THE LATEST:

A jury has been seated and will begin hearing testimony Thursday in the William A. White case.


After a daylong selection process, 14 jurors -- all of them white -- were selected to the case. Two will be alternates.

Justice Department lawyer John Richmond objected when the only two black people on a panel of 38 were struck by lawyers for White, an avowed white supremacist.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that jurors cannot be struck based on race alone.

But after hearing from White's lawyers, Judge James Turk said he was satisfied that they expressed race-neutral reasons in excluding the two blacks.

ACCORDING TO LAURENCE HAMMACK

HERE WE GO AGAIN...

UPDATE  Sixty-Six potential jurors are being questioned and twenty had been dismissed as of this writing. At least nine of those who were let go said they could not be fair and impartial because of White's hateful views. When asked how they felt about use of the "n-word" several very negative reactions and one said that she didn't want to hear it. At one point Judge James Turk said, "We are losing too many jurors." According to first reports, the jury is also being asked how they feel about white supremacy, Adolf Hitler, and swastikas. One juror who has not yet been dismissed claimed to have a swastika tattoo. It appears that jury selection will take awhile and according to reports being made that the trial could be a lengthy one. It appears that there are precious few in Roanoke who have not read or heard about this case. Hopefully, they will be able to seat members that can be fair and impartial. I suspect that the citizens of Roanoke may not be as forgiving as those in the Hal Turner trial - that is, if the prosecution has a case which I think they might, this time.

Well...it's not over til it's over. Laurence Hammack has covered Bill White almost as much as I have over the years and is a great source for updates.

TO MR. HAMMACK'S COLUMN

For more than a year now, the war of words between William A. White and the government has been one of arcane legal arguments.


Did a racist's online rants amount to "true threats," as defined by federal law? Or did the words of White, a neo-Nazi leader, stop short of "inciting or producing imminent lawless action," and thus fall under the protection of the First Amendment?

When White's trial begins today in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, the debate over esoteric legalities will no doubt continue. But for the first time since White was charged with making online threats, the court will hear from his victims.

A nationally syndicated newspaper columnist from Maryland, a human rights lawyer from Canada, a university administrator from Delaware, a former small-town mayor from New Jersey and others have been subpoenaed to testify.

The witnesses are expected to describe the fear they felt after getting telephone calls, e-mails and online abuse from White. The self-described commander of a Roanoke-based white supremacy group, White often lashed out at those who offended his sense of bigotry.

Defense lawyers maintain White is all talk and no threat.

The trial, which could last two weeks, will test the free speech rights of White -- who has been called "possibly the loudest and most obnoxious neo-Nazi leader in America" by the Southern Poverty Law Center -- against the impact of his words.

Although a similar charge against White was dismissed earlier this year in Chicago, Judge James Turk has ruled the Roanoke case can go forward, giving prosecutors a chance to bolster their legal arguments with raw, human emotion.

In court papers, Justice Department lawyer John Richmond emphasized the importance of viewing White's comments in the context of how they affected his targets.

"Evidence that victims panicked, felt anxious, sought law enforcement protection, or took extra steps to ensure their safety is very significant and militates in favor of a fact-finder concluding that a particular statement was a threat," Richmond wrote.

The best way to consider that evidence, the government contends, is through the jury trial that begins today.

Columnist targeted

After eating out the night of Jan. 6, 2007, Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian were forced from their vehicle and taken by carjackers to a house in Knoxville, Tenn.

There, some of the five suspects repeatedly raped the couple, according to news media outlets. Newsom, 23, was taken to some railroad tracks, shot him in the back of the head, and his body was set on fire. Christian, 21, died a slower death, by suffocation, after her beaten and sexually mutilated body was wrapped in trash bags.

Christian and Newsom were white; their attackers were black.

The case soon caught the attention of Leonard Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald whose work is carried by newspapers across the country, including The Roanoke Times.

In a June 2007 column, Pitts derided claims from some critics that the national media -- always eager to report on cases in which whites are accused of victimizing blacks -- ignored this black-on-white crime out of political correctness.

Pitts, who is black, cited the Central Park jogger case as just one example of why he was "unkindly disposed toward the crackpots, incendiaries and flat-out racists who have chosen this tragedy upon which to take an obscene and ludicrous stand. I have four words for them and any other white Americans who feel themselves similarly victimized.

"Cry me a river."

It didn't take long for White to notice the column.

As he is prone to do, White quickly inserted himself into a controversy in which he had no prior involvement. At 11 p.m. the night of June 3, White called Pitts' home and told his wife, who answered the phone, that he was the commander of the American National Socialist Workers Party, the government alleges in an indictment.

Fifteen minutes later, the indictment continues, White e-mailed Pitts. After reciting the lyrics of a song filled with racial slurs, White wrote: "You and your fellow black filth are quickly losing ground, and I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when whites once again rise up and slaughter and enslave your ugly race to the last man, woman and child.

