FBI Seizes Nuclear Protester in Car Bombing at A-Weapons Lab

A self-styled nuclear protester was arrested Thursday on charges stemming from a car bombing outside the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory last November, the FBI said.

Stephen Michael Dwyer, 40, was arrested after leading FBI agents to a rural site in San Benito County where he had stored additional dynamite and other explosives, said an FBI agent in court documents.

The bomb, placed beside an employee’s car just after midnight last Nov. 28, demolished the car, damaged three others, broke dozens of windows and scattered debris for 400 yards. No one was injured.

A man called the San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press the next day and said he and his friend had carried out the bombing for the Nuclear Liberation Front.

“We’re real serious,” the caller said. “They don’t give no warning for nuclear wars. Why should we give a warning?”

FBI spokesman Charles Latting said Dwyer identified himself as a member of the Nuclear Liberation Front. Latting said authorities have never heard of such a group and do not believe it is an organized group connected to the peace movement.

“We’re thinking it’s him (alone),” Latting told reporters.

He said it was possible that others, fewer than half a dozen, were working with Dwyer.

He said Dwyer was born in Santa Monica, lives “all over” and is a minerals miner, mainly in Nevada. The court documents said Dwyer bought the explosives for the bomb at a shop in Reno two days before the explosion.

Dwyer was charged with constructing an illegal explosive device, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and transporting explosives across state lines, which is punishable by 10 years.

Wearing a T-shirt that said “Peace Sunday,” he appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate F. Steele Langford. He is being held until a hearing Tuesday on a prosecution request to jail him without bail until trial.

The laboratory 40 miles east of San Francisco, operated by the University of California, is a major center for the design of U.S. nuclear weapons and has been a frequent site of demonstrations.