CBS News' "60 Minutes" reports that a group of Americans who call themselves "sovereign citizens" are among the nation's top domestic terror threats. Many of them Many don't pay taxes, carry a driver's license or hold a Social Security card. They have little regard for the police or the courts, and some have become violent.
By some estimates, there are as many as 300,000 sovereign citizens in the U.S. And with the sluggish economy and mortgage mess, their ranks are growing with people who have become alienated or disenfranchised. Some have turned to violence, particularly against police officers and judges.
Read full entry »FBI undercover operatives helped fund Mohamed Osman Mohamud's would-be terrorism plot to detonate a car bomb during a Portland, Or., Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on Friday at a crowded public square in the heart of the city, says the Seattle Times. Operatives helped him find components needed to create a bomb and schooled the 19-year-old Somali-born man in how to set off the explosives. The sting operation enabled the FBI to amass a formidable amount of details about what a grand-jury indictment yesterday charged was Mohamud's attempt to use a car bomb as a "weapon of mass destruction."
Mohamud's attorneys and some local Muslims are raising questions about whether the operatives who posed as co-conspirators played their role too well. Defense attorney Steve Sady questioned whether the operatives were "basically grooming" Mohamud to try to commit a terrorist attack. "The information released by the government raises serious concerns about the government manufacturing a crime," according to a statement released by Sady and Steven Wax, public defenders assigned to represent Mohamud. Law-enforcement officials say they gave Mohamud plenty of opportunities to opt out of the bomb plan and that he was committed to carrying out the crime at the time, place and location of his choosing. "I am confident there is no entrapment here," said Attorney General Eric Holder. Portland Mayor Sam Adams praised federal handling of the case. Imtiaz Khan, president of the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, a mosque where Mohamud worshipped, said several people at the mosque had questioned why law enforcement helped orchestrate such an elaborate plan for a terrorist act.
Read full entry »In a video sent to 50,000 police officers, West Memphis Police Chief Bob Paudert warns about the dangers of the sovereign-citizen movement, reports the Memphis Commercial Appeal. On May 20, Jerry Kane, an Ohio man who called himself a sovereign citizen, and his 16-year-old son, Joe, were stopped by Sgt. Brandon Paudert, Bob Paudert's son,and officer Bill Evans in West Memphis. The teenager fired an AK-47 rifle and killed both lawmen. Two other lawmen were wounded later before the Kanes were killed by officers.
The 12-minute officer-safety video, produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, begins with Chief Paudert recounting the day, the bloodiest in Memphis-area law enforcement history. In the video, James Cavanaugh, retired ATF special agent in charge in Nashville, highlights signs that someone might be involved in the sovereign-citizen movement, including fake license plates that display the names of strange nations or tribes. Bumper stickers that say, "I am an American National" or "Not Subject to Corporate Federal or Corporate State Jurisdiction" are also indicators. Sovereign citizens may provide fake driver's licenses or Social Security cards and may offer strange responses to routine questions, Cavanaugh said. For example, if a police officer asks the person's name, he might say, "I am a free man, traveling upon the land." Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, estimated that 300,000 people are involved in the movement.
Read full entry »Mohamed Osman Mohamud was angry at his parents for keeping him from jihad and had thought about carrying out an operation, "something like Mumbai," since he was 17, reports The Oregonian. On the two-year anniversary of the shooting and bombing attack on a Mumbai, India, hotel, that killed 166, Mohamud pressed the buttons on a cell phone he thought would trigger an explosion, creating a "spectacular show" and killing hundreds at a Portland tree-lighting ceremony, the U.S. government alleges.
The Corvallis, Or., teenager will make his first court appearance today. He is accused of the federal crime of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Mohamud, 19, was arrested late Friday after a lengthy investigation and undercover sting conducted by the FBI and Oregon law enforcement officials. Mohamud reportedly sent an e-mail June 25, 2010, to an undercover FBI operative that said he been "betrayed by my family" because he was unable to fly from the United Kingdom to Pakistan. After returning to Corvallis, and after he and undercover operatives blew up a backpack of explosives in a trial run this month in a remote area, Mohamud made a video and said that living in the U.S. "is a sin." "To my parents, who held me back from Jihad in the cause of Allah. I say to them, if you make allis with the enemy, then Allah's power will ask you about that on the day of judgment," Mohamud said in a video.
