Informant Directed Security Fbi’s Man Chosen For Top Job With West Virginia Militia

The informant who taped fellow militia members allegedly plotting to blow up FBI buildings was chosen by the group’s leader to be its intelligence and security officer, the FBI said Thursday.

The informant, identified as O. Marshall Richards, made more than 200 tapes in which militia members allegedly identified three federal targets “to be neutralized,” Agent J.C. Raffety said.

Richards has been under FBI protection since seven men with ties to the Virginia Mountaineer Militia were arrested Friday on charges of plotting to blow up the FBI’s national fingerprint record center and two other federal buildings in West Virginia.

Federal magistrates Thursday ordered four of the men held without bond, ruling that they posed a threat if released.

Jerald Jones, the lawyer for one of the men, blamed the judges’ decision on national news reports surrounding the arrests.

“There has been so much scare-type publicity. I’m not sure the people are going to be able to get an impartial jury anywhere in the state,” Jones said.

In Cleveland on Wednesday, a federal judge ordered two other suspects extradited to West Virginia. An attorney for one of the men said he appealed the extradition order on Thursday.

The bail hearing for the seventh suspect, militia commanding general Floyd “Ray” Looker, was delayed after he requested a new lawyer because the wife of his court-appointed lawyer is a federal prosecutor.

“I would like to keep my distance from that opponent as much as possible,” Looker said.

Raffety said it was Looker who chose Richards to be the militia’s intelligence and security officer.

The men face charges including conspiring to make bombs, transporting explosives across state lines and conspiring to place explosives near the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg.