KXLY news report, Jan. 21, 2011
The Seattle Times is reporting that the FBI has made an arrest in the thwarted bombing of an MLK Day parade in Spokane, Washington, and as expected by most observers, white supremacy was involved.
An FBI source in Washington, D.C., said one man was arrested Wednesday outside a home near Colville, Stevens County. Agents, including a bomb expert from Quantico, Va., were preparing to search a house where others associated with the suspect were living, the source said.
The suspect is believed to be affiliated with white supremacists, the source said....
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been investigating the attempted bombing. Most investigators suspected race and hate were the likely motives.
Frank Harrill, the resident agent in charge of the Spokane office, said "nobody believes that the timing and the placement of the device along the route of the [Martin Luther King Jr. Day] march was a coincidence."
The degree of sophistication of the bomb, laced with explosives and rat poison (an anticoagulant designed to make bombs more lethal), was a factor leading the FBI to investigate the case as domestic terrorism. As David Neiwert notes, the region is a hotbed of of racist extremism, and in this area, "no one was calling this an 'isolated event.'"