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COMMENT: Due to the lim­i­ta­tions of time, we were not able to devote suf­fi­cient time to the fol­low­ing mate­r­i­al in FTR #967. For that rea­son, we present the arti­cles and dis­cus­sion below.

IF we were Don­ald Trump, we would Tweet the fol­low­ing about this dynam­ic: #Scary. VERY bad!

Some­thing to con­sid­er, as destruc­tive cyber­bombs are being pre­emp­tive­ly placed on net­works as a form of cyber-MWDs and the US set­tles into a ‘Cold War’ modal­i­ty with Rus­sia. If any skilled hack­er on the plan­et man­ages to hack a US nuclear pow­er plan, that ‘cold war’ might heat up pret­ty fast whether Rus­sia was behind it or not…especially if there’s a melt­down.

“. . . . The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Sat­ur­day that U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials have already pinned the recent nuclear cyber intru­sions on Rus­sia. . . .  Ana­lysts remain quick to tamp down asser­tions that Russia’s fin­ger­print on the lat­est attack is a sure thing. . . . Still, it’s a pret­ty alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion regard­less of who was behind it, in part because it’s an exam­ple of how poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble things like nuclear plants are to any hack­er, state-backed or not: . . . . Still, the source said a well-resourced attack­er could try sneak­ing in thumb dri­ves, plant­i­ng an insid­er or even land­ing a drone equipped with wire­less attack tech­nol­o­gy into a nuclear gen­er­a­tion site. Reports indi­cate that the infa­mous Stuxnet worm, which dam­aged Iran­ian nuclear cen­trifuges in the late 2000s, prob­a­bly snuck in on remov­able media. Once inside the ‘air gapped’ tar­get net­work, Stuxnet relied on its own hard-cod­ed instruc­tions, rather than any remote com­mands sent in through the inter­net, to cause cost­ly and sen­si­tive nuclear equip­ment to spin out of con­trol. . . .”

In that con­text, note that Devon Arthurs – a neo-Nazi-turned-Muslim–murdered two of his neo-Nazi room­mates back in May. Bran­don Rus­sell – Arthurs’s sur­viv­ing third room­mate, was found with bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, radioac­tive sub­stances and a framed pic­ture of Tim­o­thy McVeigh after police searched their res­i­dence. Rus­sell planned to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant

Rus­sell, we note, was in the Nation­al Guard. In the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, a book we feel is–like The Turn­er Diaries–is intend­ed as a teach­ing tool, oper­a­tional blue­print and man­i­festo, the

Ser­pen­t’s Walk: Fore­casts a Nazi takeover of U.S. in mid-twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, after WMD ter­ror, blamed on Rus­sia, dev­as­tates U.S.

Under­ground Reich infil­trates the mil­i­tary, gains effec­tive con­trol of the opin­ion form­ing media and, fol­low­ing a series of WMD strikes blamed on Rus­sia and a dec­la­ra­tion of mar­tial law, the Nazis take over the Unit­ed States.

Bran­don Rus­sel­l’s activ­i­ties fit very well into this sce­nario.

Sur­viv­ing Nation­al Guardsman/Nazi Rus­sell admit­ted to belong­ing to a group call Atom­waf­fen, which is Ger­man for “atom­ic weapon”.

Rus­sell, and the rest of Atom­waf­fen, received an enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment from bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer. The bril­liant Aueren­heimer is a skilled hack­er who MIGHT have the abil­i­ty to trig­ger a nuclear melt down some­day. Aueren­heimer wrote about the Arthurs/Russell/Atomwaffen inci­dent on The Dai­ly Stormer. Accord­ing to Auern­heimer, the two killed room­mates were “friends of friends” and the “Atom­waf­fen are a bunch of good dudes. They’ve post­ed tons of fliers with absolute­ly killer graph­ics at tons of uni­ver­si­ties over the years. They gen­er­al­ly have a lot of fun and par­ty.”

If any neo-Nazi hack­er is capa­ble of suc­cess­ful­ly tak­ing down a nuclear plant, per­haps as part of a larg­er coor­di­nat­ed neo-Nazi attack or or just on his own, it’s Auern­heimer.

