More on Bush fear strategies to control the "voters:"
Case Yields Chilling Signs of Domestic Terror Plot
By Scott Gold
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday 07 January 2004
Arms cache in Texas leads to convictions but few
answers. Critics fault focus on foreign threats.
HOUSTON — One evening two winters ago, a man in Staten Island,
N.Y., absent-mindedly flipped through his mail. Inside one envelope was a
stack of fake documents, including United Nations and Defense Department
identification cards, and a note: "We would hate to have this fall into the
wrong hands."
It had. The package, intended for a member of a self-styled militia in New
Jersey, had been delivered to the wrong address.
From that lucky break, federal officials believe they may have uncovered
one of the most audacious domestic terrorism plots since the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. Starting with a single piece
of mail, investigators discovered an enormous cache of weapons in
Noonday, in East Texas, including the makings of a sophisticated sodium
cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands of people.
Three people — William Krar, a small-time arms dealer with connections
to white supremacists; Krar's common-law wife, Judith L. Bruey; and
Edward S. Feltus, the man who was supposed to have received the forged
documents — pleaded guilty in the case in November. They are being held
in a Tyler, Texas, detention facility and are scheduled to appear before a
federal judge for sentencing next month.
But what is typically the end of a criminal case may be only the
beginning in this one. Some government investigators believe other
conspirators may be on the loose. And they readily acknowledge that they
have no idea what the stash of weapons was for — though they have
tantalizing and alarming clues of a "covert operation or plan," according to
an FBI affidavit.
"What was Krar going to do with this stuff? That's what we want to know
— and we don't know," said Brit Featherston, an assistant U.S. attorney
and the federal government's anti-terrorism coordinator in the eastern district
of Texas. "There is no legitimate reason to have this stuff. The bottom line is
that it only had one purpose, and that was to kill people. And it's very
troubling that we have yet to figure it out."
Krar, 62, who lived in the piney woods of Noonday, a tiny community
about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, pleaded guilty to possession of a
chemical weapon and faces a possible sentence of life in prison,
Featherston said.
Bruey, 54, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess illegal weapons and
faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, Featherston said.
Feltus, 56, of New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the
transportation of false identification documents and faces a maximum
sentence of 15 years in prison, Featherston said.
According to the FBI affidavit, Feltus has told investigators that he is a
member of a group called the New Jersey Militia, which, according to its
website, believes the federal government has grown too powerful and says it
is "ready, as a last resort, to come to our nation's defense against all
enemies, foreign or domestic."
It is unclear whether Krar or Bruey had any involvement with the
organization. Neither representatives of the New Jersey Militia nor attorneys
representing Feltus and Bruey could be reached for comment.
Tonda L. Curry, a Tyler attorney, represents Krar, who appears to have
made much of his living, investigators say, by manufacturing trigger parts for
.223-caliber Bushmaster rifles.
Krar, Curry acknowledged, is an "eccentric" who broke the law by
possessing weapons he was not licensed to own, including fully automatic
guns.
He has not cooperated with investigators, and Curry would not reveal any
details of her conversations with Krar regarding motives for possessing the
weapons. She said, however, that she had "never seen anything that
indicates there was any kind of terrorism plot or any intent to use these
things against the American people or the government in any way."
"He was not the type who kept these things at ready access. They were
miles from his home in a storage facility," Curry said. "His home was not a
bunker, an arsenal, whatever you want to call it, where he was ready to
attack. These things were stored as collectibles."
The case began to unfold in January 2002, when the package was
mistakenly delivered to Staten Island. Investigators traced it to a mailing and
business center near Tyler, then to Krar and Bruey, who lived together in
Noonday.
With Bruey's permission, they searched a storage facility the couple had
rented. The firepower inside shocked law enforcement officers.
Investigators found nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs
and briefcases that could be detonated by remote control.
Most distressing, they said, was the discovery of 800 grams of almost
pure sodium cyanide — material that can only be acquired legally for
specific agricultural or military projects.
