'Patriot' Conspiracy Theorist Jack McLamb Dies

Gerald “Jack” McLamb, 69, a military veteran, retired Phoenix police officer and longtime promulgator of Patriot conspiracy theories, died on Saturday, according to a post at Republic Broadcasting, where he hosted a radio show. An earlier post noted that McLamb collapsed on Jan. 9 at his home in Indiana and was placed on life support. He had numerous “physical disabilities,” noted one of the announcements, though what those were or whether they contributed to his death is unknown.

Following his retirement from the Phoenix Police Department in 1986, McLamb became active on the Patriot circuit, speaking at various events (often wearing his police uniform) and running a shortwave radio show where he often railed against the “New World Order” – a feared totalitarian “one world government.” He produced a periodical called Aid & Abet Police Newsletter and, most famously, a 75-page document titled Operation Vampire Killer 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule, written in 1992 (Conspiracy-monger Alex Jones is selling the updated version in his Infowars store). McLamb also ran a group called Police Against the New World Order and made the unlikely claim that he had an 6,300 members.

McLamb was perhaps best known for his claim that the government placed unobtrusive colored dots on people’s mailboxes so that troops serving the New World Order after martial law is declared would know what to do with the people living at each address. A blue dot meant that you were destined for a FEMA-operated concentration camp; pink indicated you were to be used for slave labor; red meant you were to be shot in the head immediately.

McLamb also was involved in the development of a right-wing housing community called “Almost Heaven,” located near Kamiah, Idaho, in 1994. The community was supposed to “make a stand” against the New World Order. McLamb’s partners in that failed venture included Bo Gritz, a decorated Vietnam veteran and follower of the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity religion, and Jerry Gillespie, a former Arizona state senator who opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and who coordinated the Arizona campaign for Gritz’s failed 1992 presidential bid.

In 1996, McLamb addressed a rally, saying that government officials were smuggling drugs into the United States in order to incite racial hatred. In 1999, he claimed that Vice President Al Gore was planning to reduce world population by 90 percent through some kind of Y2K plot. But when Y2K came and went without much of anything happening beyond the usual New Year’s celebrations, McLamb began to peddle his ideas on the tax protest circuit, though he didn’t leave his other ideas behind.

In 2008, for example, he spoke at a “Ron Paul March on Washington” and brought up his “mailbox dot” theory, claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” and exhorted the crowd to go out and buy guns and ammunition. He also maintained a website that provides survivalist tips and still warns about the New World Order.