When you picture your typical terrorist, you probably envision an angry young man. Not the Billy Joel song, which is great. But, you know, a guy in his teens or twenties. Maybe his thirties. Forties? Fifties? Not likely. By that time, most people prone to committing acts of mass murder have mellowed out, settled down. They’ve gotten a little fat in the stomach. They easily tire. They can barely will themselves to lean forward to grab the remote, much less train for a deadly assault on society. If they’re angry about something, it’s that The Mentalist is a repeat. You get the point.
And yet! The FBI has arrested four men belonging to a “fringe militia group” in Georgia for plotting terrorist attacks on “Justice Department officials, federal judges and Internal Revenue Service agents.” And they’re no spring chickens.
Ha! That one guy is 73! Are you serious? What were they going to use, their canes? Were they, like, going to get a megaphone and bore everyone to death with stories about the old days?
According to arrest affidavits filed in the case, 67-year-old Dan Roberts and Thomas, 73, agreed to buy a silencer, a bomb and parts to convert a semi-automatic rifle to a fully automatic machine gun from an undercover agent.
Meanwhile, 65-year-old Ray Adams and 68-year-old Samuel Crump worked to obtain castor beans and produce ricin, an FBI agent states in the documents….
[A]ccording to the documents, they talked about spreading ricin across several cities at once, including Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans and Jacksonville, Florida.
During an April meeting at his home, Thomas allegedly told participants he had a “bucket list” of politicians, government officials, corporate leaders and media figures he said should be targeted to “make the country right again.”
Oh.
Militia members plotted to kill federal officials, prosecutors say [CNN]
Four US men arrested over terror, ricin plots [AFP]
