Ex-Guardsman Planned Slaughter of Jews, Police Say
According to authorities in Tennessee, ex-National Guard soldier and neo-Nazi Ivan Duane Braden planned to take over the local armory and murder hostages before he turned himself over to a mental institution.
Twenty-year-old Ivan Duane Braden, a discharged National Guard soldier with neo-Nazi leanings who'd taken to calling himself the "pimpin' aryan assasin," stuffed his backpack on Oct. 12 with large knives and materials for a homemade grenade, police say.
Braden allegedly left his parents' Knoxville, Tenn., home that day with a murderous plan in mind — until he decided, as he later told FBI agents, that "Jewish people were not worth dying for."
Instead of driving to the local National Guard Armory, where police say Braden had a detailed plan to take hostages, murder them and set off explosives, Braden took himself to an outpatient mental health facility, where he told staff that he had "thoughts of killing people," reportedly including the officer who'd discharged him from the Iraq-bound 278th Armored Calvary Regiment weeks earlier.
Federal authorities were contacted after a search of Braden's home and vehicle turned up additional bomb-making materials and weapons, detailed sketches of the armory, and plans to suicide-bomb a local synagogue.
The FBI says that Braden told agents he'd planned to wear a trench coat stuffed with explosives and get himself "as close to children and the rabbi as possible to cause the greatest amount of damage possible."
Braden had neo-Nazi paraphernalia in his room, including a swastika flag and videos with such titles as "Nazi America" and "KKK History." In the federal complaint against Braden, an FBI agent wrote that he "has held racist views since being a seventh-grader, and indicated that he hates Jews and blacks."
