Growing, lurking threat: “Paper terrorism”

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

How do you stop one anti-government extremist from coordinating a trillion dollar “paper terrorism” scheme involving a raft of false financial documents, or deal with another who sues prosecutors for allegedly conspiring against him by using poor grammar?

This is the question that state governments and federal agencies are faced with, ever since a surge of people who consider themselves "sovereign citizens" began acting on their belief that all aspects of law and government are illegitimate. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that in 2011 there were approximately 100,000 "hard-core" believers in sovereign citizen ideology, though it's a tough number to nail down because the movement is so disparate. For the same reason -- and because, by their nature, members of the movement don't believe in laws -- it's also tough to draft legislation to specifically target those crimes favored by sovereign citizens.

“Burn the houses down with the cops and their families inside”

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:51:00 +0000

"We have a plan: We're going to go to the houses of local cops and burn the houses down with the cops and their families inside," Schaeffer Cox reportedly said in August 2010, months before he would be arrested for plotting to kidnap and kill federal officials -- and just a few years before he would be convicted and sentenced to almost 26 years in prison.

Cox's sentence came down earlier this week, as part of the trial of Alaska Peacemaker Militia members, a right-wing group that was plotting to stockpile illegal weapons and take violent action against the government.

When Cox spoke of his plan in 2010, it was to Bill Fulton, an Army veteran and the owner of DropZone Security, an Anchorage, Alaska, Army surplus store that doubled as a bail bonds agency and tripled as a private security company. Fulton also happened to be working as an informant for the FBI. In an interview, Fulton described to Salon how he infiltrated the twisty world of Alaska's right-wing movement, passed along information to federal agents, and even got involved in a minor political scandal related to his security work for then-senatorial candidate Joe Miller.

Salon.com > Schaeffer Cox

Growing, lurking threat: “Paper terrorism”

“Burn the houses down with the cops and their families inside”