Don't know if this is the same guy, but back in around 12 years ago or so there was a guy in Cincinnati that was arrested for possessing a semi-auto in Cincinnati (violating the recently passed city wide smei-auto ban). I belive this was the guy.
Anyway, it was really strange at the time as some of us pro RKBA types tried to assist in his defense. Then, out of the blue, the Secret Service showed up and claimed he was somehow involved (as an accessory; assisting a geta-way) in a bank robbery down south (GA; or SC or somewhere) and is extradited. Curious thing, we did some checking, and apparently his father worked for one of the Govt. agencies like the CIA /FBI or Secret Service (don't remember which). All I really remember is that it seemed really curious; almost like this guy was some kind of Fed Gov mole that had simply been sidelined temporarily by some local BS anti-gun ordinance.
Will follow-up with a couple friends today who have better memories then I right now.
Sui
A version of the "phantom cell" design was used by accused bank robbers Richard Lee Guthrie and Peter Kevin Langan, who were arrested in January and charged with a two-year string of 18 bank robberies in seven states. Guthrie and Langan claimed to belong to an underground network called the "Aryan Republican Army." "If you ever have studied the IRA [Irish Republican Army], you will understand more about ... guerrilla organization," Guthrie told reporters from jail. "You will understand what is eventually coming to this country."
Guthrie also claimed that an April 1st bank robbery in Spokane, Washington was the work of a "phantom cell." The robbers, who were photographed wearing fatigues, left behind a note claiming to belong to the "Phineas Priesthood," a title conferred upon Aryan enforcers of "racial purity." As a diversion, the robbers detonated a pipe bomb at offices of the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper shortly before raiding the bank. "That was one of the cell groups," Guthrie told reporters. "I recognized it. All the patterns were correct."
To some, it will seem curious that members of a secretive underground movement would discuss their tactics so freely with a hostile press. But the case of Guthrie and Langan is fraught with such oddities. According to the Los Angeles Times, Richard Guthrie has been under Secret Service scrutiny since 1991, when he allegedly threatened then-President George Bush. To keep tabs on Guthrie, federal agents recruited a close friend to act as an informant -- none other than Peter Langan, whom the feds sprung from a Georgia jail cell in 1993. At the time, Langan was awaiting trial for robbery.
Guthrie is a court-martialed former sailor who left the Navy in 1983 after an unsuccessful attempt to join the elite Navy SEALs. Langan, whose father was a CIA officer, has listed his occupation as "revolutionary" on financial affidavits. In the apartment the duo rented in Columbus, Ohio, investigators found pipe bombs, handguns, police uniforms, wigs, and a self-produced videotape entitled The Aryan Republican Army Presents: The Armed Struggle Underground. A masked figure in the video describes the group's objectives: "Eliminate the government, from the federal government to the county seats. Exterminate Hymie [a derogatory reference to Jews]. Repatriate all non-whites to their homes. Return the country to the Bible...."
Scripted Role?
Although the press has had access to Guthrie, Langan is being held in isolation at an undisclosed location. He narrowly missed death in the gun battle that took place during his January 18th arrest, when one of the shots fired at him by federal agents grazed his scalp. According to his attorney, Langan believes that his arrest was actually an assassination attempt and that his earlier dealings with the feds have led to his present problems. Though this contention is entirely self-serving, the accumulated oddities in the matter of Guthrie and Langan might reasonably provoke the suspicion that they were playing a scripted role.
The robberies for which Guthrie and Langan stand accused netted an estimated $500,000, at least half of which is believed to have been funneled to remnants of the "Order," a terrorist offshoot of the Aryan Nations which conducted its own campaign of robbery, counterfeiting, and murder in the mid-1980s. Robert Matthews, who organized and led the Order, perished in a standoff with federal officials on Washington's Whidbey Island in December 1984.
And if the U.S. government was allowed to get away with what happened at Waco and Ruby Ridge, there was an imminent threat to the lives of gun owners, McVeigh said. "I would have no problem standing up at trial and admitting [the bombing], saying, 'This was a necessity,'" McVeigh said.Excerpted from McVeigh's book: An American Terrorist", pg 286But Jones wouldn't bite.
