Robert Doggart, a 63 year old Christian minister ran for congress last year, and failed. What kind of bullet was dodged that day we will, fortunately, never know.
On April 10th of this year Doggart was arrested on charges of interstate communication of threats and attempted damage to religious property, specifically citing Islamic schools and mosques, after revealing to an FBI informant on wire-tapped phone conversations that he and his co-conspirators "will soon be faced with the fight of our lives. We will offer our lives as collateral to prove our commitment to our God.... We will be cruel to them. And we will burn down their buildings."
The target of his planned assault was Islamberg (self-named), a Muslim community in New York state. Doggart's own words pertaining to the operation revealed a startlingly well-planned assault: "The operation in mind requires about 20 expert gunners. Target 3 is vulnerable from many approaches, and must be utterly destroyed in order to get the attention of the American people.... If it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds." Two weeks after his arrest, he was released to home confinement on a $30,000 bond after pleading guilty to interstate communication of threats. He faces 0 to 5 years in federal prison, along with a possible fine of $250,000.
Needless to say, many are outraged that this man was not brought up on charges of terrorism, which is clearly what he was planning to do. Many examples of similar failed plots can be cited to demonstrate the hypocrisy of this verdict (Iyman Faris, Kevin James et al., James Cromotie et al., Sami Osmakac, Shahawar Siraj, and more), all of whom faced between 24 to 40 years imprisonment, and the fact that all of Doggart's co-conspirators remain free citizens is even more disturbing.
However, for a story such as this, the amount of exposure is what has seriously been called into question. Although it has been 6 days since the story surfaced, there has been an extraordinary lack of coverage from any Major American news outlet. Fox News seemingly couldn't spare any air-time, but released an article online, which our readers can judge for themselves. One major outlet published the story, although they did include some baseless accusations against the Muslim Community that Doggart was targeting.
The accusations were propounded in January during a news broadcast, showing suspiciously unverified "footage" of militant-style training, but none of the claims can be substantiated.
In a news report by Al-Arabiya, cameras were welcomed to film throughout Islamberg and found no sign of any "obstacle courses","bunkers", or "airstrips" which some trespassers claim to have seen. Instead, Muhammad Haseeb, a spokesperson for Islamberg, said to the reporter, "If you listen to the radios, the neo-cons, you know, the right wing radio stations, they actually have said that this is a terrorist camp.... so their provoking the so called "patriot" to move on his own because the government hasn't."