"Itz coming."

Later, the government alleges, White published Pitts' home address and telephone number on his now-defunct Web site, overthrow.com, and encouraged readers to call the columnist.

When officials at the newspaper asked White to delete Pitts' contact information from the Web site, he allegedly replied: "We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts' personal information.

"Frankly, if some loony took the information and killed him, I wouldn't shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom."

The right to be rude?

Even White's lawyers acknowledge that he comes across as a rude and loudmouthed racist.

But his actions don't amount to threats, defense attorney David Damico said last week in asking Turk to dismiss the charges. "There's nothing here that says, 'I'm going to come to your home to do this,' " Damico said of the charge involving Pitts.

However crude White's approach was, the defense contends, his intent was to engage in "political discourse," thus his words should be shielded by the U.S. Constitution.

Most of White's alleged threats were related to items in the news. A diversity program at the University of Delaware led him to target an administrator at the school, the government alleges. And a mayor in New Jersey drew White's ire after his yard was vandalized by racists.

Defense lawyers say White's comments should be viewed in the context of today's no-holds-barred attitude among commentators on cable television and on the Internet. That especially applies to Pitts and Richard Warman, a human rights lawyer White is accused of threatening, they say.

"These are people who are lightning rods," defense co-counsel Ray Ferris said in court arguments. "They're out there mixing it up."

In July, a Chicago judge used a different standard in dismissing the first charge filed against White, which accused him of posting the name and address of the foreman of a jury that convicted a fellow white supremacist. Prosecutors argued that White meant the man harm, knowing his readers included racists who might be incited to violence.

Citing a U.S. Supreme Court case that dealt with comments at a cross burning, the judge ruled that because White's actions did not provoke "imminent lawless action," they fell under the First Amendment's protection.

Although Turk denied a motion last week by Damico and Ferris to dismiss the seven charges against White, the judge indicated that he might reconsider after the government rests its case.

It is unclear whether White, who seems to have a hard time keeping his thoughts to himself, will share them with the jury. In one of his last public comments before his arrest in October 2008, the 32-year-old was full of his usual bravado.

White said at the time that the government had been investigating him for months, but had filed no charges because prosecutors knew they had no case against him.

"They just know they're going to lose on this," he told The Roanoke Times.

THE OPP REPORT...

STRAIGHT TO ONE PEOPLE'S PROJECT
MISTRIAL! ONE JUROR TWISTS AND TURNS HAL TURNER CASE INTO ONE HUGE MESS

Hal Turner is saying that he is not a white supremacist, and considering he owes his fate to Hispanic and Indian lawyers, and now as we learn an Asian juror, he should never be! A judge declared a mistrial in his case and will be retried, thanks to a juror named Wei Wang, a self-described First Amendment juror who deadlocked the jury with what looks to be his own interpretation of the law and how it should be applied. The prosecution is heated right now. They never liked Wang as a juror, particularly after when he was seated he suggested that he could not be impartial! And we have never seen a judge grant a mistrial, leave the courtroom, and say "I changed my mind!" The only thing quicker than that would more than likely have been the appeal that was filed if Turner was found guilty! But Wang, it turns out, is not the only concern as we head into the retrial on March 1. Truth of the matter is only three jurors found him guilty. If that's the case, the prosecution is going to have a hell of a time trying to change that around, and conventional wisdom says they probably won't. We will find out in a few months, we suppose.


One People's Project

BROOKLYN, NY - The Hal Turner trial was rather uneventful during the two-day proceedings, but one juror has changed all that during deliberations. After the second note from the jury saying they were "hopelessly deadlocked", Judge Don Walter declared a mistrial.

The issues began when a series of notes from juror Wei Wang were sent to the court asking various questions concerning what constituted free speech and if historical Supreme Court decisions be applied to the jury's decision. This prompted calls for Wang's removal by the prosecution, a call that they have made repeatedly during the trial, particularly once they began deliberating. The defense meanwhile called for a mistrial, which Judge Don Walter granted. However, Judge Walter returned to the courtroom seconds later, said "I changed my mind," and said the jury should deliberate through lunch and afterwards if they were still deadlocked, the mistrial will be granted again.

Wang reportedly prompted concerns about him right after the jury was initially seated. Just before they were sworn in, jurors were excused for lunch. Wang returned saying that Hal Turner sounded "vaguely familiar" and that it might have through reading past court documents. Wang, who works for a hedge fund, has no legal training and says he studies the First Amendment as a "hobby". "If this case has something to do with freedom of speech as such, I don't know if I can be an impartial juror," Wang told the court that day, saying he had a strong belief in freedom of speech.

As deliberations went on, Wang's impartiality became an even greater concern with the notes, four of the five of them signed by Wang, not the foreperson. "It is apparent that somebody in there (the deliberating room) is arguing law that I didn't give them," Judge Walter said, sending instructions that the jury cannot interpret law for themselves. Judge Walter also sent instructions that only the foreman can sign letters, the next letter was signed by Wang who had become the foreperson. It was he who, when the jury entered the courtroom declared that the jury could not reach a verdict.

