ULTRARIGHT GROUP CAUGHT WITH TON OF ARMS
At the Kansas City, Missouri, trial of Robert P. DePugh, national coordinator of the Minutemen, and two co-defendants, charged with violating the National’ Firearms Act, the cross-examination of witnesses has made for sensational headlines. Jerry Brooks, a former member who is testifying for the state, said November 9 that the group discussed putting cyanide in the air-conditioning unit of the United Nations building and also assassinating Senator. J.W.Fulbright, who has questioned the tactical advisability of committing American armed forces to a war on the mainland of Asia.
Meanwhile in New York, nineteen other members of the protofascist, stormtrooper organization, charged with conspiracy to commit arson with firebombs, are out on bail ranging from $1,000 to $7,500 each. According to the police, who had penetrated the organization, three squads had been set up to attack four targets on October .30. Queens District Attorney Nat H. Hentel identified these as the former Camp Unity: at Wingdale, N.Y.; Camp Midvale, riear the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey; a “pacifist camp" at Voluntown, Connecticut, and the Brooklyn campaign headquarters of. Herbert Aptheker, the well~known Communist party leader who was running for Congress in New York. Under guise of going on. a hunting trip, the squads planned © to raid the left-wing camps and raze- them.
Shortly. before ‘dawn on October 30, the police carried out statewide raids. These netted more than a-ton of weapons and explosives. The list included 125 rifles; 10 pipe bombs; five mortars; a dozen 30-caliber machine guns; 25 hand guns; 20: prass-knuckled knives; 220 knives of all kinds (hunting, throwing, cleaver and machete ); one bazooka; three erenade launchers; six hand grenades; 50 80-millimeter mortar shelis; 1,000,000 rounds of ammunition; first-aid equipment; chemicals for preparing bomb detonators, including picric acid; a great deal of radio equipment, including 30 walkie-talkies; short-wave equipment able to intercept police bands; transmitters with a 30-mile radius; 50 camouflage suits with boots and steel helmets;. some crossbows and garroting-nooses.
Attorneys for the defendants claimed variously that their clients did not belong to the paramilitary organization or were "gun collectors."
It was revealéd that the’ Minutemen had excellent connections’ inthe New York police. This is typical of -such Broups, as’ has been seen over and over: again in- both Europe and the United States. . - Koille.
In the stockpile of weapons, the detectives found ‘firebombs of the icind used in attacks on the headquarters of ‘the Socialist Workers party, ‘the: Communist. party and other organizations © in ‘the: past ‘period. oo
There are no signs. at present of a resurgence of fascism in the. Unitea States. However, the atmosphere created by the Johnson -administration in- escalating: the war in. Vietnam serves to encourage and incite vermin of. ‘this kind, fostering outrages like. 5 attacks on the headquarters of groups in opposition to the war and the murder of antiwar fighters and revolutionary socialists like Leo Bernard in Detroit...