Coast Guard officer ordered held in domestic terror plot
GREENBELT, Md. — A Coast Guard lieutenant who used his work computer in what prosecutors contend was planning for a domestic terrorist attack was ordered held for 14 days while the government weighs additional charges in his case.
Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, 49, of Silver Spring, Md., was arrested on gun and drug charges after federal law enforcement last week seized a stockpile of guns and ammunition from his basement apartment. Prosecutors said he amassed weapons and tactical supplies to prepare for an attack to further his white nationalist views.
“I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth,” Hasson said in one of his letters that contemplated launching a biological plague, according to court records filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland. The court filings say a draft email from June 2, 2017, with the letter was found in a “deletions” subfolder on a computer used by Hasson.
Hasson was an active duty member of the Coast Guard when he was arrested last week, Coast Guard officials said. He has been at headquarters in Washington since 2016, but no longer works for the agency, according to court filings and a Coast Guard spokesman.
In the Thursday hearing before a federal magistrate, Hasson’s federal public defender said the court filings are a “hysteric mischaracterization of Mr. Hasson,” who she said has no criminal record.
Hasson has not been charged with any terrorrelated counts but faces weapons and drug charges. But in court filings, officials with the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland outlined Hasson’s alleged plans for a rampage and argued Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.
At his detention hearing, prosecutors said Hasson spent $14,000-a-year on arms and equipment preparing for an attack and read manifestos of several mass attackers, including the Unabomber and Virginia Tech shooter.
Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and developed a hit list of targets, prosecutors said in court filings. It’s unclear whether Hasson had a specific date for an attack, but the government said he had been stockpiling weapons for at least two years.
When law enforcement raided his home Feb. 15, they seized 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
As recently as Jan. 17, Hasson developed a list of “traitors” and targets in a spreadsheet while reviewing various broadcast news sites from his work computer, court filings show. The list included what prosecutors believe to be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and presidential hopefuls Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Also mentioned were such figures as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Van Jones.
“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government said in filings this week
A Marine Corps spokeswoman, Yvonne Carlock, said Wednesday night that Hasson joined the service in December 1988, serving as an F/A-18 aircraft mechanic. His last rank in that service was corporal. Federal authorities said he left in 1993.
Public documents say Hasson modeled his plans after right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who in 2011 unleashed two attacks that killed 77 people in Norway. Hasson studied Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto outlining how he planned the Norway rampage, court filings say.
During a raid of Hasson’s apartment, law enforcement said they found more than 30 vials of what appeared to be human growth hormone. He also ordered thousands of tramadol pills since 2016, the government said. Breivik said in his manifesto that he had taken steroids and narcotics to help him carry out his attack, prosecutors said.