Richard Gardner, a truck driver from Nassau County, was one of the jurors in the case and said only three voted to convict. He said that the biggest problem in the case was that the prosecution bailed out in the case too early. Prosecutor William Hogan chose not to respond to Mr. Gardner's opinion.

Judge Walker is allowing computer access restricted to only Hal Turner's son, the only change to Turner's bail conditions that he changed. The prosecution also called for the "Friends of Hal Turner" blog to be taken down, but the prosecution said that it was a blog operated by the family, not Turner. The judge ruled in favor of the defense, but said he will be monitoring the blog. A gag order was also put on the prosecution and defense.

The retrial will begin on March 1 in the Eastern District of New York.

---

First, let me give a big thanks to Daryle Lamont Jenkins and OPP for keeping us updated and giving us a first-hand look into the events surrounding this courtroom circus.

While, I understand that the juror in question posed a major problem for this case, I think it is important to note that from everything that I have read and heard about this "trial," it appears that the competence of the presiding judge should certainly be in question.

Additionally, the prosecution definitely blinked. Whether that was intentional or happened out of simple arrogance is a matter for further debate.

The sad thing is that should the trial begin anew in March, nothing much will be gained. There will be no possible precedent setting decisions on First Amendment rights. There will be no definitive findings. All that could possibly be accomplished is another huge waste of taxpayer dollars.

What should occur, in my opinion, is an investigation into the practices of federal law-enforcement and their use of paid informants. Following that, it should be decided that the monies expended by cities and citizens around the country because of their orchestrated entrapments and demonstrations be returned, with interest, to every one of those entities.

MISTRIAL DECLARED -VOTE WAS 9-3 TO ACQUIT

TO STORY

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The judge in the trial of ultra-right-wing shock jock and former FBI informant Hal Turner of North Bergen declared a mistrial early this afternoon after the jury said it was “hopelessly deadlocked.”


U.S. District Court Judge Donald Walter dismissed the jury and set a new trial date of March 1. He then extended a gag order, previously limited just to Turner, to lawyers for the defense and prosecution.

Jurors filed out of a side door and into a hallway near the sixth-floor courtroom, with several mumbling “no comment” or shaking their heads and declining to speak.

But one juror, Richard Gardener, a truck driver from Long Island, said the vote to acquit Turner had been 9-3 just before Walter declared a mistrial.

Gardener said he was one of the three jurors who wanted to convict Turner on the single charge that he unlawfully threatened three Chicago-based federal appeals court judges when he wrote on his blog last June that they “deserved to be killed” for their ruling in support of a gun control ordinance.

NOT LONG NOW...

SOURCE

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The judge in the trial of ultra-right-wing shock jock and former FBI informant Hal Turner of North Bergen said this morning he may declare a mistrial because jurors told him they are “hopelessly deadlocked.”


Earlier this morning, jurors sent a note to Walter, saying they were unable to reach a verdict and were “hopelessly deadlocked.”

It was the second note from the jury in which it said it could not reach a verdict on the single charge that Turner, 47, unlawfully threatened three federal appeals court judges when he wrote on his blog last June that they “deserved to be killed” for a ruling in a gun control case.

The judge’s disclosure that he was considering a mistrial marked the end of a tense morning in a mostly empty courtroom.

As jurors deliberated behind closed doors, prosecutors asked Walter to dismiss one of them. Prosecutors say the juror, Wei Wang, a hedge fund manager from Queens, had been improperly directing other jurors during deliberations.

One of Turner’s defense lawyers, Nishay Sanan, argued against dismissing Wang. who was seated on the jury even though he told Judge Walter that he often reads First Amendment cases as a hobby and thus may not be able to be impartial.

As lawyers on both sides argued about Wang’s status, the jury sent in the note that it was “hopelessly deadlocked.” On Friday, only two hours into deliberations, the jury sent a note using the same phrase.

When Walter announced that he had received the second note about the deadlocked jury, Turner’s lead defense counsel, Michael Orozco, stood and asked the judge to declare a mistrial.

“I’m going to declare a mistrial,” said Walter.

The judge then asked prosecutors and defense attorneys to “take our your calendars” and began discussion dates for a new trial.

Without issuing a formal decision on a mistrial, the judge then walked back to his chambers. Less than a minute later, he opened the door and walked back into court and said the jury had ordered lunch.

At that point, the judge said he would allow the jury to continue deliberating through lunch.

The case has attracted attention as a battle over First Amendment rights of free speech and the need to protect government officials from extremists.

Last June, Turner was arrested by FBI agents for writing on his blog that three Chicago-based federal appeals court judges “deserved to be killed” for a decision on gun control.

