By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Authorities recovered 19,000 rounds of ammunition, along with more than a dozen firearms and explosive materials, from the property of a self-professed white supremacist from McDonald County, witnesses testified Monday.
Federal prosecutors are expected to finish presenting their case today in the trial of Robert Neil Joos, who is being tried in U.S. District Court on a federal weapons charge. He was identified during Monday’s testimony as an “an associate” of two men charged with a bombing in Arizona.
Joos’ defense attorney, Darryl Johnson, is expected to make his opening statement and mount Joos’ defense today. While cross-examining witnesses Monday, he pointed out that the property where authorities seized the weapons actually belonged to Joos’ family, not Joos himself.
Johnson also said that officers had found mostly older, “archaic” weapons that were legal and could have been used for hunting. He also contended that while authorities could trace where the weapons and explosive materials were manufactured, they could not trace their ownership.
But an undercover agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who said he twice met with Joos on his 200-acre property in rural McDonald County testified that it “was clear to me that he (Joos) knew” that his previous felony convictions barred him from possessing the weapons recovered by federal law enforcement officers.
Undercover agent
ATF agent Tristan Moreland, who posed as a clandestine firearms merchant active in the “movement,” also said Joos admitted to owning one of the weapons that Moreland spotted during his visits to Joos’ compound early last year. The agent also said Joos showed a knowledge of explosives approaching the expert level.
“It was clearly part of his life,” Moreland said of Joos’ weapons collection, recounting that Joos once told him, “It’s all going to come down to whoever has the guns.”
Moreland said authorities learned of Joos during an investigation into a Feb. 26, 2004, bombing that injured Don Logan, the director of the diversity office for the city of Scottsdale, Ariz. Logan is a black man. Two others were injured in the attack.
Two men — brothers Daniel and Dennis Mahon — face federal charges in the bombing in Arizona and now await trial. The “very first call” one of the brothers made after the bomb was placed went to Joos, Moreland said, and Joos’ name surfaced again during conversations between the brothers and a confidential informant. The Mahons had a “very long history” with Joos, and they visited Joos and obtained some firearms training at his property, the ATF agent said.
“The Mahons had said often, ‘You got to meet this guy,’” Moreland said.
The undercover agent testified that Joos often spoke about his anti-government beliefs, and sometimes his racial beliefs, during their conversations. Visits to the property included tours of 20 “caves,” which included traditional caves and “dugouts,” that Joos described as potential defensive positions on the property, Moreland said.
‘Training video’
During one visit, Joos and Moreland watched “We Were Soldiers,” a Mel Gibson dramatization of the Vietnam War battle of Ia Drang. Joos, according to Moreland, intended it as a “training video” for how to repel an attack by government forces.
Johnson, Joos’ defense attorney, countered that Joos was always interested in the military, citing his attendance at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Witnesses on Monday described the property as a remote compound, requiring any visitor to first travel down an approximately mile-long driveway and then through a fenced gate that Joos always kept locked. A few mobile homes were on the property, along with a number of cars and other signs of an apparent salvage operation.
The dwelling itself contained a couple of bunk beds, a kitchen, a bathroom and a storage area that held 15 firearms. One agent said he found a file labeled “explosives” at the home.
Background
Joos in 2004 led the Sacerdotal Church of David on the 200-acre farm near the community of Cyclone, between Powell and Pineville on Big Sugar Creek. Moreland said Joos at one point referred to a church, testifying that Joos said unspecified church “elders” owned the property.
But Moreland said “there was nothing on that property that resembled a church” or church operation.
Federal law makes it illegal for anyone who has been convicted of a felony to be in possession of firearms or ammunition.
Joos has a 1997 felony conviction for unlawful use of a weapon and a 2004 conviction for operating a motor vehicle without a valid license.
Joos at one point refused to get a driver’s license, saying during a court hearing in 2002 that it was against his religion, and that he could “make no covenant with the heathen government.”
Arrest
Robert Joos was arrested in June 2009 after an undercover investigation focusing on several people allegedly involved in white-supremacist movements throughout the United States.
