burns occupation mugs

Michael Emry, 54, appeared at the Malheur National Wildilfe refuge on Jan 6., 2016,after militants took it over. He described himself as an embedded reporter with the militia.

(Mark Graves/staff)

JOHN DAY - Michael R. Emry figured out on his own how to build a potent bomb that a major drug dealer needed to kill an associate.

Emry cobbled together the parts - a clock from Walmart, a circuit board from Radio Shack and a pound of plastic explosive bought off an acquaintance.

He put the finished device in a paper bag, which in turn went into the shoe box he presented to a man who originally hired him to fix car transmissions.

Emry is the man some residents of Grant County turned to in recent weeks to help them air their anti-government views and form a private committee to press those views.

Emry, 54, described himself as an "embedded reporter" with an Idaho militia group during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildilfe Refuge earlier this year. He left Boise recently for John Day to start up a media venture with pro-militia leanings.

His history with explosives and illegal weapons is buried in the thick transcript of a 2004 federal court trial in Tennessee. Emry escaped prosecution, apparently for testifying against the drug dealer.

Now, Emry is heading back to federal court, this time in Eugene and to face his own charges. The FBI arrested him Friday, charging him with illegally possessing a .50-caliber machine gun. An affidavit described how agents found the weapon during a search of his travel trailer and vehicles at the county-owned RV park in John Day.

He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court on the charges on Monday.

The FBI has said little about the John Day arrest, giving no indication whether it is related to the occupation. So far, 27 others have been charged for their roles in the armed takeover of the bird sanctuary that started Jan. 2 and lasted 41 days. They were led by Ammon E. Bundy, an Idaho businessman who initiated the occupation to protest the imprisonment of two Harney County ranchers and federal management practices.

During the standoff, Emry's web broadcasts exuded sympathy for the declarations of Bundy and other occupiers. The record of the Tennessee trial shows Emry's own anti-government mindset dates back more than a decade.

"Our leaders are progressively putting us into a police state that no one wants," Emry testified on Jan. 16, 2004, during the trial of organizers of a major cocaine smuggling ring.

Document: Michael Emry's trial testimony

He testified that in 1999 he made 66 illegal machine guns for a Kansas man. Emry said citizens need to be armed to protect themselves, pointing to government standoffs with militants in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge in Idaho that resulted in several deaths.

"All of these people have died standing for their principles," Emry testified.

"Lord forbid I ever have to pull a gun on a law enforcement officer," he said, but "I may have to if they start breaking the Constitution and the oaths that they upheld."

During the Oregon refuge occupation 12 years later, Bundy insisted repeatedly that federal authorities weren't obeying the Constitution and local officials weren't following their oaths.

Emry didn't specify during the trial the source of his unhappiness with the government. He testified that he was a transmission repairman by trade, working at one time in Kansas. He said he built machine guns for a customer there who was stockpiling weapons in the event of civil revolt.

He moved to Tennessee, taking another auto repair job but then undertook building a bomb for his boss. He testified that he thought the man, Ken Kimball, wanted the device to guard a weapons storehouse against discovery.

Other court records showed, however, that Kimball provided the bomb to an associate to kill Kimball's Texas-based cocaine supplier. The assassination never took place, and police later found the explosive in a storage locker.

Emry described in detail his work as a self-taught bomb maker, testifying that he made it "my business to read literature and understand as much as I can about military techniques and tactics."

He said he started with the C-4 - "scratching my head trying to figure out what I was going to do." He used a pencil to poke a hole in the clay-like explosive material to house the detonator. He attached LED lights to show the bomb had electrical power from the battery. He gave the bomb and the separate detonator to his boss.

"I'm not very proud of this," Emry testified, explaining the bomb could "cause great harm" and was "highly, highly illegal."

He described in court the power of the bomb. He said the transmission shop was three times the size of the federal courtroom.

"Probably put a couple foot crater in the center of the area and blow every single wall out and just turn it into cinder," Emry testified.

He also made a silencer for his boss.

"Again, I have a natural aptitude for this stuff," Emry testified. "Nobody has ever trained me on any of this stuff. Probably known as one of the top guys in the country to build guns that were cut from scratch."

He repeated that self-evaluation in an interview Thursday with The Oregonian/OregonLive, when he said he was known as the "Picasso of machine guns."

Emry testified that he worked in the transmission shop about six months before moving to Hayden, Idaho. He said he returned to Tennessee in 2002 when he learned he was suspected of stealing a gun. He said he lied to agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when they initially questioned him about illegal conduct. When he learned agents had found his bomb, Emry admitted making it and gave them a full accounting of his activities.

He also testified that he acted undercover for the ATF "on certain particular cases" but didn't describe the time frame or the cases.

The man he testified against was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a scale of crime that a federal judge described as "breathtaking."

Emry returned to Idaho, working as a mechanic and manufacturing guns for licensed dealers. One stop starting roughly in 2002 was Weaver Automotive & Engineering of Boise.

Owner Jim Weaver said Saturday that he met Emry in northern Idaho about 15 years ago - about five years after Weaver became a federally licensed gun dealer. He said he bought a gun from Emry, who then "went back east."

But Emry returned to work in his shop off and on, repairing cars. "He was a good mechanic," Weaver said. He also tended to guns and manufacturing semiautomatic AK-47s, he added.

He left the shop before Weaver sold it about 10 years ago but the men stayed in touch from time to time. They last spoke about a year ago, Weaver said..

Then, about a month ago, Weaver took one of his specialty weapons out of a storage vault to photograph it for possible sale. It was his .50-caliber Browning MP machine gun. Weaver said that after taking the pictures, he stored it in a "non-obvious place."

On Saturday, he discovered the gun missing but saw no sign of a break-in and said he was the only one with a key to the building.

The serial number, he subsequently learned, matched that of the gun the FBI recovered in John Day.

-- Les Zaitz

@leszaitz