Read full entry »Time reports that scores of armed anti-government groups have formed or been revived during the Obama years. Recruiting, planning, training and explicit calls for a shooting war are on the rise, as are criminal investigations by the FBI and state authorities. The radical right has raised the threat level against the president and other government targets. With violence already up on a modest scale, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and state agencies point to two main dangers of a mass-casualty attack: that a group of armed radicals will strike out in perceived self-defense, or that a lone wolf, indoctrinated for war, will grow tired of waiting.
Most of today's armed radicals are linked by self-described Patriot beliefs, which emphasize resistance to tyranny by force of arms and reject the idea that elections can fix what ails the country. Among the most common convictions is that the Second Amendment — the right to keep and bear arms — is the Constitution's cornerstone, because only a well-armed populace can enforce its rights. Any form of gun regulation is seen as a sure sign of intent to crush other freedoms. Some groups embrace the white-supremacist legacy of the Posse Comitatus, which invented the modern militia movement in the 1970s. Some are fueled by a violent stream of millennial Christianity.
Six years after the government began exploring the idea of using postal workers as rapid-response medicine dispensers, efforts are underway in six cities to train workers to deliver the drugs needed to counter large-scale anthrax or other potentially deadly agents, reports USA Today. The Postal Service is ready to deliver lifesaving drugs to about a quarter of the residents of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the only metropolitan area in the nation where letter carriers have been trained to dispense medication.
The White House won't name the six cities. Cities are not required to adopt the plan, and most have separate plans in place to set up distribution centers in schools, community health centers and other government buildings where people can go to pick up drugs in the event of an attack. The White House, however, says using the Postal Service is a cost-effective and efficient way to create a reliable system for drug distribution in a crisis because postal workers can get drugs to the elderly and others who can't get out easily or wait in long lines.
Read full entry »The Newark Star-Ledger examines the investigation that led to the arrests of alleged homegrown terrorists Carlos Eduardo Almonte and Mohamed Mahmood Alessa nine days ago at Kennedy Airport in New York. The paper says the men had been observed by law enforcers since 2006, when the FBI received a tip on its website that read, "Every time they access the internet, all they look for is all those terrorist videos about the Islam holly war and where they kill U.S. soldiers and other terrible things ... They keep saying that Americans are their enemies, that everybody other than Islamic followers are their enemies, and they all must be killed."
At first, investigators were willing to dismiss Almonte and Alessa as a couple of angry young men well within their right of free speech to criticize America and adore the likes of Osama bin Laden. Alessa, 20, who holds dual U.S.-Jordanian citizenship, lived in North Bergen and had a troubled youth, going from school to school, according to one school official. Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up as a Catholic, converting several years ago to Islam against the wishes of his father. Through 2006 and into 2007, there was a serious debate inside federal and state law enforcement about the seriousness of the threat posed by the two young men. Then investigators learned Alessa and Almonte had both traveled to Jordan in February 2007.
Read full entry »Fifteen years after Timothy McVeigh blew up an Oklahoma City federal building with a truck bomb, killing 168 people in America’s worst-ever case of home-grown terrorism, the Christian Science Monitor asks: Could a disaster on the scale of Oklahoma City ever happen again? Some believe that the extremist political climate in which McVeigh operated is resurgent today. Resentment over racial changes in America, combined with the bad economy, is producing an extremist comeback, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks militia activity.
Today there are 512 extremist militias and so-called patriot groups in the US, up from 149 such groups only a year ago, says the SPLC’s Mark Potok. “[R]esurgent anger at the federal government has again caught fire,” Mr. Potok writes in a recent SPLC newsletter. Bill Clinton, president at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, says one lesson of the terrorist act is that “words matter.” There is a line that divides legitimate criticism from the advocacy of violence, Clinton said. “And the closer you get to that line, and the more responsibility you have, the more you have to think about the echo chamber in which your words resonate,” he said.
Read full entry »Michigan, the home base of the Hutaree militia, has one of the highest concentrations in the nation of militias and other extremist groups that see the federal government as the enemy, says the Christian Science Monitor. Only Texas, with 57 "patriot" groups, outstrips Michigan's 47, says the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate group activity. Nationwide, the patriot movement has grown dramatically since the election of President Obama. Between 2008 and 2009, the number of such groups increased from 149 to 512, the center says.
The Hutaree was part of this movement. Nine of its members were arrested by federal authorities last weekend and charged with conspiring to "levy war" on the U.S. The arrests point to how the Midwest in particular has become a hotbed for patriot activity. "There are a number of regional factors that, over time and at various moments, helped the militia movement take hold in different parts of the country," says Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a think tank in Somerville, Ma. "It certainly has emerged strongly in the upper Midwest."
