This story was originally published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on March 17, 1985.
The satin robes and pointed hoods that for more than a century have marked the Ku Klux Klan as an aberration of Southern culture are being replaced by camouflage fatigues and combat boots.
The cross, once claimed by KKK members as a symbol of their Christian purity, is giving way to the swastika. And shouts of "white power" at Klan rallies are being drowned out by cries of "Sieg Heil."
In the past two years, the Ku Klux Klan has moved even farther to the right. Younger, more militant Klan members are now embracing a virulent anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi philosophy in addition to the Klan's accustomed anti-black rhetoric.
Some of these Klansmen have formed or joined several small but heavily armed splinter groups that advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and the extermination of all blacks and Jews, according to law enforcement officials and private investigators who monitor the Klan.
"What is happening is that some of the Klansmen realize that they have had absolutely no impact on the American public, " said Charles Wittenstein, Southern counsel for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. "Their previous propaganda efforts have been failures, and they have gotten frustrated. Instead of talking, they are now prepared to use violence to overthrow the government."
Although Klan membership continues to decline nationwide, those who stay in are becoming more hard-line in their views on blacks and Jews, according to Randall Williams, a spokesman for Klanwatch, a project of the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "This is a logical extension of what the Klan has been saying for a long time, " said Williams. "Instead of segregation, they now want final solutions."
What particularly troubles law enforcement officials about these splinter groups, commonly called the Underground, is their penchant for violence.
All are believed linked with a pseudo-religious cult, the Aryan Nations, based in Hayden Lake, Idaho. In the past year individuals linked to the Aryan Nations have stopped talking, and started shooting and bombing, in an effort to overthrow what they call the "Zionist Occupied Government, " or ZOG, in Washington.
Warfare the only solution
These groups are the right-wing equivalent of the Weather Underground - frustrated, fanatical white supremacists who believe they have been disenfranchised by a conspiracy of Jews, blacks, homosexuals, communists and whites who don't believe as they do. They believe open warfare is the only solution.
The blueprint for this racial revolution is a book called "The Turner Diaries, " written by white supremacist and Atlanta native William Pierce under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. Pierce, a former physics professor and American Nazi Party member, now heads a white supremacist group called the National Alliance, which is based in Arlington, Va.
In the book, "patriotic" whites frustrated with Jewish and black influences in government form a group called "the Organization" and go to war against the United States. Members of the Organization rob armored cars, counterfeit huge amounts of money, bomb public buildings, destroy public utilities, and assassinate key political figures before overthrowing the government.
Since last April, Aryan Nations members have been linked to a number of racially and politically motivated violent crimes similar to those in "The Turner Diaries."
Among those crimes are the machine-gun murder of Denver talk show host Alan Berg, a $3.6 million armored car robbery in California, a $500,000 armored car robbery in Washington, a multimillion-dollar counterfeiting scheme, and several shoot-outs with law enforcement officials.
The FBI has arrested 20 people since November in connection with these crimes and is seeking at least six more.
Among those arrested and linked to the Underground are three Alabama men, all with strong Ku Klux Klan ties. Two have been charged as accessories after the fact in the California armored car robbery. The third, William David Riccio, is facing federal weapons charges and state drug charges.
Riccio has been a Klan member and organizer in Alabama for the last 10 years. He is also a member of the Aryan Nations. Riccio apparently became connected with the Aryan Nations while serving two years in a federal prison for parole violations stemming from a 1979 arrest on a weapons charge. Riccio has also been indicted on civil rights charges in connection with a 1979 incident in Decatur, Ala., in which Klansmen attacked a group of blacks.
"We are still concerned about the presence of a small core of people with similar beliefs in this area, " said Tom Moore, an FBI agent in Birmingham. "Our investigation is continuing."
'A terrorist underground'
Estimates of the groups' strength nationwide ranges from fewer than a hundred to more than 500.
"It's an army, " said Lyn Wells, coordinator of the National Anti- Klan Network in Atlanta, who estimates the number of actual armed combatants at fewer than 300. "This is a dangerous phenomenon. This is a white supremacist terrorist underground."
According to Williams of Klanwatch, "the Aryan Nations is not pervasive in the South, as far as we can tell. It's mostly in the West and Northwest."
