America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States (48 page)

The Williams brothers were true lone wolves—self-radicalized into Christian Identity without the mentorship of someone like CSA founder Jim Ellison. They lacked any of the connections to white supremacist leaders and organizations enjoyed by Robert Mathews and his close aides in the Order. Nor did the Williams brothers embrace the kind of paramilitary, survivalist lifestyle favored by these groups. They lived in and operated out of suburban areas, not in some isolated rural or mountain compound. But in other key ways, the groups led by Mathews and Ellison anticipated the activities of the Williams brothers. Like the Williams brothers, the Order had composed a hit list for assassinations. Significantly, Robert Mathews's list included not only Jews like Alan Berg but also prominent homosexuals, a target largely ignored by hate groups in
the 1960s and 1970s. But as homosexuals became increasingly open and accepted in American society, they became targets for white supremacists, especially Christian Identity adherents. As early as 1983, individuals from the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord had set fire to a gay-friendly church in Missouri. Christian Identity–influenced skinhead groups, of which much more will be said shortly, increasingly engaged in gay bashing throughout the 1990s. In murdering a gay couple in 1999, the Williams brothers took this trend even further.

Similarly, in targeting an abortion clinic, the brothers assailed another class of enemy increasingly popular among religious terrorists. For obvious reasons, attacks against abortion clinics were all but unknown prior 1973. Then the U.S. Supreme Court, in
Roe v. Wade,
forbade state legislatures from criminalizing the medical procedure. The first reports of anti-abortion arson date to 1976. Attacks inspired by religion tended to increase and track with the general increase in anti-abortion activism that grew to a crescendo in the early 1980s, fueled by the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian right. The number of attacks reached its apex in 1984 with “eighteen bombings, six cases of arson, six cases of attempted bombing or arson, twenty-three death threats, and nearly seventy clinic invasions with acts of vandalism.”
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The group most associated with anti-abortion violence was the Army of God, led by minister Michael Bray. In his ethical defense of anti-abortion violence, called
A Time to Kill,
Bray argued, “We do not know the best strategy to resist the evil of ‘abortion.' But we cannot condemn that forceful, even lethal, action which is applied for the purpose of saving innocent children.”
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Many mistake the Army of God for a Christian Identity group or offshoot—partly because both groups share an orthodox view of the Bible, honoring Old Testament practices that have been abandoned by even most fundamentalist Christians. But whereas both groups believe that human beings must help bring the secular world in line with God's teachings to facilitate the end-times, the Army of God does not share the radical reinterpretation of the book of Genesis that is unique to Christian Identity and that shapes the character of its eschatology. In short, the Army of God does not share Christian Identity's anti-Semitism and racism.