Topping the list in the Midwest, Indiana has 21 patriot groups, Illinois has 10, and Wisconsin and Ohio have 13 each, according to SPLC.
Read full entry »A store clerk's curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty products was an example of the kind of citizen vigilance that can help combat terrorism, law enforcement officials say. Los Angeles Police Department Commander Joan McNamara cited the recent case at a Denver meeting of police chiefs, who adopted "iWatch," a model for a nationwide community watch program that teaches people to identify suspicious behavior and encourages them to report it, reports the Associated Press.
Federal authorities allege that Zazi, 24, bought beauty supplies from Denver-area stores in order to make explosives. He has been jailed in New York on charges of conspiracy to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Zazi reportedly told an inquisitive clerk that he needed a large amount of cosmetic chemicals because he had "lots of girlfriends." His purchases weren't reported to authorities, but the police chiefs said they hoped a coordinated publicity effort would make people think differently about such encounters. The Major Cities Chiefs Association, composed of the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the U.S. and Canada, endorsed iWatch at the group's conference Saturday.
Read full entry »Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, reports the Huffington Post. The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.
Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he's seen in more than a decade. "All it's lacking is a spark," McEntire said in the report. It's reminiscent of what was seen in the 1990s – right-wing militias, people ideologically against paying taxes and so-called "sovereign citizens" are popping up in large numbers, according to the report to be released Wednesday. The SPLC is a nonprofit civil rights group that, among other activities, investigates hate groups.
Read full entry »Federal authorities have launched an effort to detect lone attackers who may be contemplating politically charged assaults similar to the recent murders of a Kansas abortion doctor and a Holocaust museum security guard, reports USA Today. The effort, known as the "Lone Wolf Initiative," was started shortly after President Obama's inauguration, in part because of a rising level of hate speech and surging gun sales.
Agents from all of the FBI's 56 field offices have been dispatched on a range of assignments, said two U.S. law enforcement officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about details of the program. Among the duties: reviewing records in domestic terrorism investigations that may point to more suspects; analyzing records for suspicious purchases at fertilizer or chemical suppliers whose materials could be used in bombmaking, and checking rolls of prisoners scheduled for release or who have been recently released for past links to extremist groups.
Read full entry »Seven men accused of an intricate terrorism plot seemed to live simply, quietly, and kindly, says the Raleigh News & Observer. Daniel Boyd was a father who stopped his work at noon each day for prayer. Dylan Boyd, his son, was a college student who worked as a clinical services technician. Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan was a newlywed; his father owns a car dealership. To federal authorities, these men and four others plotted to kill themselves and others in the name of Islam.
Their activities, tracked by FBI agents over three years and detailed in federal indictments released yeserday, tell of an elaborate scheme hatched in a quiet neighborhood and nondescript apartment complexes. All seven men are charged with conspiring to provide support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people abroad. "If he's a terrorist, he's the nicest terrorist I've ever met in my life," said a neighbor of Boyd.
Read full entry »While much of the focus in recent years has been on international terrorism and militant groups, recent murders of a Kansas doctor and Holocaust Museum guard were reminders that "lone-wolf" extremists are dangerous. The Wall Street Journal also cites the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta and the series of bombings carried out over decades by Theodore Kaczynski.
The FBI has stepped up efforts to pre-empt violence by lone extremists, one element of a broader strategy to fight domestic terrorism. "Operation Vigilant Eagle" was launched late last year in response to what an FBI memo identified as "an increase in recruitment, threatening communications, and weapons procurement by white supremacy extremist and militia/sovereign citizen extremist groups." But the recent killings also show the limits of the lone-wolf effort. Both the doctor and the guard were murdered by men who had openly expressed extremist views.
Read full entry »A government list of "cleared" fliers, developed to cut airport hassles for people whose names are confused with suspects on the terrorist watch list, has grown to 80,000 names, reports USA Today. The additions to the Transportation Security Administration's "cleared list" reflect an influx of requests from people asking to be removed from the watch list.
The watch list database has expanded 32% since 2007, to more than 1 million entries. The cleared list has grown because about 99% of the fliers seeking to be removed from the watch list were never on it, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the TSA. Most believed they were on the watch list after encountering screening problems at airports, often because they were mistaken for someone on the watch list, says Jim Kennedy, who heads the program that handles requests to get off the watch list. The cleared list allows airline personnel and TSA officers to know that "this individual with this government-issued ID is not the individual we're looking for."
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