His trial, which began last Tuesday, was expected to last two weeks and possibly include Governor-elect Chris Christie as a witness. As the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, Christie had opted not to file charges against Turner after Turner made other alleged threats against judges.

Prosecutors cut off their presentation of evidence after only six witnesses – five FBI agents and one U.S. marshall – when Judge Walter blocked them from introducing evidence of Turner’s history of other on-air or Internet threats against other officials.

Beginning in 2003, Turner was an informant for the FBI, passing along information about the extremist groups in his audience. The FBI dismissed him as an informant in 2007, but Turner continued to communicate with the bureau and pass along tips until last June.

His FBI past was the subject of a lengthy investigative report in The Record on Nov. 29.

The juror in question, Wei Wang, had already been seated on the jury last week when he disclosed his interest in the First Amendment. At the time, Judge Walter called Wang to the bench and questioned him with defense and prosecution attorneys standing nearby.

On Prefabricated Fascists...

Well, it finally happened! It's a very rare thing for me to ever agree with an article written by anyone representing the far right segment of our society...very rare, indeed. However, I have to give credit where credit is due and, in this case, I will.



William Norman Grigg has written a sterling piece on the entire debacle surrounding the Federal Bureau of Investigation's use of paid informants and agents provocateur in general, and the recent case of one Hal Turner in specific. I am reposting the article here along with a few of my own observations regarding this situation. It is, indeed, lengthy. So pop some corn, pull up a chair, and be ready to stay awhile.


Prefabricated Fascists: The FBI's Assembly-Line Provocateurs

It's difficult not to experience a faint pang of sympathy for Hal Turner, albeit an ephemeral one deeply buried beneath multiple layers of well-earned disgust.


For at least five years, and probably more, Turner was a paid informant and provocateur in the employ of the world's largest sponsor of terrorism, the Federal Government. His assignment was to bait easily influenced people with incendiary rhetoric about race and other resentments, and reel in anyone who bit a little too lustily on the bait. The Bureau credits Turner with personally bringing more than 100 "extremists" to their attention, many of whom (the Bureau won't specify how many) were arrested.


There's every likelihood that at least some of Turner's victims were offered the same deal offered to Randy Weaver after he was set up on trivial and spurious firearms charges by an undercover snitch for the ATF: Become an informant/provocateur, and you'll stay out of jail.

Undoubtedly, that likelihood exists. There is also a probability that Hal, at some point, found himself on the wrong side of the law given his penchant for cocaine and some of life's little pleasures. The difference between Hal and others that are considered "Stinky Bait" by the powers that be, is that Hal has talent - a talent to reel people in, to endear himself to the weaker, more vulnerable, and less discerning members of society. While, sleazy and detestable to most, he has a certain charm that woos the extremists right into his web of deceit.


Additionally, Hal already had connections which gave him credibility. Working on various political campaigns, rubbing elbows with notables such as Sean Hannity, and developing a good radio personality all went into making him the right person for the job. The kicker was the motivators - Hal was easily motivated by two things, his ego and money and the feds knew just how to use that to their advantage.

Weaver rejected the deal, and the FBI eventually retaliated by attacking his home and murdering his wife and son. Jose Padilla, a rougher customer than Weaver, rejected the same deal; he was declared an "enemy combatant," subjected to prolonged torture intended to destroy his mental equilibrium and break his will, and eventually convicted on exceptionally dubious terrorism-related charges.


Before he was outed as a stukach in early 2007, Turner was the host of a web-based talk radio program and a freelance speaker who specialized in "incitement-and-indictment" entrapment of "right-wing extremists." Hackers discovered a cache of e-mail correspondence between Turner and William Haug, an agent working for a Joint Terrorism Task Force who acted as the informant's handler. Turner closed down his radio program while emitting great gusts of affected outrage over what he insisted were spurious accusations that he had collaborated with the Feds.






In a message posted to Pro Libertate after he was identified as an agent provocateur – along with federal assets tasked to carry out similar missions within Muslim sub-populations in the U.S. – Turner insisted that only "PARANOID FREAKS (like this blog)" would suspect him of collaboration.


By way of establishing his neo-Nazi bona fides, Turner boasted that "my [white supremacist] rallies in Kingston NY and Kalamazoo, MI cost those cities $60,000 and $120,000 respectively in police overtime and that there's no way the FBI would have approved anything like that by an informant because the cities would have demanded the money back!"

And that is precisely what is happening right now - the cities want their money back, and they will, surely, get it if they don't relent to governmental pressures.


Long ago, as early as 2003, there were those who were pointing at Hal Turner and labeling him an agent provocateur along with a few others. It was inconceivable to the left that he could make the threats he made, publish the information that he published and attempt to incite violence in the manner that he did with impunity.


