A terrorist targets liberals

Regular readers know I've already discussed ad nauseam the Bush administration's failure to take domestic terrorism seriously (and will have more tomorrow, I hope, on my current series discussing the broader ramifications and consequences of that). Some of you may recall that I've also repeatedly voiced concern that right-wing extremists may be planning violence against liberals this summer and fall and how it might affect the coming election.

Both of those concerns, it seems, have coalesced in the arrest last week of an Illinois man named Michael J. Breit for plotting the deaths of government officials:

Police came upon Breit after an anonymous caller reported a gunshot going off in his apartment Sunday night.

When officers arrived, Breit told them, "I screwed up."

He explained he accidentally shot off his AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle in his home, blowing a hole through his door frame.

Breit agreed to a search of his house and car, according to the complaint.

The search turned up several hundred rounds of ammunition, components for pipe bombs, shotguns, more than 700 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, a cannon fuse and a recipe for dynamite.

The search also turned up a list of federal officials, political and public figures with the word "marked," next to the names. Breit told agents it meant "marked to die," because the people were liberal, opposed to gun rights or opposed to the current government.

Police also found a note that reads: "I will die for my cause, for it is just. I won't put my hands up and surrender -- I will not rest till I purge these United States from the treasonist (sic) parasites."

What the Sun-Times story neglects to tell readers is that it appears that nearly the entirety of his targets were Democrats and liberals. That information comes from a news release from the Brady Campaign:

Federal agents say they recovered seven guns, more than 1,300 rounds of ammunition, pipe bomb making components and other explosives, a list of government officials and political and public figures with the word "marked" written next to them, and a written plan for 15 heavily armed men to kill 1,500 people at a Democratic presidential meeting.

Breit's library included The Turner Diaries, the anti-government cult novel that inspired Timothy McVeigh, and Guns, Freedom and Terrorism, the book authored by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, investigators said.

The latter text may not necessarily be relevant, though the title, obviously, points up the extreme irony of the situation.

But what remains especially disturbing about this case is that, once again, an obvious case of domestic terrorism has received so little attention.

Information about this case is nowhere to be found at the Web sites of either the FBI or the Justice Department -- though of course, both carry voluminous reports discussing threats from international terrorists. And of course, the FBI has a full phalanx of reportage on various aspects of "eco-terrorism," which is currently the agency's prime domestic-terrorism focus.

Even the Chicago Tribune carried only a brief version of the story -- even though last week, the same paper carried an in-depth report on domestic terrorism and the fact that these threats are ignored by media and played down by federal law enforcement:

With the nation focused on terrorist threats from abroad in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, experts wonder if the Krar case, which FBI agents discovered only by accident, could be a harbinger of homegrown attacks to come.

"All of this homeland security, all of the orientation of the government's war on terror is about protecting our borders," said Ken Toole, director of the Montana Human Rights Network, which monitors right-wing groups. "We're moving back into this period where radical right-wing activism is being dismissed as goofy and loopy, whereas the Al Qaeda threat is around every corner. But the right-wingers are much closer to home. And they are still there."

Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League, noted that criminal acts by right-wing extremists "remain at a very high level," including the slayings of three law enforcement officers last year.

Also unanswered in the Breit case is the lingering question that almost certainly would be raised were we talking about the arrest of a Muslim man: Is there any evidence that his plans to employ 15 other conspirators to gun down Democrats proceeded beyond the mere fantasy stage? As with the Texas cyanide bomb case, there seems to be relatively little concern about the possibility of active and uncaught co-conspirators.

As I say, I'll have more on all this soon.

[Thanks to reader Ann Salisbury for the heads-up, and to Jonas M. Luster for the first post I've seen on this case.]