CLEVELAND -- Frederick Thomas is a man of clear loyalties. In his yard, deep in the woods of White County, a yellow flag with the image of a snake warns: “Don’t Tread On Me.” Nearby, affixed to the wall of his imposing wood home, a sign proclaims: “Frank Sinatra Fan Parking Only.”
So, which is he? An ordinary American of advancing years who calls his Sinatra-loving wife of 51 years each night from jail to say he misses her? Or the angry, alienated man who emerges from federal affidavits, his own heated rhetoric online and the pages of a novel he allegedly took as a blueprint for revolt?
One thing is certain -- until last week, local officials had no reason to suspect him of leading a plot to assassinate federal officials, blow up buildings or murder innocent Georgians with deadly nerve toxins.
“He was unknown to me,” said White County Sheriff Neal Walden, who has held the post for 30 years.
Thomas, 73, was known, however, on various online forums and blogs devoted to railing against perceived federal misdeeds. Mark Pitcavage, who tracks extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League, has identified a number of posts as authored by Thomas, often under the pseudonyms Ahab and Ahab627.
In them, Thomas broadcast his determination to resist a government of “the Obummer,” which he accused of destroying the Constitution.
“Most of my adult life has been spent in service to America, and here in the twilight of my years I find that my sacrifice and the blood I’ve shed for this country has led to the enslavement of me and mine,” he wrote in January 2009 on a forum maintained by the Militia of Georgia.
“I’ve decided I can sit idly by no longer, and so I freely join with you to do something about this intolerable situation.”
Charlotte Thomas -- who has decorated their Cleveland home with all kinds of Sinatra memorabilia -- doesn’t deny that her husband likes to talk. “He’s very assertive, very confident,” she said in an interview Monday with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But the talk is just talk, she said “His friends would come up and they would [BS]. . . . My husband wouldn’t kill a flea.”
He does collect guns, she said, but all of the dozen or so he owns are legally licensed.
In any case, she said, he’s too frail to be a threat to anyone. He’s under the care of a kidney specialist, and he had surgery in February to remove a mass from his right lung.
The following month, according to an affidavit filed in federal court, Thomas was plotting murder with the three men charged along with him, all residents of Toccoa: Dan Roberts, 67; Ray H. Adams, 55; Samuel J. Crump, 68.
At that meeting, which was among the first of several recorded by an FBI informant, Thomas reportedly announced: “There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly highly illegal. Murder.”
It’s a scenario that could have come straight from the pages of the online novel “Absolved,” by Mike Vanderboegh, which, according to federal agents, Thomas often quoted to his alleged co-conspirators.
One chapter begins:
“Phil Gordon felt old, sick, tired and cranky. Cancer did that to you … But now, at the end of his life, he wasn’t afraid of the thugs who had targeted him . . .
“He had known that that they would get around to him sooner or later. He’d run his mouth too much. . . .
“ ‘Now would be a good time,’ Phil whispered in prayer. God heard him.
“The PSR1-A seismic intrusion detectors planted in the front yard that he’d first learned how to use in Vietnam began to crackle loudly through the speaker in the hall. . . . Armed and armored black-clad men tiptoed up his front porch.”
Charlotte Thomas, 71, said that if her husband, a Navy veteran who saw service in Vietnam, was a fan of the book, he never shared it with her.
She had been grocery shopping Tuesday and arrived home to find 22 cars parked in their front yard. She shows visitors the burn marks from where agents used an explosive charge to gain entrance.
FBI agents had arrested Thomas in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Cornelia.
Charlotte said her husband never told her what he and his buddies discussed at the Waffle House or when they gathered at the house in the woods.
“He had the guys over for coffee,” she said. “I baked something. I would either leave the house or go upstairs and watch TV.”
She said the couple did have a spot of trouble with the IRS in 2008, when the agency said they had underpaid on taxes after withdrawing money from a retirement fund.
But she said he still loved America. “He wouldn’t hurt this country,” she said.
One of their closest neighbors, David Palmer, said he and Thomas spoke mostly of gardening and spirituality. He can’t see Thomas in the role of revolutionary.
“He can hardly walk,” he said. “He’s elderly. We should treat elderly people more respectfully.”
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