Click photo montage for facts about Buford Rogers
FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack – or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home.
The FBI said “the lives of several local residents were potentially saved” with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm…
“The FBI believed there was a terror attack in its planning stages, and we believe there would have been a localized terror attack, and that’s why law enforcement moved quickly to execute the search warrant on Friday to arrest Mr. Rogers,” said FBI spokesman Kyle Loven.
He said the investigation is ongoing, and agents are looking at the case as one of domestic terrorism…
Montevideo Police Chief Adam Christopher said a homemade sign in front of the mobile home that bore the letters “BSM” refers to a local anti-government militia group called the Black Snake Militia, which the Rogers family started.
“That is not a large scale, nationwide group, as far as I know,” Christopher said. “I think it’s kind of them, and their family, and a few of their friends…”
According to a federal affidavit, FBI agents from the domestic terrorism squad searched the mobile home in Montevideo and discovered Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms. The affidavit said Buford was there at the time, and one firearm recovered from the residence was a Romanian AKM assault rifle.
In an interview with authorities, Rogers admitted firing the weapon on two separate occasions at a gun range in Granite Falls, the affidavit said. Rogers has a 2011 conviction for felony burglary and is not allowed to have a firearm.
Of the several flavors of outright crazy right-wingers clustered around profit centers ranging from the NRA to Fox Noise the militia-types are the most dangerous. Unlike true lone wolf terrorists, they feed each other’s paranoia constantly.
Just makes them all the more likely to start killing whoever they fear the most – this week.