02.24.14
Right-wingers riled over anti-terror exercise
From last week:
Well over a quarter of a century ago I was always able to find Hutckinson’s recipe for abrin [and ricin] at the end of a telephone line. With the squeal of a US Robotics modem you would find it archived, along with lots of other alleged means to easy mayhem and malice, on bulletin board systems run off PCs in the bedrooms of young men.
With regards to the poison and other informations from the computer underground, what it was called back then, not much has changed.
Keep it in mind, it will have some relevance later.
In the last few years anti-terror training has moved from drills centered around Muslims to those involving domestic terrorists.
One such drill was briefly mentioned in the news last year, from Ohio:
A dead science teacher, weapons of mass destruction, first responders in hazmat suits and the Ohio Army National Guard all near the Municipal Stadium in Portsmouth, Thursday. There’s no cause for alarm — this is just a drill!
The mock disaster training exercise is being done with Scioto County first responders and the Ohio Army National Guard 52nd Civil Support Unit.
“It’s the reality of the world we live in,” says Portsmouth Police Chief Bill Raisin. “Don’t forget there is such a thing as domestic terrorism. This helps us all be prepared.”
The make-believe scenario is timely. Two school employees who are disgruntled over the government’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, plot to use chemical, biological and radiological agents against members of the local community.
On hair-trigger over being potentially painted as domestic terrorists, gun rights supporters used the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose training documents on the incident.
They are here.
The papers show a theoretical plot in which a disgruntled janitor in the Portsmouth School District cooks up some sulfur mustard and ricin, dispersing the former in a plot which caused minor burns. Ricin was put into the school lunches of children, sending many to the hospital with “flu-like” symptoms.
The scenario shows the janitor inspired by William Pierce, a famous American neo-Nazi known as the author of “The Turner Diaries,” America’s foremost example of race hate and government overthrow fiction. Pierce died a number of years ago but his book was a bestseller within the neo-Nazi violent right underground. Timothy McVeigh was one infamous domestic terrorist influenced by it.
The ricin recipe was also reproduced in the documents. It is illustrated as originating from the “Second” Temple of the Screaming Electron 2 website.
I could not find it on TOTSE2, so it is possible that for the drill, something was put together that looked like the chat board.
The original Temple of the Screaming Electron, although it no longer seems to exist, is archived in more than one place on the web and the mirror includes its old ricin recipe. The ricin recipe was a procedure bowdler-ized from far right kook Kurt Saxon’s Weaponeer and The Poor Man’s James Bond where it was attributed to someone named Punk Rock Girl.
Or maybe it is there at TOTSE2 and my search-fu was not strong enough. Or perhaps it was taken down.
On the Temple of the Screaming Electron, by me at the Register, in 2007:
During the [anti-terror] sweep which netted the alleged ricin cell, one young man was arrested with a copy of the ricin recipe downloaded from the Temple of the Screaming Electron, which is where Google will take you if you punch in “how to make ricin” and then click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” tab. He was subsequently released.
The person apprehended turned out to be a researcher with the wrong kind of name.
Over a quarter of a century ago, The Temple of the Screaming Electron was a bulletin board system hosted on a PC at the end of a telephone line. It archived computer virus source code, hacking files and, of course, things like the ricin recipe from self-published pamphlets authored by the violent right, then called anarchy files.
It was later migrated to the world wide web where it lasted, I’m guessing, for about a decade.
In the anti-terror exercise in Portsmouth, Ohio, the perpetrator was
drawn as someone striking back in retaliation against perceived effort to change or eliminate the 2nd Amendment.
However, in terms of motivation, how poisoning young children with ricin at lunchtime would symbolically be seen as having something logical to do with 2nd Amendment rights escapes me. If recent history is a guide, domestic terrorists have planned to attack government workers and installations.
Continuing, domestic right-wingers were recently been convicted in a ricin plot.
One such group was puckishly referred to as the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang in 2011.
Two members of that group were recently convicted by a jury in 90 minutes for conspiring to attack the government with ricin. Two others had previously taken guilty pleas on weapons offenses.
And a few days ago the FBI arrested three more men who were allegedly conspiring to attack the government with pipe bombs.
They were observed and engaged by the FBI and two confidential informants while on Facebook:
Three Georgia men tried to buy pipe bombs and other explosives and discussed attacking power grids, water treatment plants and other infrastructure in a plot to incite other militias to fight the federal government, authorities said.
Brian Edward Cannon, 36, and Cory Robert Williamson, 28, appeared in federal court Friday in Rome and were denied bond. Terry Eugene Peace, 45, is due for his first court appearance Monday. A criminal complaint charges them with conspiring to receive and possess firearms, specifically pipe bombs and thermite grenades. Thermite grenades are military-grade weapons typically used to destroy vehicles, weapons systems and other equipment …
Between Jan. 23 and Feb. 15, the three men participated in online chat discussions about carrying out an operation against the government in February, according to a written statement from an FBI agent. The online chats were monitored by the FBI.
‘‘Peace encouraged members of the militia to review guerrilla warfare tactics, small unit tactics, accumulate supplies and prepare family,’’ the agent’s statement says.
In a recorded phone call on Feb. 8, an FBI source told Peace he had a contact who could provide the materials the men sought. Peace said during the conversation, ‘‘… if he can hook us up with say 12 pipe bombs that will be sweet,’’ according to the agent’s statement.
A second FBI source told agents he had a conversation with Cannon on Feb. 8 during which Cannon said the group planned to ‘‘start the fight’’ with the government by sabotaging power grids, transfer stations and water treatment facilities to create mass hysteria, the agent’s statement says. That would push the government to declare martial law, which would push other militias to join the fight.
The FBI arranged for one of the informants to supply the men with a dozen dummy thermite bombs, at which point they were arrested.
As mentioned last week, it’s quite clear Homeland Security and the FBI monitor networks for this kind of thing.
And the right is a bit perturbed about the Oho anti-terrorism drill.