Tom Metzger
— a wily, iconic racist ideologue who has for years espoused
“lone-wolf” terrorism — could soon find himself facing criminal charges
filed by the federal government he’s excoriated for decades.
Federal investigators, fresh off a related mail-bombing conviction in
Arizona, may be pressing for what could develop into a major Justice
Department criminal case against “Terrible Tommy” Metzger, as he likes
to call himself. Court records filed in three states show the
investigators strongly suspect Metzger provided the Arizona bomber with
explosive-making instructions, knowing they would be used in the
commission of a crime of violence.
At 74,
Metzger, who now lives in Warsaw, Ind., has “celebrity status” as the founder of
White Aryan Resistance
(WAR), court documents say, and is a dean of white supremacists. He’s
the last vestige of a generation of revolutionary racist leaders in the
United States that included the late Richard G. Butler of
Aryan Nations
and the late Robert Miles, a one-time Michigan Klan leader and
convicted bomber. While those two and many other racist leaders were
charged in various criminal cases over the past three decades, Metzger
has managed to avoid any serious criminal charges in his 40-plus years
of activism.
That may be about to change.
Court documents filed in Arizona, Illinois and Indiana and obtained by
Hatewatch
suggest that federal investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms & Explosives may now be building a case against Metzger
that could be filed in any of several federal jurisdictions.
Metzger is accused in the court papers of providing bomb-making
instructions to long-time WAR associates Dennis and Daniel Mahon in a
plot to send a mail bomb to the black man who was then the diversity officer for the city of Scottsdale, Ariz.
Don Logan’s
hands were maimed, and two colleagues were less seriously injured, when
he opened a package containing a pipe bomb on Feb. 26, 2004, at his
city office.
The Mahon twins — itinerant aircraft
mechanics
and well-known racist activists who have lived in Oklahoma, Arizona and
Illinois — were indicted in 2009, five years after the attack on Logan.
At the same time, agents raided Metzger’s Warsaw, Ind., home and seized
computers and other items. Metzger was not arrested, and the results of
the raid have not been disclosed. However, Metzger was recently
described in open court as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
This Feb. 24, Daniel Mahon, 61, was acquitted of a single conspiracy
count by a jury. But his identical twin brother, Dennis, was convicted
of three felonies, including conspiracy, distribution of information
about explosives, and using explosives to attack a building. That last
conviction is apparently the “crime of violence” that officials need to
pursue charges against Metzger.
Tom Atteberry, special agent in charge of the ATF’s Phoenix field
division, encompassing the states of Arizona and New Mexico, said he
couldn’t discuss the possibility of bringing such a charge. “But what I
can tell you is, even though this [Mahon] trial is over, there are
continuing leads being pursued throughout the United States,” Atteberry
told
Hatewatch. “ATF is fully committed to pursuing leads with vigor with our state and local partners.”
Reached at his Indiana home, Metzger denied that he had ever built a
bomb, instructed anyone on how to build a bomb, or knew of Dennis
Mahon’s involvement in the Logan attack. “I don’t know what they would
build a case on,” he said. “I’ve been
the target
of various investigations going back to the 1970s. Unless they come
with an arrest warrant, I don’t pay attention to what the feds are
doing.”
Metzger and Lone Wolves
Tom Metzger’s
racist activities go back to the 1970s, when he joined David Duke’s
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, quickly rising to California state leader.
He later split with Duke, who he accused of womanizing and other
transgressions, and formed his own group to seek political office. After
a failed run for Congress, he founded what would eventually be called
the
White Aryan Resistance.
WAR published a grotesquely racist tabloid, complete with animalistic
portrayals of black people and thick with slurs and calls for violence.
At the same time, however, Metzger’s ideology was quite different than
most on the racist right. He described himself as an anti-corporate
leftist, a strong supporter of unions (for white people) and the working
class. He applauded black racists, who he saw as standing up for their
own people just as he was standing up for whites.
Metzger also pioneered the idea of using racist skinheads as the
“shock troops” of the movement. Reaching out to such skins, he sent a
trainer to Portland, Ore., in 1988 to encourage skinhead street violence
against black people. Three weeks later, three skinheads murdered an
Ethiopian student, resulting in criminal convictions but also
a civil suit from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
In the end, a jury returned a $12.5 million verdict against Metzger and
WAR. Metzger, who wrote after the murders that the killers had done
their “civic duty,” was forced to make monthly payments to the student’s
estate for the next 20 years.
