Militia Members Targeted Founder Undercover Agent Says Suspicious Members Planned To Torture, Kill ‘Traitor’ Pitner

Several members of the Washington State Militia talked of torturing and killing the group’s founder and director as a traitor, a U.S. District Court jury was told Monday.

FBI undercover agent Michael German testified that he doubted militia head John Pitner, 45, of Deming, knew of the growing alienation among members of a militia cell infiltrated by German and an informant, Edwin Maeurer.

Previous testimony in the anti-government conspiracy trial of seven people, including Pitner, made passing reference to concern about what Pitner had done with $1,500 in militia funds from a garage sale and whether he had all the weapons and ammunition he said he had purchased.

In conversations recorded secretly by German, defendants Marlin Lane Mack, 24, and Frederick Benjamin Fisher, 61, both of Bellingham, talked of getting the truth from Pitner and then killing him to avoid the chance of revenge.

“How could you make him talk? He wouldn’t tell you. He’d go in circles. That’s all he does to me,” Maeurer said July 23.

“I could take that (apparently a knife) and cut that first joint off right there, and then I’d cut the second joint off … and I would just cut him until he was, you know, and if I got up to here, I’d use the ax,” Fisher said. “He would talk - believe me, he would talk.”

In a conversation four days later, Fisher said, “Hell, when you get someone like John, who to me is a traitor, he needs to be eliminated … and I want to know what he’s got before we eliminate him.”

Mack followed by suggesting “the silent weapon … the dart, little bit of cyanide.”

The conversations, often virtually unintelligible without transcripts that were distributed to Judge John C. Coughenour, lawyers, reporters and the six-man, six-woman jury, were played at the start of the third week of the trial.

Defendants beside Pitner, Fisher and Mack are Tracy Lee Brown, also known as William Smith, 55, of Seattle; Gary Marvin Kuehnoel, 48, of Bellingham; John Lloyd Kirk, 56, of Tukwila, and his wife, Judy Carol Kirk, 54.

All are charged in an 18-count indictment with conspiring against the government, and several also are charged with weapons violations.

The jury also watched dim, shadowy black-and-white videotape showing some of the defendants discussing land mines and incendiary and fragmentation grenades that German was offering for sale.

The devices had been neutralized and lacked explosive potential when he displayed them, the FBI agent testified.

German said he posed first as a dealer in stolen goods in a separate investigation in Bellingham, then was introduced by Maeurer to the militia members.

Under questioning from Wayne Fricke, Fisher’s lawyer, German said the only completed pipe bomb he obtained in the investigation was made by Mack and then only at the undercover agent’s request.

“He was the only one that had the willingness,” German said.