By Kathleen Kern

The FBI caught a lucky break in January 2002 when a package William Krar sent to a fellow white supremacist, Edward Feltus, in New Jersey was delivered by mistake to a Staten Island address. False identification documents aroused the recipients’ suspicion, as did the note, “We would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands.”

They called the FBI. More than a year later, in April 2003, the FBI’s investigation of Krar and his common-law wife turned up scores of bombs, including bombs disguised as suitcases, an arsenal of weapons and nearly half a million rounds of ammunition in the couple’s Noonday, Texas, storage facility. More troubling, Krar had enough cyanide and other toxic chemicals to manufacture a bomb that would kill everyone in a 30,000-foot building.

One would think that the U.S. Department of Justice would have considered the arrests of Krar, his wife and Feltus big news. However, a search of its Web site brings up only two hits for “William J. Krar,” both linked to a May 4, 2004, release recording the sentencing of Krar to 135 months in federal prison for possessing the chemicals.

The site contains no mention of federal agents making him the subject of a domestic terrorism investigation around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, or of his supplying other right-wing militia members with weapons. It does not record that a Tennessee state trooper arrested him in January 2003 for possessing a vial of sodium cyanide and noted the presence of many weapons in Krar’s vehicle as well as atropine, a nerve-gas antidote.

A search for “Jose Padilla” on the same Web site gets 31 direct hits. Recall that the FBI arrested Padilla in May 2002 on suspicion of his intention to make a “dirty bomb” that would disperse radioactive materials. Padilla possessed no bomb materials or diagrams. The authorities found no record of his attempt to obtain these materials.

The government detained Padilla on the basis of information supplied by Abu Zubaydah, a former al-Qaeda operative who had supplied investigators with misinformation on other cases.

On June 9, 2002, the Department of Justice called Padilla an “enemy combatant” and transferred him to military control. This designation, they said, meant that he had none of the rights granted U.S. citizens, including the right to due process, consultation with a lawyer or a trial in which he could confront his accuser.

On Dec. 18, 2003, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration did not have the authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens seized on American soil, and ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release Padilla. The government appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled on June 28, 2004, that a federal court should hear Padilla’s case.

No one argues that Padilla, who changed his name to Abdullah al-Muhajir, is a solid citizen. He has a long arrest record for petty crimes and gang violence. He may very well have fallen in with terrorists after his conversion to Islam. The authorities should prosecute him if they think he poses a threat to society.

But questions remain: How would the Bush administration and the media have responded if Krar and his compatriots had been Arab or Muslim? Why did the government play down the threat posed by Krar and his associates, who possessed weapons of mass destruction, while publicizing the threat posed by Padilla, who did not? Why does the government grant constitutional rights to white supremacists in Texas that it denies a Puerto Rican American Muslim?