ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140056
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTONO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
Seven men with connections to an anti-government West Virginia militia - including its leader and a local firefighter - were arrested Friday on charges of conspiring to blow up the FBI's new national fingerprint record facility.
The arrests were made early Friday after members of the West Virginia Mountaineer Militia are alleged to have begun assembling large amounts of plastic explosives, TNT and blasting caps, and also had gained access from a city firefighter to confidential blueprint maps of the new $200 million FBI complex in Clarksburg, W.Va.
For 16 months, the FBI ran a covert investigation of the paramilitary group, an operation that began not long after the Oklahoma City federal office building bombing in April 1995. Authorities described the alleged West Virginia conspiracy as a sign of continued fervor among some far-right extremists for attacking federal institutions and law enforcement agencies, despite the intensive backlash caused by the Oklahoma City attack.
The militia's leader, Floyd Raymond Looker, a Vietnam veteran, former state political candidate and real estate developer, has said in published interviews that the Oklahoma City bombing was the work of federal agents intent on blaming local militias and putting them out of business.
Federal officials, however, said the arrests are not an attempt to shut down individual state militias.
``The FBI recognizes citizens' rights to participate in militia groups,'' said John O'Connor, an FBI supervisor who oversaw the undercover investigation. But, he added, ``the FBI will aggressively pursue those who participate in criminal actions.''
Richard Baudouin, a spokesman for Klan Watch in Alabama, which monitors hate groups, said the 56-year-old Looker has in the past accused the government of secretly planning to set up concentration camps for American dissidents such as himself.
``The significance of this FBI center to these individuals is that they are obsessed with the idea of the federal government spying on its citizens and rounding up dissidents,'' Baudouin said. ``The FBI center becomes a pretty good symbol of that paranoia.''
The Criminal Justice Information Services Division complex eventually also will house other crime-fighting units within the FBI, including the bureau's National Criminal Information Center at the Uniform Crime Reporting Center. The center eventually will employ 2,600 people.
Looker lives in a small ranch home in Stonewood, which is just outside Clarksburg. He has maintained that his militia is not a hate group but is deeply concerned with government efforts to curtail individual liberties.
Federal authorities said Friday that the West Virginia militia was sophisticated and well organized, and claimed to have brigades in 37 of the state's 55 counties.
They accuse the defendants of assembling highly explosive material, buying and selling bomb components and specifically targeting the FBI center.
Along with Looker, also arrested was James R. Rogers, 40, a lieutenant in the Clarksburg Fire Department who is accused of giving the militia photographs of construction blueprints for the FBI facility. The blueprints were taken from the files kept at the Fire Department, and were supposed to be used only to help firefighters in the case of an emergency at the sprawling government center.
Also charged was Edward F. Moore, 52, and Jack Arland Phillips, 57, who allegedly manufactured and dealt in homemade nitroglycerin, C-4 plastic explosives and detonators.
The others charged are Terrell P. Coon, 46, James M. Johnson, 48, and Imam A. Lewis. They are accused of taking explosive materials across state lines from Ohio and Pennsylvania into West Virginia.
Summing up the case, O'Connor said: ``There was a plot. It was ended before it could be consummated.''
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by AP. color.by CNB