U.S. Newswire release, September 24, 1998 11:25 Eastern Time

ADL Report Cites Neo-Nazi National Alliance as Most Dangerous Organized Hate Group in America

by Myrna Shinbaum of the Anti-Defamation League, 212-885-7747

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24--An Anti-Defamation League (ADL) investigative report reveals that the single most dangerous organized hate group in America today is the neo-Nazi National Alliance (NA).

Led by veteran anti-Semite and racist William Pierce, the National Alliance has grown to become the largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the nation. NA members have engaged in plotting violent crimes and its propaganda appear to have inspired others to carry out murder, bombings and robberies, according to Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance.

ADL released its findings today at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

With 16 active cells from coast to coast and a growing membership, National Alliance has been visible in at least 26 states, most notably in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Mexico.

Pierce's novel, "The Turner Diaries," which depicts the Aryan takeover of the world, is regarded by many extremists as an explicit terrorism manual and may have inspired Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing. "Explosion of Hate" documents how Pierce uses the Internet to spread his anti-Jewish, anti-Black and anti-government propaganda, recruit active members and maintain contact with like-minded haters. ADL's investigation also reveals potential links to racists and neo-Fascists and right-wing parties in Germany, Great Britain, France and Holland.

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"The National Alliance is an alliance of bigots and bombers thriving on hate," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. "What makes William Pierce and his group so dangerous," stated that they have the right to carry out acts of violence in order to realize their vision of a world free of Jews, Blacks and democracy."

Foxman noted that, "We had a tragic wake up call on April 19, 1995, when the Murrah Federal Building was blown up by Timothy McVeigh. The American people must be made aware that the National Alliance is not some insignificant fringe group. They are an army committed to violence and an ideology to undermine our democracy in favor of a Hitlerite world."

"The National Alliance has taken its hate high tech," said Howard P. Berkowitz, ADL national chairman. "It maintains one of the most technically sophisticated sites on the World Wide Web, exploiting the potential power of the Internet to showcase its racist and neo-Nazi ideology and peddle its wares." Not limited by its Web site, Berkowitz stated that "the National Alliance's insidious message is also injected unsolicited into chat rooms and on E-mail."

The ADL leaders lauded law enforcement for actions taken against National Alliance members. Speaking for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Ray Velboom detailed his investigations into National Alliance activity in Florida, including conspiracies to commit bombings and bank robberies in Central Florida and the operation of a clandestine radio station in the Tampa area.

Copies of "Explosion of Hate" were provided to Attorney General Janet Reno, FBI Director Louis Freeh and law enforcement officials around the country, encouraging them to increase vigilance of this violent hate group.

Samples from "Explosion of Hate: The Growing Danger of the National Alliance"

Militant Membership 16 active cells from coast to coast, an estimated membership of 1,000 and several thousand additional Americans listening to its radio broadcasts and browsing its Internet site....In 11 states around the country, NA members operate as part of official "local units" which are headed by "unit coordinators." Members generally meet regularly, in secret...common themes include white supremacy and William Pierce's novel "The Turner Diaries." Twice each year, Pierce selects about 50 NA members with "leadership potential" to attend a private, national "Leadership Conference" at the organization's headquarters near Hillsboro, W.Va....NA members operate 21 telephone hotlines, which serve as regional National Alliance propaganda centers....National Alliance leaders ensure their charges read "The Turner Diaries" from cover to cover...some NA leaders have instructed members to keep guns and ammunition...National Alliance leaders school their adherents in an ideology of hate.

Exploiting the Internet The National Alliance uses the Internet to showcase its racist and neo- Nazi ideology...The NA's weekly half-hour "American Dissident Voices (ADV) radio broadcasts...appear the group's web site on the day of the broadcast.... The user simply needs to click a mouse to listen to the violent, hate-filled fantasies of William Pierce, and the venom he aims at Blacks, Jews and other minorities....Web pages offer a series of policy statements explaining NA's program for establishing an "Aryan society...call for the creation of "White Living Space," an area that incorporates all of Europe and the "temperate zones of the Americas," which is to be purged of all non whites...in February 1998 hundreds of people received an unsolicited E-mail message containing one of Pierce's anti-Semitic and racist pieces...the creation of an "Alliance Cybercell," whose members disrupted Internet discussion group exchanges...." We have organized members working as teams, not identifying themselves as Alliance members but going into these discussion groups and virtually taking them over....(William Pierce, 1996).

