The Blood of Patriots: How I Took Down an Anti-Government Militia with Beer, Bounty Hunting, and Badassery

by Bill Fulton and Jeanne Devon

When Bill Fulton arrived in Alaska, he was filled with optimism and big dreams. When he left, it was under FBI escort.

Bill was Army Infantry. When his knees gave out, he opened the Drop Zone, a military surplus store in Anchorage, and started hiring fellow vets. Sharpshooting hippies, crew-cutted fundamentalists, PTSD sufferers-all seeking purpose and direction. Alaska gave it to them.

The Last Frontier is vast. The perfect refuge for fugitives and the perfect place for vets itching for a mission, Alaska is a giant icebox full of people either running to or away from something. More than 400 fugitives would meet Bill and company on the wrong side of a gun, and he would learn many lessons along the way-like even tiptoeing through subzero snow can get you shot, and removing a gun from the butt crack of a 300-pound man is just as fun as it sounds.

Bill was enjoying the ride until, one day, the FBI asked him to go undercover, and his road forked. Schaeffer Cox was a sovereign citizen who believed no government had authority over him and a private militia commander amassing an arsenal and plotting to kill judges and law enforcement officers. Bill's mission: to take down Cox and his militia without a shot being fired.

The Blood of Patriots traverses a wide swath of rugged territory. Raucously funny and stark, it depicts men, once brothers in arms serving their country, who now find themselves on opposite sides of those arms in a deadly test of the intricacies of liberty, the proper role of government, and the true meaning of patriotism. It offers a witty and unsettling look at political rhetoric gone haywire and a movement the FBI considers the single greatest threat to law enforcement in the nation-all set in the beautiful, terrifying landscape of our 49th State.

• ISBN10: 1944648089
• ISBN13: 9781944648084
• Publish Date: 19 September 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: BenBella Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Heather]

The beginning of this book sounded familiar to me - like really, really familiar.  Like the author, all my husband ever wanted to do was be a soldier until he was physically unable to do it any more.  He was also in Alaska for a while.  Their stories were so similar that I made him start listening to the audiobook too.  He totally identified. 

After the Army is where their paths diverged.  The author opened a bouncing service that grew into a military surplus store and then a bounty hunting group while giving jobs to veterans who were having a hard time readjusting to civilian life.  All of it came crashing down after he decided to help the FBI expose a militia in Fairbanks that had a plan to kill judges and their families.  No good deed goes unpunished.

This book alternates between being really funny and being extremely horrifying. 
It helps you get into the mindset of people who are convinced that the government is coming after them.  There are people who think that hit squads have been sent after them so they have booby trapped their houses.  None of them tend to be important enough for anyone to take notice of until they lay out their plans to "defend themselves" in paramilitary style.  Even worse are those who are going to strike first before the government comes for them.

One of the most frustrating parts for me to read was when the author was being vilified by the left-leaning journalists he admired because of a run-in with an unidentified journalist while he was working security.  Later when it became known that he was an FBI informant the media got his story all wrong again.  He couldn't defend himself either time.  It has to be frustrating to be being talked about on TV when people have the basic facts and motivations for your actions wrong and make no attempt to talk to you and find out the facts.  Hopefully, this book helps set the record straight.

Things I had confirmed while reading this book:

• Living in Alaska isn't for me


• There are some really paranoid people out there and they have guns


• Veterans need a welcoming, nonjudgmental space like his store became


• Make sure you have your facts right before condemning people

This is a book that I would recommend for everyone.  The topics discussed are important and aren't covered enough. 

Bill Fulton narrates his own story.  He does a good job for an author-narrator. This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story