Showing that they can stop a domestic terror attack before it takes place, the FBI arrested today 23-year-old white supremacist Conor Climo. Tracking him down with an Internet sting, FBI agents set Climo up in a chat room, getting him to talk about his plans to attack a Las Vegas synagogue and gay night club. Drawn to white supremacist groups, the FBI tracked Climo on the Internet “communicating with individuals with a white supremacist extremist organization using the National Socialist Movement to promote their ideology,” the FBI said. A joint-terrorism task force investigated Climo since April, finding he communicated with Atomwaffen Division [AWD], a known neo-Nazi group. “AWD encourages attacks on the federal government, including critical infrastructure, minorities, homosexuals and Jews,” read the FBI’s complaint. AWD trains recruits to attack soft targets to promote a race war.
When 22-year-old Patrick Wood Crusius mowed down Latino customers at an El Paso Walmart Aug. 2, killing 22, injuring 24, the FBI and local authorities weren’t so lucky to intercept the domestic terror attack. Law enforcement officials found Crusius’s ranting on the Internet in a crudely written manifesto, rambling about Mexicans and border problems. Had the FBI combed the Internet more thoroughly, they might have stopped Crusius before he took an AR-15 assault rifle into Walmart, gunning down innocent back-to-school shoppers. Today’s challenge for law enforcement is to find needles-in-haystacks before, misguided ballistic killers launch their attacks. Climo found AWD the perfect fit for his twisted personality, looking, like most foreign or domestic terrorists, to murder innocent bystanders. Terrorists create their perverted internal logic and find weapons to carry it out.
Growing reports about the rise of white supremacist groups cater to disenfranchise youth, looking for a cause célèbre with which to attack. Climo found AWD the perfect fit, advocating mayhem against a host of government and minority groups, all with the intent of advancing the white race. “AWD works to recruit like-minded members to the organization, train them in military tactics, hand to hand combat, bomb-making and other techniques in preparation for an ‘ultimate and uncompromising victory in a race war,’” said the FBI. Every word applies to any domestic or Mideast terror group whose target are innocent civilians, creating mayhem whenever possible. Mideast terror groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda, hide behind Islam, where young, gullible recruits fall right in line with the goal of charismatic leadership to kill as many people as possible for the cause.
Tracking AWD’s chat rooms helped the FBI intercept Climo before he executed his sick plan to kill innocent civilians in soft targets. FBI, in connection with state and local law enforcement, need to ramp up Joint Terrorism task forces, especially to stop disenfranchised youth before it’s too late. For the victims of Crusius or Aug. 4 mass shooting by 24-year-old Connor Stephen Betts in Dayton, Ohio, the parallels run deep, with another youthful perpetrator buying an AR-15-type assault rifle and killing 10, injuring 27, at Ned Pepper’s Bar in Dayton’s historic district. FBI and local law enforcement didn’t stop Betts before he opened fire at another soft target. FBI officials used a confidential informant to entrap Climo, after officials uncovered his plot to burn down a Las Vegas synagogue. Climo spilled the beans to the FBI informant, admitting to preparing his terror attack.
Climo told the FBI informant that he was going to attack a gay bar on Freemont Street that “catered to homosexuals,” the same sick plan as 29-year-old Afghan-American Omar Mateen who massacred 50, injuring 53, June 12, 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. When former President Barack Obama was president, he had the unhappy task of sending condolences to families of victims, gunned down under his watch. But unlike Trump, Obama wasn’t blamed by every media outlet for inciting violence with his campaign rhetoric. No one second-guessed Obama, only turned their ire on the perpetrators and inability of law enforcement to intercept the mayhem before it occurred. There’s not one liberal politician or celebrity that hasn’t blamed Trump for the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Trump didn’t start mass shootings nor did he encourage it.
Searching Climo’s home Aug. 8, FBI officials found thermite, sulfuric acid, a soldiering iron, circuit boards, and bombing-making paraphernalia, ready to launch his grandiose last act. FBI and Las Vegas law enforcement officials turned up Climo’s plot before he executed it. Climo admitted, in the complaint, that he hated “African Americans, Jews and Homosexuals,” the typical targets of white supremacist groups. There’s virtually no differences from foreign and domestic terror groups, both seek to commit mass violence in the name of their causes. ”Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LBGTQ communities have no place in this country,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada Nicholas A. Trutanach. Proving they can stop terror attacks before they occur, the FBI and local law enforcement showed they can save lives.
