01-15-2004, 08:01 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: inside the Beltway, outside the loop
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Our (invisible) homegrown terrorists, cont'd.
Winchester [VA] Named as Site For Meeting of Suspects Quote:
Documents naming Winchester as one of 10 potential meeting places for suspected domestic terrorist conspirators were found a year ago, but most local law enforcement officials did not know about it until Thursday.
Federal officials first discovered that Winchester could be a meeting place for home-grown terrorists after a Tennessee State Police trooper found documents listing 10 cities along interstates in the eastern part of the United States during a January 2003 traffic stop.
The driver, William Krar, 62, of Noonday, Texas, has since pleaded guilty to a chemical weapon charge and is connected with illegal weapons and white supremacist and anti-government literature — and federal officials believe other conspirators may be at large, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The list in Krar’s car included Winchester and Roanoke; Harrisburg and Scranton, Pa.; Chattanooga, Bristol, and Knoxville, Tenn.; Jackson, Miss.; and Shreveport, La.
One year later, local law enforcement officials are in the dark.
"I have received no information from anyone prior to this that Winchester was a designated meeting area for terrorists," city Police Chief Gary W. Reynolds said on Thursday. "This particular incident, if true, certainly needs to be fixed."
Gary Sheppard, FBI special agent in Winchester, also said he did not know that Winchester could be a meeting point for domestic terrorists.
"This is the first I’m hearing of it," he said on Thursday.
The FBI office in Dallas led the investigation, said Lawrence Barry, chief division counsel for the Richmond Division of the FBI.
Though his division did not handle the investigation, information-sharing among law enforcement is supposed to have become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001, Barry said.
The government created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and tightened restrictions on travel and immigrants in an attempt to make the nation safer.
The department also instructed law enforcement agencies to work with each other and share information to solve terror-related crimes.
Barry does not know why law enforcement officials in Winchester were not told of the city’s appearance on the list. ...
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