On the flip side of the coin, some of the racists and extreme elements were cautioning members to be wary of those who openly advocated violent or criminal acts as they might not be what they seem. Yet, the checkbooks were opened and the money was sent to support Hal Turner, et. al. in their endeavors. And all the while, Turner was operating on the taxpayer's dime. It makes one wonder what other endeavors we are financing.

Actually, as we'll see anon, the FBI has no problem staging white supremacist rallies and protest marches that help "local" police departments rack up overtime.


Certainly, the police don't mind making a little extra money by swanning about in riot gear. Events of the sort Turner organized are an intelligence bonanza for the Regime: They give the FBI (and, most likely, other Homeland Security assets) an opportunity to harvest detailed information for federal databases about both "right-wing extremists" and their opposition.

Grigg makes an excellent point, and one that is often overlooked by the left in their zealousness to protest at these events. Often, the young people who get caught up in the moment are so enmeshed in their beliefs that they are standing up for what is right that they fail to realize that they, too, are the objects of government surveillance.


Staging the right-wing rallies provides law-enforcement with the perfect situation in which to amass all of the data necessary to build a case against any group or individual they have targeted. Once labeled an "extremist" on any point of the spectrum, you can bet your ass that you will carry that label for life and that you have become a member of the vast data bank targeting the citizens of this country.


So much for the right to assemble and for freedom of speech - yes, you have both. But exercise those rights at your own peril because none of us are immune.

We know this is the case through first-person testimony from an FBI undercover asset who spent nearly a decade worming his way through the "radical right" – including the National Socialist Movement (NSM).


The NSM's adherents doubtless see themselves as the finely honed blade of a resurgent "white power" movement, a description promoted with similar zeal by professional hate-hucksters like Morris Dees' artfully misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center and the so-called Anti-Defamation League.


Actually, the NSM is "all show, no go" – it's more of a federally controlled traveling roadshow, sort of a Third Reich tribute band. Its cadres exude all of the raw menace of the hapless Illinois Nazis from The Blues Brothers, and possess all of the street-fighting chops of the bumbling Black Widow biker gang from Clinton Eastwood's Philo Beddoe films.


But I digress.

You have to love the "Third Reich tribute band" reference and if you've ever SEEN the NSM in "action" you will appreciate the Every Which Way But Loose comparison. Kudo's to Mr. Gregg. Sometimes in an article such as this a moment of levity is definitely a welcome respite.

We were discussing Hal Turner's career as an FBI informant/provocateur code-named "Valhalla," details about which have been pried from the Bureau by reporters for the Bergen (New Jersey) Record.


Beginning in 2003 (or, as Turner claims, 2002), Turner was a paid informant "who spied on his own controversial followers," reports the Record, citing "government documents, e-mails, court records, and almost 20 hours of jailhouse interviews" with the snitch. Turner "received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band."


"I was not some street snitch," insists Turner. "I was a deep undercover intelligence operative." He demands recognition of that distinction with the same desperate desire for dignity displayed by any other whore who seeks to upgrade his or her job description with a more refined title.


The FBI budgeted at least $100,000 to pay for Turner's performances, both on his radio program and in public speeches. He now insists that he was merely role-playing on behalf of his pimps – both the FBI's Special Agent Haug and New Jersey State Police Detective Leonard Nerbetski, who also served on the Newark Joint Terrorism Task Force.


As he tells the story, Turner was required to feign passion for various unsavory causes: In interviews with the Record, Turner maintained that "the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and new now feels double-crossed by the Bureau after his arrest."


"The audience loves the rip-roaring radio psycho," Turner boasted in an e-mail to the FBI. "They literally throw money at it. Just be confident that the personality you hear (or hear about) on radio is not real life. I have zero intention of doing anything stupid."


In the guise of the "radio psycho," Turner – with the FBI's help – was pulling down about $15,000 a month to express such edifying sentiments as the following: "A full day of violence against blacks would be a really nice thing.... [L]ynchings, church burnings, drive-by shootings and bombings [would] put these subhuman animals back in their place."


Turner materialized at various white power gatherings in several states. He also traveled to Brazil on the FBI's dime to spy on suspected white supremacists in that country, as well as to investigate an alleged plot by white supremacists and Brazilian Arabs to send "consumer goods" to resistance fighters in Iraq. It's difficult to believe that the CIA remained entirely aloof from that aspect of Turner's career.


While the FBI was willing to abet Turner's efforts to incite violence against innocent people, the Feds moved against him shortly after he published comments on his blog interpreted as death threats against three judges in Chicago. He was arrested shortly before the 2008 election and is scheduled to stand trial this week.


As the song says, "some men like the fishin', some men like the fowlin', and some men like to hear the cannonball a-roarin." Turner likes nothing more than hearing the sound of his own voice. Yet "here I am in prison, betrayed," he laments, arrested by the same FBI Special Agent who recruited him and – he plaintively maintains – fed him his lines.


"I was given specific instructions," Turner declares, and he played the role of racist agitator out of his duty as "a loyal, patriotic decent American citizen."

