Far-Right Texas Terrorist Planned Murder And Robbery Spree in the Name of ‘Liberty’

[DonViejo]

Caitlin Dickson

Recruiting militants via Facebook is an amateur move, but the arrest of a right-wing extremist is a reminder that most terror plots in the U.S. have nothing to do with al Qaeda.

Robert James Talbot, Jr. woke up on the morning of March 27 ready to carry out the plan he’d allegedly been concocting for months. He drove to a storage facility in Houston, Texas where he met the three other members of “Operation Liberty.” According to a criminal complaint filed against him, Talbot had recruited his teammates via a Facebook group called the American Insurgent Movement to help him rob armored cars; the first phase of his larger scheme to kill police officers and blow up mosques and government buildings. Talbot allegedly provided his team with detailed maps of the financial institution he wanted to target, and escape routes for best avoiding law enforcement. He put two Composition 4, or C4, plastic explosive devices in his black backpack and asked one of his team members to read a “manifesto” he’d brought with him.

“We must rebel. There is no other option,” it read, according to the complaint. “Blood and bullets are the only two things that will change this world, short of divine action.”
On his way to carry out the robbery, Talbot was arrested by an FBI SWAT team.
Unbeknownst to the 38-year-old Talbot, he’d been the subject of an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation since August, 2013. The people he’d recruited to be a part of his team were a pair of undercover FBI agents and a civilian informant.

While the words “terrorism” and “insurgent” often conjure thoughts Islamic extremism, the majority of domestic terrorist attacks in the United States over the past two decades have been carried out by right-wing radicals. According to data compiled last year by the liberal website ThinkProgress from the National Counterterrorism Center, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, right-wing extremists have been responsible for 56 percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots since in the U.S. the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. 12 percent have been perpetrated by Islamic extremists.

Over the next eight months, the FBI complaint alleges, Talbot set his plan into motion: He created a Facebook group titled “American Insurgent Movement” or “AIM.” He described it as “a Pre-Constitutionalist Community that offers those who seek True patriotism and are looking for absolute Freedom by doing the Will of God. Who want to restore America Pre-Constitutionally and look forward to stopping the Regime with action by bloodshed.”

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/01/far-right-texas-terrorist-planned-murder-and-robbery-spree-in-the-name-of-liberty.html

[JoePhilly]

1. I bet his facebook status said: "On a killing Spree!"

[riqster]

2. And ”Lol, totes Magotes!"

[shenmue]

3. Wow

Some piece of work!

[Shankapotomus]

4. genius

Post a Facebook page, lead them right to you. What could go wrong?

[justhanginon]

5. In hindsight perhaps waiting

for "divine action" may have been the the better of the options. He will probably now be given considerable time to ponder that.

[kelliekat44]

6. Damn that nasty government spying thingy!! nt