WHITE DOMESTIC TERRORISM on 6 OCT 17 in North Carolina. Nothing from NOT MY pres drumpf/trump or NOT MY vp pence, no public congratulations to the citizens and law enforcement who stopped the attack, no condemnation of the attempted terrorist attack or of the white supremacist movement that inspired this attempted terrorism. From The Intercept and NPR.....
THE AIRPORT BOMBER FROM LAST WEEK YOU NEVER HEARD ABOUT
Following the Transportation Security Administration’s protocols, airport security allowed a bomb dog to sniff the bag for explosives and the dog signaled to the team the presence of dangerous materials in the bag. The concourse was then shut down. The street leading to the airport was shut down. And Asheville Regional Airport officials found themselves in a dangerous emergency situation.
What investigators eventually found in the bag was AN/FO (Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil) explosives that, according to the criminal complaint, have been used “in a number of terrorist-related incidents around the world. When AN/FO comes into contact with a flame or other ignition source it explodes violently. Nails or ball bearings are often items added to the device so as to increase the devastation inflicted by the explosion.”
In fact, sharp nails and bullets were found in this improvised explosive device. Whoever built it designed the bomb to cause horrific bodily harm. Before disarming it, authorities discovered that the alarm attached to it was scheduled to go off at 6:00 a.m. that morning just as a fresh round of travelers was scheduled to arrive at the airport.
The man who planted it, it turns out, openly admitted to authorities that he was “preparing to fight a war on U.S. soil” and that this bomb was but one part of that war.
Little Fanfare
I bet you never heard about it. I keep an eye on these types of incidents closely and I didn’t hear about it. Someone who follows me online who happens to live in Asheville sent me the story this morning — shocked that it hadn’t gotten any play at all beyond a few mentions in the local paper and some isolated pickup by a few national outlets.
As soon as I clicked on the article, it all made perfect sense.
The story didn’t go viral and Trump didn’t tweet about it because the bomb was not placed by an immigrant, or a Muslim, or a Mexican. It was placed there by a good ol’ white man, Michael Christopher Estes. Unlike the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, whose motive is still hard to discern, Estes wanted to be very clear that his ultimate goal was to accelerate a war on American soil.
Sorry if it sounds like you’ve heard this story before. I’m as tired of writing it as you are reading it, but you know good and well that if Estes was a young Muslim — hell, if he had ever even visited a mosque in the past 25 years — that Trump would be tweeting about him right this very moment to tout how essential a Muslim ban is for American safety.
A Muslim attacker’s mugshot would become a meme across the conservative media. Mainstream American outlets would be covering the heroic bravery of those who thwarted the terrorist plot. We’d all be seeing footage of the perpetrator being walked from the police car to the jail and from the jail to the court room. Out loud, people would talk and tweet about the man’s family and friends and networks — wondering where he was radicalized, and if anyone else feels the way he does.
In this case, though? Crickets. We hear nothing at all — almost exclusively because the man who planted an improvised explosive device, just like ones that have been used to murder and maim people all over the world, was white. His guilt starts and stops with him. His actions aren’t an indictment of his whole faith, political outlook, and race. White people aren’t, thanks to Estes, suddenly labeled terrorists or seen as a threat to American safety in the way that would almost certainly happen had it been anybody other than a white man.
This isn’t me calling for all of those things that happen to Muslims and immigrants every single day to now happen to Estes and white people all over the country. It’s me saying that the fundamentally bigoted double standard by which it is done to virtually everyone except for Michael Christopher Estes and other white men has to stop.
Top photo: A collage shows Michael Christopher Estes and a view of Asheville Regional Airport. (Photos: Google Maps, Buncombe County Detention Center)
Suspect In Would-Be Airport Bombing Nabbed With Help From REI
Someone left a bomb at the Asheville Regional Airport. That much was clear. The question was, who?
The airport in Asheville, N.C., serves tens of thousands of people every month. According to an affidavit, federal marshals called the FBI on Oct. 6 to report the presence of an improvised explosive device.
Bomb technicians neutralized the device, which was packed inside a glass jar. Bomb dogs indicated the presence of explosive material. Analysts determined that the bomb was powered by ammonium nitrate, packed with nails to serve as shrapnel, and set to go off on a timer — an alarm clock, minus its bells, set to 6 o'clock.
