The FBI Arrested Three Dudes for Planning to Retaliate Against 'Jade Helm'

A trio of North Carolinians got an especially bad case of The Fear when they found out about Jade Helm 15, the mysterious, large-scale US military training exercise that some fear is actually Obama's master plan to impose martial law and take away everybody's guns in one fell swoop. Concerned citizens have been stocking up on ammo in preparation for Jade Helm since the spring, when a map leaked marking Texas, Utah, and part of California as "hostile" territory. But no one has actually plotted to wage an all-out battle against the US government—until now, as the Houston Chroniclereports.

According to court documents, a North Carolina man named Walter Litteral owns a 99-acre compound in South Carolina where he planned to "booby-trap the camp and draw government forces into the camp and kill them." The FBI arrested Litteral and two other men accused of assisting him on Saturday after more than a month of surveillance and wire-tapping, thanks in part to the help of a secret informant. They are charged with

Litteral had been buying a shit-ton of ammunition and gun powder from a local military surplus store for about two months when the shop's owner began to think something shady was going on. After Litteral had already purchased body armor, helmets, and ammo for his assault rifle, he told the store's owner he needed smokeless gunpowder for pipe bombs, planned on taping nails to a tennis ball filled with gunpowder, and wanted to fill coffee cans with ball bearings and—guess what?—more gunpowder so that he could blow up the makeshift bombs up with a sniper rifle.

According to the Chronicle, the suspect told the shop owner he needed everything by July 15—the same day Jade Helm was scheduled to begin.

"Lemme tell you something I gunna have my [expletive] house rigged up," Litteral said in a conversation recorded by the store owner. "These motherfuckers come try to come in my house it's going off."

Of course, Litteral probably did all that terrifying prep work for nothing. Jade Helm has been in operation for almost a month now, and it's not making all that much of a stir.