Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (34 page)

Further investigation of this plot to assassinate President Clinton revealed that it had been masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden.

Ortega often partied with his friends on weekends and had a number of minor run-ins with the law, including indictments for drug offenses and underage drinking.

In 2010, at age twenty, Ortega grew out his hair and beard and began a year of intensive training to become a mixed martial arts fighter. In his first and only bout, he pummeled his opponent in the face until the referee ruled it a technical knockout.

Standing in triumph, Ortega held his infant son, whom he had named Israel.

In March of 2011, Ortega purchased an assault rifle from twenty-one-year-old Jake Chapman, known to friends as “the gun guy.” Chapman recalled that about a year earlier, Ortega had watched an anti-government Internet movie called, The Obama Deception.

In September, Ortega convinced a student from Idaho State University to help him shoot a video intended for Oprah Winfrey, begging her to bring him on her TV talk show as a guest. “I have been sent here from God,” claims Ortega in the video. “I also have with me the answer to worldwide peace.”

In a disjointed twenty-minute talk, Ortega said he had received a “message through time” while watching a History Channel show about Nostradamus. He ended by noting, “It’s not just a coincidence that I look like Jesus. I am the modern-day Jesus that you all have been waiting for.”

At his twenty-first birthday party in October, surrounded by family, Ortega gave a forty-five-minute speech in support of marijuana legalization, condemning the government’s bullying of foreign oil-producing countries, and detailing the threat of secret societies.

Talking with friends, Ortega expressed a belief that President Barack Obama planned to implant GPS tracking devices in children. He also referred to the president variously as “the Antichrist” and “the Devil,” and said he “needed to kill him” and that he would “not stop until it’s done.”

Telling his family he was heading on a vacation to Utah, Ortega instead drove across the country. On November 11, 2011, just outside Washington, DC, Ortega was reported as acting suspiciously. On foot and unarmed, he was briefly questioned by police who took his photo, but he was allowed to go.

Later that evening, at about 9 PM, Ortega allegedly drove into Washington and stopped his car on Constitution Avenue, about 700 yards from the White House. Aiming through a telescopic sight, he allegedly pointed his assault rifle out the passenger side window.