04.11.12
Two members of the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang plead guilty
Once again the Internet recipe for ricin takes down some fools.
Today wire news informed two members of the George Ricin Beans Gang copped guilty pleas to the lesser charges of “conspiring to get explosives and silencers.”
Two Georgia men pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to get an unregistered explosive and an illegal gun silencer in what prosecutors describe as a plot to attack government targets.
The suspected ringleader of the group, Frederick Thomas, and Dan Roberts entered their pleas at a hearing in federal court in Gainesville, about 55 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Thomas, 73, and Roberts, 67, could face up to five years in prison …
Readers may recall the ricin beans gang comprised four old men, mostly talkers, who were angry with the government’s alleged desecration of the Constitution. To make things right, they mused at a Cracker Barrel restaurant and other places, people would have to be killed.
One of the ways this was to be done was an absurd plan to grind up castor seeds and dispense the powder from a car speeding along the highway. It would never have worked and the men had no capability. I and others were quoted as saying so in newspapers.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
“There’s no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly illegal: murder,??? Thomas said during a meeting in March, according to the affidavit. “When it comes to saving the constitution, that means some people gotta die,” he was quoted as saying.
Roberts’ attorney, Michael Trost, said after the hearing that the plea was the best “rough justice” he and his client could hope for. The plea is “close to what represents the facts,” he said, since it is not an admission of terrorism.
“We will resolutely deny that it is terrorism” during the sentencing hearing, he said …
“Prosecutors said those two men brought [two other defendants who have not issued pleas, Sam Crump and Ray Adams] into the mix after Roberts talked of obtaining a ‘silent killer’ — the toxin ricin, which can be lethal in small doses,” added AP. “Crump had memorized the recipe for making the poison from castor beans, prosecutors said, and Adams had the know-how to make it as a former government lab technician.”
Adams did not have the know-how, as a “lab technician,” to make ricin.
He was a pesticide mixer, at best. However, this is unlikely to matter in the final reckoning.
There is no defense lawyer who can mitigate charges when ricin is part of the courtroom discussion. Juries, judges and prosecutors simply won’t have it.
“This is about an old man talking big,” said one of the defendant’s lawyers. It was an accurate statement. But the justice system during the war on terror makes no allowance for such things.
On the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang — from the archives.
George Smith said,
April 12, 2012 at 11:18 am
Chuck: Another Sea of David sting.
Akismet/WordPress killed your comment. I was able to save the gist of it.
Re the thought about the Feds teaching them how to make ricin. Agree, the only thing stopping it is that’s probably harder to fake a bit so the locals in the news won’t freak when the arrests are made.
Instead, the informant sold them a silencer. I mentioned it originally and that’s one of the charges the two in this one pleaded out on.
Enemies, Tim Weiner’s book on the history of the FBI devotes a little time to the war on terror decade. It brings up the fact that a lot of the people arrested in the US in international and domestic terror busts were simply patsies and fools, netted by FBI informants of dodgy reputation — trading leniency in other cases for help, and infiltrators. It’s obvious a lot of this is expanded from widespread surveillance through websites and idle chat on the Internet as well as wiretapping and digital comms interception.