Auern­heimer shares in the McVeigh worship,recently propos­ing crowd-fund­ing a McVeigh mon­u­ment:

“ ‘Who did it?’ zeroes in on Russ­ian hack­ing” by Blake Sobczak; E&E News; 07/10/2017

A sophis­ti­cat­ed group of hack­ers has tar­get­ed U.S. nuclear plants in a wide-rang­ing hack­ing cam­paign since at least May, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple U.S. author­i­ties.

The hack­ers tried to steal user­names and pass­words in the hope of bur­row­ing deep into nuclear pow­er net­works, in addi­tion to oth­er util­i­ty and man­u­fac­tur­ing tar­gets.

But the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, the FBI, sources famil­iar with the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and non­pub­lic gov­ern­ment alerts told E&E News that heav­i­ly guard­ed nuclear safe­ty sys­tems were left unscathed by any recent cyber intru­sions. Experts say the evi­dence so far points to a remote threat that, while advanced, like­ly could not have leaped from cor­po­rate busi­ness net­works to the crit­i­cal but iso­lat­ed com­put­er net­works keep­ing nuclear reac­tors oper­at­ing safe­ly.

Still, the ques­tion that lingers is, who did it?

Sus­pi­cion has fall­en on hack­ers with ties to Rus­sia, in part because of past intru­sions into U.S. com­pa­nies and for Rus­sia-linked attacks on Ukraine’s pow­er grid in 2015 and 2016.

Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices laid the blame for the grid hacks at Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s feet. Sev­er­al pri­vate U.S. cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies have also drawn links between ener­gy indus­try-focused hack­ing cam­paigns with names like “Ener­getic Bear” back to Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices.

The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Sat­ur­day that U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials have already pinned the recent nuclear cyber intru­sions on Rus­sia.

Ana­lysts remain quick to tamp down asser­tions that Russia’s fin­ger­print on the lat­est attack is a sure thing.

With­out men­tion­ing any nation-state by name, for­mer Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Ernest Moniz not­ed on Twit­ter that “these ‘advanced per­sis­tent threats’ have long wor­ried U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials — and recent events prove they are very real.”

Ref­er­enc­ing reports of the recent nuclear cyber inci­dents, he added, “These breach­es make plain that for­eign actors are look­ing for ways to exploit US grid vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. We saw this com­ing.”

If U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies con­firm Russ­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices were involved in the attack on nuclear plants, ten­sions with Moscow could esca­late. In a Twit­ter com­ment that attract­ed bipar­ti­san ridicule, Pres­i­dent Trump yes­ter­day morn­ing said that he and Putin had agreed to cre­ate an “impen­e­tra­ble Cyber Secu­ri­ty unit” to guard against hack­ing, only to appar­ent­ly reverse his posi­tion hours lat­er and sug­gest such an arrange­ment “can’t” hap­pen.

…

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D‑Wash.), rank­ing mem­ber of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources Com­mit­tee, reit­er­at­ed her calls for the White House to assess ener­gy-sec­tor cyber vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and aban­don pro­posed bud­get cuts at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. “The dis­turb­ing reports of the past 24 hours indi­cate that our adver­saries are try­ing to take advan­tage of the very real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of our ener­gy infrastructure’s cyber defens­es,” she said Fri­day.

Draw­ing from the Ukraine play­book

In 2015, a group of hack­ers set sights on sev­er­al Ukrain­ian elec­tric dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies. The intrud­ers broke into the util­i­ties’ busi­ness net­works with “phish­ing” emails designed to lure employ­ees into click­ing on a doc­u­ment laced with mal­ware.

From there, the attack­ers mapped out their vic­tims’ com­put­er sys­tems, even gain­ing access to the vir­tu­al pri­vate net­work util­i­ty work­ers used to remote­ly oper­ate parts of Ukraine’s elec­tric grid.

On Dec. 23, 2015, after months of wait­ing and spy­ing, the hack­ers struck, log­ging onto the oper­a­tional net­work and flip­ping cir­cuit break­ers at elec­tric sub­sta­tions. They suc­ceed­ed in cut­ting pow­er to sev­er­al hun­dred thou­sand Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens for a few hours in what became the first known cyber­at­tack on a pow­er grid in the world.