His responsibility was to give McVeigh the best possible defense, not a forum for his political views. He told McVeigh they would have to fight the charge, to force the government to prove McVeigh had bombed the building, and poke what holes they could in the evidence.
Furthermore, Jones simply did not believe MeVeigh's contention that he acted alone on April 19, 1995. Jones was convinced there was a much bigger conspiracy - one he imagined might well have involved international connections. He did not believe that one former Amy sergeant, with limited experience in explosives, could have pulled off everything McVeigh claimed, with only minimal assistance. McVeigh never wavered from his story: he alone drove the truck bomb to Oklahoma City, parked it in front of the building, and lit the fuses. And he alone made the decision to bomb the building during daylight hours, when it was full of people. Yet Jones seemed to think that McVeigh was sacrificing himself to protect others.
"There was no big conspiracy," McVeigh said.
"It was mostly me. The few friends [Nichols, Fortier]] who helped me were acting under duress, and none of them had any control over when I was going to blow up the Murrah Building."
Nevertheless, at various times Jones tried to link the bombing to associates of Terry Nichols in the Philippines; to Osama bin Laden and other Arab terrorists; to a German descendent of a Nazi Party leader; to neo-Nazis in Great Britain; to Rarnzi Yousef, mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing; and to associates of a white separatist group in the Oklahoma compound Elohim City.
All nonsense, McVeigh said.
But Jones was convinced that the FBI had never really investigated the bombing thoroughly, and he was determined to crack open a conspiracy. The lawyer traveled to the Philippines, trying to prove that Nichols had met with terrorists there. He flew to Israel to learn about Arab terrorists, and to Great Britain to discuss the Oklahoma City bombing with experts on the Irish Republican Army. Jones hired a Harvard professor, an expert on Arab terrorists, to work with the defense team.
The June 24 interview lasted a little over an hour, and the questioning was limited to issues outside the bombing evidence. McVeigh spoke with pride about his Army record, denied speculation that his parents' divorce had ruined his life, and also denied allegations that he had belonged to a militia group in Michigan.and - Oklahoma Jones maintains his 'fantasy' about a 'conspiracy' in direct contradiction to McVeigh's revelations ...Despite all the restrictions on the interview, Hackworth did manage to become the first journalist to ask McVeigh, point-blank and on-record, whether he bombed the Murrah Building.
"This is the question that everyone wants to know: did you do it?" Hackworth asked.
"The only way we can really answer that is we are going to plead not guilty," McVeigh said.
Hackworth pressed the issue.
"But you've got a chance right now to say, 'Hell, no!'" he said.
"We can't do that," McVeigh said.
"And if he says, 'Hell, no!' " Jones interjected, "the government isn't going to just say, 'Well, okay, that settles that.' "
It turned MeVeighs stomach to dodge Hackworth's question [McVeigh wanted to confess he did it himself]. It was just another missed opportunity to tell his story, to get his message out. But McVeigh kept his silence, much to his frustration.
The feds hadn't come up with any evidence of a wide-ranging conspiracy, but that did not stop the lawyer McVeigh sarcastically called "Sherlock Jones" from searching for one.Jones was convinced that federal agents hadn't done enough to explore Elohim City, the white separatist group whose members lived in trailers in northern Oklahoma. Jones learned that Carol Howe, a former undercover informant for the ATF, told the feds that two men who frequented Elohim City had talked about bombing a federal building.
Jones alleged the two men - Dennis Mahon, a former KKK leader, from Tulsa, and Andreas Strassmeir, a German citizen whose grandfather helped form the original Nazi party - had had something to do with the bombing. But McVeigh denied the story. Yes, he admitted, he had met Strassmeir at a gun show in Tulsa; he had traded him a pair of military long underwear for a dagger. They had even discussed some political issues. But Strassmeir had no role in the bombing, and neither did Mahon, whom McVeigh said he'd never met.
Jones and the defense team maintained their skepticism about McVeigh's claims, especially after they gave McVeigh a polygraph test to examine the truthfulness of his statements about the crime.
The polygraph examiner found that "McVeigh was being truthful" ...