Threat? Or 'racist rantings of drug abusers'
Posted: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:04 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Pete Williams
The U.S. attorney in Denver says the reported discussions about a plot to kill Sen. Obama were made by some of the suspects and their girlfriends while they were all taking methamphetamine.
"These were hateful, bigoted threats but made by meth heads, abusers, all of whom were impaired at the time and cannot be corroborated," said U.S. Attorney Troy Eid. There's a difference, he said, "between a true threat and the racist rantings of drug abusers."
Court documents say the first report of a threat came from a girlfriend of one of the men who attended a meth party in a Denver hotel room, the Hyatt Regency Tech Center. One of the men told her (erroneously) that "Obama had a suite on the third floor of the hotel."
One person present talked about trying to hide a gun in a camera. There were references to a "grassy knoll." And while one of them has admitted to investigators that he made threatening statements about Obama in the past, investigators are not certain that the effects of the meth the men were taking had even yet fully worn off.
Investigators also say they have found no evidence of any plot -- no maps, no documents, no lists. One official says a laptop computer was found in a search belonging to one of the men, but it contained no such evidence, either.
For now, prosecutors say they're "keeping an open mind" about the case but have yet to find any credible evidence of a threat.
