Hot News

03/25/03

By RICKY BOURGEOIS

“This area is temporarily closed,” U.S. Park Service police officer Anthony McSherry told a group of tourists wanting to visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., last Tuesday.
McSherry and fellow officer Cesar Pina guarded a section of steel barricade erected between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The two officers had just been brought in from New York City, less than 24 hours after Dwight Watson, a 50-year-old tobacco farmer from Whitakers, N.C., drove his John Deere tractor into a small lake at the west end of The Mall in the nation’s capital. The situation was resolved without incident when Watson surrendered Wednesday.
But for two days, traffic was disrupted as law enforcement officers from U.S. Park Police, D.C. police and the FBI cleared the area and closed nearby streets, causing traffic delays and rerouting. Authorities said Watson claimed to have ammonium nitrate, the same chemical Timothy McVeigh used to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City eight years ago, killing 168 people.
Last week’s incident occurred less than a mile from the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam, Korean and D.C. war memorials, as well as the Department of Interior, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Academy of Science and American Red Cross buildings. No buildings were evacuated.
Officials would not say whether explosives were found after Watson’s arrest.
Watson’s actions came on the same day President George W. Bush announced that a U.S.-led military strike against Iraq would begin within 48 hours if Saddam Hussein didn’t relinquish power in that country.
During the two-day standoff with Watson, commuters and joggers altered their routes, and tourists, many from other countries, left the city without visiting the Vietnam War Memorial, a prime tourist destination.
“We’re peeved that we can’t see the Vietnam Memorial” one Canadian visitor, who wished not to be identified, said. “That’s the No. 2 thing we wanted to see in Washington, after the Holocaust Museum. I wonder why they can’t just plug him (Watson) with a tranquilizer dart.”
Watson himself is a Vietnam veteran, having served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and his tractor was painted with messages reading, “Salute to Veterans” and “God Bless the Troops.”
“That’s what makes me mad, because that’s where I served, with the 82nd,” Vietnam vet and Washington, D.C., resident Eddie Wallace said. Wallace is one of a group of volunteers who keep 24-hour watch over the P.O.W. commemorative displays in the area, and was allowed to remain inside police barricades. “It’s a shame this has to happen today,” Wallace said.
“I can’t believe they let the guy sleep last night,” said Jeff Jeppson, a Salem, Mass., native who, like Wallace, volunteers at the P.O.W. displays.
Reports said Watson towed the tractor on a trailer behind a Jeep when he entered the area known as Constitution Gardens at about noon on Monday of last week.
He reportedly drove over the curb on Constitution Avenue and into a pond, and then drove his tractor off the trailer into about 3 feet of water.
He began playing recordings of military exercise cadences, and wore a shirt with several patches and badges on it.
Watson also was reported to have been wearing a military-style helmet featuring what appeared to be the Red Cross emblem.
A flag mounted on one side of the tractor showed tobacco leaves, while the American flag, upside down in the traditional signal of distress, was mounted on the other side. Those in contact with Watson during the incident described him as distraught, but could not immediately determine his motives.
“We were kind of wondering about that ourselves,” Extension Agent Charlie Tyson, of Nash County, N.C., said. “It’s a puzzle to us.”
Tyson said he knew who Watson was, but that, personally, he didn’t know him very well.
“I was surprised to see how he got such a big tractor into Washington, D.C., with that little Jeep,” Tyson said.
Robin Taylor, traveling from Toronto, Ontario with her husband and daughter, also was turned away from the Vietnam Memorial.
“What he did was to make a point,” Taylor said. “I think this farmer was trying to prove that you can’t stop terrorism. If you can’t stop him and his tractor, how could you stop terrorists?
Andre Rakota, an French Army employee stationed in Washington, D.C., was giving a tour of the capital city to his mother, who was visiting from France. He said the fact that he couldn’t show his mother the Vietnam Memorial was a result of Americans’ terrorism fears after Sept. 11, 2001.
“It’s because this country is not used to what happened,” Rakota said. He said that during the 1990s, when terrorists were planting bombs in Paris subways, the threat was dealt with more subtly, and that everyday life was relatively uninterrupted.
“How does a guy get a tractor that close to all those government buildings, loaded with explosives? That’s what worries me,” Graham Boyd, executive vice president of the Tobacco Growers Association of North Carolina, said.
However, Boyd was able to give some insight into why Watson acted the way he did.
He said Watson’s actions are probably the culmination of a series of hardships Watson faced during the past few years. Boyd said Watson’s tobacco acreage had fallen from 150 to 50 acres, and like farmers throughout the region, he was hard hit by last year’s severe drought.
He was under financial hardship, to the point that many in the communit expected him to get out of farming.
Whitakers is a community of 800 about 60 miles down the road from the state capitol, Raleigh, where the tobacco growers association is based. Boyd said up to 30 percent of North Carolina’s tobacco farmers may be forced to go out of business this year.
“It’s just crushing us. This is a make-or-break year for us in North Carolina,” Boyd said. “I think every farmer can understand the acute stress of economic pressure.”
Watson had expressed concerns about the state of the nation and tobacco farming at recent farmer meeetings. Boyd described him as a dedicated farmer and a veteran.
“He’s a man under a lot of pressure. In his own way, he’s trying to express his plight,” Boyd said.
He said, “the message here is that these are drastic times.”