Since that trial, Metzger has evolved into an ideologue and a
cheerleader, rather than an activist leading street actions or building a
group. He has spent much of that time encouraging “lone wolves” to
attack the government and minorities and selling publications detailing
weapons, bombs and paramilitary tactics.
Indeed, as one court document in the Mahon case points out, Metzger’s
website reflects these efforts. “There are those like myself who have
been out in the open for years with no real possibility of becoming deep
cover Lone Wolves,” he is quoted as saying. “Our job is primarily one
of creating white propaganda, of being public information sources and
for communicating to those in deep cover.”
It’s that very kind of relationship that may be at issue now.
Curiouser and Curiouser
Five months before the 2004 Scottsdale bombing, a man identifying himself as “Dennis Mahon of the White Aryan Resistance”
called the city’s diversity office and left a threatening message. The
caller’s number was later confirmed to be that of Dennis Mahon, and an
agent who met Mahon repeatedly during the subsequent investigation
recognized the voice on the call as Mahon’s, court records say.
In early February 2004, Metzger and Dennis Mahon appeared together at
Aryanfest 2004, a white power concert in Fountain Hills, Ariz., just
three miles from Scottsdale. (The event was one of the last attended by
Richard Butler, the
Aryan Nations founder from Idaho who died that fall, on Sept. 8.)
Aryanfest attracted some fairly prominent press attention in the Phoenix area. Between Feb. 17 and Feb. 19, the
Phoenix New Times alternative newspaper and two other small local papers published a major
New Times
article entitled “Barbecue Nations” that mocked the participants, with a
headline referring to “shaved-headed men hugging each other like they
were at a gay pride picnic” and an unnamed law enforcement official
describing Dennis Mahon as a “drunken fool.”
The racists couldn’t resist responding. Starting on Feb. 19 and
continuing for the next two days, Mahon and Metzger separately contacted
one of the article’s authors by phone and E-mail. “Amusing article,”
Metzger wrote in one E-mail, court records in the Mahon case say. “If
only you knew. But you will. lol TM.”
On Feb. 21 — the same day that the reporter received a final phone
call and a voicemail from Dennis Mahon — a pipe bomb, disguised in a
cardboard box and addressed to
Don Logan,
was left in the Scottsdale library. It was routed through the city’s
internal mail system to the diversity office, where it arrived on Feb.
26. Logan opened it that day. The blast injured Logan, a secretary and
another worker.
Records in the case against the Mahons say that ATF Special Agent
Tristan Moreland located phone records showing a “series of calls
between Mahon and Metzger just before and after the attempted contacts”
with
New Times.
Metzger’s E-mail strongly suggests that he knew the bombing was about
to occur, the ATF agent said in a court affidavit. Moreland said it was
his “belief that Metzger foreshadowed the Logan bombing to this
reporter in the email.”
Metzger absolutely denied that. “I had no idea the Mahons were involved in something like this,” he told Hatewatch.
“If I had known, I would have told them to stay the hell away from
anything like that. If I’d known Dennis was involved in something like
this, I would taken him outside and broken his legs.”
In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 bombing, investigators focused
in on the Mahon brothers. The ATF recruited a female informant, a
former stripper who in early 2005 moved with an undercover ATF agent
into a trailer park in Catossa, Okla., where the Mahons were then
living. She flirted with the Mahons, at one point sending them two
provocative pictures of herself, and sympathized with their views.
Within days, they began to talk to her about various bombings.
In 2006, Metzger left Fallbrook, Calif., for Warsaw, Ind., where he
moved into his mother’s house after her death. Even then, three years
before the Mahons’ arrests, the investigation already was beginning to
point to Metzger.
‘I Won’t Betray You’
In January 2008, a smitten Dennis Mahon allegedly told the female
informant that he and his brother “have been bombing for the movement
since the early 1980s and that Tom METZGER told them, ‘If they (The
MAHON’s) want to go ahead and bomb a Synagogue or a Mexican restaurant
go ahead, but that he (METZGER) doesn’t want to know about it,’”
according to an ATF affidavit filed in court.
“MAHON said that METZGER said that he will be the lightning bolt for
it and take the heat, but that he just doesn’t want to know about it.
MAHON appeared to be telling the [informant] that he and his brother
Daniel committed bombings on METZGER’s and the movement’s behalf, but
that METZGER insulates himself by not having the specific knowledge of
when and where.”
