The ADN is still a day late and a dollar short.

Most of you who have been reading this blog for awhile are already aware that I confirmed last month that one of the two  FBI informants who provided assistance in the arrest of Schaeffer Cox was in fact William Fulton, once Joe Miller's head security guy and, up until recently, the owner of Dropzone.

So here we are fully two weeks later and the Anchorage Daily News is still struggling to put the pieces together.

After the Fairbanks arrests and filings in court in which the FBI said it used confidential informants to make their cases, online message boards frequented by militia members have been buzzing with questions about Fulton.

"Was he a plant all this time?" wondered Kath McCubbins-Carlson, a member of the Alaska Citizens Militia, on an online message board, apparently referring to Fulton. "If 'the Anchorage informant' was a certain person who owned a certain establishment that catered to a certain clientele, was he keeping records of everything YOU ever said to him?"

Requests by phone and email for an interview with Fulton for this story went unanswered. His mobile phone was disconnected and calls to a home listed in the phone book returned a perpetual busy signal.

"I don't know and can't say the extent of his involvement, if any, at this time, but he's not a defendant," said Wayne Ross, Fulton's lawyer. Ross said he remains in touch with Fulton, speaking with him in the past week.

But at the surplus store, Giles said he had not heard or seen Fulton for almost a month.

"I don't know what the hell he got into or whatever. It's still up in the air," Giles said. "I don't want to have anything to do with it."

As you can see the ADN is pretty sure that Fulton is the guy, but simply cannot declare it as fact without confirmation even after two weeks of trying to nail it down. Unfortunately for them, they have lost so much credibility up here that nobody will provide that confirmation.

At this point I can only share a portion of what WAS confirmed for me. (I will be able to share more after the trial.)

I can confirm that Fulton was NEVER a true member of the militia, and that the following statement from his attorney is pretty accurate:

"He's a pretty straight-shooting guy," said attorney Ross of his client Fulton.

Ross wasn't sure how Fulton's beliefs matched the militia members, if at all. The extremists worried Ross, a longtime gun-rights advocate.

"When you get these groups forming, it hurts the average gun owner, and I think Bill feels the same," Ross said. "Some people, if they don't go to the ballot box, they go to the bullet box."

I think that pretty much sums up what I have been able to find out about William "Dropzone Bill" Fulton.  Some people hear talk of taking up arms and standing up to the federal government, and they feel a rush of excitement at the chance to become a new American patriotic hero. Others hear that kind of talk and immediately identify it as UNPATRIOTIC and possibly leading to crimes against their country, and feel honor bound to do something to stop it.

Don't forget that whatever we think we know about William Fulton, he WAS a soldier, and he clearly falls into the latter category.

He was never really on the side of the militia. So to address Kath McCubbins-Carlson's fears concerning whether or not he was "keeping records" of everything they ever said to him, why yes he was! And I can only imagine that there are a LOT of customers that came into Dropzone, or talked with Fulton over a beer or two, that are going back over every single word they ever said to him and wondering if there isn't an FBI subpoena with their name on it out there as well. Because you know what, there just might be!

From what I have gathered Fulton played Schaeffer Cox, Coleman Barney, Lonnie and Karen Vernon, and the rest of the militia wingnuts like a fiddle.  He was able to gain their trust, gather the evidence he needed, and skip town before they had any idea how badly they had just been screwed.

But you know they were probably not the only ones who were played by "Dropzone Bill." 

It occurs to me that if you are trying to establish your super right wing, potential domestic terrorism credentials, that it certainly does not hurt to have liberal blogs and news websites going after you day after day.  Much like Talking Points Memo, Wonkette, the Huffington Post, Alaska Dispatch, and of course yours truly did.

As you can imagine being the favored whipping boy of the "lamestream" media certainly could not have hurt Fulton's plan to convince these guys to take him into their confidence.

What can I say?  I do what I can to help.  Even if it is accidental.