A coalition of anti-Semitic, racist paramilitary groups planned a series of crimes in 1983 intended to lead to the overthrow of the federal government, according to recent testimony of two prosecution witnesses during the Fort Smith, Ark., trial of 14 hate group leaders.
The witnesses, James Ellison and Kerry Noble, are former leaders of the survivalist group The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord.
They told the jury in federal district court of a 1983 plan to initiate murders and robberies intended to cause disruption and chaos in large cities, race riots and a “chain reaction” that would end in the ultimate overthrow of the federal government and its replacement with an all-white “Aryan nation.”
Their testimony is central to the government’s case against the 14 defendants, 10 of whom are charged with “seditious conspiracy.” All 14 have pleaded not guilty. Ellison and Noble are unindicted co-conspirators testifying under the federal witness-protection program.
Among those charged are Richard Butler, so-called pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian of the Aryan Nations; Robert Miles, former Ku Klux Klansman and so-called pastor of the Mountain Church of Jesus Christ the Saviour in Cohoctah, Mich., site of several white supremacist meetings; and Louis Beam, former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and so-called ambassador-at-large of the Aryan Nations who set up a computer network bulletin board between different extremist groups.
SAID GROUP LEADERS GATHERED
Ellison, 47, and Noble, 35, an elder in the Church of Zarephath-Horeb, the name given to the Covenant settlement in Mountain Home, Ark., testified that leaders of white supremacist groups gathered at the Aryan Nations compound near Hayden Lake, Idaho, in 1983 and agreed to use the Covenant compound for guerrilla warfare training.
They also agreed to stage a “plundering” that would raise money to further their attempted overthrow of the government. More than 100 men, women and children were estimated to have lived at the settlement.
The two men said that various groups stepped up violent and illegal activities following the meeting. They also said that The Order, an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, was founded after the meeting in September 1983. The Order robbed more than $4 million from armored cars in California and Washington state in order to raise money to be shared by the various groups to finance their activities.
They testified that the Covenant supervised paramilitary training and planned strikes against Jewish businesses and assassinations of federal officials. Noble said that the killings “would give the push to begin the total insurrection across the United States… We desired to see the government collapse in order to bring the kingdom of God.”
Noble testified that he, Ellison and the five defendants who are separately charged with conspiracy to kill federal officials went from the Covenant compound on Dec. 26, 1983 to kill U.S. District Court Judge H. Franklin Waters, special FBI agent Jack Knox and any family members who were with them at home in Arkansas. They were also set to blow up the men’s homes.
Noble said the plan to kill Waters and Knox was called off when their van was involved in a traffic accident, which they interpreted as “God’s sign that the time wasn’t right.”
Ellison testified last week that Miles gave the Covenant 30 gallons of cyanide, which he said “could kill a lot of people.” Miles visited the Covenant camp in 1984 and discussed using the cyanide to poison the water supplies of New York and Washington, because killing the people there “would be a good cleansing,” Ellison said.
Ellison also testified that Richard Snell, another defendant who is charged both with seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to kill federal officials, attempted to blow up a natural-gas pipeline in Fulton, Ark., that the group believed was the major source of gas for Chicago. In that attempt, a load of dynamite was detonated along the pipeline, but did not produce a hole in it.
Snell is serving a life prison sentence with no chance for parole for the murder of an Arkansas state trooper in 1984. He also was sentenced to death for killing the owner of an Arkansas pawn shop during a robbery.
Other criminal activities attributed to the supremacist groups following the 1983 meeting was the firebombing of an Indiana synagogue and arson of a Missouri church. Another Covenant member pleaded guilty at a previous trial in Arkansas federal court to charges he dynamited the natural gas pipeline.
FEDERAL RAID
The Covenant was reportedly disbanded in 1985 following a raid on its Arkansas compound by more than 300 state and federal law enforcement agents. The raid uncovered a weapons arsenal which included submachine guns, grenades, anti-tank rockets, plastic and other explosives, remains of a mine field, an armored tank under construction and large amounts of cyanide intended to poison the water supply of what was at the time an unnamed city.
Also found were reams of neo-Nazi hate literature. In a nearby area that the group dubbed Silhouette City, police found a shooting range whose wooden targets were cutouts of state troopers with Stars of David over their hearts.
As a result of that raid, during which fugitive members of The Order were found hiding out, Ellison and Noble and four other men were charged with racketeering and manufacture of illegal weapons. Ellison is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison.
The discovery of members of The Order on the 224-acre compound near the Missouri border corroborated the theory of an interrelationship between the groups’ members and ideologies that was based on the “Christian Identity” belief that Jews are “the seed of Satan, not the seed of God.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
