ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The trial against three Fairbanks-area militia members who are charged with amassing a cache of weapons and plotting to kill government officials will resume next week in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.
Jurors on Thursday heard a small sample of the 100 hours of recordings that federal investigators made, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported (http://bit.ly/Jnt2AC ). The centerpiece was a recording of a November 2009 speech that Peacemaker's Militia leader Schaeffer Cox gave in northwest Montana.
On the recording, the Fairbanks man is heard boasting of his firepower.
"We've got a medical unit that's got surgeons and doctors and medical trucks and mobile surgery units and stuff like that," according to the recording. "We've got engineers that make GPS jammers, cellphone jammers, bombs and all sorts of nifty stuff. We've got guys with ... we've got airplanes with laser acquisition stuff and we've got rocket launchers and grenade launchers and claymores and machine guns and cavalry and we've got boats. It's all set."
He also encouraged the Montana crowd to join him in ignoring gun registration laws. The intent, he says, is to have so many violators that the government couldn't prosecute.
"When everyone is on the list, no one is on the list," he is heard saying on the recording.
The trial for Cox, Coleman Barney of North Pole, and Lonnie Vernon of Salcha will last for another three to five weeks. So far, federal prosecutors have presented documents seized from Barney's home that lay out grievances with some government employees.
Envelopes, marked as "not delivered," were intended for two employees of the Alaska Office of Children's Services, which was investigating Cox after a 2010 domestic violence report. The letters allege the employees tried to kidnap his son, trespassed on Cox's property, and demanded $2 million compensation.
Prosecutors had an Alaska State Trooper read a portion of the militia's manual concerning use of firearms that listed job descriptions for a team of four as "full auto guy, grenadier, rifleman and sniper."
Cox's lawyer, Nelson Treverso, asked the trooper during cross examination to read the militia oath from the manual.
It ends with: "I will Demand liberty, Destroy tyranny, Discern justice, Defend all, Aggress none and follow others to the end."
"Defend all, aggress none" is part of the Alaska Peacemaker's Militia logo.
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Information from: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com