But one of the more militant factions of the Klan, the North Carolina-based Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has close links with the Aryan Nations and recently established a klavern in Canton, Ga.
Efforts have also been made to recruit Georgia Klansmen for duty in the Underground, Williams said. "There were definite efforts at recruitment in Georgia in the fall of 1984, " he said.
Williams would not say where the recruiting took place, but he identified the recruiter as Robert J. Matthews, an avowed white supremacist who was among a group of 13 people who last fall signed a document declaring war on the U.S. government. Matthews died Dec. 8, 1984, in his home on Whidbey Island, Wash., following a 36-hour shoot-out with FBI agents.
Since his death, Matthews has been praised as a hero and a martyr in right-wing literature. Among those praising Matthews is Edward Fields, leader of the Marietta-based National States Rights Party and publisher of the right-wing "Thunderbolt."
"Fields is clearly promoting what he calls the White American Bastion organization, which is also known as the White Underground. We know these groups have some ties to the Klan in this area, " said the ADL's Wittenstein.
Matthews is believed to have attended a KKK rally at Stone Mountain in 1983. Last May he met with Riccio in Birmingham in an effort to gather information on Montgomery activist attorney Morris Dees, one of the founders of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dees reportedly is on a "hit list" issued by the Aryan Nations through one of at least five nationwide computer networks operated by group members. Also on the list is Alabama Lt. Gov. Bill Baxley.
Dees reportedly made the hit list because of his work on behalf of poor blacks and against the Klan, while Baxley's name was added because of his efforts while attorney general to extradite white supremacist J.B. Stoner of Marietta, Ga., for his role in a 1965 Birmingham church bombing. Security for Dees and Baxley has been increased.
Assassination point system
Louis Beam, a former Texas KKK leader now closely aligned with the Aryan Nations, operates one of these computer networks and allegedly has proposed an assassination point system by which whites can earn the designation "Aryan warrior."
It would take one full point to become an "Aryan warrior." The murder of a member of Congress would be worth one-fifth of a point, judges one-sixth, FBI agents and federal marshals one-tenth, journalists and local politicians one-twelfth. One full point would be given for assassinating the president, under Beam's system.
"You have to take seriously the threats coming from these people because of th eir penchant for violence, " said Williams.
Other law enforcement officials are also taking seriously the threat posed by these groups. U.S. attorneys from Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado, California and Alabama gathered in Seattle in January to discuss the problem.
The FBI has initiated a domestic security investigation and formed a task force with members of the Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Prisons to investigate crimes committed in the name of white supremacy.
"We have several ongoing investigations, but we're not interested in any particular group because of their views, " said FBI Special Agent Manuel Marquez Jr. in Washington. "We only investigate once these views or beliefs go beyond the rhetoric stages and go into acts of violence or other violations of the law."
The groups being closely watched by law enforcement officials go by a variety of names, including the Order, the Aryan Resistance Movement, the White American Bastion, and the Silent Brotherhood (or its German translation, Bruder Schweigen). Other groups closely allied with the Underground and the Aryan Nations are the Covenant, the Sword, andthe Arm of the Lord, the Christian Defense League, the Christian Patriots Defense League, and the tax protest group Posse Comitatus.
In addition to recruiting members from these groups, the Underground has filled its ranks with people from more militant Klan factions, from a prison-based white protection group called the Aryan Brotherhood, and from more radical elements of the farm protest movement.
Most of these groups have their roots in the KKK and draw many of their beliefs from theology espoused by Aryan Nations leader the Rev. Richard Girnt Butler. Butler, 65, is a former member of the KKK and Posse Comitatus in California. Butler moved to Idaho in the late 1970s and founded what he calls the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which teaches "Christian Identity, " a theology that first appeared in England about 80 years ago.
Among the precepts of Christian Identity are that Jesus was not a Jew, that the lost tribe of Israel actually consists of Aryans who settled in northern Europe and later migrated to the United States and Canada, and that whites have the God-given right to reclaim Canada and the United States for white people. Some members of the cult advocate the extermination of Jews and blacks.
"Their bigotry is almost beyond belief, " said Wittenstein.
Added Klanwatch's Williams: "These people are totally detached from reality, and that's what makes them so dangerous. They believe they are on a mission from God, just like the Ayatollah Khomeini thinks he's on a mission from God."
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