Anderson grew up Everett, 30 miles north of Seattle. On Friday, TV satellite trucks lingered on the street outside his parents' home, where a large American flag hung outside the garage.
The family made no appearance, but his father Bruce Anderson, stepmother Jaclyn and wife Erin issued a statement saying the family "is stunned" by the arrest. They asked the media to "respect our wishes not to be a part of any news story."
Ryan Anderson and his wife moved to Lynnwood, just north of Seattle, several months ago. He reported to Fort Lewis near Tacoma on Nov. 15, when the guard's 4,200-member 81st Brigade was called to active duty.
No one answered a knock at the Andersons' apartment door Friday. A newspaper with its front-page report on his arrest lay unopened on the doorstep.
Upstairs neighbor Don Simmons, 52, said he did not know Ryan: "He was hardly ever here."
"The FBI was actually here for days staking the place out, seeing who was coming and going," said Simmons, whose wife, Cindy Smith, manages the sprawling Cambridge Square North apartment complex.
Smith declined comment, but Simmons said she called police about the men watching the complex, who claimed to work for the phone company but refused to offer identification. Police arrived, talked to the operatives, and left in a hurry, Simmons said.
FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs confirmed the agency is involved.
The arrest is "shocking, but it's not too shocking, knowing how Ryan is," said Nathan Knopp, a friend of Anderson's since they graduated from Everett's Cascade High School in 1995.
"He was always a paramilitary type of guy, really into military weaponry," Knopp told The Herald on Thursday. "Ryan's kind of a weird type of guy who made up a lot of stories that seemed really far-fetched."
Knopp, who is in the Navy, declined to talk about Anderson to The Associated Press Friday, saying the Navy asked him not to discuss the case.
But he showed an AP reporter and photographer a copy of his 1995 yearbook, where he said Anderson had drawn an elaborate sketch of a machine gun, and a Confederate flag, adding, "Have a (expletive) great summer. Let's overthrow the government!" He signed it R. "Za Savierski" Anderson.
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