Man Who Reportedly Claimed Credit for Bombing Indicted for Letter Threats

An unemployed Ocean Beach man who reportedly claimed credit for last month’s bombing of the San Diego federal courthouse was indicted Tuesday on charges of sending threatening letters to a San Diego television station, a civil rights activist and an attorney.

Mark George Somes, 44, was not indicted, however, on charges connected to the Sept. 15 courthouse bombing, and a source close to the case said authorities do not believe he was responsible for the blast.

Somes, who claimed credit for the bombing in the name of “The Holy Church of the White Fighting Machine of the Cross,” was arrested Tuesday morning near his house, authorities said.

At a hearing later Tuesday in San Diego federal court, he pleaded innocent to three felony counts of mailing threatening letters. U.S. Magistrate Barry Ted Moskowitz set bail at $100,000.

At that hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry Burns said Somes confirmed writing the letters in two interviews with the FBI.

At a press conference announcing Somes’ indictment, federal authorities said Somes had taken credit--in one of the three letters--for the bombing in the name of the church. However, officials declined to link him to anything more than the three mailings detailed in the indictment.

“There are still a lot of motives and leads and possible suspects we’re looking at” in connection with the bombing, said Joe Johnson, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego office.

A source who asked to remain unidentified said later Tuesday, however, that Somes is not the focus of the probe into the bombing. Instead, authorities view Somes, who has been unemployed for 10 years, as “an opportunist,” the source said.

The bombing--the result of a pipe bomb placed on, inside or near a decorative railing near the Front Street entrance to the five-story courthouse in downtown San Diego--damaged the building’s two front doors. They have not yet been fully repaired.

There was no structural damage to the interior of the building. The explosion took place on a Saturday at 12:45 a.m., and no injuries were reported.

Two days after the blast, according to the indictment, Somes sent a letter to television station KNSD (Channel 39) and claimed responsibility for it in the name of the church. Johnson said Tuesday that authorities believe there is no church, that “as of now, it looks as if Mr. Somes and the church may be one and the same.”

In the letter to KNSD, Somes threatened “further action” unless all “anti-white” laws against “hate crimes” were eliminated and unless a $10-million lawsuit in Portland, Ore., involving white supremacist Tom Metzger of Fallbrook was halted.

In that suit, Metzger and his son, John Metzger, face civil charges in the 1988 beating death of a black man in Oregon. Trial in the case began last week.

Somes’ second letter, according to the indictment, went to lawyer Morris Dees, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., who is pressing the case against the Metzgers on behalf of an uncle of the slain black man.

In the second letter, also dated Sept. 17, Somes threatened Dees with physical harm unless he dropped the suit against the Metzgers, the indictment said.

The third letter, dated Sept. 10, was sent to Roberto Martinez, a San Diego community leader and Latino rights activist, the indictment said.

The letter said Martinez would be hurt unless he stopped “criticizing the Border Patrol” and white advocates for the “white Aryan race.”

If convicted on all three counts, Somes could draw up to 45 years in federal prison and $750,000 in fines, prosecutors said.

The case was assigned to Judge John S. Rhoades.