Racist Who Allegedly Threatened Obama Faces Gun Charges
A detention hearing will be held Monday for a self-described racist from Virginia who allegedly made threats against President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder before illegally taking possession of a machine gun.
Douglas Howard Story, 48, of Manassas, Va., was arrested Wednesday by the FBI in a shopping mall parking lot, after taking delivery of a semi-automatic AK-47 assault rifle that he had paid $125 to have converted to fully automatic, officials said.
At the detention hearing in Alexandria, Va., federal prosecutors are expected to argue that Story poses either a flight risk or a danger to the public, or both, and that he be detained in custody until his federal trial in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has worked for the Virginia Department of Transportation and lived in Virginia for several years, according to court documents.
Story, who was active on several white nationalist websites including Stormfront, Vanguard News Network (VNN), and New Saxon, has a long history of vocal racism.
He made national news in April 2010 when a photo of his pickup truck, its rear window plastered with a full-color sticker featuring a photo of the Twin Towers in flames and the slogan, “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11,” went viral, and viewers noticed that his custom license plate read “14CV88.” Fourteen and 88 are potent numbers on the racist right – the first a reference to deceased terrorist David Lane’s 14-word slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children”; the second a code for “H.H.,” or “Heil Hitler” (H is the 8th letter in the alphabet).
Despite Story’s protest that the numbers were references to his favorite NASCAR drivers and that “[T]here is absolutely no way I’d have anything to do with Hitler or Nazis,” the Virginia DMV recalled the custom plates. Reportedly, Story’s boss at the Virginia Department of Transportation forbade him park in the lot with the anti-Muslim sticker on his rear window.
In a November 2008 comment on Stormfront, where he posted as “Confederado,” Story describing his AK-47 as a potential “homeland defense rifle should I need to protect micelf [sic] and my wife from rioting neeegroes [sic].” The same month, he described the president as “brown-filth mulatto,” and wrote, “Now I’m not advocating violence against him, I’m just saying there are White folks out there that are none to [sic] happy with his ‘election.’
Though his work at the Virginia DOT required him to assist stranded drivers, the Anti-Defamation League reports that Story in 2007 wrote on a white nationalist website that, “if I see an accident involving a negro or other kind of brown filth, I just drive on by. Screw ‘em, let ‘em die.”
The FBI opened its weapons investigation last August after learning Story was posting comments on an Aryan Nations Web site and asking about how to convert a semi-automatic assault rifle to a fully automatic machine gun, court documents say. As the investigation unfolded, an FBI informant engaged Story in various conversations on white supremacy websites. According to an affidavit, “The conversations and posts were reported to the case agent and show the propensity for hatred and violence toward African Americans, Jewish Americans, other minorities and a number of political figures.”
The affidavit also quotes Story as having written, “I think there’s one way Obummer would be proven as a mere mortal … if someone puts a 30.06 round into the base of his skill [sic], huh ya think?” In a post referring to the attorney general, Story predicted, “Holder will likely be removed when the administration changes in 2012. Although, personally, I’d prefer removing him from office with a 30.06.”
In a later E-mail, court documents say, Story also boasted “that he was planning on ambushing and murdering any law enforcement officer that stops him on the street if and when martial law is enacted in the United States.”
The informant told the FBI “that Story believed martial law would be declared under various scenarios to include President Obama being assassinated.”
In March meeting, Story asked the FBI informant if he could help modify Story’s AK-47 “from semi-automatic to fully automatic.” The informant later introduced Story to “Ricky” who claimed to have been an armorer in the U.S. Marine Corps and could easily modify the weapon. In the conversations that were secretly recorded by the FBI, Story acknowledged knowing that possessing a fully automatic weapon that wasn’t federally registered was illegal.
After a number of follow-up discussions, Story met with “Ricky” and the FBI informant on May 9 in Chantilly, Va., and turned over his AK-47 and $125 cash to have it converted to full automatic, the affidavit says.
The FBI modified the weapon to full automatic and “Ricky” delivered it to Story on Wednesday in the Bull Run Shopping Plaza in Manassas. Story was arrested as he walked across the parking lot with his newly modified machine gun.
