FBI agents came to believe Schmidt had been planning his own string of racially motivated attacks on African-American and Jewish community leaders.
By A.C. Thompson
ProPublica (2/8/17)
The year was 2012. The place was Bowling Green, Ohio. A federal raid had uncovered what the authorities feared were the makings of a massacre. There were 18 firearms, among them two AR–15 assault rifles, an AR–10 assault rifle and a Remington Model 700 sniper rifle. There was body armor, too, and the authorities counted some 40,000 rounds of ammunition. An extremist had been arrested, and prosecutors suspected that he had been aiming to carry out a wide assortment of killings.
“This defendant, quite simply, was a well-funded, well-armed and focused one-man army of racial and religious hate,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
The man arrested and charged was Richard Schmidt, a middle-aged owner of a sports-memorabilia business at a mall in town. Prosecutors would later call him a white supremacist. His planned targets, federal authorities said, had been African-Americans and Jews. They’d found a list with the names and addresses of those to be assassinated, including the leaders of NAACP chapters in Michigan and Ohio.
But Schmidt wound up being sentenced to less than six years in prison, after a federal judge said prosecutors had failed to adequately establish that he was a political terrorist, and he is scheduled for release in February 2018. The foiling of what the government worried was a credible plan for mass murder gained little national attention.
For some concerned about America’s vulnerability to terrorism, the very real, mostly forgotten case of Richard Schmidt in Bowling Green, Ohio, deserves an important place in any debate about what is real and what is fake, what gets reported on by the news media and what doesn’t. Those deeply worried about domestic far-right terrorism believe United States authorities, across many administrations, have regularly underplayed the threat, and that the media has repeatedly underreported it. Perhaps we have become trapped in one view of what constitutes the terrorist threat, and as the case of Schmidt shows, that’s a problem. …
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Democracy Now! The Real Bowling Green Massacre And Actual Threat Of Terrorism By White Supremacists
Democracy Now! (2/10/17)
As the nonexistent terrorist attack manufactured by Donald Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway makes headlines, we look at an actual threat by an extremist in Bowling Green, Ohio. In 2012, an FBI raid uncovered a full arsenal of assault rifles, firearms, body armor and ammunition amassed by the suspect, who prosecutors later determined was planning to carry out mass killings. But the suspect is not a radical Muslim. He is white supremacist Richard Schmidt, who federal authorities say was planning targeted attacks on African Americans and Jews. Investigators found a list of names and addresses of people to be assassinated, including the leaders of NAACP chapters in Michigan and Ohio. Schmidt was sentenced to less than six years in prison after a federal judge said prosecutors had failed to adequately establish that he was a political terrorist. He is scheduled for release in February 2018. …
Read the Rest and 10-Minute Video
- Part Two Of Democracy Now! Report: Link to 19-Minute Video
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Missing KKK Leader Found Shot To Death Near Missouri River – The body of a Ku Klux Klan leader who was reported missing last week was found Saturday near a Missouri river, according to multiple media outlets. Frank Ancona, 51, who was an imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights near St. Louis, was found with a gunshot wound to his head, the Daily Journal reported, citing the results of an autopsy performed Sunday. … Read the Rest and 30-Second Video