America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States

by Stuart Wexler

  16.Dan Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace and the Origins of the New Conservativism (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000); see endnote 25 on page 490.

  17.Thorne, Last Chance, unpaginated.

  18.Bob Eddy, interview with the author, September 6, 2013.

  19.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Memorandum for the Attorney General,” FBI, accessed April 16, 2015, http://vault.fbi.gov/16th%20Street%20Church%20Bombing%20/16th%20Street%20Church%20Bombing%20Part%2047%20of%2050/view.

  20.Ibid.

  21.Bill Fleming, interview with the author, September 9, 2013.

  22.William Baxley, interview with the author, August 21, 2013.

  23.Stephen E. Atkins, The Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 42.

  24.Ibid.

  25.Carter, Politics of Rage, 189.

  26.Swift, “Armageddon.”

  27.Ed King, interview with the author, September 25, 2014.

  28.Ibid.

  CHAPTER 5

  1.Douglas O. Linder, “The Mississippi Burning Trial (U.S. v. Price, et al.),” Famous Trials, accessed April 16, 2015, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price&bowers/Account.html. The preceding account draws heavily from Professor Linder’s excellent Web source. Subsequent endnotes reference subdivisions within Linder’s website.

  2.Ibid.

  3.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Confession of Horace Doyle Barnette,” FBI, accessed April 16, 2015, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price&bowers/barnetteconfession.html.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Robert Cohen, Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (London: Oxford University Press, 2009), 52.

  6.Sims, Klan, 241.

  7.Charles Marsh, God’s Long Hot Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 63.

  8.Ibid., 60.

  9.Ibid., 54.

  10.William H. McIlhany, Klandestine: The Untold Story of Delmar Dennis and His Role in the FBI’s War against the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Arlington House, 1975), 38–47.

  11.Douglas O. Linder, “Sam Bowers,” Famous Trials, accessed April 16, 2015, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/price&bowers/Bowers.htm.

  12.“The Klan Ledger,” Candy Brown Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society: Freedom Summer Digital Collection, accessed April 16, 2015, http://cdm15932.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15932coll2/id/34854.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Marsh, God’s Long Hot Summer, 64–66.

  15.Rebecca N. Ferguson, The Handy History Answer Book (Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2005), 201.

  16.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “FROM: SAC Jackson to Director; Reference Bureau airtel set out instances of threats from the main file on King,” Mary Ferrell Foundation, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=145174&relPageId=33. The document has Bowers warning two men who approached him with an offer to kill King to be cautious. On the other hand, he appears to have assigned two other men to kill King with “high powered rifles” that same summer (1964). That fact becomes interesting in our discussion of the alpha plot.

  CHAPTER 6

  1.Malcolm X, “To Mississippi Youth,” Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 139.

  2.Ibid., 143.

  3.Ibid., 145.

  4.Rufus Burrow Jr., A Child Shall Lead Them: Martin Luther King Jr., Young People, and the Movement (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), 195–96.

  5.Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (New York: NYU Press, 2013), 120.

  6.Associated Press, “Harlem Rioting Leaves One Dead,” Tuscaloosa News, July 20, 1964, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19640720&id=FxAdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-poEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5339,2725361&hl=en.

  7.United Press International, “Curfew Extended for Third Day in Riot-Torn Rochester,” Bulletin, July 27, 1964, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1243&dat=19640727&id=J_hYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TvcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4880,4815124&hl=en.

  8.Ellesia Ann Blaque, “Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Riot of 1964,” in The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, vol. 2, eds. Walter C. Rucker and James N. Upton (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007), 507.

  9.William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo, “The Economic Aftermath of the 1960s Riots in American Cities: Evidence from Property Values,” National Bureau of Economic Research 10493 (May 2004): 22, Table 1.

  10.Eric Avila, “Social Flashpoints,” in A Companion to Los Angeles, eds. William Deverell and Greg Hise (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 96.

