Chris Simcox

With his guns close at hand and visions of mushroom clouds blossoming darkly in his mind's eye, Chris Simcox punched the record button on the answering machine inside his Los Angeles apartment.

"Hi, this is Chris," he said. "You have reached a righteous American educational institution. Due to the horrific changes in our society in the last few days, I now must preface that I will accept offers of communication only from people who preface their message with the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America. If you include that with your message, I look forward to communicating with you, and have a great day. Thanks. Bye."

It was Sept. 13, 2001. Simcox, by his own later account to reporters, was obsessed with the recent terrorist attacks. His phone messages and conversations with relatives were growing increasingly bizarre. He talked endlessly about stockpiling firearms and apocalyptic premonitions. Los Angeles was doomed, he said. Then, on Sept. 30, he fled the city for good.

"I'm going on a great adventure," he told his teenaged son. "If I end up going to prison, you can always e-mail me."

Four years later, Simcox is at the height of his great adventure. He is president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a nationwide, anti-immigration vigilante organization with armed "citizen border patrols" in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, along with a smattering of states on the Canadian border where Minutemen have deployed to protect America from northern invaders.

Simcox has said he moved to Los Angeles from New York (where he relates that he was mugged twice by people who didn't speak English) because he wanted to be a movie star.

He didn't make it as an actor. But he's famous now. Hailed as a hero within the anti-immigration movement, Simcox has testified before Congress and been interviewed, repeatedly, on CNN (see Broken Record).

A frequent guest on the Fox News show "Hannity & Colmes," Simcox travels the country giving paid lectures at anti-immigration conferences where he receives standing ovations and accolades from other celebrity extremists.

"I salute Chris Simcox. The Minutemen are the best thing that ever happened to our movement," the Los Angeles talk radio host Terry Anderson told anti-immigration activists at "America First," a "summit on national security" held in October at a private Christian school in a Chicago suburb.

At that summit, Simcox claimed to have signed up more than 1,200 volunteers who have "assisted in the apprehension of more than 6,500 illegal immigrants representing 27 different countries."

"We are the premier civilian border defense organization," he said. "We are the biggest, baddest neighborhood watch group in the nation."