At first glance, the lat­est nuclear hack­ers appear to have drawn from the same play­book.

They used a “fair­ly cre­ative” phish­ing email to gain a foothold on tar­get­ed net­works, accord­ing to Craig Williams, senior tech­ni­cal leader and glob­al out­reach man­ag­er for Cis­co Talos, a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty research divi­sion of Cis­co Sys­tems Inc.

Instead of stow­ing mal­ware in the Word doc­u­ment itself, the hack­ers tweaked a con­trol engineer’s résumé into bea­con­ing out to a mali­cious serv­er via a Microsoft com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­to­col called Serv­er Mes­sage Block. The cyber intrud­ers could then swipe frag­ments of SMB traf­fic con­tain­ing the vic­tims’ login infor­ma­tion to set up an autho­rized con­nec­tion to the tar­get­ed net­work and move on from there, Williams explained.

The tech­nique points to “attack­ers who are ded­i­cat­ed and who’ve done their research,” he not­ed.

While Williams said Cis­co had detect­ed a vari­ety of ener­gy com­pa­nies hit by the phish­ing emails, he point­ed out that “the nuclear sec­tor is extreme­ly hard­ened.”

Get­ting blocked

Nuclear pow­er plant oper­a­tors have to abide by their own set of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty rules estab­lished by the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion. Fol­low­ing its most recent cyber­se­cu­ri­ty audits in 2015, the NRC report­ed “sev­er­al very low secu­ri­ty sig­nif­i­cance vio­la­tions of cyber secu­ri­ty plan require­ments.”

None of those vio­la­tions could have result­ed in an immi­nent threat to nuclear safe­ty, the reg­u­la­tor said.

The NRC plans to ramp up cyber­se­cu­ri­ty inspec­tions lat­er this year. The agency has declined to com­ment on reports of the recent cyber breach­es at nuclear pow­er gen­er­a­tion sites.

Nuclear pow­er com­pa­nies have had to account for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a cyber­at­tack on their safe­ty sys­tems since 2002, accord­ing to NRC guid­ance.

Elec­tric util­i­ties typ­i­cal­ly adhere to a three-step mod­el for pro­tect­ing their most sen­si­tive sys­tems from hack­ers. At a basic lev­el, this set­up involves an infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy net­work — such as a utility’s inter­net-con­nect­ed cor­po­rate head­quar­ters — and an oper­a­tional net­work that includes grid con­trol sys­tems. Com­pa­nies typ­i­cal­ly add a third lay­er or “demil­i­ta­rized zone” bridg­ing those two sides of the busi­ness, replete with fire­walls, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty tech­nolo­gies and oth­er safe­guards.

Nuclear oper­a­tors add at least two more lay­ers to that mod­el, draw­ing lines among the pub­lic inter­net, the cor­po­rate net­work, onsite local area net­works, indus­tri­al “data acqui­si­tion” net­works and, final­ly, the core safe­ty sys­tem over­see­ing radioac­tive mate­ri­als, based on gov­ern­ment guide­lines.

In the U.S., safe­ty sys­tems are often still “ana­logue,” hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been built in the 1980s or ear­li­er, before the recent spread of web-con­nect­ed tech­nolo­gies.

With­in that last, crit­i­cal zone — Lev­el 4 in nuclear indus­try par­lance — tight phys­i­cal con­trols pre­vent phones and USB dri­ves from get­ting in; and oper­a­tional data is designed to flow only out­ward through “data diodes,” with no poten­tial for online com­mands to enter from the pub­lic inter­net or even the site’s own local area net­work.

“Any­body ever reports that some­body got a con­nec­tion from the inter­net direct­ly or indi­rect­ly into the heart of a nuclear con­trol sys­tem is either full of crap, or is reveal­ing a mas­sive prob­lem with some par­tic­u­lar site, because there should be phys­i­cal­ly no way for that to actu­al­ly be pos­si­ble,” said Andrew Gin­ter, vice pres­i­dent of Water­fall Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions, which mar­kets one such “uni­di­rec­tion­al gate­way” or data diode to the U.S. nuclear sec­tor. “To me, it’s almost incon­ceiv­able.”

