Nearly a year after federal agents descended on Montevideo, Minn., announcing that they had broken up a major terrorist conspiracy, the U.S. attorney's office acknowledged Friday in a single sentence "that a broader plot was not discovered."
The admission came in an aside to a federal memorandum urging that Buford "Bucky" Rogers be sentenced to five years and three months in prison. Rogers, 25, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
Rogers pleaded guilty in January to illegal possession of a semi-automatic rifle, prohibited because he is a convicted burglar, and possession of two black powder-and-nail explosive devices.
Federal prosecutors say Rogers' arrest last May was necessary after the FBI was tipped off that he had a large cache of weapons and planned to attack the Montevideo police station, National Guard armory and a local radio tower, but he was never indicted on terrorism charges. Prosecutors say he should get five years because of "numerous" previous arrests, including third-degree burglary and possession of illegal weapons, suggesting he has "exhibited consistently dangerous criminal behavior over the course of many years."
Federal Public Defender Andrew Mohring urged this week that Rogers get a two-year sentence, noting in a memorandum that "the facts of this case as it now exists stand in sharp contrast to those broadcast to the press and public when the case opened last spring."
At the time of his arrest, Mohring said, Rogers was labeled by authorities as a "domestic terrorist."
"Coming less than three weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, these accusations were made in an unusually public manner, through news releases and televised interviews," Mohring wrote.
In the end, Mohring said, the only suggestion that Rogers was planning a violent conspiracy came from a single individual "of untested reliability" who did not meet the definition of a reliable informant.