Bail Opposed in Alleged Bomb Plot Case

A handyman suspected of plotting to blow up two huge propane tanks near Sacramento possessed all the volatile ingredients of an “Oklahoma City blast,” a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

In arguing against bail for Kevin Ray Patterson, reputedly a member of an anti-government militia, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jodi Rafkin said he is too dangerous to be on the streets.

Patterson is among eight people arrested in Northern California and Nevada in recent days as part of a crackdown on hate groups on the eve of 2000.

Paul Seave, the U.S. attorney for a sprawling area from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, said law enforcement needs to be on alert “about potential terrorist-type crimes as we approach the millennium and as we go past the millennium.”

Patterson was arrested last week after he allegedly discussed a potential bombing of the California Aqueduct, a Pacific Gas & Electric station on California 99 and the two propane tanks in Elk Grove south of Sacramento, according to a sworn affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

Another suspect in the case, Charles Dennis Kiles of Placerville, is being held without bail. Both men were arrested on firearms charges.

Rafkin made it clear in court that at least Patterson will soon face more severe charges, presumably related to the bombing plot.

Rafkin described a chilling laundry list of bomb-making ingredients that she said could be transformed into a device similar to, although apparently smaller than, the one that in 1995 destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, killing 167 people.

Her list included fertilizer, blasting caps and anti-personnel devices found at Patterson’s home in Camino in the foothills east of here.

Rafkin also told U.S. Magistrate Dale Drozd that Patterson had a 25-pound bag of sugar that could, along with the other components, be made into a bomb. The suspect also had cyanide, nerve gas antidote and parts of a rifle grenade, Rafkin said.

There was also a small library of manuals and books, including a five-volume set titled “How to Kill.” Others included “The Anarchist Cookbook,” “Military Explosives” and “Mines and Booby Traps.”

“I’m not trying to outlaw reading,” Rafkin told reporters after the hearing, but “when someone possesses all the items you need to make a bomb . . . that’s very different than free speech.”

Patterson’s attorney, Dwight Samuel, would not comment on whether his client had the makings of a bomb similar to the Oklahoma City device. But he said that in the U.S., citizens are not supposed to be jailed “just because of their knowledge. He hadn’t taken any action.”

Samuel described Patterson as a handyman who is not a flight risk because he grew up in Modesto, has spent his life in the area and has never been convicted of a felony. Samuel is proposing that his client be released on a $125,000 bond secured by the home of Patterson’s mother.

Drozd is scheduled to decide today whether to grant Patterson bail.

According to a sworn affidavit in the case, Patterson and Kiles also may have planned an attack on a Reno clinic where abortions are performed. A Nevada couple, Ronald and Jan Brown, were ordered to appear Thursday before a grand jury in Sacramento looking into the plot. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office could not be reached to determine if the Browns appeared.

In an unrelated case, Carl Barry DeAmicis, 25, and Daniel Austin McIntosh, 19, were arraigned after being arrested in Sacramento on charges stemming from an attempt to firebomb a Reno synagogue Nov. 30.

Drozd ordered the men, who were arrested Wednesday, sent back to Nevada. A Nazi swastika tattooed on the side of DeAmicis’ head was visible as he sat in court.

They are the last of six people arrested in an alleged white supremacist plot that may have been just the first of several planned millennium-related terrorist acts.

Reno Police Lt. Jake Wiskerchen said Thursday that witnesses suggested to police there “may have been other plans by this group to do more things as we got closer to the New Year . . . We don’t know if they were just talking.”

Investigators do not believe the group is tied to three synagogue bombings in Sacramento. The prime suspects in that case are being held in the slayings of two gay men in Redding.