Ashcroft Silent on Lax Treatment of Anti-military Wannabe Bomber

NewsMax ^ | 12/5/03 | Limbacher

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Attorney General John Ashcroft is not rushing to the mikes and cameras to defend his assistant D.A. in Washington state who vowed to give a would-be terrorist who targeted American servicemen a light sentence to get "home by Christmas.”

Just as the Department of Justice has stonewalled NewsMax.com for the past several weeks, four new phone inquiries in the past two days elicited no comment from the attorney general or his spokesman on a plea bargain last month with "anarchist" college student Paul Douglas Revak, charged with plotting to bomb Coast Guard and Army National Guard stations in Bellingham, Wash. He was also accused of at least talking about obtaining or making C-4 explosives and bombing other military facilities.

All of this was Revak’s way of expressing his "frustration” with how the Bush administration "was dealing with the Iraq situation,” according to the student’s taxpayer-supported public defender, who claimed the poor boy just "got a little carried away.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Hamilton has bought into that "He’s only a kid” defense, so the result was a plea bargain with a reduced charge of trying to obtain explosives.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman at DOJ told us we would hear back from Mark Corallo. When there was no reply today, we contacted DOJ again, and were informed that Ashcroft and Corallo were away on department business.

A press release previously had stated that on that day, Ashcroft would be in Tampa, Fla., to address the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. A spokesman at headquarters vowed to try to get Corallo to talk to us by late in the afternoon, but no response had come by deadline.

The Associated Press previously reported that Revak could be released as early as today, but as of 5:40 p.m. EST there were no reports on the news wires about this. We will continue to follow up.

AP reported that when the FBI apparently was tipped off by students who said Revak had been trying to recruit others in his venture by handing out a "manifesto,” agents searched his dormitory room at Western Washington University.

They found black ski masks and gloves, face paint, camouflage hats, a walkie-talkie and bolt cutters. All of this would indicate this "kid” had advanced his plot beyond the idle theoretical stage. All of this from a young man who supposedly doesn’t have "a mean bone in his body,” to quote his attorney, Thomas Hillier II.

One can shudder at the thought of what it takes to qualify for the "mean” label by Hillier’s standard.

After 9/11 traumatized the nation, President Bush told Ashcroft that he expected him to do everything possible to see to it that "this doesn’t happen again.”

And as NewsMax has noted, no comparable "understanding” has been shown to Steve John Jordi, who was accused of plotting to blow up gay bars and abortuaries in South Florida. Of course, there should be no mercy for those who plot to maim and kill, regardless of what cause is involved.

One can speculate whether Assistant D.A. Hamilton has been or will be taken quietly to the woodshed for this.

Given DOJ’s campaign to come to grips with terrorists in our midst, the Revak case could be causing red faces in positions of authority here in the nation’s capital.

[Sacajaweau]

Hmm, Bellingham....where Malvo went to school. So many dots, so little time.

[American in Israel]

Wonder if he sang like a canary about his "friends" he hung with. If there are a rash of arrests there, my guess the canary is a rat.

Well he prob voted rat before, but now he is one...