Part of the confusion over the connection between Christian Identity and the Army of God may stem from the actions of Eric Rudolph, infamous for bombing abortion clinics throughout the Southeast and for detonating explosives at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Rudolph grew up in Topton, North Carolina. His mother exposed him to Identity teachings from minister Nord Davis, who operated a nearby compound. He also spent part of his teenage years in Schell City, Missouri, where he was influenced by the teachings of Identity preacher Dan Gayman. As noted in
Chapter 9
, Davis and Gayman both became influential figures in contemporary Christian Identity circles. But while both advocated two-seedline theology, they did not push for the same kind of proactive violence advocated by predecessors like William Gale and Wesley Swift. Davis's followers still stockpile weapons in preparation for Armageddon, but they are separatists who divorce themselves from America's mixed-race society. Moreover, it is not clear that Christian Identity ideas even resonated with Rudolph in adulthood, and he specifically denied any affinity for them. Nor did Rudolph have any direct connection to the Army of God, although some suspect that the group provided Rudolph with aid and comfort for the five-year period (1998 to 2003) when he evaded law enforcement while ensconcing himself in the dense forests of Appalachia. Rudolph appears to be another lone wolf, but one who opposed abortion for different reasons than the Williams brothers. For Christian Identity zealots like the two brothers, opposition to abortion, and violence against abortion clinics, was rooted in the threat that widespread abortion supposedly posed to the future of the white race. For Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler, legal abortion was part of the “Jewish anti-Christ strategy” for “TOTAL ELIMINATION OF THE WHITE ARYAN NATIONS FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.”
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In the 1990s, anti-abortion and anti-gay violence became part of the Phineas Priesthood, an offshoot of Christian Identity radicalism that many believe influenced Buford Furrow when he opened fire at the Jewish community center in Los Angeles. When police found Furrow's abandoned van, it contained “ammunition, bulletproof vests, explosives and freeze-dried food” and two books: an Army Ranger handbook and
War Cycles, Peace Cycles
by Richard Kelly
Hoskins. The latter work, by “unlocking the mysteries and hidden secrets of the Bible,” predicts an apocalyptic economic catastrophe inspired by Jewish usury and “explains the necessity for the assassination of national leaders.”
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Hoskins, a reclusive Virginia-born Korean War veteran, has authored a number of tracts that combine fundamentalist theology, anti-Semitism and racism, and economic history. His most famous work,
Vigilantes of Christendom,
published in 1990, has to rank alongside
The Turner Diaries
as one of the most influential books for white supremacist, religious terrorism. In it, Hoskins recounts the biblical story of Phineas, the nephew of Moses, as a model for the kind of God-sanctioned activity that Hoskins felt was necessary to combat the growing satanic Jewish conspiracy. The Bible describes an episode in the ongoing rivalry between Israel and the neighboring tribe of Moab in which Hebrew men “indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women” and begin to worship Moab's pagan idols. The Hebrew God, infuriated with this behavior, punishes the Jewish people with a plague that ceases only when Phineas drives a spear through a Hebrew man and a Moabite woman.

Several aspects of this account are important to Hoskins. First, God's anger is driven, according to Hoskins, not simply because the Hebrews strayed from God's commandments but by the act of miscegenation between the chosen people and a heathen tribe. Phineas shares in that anger and acts on his own accord, according to Hoskins. Moreover, Phineas does not ask permission of Moses, his father (the priest Eleazar), or even God. Yet God celebrates the deed in Chapter 25 of the book of Numbers: “Phineas . . . has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal.” Finally, Hoskins finds it relevant that God ended the plague against the Jews but then immediately ordered Moses to war against the Moabites. Taking this material together and filtering it through the prism of Christian Identity theology, Hoskins argues that the modern, true Christian, as part of an ongoing holy war, must take it upon himself or herself to punish those who violate God's law and who mix with other races. God honored Phineas “and his descendants” with a “covenant of a lasting priesthood,” and so some
Christian Identity radicals, taking their cue from Hoskins, refer to themselves as members of the Phineas Priesthood. Hoskins wrote, “There are those who obey God's Law and those who don't. Those who obey are Lawful. Those who disobey are outlawed by God. God has specified the outlaw's punishment. The Phineas Priests administer the judgment, and God rewards them with covenant of an everlasting priesthood.”
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Jim Nesbitt of the Religious News Service wrote in 1999 that the Phineas Priesthood is “less an organization than a call to action and a badge of honor, followers of this blood-stained faith strive to live up to the example of Phineas.”
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The
Vigilantes of Christendom
became a clarion call for a generation of self-directed domestic terrorists, acting alone or in very small groups to victimize interracial and homosexual couples, abortion providers, and secular-liberal institutions as well as Jews and minorities. Hoskins, while celebrating the intentions and activities of those in the Order, warned against any set of Phineas priests becoming as relatively large and interconnected as Mathews's group. He said that groups should avoid having more than six members. Would-be Phineas priests took heed.

