23 June 1998
Source:
http://www.columbian.com/06231998/front_pa/6709.html
By BRUCE WESTFALL, Columbian writer
An Internet anti-government essayist imprisoned last year has been arrested for alleged probation violations.
James Dalton Bell, 39, Vancouver, was taken into custody Monday at the McLoughlin Heights home of his parents, where he had been living since his release from prison in April.
He was scheduled to appear this afternoon in Seattle in front of U.S. Magistrate David Wilson. He is being held at a federal detention center in SeaTac, said Jerry Moore, acting chief deputy for the U.S. Marshal's office in Seattle.
Moore said Bell was taken into custody without incident about noon Monday by three federal agents assisted by Vancouver police. An arrest warrant was issued Friday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.
The warrant alleges Bell violated several of his approximately three dozen probation conditions.
Bell was sentenced to 11 months in federal prison last year for falsifying a Social Security number and obstructing a federal official.
He came to the attention of authorities with an Internet essay, "Assassination Politics," in which he proposed the killing of federal officials.
Bell said the essay was just theorizing and he referred to himself as a "talker, not a doer."
Investigators also believed that Bell dabbled with deadly chemicals and a botulism toxin, but he was never charged with those activities.
He spent his time behind bars at a federal medium-security prison in Phoenix, Ariz., and was released April 15 with a long list of probation conditions, including no possession of no chemicals and no computers.
Among other provisions were regular contact with his probation officer and payment of fines.