Plans for an anti-terror drill on Saturday in western Iowa that would have involved fictional school shootings by white supremacists have been canceled because of threats received by the Treynor public schools, Pottawattamie County officials said today.

“During the last 24 hours, the Treynor school system has received threats to their employees and buildings due to the planned “active shooter” exercise, ” county officials said in a statement. “After consultation with the Treynor School District and the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, we have jointly decided to cancel the exercise due to these threats which we must consider viable. The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Department is now actively investigating the threats.”

County Sheriff Jeff Danker said he sent three deputies to the Treynor schools today as a precautionary measure, but the school day was completed without any problems.

Members of so-called patriot groups opposed to illegal immigration had strongly objected to the plans for the exercise, which would have been held at the Treynor High School. Their complaints focused on a fictional scenario for the drill based on young white supremacists shooting dozens of people amid rising tensions involving racial minorities and illegal immigrants who moved into the area.

Patriot group leaders complained the exercise was intended to portray people who legally possess guns and who fight illegal immigration as extremists.

County officials said in their statement they found it “astounding” that people claiming to be patriots would be opposed to emergency response agencies drilling to be prepared for any threat. They said the use of the fictional scenario was included only to meet U.S. Department of Homeland security requirements to qualify for federal grant funds.

“In no way has our office or any other response agencies favored a political view or issue. Our only intent was to prepare for a worst-case scenario to build our capacity for such an event and to test any gaps in our response system,” county officials said.

Jeff Theulen, coordinator of the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency, said, “I apologize to the true patriots who have endured profane-laced telephone calls, threats, and generally had their operations disrupted over this event.”

Kevin Elwood, superintendent of Treynor Community Schools, said the school system received about 100 emails from throughout the nation, as well as some angry phone calls, including one particularly disturbing call that was left as a voicemail message.

“They basically indicated that if we went through with this type of a drill that potentially that type of an incident could become a reality in our school district,” Elwood said. The recording was provided to the sheriff’s office for investigation, he added.

Sheriff Danker said investigators believe the call to the school came from outside of Iowa and Nebraska, and they are trying track it to find the person responsible for the threat. He added he has doubts about the threat’s credibility, but he sent deputies to protect the Treynor school’s entrances today because he didn’t want to take any chances.

Elwood said he was disappointed at the cancellation because local residents had understood the purpose of the training exercise and were supportive of the need for crisis response training. It’s important to recognize that the fictional scenario that would have prompted a shooting was not going to be role-played during the exercise, but critics failed to understand that, he added.

“We are not going to jeopardize our kids’ safety for some of the extreme views that are out there, and for people who are misinformed,” Elwood said. “We had a fantastic drill pieced together that had nothing to do with that background scenario that was going to test the response of a lot of agencies. Unfortunately, we are going to have to cancel now.”

More than 300 people were scheduled to participate in Saturday’s exercise from about 42 agencies, including area hospitals, fire departments, law enforcement agencies, schools and other organizations. Planning for the event had been underway for four to five months.

Doug Reed, the county’s lead planner for the Treynor exercise, said today there have been no discussions yet about making up the drill at a future date.

Craig Halverson of Griswold, national director of the Minuteman Patriots, one of the groups which had objected to the drill, said he is skeptical that any threats were actually made. He said he suspects county officials are citing threats as an excuse to drop the exercise because of the controversy that had developed over the plans.

News stories about the drill have received national attention via the Internet the past two days, and the controversy swirling around the exercise has been a hot topic on some conservative radio talk shows.

Halverson said the Minuteman Patriots are law-abiding people and the organization doesn’t condone people making threats. He said said his organization had no plans to conduct a protest in Treynor on Saturday because the drill was planned on school property and children would be participating.

“We are God-fearing people who believe in the sovereignty of our country and the Constitution,” Halverson said. “If somebody in my organization is making threats, I don’t want them in my organization. We are not lawbreakers and we follow the law of our country.”

Robert Ussery of Des Moines, state director of the Iowa Minutemen activist group, said he also doubted whether threats were actually made against the Treynor public schools. He contends government officials were pursuing a political agenda in support of amnesty for illegal immigrants when they developed the fictional scenario. The cancellation of the event supports that agenda, he added.

“What they are basically saying is, “See. We are right. We had to cancel it because of these people.” It would be very, very stupid to make threats like that. People are upset, but I don’t believe they would do that,” Ussery said.

Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, said today he doubted that county officials were acting with malicious intentions in planning the Treynor exercise, and he noted that there have been recent cases of anti-immigrant extremists charged with crimes of violence.

“The reality is that we have seen anti-immigration terror; we have seen white supremacist terror,” Potok said.