domestic terrorist plot to be carried out in the name of life.

The most radical of these men and women are prepared to use any means necessary to impose a theocracy, based on the laws of the Old Testament, on all Americans. Their "ends-justify-the-means" mentality ensures that all bets are off in America's culture war--a struggle between those who seek to preserve our treasured ideals of freedom and individual liberty and those who are committed to making the one-size-fits-all rules of the Bible the law of the land--and who are ready, willing, and able to take up arms to force their ideology on others.

Aided by a history of involvement in conservative Christian organizations, Reiter gains the confidence of many of the major players in this radical movement, first on his own, and later as a reluctant informer for the FBI. What he learns about the larger agenda of the radical Christian activists is sometimes more disturbing than the individual acts of violence he describes. This agenda is brought out in shocking details as he uncovers the ties that exist between them and "respectable" conservatives including Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan--and exposes the dangerous road ahead if this agenda is realized.

LIVE FROM THE GATES OF HELL takes you inside the secret meetings and intrigues that set the stage for violence by radical antiabortion groups, militias, and other radicals from the Religious Right. It is a story with serious implications for the entire Christian conservative movement and, by extension, the Republican Party.

About the Author
Jerry Reiter, a former Christian Coalition activist, has worked in broadcast journalism and as a media consultant, national political organizer, and speaker. He currently works for a nonprofit organization.

Customer Reviews

"If you can keep your head when all about you..."
Kipling's poem, "IF," must have had a place of honor on Jerry Reiter's wall when he was growing up, just as it did on the walls of the bedrooms of many young Christian boys when I was a child. Reiter, raised Catholic but "born again" as a teen and recruited by the extreme religious militants of the anti-abortion movement, came to his senses when faced with the true nature of all too many of the militant anti-abortion religious fundamentalists. For those of us who have been involved in providing abortions for the past 30 years, Reiter's revelations come as no surprise. What is surprising is that Reiter (like David Brock, who wrote "Blinded By The Right," was for the extreme right wing of the Republican party), one of the movement's own and thus given great access to the crazy plans and insane paranoias of the extreme anti-abortion movement, was able to break away from the clutches of the cult-meisters of the antiabortion movement and all the other fringes composed of Christian religious nuts and the "rightious wing" of the Republican Party and reveal their secrets from the perspective of an insider. (And like Brock, he will be viciously attacked by the "ditto heads" of the Right without a single relevant fact being refuted.) What I want to know is, where are the terrorist hunters of the Bush administration and Ashcroft's FBI when murderers-by-proxy (in the mold of Osama Bin Laden and Charles Manson, the Helter Skelter guy) and terrorists who have been responsible for multiple deaths, grave injuries, and property damage in the millions of dollars are exposed for what they are. I suppose Ashcroft and our terror czar, Tom Ridge, and their witch hunters are so busy chasing their own tails and lighting red, yellow and orange caution lamps, and out hounding innocent ethnic Americans who happen not to be fundamentalist Christians -or indeed Christians of any type - that they will never have time to investigate the characters exposed in Reiter's book. Jerry Reiter is a rare Human. He may be "my kind of Christian."
If you really want to know something about the anti-abortion movement in this country and what it has whelped, read "Live From The Gates Of Hell." And if you want to know how poor Michael Griffin, whose trial is exposed in this book and who was convicted of murder in the first abortion related killing in this country was driven mad enough to kill for the Svengali's of the truly Insane-Religious-Right, go to a fundamentalist Christian church "pastored" by an anti-abortion preacher and ask to see his copy of the video "Hard Truth;" which is truly hard, but a very long way from truth. And should you desire to know the hard truth about "Hard Truth," e-mail me. wfh

Engrossing and Informative!
I found this book enthralling, and difficult to put down! To quote the book jacket, it "reads like a gripping murder mystery", and while that is certainly true, it is much more! The author, Jerry Reiter, was an early member of the Christian Coalition. As a member of the Buffalo, NY, church lead by the Reverends Paul and Rob Schenk, he was involved in anti-abortion protests. This is an insider's story of how a potential crime was prevented, but it is also a first-person account of Mr. Reiter's own journey as a self-described Reagan Republican and Ditto-head who developed into a tolerant Christian, who still seems to believe abortion is wrong, yet can call himself "Pro-Choice". This transformation began with a feeling of horror at the extreme tactics employed by others who opposed abortion, leading to his disillusionment with much of the movement due to their silent acceptance of those who were willing to use terrorism to achieve their objectives.

I was especially interested in the author's conclusions about the connections between militant anti-abortion groups, right-wing militias, and the NRA, along with more mainstream religious groups and the Republican Party. In reference to this, I found two chapters of the book to be particularly chilling: Chapter 13, "Fingers Point to One Man" and Chapter 26, "Pat Buchanan and I Come Face to Face". These chapters describe goals of these groups and methods for achieving them, and show a logical relationship linking them.

This book is full of very critical information, yet the author narrates it in an appealing style that will hold the interest of anyone, even those who are completely uninterested in politics or the abortion debate.

Page turner for sure!
I like a good murder mystery story, and for the most part, I thought that "Live from the Gates of Hell" delivered, especially when you consider that the author was working with factual material rather than making something up. I was shocked at how such a huge murder plot almost happened, and the horrors of the actions taken by ministers and others who claimed to be conservatives and Christians. As a former sidewalk counselor for the pro-life side, I did not enjoy seeing how far gone some of my supposed allies had gone, but I think this is an important story for pro-life people to read. Most of us deplore the murders and bombings that Reiter details in his book, but the tale is effective at showing that we must not rationalize that the "ends justifies the means." And I found the experiences about the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice fascinating, I just wish more pro-life people would take part. I have seen acts of ugliness on the pro-choice side, and Reiter does not talk as much about that as he might have. I read the book in just 2 days, though, because it was hard to put down. I think people should put this in their local libraries and schools because it covers both sides of something that is so important.