Ex-FBI agent Mike German talks to Democracy Now! about what he sees as the bureau's failure to deal effectively with white supremacist groups.
German has written: "Lone extremists pose a challenge for law enforcement because they're difficult to predict. It's like searching every haystack for a needle. Perhaps we'd have better luck if we paid more attention to the needle factories.” This is especially true now that militant Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda are adopting the model of leaderless resistance that our homegrown terrorists mastered so well.
An excerpt from his interview with Amy Goodman:
AMY GOODMAN: Looking at the piece that you did in The Washington Post, "Behind the Lone Terrorist, a Pack Mentality," you talk about every once in a while, a follower of these movements bursts violently into our world with deadly consequences. McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Buford Furrow, Jr., Paul Hill, to name just a few, all convicted murderers, identified as lone extremists, the most difficult terrorists to stop, because they act independently from any organization. Or do they? You write, “Tim McVeigh seemed able to find a militia meeting wherever he went. He was linked to militia groups in Arizona and Michigan, white supremacist groups in Oklahoma and Missouri, and at gun shows he sold copies of The Turner Diaries, the racist novel written by the founder of a neo-Nazi organization. No one finds such groups by accident.” You talk about Eric Rudolph who planted the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics, two abortion clinics, gay nightclub, grew up in the Christian Identity Movement, which identifies whites as God’s chosen people and encourages the faithful to follow the Biblical example of Phineas, by becoming instruments of God’s vengeance. Aryan Nations, formerly of Hayden Lake, Idaho, was the center of Christian Identity thought. Not incidentally, Buford Furrow worked there as a security guard before going on a shooting rampage at a Jewish day care center in Southern California. And you talk about Paul Hill, wrote of the need to take Phineas actions to prevent abortions and was so well known that the news media used to -- used him to speak in support of Michael Griffin's killing of abortion doctor, David Gunn, that Hill later shot an abortion provider himself should have surprised no one. Give us the landscape of these groups. They're well known.
MIKE GERMAN: Sure, they're well known. And they're very well organized, and they're very smart. They understand criminal conspiracy laws. They understand the First Amendment. And they take advantage of those in training their operatives to go out and do these activities. And the point I was trying to make is -- is that we can’t look at these as isolated instances. It would be as if we were investigating the mafia and looking at every mafia hitman as a lone assassin and not looking at the underlying organization that was producing these murders, you know. And these people are careful, the leadership are careful about separating themselves from the actual criminal conspiracy, you know. But they do set the motive. They set the method that's used, and I believe that makes them part of the conspiracy. Now, I’m not saying necessarily you can make a criminal case against them, but all I’m saying is if we're -- if our number one priority is to prevent acts of terrorism, we have to pay attention to these needle factories, because that's what they're producing is these lone extremist terrorists. And it's not just random violence that occurs once in a while, it's an organized pattern of activity.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember during President Bush, the first's presidency, Planned Parenthood trying to get the administration to talk about the whole movement of burning, bombing, attacking women's health clinics as a conspiracy, because the same kinds of things were happening around the country, not to mention the targeting of women's health professionals, and doctors who performed abortions. They could hardly get an audience with the Justice Department at the time, and the administration was adamant about not talking about conspiracy of these groups. What is the significance of this?
MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think the problem is if you blind yourself to the conspiracy, then the chances of them being successful in their next act of lone extremist terrorism is more likely. So, you know, again I’m not saying that we could necessarily take these leaders into court and convict them, because the whole purpose of their methodology is to separate themselves from the actual criminal activity, but what I’m saying is if we don't pay attention to those leaders, you're going to insure that the next group is successful, just as if we were only investigating the mafia one murder at a time and not looking at the underlying organization. And frankly, you know, these groups, like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations, have rich criminal histories just as deep as the Italian mafia does, yet, you know, we tend to give them a political status that I don't think is necessarily deserved.
Now, one thing to keep in mind, there are political groups within this movement. It's a huge community. Like any community, there's a division of labor, and these -- you know, there are completely law-abiding people within these groups, and as a criminal investigator, when I went undercover, one of my -- one of the things that I had to do was separate those two out, because there are people who have very strong white supremacist beliefs but would never, ever engage in violence. And my role as a criminal investigator, I was there to gather evidence of criminal activity. So I had no interest in talking to those people. I had to try to find who were the criminals. And I mean, that's the part -- the hard part about law enforcement in a democratic society, but it's something that has to be done. And, you know, in my cases, it was done very effectively and, you know, I believe the F.B.I. should have replicated those cases more than they did.
