Possible domestic terror plot foiled; critics decry lack of official interest

By Scott Gold
Los Angeles Times

	William Krar
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It had. The package, intended for a member of a self-styled militia in New Jersey, had been delivered to the wrong address.

From that lucky break, federal officials believe they might have uncovered one of the most audacious domestic-terrorism plots since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Starting with a single piece of mail, investigators discovered an enormous cache of weapons in the East Texas town of Noonday, including the makings of a sophisticated sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands.

Three people — William Krar, a small-time arms dealer with connections to white supremacists; Krar's common-law wife, Judith L. Bruey; and Edward S. Feltus, the man who was supposed to have received the forged documents — pleaded guilty in the case in November. They are being held in a Tyler, Texas, detention facility and are scheduled to appear before a federal judge for sentencing next month.

What is typically the end of a criminal case may be only the beginning in this one. Some government investigators believe other conspirators may be on the loose. And they readily acknowledge that they have no idea what the stash of weapons was for — although they have tantalizing and alarming clues of a "covert operation or plan," according to an FBI affidavit.

"What was Krar going to do with this stuff? That's what we want to know — and we don't know," said Brit Featherston, an assistant U.S. attorney and the federal government's anti-terrorism coordinator in the eastern district of Texas. "There is no legitimate reason to have this stuff. The bottom line is that it only had one purpose, and that was to kill people. And it's very troubling that we have yet to figure it out."

Guilty pleas entered

Krar, 62, who lived in the piney woods of Noonday, a tiny community about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, pleaded guilty to possession of a chemical weapon and faces a possible sentence of life in prison. Bruey, 54, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess illegal weapons and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Feltus, 56, of New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the transportation of false identification documents and faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

According to the FBI affidavit, Feltus has told investigators he is a member of a group called the New Jersey Militia, which, according to its Web site, believes the federal government has grown too powerful and says it is "ready, as a last resort, to come to our nation's defense against all enemies, foreign or domestic."

It is unclear whether Krar or Bruey had any involvement with the organization. Neither representatives of the New Jersey Militia nor attorneys representing Feltus and Bruey could be reached for comment.

Tonda Curry, a Tyler defense attorney, represents Krar, who appears to have made much of his living, investigators say, by manufacturing trigger parts for .223-caliber Bushmaster rifles.

Krar, Curry acknowledged, is an "eccentric" who broke the law by possessing weapons he was not licensed to own, including fully automatic guns.

He has not cooperated with investigators, and Curry would not reveal details of her conversations with Krar regarding motives for possessing the weapons. She said, however, she has "never seen anything that indicates there was any kind of terrorism plot or any intent to use these things against the American people or the government in any way."

"He was not the type who kept these things at ready access. They were miles from his home in a storage facility," Curry said. "His home was not a bunker, an arsenal, whatever you want to call it, where he was ready to attack. These things were stored as collectibles."

The case began to unfold in January 2002, when the package was mistakenly delivered to Staten Island. Investigators traced it to a mailing and business center near Tyler, then to Krar and Bruey, who lived together in Noonday.

With Bruey's permission, they searched a storage facility the couple had rented.

Investigators found nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and briefcases that could be detonated by remote control. Most distressing, they said, was the discovery of 800 grams of almost pure sodium cyanide — material that can be acquired legally only for specific agricultural or military projects.

A powerful weapon

The sodium cyanide was found inside an ammunition canister, next to hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids and formulas for making bombs. If acid were mixed with the sodium cyanide, an analysis showed it would create a bomb powerful enough to kill everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility, investigators said.

Also discovered were anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-government books and pamphlets, according to the FBI's affidavit.

The affidavit included documents recovered from a rental car Krar was driving in Tennessee when he was pulled over by a state trooper in January 2003 for a minor traffic violation. Inside the car, according to the affidavit, the trooper found many weapons, including two handguns, 16 knives, a stun gun and a smoke grenade.

The documents were entitled "trip" and "procedure," and appeared to list rendezvous points in several cities. They also listed what appeared to be code phrases; some investigators say they believe the phrases could be used to indicate a level of awareness of law-enforcement officials or others.

" 'Tornadoes are expected in our area' — things very hot; lay low or change your travel plans," one document said. " 'Major thunder storms are predicted' — they are looking pretty hard; be cautious."

The clues, FBI Special Agent Bart LaRocca wrote in the affidavit, suggested an "involved criminal scheme which could potentially include plans for future civil unrest and/or violent civil disorder against the United States government."

The revelations — and unanswered questions — have made the case the target of the new, post-Sept. 11 politics of terrorism.

Critics of the Bush administration say federal officials and the mainstream media are suffering from tunnel vision — that they are so focused on international threats that they have failed to give sufficient attention to threats at home.

At most, the critics say, increased attention to this case could have brought more answers. At the least, they say, if the defendants in this case had been people with foreign background, or Muslims, Attorney General John Ashcroft himself would have announced the arrests and the guilty pleas.

Instead, details of the case were revealed in a half-page press release sent to local media. Officials say the case at one point was included in President Bush's daily security briefings, but it remains virtually unknown outside East Texas — even though, critics note, it represents an instance when federal authorities actually discovered a weapon of mass destruction.

People who operate Internet Web sites known as "blogs" have seized on the Krar case, and what they perceive as the inattention it received from the Bush administration and major media.

The fault, critics say, lies with an administration that adheres too closely to a script.

"If anyone wanted evidence that the 'war on terror' is primarily a political marketing campaign — in which war itself is mostly a device for garnering support — they need look no further than the startling nonresponse to domestic terrorism by the Bush administration," one blog, called Orcinus, said recently. The blog is written and compiled by David Neiwert of Seattle, a former journalist.

No political benefit

Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the school of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, and director of the college of communication's honors program, agrees with the criticism. He says that the Bush administration, to promote its efforts overseas, "needs a public that is afraid and sees these wars as justified.

"The primary justification is a fear of people 'out there' who want to come here and get us," he said. "Arrests of foreigners are very effective arrests to publicize. It has a political function. Domestic terrorism may be, in some ways, more of a threat. But there is no reason to publicize it. It doesn't have any political benefit."

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the observations about the Krar case are overly cynical.

"We don't spend a lot of time thinking about how we announce our activities," he said. "We base all our decisions on the facts and the law and we pursue all violations of the law vigorously."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company