Meanwhile, a federal judge authorized a wiretap of Metzger’s
telephone that was active from January until June 2008, court documents
say. Eventually, investigators would surveil Metzger personally, monitor
his website, and place a “mail cover” on his post office box. At one
point, they even installed a camera that took pictures of Metzger as he
picked up WAR mail at his post office box, court documents show.
On May 22, 2008, after finding partial DNA profiles on some of the
Scottsdale bomb components, ATF agents with a court warrant swabbed the
mouths of the Mahon brothers to see if they could obtain a match.
Ultimately, they couldn’t make the match, but their visit raised alarms.
Two days later, testimony at the later Mahon trial would reveal, Dennis
Mahon called his mentor, Metzger.
“I won’t betray you, Tom,” Mahon said over the tapped phone.
“I didn’t think you would,” Metzger replied.
In his comments to Hatewatch, Metzger suggested that far from being
in on the attack, he hardly even knew the case. “Who’s this Logan
anyway?” he said of the diversity officer who was maimed. “A nobody that
I’ve never heard about.”
After obtaining the swabs, investigators finally presented their
evidence to a Phoenix grand jury. In June 2009, the Mahon brothers were
indicted in a conspiracy, the indictment said, to “promote racial
discord” and “teach the
tactics of terrorism with the intent that others would commit violent acts on behalf of WAR.”
Later that month, ATF agents raided the Mahon family residence in
Davis Junction,
Ill., about 10 miles south of Rockford, searching for bomb-making
materials, instruction manuals and any related computer files. In an
affidavit backing the search, the ATF described the Mahons as “closely
associated” with Metzger and WAR for 20 years and noted that WAR
promoted lone-wolf attacks.
At the same time, they searched Metzger’s Indiana home. According to
the affidavit supporting that search, agents were looking for
information on how to manufacture bombs, evidence of manufacturing
bombs, computers, and any documents relating to the 2004 attack on Don Logan. It said that investigators had developed “evidence suggesting that that MAHON brothers follow the advice and direction of TOM METZGER” when it comes to racist activities.
Making the Case
As interest in Metzger’s possible role heated up, undercover ATF
agents also ordered a number of books from Metzger’s site — materials
with names like
Terrible Tom’s Guide: White Urban Survival,
Combatives: Who, What, Why and When of Unconventional Warfare, and
Total Resistance: Resisting the Iron Heel.
Because ATF experts were able to recover enough forensic evidence from the 2004
mail bomb,
including triggering components, they were able to accurately surmise
what types of plans were used to build the device. Those plans looked
similar to those described in books sold by Metzger from his website.
The affidavit also said Metzger “regularly discusses acts of violence
in the furtherance of his white supremacist goals” on his Internet
radio show. It added: “Some of these acts included the use of small
explosive devices to disrupt civil rights marches and the murder of
judges and politicians. Although at times during these shows Metzger
tells his listeners not to act violently, he and his guests often
contradict themselves by telling the followers the opposite. They say
things like, ‘If there was ever a time for a white barbarian, it is
now,’ and that the commission of violence and murder is the only way
things are going to change in this country.”
The affidavit also spelled out the ATF’s theory of Metzger’s possible
criminal culpability, saying the search was for evidence of “teaching
or distributing material related to an explosive device with intent the
teaching or material will be used to commit a Federal crime of violence
and/or knowing that the person receiving such teaching or material
intends to use [it in] … a Federal crime of violence.”
In January 2009, an undercover ATF agent wrote Metzger a letter
saying he could “use a little instruction on the finer points of
warfare.” He also said that he was “thinking about waiting until its
[sic] 120 [degrees] this summer and blowing the power grid or something
like that.” He included $100. Within two weeks, Metzger had filled the
request for three books. He made no comment about his customer’s plans.
After the June 2009 raid and the arrests of the Mahons, things were
quiet until the twins were finally put on trial early this year. Now,
with the conviction of Dennis Mahon in a crime of violence, officials
may be moving ahead again.
It’s clear what federal law enforcement agents believe is really
going on. In one affidavit, ATF agent Moreland says that he “believes
Metzger is actively recruiting and training other persons to commit
crimes on behalf of the white supremacist and anti-government
movements.” That’s plain enough. What remains to be seen is if officials
can make a case they feel confident bringing to a grand jury.
Yesterday, a committee in the UK Parliament investigating the NewsCorp phone hacking and bribery scandal concluded that Rupert Murdoch was "not a fit person" to run a major international corporation.