  11.Martin Luther King Jr., “MLK Speaks to the People of Watts,” King Center, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlk-speaks-people-watts.

  12.Ibid. The speaker who responds to King is not identified.

  13.Jim Vertuno, “LBJ Library Releases Tapes Showing King Feared Race War,” Times Daily, April 13, 2002, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=20020413&id=E2weAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VskEAAAAIBAAwfulGraceo/GodJ&pg=2671,1610048&hl=en.

  14.Wexler and Hancock, 73–74.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Collins and Margo, Economic Aftermath.

  18.Donald Jason, “Guards Bayonet Hecklers in Cicero’s Rights March,” New York Times, September 5, 1966, 1.

  19.Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power,” American Rhetoric, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/stokely/carmichaelblackpower.html.

  20.James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States: 1945–1974 (London: Oxford University Press, 1996), 658.

  21.United Press International, “Baltimore Ripped by Violence,” Bulletin, July 29, 1966, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1243&dat=19660729&id=-_5XAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JPcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6427,457917&hl=en.

  22.Wesley Swift, “The Coming Liberation of America (1-30-66),” Wesley Swift Library, accessed April 16, 2015, http://swift.christogenea.org/content/coming-liberation-america-1-30-66.

  23.Boylan, “A League of Their Own.”

  24.City of Miami Police Department, “Report of Detective Lochart F. Gracey, Jr.,” Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed April 16, 2015, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/M%20Disk/Milteer%20J%20A/Item%2009.pdf.

  25.Minutemen, “A Short History of the Minutemen,” Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed April 16, 2015, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/M%20Disk/Minutemen/Item%20001.pdf.

  26.Eric Norden, “The Paramilitary Right,” Playboy 16, no. 6 (1969), Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed April 16, 2015, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/M%20Disk/Minutemen/Item%20006.pdf.

  27.Ibid.

  28.William Turner, “The Minutemen (The Spirit of ’66),” Ramparts, January 1967, Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed April 16, 2015, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20to%201967/Item%2037.pdf.

  29.Ibid.

  30.Norden, “Paramilitary Right.”

  31.Ibid.

  32.Gerald McKnight, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 93.

  33.Ibid., 124.

  34.Jim Ingram, interview with the author, March 2, 2008.

  35.Wesley Swift, “Zero Hour (2-4-62),” Wesley Swift Library, accessed April 16, 2015, http://swift.christogenea.org/content/zero-hour-2-4-62.

  36.Wesley Swift, “2-12-67 Bible Study Q&A,” Wesley Swift Library, accessed April 16, 2015, http://swift.christogenea.org/content/02-12-67-bible-study-qa.

  37.Ibid.

  38.Don Koenig, “Revelation Commentary: Chapter 14—The Grapes of Wrath Are Crushed,” Prophetic Years, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.thepropheticyears.com/The%20book%20of%20RevelationRevelation%20Chapter%2014.htm. />
  CHAPTER 7

  1.Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution” (Oberlin), Electronic Oberlin Group, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/BlackHistoryMonth/MLK/CommAddress.html.

  2.Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution” (National Cathedral), Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, accessed April 16, 2015, http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/remaining_awake_through_a_great_revolution/.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Max Herman, “Newark (New Jersey) Riot of 1967,” in The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, vol. 2, eds. Walter C. Rucker and James N. Upton (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007), 452.

  5.Sandra West, “Negro Reporter Tells Detroit Riot Story,” Times-News, July 24, 1967, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1665&dat=19670724&id=T59PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ayQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6942,1623294&hl=en.

  6.Collins and Margo, “Economic Aftermath.”

  7.Marquis Childs, “Guns Sales Mount as Tension Grows in This Strange Moment in History,” Morning Record, August 15, 1967, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2512&dat=19670815&id=WiVIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XgANAAAAIBAJ&pg=775,5019331&hl=en.

  8.Martin Luther King Jr., “The Other America,” Gross Pointe Historical Society, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/mlk-gp-speech.pdf.

