Arrests in 2004 Arizona bombing: Are the feds finally taking domestic terrorism seriously again?
By David Neiwert Friday Jun 26, 2009 3:45pmBack in 2004, someone sent a letter bomb to Don Logan, the director of the Office of Diversity and Dialogue in Scottsdale, Ariz. Logan suffered serious burns on his hands and arms, and two other people suffered minor injuries.
At the time, it was clear that both federal and local authorities wanted to treat the case as an "isolated incident" unconnected to any racial matters. The chief line of investigation was into Logan's personal background, to see if he might have had financial dealings that created enemies. Unsurprisingly, the trail went cold in short order.
Yesterday, the FBI finally arrested three white supremacists in the case:
An undercover ATF sting raided white supremacists in at least three states on Thursday in an investigation connected to the 2004 letter bombing of Don Logan, an African-American who worked for a diversity program in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms infiltrated "several" undercover agents into white supremacist circles as part of the investigation, according to court records.
In Arizona, Dennis and Daniel Mahon were arrested this week by the ATF on a sealed indictment issued June 16.
In Missouri, Robert Neil Joos was arrested by the ATF on a firearms charge. An ATF affidavit said the arrest resulted from a multi-year investigation into the Logan bombing.
According to the affidavit, Dennis Mahon called Joos on the morning of the bombing.
Dennis Mahon has been a player in the white-supremacy movement for a couple of decades now:
Dennis Mahon is a white supremacist and anti-Semite who has been active in several states in the Midwest and in Arizona. He has held leadership positions within various white supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a now-defunct group led by long-time white supremacist Tom Metzger.
In 1991, Mahon even embarked on a Klan/neo-Nazi recruitment tour in Europe.
Mahon claims to have befriended Timothy McVeigh when both were hanging out at Elohim City, the violent white-supremacist enclave in the Ozarks.
Likewise, Robert Joos has been a figure on the white-supremacist right for some time. He was arrested for pulling a gun on a cop during a traffic pullover in Missouri in 1994. Joos is a hardcore "dual seedline" adherent of the white-supremacist Christian Identity movement, and is mostly regarded a paranoid recluse. However, as the Joplin Globe notes, he is also known to have some expertise in explosives:
Joos is characterized in the affidavit as a “long-time white supremacist associate and an expert on weapons, explosives, bomb making and general survival skills.”
Joos allegedly told undercover operatives that he knew how to make napalm and agreed to train others, and that he used caves on his property for concealment and shelter. The caves were stockpiled with food, water and weapons, according to the affidavit.
After awhile, it ceased to surprise me when these cases were buried during the Bush administration -- which treated terrorism mostly as a marketing tool. It's a relief to see them get the handling they deserve now.
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Well that's just another coincidence, just because these are more right wing terrorists doesn't mean that there are terrorist on the right wing. Does it? Does it?
i believe the most heinous example of domestic right-wing terrorism in u.s. history occurred in lower manhattan & washington d.c. about 8 years ago.
one would think david neiwert would be more interested in covering this.
peter dale scott, author of "cocaine politics" and about a million other significant works of writing (also a friend and contemporary of noam chomsky) weighs in here.
it will truly be a sad day @ c&l if i get censored for posting a peter dale scott link!
Very interesting.
no.
peter dale scott was one of my favorite writers when i was in college at the university of illinois in the early 90's.
now, in 2009, he's a very wise old man... i love listening to him talk about chomsky -very respectful, even in disagreement.
is nuanced and intelligent. But you have to very careful about introducing the topic of Giuliani day.
you have to keep your cool, even when discussing stuff that gets you so mad you want to punch a hole in a wall.
this is why i do think david neiwert is a good spokesperson to go on these talk shows -he always keeps his cool.
this is also why i miss c&l's coolest commenter, orangutan, so much.
orangutan never loses his cool -more than could be said for me.
Hate has become a rallying cry for the "right" and it needs to stop! It's bad enough the right embraces torture but this racism is getting out of control. Good freaking grief when will it stop..... how many people have to die or be murdered before......AAARRRGGG....reality sets in? Honestly how many people have to die before rational individuals stop these idiots and fools?
I lived in Tulsa Oklahoma when the "right wing" asswipes terrorised our country. I'm being nice with my comments about right wing terrorists. But not anymore! They have become a plague on our society Timothy Mc Veigh is their hero who murdered 29 innocent pre-schoolers and over 200 other innocent people. This piece of shit is a hero to the right. What does that about republics today?
peace
Can't we just jail all KKK, Neo-Nazi, and other white supremacist groups? They all have intent to conduct violent crimes on others.
i wanna be a capo at the newly built fema camps
violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. Title 18 of U.S. Code covers such behavior - they are therefore, legally subject to arrest. will that happen - not in our lifetime. The big $$ fascists use them, exactly as Hitler used the same crowd - they wore brown shirts.
I can't recall ever hearing about this terrorist act. Thanks to C&L for reporting these arrests. We liberals (i.e. loyal peace-loving Americans who love our conutry) need to concentrate on catching these right wing terrorists and bringing them to justice before any more innocent people are hurt, maimed or killed.
Belonging to an organization, no matter what others think of the philosophy of that organization, is not a crime, and I hope it never is.
Last time I checked, we hold people responsible for their individual actions, not their thoughts or their wishes.
this sort of penetration of these organizations must have taken time both to insert agents and have them build the trust that secured the evidence. This must have started during the Bush era. As surprising as that is it must be true.
and decided to 'cash in' some cointelpro people, assets that were of no use in their former work.
Hal Turner being a good case to illustrate, former radical informer of no use to the new bosses, but useful as a quick PR prosecution to keep the Faux audience amused.
... it all simply starts, with one's interpretation.
Is still terror whether domestic or foreign. Mc Veigh demanded to be killed. He got his demand!!!!!! Personally I wish he diidn't get his wish!! Personally this terrorist should still be in "Prison" being punished like the criminal he was! Giving a convicted terrorist what they want ios not a punishment.....leaving a convicted domestict terrorist nprison is true justice!!!!! Gicing a conviced terrorist what bthey want.....Martyr....is giving the terrorist.......Keep the true killers in prison aqnd keep them alive so the true victums.........
Doesn't that remind you of a certain five other people who also...
When people in high security prisons demand to die via official channels, something slightly stinks.
Dead ex prisoners tell no tales, no books, no memoirs, no leaks via lawyers, no confessions about the others who helped.
Remember that redneck 'methhead' three man assassin team in Denver, one of the girls described "five men in the hotel room" when she talked to the Feds.
so they were declared not to be a threat.
maybe if they target a building....
That really tells me that the DoJ under Bushco didn't care to investigate right leaning terrorism. Ditto with the still unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks, nearly eight years later.
of Sheriff Nazi Joe?
prob sacrificed for brownie points to keep his fiefdom secure.
can be traced back to stuff bought with DHS funds for his little fiefdom?
what about the methods who were headed to Denver?
just what they're up to today wouldn't it?
all of this BS , is a distraction , what if the real power ( the IMF & the world bank ) are playing the world as a fiddle . Just saying what shell is the peanut under , it is not about left vs right , or any religious group against another , it is about power .
There are no lines other than the top 5% and the rest of us , i have always wondererd what would a inter galactic bunch of " HOMIES " think of us , not much other than fools .
Shit pie , WTF is wrong with peace ? .
ARIVACA, Ariz. — “Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”
Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call.
The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.
The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.
The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/27arizon...
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