Thread by @egavactip

This is a short, anecdotal thread about UFO-related "terrorism" in the United States. We tend to think of terrorism as being related to the far right, or the far left, or extremist religious movements, but fanatic belief in any cause can potentially result in violent acts.

By way of explanation, I was thinking about the Nashville bombing last night, which got me to thinking about other unusual bombings involving vehicles (as target or delivery vessel), one of which was related to a fringe religious group focused on UFOs.

The group in question is the Outer Dimensional Forces, which still exists and has been based in Weslaco in far south Texas since 1966. Its founder, Orville Gordon (who called himself Nodrog), built a UFO landing pad for ships that would land and save himself and his followers

from Armageddon. For most of its long existence, ODF has been harmless, but in the early-to-mid 1980s, it got linked up with the Posse Comitatus, a primitive version of what is today known as the sovereign citizen movement. An unusual and generally forgotten aspect of the

1980s Posse was that people associated with it managed to connect themselves to a wide variety of fringe religious groups across the U.S. In any case, the ODF was joined by members of the Lingenfelter family, led by Merlon Lingenfelter, Sr., who joined together his own resolute

anti-Semitism, his pseudo-legal sovereign citizen beliefs, and the UFOlogy of ODF. As he told one local newspaper, "Your President, all supporting Bloodsuckers of the US, plus all Bloodsuckers of Canada and Mexico, have been duly served and convicted in the Outer Dimensional

Forces Foursquare Court at Alternate Base, of Triple High Treason." Well. The Lingenfelters and other ODF members became convinced that the local mayor was trying to take ODF's property away. On February 25, 1985, they decided to take revenge, exploding a bomb in a car parked

outside a paint store that the mayor managed. Luckily, no one was hurt in the blast. Subsequently, two ODF members were arrested for the crime, including Mark Alan Lingenfelter, one of Merlon's sons; he was later convicted (like many sovereigns, he defended himself).

Incidentally, 11 years later, Lingenfelter's other son would be arrested on charges related to a militia plot to bomb Fort Hood, Texas, on the Fourth of July. Nice family.

The ODF incident is one of the older incidents of UFO-related violence that I am aware of, but hardly the

only one. Another incident that fascinated me at the time took place on Long Island in the mid-1990s, where members of the Long Island UFO Network became convinced that UFOs were flying above the island and nefarious deeds were afoot at Brookhaven National Laboratory. John Ford,

the head of the group, had grown particularly paranoid about a cover-up--to the point where he started carrying a gun for his own protection from the conspirators who might target him for his investigations. Ford focused particularly on local Long Island Republican figures--and

in the summer of 1996 decided to kill them. In fact, Ford had procured radioactive materials (radium) that he thought could be used to poison them--by putting it in their food or smearing it on the steering wheel of a car. Luckily, he knew less about radium than about UFOs;

someone would have had to have had exposure to the substance for 20 or so years to be killed by it. Law enforcement ended up hearing about Ford's plans from an informant, which eventually ended up in the arrest of Ford and two others on a variety of serious charges.

Ford's attorney decided to defend him by questioning his sanity--and, by using Ford's own conspiratorial beliefs (about UFOs, Communists, and other subjects) against him, managed to get Ford declared incompetent to stand trial. Two other defendants were sentenced on various

charges.

Last year, Ford (now 71), was transferred from a high security psychiatric hospital to a less restrictive one, a judge having ruled that he is not now a danger to anyone. newsday.com/long-island/cr…

Another (tangentially) UFO-related incident occurred in New York in 1994. In early 1994, five people were killed by what one newspaper described as "a series of powerful package bombs." There were six bombs total but one did not

explode. The targets of the bombs were all people related to Pamela Lazore Lanza and Richard Urban, who both died in the blasts. Three of the five victims, including Lanza, were members of the Ultimate Frontier Organization, a UFO "study group" that combined UFOlogy with

Native American mysticism (a number of members were of Mohawk descent). However, in this instance, the UFO connection appears largely coincidental. The boyfriend of Lanza's sister (and another man helping him) were behind the attacks, which had been launched for personal and

family reasons.

The same could not be said for one of the most recent UFO-related incidents, the 2019 Myerstown (PA) incident. In June 2019, a 28-year-old man, David Oxenreider, told the manager of the hotel where he lived that he had constructed a bomb. The hotel

manager called police and ordered Oxenreider to move the bomb outside. Police arrived and dismantled the bomb--which allegedly could only be detonated by hand. Oxenreider told police that he had made the bomb specifically in order to get the attention of police (he had

allegedly previously tried talking directly to various police agencies but nobody would pay attention to him). Why did Oxenreider want them to listen to him? Because, according to him, in 2014 he had encountered aliens in a UFO, who warned Oxenreider that humans had to start

behaving better or the aliens would destroy the planet with a "nuclear laser beam." Oxenreider was charged with manufacturing a WMD, causing/risking a catastrophe and reckless endangerment. I have not seen anything that would suggest he has yet been tried or made a deal.

I suspect that if one looked, one would be able to find some other incidents similar to these. I haven't myself looked--this is obviously not my area of expertise--but have nevertheless "accumulated" this handful of incidents over the years. I don't think I have any big picture

analysis to go along with this, except to suggest that these incidents are good reasons not to jump to conclusions about perpetrators of violent or dangerous incidents.

[I apparently lied through my teeth in the first tweet when I promised the thread would be short]