Texas Terrorism

I mentioned earlier a case that seems have not initially gotten the national attention it deserved, involving a bust of member of a far-right militant group in Texas who had prepared at least one cyanide bomb.

Orcinus (David Neiwert) provides a link to the new story in the New York Times on the case by Daniel Levitas, another expert on domestic far-right extremism. Noting that the Texas case potentially involves dozens of individuals, Levitas points out:

The Noonday [Texas] case shows just how serious a threat we face from domestic terrorists. Consider this year's other high-profile incident involving rightist causes: the arrest of Eric Rudolph, accused of bombing abortion clinics and the 1996 Olympics. During his five years in the wilderness, he was often viewed by the public and press as a lone fugitive. But law enforcement officials have linked him to two national movements: the Army of God, a biblically inspired underground network of anti-abortion extremists; and the Christian Identity movement, whose members believe that Jews are the literal children of Satan, nonwhites are sub-human, and that Anglo-Saxon Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

The examples keep coming. James Kopp, who was found guilty earlier this year in the 1998 shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian in Buffalo was also affiliated with the Army of God. Matthew Hale, leader of the World Church of the Creator, a white-supremacist group, was arrested in January in Chicago on charges of soliciting the murder of a federal judge. In February, federal officials arrested Rafael Davila, a former Army National Guard intelligence officer from Washington State; they say Mr. Davila and his former wife planned to distribute highly classified documents to white supremacists and antigovernment groups in North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.

And he questions whether John Ashcroft's Justice Department is giving sufficient attention to such domestic terrorists. Our "home-grown version of Al Qaeda," he calls them.