Mar­ty Edwards, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Automa­tion Fed­er­a­tion, who until last month head­ed a team of indus­tri­al con­trol secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ists at DHS, gen­er­al­ly agreed that a remote con­nec­tion would be near­ly impos­si­ble to achieve. “When we test­ed those kinds of [one-way] devices in the lab, we found that you couldn’t cir­cum­vent any of them, basi­cal­ly, because they’re physics-based,” he said. “There’s no way to manip­u­late that stream.”

One source famil­iar with nuclear infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy prac­tices, who agreed to speak about secu­ri­ty mat­ters on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said that “in order to have a cat­a­stroph­ic impact, you have to get by the human in the con­trol room” — no easy feat. “You’re talk­ing work­ers who are reg­u­lar­ly screened for insid­er [threat] indi­ca­tors and psy­cho­log­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty.”

Still, the source said a well-resourced attack­er could try sneak­ing in thumb dri­ves, plant­i­ng an insid­er or even land­ing a drone equipped with wire­less attack tech­nol­o­gy into a nuclear gen­er­a­tion site. Reports indi­cate that the infa­mous Stuxnet worm, which dam­aged Iran­ian nuclear cen­trifuges in the late 2000s, prob­a­bly snuck in on remov­able media. Once inside the “air gapped” tar­get net­work, Stuxnet relied on its own hard-cod­ed instruc­tions, rather than any remote com­mands sent in through the inter­net, to cause cost­ly and sen­si­tive nuclear equip­ment to spin out of con­trol.

But the source, who had reviewed recent DHS and FBI warn­ings about recent nuclear cyberthreats, added that there was no indi­ca­tion the actor behind it got close to nuclear oper­a­tors’ crown jew­els.

“To get around the data diodes and all the oth­er defens­es, it’d be unprece­dent­ed at this point,” at least from a U.S. per­spec­tive, said the source.

Would it even be pos­si­ble?

“Maybe if you’re Vladimir Putin,” the source said.

“Nation­al Guard ‘neo-Nazi’ aimed to hit Mia­mi nuclear plant, room­mate says” by Dan Sul­li­van; Tam­pa Bay Times; 06/13/2017

Bran­don Rus­sell, a Nation­al Guards­man and self-described neo-Nazi, had plans to blow up pow­er lines in the Flori­da Ever­glades and launch explo­sives into a nuclear pow­er plant near Mia­mi, his room­mate Devon Arthurs told police.

Pros­e­cu­tors on Tues­day played por­tions of a record­ed inter­ro­ga­tion Arthurs gave in the hours imme­di­ate­ly after he was arrest­ed in the killings of Jere­my Him­mel­man and Andrew Oneschuk.In the video, Arthurs offers a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the killings, claim­ing that Rus­sell, the sur­viv­ing room­mate, was prepar­ing to com­mit acts of ter­ror­ism.

“The things they were plan­ning were hor­ri­ble,” Arthurs said. “These peo­ple were not good peo­ple.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office pre­sent­ed the video excerpts in an effort to get U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Thomas B. McCoun III to revoke an order grant­i­ng Rus­sell bail, argu­ing that he pos­es a dan­ger to the com­mu­ni­ty.

Late Tues­day, the judge stayed the order. Rus­sell will remain jailed while the judge recon­sid­ers the issue.

Rus­sell, 21, faces explo­sives charges after bomb­mak­ing mate­ri­als were found at his Tam­pa Palms apart­ment May 19 dur­ing the mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion. Arthurs, sep­a­rate­ly, has been charged with two counts of first-degree mur­der in state court.

In the video, Arthurs sits beside a table in a white-walled inter­ro­ga­tion room, his right leg rest­ing over his left knee. He ges­tures with both hands as he casu­al­ly describes Russell’s neo-Nazi beliefs and sup­posed plans to com­mit ter­ror­ist acts.

He said Rus­sell stud­ied how to build nuclear weapons in school and is “some­body that lit­er­al­ly has knowl­edge of how to build a nuclear bomb.”