In a case reminiscent of the Order, in one of the first known acts with Phineas dimensions, Walter Eliyah Thody joined others, whom he refused to identify, in a string of bank robberies in hopes of financing “an assassination squad dedicated to killing advocates of one-world government.” Described as “gangly [and] bespectacled . . . with the long, ragged beard of a prophet,” Thody explicitly claimed to be a Phineas priest. In a 1996 prison interview, Thody asserted, “We're having to fight to keep our country. Killing is normally murder. . . . Theft is theft. But if you're in warfare, then those same acts are acts of war. I'm at warfare against the enemies of my country.”
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Another major act of apparent Phineas terrorism occurred in 1996. Three men engaged in a months-long spree of violence in Spokane, Washington, detonating pipe bombs at an abortion clinic (which failed to kill the employees only because they were attending a conference in another building), a newspaper office, and a handful of banks, which the men had robbed beforehand. At each scene, the men left behind biblical literature signed with a symbol: “a black
cross superimposed with the letter P . . . a symbol of members of the Phineas Priesthood.”
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Law enforcement arrested three men, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry, and Jay Merrell, all with connections to Christian Identity–based groups. The men never openly proclaimed their membership in the Phineas Priesthood, but that may have been for legal purposes, to deny the state motive-based evidence in their trial. Federal prosecutors could not prove, to the satisfaction of a jury (that deadlocked), that the men had
directly
participated in the robberies and bombings, so the government settled for convictions for conspiracy to commit such crimes, as well as “interstate transportation of stolen vehicles and possession of hand grenades.”

The
Vigilantes of Christendom
also heavily influenced the Aryan Republican Army, whose members held a copy of the book up for cameras in their videos, calling it a “handbook for revolution.” When a jury finally convicted Byron de la Beckwith for murdering Medgar Evers in 1994, Beckwith publicly claimed to have recently become a Phineas priest. Violent acts attributable to Phineas priests have occurred as recently as late November 2014, when Larry Steve McQuilliams, a forty-nine-year-old unemployed Texan with a criminal history, opened fire with “two long rifle guns” on the Mexican Consulate in Austin, Texas. Over one hundred rounds pierced the walls of the building, although no one was hurt. Police found the
Vigilantes of Christendom
in McQuilliams's rented van, “along with a note and Bible verses indicating he planned on fighting ‘anti-God people.'” The Austin police chief observed of McQuilliams, a self-described “high priest” of Phineas, “Hate was in his heart. He is a homegrown American terrorist trying to terrorize our people.”
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Although high profile in nature, Phineas attacks remain relatively small in number. But that may be a function of the problems faced by students of terrorism in disentangling the multilayered influences that various hate groups and ideologies have on perpetrators. Beyond his connections to the Phineas Priesthood, Buford Furrow also once worked at the Aryan Nations compound in Idaho; he had married Debbie Mathews, widow of the founder of the Order, and thus may have been influenced by Odinism. McQuilliams harbored general anti-immigrant feelings associated with his lack of employment. Criminology professor Brian Levin of California State
University–San Bernardino told the Religious News Service, “You can really craft your own philosophy from this extremist buffet. You don't have to stay married to one philosophy or another—you can pick and choose. You see a lot of morphing out there.”
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The legal implications of admitting a connection to a well-known, violent philosophy (as seen in the Spokane case) encourage less-zealous terrorists to obscure or hide their agendas from the public (and prosecutors). Hence the actual examples of Phineas Priesthood terrorism could be more numerous than reported.

Other legal developments make it even harder to qualify and quantify acts of domestic, religious terrorism. These developments create incentives for leaders of Christian Identity (and similar) groups to obscure their connections to supposed lone-wolf terrorists. The connection between Furrow and Butler provides a suggestive case study. Butler definitely knew about Furrow, who once served as a security lieutenant at Butler's Idaho compound. Butler, in turn, served as the master of ceremonies when Furrow married Debbie Mathews. He described Furrow to the
New York Post
as “a good learner, he was passionate about the cause. . . . He was very intelligent, very sincere and quiet.” In the same interview, Butler said Furrow was a “good soldier” and someone who “was very well-respected among” the denizens of Hayden Lake. Butler became coy, however, when pontificating on Furrow's violent actions. “Sometimes you have to do these kinds of things for the cause,” he asserted at one point. “He is a frustrated male like all us members of the Aryan Nation—with the Jews and nonwhites.” But then the Swift mentee calibrated his comments: “I don't know why he did what he did, but I cannot condemn what he did—nor do I condone it.”
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