[R-G] RE: Package delivered to wrong address reveals big arms cache in EastTexas

[David Mcreynolds]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Davis, Hal 
To: McReynolds, David (E-mail)
Sent: 1/8/04 6:36:52 PM 
Subject: Package delivered to wrong address reveals big arms cache in EastTexas


at: 
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/thursday/news_f3dff050402b7000000a.html 
   
3 face sentencing in chemical weapons case 
Package delivered to wrong address reveals big arms cache in East Texas 
By Scott Gold 
LOS ANGELES TIMES 
Thursday, January 8, 2004 
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 U.N. 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 think they might have uncovered one of the most audacious domestic terrorism plots since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Starting with a single piece of mail, investigators discovered an enormous cache of weapons in the East Texas town of Noonday, including the makings of a sophisticated sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands.
Three people -- William Krar, a small-time arms dealer with connections to white supremacists; Krar's common-law wife, Judith Bruey; and Edward 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 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 might be only the beginning in this one. 
Some government investigators think other conspirators might 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 for 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 and 10 miles southwest of Tyler, pleaded guilty to possession of a chemical weapon and faces a possible sentence of life in prison, Featherston said. No sentencing date has been set, though the case is expected to be on the docket in February.
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 Web site, thinks the federal government has grown too powerful.
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 Curry, a Tyler defense lawyer who represents Krar, said that her client is an "eccentric" who broke the law by possessing weapons he wasn't licensed to own, including fully automatic guns.
He hasn't cooperated with investigators, and Curry wouldn't reveal any details of her conversations with him regarding motives for possessing the weapons. She said, however, that she has "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, law officers searched a nearby storage facility the couple had rented. 
The firepower inside shocked them. 
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, anti-black and anti-government 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 think 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.' "
Critics of the Bush administration say federal officials and the mainstream media are suffering from tunnel vision -- that they are so focused on international terrorism that they have failed to give sufficient attention to such threats at home.
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 when federal authorities actually discovered a weapon of mass destruction.
Federal officials disagreed with the contention that their international investigation into terrorism has distracted them from domestic threats.
"Certainly, our international anti-terrorism efforts are clearly the number one 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."
 
---------- 
From:   Budd, Larry 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 2:01 PM 
To:     Davis, Hal 
Subject:        RE: Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 
Yup 
---------- 
From:   Davis, Hal 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 1:41 PM 
To:     Budd, Larry 
Subject:        RE: Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 
until the next Oklahoma City 
---------- 
From:   Budd, Larry 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 12:58 PM 
To:     Davis, Hal 
Subject:        RE: Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 
International terrorism sells better. 
---------- 
From:   Davis, Hal 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 10:54 AM 
To:     Budd, Larry 
Subject:        RE: Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 
Yeah, this Texan was mainly covered in November, when he pled, by local Texas media except for a NYTimes op-ed piece by Levitas, mentioned in this item, and some CNN-style palaver in which a flack for the Justice Dept said, in effect, "We put out two press releases. The media decides what to report." Of course, had Ashcroft held a news conference, as he did when he commandeered the Emery guilty plea, coverage would be higher.
I'm not sure I totally buy the "domestic terrorism" / search phrase argument. The news biz still has regional wire editors who pitch stories nationally. 
But it's true that a lot of these neo-Nazi, white supremacist busts, with loads of ordnance, are reported only locally or regionally. That, I think, does indicate editors' heightened interest in furriners' names. 
---------- 
From:   Budd, Larry 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 10:21 AM 
To:     Davis, Hal 
Subject:        FW: Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 



---------- 
From:   Jules Siegel 
Reply To:       Computer-assisted Reporting & Research 
Sent:   Thursday, January 8, 2004 10:25 AM 
To:     CARR-L at LISTSERV.LOUISVILLE.EDU 
Subject:        Why so little coverage of domestic terrorism? 
[Comment: Toward the end of the item you will find some observations 
on how press release key words affect media coverage. Apparently there's 
been a change of government key words policy that diminishes media 
pick-up of domestic terrorism cases. Wouldn't this be news of itself?] 