When a Tam­pa police detec­tive asked Arthurs if his friends had any spe­cif­ic ter­ror­ist inten­tions, he said they had a plan to blow up pow­er lines along Alli­ga­tor Alley, the stretch of Inter­state 75 link­ing Naples with Fort Laud­erdale.

He also said they had a plan to fire mor­tars loaded with nuclear mate­r­i­al into the cool­ing units of a nuclear pow­er plant near Mia­mi.

He said the dam­age would cause “a mas­sive reac­tor fail­ure” and spread “irra­di­at­ed water” through­out the ocean.

“Think about a BP oil spill, except it wipes out parts of the east­ern seaboard,” Arthurs said.

The detec­tive asked why they want­ed to do these things.

“Because they want­ed to build a Fourth Reich,” Arthurs said. He said Rus­sell idol­ized Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh.

“He said the only thing McVeigh did wrong was he didn’t put enough mate­r­i­al into the truck to bring the whole build­ing down.”

Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Josephine Thomas not­ed dur­ing the hear­ing that the Turkey Point Nuclear Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion is near Mia­mi.She also not­ed that when bomb squad mem­bers arrived at Russell’s apart­ment, their pagers alert­ed them to the pres­ence of “two radi­a­tion sources.” The crim­i­nal com­plaint says those were tho­ri­um and ameri­ci­um, both radioac­tive met­als. . . .

“Neo-Nazi-turned-Mus­lim kills room­mates over ‘dis­re­spect,’ police say” by JASON DEAREN and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 05/22/2017

A man told police he killed his two room­mates because they were neo-Nazis who dis­re­spect­ed his recent con­ver­sion to Islam, and inves­ti­ga­tors found bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als and Nazi pro­pa­gan­da after he led them to the bod­ies.

Devon Arthurs, 18, told police he had until recent­ly shared his room­mates’ neo-Nazi beliefs, but that he con­vert­ed to Islam, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments and a state­ment the Tam­pa Police Depart­ment released Mon­day. . . .

. . . . In the apart­ment with the vic­tims’ bod­ies on Fri­day, inves­ti­ga­tors found Nazi and white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da; a framed pic­ture of Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh; and explo­sives and radioac­tive sub­stances, accord­ing to the court doc­u­ments.

They also found a fourth room­mate, Bran­don Rus­sell, cry­ing and stand­ing out­side the apartment’s front door in his U.S. Army uni­form.

“That’s my room­mate (Rus­sell). He doesn’t know what’s going on and just found them like you guys did,” Arthurs told the police offi­cers, accord­ing to the report.

Fed­er­al agents arrest­ed Rus­sell, 21, on Sat­ur­day on charges relat­ed to the explo­sives.

The FBI said Rus­sell “admit­ted to his neo-Nazi beliefs” and said he was a mem­ber of a group called Atom­waf­fen, which is Ger­man for “atom­ic weapon.”

Major Caitlin Brown, spokes­woman for the Flori­da Nation­al Guard, con­firmed Rus­sell was a cur­rent mem­ber of the Flori­da Nation­al Guard. But she couldn’t imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide any oth­er infor­ma­tion.

Arthurs start­ed the chain of events on Fri­day when he held two cus­tomers and an employ­ee hostage at gun­point at a Tam­pa smoke shop, police said. He was com­plain­ing about the treat­ment of Mus­lims.

“He fur­ther informed all three vic­tims that he was upset due to Amer­i­ca bomb­ing his Mus­lim coun­tries,” police Detec­tive Ken­neth Nightlinger wrote in his report.

Offi­cers talked Arthurs into let­ting the hostages go and drop­ping his weapon, and took him into cus­tody.

While in cus­tody, police said Arthurs start­ed talk­ing about killing two peo­ple, and then he direct­ed them to a con­do­mini­um com­plex where the four room­mates shared an apart­ment.

“I had to do it,” Arthurs told police. “This wouldn’t have had to hap­pen if your coun­try didn’t bomb my coun­try.”

Inside the apart­ment, the offi­cers found the bod­ies of 22-year-old Jere­my Him­mel­man and 18-year-old Andrew Oneschuk. Both had been shot.

Police called in the FBI and a bomb squad, which found enough explo­sives to con­sti­tute a bomb, accord­ing to fed­er­al agents.

