Salon.com > FEAR

Army veteran pleads guilty in Fort Stewart militia case

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:04:00 +0000

  Another former soldier has pleaded guilty for his role in an anti-government militia authorities say is responsible for the execution-style murder of two teenagers in the Georgia woods in late 2011.

Timothy Joiner, a 22-year-old Iraq War veteran, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Liberty County, Ga., to more than 30 charges of burglary, financial-transaction-card thefts, and violations of the Georgia Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act among other crimes, according to the Associated Press.

The AP quoted the lead prosecutor in the case, Isabel Pauley, as saying Joiner’s crime wave was an attempt to raise enough money to bail another member of the militia out of jail. Joiner was arrested before that could happen.

Eleventh implicated in Fort Stewart militia plot

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:17:00 +0000

As the investigation continues into a murderous Georgia-based militia group led by American military personnel who were plotting to overthrow the federal government, a former Navy recruit has become the 11^th person charged in the case that includes allegations of burglaries and car break-ins to support the group and at least two homicides to keep it secret.

It appears drug dealing should also be added to the list.

On Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, Georgia prosecutors said the former Navy recruit, Jeffrey Wayne Roberts Jr., 27, of Savannah, was being held in Bryan County after his arrest Tuesday on charges of illegal gang activity, including possession of cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy with intent to distribute.

The gang named in the indictment of Roberts was FEAR, a militia group that authorities say was based at the sprawling Fort Stewart
Army base in Georgia and is responsible for the December 2011 murder of a recently discharged soldier, Michael Roark, 19, and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York, a high school junior.

Fearing fear itself

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:00:00 +0000

I slept in the attic. I was put up there when I was 5 and my sister was born and she took over my room. The attic is a haven in a lot of ways — I am atop my family and can hear them moving below; I have a window seat and I can look down on the world, see the kids playing kick the can, riding their banana-seated bikes down the hill, ringing their bells, and I can watch the old people leaning into each other, walking hand in hand after dinner.

I soon realize, though, that the world doesn’t look back up. No one can see me. I have just seen “Beauty and the Beast” at Wolf Trap, the performing arts center in Washington, D.C., where I have also seen “The Music Man,” “Hello Dolly” and “The Phantom Tollbooth.” I loved these productions so much that I have signed up for a drama workshop here. But when it’s my turn to improvise onstage, I giggle with so much self-consciousness, I am told by the drama instructor to get off the stage. “You need to get into your character,” she says. “Who are you going to be?” Alas, I have always, only, been myself.

Karl Rove unleashes the swiftboats

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Karl Rove is partying like it’s 2004 — resorting to a theme he used in George W. Bush’s reelection campaign and reinventing it in a massive ad campaign being run by his superPAC, American Crossroads, that casts Barack Obama and the Democrats as soft on terror and evokes the fear that gripped the nation in the wake of 9/11.

The ad, “Act of Terror,” which started airing on October 18, is being heralded by some on the right as a stinging rebuke to President Obama’s foreign policy because it insinuates that Obama intentionally misled the American people in the wake of the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya in September.

It is based on one of the most dramatic moments of the second Obama-Romney debate in which Mitt Romney suggests that Obama purposefully put forth a false narrative to bolster the impression that he has been successful in fighting terror. It is artfully edited to omit the fact that moderator Candy Crowley stopped Romney in midstream during the debate and confirmed that President Obama did in fact use the phrase “act of terror” in a speech on September 12, the day after the tragedy.

Second suspect pleads guilty in FEAR militia murder

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:17:00 +0000

FEAR was afraid.

Hours after four members of FEAR, an anti-government militia largely made up of active-duty and recently discharged American soldiers, shot to death two teenage sweethearts in the Georgia woods last December, the group gathered around a backyard bonfire, desperately trying to destroy evidence of the crime.

“That didn’t work out so well,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Liberty County, Ga., Superior Court judge Monday morning as a former Army medic became the second member of the dysfunctional band of brothers to agree to testify against his erstwhile comrades in the murders.

The couple was killed shortly before Christmas, prosecutors say, to keep secret the group and its bizarrely grandiose plans to overthrow the United States government through a campaign of terror and political assassinations.