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Agents raid purported UFO base

By MACK SISK

WESLACO, Texas -- Authorities Tuesday raided the headquarters of a group calling itself Outer Dimensional Forces, confiscating weapons and searching for 'threatening' literature.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, executing a federal search warrant, were the first uninvited guests known to have entered the property in years.

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Weslaco health and building code inspectors followed, looking for violations at the weather-beaten, two-story house that for more than 20 years has been an eyesore next to Expressway 83 in this Rio Grande Valley city.

ODF members kept news reporters away from the fenced site during the raid.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Guerra said besides weapons, the ATF agents were looking for 'threatening' literature. Previous ODF literature had referred to President Reagan and others as 'bloodsuckers.'

White-bearded Nodrog (Gordon spelled backwards), a recluse who has who has claimed to house an 'Armageddon Time Ark' space vehicle in Weslaco, was present during the raid and spent time 'insulting the officers,' police Sgt. Enrique Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said that 'maybe six or seven rifles and four or five handguns' were confiscated.

Similar searches of other houses occupied by ODF members were made and several weapons, survivalist literature and instructions on converting rifles to fully automatic were seized last March.

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In May, a federal judge held three ODF members in contempt and ordered them jailed for refusing to testify, give handwriting samples or fingerprints. Two remain imprisoned.

Authorities have expressed concern that survivalists, some perhaps affiliated with the activist anti-government Posse Comitatus, had associated themselves with Nodrog's otherwise harmless UFO group in the past year.

Gonzalez said no one was arrested Tuesday.

Nodrog for years has sold literature and space on his Time Ark to people who wanted to fly off into space the day before Armageddon.

Gonzalez said the officers did not find anything that looked like a spacecraft.

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