  9.Tavis Smiley, with David Ritz. Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 243.

  10.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “FBI Director to All Offices; Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist—Hate Groups, Internal Security,” March 4, 1968. http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html

  11.King, “Remaining Awake” (National Cathedral).

  12.Wexler and Hancock, Awful Grace of God.

  13.Wesley Swift, “Power in the Word (3-31-68),” Wesley Swift Library, accessed April 16, 2015, http://swift.christogenea.org/content/power-word-3-31-68.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Wexler and Hancock, Awful Grace of God, 21–31. Our original work goes into each plot in greater depth than in the synopsis that follows. We discuss at least one additional plot—in 1964 in St. Augustine—that was never solved and thus cannot be firmly tied to Christian Identity. That plot has been excluded from this synopsis.

  16.Bernie Ward, Kansas Intelligence Report: The Dixie Mafia (Topeka, KS: Office of Attorney General Vern Miller, 1974).

  17.Michael Newton, The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 199.

  18.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Airtel from SAC Oklahoma City to Director re: Donald Eugene Sparks,” Mary Ferrell Foundation, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=145174&relPageId=9.

  19.Jerry Mitchell, “KKK Killed Ben Chester White, Hoping to Lure and Kill MLK,” Mississippi ClarionLedger, June 10, 2014, http://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/06/10/ben-chester-white-kkk-mlk/10277517/.

  20.Ibid.

  21.Wexler and Hancock, Awful Grace of God, 211.

  22.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “From SAC, Atlanta to Director; re: National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” Internet Archive, accessed April 16, 2015, https://archive.org/stream/foia_National_Knights_KKK-19/National_Knights_KKK-19#page/n37/mode/2up/search/nighthawk, see 38-40.

  23.Interview with the author, November 2009. The source does not wish to be named.

  CHAPTER 8

  1.While earlier chapters draw heavily from The Awful Grace of God, my previous book (coauthored with Larry Hancock), this chapter draws heavily from the e-book update, Killing King, released by Counterpoint Press in April 2015.

  2.Donald Nissen, interview with the author, November 9, 2009. This interview is one of dozens, formal and informal, conducted with Nissen from 2009 to 2014. His story has never waivered, and he has never sought to profit from it. He kept quiet about his account, provided to the FBI in June 1967 and August 1968, until 2009, when I was able to track him down. A career criminal, Nissen experienced a religious conversion in prison and presently works for church groups that help young ex-prisoners transition from their criminal pasts to productive lives.

  3.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Airmail from Tampa to Director,” July 4, 1974, MURKIN 44-38861; Janet Upshaw, interview with the author, December 15, 2010.

  4.House Select Committee on Assassinations, “Evidence of a Conspiracy in St. Louis,” Mary Ferrell Foundation, accessed April 16, 2015, http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=800&relPageId=389.

  5.“The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mysterious Deaths and Disappearances, accessed April 16, 2015, http://cuchculan.hpage.co.in/martin-luther-king_49125488.html.

  6.Jerry Mitchell, “Did the Mafia Help Solve the Mississippi Burning Case?” Mississippi ClarionLedger, June 22, 2014. Few reporters are more respected on the issue of civil rights violence and law enforcement’s response than Mitchell, who confirmed the use of Mafia don Gregory Scarpa to help solve the Dahmer case. Per Mitchell, “Scarpa and an FBI agent bought a television from Klansman Lawrence Byrd just as he was closing his business, Byrd’s Radio & TV Service in Laurel. Byrd helped carry the TV to the car, and Scarpa shoved him into the back seat, where Byrd was pistol-whipped.” Federal judge Chet Dillard, referenced in Mitchell’s article, also firmly believes, based on FBI documents, that the FBI used Scarpa.

  7.Jack Nelson, Terror in the Night (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1993), 139. No book does a better job of covering the rivalry between law enforcement and the KKK in Mississippi.

  8.Ibid.

  9.Nissen, interview with the author, November 9, 2009.

