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Wagner indicted on federal charges
COURTNEY BRUMMER , Staff Writer 07/28/2004
Michael Wagner
DES MOINES - Michael Wagner had al-Qaida connections and knew of a plan to shoot trams and trains in San Diego when he was stopped by an Iowa State Patrol trooper just outside of Underwood earlier this month.
That stop put the trooper's life in jeopardy when the 44-year-old San Diego man allegedly talked with his companion about killing the officer, according to testimony heard in federal court Tuesday.
Wagner was indicted on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of body armor. He is being detained by federal authorities without bond.
According to court documents obtained by The Associated Press, Wagner told Iowa troopers he had knowledge of terrorist activities and people and groups tied to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Wagner also said that he knew about things in the Muslim communities in San Diego that federal agencies would be interested in.
A state trooper stopped the sport utility vehicle Wagner was driving on July 14 after the trooper noticed Wagner was not wearing a seat belt. The stop occurred on Interstate 80 eastbound just outside of Underwood.
Last week, the Pottawattamie County Attorney's Office dropped its charges against Wagner, which included being a felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon, providing false information to a law enforcement officer and solicitation of a felony, so that he could be turned over to federal custody.
On July 22, Wagner was charged federally by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Iowa's Southern District in Des Moines.
Conviction on a federal charge of felon in possession of a firearm carries a maximum 10-year prison term, and conviction of being a felon in possession of body armor carries a maximum five-year term in prison.
Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilber said Wagner was convicted of a felony sex offense in California in the late 1980s.**Edit comment**Want to bet this is when he became 'radicalized'?**end Edit comment**
Concerns arose when officers found Wagner had more than one set of identification with more than one name, according to reports given by a Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesperson at the time.
Officers also found what were determined to be "suspicious items" in the vehicle. The items were described by an FBI spokesperson as items one wouldn't expect to find inside a vehicle.
According to court documents, the items turned out to be flight training manuals, flight training software, three bulletproof vests, night-vision goggles, a night-vision scope for a rifle, a telescope, a Ruger 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a bag of ammunition and marijuana residue in the ashtray.
Also found in the vehicle were numerous pages of literature and documents with Arabic printing, court papers said.
Some of the items were hidden inside a hollowed out computer hard drive, the papers said.
State and federal law enforcement ranging from the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office through the Iowa Homeland Security Office and the Secret Service were all made aware of the stop when it occurred.
At some point, the trooper put Wagner and the woman who was traveling with him, identified as Linda Maguire, also of San Diego, in the back of the cruiser, reports stated.
A conversation between the two was caught on the cruiser's microphone in which Wagner is heard to say: "I told you I should have killed him."
He also mentioned killing the trooper and two other officers that had arrived at the scene and told his companion to "find a handcuff key, get up there and run them over."
Wagner told police and Omaha television media that the vests were for his children for protection after Sept. 11, 2001, and that the night-vision goggles belonged to his son, who was a paintball enthusiast. He also told Omaha reporters who ran the story the day after his arrest that he believed he was pulled over for being "Muslim."
The vehicle was taken to the Iowa State Patrol's district post headquarters east of Council Bluffs, and bomb-sniffing dogs were called, reports said.
Maguire, who has lived with Wagner for more than a decade, was not charged or detained. The SUV was released to her following the investigation.
