Thread: James Gilchrist Credits George Putnam

Thursday, July 14, 2005 9:51 a.m. EDT
Minutemen Founder Credits George Putnam

Minutemen Founder James Gilchrist is crediting legendary California broadcaster George Putnam for spotlighting the issue of illegal immigration and motivating him to found the group that has started a grassroots border security revolution nationwide.

"George Putnam was the guy who gave me the inspiration and who gave me the guts to do it," Gilchrist told NewsMax.com late Wednesday.

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For years, he said, "Putnam was the only one covering the immigration issue, as far as I knew, in the entire country."
For more than three decades, the stentorian-voiced former news anchorman has been pounding away about the dangers posed by America's open borders. But it wasn't until this year that the movement finally caught fire, when Gilchrist and his band of border security volunteers stepped into the breach.

Now even Hillary Clinton has taken up Putnam's message, with the New York Times quoting her just yesterday proclaiming: "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigration."

But while the Minutemen have attracted the ire of federal and state authorities for underlining their failures - not to mention the elite media, who smear the citizen border patrollers as vigilantes hell-bent on violence - Putnam's role in shaking up the status quo has gone largely unreported.

Gilchrist made it clear, however, that had it not been for Putnam, starting a group like the Minutemen might never have occurred to him.

"I had contacted other radio stations and complained about their lack of coverage and highlighted the fact that George Putnam was the sole presenter of this issue," he told NewsMax. "My words always fell on deaf ears."

"So I kept listening to George and got the idea that if he could deal with this issue under the First Amendment using the radio waves, I could deal with it under the First Amendment, literally on the ground," Gilchrist explained.

"That's how I got the idea to put The Minuteman Project together."

Even as he turns 91 today, Putnam continues to pound away at the issue from his microphone at KCCA, 1050 AM in San Bernardino, Calif., keeping border security issues at the top of his broadcast agenda. Putnam's "Talk Back" show is also simulcast nationwide on the Cable Radio Network (CRN).

His NewsMax column last Friday was about the importance of legal immigrants learning to speak English.

In his nearly 70 years of covering the news - working as a reporter, anchorman and commentator for NBC, ABC, Mutual, Dumont and Metromedia, Putnam has covered more than his share of big stories.

His investigative reports influenced the exit of a district attorney, helped elect Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and persuaded Californians to get behind Proposition 13, which set the stage for the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s.

But as those charged with the nation's defense continue to bury their heads in the sand, it's Putnam's fight for border security and the preservation of America's national character that may ultimately turn out to be his most enduring legacy.

Read George Putnam's articles here.

Editor's note:

GOOD TO KNOW!!

Watch the "Hillary".. her plan is to be against illegal immigration and her solution is to legalize it.

Trickster Traitor!

Keep the "wind" blowing....he puts her finger to it every morning before she has breakfast and decides what's she gonna say THAT day.

She learned this well from her Hubby, "Slick".