Fed: 4 men got terror ideas from underground novel

GREG BLUESTEIN

Asso­ci­ated Press

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — In the vio­lent under­ground novel Absolved, right-wing mili­tia mem­bers upset about gun con­trol make war against the U.S. gov­ern­ment. This week, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors accused four elderly Geor­gia men of plot­ting to use the book as a script for a real-life wave of ter­ror and assas­si­na­tion involv­ing explo­sives and the highly lethal poi­son ricin.

The four sus­pected mili­tia mem­bers allegedly boasted of a “bucket list” of gov­ern­ment offi­cials who needed to be “taken out”; talked about scat­ter­ing ricin from a plane or a car speed­ing down a high­way past major U.S. cities; and scouted IRS and ATF offices, with one man say­ing, “We’d have to blow the whole build­ing like Tim­o­thy McVeigh.”

Fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tors said they had them under sur­veil­lance for at least seven months, infil­trat­ing their meet­ings at a Waf­fle House, homes and other places, before finally arrest­ing them Tues­day, just days after dis­cov­er­ing evi­dence they were try­ing to extract ricin from cas­tor beans.

“While many are focused on the threat posed by inter­na­tional vio­lent extrem­ists, this case demon­strates that we must also remain vig­i­lant in pro­tect­ing our coun­try from cit­i­zens within our own bor­ders who threaten our safety and secu­rity,” said U.S. Attor­ney Sally Quil­lian Yates.

The four gray-haired men — Fred­er­ick Thomas, 73; Dan Roberts, 67; Ray Adams, 65; and Samuel Crump, 68 — appeared in fed­eral court Wednes­day with­out enter­ing a plea and were jailed for a bail hear­ing next week. They appar­ently had trou­ble hear­ing the judge, some of them cup­ping their ears.

Thomas and Roberts were charged with con­spir­ing to buy an explo­sive device and an ille­gal silencer. Pros­e­cu­tors would not say whether the men actu­ally obtained the items. Adams and Crump were charged with con­spir­ing to make a bio­log­i­cal toxin.

Rel­a­tives of two of the men said the charges were base­less. The pub­lic defender assigned to the case had no comment.

Pros­e­cu­tors said that Thomas was the ring­leader and that he talked of car­ry­ing out the sort of actions described in Absolved, an online novel writ­ten by for­mer Alabama mili­tia leader Mike Van­der­boegh. In the book, the mili­tia mem­bers build rifle grenades and drop explo­sives from crop dusters.

In the book’s intro­duc­tion, Van­der­boegh calls it a “cau­tion­ary tale for the out-of-control gun cops of the ATF.”

“For that warn­ing to be cred­i­ble, I must also present what amounts to a com­bi­na­tion field man­ual, tech­ni­cal man­ual and call to arms for my beloved gun­nies of the armed cit­i­zenry,” he writes. “They need to know how pow­er­ful they could truly be if they were pushed into a corner.”

In an inter­view, Van­der­boegh said he didn’t know the four men and bears no respon­si­bil­ity for the alleged plot.

“I’m glad that the FBI has appar­ently short-circuited some weak-minded indi­vid­u­als from mis­in­ter­pret­ing my novel,” he said.

Last year, Van­der­boegh was denounced for call­ing on cit­i­zens to throw bricks through the win­dows of local Demo­c­ra­tic head­quar­ters across the coun­try to protest Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care plan. Sev­eral such inci­dents occurred. Van­der­boegh has also appeared as a com­men­ta­tor on Fox News Channel.

Van­der­boegh wrote on his blog Wednes­day that his book was fic­tion and that he was skep­ti­cal a “pretty geri­atric” mili­tia could carry out the attacks the men were accused of planning.

But Kent Alexan­der, a for­mer U.S. attor­ney in Atlanta, said he wouldn’t write off the men as harm­less just because of their age: “Crime doesn’t have a retire­ment age. These guys are older than one usu­ally sees, but crim­i­nals come in all ages.”

Don­nie Dixon, another for­mer U.S. attor­ney, said: “I would find it extremely dif­fi­cult to think they could carry out a plot of such grandiose design, which doesn’t mean they should not have been nipped in the bud just like they were.” He said it would not have required any­thing grandiose “to cause a lot of prob­lems or hurt a lot of people.”

Thomas’ wife, Char­lotte, told The Asso­ci­ated Press the charges were “baloney.”

“He spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy. He would not do any­thing against his coun­try,” she said. “He loves his country.”

Roberts’ wife, Mar­garet, said her hus­band retired from the sign busi­ness and lives on a pen­sion. “He’s never been in trou­ble with the law. He’s not anti-government,” she said. “He would never hurt anybody.”

Ricin is a castor-bean extract whose poten­tial as a deadly bio­log­i­cal weapon has long been known. In 1978, Bul­gar­ian defec­tor Georgi Markov was assas­si­nated in Lon­don with a ricin pel­let believed to have been fired from the tip of an umbrella.

Pros­e­cu­tors wouldn’t com­ment out­side court Wednes­day on exactly what steps the men took to get their hands on ricin. But they pointed out in court records that the two men allegedly assigned to obtain or make the ricin had use­ful back­grounds: Adams used to be a lab tech­ni­cian for a U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture agency, and Crump once worked for a con­trac­tor who did main­te­nance at the Atlanta-based Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Prevention.

Also, Roberts claimed to know a for­mer U.S. sol­dier who was a “loose can­non” and might be able to help them make ricin, accord­ing to court papers.

An infor­mant saw lab equip­ment and a glass beaker at Adams’ home in Octo­ber, and a bean obtained by the infor­mant tested pos­i­tive for ricin, pros­e­cu­tors said.

Thomas is also accused of dri­ving to Atlanta with an infor­mant to case build­ings that house the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco and Firearms, the IRS and other agen­cies. Dur­ing the trip, Thomas allegedly said: “There’s two schools of thought on this: Go for the feds or go for the locals. And I’m inclined to con­sider both. We’d have to blow the whole build­ing like Tim­o­thy McVeigh.”

Thomas also allegedly boasted of mak­ing a “bucket list” of gov­ern­ment employ­ees, politi­cians, busi­ness­men and media mem­bers. Court records quoted him as say­ing: “There is no way for us, as mili­ti­a­men, to save this coun­try, to save Geor­gia, with­out doing some­thing that’s highly, highly ille­gal: Murder.”

He also allegedly told an infor­mant: “I could shoot ATF and IRS all day long. All the judges and the DOJ (Depart­ment of Jus­tice) and the attor­neys and prosecutors.”

Court doc­u­ments accused Crump of sug­gest­ing ricin could be dropped from the air or blown out of a car to attack peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton; Newark, N.J.; Jack­sonville, Fla.; Atlanta and New Orleans.

Posted by AP News on Nov 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.