  10.Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Re: Alleged Offer of $100,000 by the WKKKKOM to Anyone Who Kills Martin Luther King, Jr.,” July 24, 1967, File 157-7990, Jackson Field Office.

  11.“Atlanta Mayor: ‘Get King Away from Him Right Now,” Jet, May 2, 1968, https://books.google.com/books?id=UTgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17&dq=ayers+AND+bond+AND+jet&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Hm4nVa4495qxBNbOgPAF&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ayers%20AND%20bond%20AND%20jet&f=false.

  12.The Reverend John Ayers, interview with the author, November 16, 2010.

  13.Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartmann, Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2008), 339–40, 500–501.

  14.Thorne, Last Chance for Justice. Thorne does not have page numbers in her book. The relevant passage says that Bob Eddy was told by Bill Holt that a “Brown” from Tennessee had helped train the Cahaba Boys to make an acid detonator. Other sources say that a “Brown” from the Constitutional Party participated in the Birmingham bombing. Together, these clues strongly point to Jack Brown, a known associate of Stoner and Milteer. Thorne notes that the police later cleared Jack Brown because they could verify his whereabouts in Tennessee on the day of the attack. But none of the material presented to law enforcement suggests that Brown participated in the actual September 15, 1963, attack; he may have simply been an accessory.

  15.FBI, “Re: Alleged Offer of $100,000.”

  16.“Fourth Suspected Robbery Gang Member Held,” Gadsden Times, July 6, 1966, 16, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=z2ofAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MdUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1586,811537&dq=sparks+and+payne+and+mayor+and+robbery&hl=en.

  17.“James Earl Ray: Selected Chronology,” Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed March 30, 2013, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Assassination%20Clippings%20Folders/Miscellaneous%20Folders/Miscellaneous%20Study%20Groups/Misc-SG-109.pdf.

  18.Philip Melanson, The Martin Luther King Assassination: New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover-Up (New York: SPI Books, 1994), 42.

  19.James Earl Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.? The True Story of the Alleged Assassin (New York: Marlowe, 1997), 125.

  20.William Pepper, Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King (London: Vers
o, 2003), 248.

  21.Harold Weisberg, letter to Mark Lynch, August 26, 1985, Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed April 16, 2015, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/ACLU/ACLU%2008.pdf.

  22.Philip Melanson, The Murkin Conspiracy (New York: Praeger, 1989), 44–50.

  23.John Nicol, “Was the King Assassination ‘Triggered’ in Canada?” CBC News, accessed December 15, 2010, www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/28/fray-hearings.html. I am not revealing their identities because both men are still alive.

  24.Charles Faulkner, “Murdering Civil Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., White Supremacy, and New Facts Supporting the Guilt of James Earl Ray,” Mary Ferrell Foundation, accessed April 16, 2015, www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Murdering_Civil_Rights.

  25.Gerald Posner, Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1998), 170–71.

  26.Nissen, interview with the author, November 9, 2009.

  27.Michael Newton, The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: A History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 179–180. Newton is one of the most informed and most prolific authors on the KKK in general.

  28.Wexler and Hancock, Awful Grace of God, 213–15.

  29.“Notes on FBI Hardin Documents,” Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College, accessed March 30, 2013, http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/H%20Disk/Hardin%20James%20C/Item%2030.pdf.

  30.Nelson, Terror in the Night, 140.

  31.Jerry Mitchell, “Book Probes MLK Killing,” Mississippi ClarionLedger, January 3, 2008, www3.nd.edu/~newsinfo/pdf/2008_01_03_pdf/Book%20probes%20MLK%20killing.pdf.

  32.Jack Nelson, “Transcript of Interview with Thomas Albert Tarrants, III, June 20, 1991,” MSS 1237, Box 3, Jack Nelson Collection, Manuscript Archive and Rare Book Library, Emory University. With the help of researcher Charles Faulkner I obtained the audio of the tape, which, with a few very minor discrepancies, confirms the substance of the transcript.