The sodium cyanide was found inside an ammunition canister, next to
hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids and formulas for making bombs. If acid
were mixed with the sodium cyanide, an analysis showed, it would create a
bomb powerful enough to kill everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility,
investigators said.
Also discovered were anti-Semitic, antiblack and antigovernment books
and pamphlets, according to the FBI's affidavit.
The affidavit included documents recovered from a rental car Krar was
driving in Tennessee when he was pulled over by a state trooper in January
2003 for a minor traffic violation. Inside the car, according to the affidavit, the
trooper found many weapons, including two handguns, 16 knives, a stun gun
and a smoke grenade.
The documents were titled "trip" and "procedure," and appeared to list
rendezvous points in cities across the nation. They also listed what
appeared to be code phrases; some investigators say they believe the
phrases could be used to indicate a level of awareness of law enforcement
officials or others.
" 'Tornadoes are expected in our area' — things very hot; lay low or
change your travel plans," one document said. " 'Major thunder storms are
predicted' — they are looking pretty hard; be cautious."
The clues, wrote FBI Special Agent Bart B. LaRocca in the affidavit,
suggested an "involved criminal scheme which could potentially include
plans for future civil unrest and/or violent civil disorder against the United
States government."
Revelations, however, that many questions remain unanswered in the
case have made it the target of the new, post-Sept. 11 politics of terrorism.
Critics of the Bush administration say federal officials and the
mainstream media are suffering from tunnel vision — that they are so
focused on international threats that they have failed to give sufficient
attention to threats at home.
At most, the critics say, increased attention to this case could have
brought more answers. At the least, they say, if the defendants in this case
had been people with foreign backgrounds or Muslims, U.S. Atty. Gen. John
Ashcroft himself would have announced the arrests and the guilty pleas.
Instead, details of the case were revealed in a half-page press release
sent to local media. Officials say the case was at one point included in
President Bush's daily security briefings, but it remains virtually unknown
outside East Texas — even though, critics point out, it represents an
instance in which federal authorities discovered a weapon of mass
destruction.
Much of the criticism has come on Internet Web logs, known as "blogs."
People who operate the websites, or "bloggers," have seized on the Krar
case and what they perceive as the inattention it received from the Bush
administration and major media.
The fault, critics say, lies not with law enforcement officers, whom they
believe prevented a deadly plot from developing. Instead, they say, the fault
lies with an administration that adheres too closely to a script.
"If anyone wanted evidence that the 'war on terror' is primarily a political
marketing campaign — in which war itself is mostly a device for garnering
support — they need look no further than the startling non-response to
domestic terrorism by the Bush Administration," one blog, called Orcinus,
said recently. The blog, which uses a killer whale as its mascot and targets
the nexus of politics, culture and journalism, is written and compiled by
David Neiwert, a Seattle resident and former journalist.
Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the
University of Texas in Austin and director of the College of Communication's
honors program, agrees with the criticism. He says that the Bush
administration, to promote its efforts overseas, "needs a public that is afraid
and sees these wars as justified."
"The primary justification is a fear of people 'out there' who want to come
here and get us," he said. "Arrests of foreigners are very effective arrests to
publicize. It has a political function. Domestic terrorism may be, in some
ways, more of a threat. But there is no reason to publicize it. It doesn't have
any political benefit."
Federal officials disagreed with the contention that their international
investigation into terrorism had distracted them from domestic threats.
"Certainly, our international anti-terrorism efforts are clearly the No. 1
priority," said Mary Beth Buchanan, the Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney for
the western district of Pennsylvania and the chairwoman of a committee of
federal prosecutors that advises Ashcroft. "But domestic terrorism is also a
part of that. As we've increased our efforts to find the sources of international
terrorism, we are also stepping up our efforts in the area of domestic
terrorism as well."
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the
observations about the Krar case are overly cynical.
"We don't spend a lot of time thinking about how we announce our
activities," he said. "We base all our decisions on the facts and the law and
we pursue all violations … vigorously."
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