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US grown terrorismView MessagesViewing posts 1 to 15 of 15 messages posted.
Terror Made in the U.S.A. “Washington says it's at war with terrorists—and the countries that harbor them. But what about groups that plan violence from America's own shores? BY KAY JOHNSON GARDEN GROVE Ask Nguyen Huu Chanh about bombs and, for a second, a smile flickers across his face. In fact, bombings are one of the favorite topics—and hobbies—of this self-styled commander in chief of the Government of Free Vietnam. He readily describes the bombs his supporters threw at the Vietnamese embassies in Bangkok and Phnom Penh, and the one they claim to have planted in Hanoi's airport. Chanh's favorite subject, however, is the destruction yet to come. The next attack will be "a very important target" inside Vietnam itself, he says. "Our bombs use an electronic system, a new design," he boasts. "And I control the code." Government of Free Vietnam Cambodian Freedom Fighters LED BY: Green-card holder Nguyen Huu Chanh, 51 HEADQUARTERS: Garden Grove, California FORMED: 1995 MEMBERS: Group claims to have trained up to 100,000 supporters at secret bases along Vietnam's border AIMS: To topple Vietnam's ruling Communist Party LED BY: Cambodian- American accountant Chhun Yasith, 45 HEADQUARTERS: Long Beach, California FORMED: 1998 MEMBERS: Group claims to have 500 in America and up to 20,000 supporters in Cambodia AIMS: To overthrow Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, whom it calls a dictator Chanh, 51, is Vietnam's most-wanted terrorist, a globe-trotting rabble-rouser sought by police in his homeland and in the Philippines, where three of his associates were recently arrested with bombmaking materials. He may not be in the same league as Osama bin Laden, but his Free Vietnam movement, which has waged a low-level three-year war against the communist government of Vietnam, is suspected in half a dozen attacks on Vietnamese targets in Europe and Asia. What's most striking about Chanh is where he operates: from a suburban office complex in Garden Grove, California. Chanh immigrated to the U.S. in 1982 and, despite George W. Bush's war on terrorism, he feels no need to hide in his adopted country. But Chanh's California dreaming and Free-Vietnam scheming haven't gone completely unnoticed. Earlier this month, U.S. federal agents arrested Free Vietnam operative Vo Van Duc, 41, for involvement in a failed June attempt to blow up the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok with two fertilizer bombs. Duc was charged in Los Angeles last week with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction abroad and he could face life in prison. He could also be extradited to Thailand, where three of his accused accomplices in the attack are already in custody. Chanh says Duc was acting on his own. But in August, he openly bragged to TIME of having planned several past incidents, including one foiled in 1999, when authorities in southern Vietnam arrested 38 people with explosives and plans to blow up national monuments. A REBEL GROUP'S RAP SHEET The Free Vietnam organization has admitted to or been blamed for several attacks: 1999 Vietnamese police arrest 38 members and seize 37 kg of explosives in connection with plot to bomb statues of communist hero Ho Chi Minh and disrupt national festivals AUGUST 2000 Free Vietnam believed to be behind fire in Vietnameseembassy compound in London APRIL 2001 Homemade bomb explodes at Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh, injuring a guard. Free Vietnam says it was behind attack JUNE 2001 Three members arrested for allegedly planting two bombs at Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok SEPTEMBER 2001 Philippine police charge three suspected members for allegedly plotting to bomb Vietnamese embassy in Manila Hanoi officially welcomed Duc's arrest, but said it's not enough. Vietnam wants the U.S. to go a step further and shut down Chanh's group as part of its declared war on international terrorism. "The U.S. and all governments should have a consistent attitude to terrorist activities," Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh says pointedly. As TIME reported earlier this year, Free Vietnam isn't the only group of exiles accused of exporting terror from U.S. shores. In Long Beach, California, a storefront accountancy office doubles as the headquarters of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, where Cambodian-born Chhun Yasith is busy plotting to overthrow his home country's government. On the walls are maps with arrows and circles marking battle plans, and they're not just pipe dreams. Eight people were killed last November when CFF forces armed with B-40 rockets attacked Phnom Penh. Government forces repelled the attack. In June, 30 alleged rebels, including two Cambodian-born U.S. citizens, were given prison sentences ranging from three years to life for that assault. Last week 28 more went on trial. Yet, Yasith isn't discouraged and says his next coup attempt is coming soon. "We're going to take the whole country this time," he insists. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Yasith seems an unlikely guerrilla: he wears gold rings and, when not planning coups, he prepares neighbors' tax returns. Yet Cambodia takes the CFF very seriously and is demanding that U.S. authorities arrest Yasith—or at least make him stop. "The U.S. asks for help from everyone regarding terrorism," complains Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith. "But so far it has a two-track policy." Why has the U.S. tolerated these groups for so long? The federal Neutrality Act forbids conspiring to overthrow a friendly government, and Washington has diplomatic relations with both Vietnam and Cambodia; Chanh and Yasith could face three years in prison. But diplomats say that Vietnam and Cambodia haven't offered Washington proof that they are involved in terror acts. Their own admissions could be dismissed as mere boasting. The cold war may be over for most people, but the exiles say they still have "advisers" within the U.S. government. Yasith even claims to have had meetings inside the Pentagon. The State Department hotly denies that claim—and any link with the exile groups. U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Kent Wiedemann describes Yasith as "delusional" and says the FBI is actively gathering evidence against the CFF. So far, though, neither of the troublesome exiles say they're feeling heat. Yasith spends his nights making calls to Thailand and Cambodia, marshaling his "secret army," confident that U.S. authorities are winking and looking the other way. "They've never given me a red light," Yasith says. "That means there's a green light." But everyone's world changed on Sept. 11—and the trouble with green lights is they can always turn red. Do you feel that the USA led by BUSH is evil?” 12:58:01 PM 3/23/02 “im kinda burned out on these political threads.They just end up being flamefests. I guess its fun once in a while but basically were here to talk about the outdoors.” 1:57:34 PM 3/23/02 “Vietnam,Cambodia, friendly governments? Since when? Maybe you should ask the South Vietmanese.That's right,there isn't a South Vietnam any more.How about the Vietnam vets?I'm sure they could spread some light on the subject.It's a good thing our founding fathers aren't around,they might be aressted for terrorism.” 2:27:25 PM 3/24/02 “Yawn!!!! 8|” 3:11:35 PM 3/24/02 “Three people linked to white supremacist and anti-government groups are in custody. At least one weapon of mass destruction - a sodium cyanide bomb capable of delivering a deadly gas cloud - has been seized in the Tyler area. Investigators have seized at least 100 other bombs, bomb components, machine guns, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and chemical agents. But the government also found some chilling personal documents indicating that unknown co-conspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to be an advanced plot. And, authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation. <snip> While authorities work for a new break in the case, some counter-terrorism experts question whether the government might be overlooking dangers closer to home while fighting the War on Terror in the Middle East. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors domestic hate groups, says the number of openly violent groups dropped from more than 1,000 to about 100 after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing because of negative public sentiment. Groups that call East Texas home include the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and Christian Identity. In 1997, the Dallas FBI broke up a terror plot by members of the Ku Klux Klan to blow up a Wise County power plant. Former Dallas FBI Special Agent in Charge Danny Coulson was involved in the nation’s first stand-offs with domestic anti-government groups and mounted some of the first intensive domestic terror investigations. He cautioned that authorities should take care not to forget about domestic groups while concentrating on foreign ones. “It’s scary when you look at their capabilities,” he said. “Look at the vulnerabilities of our society. We don’t have to concern ourselves only with foreign terrorists, but we need to concern ourselves with domestic terrorists too. And these guys are very dangerous.” Full Story” 11:11:23 AM 12/04/03 “Holy crap! Why isn't this all over the news? I see the story first broke on the 26th!” 11:14:56 AM 12/04/03 “Hypothesis: Because they are white, not brown skinned terrorists.” 11:47:53 AM 12/04/03 “But the government also found some chilling personal documents indicating that unknown co-conspirators may still be free to carry out what appeared to be an advanced plot. And, authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation. C'mon! This has to be more important than the latest episode of Paris Hilton Does Cattle!” 11:57:25 AM 12/04/03 “Welp, they never caught the Anthrax person, what's to say that these morons aren't trying to start somethin' alla Charles Manson?!?!” 