The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: twyacht on January 18, 2011, 06:11:26 PM
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Hardly an arsenal. But it's what he knows that scares the Feds....
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Police-seize-guns-after-Los-Alamos-standoff
Police seize guns after Los Alamos standoff
Ex-LANL physicist being held for psychiatric evaluation
Geoff Grammer | The New Mexican
Posted: Friday, January 14, 2011 - 1/15/11
High-powered weapons and ammunition were among the items seized from the home of a former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who has become increasingly paranoid and outspoken against the lab and the government.
Los Alamos police trying to serve a warrant arrested Richard Lee Morse, 75, outside his 1350 Bathtub Row home at 11:45 a.m. Thursday when "he just came out to throw some trash away" after nearly 19 hours, according to Los Alamos Capt. Randy Foster.
A search warrant executed Thursday on Morse's home netted the discovery of three guns — a .30-06 rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a 9 mm Beretta pistol — and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, including 661 rounds for the powerful .30-06 rifle alone. As a condition of his release from jail for a pending criminal case, Morse was not allowed to own a gun.
"It's very concerning that somebody in that mental state would have these types of weapons — certainly the .30-06 is a formidable weapon and the 9 mm is a rapid-fire weapon that can be very dangerous," Sgt. DeWayne Williams told the Los Alamos Monitor on Friday.
Police said they also found nine cats in the home Thursday — including two dead ones being stored in Morse's freezer, according to Lt. Jason Wardlow-Herrera.
"We were told he was planning to use those weapons if we tried to take him, so we proceeded with great caution in serving this warrant," Foster said. "We didn't have reason to believe he was going to ever go out of the home to use these weapons, but when dealing with people we have reason to believe may have some mental instability, we have to proceed with that caution, and this ended as peacefully as could be expected given the circumstances."
Foster said police had gone to Morse's home at 5 p.m. Wednesday to serve him with an arrest warrant signed by Judge Stephen Pfeffer, charging Morse with failing to comply with the conditions of his electronic monitoring, according to police.
Morse, awaiting trial before Pfeffer on a charge of battery on a peace officer in Los Alamos in August, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before that case could proceed, but a bed at the Las Vegas, N.M., hospital where that evaluation was to take place was not available until this week.
According to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Los Alamos County Magistrate Court, Morse "said he would not go to Las Vegas," and police had information that if they tried to detain him, Morse would shoot them.
Foster said nearly all of the department's 30-plus officers worked the standoff, and they received assistance from the New Mexico State Police and the Albuquerque Police Department.
"Some of our officers were laying in snow embankments for about six hours near his house waiting for him to come out," Foster said.
Despite hours of communication between Morse and police over bullhorns, the telephone and even with a Police Department robot that was able to deliver a cell phone into the home, Morse, upon his arrest, asked, "Why we didn't just come in and get him, almost like he didn't know we were ever there," Foster said.
Morse in the past had high levels of government clearance as a weapons physicist who, among other projects, worked on development of the $128 million W76 submarine nuclear missile warhead in the 1970s.
Morse left the lab in 1976, and in recent years spoke out publicly after saying his internal protests were ignored about a design flaw with the warhead that would leave the United States at risk.
"We're vulnerable as hell," Morse said in a 2004 Associated Press article.
He also alleged that competition between LANL and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California led to weapons designers in Los Alamos cutting corners.
He argued the casing of the warhead was too thin.
More recently, Morse had become increasingly paranoid, telling The New Mexican that federal agents had him under surveillance and that security officers were holding his wife. [/b]
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Remember the X-files? this guy was about to go public, justifying my tin-foil hat,.....now the Feds will jack him up on Thorizine and Haldol, send him to the funny farm, and portray him as a loon.....
(http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm182/twyacht/tinfoilhat.jpg)
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Sounds like BS. 75 Years old assaulting a peace officer ? A suspicious stock pile of cats ?
I'd bet money what he had was a Garand and 1 case of ammo.
TW is right, they don't care what he had, it's what he knows that was scaring the sh!t out of them.
But it does raise an interesting question.
You have a retired person, say a Diplomat, or Spy, or , as in this case, a Govt scientist, who, maybe literally, knows where the "bodies are buried". What do you do if he starts becoming irrational ?
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Sounds like BS. 75 Years old assaulting a peace officer ? A suspicious stock pile of cats ?
I'd bet money what he had was a Garand and 1 case of ammo.
TW is right, they don't care what he had, it's what he knows that was scaring the sh!t out of them.
But it does raise an interesting question.
You have a retired person, say a Diplomat, or Spy, or , as in this case, a Govt scientist, who, maybe literally, knows where the "bodies are buried". What do you do if he starts becoming irrational ?
You bury him in a psycho ward, in a modern OMG, there's a another "crazy with a gun" mantra,...and it never makes the MSM, and quietly goes away....
Remember the old guy in the "Shooter" movie? Talked about paper patching bullets; "men behind the grassy knoll were dead in three hours type stuff????
Makes you wonder......My Father-In-Law is 86 years old, former Westinghouse Engineer, part of the skunk works, with black box clearance back in the day, gets a smirk on his face when we get together....
"Area 51, is just a bunch of GD desert"....never says another damn word about it. After 12 years, same smirk, same response.. It's that generation of folks that know where the "bodies are buried"...
When one gets old and "irrational", our gov't needs to get them quiet.
Nothing to see here,....move along,......The MSM won't ever even make this a story. Just a local "kook",.....
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There are a few skeletons in the closet of the United States of America for sure. He's of the age of men to have been in the middle of some of the more sensitive developments at Los Alamos.
Curious? You bet!
I've been to a few of our more delicate facilities myself. Rocky Flats, Mound, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Hanford.....they led (escorted) me around like a child.....never got more than a glimpse of what once was! Stood outside the K25 building at Oak Ridge (Manhattan Project) in awe of the history of the place.
I was glad to leave the place as well..
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Nowadays Area 51 is just GD desert. Back around the turn of the century they moved all that, "Dreamland" stuff ( Skunk Works and the other Company site, Phantom works {?} ) out to Pawnee Dry Lake. The old facility was getting small and obsolete, the new facility is well out of sight of the public.
But even when the EPA was suing the Air Force over hazardous waste at the site the Government never admitted it existed.
Sad part is I know the new location from reading "Popular Science". Same for our replacement for the SR-71, the pulse jet Aurora.
But back on topic, I'm talking about some one who knows real secrets, not embarrassing things , but things that really need to be kept secret. Names of Cold war Soviet assets for one example.
Putting them away in some quiet little "facility may not be right in the eyes of the public, but it's a lot nicer than a bullet in the head.
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Nowadays Area 51 is just GD desert. Back around the turn of the century they moved all that, "Dreamland" stuff ( Skunk Works and the other Company site, Phantom works {?} ) out to Pawnee Dry Lake. The old facility was getting small and obsolete, the new facility is well out of sight of the public.
But even when the EPA was suing the Air Force over hazardous waste at the site the Government never admitted it existed.
Sad part is I know the new location from reading "Popular Science". Same for our replacement for the SR-71, the pulse jet Aurora.
But back on topic, I'm talking about some one who knows real secrets, not embarrassing things , but things that really need to be kept secret. Names of Cold war Soviet assets for one example.
Putting them away in some quiet little "facility may not be right in the eyes of the public, but it's a lot nicer than a bullet in the head.
You're forgetting the neuralyser Tom, but then, that's the point isn't it? ;D
FQ13