Jerry Varnell
US officials announced Monday the arrest of a
man who sought to detonate a bomb in
Oklahoma City reminiscent of the deadly 1995
bombing by anti-government extremist
Timothy McVeigh in the same city.
Jerry Varnell, 23, was arrested Saturday after
attempting to trigger what he thought was an
ammonium nitrate fertilizer bomb — like
McVeigh’s — outside a BancFirst branch in the
center of the city, according to a criminal
complaint filed in Oklahoma district court.
Varnell told an undercover FBI agent and a
cooperating source he wanted to attack the
government, with his initial target the Federal
Reserve in Washington, eight blocks from the
White House.
He also considered attacking data centers of
Facebook and the Internal Revenue Service
before settling on the bank in Oklahoma City,
130 miles (210 kilometers) east of his home in
Sayre, Oklahoma.
“I think I’m going to go with what the okc
bomber used,” Varnell allegedly told the FBI’s
source in an encrypted message.
“What happened in Oklahoma City was not an
attack on America, it was retaliation,” he later
said. “The time for revolution is now.”
McVeigh killed 168 people when he exploded a
fertilizer bomb outside a federal building in
Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. McVeigh
was arrested soon afterward, imprisoned and
in 2001 executed for the crime.
Varnell’s arrest was announced two days after
white supremacist and extreme-right anti-
government groups clashed with opponents in
Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman killed
when an extremist rammed his car into a
crowd of counter-protestors, and two police
officers died in a helicopter crash.
Varnell told investigators he supported the
far-right “III%ers” anti-government movement
and wanted to form his own armed militia.
But he told the undercover agent that, unlike
McVeigh, he did not want to kill a lot of
people with his bombing, but to “cripple the
government,” according to the complaint.
Varnell also told the agent he wanted a way to
communicate his message about the bombing
to prevent other groups like Islamic State from
claiming responsibility.
According to the complaint, Varnell and the
FBI agent built the bomb in a van, with “inert”
materials including blasting caps and
dynamite that were all supplied by the agent.
The inert bomb was parked outside the bank
and Varnell was immediately arrested early
Saturday morning after he tried to used a
cellphone to set it off.
Source: vanguardngr
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