Bill Berkowitz 
WorkingForChange 
01.07.04 
Whither America's homegrown terrorists 
<http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16238> 
[Excerpts] 
Is the mainstream media giving America's antigovernment and religious 
extremists a pass? 
Last May, federal agents uncovered a storage locker filled with deadly 
chemicals near the East Texas town of Noonday. The cache included sodium 
cyanide and other highly toxic chemicals, as well as land mine 
components, briefcase bombs, trip wire and more than 60 fully 
operational pipe bombs. Also found were machine guns and other illegal 
weapons; hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition; and a variety of 
neo-Nazi literature. Most chilling of all, however, was the discovery of 
an entirely functional sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing anyone 
"within a 30,000 foot facility" as well as "documents indicating that 
unknown coconspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to 
be an advanced plot." 
Three antigovernment activists were rounded up: Edward Feltus, 56, a 
member of the New Jersey Militia movement; William Krar, a 62-year-old 
tax protester with ties to the New Hampshire militia and a range of hate 
groups; and Judith L. Bruey, 54, Krar's common-law wife. Last November, 
Krar pleaded guilty to federal charges of "possessing a dangerous 
chemical weapon" and faces up to life in prison. Bruey and Feltus also 
pleaded guilty to different charges. 
Yet there has still been no word from US Attorney General John Ashcroft 
about the Texas case -- no high-profile news conferences or sharply 
worded denunciations of the threat of terrorism coming from Timothy 
McVeigh's political descendants and ideological comrades-in-arms. 
One journalist who has closely followed all these developments is Daniel 
Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the 
Radical Right (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, Nov. 2002, 520 pp. 
$16.95 paper, $27.95 cloth), soon to released in paperback. 
In an e-mail exchange, Levitas told me that he was curious about the 
lack of media coverage of the Tyler, Texas case so he telephoned the 
chief Department of Justice antiterrorism coordinator for the Eastern 
District of Texas, who is an assistant US attorney. According to 
Levitas, "He confirmed all of the details as previously reported in the 
media and then some. This case was huge," the assistant US attorney told 
Levitas. "The real facts of this case are as bad or 'worse' than all 
previous reports and it does not appear as if media exaggeration is at 
work," Levitas said. 
# "The sodium cyanide device was fully functional and could have killed 
anyone within a 30,000 sq. foot facility; 
# "Krar's stockpile contained more than 100 explosives, including 60 
fully functional pipe bombs, as well as land mine components, det cord 
and trip wire and binary explosives; machine guns and other illegal 
weapons; and racist, anti-Semitic and antigovernment literature, 
including William Pierce's Turner Diaries; 
# "Federal authorities have served more than 150 subpoenas in connection 
with the case, but still remain concerned that others may be involved, 
and the investigation is ongoing." 
In response to a telephone interview Dan Yurman, a long term Idaho human 
rights activist who has closely followed militia-type movements, thinks 
that the Texas case didn't get as much attention as it deserved because 
of the way the news media routinely conducts its business these days -- 
through the extensive use of "automated search tools." 
"The DOJ/FBI press release did not use the term 'domestic terrorism' in 
the text of their press release," Yurman told me. This is significant 
because "the term 'domestic terrorism' is a key search term for 
automated search tools used by the news media." 
Given that the news media relies heavily upon these "automated search 
tools" -- commercial services such as Lexis-Nexis, Factiva (Dow 
Jones/Reuters), etc., as well as noncommercial services including Yahoo 
and Google -- "many of the prior cases involving chemical/biological 
weapons have been described by the government with the phrase 'domestic 
terrorism"... made it easier to flag those stories." 
Often, "the decision to follow up on a government press release hinges, 
in part, on whether it contains this phrase," Yurman said. 
Levitas maintains. "For reasons known only to John Ashcroft and the PR 
department at Justice, the decision was made to not give this case the 
same prominence as other terrorism related arrests. Somehow, I do 
believe that if suspected Al Qaeda operatives had been arrested with a 
fully functional sodium cyanide bomb in East Texas or anywhere else in 
the nation for that matter, this would have been a page one story. It is 
only now that Krar has pleaded guilty, that more news is getting out and 
this case is becoming more visible." 
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His 
WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, 
players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right. (c) 
2003 Working Assets Online. All rights reserved 


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