Bonds with Other Bigots....the NA has been providing a speaking venue for David Duke, a former Klan leader and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People....The National Alliance has also provided a forum for David Irving, the well-known British holocaust denier... asserted that Hitler neither proposed nor knew about the mass extermination of Jews in Europe and that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz... The National Alliance claims to have members in Holland, France, Great Britain and Germany....The National Alliance also "has especially friendly relations with the German National Democratic Party, an ultra right wing nationalist party....William Pierce also claims to have long-term ties to the British National Party, a racist, anti-minority and neo-Fascist party.

Our opinion

THIS PRESS release issued by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League serves as a copybook example of Abraham Foxman's well-funded paranoid obsessions. Whatever medication he is taking, he should cut the dose by half. Shorn of its emotional adjectives ("Fascist," "neo-Nazi", "anti-semitic" etc.) its substance shrivels away. The malicious use of guilt-by-association methods would render it actionable in libel in the English courts if published within their jurisdiction. In the United States, Foxman cowers behind the First Amendment, like a bug beneath a marble stone.

Note the clever mention of the Oklahoma City bomb outrage in the same paragraph as the National Alliance, without a shred of evidence to link them: and compare it with the press release issued by the Jewish Telegraph Agency in 1996 in an equally sinister attempt to link British writer David Irving with that crime. Those are the methods of the coward: willing to wound, but afraid, so afraid, so very, very afraid, to strike.

And now see the juicy story that the brave journalists of The Tampa Tribune brew out of this thin gruel within a matter of hours:

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Neo-Nazi group with following in Tampa poses threat, ADL

By MICHAEL FECHTER of The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA - A new report calls the National Alliance "the single most dangerous organized hate group in the United States."

A domestic terrorist group with a following in Tampa poses an ongoing threat of violence, the Anti-Defamation League said in a report issued Thursday.

The National Alliance is the largest and most active neo-Nazi group in the country, the Jewish group reported. It has active cells in 16 states and its followers have plotted murders and committed bombings and bank robberies, the report also states.

Tampa is the Alliance's greatest concentration in Florida, the report said. Other activists are in Orlando, Boca Raton and Tallahassee.

"Experience shows they are very dangerous bombers and bigots with a serious presence in Florida, particularly in the Tampa Bay area," said ADL Florida director Arthur Teitelbaum.

"A small number of sociopaths who care nothing about human life can cause traumas not only for a local community, but for the nation," he said.

A call to a Tampa telephone number listed for the National Alliance was not returned.

Area Alliance organizer Victor Heath said the Alliance's "purpose is the preservation and enhancement of Western man and his civilization" in a letter to the editor in the Tampa Tribune in May 1997.

The report identifies Brian Pickett of Tampa as a member of the Alliance. Pickett is among three people awaiting trial for a failed 1997 bombing and robbery conspiracy. The group planned to detonate 14 bombs in Central Florida, including one at the main access road to Walt Disney World.

While police scrambled to respond, the conspirators planned to rob Central Florida banks, law enforcement officials said.

The plot ended when the bomb maker, Todd Vanbiber, accidentally detonated a bomb he was working on, spraying his eye with shrapnel. Vanbiber cooperated with authorities and was sentenced to six years in prison.

He and Pickett once met with National Alliance leader William Pierce after a bank robbery in Connecticut, the ADL report said.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's domestic terrorism coordinator participated in the ADL's news conference in Washington Thursday about the release of the report.

The ADL also notes three recent appearances by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke organized by local alliance members. Tampa public access cable television and a local radio station also air recorded programs from Pierce each week.

Michael Fechter covers politics and can be reached at (813) 259-7621.