Sympathy for Turner is eclipsed by the revulsion that Turner's rhetoric engendered in me for so long. And, Grigg hit on a central point in all of this, for me and that is that Turner loved all of this. Not only did he love the sound of his voice, but he absolutely relished in the travel, in the money that was being lavishly spent, in the turmoil that he created. Hence, I have a difficult time believing in his patriotic or decent nature.


As someone on my blog said earlier in the week, I tend to believe that what happened to Hal Turner was a real good indicator that karma is real.

Turner may be telling the truth. His experiences are eerily similar to those recounted by former FBI "deep cover" operative (and one-time Roller Derby star – no, I'm not kidding) David Gletty in his ineptly written but highly useful memoir Undercover Nazi: The FBI Infiltration of Extremist Groups in America.


In what strikes me as a transparent effort to cultivate a marketable mystique, Gletty says that many details of his work as a paid FBI snitch remain "classified." He claims to have been recruited in 2000 when, as the leader of a constitutional militia, he came across a plot by an Appalachian white supremacist to set off a string of radiological bombs in collaboration with al-Qaeda.


Recruited as a "deep cover" operative, Gletty spent several years cultivating ties with "extremist" groups, including elements of the KKK, the Hammerskins, and eventually the National Socialist Movement. He was careful to get his "ticket punched" by working with legitimate dissident groups such as the League of the South, and various immigration reform groups, such as at least one element of the Minuteman volunteer border watch movement.


Gletty's most notable achievement was to infiltrate and become leader of a National Socialist Movement chapter in Florida and organize a 2006 NSM march in Orlando that was intended to sow fear and anger in a predominantly black neighborhood.


To prepare for that role, Gletty behaved much as Hal Turner had, fulminating in public about the supposed inferiority of non-white people and befouling the air with exhortations to collectivist violence. This not only legitimized Gletty in the eyes of his comrades in the NSM, it also helped to rile up the group's enemies, thereby ensuring a large turnout of counter-protesters for the February 2006 march in Orlando – which was exactly what the Bureau desired.


During his years as an informant/provocateur, Gletty was usually accompanied by a fellow asset he identifies only as "Joe." During the Orlando protest, Gletty recalls, Joe carried a concealed digital camera "for taking all the photos he could of protesters and counter-protesters. Then the images would be fed into the FBI face recognition computer. At least 1000 faces for the computer to digest."


In addition to producing a bounty of biometric intelligence for the FBI, the Orlando rally offered a good dry run for a future Homeland Security crack-down. Gletty points out that his FBI handler was "actually pumped up" about the Orlando march, "because the protest would be a great training exercise for the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff's Department, the FBI, and MBI [the Central Florida Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation] as they would all be in attendance."


As a leader in the white supremacist underground, Gletty held many "surveillance parties" – not only public events, but private functions used to gather intelligence and, where possible, set up various low-level thugs to become informant/provocateurs themselves.


For three years, "Joe and I ... traveled from state to state, rally to rally, and party to party, infiltrating the White Power Movement in America," Gletty recalls. "Thousands of miles, hundreds of photographed faces, and a myriad of tape recordings were contributing to the eradication of racial and religious prejudice in America."


Really? To judge from recent attention earned by the NSM, Gletty's mission was not to help "eradicate" prejudice (as if this could be accomplished through government intervention), but rather to bring the group more completely under the FBI's control.

It's important to note here that Gletty, by all accounts, appeared to be more "normal," at least on the surface, than many of the people who have been attracted to the movement, and especially to the NSM. This made him more likable, and like Turner, he had a special charm. He, too, was the perfect man for what the government had in mind.


Movement leaders and solid members took to him right away. Bill White, who was active in a leadership role with NSM at the time, gravitated toward him along with some of the other more staunchly respected nationalists. Consequently, the feds were enjoying their newly created extremist magnet.


Sources who were present during this period have given many accounts of Gletty's fostering of violent situations that could very easily, but surprisingly didn't, get someone killed. All of this at the behest of our federal law-enforcement.


The National Socialist Movement has always been fertile territory for the drunk and the disorderly, for the disenfranchised, and the easily manipulated. In fact, much of organized racism has been built on capitalizing on the weak and the defective. Infiltrating these groups is easy and our government knows that.

The NSM is a remnant of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP). According to Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, the ANP was thoroughly compromised through the FBI's notorious COINTELPRO operation; by the time of his murder in 1967, Rockwell was widely believed to be a "patsy" for the FBI or some other intelligence agency.


One objective of the anti-ANP COINTELPRO operation was to create a rift between Rockwell's Nazi outfit and the United Klans of America. By the late 1970s, the Klan was thoroughly honeycombed with FBI assets. In fact the Bureau boasted that it had enough Klansmen on its payroll in North Carolina to elect that state's Grand Dragon: At one point, 7 of the 8 members of a Charlotte Klan chapter reportedly were FBI assets informing on the klavern's sole non-federal employee.


