Robert Doggart
Signal Mountain Police used a ruse to help in the "safe" capture of Robert Doggart by the FBI, it was testified Thursday.
An FBI agent said they did not want to confront Doggart at his home across the county line in Sequatchie County because of his stockpile of weapons and ammunition.
A Signal Mountain Police lieutenant called Doggart on April 10, 2015, to tell him he wanted his input on a suspected shipment of illegal aliens. Doggart earlier made a complaint to the department about some vans he suspected were carrying illegal aliens.
Doggart eagerly accepted the offer and was taken into custody as soon as he got inside the police station.
He is standing trial in a case being heard by Judge Curtis Collier at the Federal Building. The government is expected to close out its case on Monday.
The agent said the FBI wanted to act quickly because Doggart was making plans to go to near Hancock, N.Y., to scope out the nearby Muslim community of Islamberg, which he feared was a terrorist cell. The agent said the FBI found no such threat at Islamberg.
A number of members of the Islamberg community are attending the trial.
The government continued playing a number of conversations picked up with a wire tap on Doggart's phone. In all of them, he told of his effort to recruit "gunners" to go with him to attack the town and "burn it down." He said he had been advised that the group planned to poison the water supply of New York City and also take 40 men in vans to New York City to murder "as many people as they could before they were killed."
Doggart said a raid on the town by a militia group "would be the most wonderful, generous thing we could do in our lifetime."
He told Larry Smith, who had run for Congress in Texas, that "the other militia will come active" if his group stepped forward and made "a preemptive attack against a clear target."
He said he expected that government forces would not oppose the effort and would, in fact, join in.
Doggart, who was 63 at the time, said he could be the master gunner. He said, "It is going to take 30 people to get me."
He told one expected co-conspirator, "I think you are an American patriot and a true hero."
Doggart, a former candidate for 4th District Congress, at one point talked of a possible run for president. He said, "If one million people given $20 apiece, we can win with that."
The government played a long tape of a lunch meeting at the City Cafe in downtown Chattanooga the day before Doggart was arrested. He again discussed his plans with a potential gunner from Peoria, Ill., from the man the government was using to infiltrate the group and with local realtor Ann McNulty, who gave the blessing at the start of the meal.