12:01:16 PM 12/04/03 “If you'd rather look at some crazy white men with buzzed hair cuts from northern Idaho than Paris Hilton, so be it. Some of us prefer incredibly easy stupid blondes.” 12:01:59 PM 12/04/03 “ Arms cache in Texas leads to convictions but few answers. Critics fault focus on foreign threats. By Scott Gold, LA Times Staff Writer HOUSTON — One evening two winters ago, a man in Staten Island, N.Y., absent-mindedly flipped through his mail. Inside one envelope was a stack of fake documents, including United Nations and Defense Department identification cards, and a note: "We would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands." 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 may have uncovered one of the most audacious domestic terrorism plots since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. Starting with a single piece of mail, investigators discovered an enormous cache of weapons in Noonday, in East Texas, including the makings of a sophisticated sodium cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands of people. 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. But 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 — though 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." 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, Featherston said. Bruey, 54, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess illegal weapons and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, Featherston said. 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, Featherston said. According to the FBI affidavit, Feltus has told investigators that he is a member of a group called the New Jersey Militia, which, according to its website, 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 L. Curry, a Tyler 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 any details of her conversations with Krar regarding motives for possessing the weapons. She said, however, that she had "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. The firepower inside shocked law enforcement officers. 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 only be acquired legally for specific agricultural or military projects. 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, antiblack and antigovernment 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 titled "trip" and "procedure," and appeared to list rendezvous points in cities across the nation. 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, wrote FBI Special Agent Bart B. LaRocca 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." Revelations, however, that many questions remain unanswered in the case have made it 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 backgrounds or Muslims, U.S. Atty. Gen. 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 was at one point included in President Bush's daily security briefings, but it remains virtually unknown outside East Texas — even though, critics point out, it represents an instance in which federal authorities discovered a weapon of mass destruction. Much of the criticism has come on Internet Web logs, known as "blogs." People who operate the websites, or "bloggers," 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 not with law enforcement officers, whom they believe prevented a deadly plot from developing. Instead, they say, the fault 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 non-response to domestic terrorism by the Bush Administration," one blog, called Orcinus, said recently. The blog, which uses a killer whale as its mascot and targets the nexus of politics, culture and journalism, is written and compiled by David Neiwert, a Seattle resident and former journalist. Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas in 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." Federal officials disagreed with the contention that their international investigation into terrorism had distracted them from domestic threats. "Certainly, our international anti-terrorism efforts are clearly the No. 1 priority," said Mary Beth Buchanan, the Pittsburgh-based U.S. attorney for the western district of Pennsylvania and the chairwoman of a committee of federal prosecutors that advises Ashcroft. "But domestic terrorism is also a part of that. As we've increased our efforts to find the sources of international terrorism, we are also stepping up our efforts in the area of domestic terrorism as well." 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 … vigorously."” 3:31:25 PM 1/07/04 “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 non-response to domestic terrorism by the Bush Administration. False, prima facie. To reduce one's examination of the motives for the war to one factor is ridiculous.” 3:41:07 PM 1/07/04 “Take it up with "David Neiwert", whoever that is.” 3:54:01 PM 1/07/04 “i bet you make all your backpacking posts at political websites, dontcha fiddleboy : P” 3:55:37 PM 1/07/04 “We need to invade and bomb the United States! They harbor terror groups! Love live George Hayduke!” 4:38:55 PM 1/07/04
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