At first, Rus­sell told agents he kept the explo­sives from his days in an engi­neer­ing club at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da in 2013, and that he used the sub­stances to boost home­made rock­ets. The agents wrote that the sub­stance found was “too ener­getic and volatile for these types of uses.”

Rus­sell has been charged with pos­ses­sion of an unreg­is­tered destruc­tive device and unlaw­ful stor­age of explo­sive mate­r­i­al. Court records did not list an attor­ney for him.

Andrew Auern­heimer, a noto­ri­ous com­put­er hack­er and inter­net troll, wrote a post about the killings for The Dai­ly Stormer, a lead­ing neo-Nazi web­site.

Auern­heimer, known online as “weev,” said in Sunday’s post that he knew the shoot­ing sus­pect and both of the shoot­ing vic­tims. He said he banned Arthurs from The Dai­ly Stormer’s Dis­cord serv­er, an online forum, for post­ing “Mus­lim ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da” ear­li­er this year.

“He came in to con­vert peo­ple to Islam,” Auern­heimer said dur­ing a tele­phone inter­view Mon­day. “It didn’t work out very well for him.”

Auern­heimer described Him­mel­man and Oneschuk as “friends of friends” and said they belonged to the Atom­waf­fen group.

“Atom­waf­fen are a bunch of good dudes. They’ve post­ed tons of fliers with absolute­ly killer graph­ics at tons of uni­ver­si­ties over the years. They gen­er­al­ly have a lot of fun and par­ty,” he wrote.

“McVeigh Wor­ship: The New Extrem­ist Trend” by Bill Mor­lin; The South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter; 06/27/2017

In extrem­ist cir­cles, there appears to be a bump of inter­est in Tim­o­thy James McVeigh.

Yes, that Tim­o­thy McVeigh. The guy who used a Ryder truck to bomb the Alfred P. Mur­rah Fed­er­al Build­ing in Okla­homa City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 inno­cent chil­dren and adults and wound­ing more than 600 oth­ers.

His act 22 years ago, for those who may have for­got­ten, was the dead­liest ter­ror­ist attack in the Unit­ed States before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

McVeigh was con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism and exe­cut­ed just three months before those attacks.

His name and heinous crime are not for­got­ten, nor should they be, while there seems to be a grow­ing admi­ra­tion for McVeigh in some extrem­ist cir­cles. One mili­tia hon­cho even likened McVeigh to Jesus Christ.

Check out these recent men­tions of McVeigh:

In mid-May, police in Tam­pa, Flori­da, respond­ed to the scene of a dou­ble-mur­der involv­ing young, self-described neo-Nazis.

Bran­don Rus­sell, who shared the apart­ment with the mur­der sus­pect, was charged with pos­ses­sion of bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als and chem­i­cals, includ­ing ammo­ni­um nitrate – the same kind of mate­r­i­al used by McVeigh.

In Russell’s bed­room at the apart­ment he shared with the mur­der sus­pect and the two slain neo-Nazis, police found a framed pho­to­graph of Tim­o­thy McVeigh. Rus­sell, who’s in cus­tody, hasn’t pub­licly explained that fas­ci­na­tion.

…

More recent­ly, neo-Nazi Andrew ‘Weev’ Auern­heimer, who writes for the racist web site “Dai­ly Stormer,” said he was seri­ous in propos­ing a crowd-fund­ing account to raise mon­ey to build a “per­ma­nent mon­u­ment” in a memo­r­i­al grove hon­or­ing McVeigh.

“Think of it, a gigan­tic bronze stat­ue of Tim­o­thy McVeigh poised tri­umphant­ly atop a Ryder truck, arms raised as if to form an Algiz rune from his body, with a plaque that states the hon­est truth,” Auern­heimer wrote. “Noth­ing would be a greater insult to these piz­za-par­ty guard­ing fed­er­al swine than a per­ma­nent mon­u­ment hon­or­ing [McVeigh’s] jour­ney to Val­hal­la or Fólk­van­gr atop the piles of their corpses.”

“I am not jok­ing,” Auern­heimer wrote. “This should be done. Imag­ine how angry it would make peo­ple.”

…