A Michigan militia group spent the past two years plotting terrorist attacks, including the murders of federal agents and the bombings of highways and federal buildings, authorities said.
Three members of the North American Militia of Southwestern Michigan were arrested Wednesday. They were to be arraigned Thursday on firearms charges in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, assistant federal prosecutor Lloyd Meyer said."It's a fringe group, a radical group," he said.
One of the group's former members, Brendon Blasz of Kalamazoo, was sentenced to three years and one month in prison last August for making pipe bombs. At the time, a leader of the Michigan Militia Corps Wolverines, the state's largest militia group, said Blasz and about a dozen other people from the Battle Creek-Kalamazoo area had been kicked out a few years earlier for advocating violence.
"We thought they were a bunch of bad apples," Wolverines commander Lynn VanHuizen said then.
Arrested were Ken Carter, 47, and Bradford Metcalf, 46, both of Battle Creek; and Randy Graham, 41, of nearby Springfield.
According to a federal affidavit, an informant and later an undercover agent kept authorities informed of the group's activities. At one meeting in a coffee shop in November 1996, Carter allegedly discussed bombing the intersection of I-94 and U.S. 131 near Kalamazoo.
At other meetings, members spoke of assassinating federal employees and judges, the affidavit said. Alleged targets for possible attacks included federal buildings, power facilities, fuel depots and gas stations.
Authorities did not say how many people belonged to the group.