February 26, 2004 and After: Diversity Office in Arizona Bombed, White Supremacist Involvement Suspected

A cardboard box delivered to the Scottsdale, Arizona, Office of Diversity and Dialogue explodes when the office director, Donald Logan, opens it. He suffers severe burns and lacerations from the blast. His assistant, Renita Linyard, is also severely injured, and office staffer Jacque Bell suffers lesser injuries. Scottsdale police quickly call for help from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF), and veteran BATF special agent Tristan Moreland heads the investigation. Moreland believes that Logan, an African-American federal employee, was targeted for his job and his race. Moreland begins looking at white supremacist groups in the area. He learns that a national gathering of supremacists, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members took place a few months earlier in a park outside Scottsdale, an event called Aryanfest 2004. Two supremacists in attendance, Dennis Mahon (see 1973 and After, August 1994 - March 1995, November 1994, and February 9, 1996 and After) and Tom Metzger (see 1981 and After), attract Moreland’s particular attention. Mahon bragged at Aryanfest about his connection to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and Metzger is well known for his advocacy of “lone wolf” style attacks such as McVeigh’s, where individuals launch attacks without the overt backing or involvement of actual organizations. Metzger heads a white supremacist organization called White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and Mahon is a member of that organization. (WAR will later change its name to The Insurgent.) Metzger and Mahon have been friends for decades. Moreover, Mahon had left a voice message at the Scottsdale diversity office months before about the city’s upcoming Hispanic heritage week, a message virulent enough in its hatred and implied threat of violence to attract the attention of law enforcement authorities (see October 2003). Moreland decides to investigate Mahon and Metzger further, and the BATF learns that Mahon and his twin brother Daniel had been living in a trailer park in Tempe, Arizona, before the bombing. They left the area shortly after, moving to a trailer park in Catoosa, Oklahoma. Unwilling to allow the investigation to stall, Moreland decides to find a willing confidential informant to go to Catoosa and get close to Mahon. The subsequent investigation elicits evidence that Mahon and Metzger were involved in the Scottsdale bombing and other attacks as well (see January 26, 2005 and After). [TPM Muckraker, 1/10/2012]