AMY GOODMAN: You write in your piece in The Washington Post of last week, that just six weeks ago, self-avowed white supremacist, Sean Gillespie, was convicted of firebombing an Oklahoma City synagogue. According to a CNN report, Gillespie said he once had been a member of the white supremacist group, Aryan Nations. He later left the group. At the time of his arrest, he told authorities he was a racist skinhead acting on his own. But before the attack, he videotaped himself stating, “I will film it for your viewing enjoyment, my kindred white power.” If he’s all alone, who are his “kindred”? “Neo-Nazi ideology is also a leading influence in rising school violence,” you write. “The March 21 shooting at Minnesota’s Red Lake High School was carried out by a Native American teen who praised Adolf Hitler, used the name ‘Native Nazi’ in internet chat rooms, and the shooters at Colorado’s Columbine High School reportedly greeted each other with Nazi salutes and chose Hitler's birthday as the date of their attack. But you rarely hear these incidents described as acts of domestic terrorism.” Who defines whether it's terrorism or not?
MIKE GERMAN: Well, that's a big part of the problem, and you know, any time they come up with numbers of terrorist attacks, you have got to realize that there's a reporting problem there. You know, a white man beats a black man on the street, is that just a random assault or is that a hate crime, or is that an act of domestic terrorism, or is it nothing? Does it not get reported at all? So, any time that the government talks about numbers of terrorism attacks, what they're talking about is the number of attacks that were reported as acts of terrorism. And like the school violence, sometimes it's not even thought of as domestic terrorism, but if neo-Nazi influence is influencing these kids to act out violently, I would argue that that’s part of the terrorist movement, and that that, by paying attention to the neo-Nazi groups that are producing that literature and those websites, we might have a better idea of who might be the next lone extremist, so that we can stop him.
For more on Mike German, here's a link to an online chat he conducted for the Washington Post.
Here's a link to his June 5 WaPo story, Behind the lone terrorist, a pack mentality, an an excerpt:
The FBI has long maintained that Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed 168 lives, was the prototypical "lone wolf" terrorist and that anyone implicated in the bombing conspiracy is behind bars. But old loose ends and troubling new revelations about McVeigh's association with white supremacist groups have led many people to wonder whether a wider conspiracy was behind the bombing that took place just over 10 years ago. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, is considering holding hearings to try to answer these lingering questions. What he is likely to discover is not a disagreement over the facts, but a fundamental misperception of how most extremist groups operate.
Most people have never been to a Ku Klux Klan rally or a militia meeting; you don't stumble into one by walking through the wrong door at the dentist's office. Chances are, you wouldn't know how to find where a white supremacist group meets in your community. In fact, you'd probably be shocked to learn that there was one in your community.
Not so all alone: Timothy McVeigh, shown here just hours after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, drew inspiration and support from extremist groups and literature. (Noble County Jail Via Associated Press)
I learned how extremist groups operate firsthand as an FBI undercover agent assigned to fight domestic terrorism. They don't always call themselves the KKK or the militia; they sometimes use benign names that mask their true nature. They might wear Nazi symbols right on their sleeves, but they might not. They could be just a couple of grumpy old geezers who meet for coffee at a local cafe, or a few young punks looking for trouble, or even one guy sitting in his basement chatting on neo-Nazi Web sites. But they are all part of an underground extremist community.
Even if you could find them, they wouldn't just welcome you into a meeting. They tend to be suspicious of strangers. They use coded language and symbols that help them distinguish insiders from the uninitiated, and they are careful to avoid infiltrators.
But every once in a while, a follower of these movements bursts violently into our world, with deadly consequences -- McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Buford Furrow Jr., Paul Hill, to name just a few. And all these convicted murderers were identified as "lone extremists," the most difficult terrorists to stop because they act independently from any organization.
Or do they?
Tim McVeigh seemed able to find a militia meeting wherever he went. He was linked to militia groups in Arizona and Michigan, white supremacist groups in Oklahoma and Missouri, and at gun shows he sold copies of "The Turner Diaries," a racist novel written by the founder of a neo-Nazi organization. No one finds such groups by accident.
