Live from the Gates of Hell

'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.