Edward Dawson, an informant/provocateur on the payroll of the Greensboro police department and under the supervision of the FBI, helped orchestrate a November 3, 1979 street clash between white supremacists and Communists that left five people dead. The "White Power" contingent included elements of both the Klan and the American Nazi Party, whose FBI-engineered rift had apparently healed sufficiently to permit joint action.


Understanding the history of both the nationalist movement and the infiltration and usefulness of its' members to law enforcement is the key to understanding what is going on when they march through the streets of your city or town. It's not just a group of Hollywood Nazi types or sheet-wearing rednecks...it's your government dollars at work.


The National Socialist Movement's current strategy is to provoke tumult and violence, rather than participating in it directly. In recent weeks the group has achieved a relatively high profile by staging anti-immigration rallies in Riverside, California and Phoenix, Arizona.


In California, a small knot of NSM denizens faced off with members of "Los Brown Berets de Aztlan," a foundation-funded militant Chicano group, with riot police clad in body armor on hand to maintain "order." A few weeks later the group inflicted itself on an immigration- reform protest in Arizona during which the group's most visible spokesperson, J.T. Ready, unfurled a portrait of Adolf Hitler.


Ready – a dishonorably discharged ex-Marine – is a pretty good candidate to be the next NSM figure outed as an asset of the Feds. An ambulatory wad of cholesterol and bile, Ready looks like the unfortunate result of a genetic experiment combining the most unpleasant traits of Ernst Roehm and Chris Farley.


While certainly not telegenic, Ready has achieved a certain media prominence as a result of his candor in reciting the Nazi party line

The very sight of a brown-shirted Nazi waving the swastika evokes a violent reaction in most situations. J.T. Ready, the National Socialist Movement, and the federal government are very aware of the passionate, and sometimes violent reaction that people have at such events - in fact, they bank on it. The marionettes in all of this also bank on the fact that they will be protected.


Regardless, of Ready's bilging appearance, Grigg hit the nail again when he noted the media prominence which Ready has gained and the following he has garnered. Suffice it to say that he is another in the long list of candidates to profit on the taxpayers back.

The sudden prominence of the NSM has been noted – with a detectable hint of gratitude – by left-collectivists eager to shoehorn resistance to the Obama Regime into a pre-determined narrative: Critics of the Blessed One and his administration are animated by concealed bigotry, according to this reading, whether they know it or not, and their rhetoric is creating an "atmosphere" of incipient violence that will engender domestic terrorism.


It should be remembered that the same tropes were put into play early in the last Democratic administration, just before the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing – a terrorist act for which disenchanted former federal employee Timothy McVeigh was executed, but was actually carried out with the help of "others unknown," including several federal assets connected to a bizarre little white supremacist commune known as Elohim City.


The Regime has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep the otherwise moribund White Power movement on life support. It's simply too useful as a political foil – and, occasionally, as an instrument of politically useful violence – for the Regime to let it die.

Whose rhetoric is really creating an atmosphere of "incipient violence that will engender domestic terrorism" is certainly something worthy of debating and I do find it unfortunate that such a well-written and thought-provoking article became the victim of political vomit in its' summation. However, the body of the discussion is extremely important to the issue at hand.

The very thought that our federal law-enforcement agencies could engage in such activity is absolutely chilling, but their record speaks for itself. The sole reason that this kind of thing can happen is that most people don't know about it. Most people don't really pay attention - and that lack of vigilance could very well spell disaster for this country and our freedoms.

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The Grigg article is, without a doubt, one of the best and most accurate that I have read throughout the entire Hal Turner recent saga. He echoed much of what individuals residing on both the left and right are thinking and feeling.

Given the revelations of just how involved our government has been in supporting one of the most pernicious personalities to ever take to the airwaves, and their attempts to prey on the vulnerable in our society, many questions have been raised. But, not all have been asked.


One of the many that is in on the mind of this writer is just how many people have been victimized in all of this.


I keep going back to the afternoon of February 28, 2005. While in my kitchen making preparations for a get-together, I received a phone call from a reliable source in Chicago that the police had just been summoned to home of Judge Joan Lefkow and it appeared to be very serious.


As someone who had been peripherally involved in the Matthew Hale case, I knew that this couldn't be good. I felt nauseous. A cold chill shinnied down my spine. Forty minutes later, I learned that the husband and mother of that Judge had been senselessly and brutally murdered.


We all thought that this was the work of a white supremacist. And when Hal Turner posted a picture of Judge Lefkow on his website with the caption "GOTCHA." along with a suggestion that the same fate might be awaiting other judges, we thought for certain that he knew more than he was saying.


When it was revealed that the killer had died by his own hand and that he had no apparent connection to the racist right we still wondered how they knew for certain that he had not been influenced by the rhetoric or that he had not gotten her personal information from one of the sites where it had been posted. In short, we will probably never know. But, I wonder...


