— Jared Lee Loughner volunteering at the Tucson
Book Festival. Loughner is a suspect in the
shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at a
public event. | © Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily
Star/ZUMAPRESS.com.
At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours
before he allegedly killed six people and wounded
14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in
Tucson —Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and
close friend with whom he had gone to high
school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney,
was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer
the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he
heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey
man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times.
Peace out. Later."
That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney
first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a
sickening feeling: "They hadn't released the name,
but I said, 'Holy shit, I think it's Jared that did it.'"
Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive
interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge
against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her
as a "fake." Loughner's animus toward Giffords
intensified after he attended one of her campaign
events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently
answer a question he had posed, Tierney says.
He also describes Loughner as being obsessed
with "lucid dreaming"—that is, the idea that
conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a
person can inhabit and control —and says
Loughner became "more interested in this world
than our reality." Tierney adds, "I saw his dream
journal once. That's the golden piece of evidence.
You want to know what goes on in Jared
Loughner's mind, there's a dream journal that will
tell you everything."
On Sunday, federal prosecutors charged 22-year-
old Loughner with one count of attempting to
assassinate a member of Congress, two counts
of unlawfully killing a federal employee, and two
counts of attempting to kill a federal employee.
Giffords was the target of Loughner's rampage,
prosecutors say, and the sworn affidavit
accompanying the charges mentions that
Loughner attended a Giffords "Congress in Your
Corner" event in 2007. The affidavit also mentions
that police searching a safe in Loughner's home
found a letter from Giffords' office thanking the
alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007
event.*
Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner
complaining about a Giffords event he attended
during that period. He's unsure whether it was
the same one mentioned in the charges —
Loughner "might have gone to some other
rallies," he says —but Tierney notes it was a
significant moment for Loughner: "He told me
that she opened up the floor for questions and he
asked a question. The question was, 'What is
government if words have no meaning?'"
Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy
Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they
wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him,
'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney
recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake,
he had something against her."
Tierney says he has "no clue" why Loughner
might have "shot all those other people." But, he
notes, "when I heard Gabrielle Giffords has been
shot, I was like 'Oh my God...' For some reason I
felt like I knew...I felt like if anyone was going to
shoot her, it would be Jared."
Loughner would occasionally mention Giffords,
according to Tierney: "It wasn't a day-in, day-out
thing, but maybe once in a while, if Giffords did
something that was ridiculous or passed some
stupid law or did something stupid, he related
that to people. But the thing I remember most is
just that question. I don't remember him stalking
her or anything." Tierney notes that Loughner did
not display any specific political or ideological
bent: "It wasn't like he was in a certain party or
went to rallies...It's not like he'd go on political
rants." But Loughner did, according to Tierney,
believe that government is "fucking us over." He
never heard Loughner vent about the perils of
"currency," as Loughner did on one YouTube
video he created.
Tierney, who first met Loughner in middle
school, recalls that Loughner started to act
strange around his junior or senior year of high
school. Before that, Loughner was just a "normal
kid," says Tierney. When the two friends started
hanging out in sophomore year of high school,
"there was nothing really dark about Jared,"
Tierney says. "He was playing drums, doing
band things, playing sax. He was raised on
writing and reading music." Loughner also did a
lot of creative writing in his high school days,
Tierney says, and he used to carry around a
copy of a short story he wrote involving a
character named Angel; he'd ask people if they
would like to read it. "It had a lot of hidden
metaphors in it," Tierney says.
As Loughner and Tierney grew closer, Tierney
got used to spending the first ten minutes or so
of every day together arguing with Loughner's
"nihilist" view of the world. "By the time he was
19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics
and how the world is really nothing —illusion,"
Tierney says.
Once, Tierney recalls, Loughner told him, "I'm
pretty sure I've come to the conclusion that
words mean nothing." Loughner would also tell
Tierney and his friends that life "means nothing,"
and they'd reply, "If it means nothing, what
you're saying means nothing." Other times,
Tierney says, Loughner acted like any teen: "We'd
go to concerts, play music, get into trouble."
Source: Http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message
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