As for the man who dropped it off, FBI investigators had surveillance footage — a white male wearing black clothes, with a black cap. He'd walked in after midnight and left a bag inside the building.
They also found a brand-new backpack in the woods near the airport — REI's "Traverse 70" brand. Inside the bag were gloves, a fuel source, a roll of Gorilla Tape, and "what appeared to be an alarm clock bell," Agent James Anderson writes, "consistent with the bell missing from the clock" in the bomb. Plus there was a spoon — gray, polymer.
FBI agents also tracked down surveillance footage of a white male apparently purchasing some of those materials, as well as other bomb-making supplies, at a Walmart and Lowe's in Arden, N.C.
But he paid cash at both venues, and the FBI still didn't have a name.
Then they found an REI, an outdoor goods store, in Asheville where a man had recently purchased a new backpack. A Traverse 70. He also bought a spoon — gray, polymer.
There was no video footage this time. And again, the man paid cash. But, Anderson writes, "the individual ... used an REI membership number when paying."
An REI membership entitles a customer to 10 percent back on purchases every year. In this case, it also gave the FBI a name — Michael Estes. After releasing a still photo from the surveillance footage, authorities found Estes in downtown Asheville. He was arrested on Oct. 7.
Estes told authorities that he created the bomb and placed it at the airport but said he did not actually set it to go off, the FBI says.
Estes said he was prepared to "fight a war on U.S. soil."
The suspect has been charged with multiple federal crimes and is currently in custody.
For the first few days, this story received little attention outside of North Carolina. Now, it has been brought to the national spotlight, largely because Shaun King, a columnist for the Intercept, wrote about Estes on Wednesday.
King pointed out the particulars of the story — an improvised weapon, planted at an airport, by a man who said he was declaring war. King asked what would happen if the attacker were "an immigrant, or a Muslim, or a Mexican ... Mainstream American outlets would be covering the heroic bravery of those who thwarted the terrorist plot. ... in this case, though? Crickets."
Every year, law enforcement officers in America make multiple arrests over improvised explosive device plots or incidents in which no one was actually injured. The level of news coverage, as King notes, can vary enormously.
Here's a sample of such incidents from this year:
- In February, Adam Hayat allegedly made several explosive devices and left them at a hotel in downtown Denver, scrawling "explosives" on a closet door mirror. He was later arrested in Los Angeles. His federal case is ongoing.
- Also in February, a Florida man named Mark Barnett allegedly created improvised explosives to plant in Target stores along the East Coast as part of a profit-driven bomb plot. Someone he allegedly attempted to recruit to his plot turned Barnett into authorities and he was charged in federal court; his federal case is ongoing.
- In July, Luke Mullen was arrested after allegedly making bomb threats against the Colorado Springs Airport; police say he had four explosive devices and a machete inside his vehicle.
- Also in July, a blast outside the Bixby Air Force Recruitment Office in Oklahoma caused property damage but no injuries. Benjamin Roden, a former airman, was arrested and is facing federal charges in connection with the incident.
- In August, Elijah Blankenship in Ohio was arrested and charged with creating multiple homemade explosives. His arrest came shortly before an anti-racist vigil in honor of the victims of the Charlottesville, Va., attack, but court records don't indicate whether there was a connection to the event.
- In September, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced that Douglas Kennedy of Tifton, Ga., was charged with manufacturing explosive devices after a bomb went off in the parking lot of the Tift Regional Medical Center; no one was injured. Kennedy had allegedly constructed and detonated at least three other bombs, none of which hurt anybody.
- Earlier this month the FBI unsealed charges against three alleged ISIS supporters accused of plotting attacks in New York City in the summer of 2016. The alleged plot, which involved improvised explosive devices, was foiled by law enforcement, the FBI says.
In each of those instances, an apparent plot was never carried out to completion; if a bomb did go off, no one was hurt. None of those stories made headlines here at NPR.org.
Barnett's Target scheme, the Bixby recruiting station blast and the foiled ISIS plot were covered in many national outlets.
Hayat, who is of Pakistani descent, received relatively little coverage in the national press but was featured on multiple right-wing websites, including Breitbart News.
Other incidents, including the arrests of Mullen, Blankenship and Kennedy, were covered almost exclusively on the local level.
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