Attorney: Bomb Plot Suspects Set Up Prosecutor Says Seven Militia Members Sought Confrontation With Authorities

Attorneys for seven militia members and freemen accused of plotting against the government said Thursday that their clients may have strange ideas about foreign invasions and oppressive laws, but did nothing wrong and were set up by federal agents.

But a prosecutor said evidence of bomb manufacturing, illegal weapons sales and other activities will show jurors “an extremely violent reality behind the public face” of the groups.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Blair Dohrmann said the weapons were collected “for the sole purpose of confronting the people that these defendants consider the enemy - the FBI, the ATF and the U.S. government.”

The sharply contrasting views emerged in opening statements during the U.S. District Court trial of seven Bellingham- and Seattle-area people charged with conspiracy against the government and illegal weapons charges.

The trial stems from raids last July in which federal agents arrested eight men and one woman. Prosecutors allege they were members of the Washington State Militia or the freemen - anti-government groups that gained public attention after events such as the Ruby Ridge standoff in Idaho and the Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.

Another man and two other women were subsequently charged in connection with the case, although three defendants later pleaded guilty and one had charges against her dropped.

The remaining defendants are militia leader John Pitner, 45, of Deming; Gary Marvin Kuehnoel, 48, of Bellingham; Frederick Benjamin Fisher, 61, of Bellingham, the militia’s assistant director; Bellingham resident Marlin Lane Mack, 24; Tracy Lee Brown, also known as William Smith, 55, of Seattle; and Tukwila residents Judy Carol Kirk, 54, and her husband, John Lloyd Kirk, 56.

The charges stemmed from an investigation in which an undercover FBI agent and an informant participated in meetings with the defendants.

Dohrmann said that from June 1995 to July 1996 the defendants participated in scores of meetings that included not just heated anti-government rhetoric, but bombmaking and detonating demonstrations and target practice using silhouettes of federal agents.

The defendants, she said, were following the militia creed that includes such beliefs as “the greatest threat in the country comes from your own domestic government,” that gun control laws violate the U.S. Constitution, that federal agents are the enemy and can expect to be killed or injured if they confront militia members, and that agents in fact ought to be killed and not allowed to escape in confrontations.

“The evidence will show a direct connection between the creed of the militia … and the conduct that actually occurred,” she said.

Defense attorneys, however, portrayed paid informant Ed Maeurer and undercover FBI agent Michael German as setup artists who persuaded their clients to do things they would not otherwise have done.

Maeurer, a convicted passer of bad checks who had thousands of dollars in restitution to pay, “needed money - he needed a lot of money.” said James Lobsenz, attorney for Pitner, the founder of the Washington State Militia.

Having been a paid informer in other cases, Maeurer “knew he would be paid again if he came up with the right information,” Lobsenz said.

Among other things, Maeurer lied about seeing grenades and other military gear in Pitner’s garage, Lobsenz said.

At another point, he said, German went to the ATF to get weapons that he could have militia members convert into illegal, fully automatic guns. The ATF refused, saying the militia “is a purely defensive organization,” he said.

After Pitner stepped down as militia chief in May 1996, Maeurer, German, Kuehnoel, and Mack were most active, Lobsenz said.

“Basically, what you have from late May on, the FBI was running the Washington State Militia,” he said.