One of the biggest surprises – and announcements – from Mayor Tom Henry’s State of the City address had little to do with city government at all.An ATF raid on a local white supremacist’s home happened the same day as a pair of arrests and another raid connected to the investigation of a 2004 Arizona bombing.
Warsaw resident Thomas Metzger was greeted Thursday morning by agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as they served a federal search warrant. He was allowed to leave the house while they searched. He later revealed in a recorded telephone message that three of his computers were seized with books and address books, some of them going back years.
While Metzger was not arrested Thursday, two men long affiliated with Metzger’s organization, White Aryan Resistance or W.A.R., were arrested at their Illinois home for their role in a 2004 package bombing of a Scottsdale, Ariz., city office. The two men, Dennis and Daniel Mahon, both 58, are long-time associates of Metzger – linked to him on his own Web site and their involvement in W.A.R.
According to documents unsealed in federal court in Arizona, the Mahons conspired to mail the bomb to the Scottsdale Office of Diversity and Dialogue. It arrived on Feb. 26, 2004, and when staff opened it, it exploded, injuring two.
Since then, Dennis Mahon taught others how to dress to avoid law enforcement and how to build bombs, and the pair traveled to an Oklahoma gun show to buy bomb-making materials, according to court documents.
A federal search warrant was also served at the Missouri compound of Robert Joos, another known associate of the Mahon brothers. According to court documents, Dennis Mahon called Joos the morning of the Arizona bombing.
Undercover ATF agents were told by the Mahons of Joos’ involvement in the white supremacy movement as well as his expertise in bomb making and survival skills. Joos was arrested and charged with illegally possessing firearms.
J.M. Berger, a freelance journalist who runs the research Web site Intelwire, said it’s clear that the arrests of Joos and the Mahons are connected, and there is reason to believe the raid on Metzger’s home is connected as well.
“(The Mahons) and Metzger have been friends for years,” Berger said.
The arrests and raids also seem to be connected in the minds of Metzger, who linked the events on his Web site, and other white supremacists, who lamented the turn of events on a number of online forums and newsgroups Thursday and Friday.
In his new phone message Friday, Metzger said the Mahons were friends of his but said he could barely recollect the 2004 bombing.
And he is “sure that the Mahon brothers are smarter than to do something like that,” referring to the bombing, according to the recorded message.
