Tuesday
26Aug
Possible Assassination Plot Against Obama
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 05:13CBS4 has learned at least four people are under arrest in connection with a possible plot to kill Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.
CBS4 Investigator Brian Maass reported one of the suspects told authorities they were "going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle … sighted at 750 yards."
Law enforcement sources tell Maass that one of the suspects "was directly asked if they had come to Denver to kill Obama. He responded in the affirmative."
The story began emerging Sunday morning when Aurora police arrested 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell. He was driving a rented pickup truck in an erratic manner according to sources.
Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas.
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A third man -- an associate of Gartrell and Adolph, Nathan Johnson, 32, was also arrested. He told authorities that the two men "planned to kill Barack Obama at his acceptance speech."
I find it interesting that some people are suggesting that "no connection to Obama" exists. I might understand such a position, were it not for the disguises, spotting scopes, and walkie-talkies. The hotel in question is close to the convention site; in fact, Newsweek's reporting team is staying at the same hotel. The confession from Johnson speaks for itself.
This comes on the heels of the "white powder" threatening letter sent to a McCain office by a prison inmate and a Florida man's assassination threat against Obama. Political partisans often refer to their counterparts as 'wingnuts' or 'moonbats,' but these are the true nutjobs.
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Reader Comments (4)
Why am I not surprised that meth was involved?
Yeah, I know...drugs, white supremacists (the CBS4 report mentions that at least one of those arrested has ties to supremacist organizations) and weaponry, what a surprise.
Maybe not so much?
Who can say? All I know is that it's pretty odd to have wigs (if that detail of the earlier report is accurate), scoped rifles, walkie-talkies and the like when one is staying at a downtown hotel. That isn't hunting gear (none of the hunters I know use spotting scopes or walkie-talkies), and there isn't any wild game that close to the Democratic Convention.
Yeah, they're all probably drug-addled, but I wouldn't write it off.