I wonder how much more federal law-enforcement knows but doesn't divulge. For the last four years, Hal Turner has publicly taken "credit" for that murder telling his enemies not to mess with him - look what happened to that Judge. He did this repeatedly. Does he know something about that night that we don't? Does the government?


How much blood and terror is on their hands via their flunkies like Hal Turner? How much Stinky Bait do they use to accomplish their mission? And...how much have we, the apathetic public, paid through the years to allow them to continue?


While I'm not much for conspiracy theories, I do know what a duck walks like and what it sounds like. Perhaps this Stinky Bait landed the biggest fish of all!



















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Hal Gets The Weekend

Now, this is really rich! Here's the report from One Peoples Project...

We all know that Justice is blind, but after today, we might also be able to count mental illness among its handicaps! Sure, we are not the most impartial group in the world, as it stands with Hal Turner, but guilty or not guilty, we thought there would be a real concrete verdict in this case going through the courts. But alas we are dealing with a case involving white supremacists, and we are starting to get used to the hoops folks have to jump through to nail these bastards. Just wait until next week, when Bill White goes to trial! That promises to be just as WTFish as this case has been. So the deal is this: Turner's jury deadlocked, the judge ordered them to deliberate more, they did so for a few more hours and sent out a weird question before calling it quits for the day. So we have at the very least one more day - Monday - of this trial, and if this results in a mistrial, keep the summer free for them to do it all over again! Oh, and it was real nice to see damn near everyone from ACORN in the courtroom next door trying to get their funding back after all the right-wing agitation against them. They really loved the fact that a neo-Nazi who once called upon his radio listeners to do harm to them was facing a judge for something his damn self. Gotta love the irony!


One People's Project


Harold C. "Hal" Turner, the white supremacist who for eight years hosted an internet radio show where he repeatedly called for violence against those he had political issues with, is getting a temporary reprieve from a verdict in a trial charging him with inciting violence against three federal judges in Chicago. After 2½ hours, the jury informed the court that they were hopelessly deadlocked, but will return on Monday to deliberate more.

At 3:30, the multiracial 6-man, 6-woman jury sent Judge Don Walter a note about them not being able to come up with a unanimous verdict. Judge Walter sent the jury back to deliberate longer, reminding them of the costs of the trial. "This is an important case,"

Walter said to them in court. "This trial has been expensive in time and money." By 5:30 he had released them for the weekend.

Earlier, after the jury was given the case, prosecutors tried in vain to have one juror removed because of concerns about his impartiality. The juror, an Asian man, had told the court that he was particularly knowledgeable about the First Amendment. Judge Walter felt however, that he presented no issues during the course of the trial, and chose to keep him on. Later, during the second round of deliberations, a question was asked the court by a juror asking if a person who makes a written statement responsible for that statement, as opposed to if they make a verbal one. Judge Walter responded by saying there is no distinction between verbal or written statements.

The charges stem from a June 2, entry in Turner's blog about the judges who ruled on a gun control case in a way Turner didn't approve. In response, Turner called out the judges as "devils" and provided maps and photographs of the office building where they worked. "Let me be the first to say this plainly," he wrote on his website, "these judges deserve to be killed." He had obtained the home addresses of the judges later in the day, but before he could post them he was arrested by Connecticut authorities for similarly threatening government officials in that state. Those charges are still pending.

In his closing arguments, prosecutor William E. Ridgeway maintained that what Turner posted on his website was outside the scope of free speech and should be considered a threat, as it would be the conclusion of any rational person who read those words. Defense Attorney Nishay K. Sanan, who described Turner as a "shock jock" along the lines of Howard Stern and Don Imus said otherwise to the jury. "Giving your opinion is not a crime," Sanan, said. "To criticize the judiciary is not a crime." Sanan also tried to suggest that Turner's remark of "Obey the Constitution or die!" was no different than someone wearing a T-Shirt saying "Skate or Die" or "Snowboard or Die" Prosecutor William Hogan in his rebuttal said "That's just ridiculous!" Hogan also noted that the attempt to make the FBI responsible for how Turner acted was a "non-starter", citing the numerous times he was admonished, approached and finally removed from the informant program because of his activities online.

Coincidentally, the national leaders of one of the groups Turner had attacked, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), was in the courtroom next door to his to suing to get their funding back after they were stripped by Congress after an almost 2-year long campaign against the group by conservatives groups and politicians. Last year, Turner took issue with the story that ACORN was involved in voter fraud, and linked to a list of ACORN offices around the country while also posting, "I think it might be wise for the general public to pay a visit to their nearest ACORN office and make certain the office is . . . . . . not able . . . . . . to do this anymore." ACORN was not aware of Turner's trial taking place.


If the jury remains deadlocked at the end of deliberations, the re-trial will possibly take place on or around June 1.