Soldier pleads guilty in Army attack plot
He drafted plan with secretive group
NEW YORK — An Army private charged with plotting to murder members of his unit overseas with help from a secretive violent anarchist group was planning a defense calling it all an internet fantasy before pleading guilty just before trial, court records show.
Plans for the defense of Ethan Phelan Melzer was revealed in court papers in the months before the Kentucky man abruptly pleaded guilty to charges Friday, eliminating the need for his July 5 trial in Manhattan federal court. Sentencing is set for Jan. 6. He could face up to 45 years in prison rather than the life sentence that a jury conviction could have brought.
Melzer, 24, was in Italy in October 2019 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team when he communicated online with others prior to plotting an attack against his Army unit once it was redeployed in 2020 to guard an isolated and sensitive military installation, prosecutors said.
But court papers reveal the individuals he was communicating with online weren’t members of the Order of Nine Angles — or 09A — as he believed, but rather, government informants who helped build the case against him, defense lawyers said.
The Washington Post quoted a European security official in a June 2020 article as saying that the Nazi-Satanist group was established in Britain in the 1970s and has promoted extreme violence for decades.
The official who spoke on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue told the newspaper that 09A membership ranges from a few dozen to about 2,000, targeting young people and sending supporters into groups to influence and recruit.
Prosecutors said the white-supremacist group espouses neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic and Satanic beliefs and encourages members to infiltrate the military to gain training, commit acts of violence and identify like-minded individuals intent on subverting the military from within.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Friday that Melzer sought to “orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully disclosing its location, strength and armaments to 09A members online.”
“The defendant believed he could force the U.S. into prolonged armed conflict while causing the deaths of as many soldiers as possible. Melzer’s traitorous conduct was a betrayal of his storied unit and nothing short of an attack against the most essential American values,” he said in a news release.
The guilty plea came after prosecutors clarified they’d built a case against Melzer that included evidence from his electronic devices and barracks — photographs, videos and documents — that could be characterized as “jihadist” and “09A” materials.