The arrest on Thursday of Robert Joos in connection with a 2004 bomb incident in which three Scottsdale, Ariz., city employees were injured raises the question: Where is Timothy Thomas Coombs?

Coombs, 50, reputedly was a follower of the Sacerdotal Order of David Company, of which Joos, a white supremacist, was pastor. Coombs, also known as James Wilson and Cal Liberty, is accused of shooting and wounding a Missouri state trooper in September 1994 as he stood at his kitchen window. He is believed to have been enraged at the trooper’s role in arresting Joos earlier that year, after Joos had been a fugitive for several years. Coombs — who authorities say hides one pistol in an ankle holster and another in the center of his back — has now been a fugitive himself for nearly 15 years, despite a $100,000 reward offered by the FBI for information leading to his capture.

“It’s still an open and ongoing investigation for the FBI,” says Bridget Patton, a spokeswoman in the FBI’s Kansas City bureau.

The same is true for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. “We’re following all leads, worldwide,” Sgt. Curtis Wirth tells Hatewatch. But, he adds, there haven’t been many leads, and none has been substantiated.

Here’s the background: Joos was arrested on the same day last week as Dennis and Daniel Mahon, who were accused of sending a package bomb in 2004 to the diversity office in Scottsdale. Diversity Director Don Logan was the most seriously injured in the ensuing explosion, requiring extensive surgery on his hands and arms. Dennis Mahon is a former Klansman and skinhead recruiter, as well as a longtime member of Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Resistance (WAR), authorities say. His twin brother, Daniel, also was involved in the Klan and in WAR. [ATF agents searched Metzger’s Indiana home the same day the Mahons and Joos were arrested, taking some items, but not charging Metzger with any crimes].

Joos was the first person Dennis Mahon called the day the package bomb was delivered, according to the indictment charging the Mahons. Undercover operatives were quoted in the indictment alleging that Joos is a longtime white supremacist associate and expert on weapons, explosives and bombmaking who taught an informant how to make napalm. Joos was charged with being a felon in possession of firearms when he was arrested last week. ( continue to full post… )

This past weekend, the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) held its annual conference at the Cabot Lodge on the campus of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. The “surprise guest,” Mississippi State Sen. Lydia Chassaniol (R-14th District), was introduced by emcee Bill Lord — the CCC’s field director who is known for his racist “Martin Luther Coon” jokes — as “the right hand to the Governor [Haley Barbour].” Lord also identified Chassaniol as a “member” of the CCC chapter in Carroll County, one of a handful of Central Mississippi counties she represents.

In an E-mail, Chassaniol confirmed to Hatewatch that she is a member of the CCC, which she described as a “conservative organization.” She also wrote, “I do not consider myself racist,” adding that she believes “a person’s membership in any organization is a private matter.” She said that she had worked for years “with the children of the Mississippi Delta” and had spoken to the Greenwood Voters League even though, she said, it has “no members who are Caucasian.”

Gov. Barbour’s website shows that he has worked with Chassaniol in her capacity as chair of the Senate Tourism Committee. A May 12 press release from the governor’s office says Barbour “praised” Chassaniol for her contributions to a new slogan for the state’s highway signs, “Birthplace of America’s Music.” Ironically, the music the signs refer to — “from the blues, to country, to rock and roll, to gospel” — was largely produced by African Americans, who the CCC has described on its website as a “retrograde species of humanity.”

Calls to Barbour’s office for comment were not returned. The Mississippi state GOP office said it was unable to comment on the matter because their press officer was out of the office. ( continue to full post… )

One of two brothers indicted this week in connection with the bombing of a Scottsdale, Ariz., diversity office was a former Klansman and leading skinhead recruiter with a predilection for explosives.

As part of a sweeping undercover investigation that led to the indictment, federal agents also raided the Indiana home of longtime white separatist Tom Metzger on Thursday, removing computers and other items, but not arresting him.

In another related move, a man described as a white supremacist with expertise in weapons and the making of napalm was arrested on his rural property in Missouri and charged with being a felon in possession of firearms.

Dennis Mahon, 58, and his twin brother, Daniel, were arrested Thursday following the search of a home in Davis Junction, Ill. A federal grand jury indictment in Arizona charges them with conspiring to damage and destroy buildings and property. “The object of the conspiracy was to promote racial discord on behalf of the ‘White Aryan Resistance,’” the indictment states. WAR is a white supremacist organization founded by Metzger more than a quarter century ago. ( continue to full post… )

As if President Obama doesn’t have enough to deal with - what with civil unrest in Iran, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and economic malaise at home - now he’s also got a Southern Baptist minister praying for his death.

The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., told Fox News Radio earlier this month that he was practicing “imprecatory prayer” – a divine curse – that would bring about Obama’s death.

“So you’re praying for his death?” asked the show’s host, Alan Colmes.

“Yes.”

“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”

“Yes.”

The pugnacious pastor later elaborated: “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death, that’s correct.” ( continue to full post… )

Hal Turner, a neo-Nazi talk radio host known for his threats against public
figures, was denied bail during an appearance in federal court Thursday
afternoon on charges of threatening to assault and murder three federal
judges. Also at the hearing, FBI officials revealed that they’d found 200
rounds of ammunition and 150 illegal hollow point bullets in Turner’s home during a search on Wednesday, according to the Jersey Journal.

Turner’s arrest comes three weeks after he was taken into custody in New Jersey on charges that he incited violence against two Connecticut legislators. He had been freed on $25,000 bond and wasn’t scheduled to return to court until July.

But the FBI — an agency for which he once may have worked as a paid informant — arrested Turner on Wednesday after going to his home in North Bergen, N.J., to execute a search warrant. The charges stem from Internet postings earlier this month in which he blasted a June 2 decision by the 7^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that essentially upheld local handgun bans.

The blog posts named Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the unanimous decision, along with Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed,” Turner allegedly wrote on June 2. He later posted the photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of the three judges, as well as a modified photo of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse where they work that reveals the locations of “anti-truck bomb barriers.” He also posted a map showing how to get to the building, according to the FBI. ( continue to full post… )

Less than two weeks after Holocaust denier James von Brunn was arrested and charged with killing a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., an online magazine has begun publishing a four-part story on two of the leading figures among Holocaust revisionists.

Mark Oppenheimer’s story based on his interviews with Holocaust revisionists Bradley R. Smith and Mark Weber began on Tuesday and will run through Friday in “Tablet Magazine,” a daily online magazine about Jewish life that debuted this month.

Smith, 79, founded an online magazine called Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, and he also blogs on the Holocaust and more mundane matters such as his medical travails. Weber, 57, is director of the Institute for Historical Review, which published the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review until 2002. He incurred the wrath of fellow revisionists, including Smith, in January when he posted an article on his website arguing that Holocaust deniers have had little success in persuading people, and it was time to focus instead on the harmful impact of “Jewish-Zionist power” around the world. ( continue to full post… )

Nativist leaders are scrambling to distance themselves from Minutemen American Defense (MAD) founder Shawna Forde, who has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of an Arizona man and his 9-year-old daughter.

“We knew there was something very wrong with Shawna Forde and did all in our power to forewarn groups and leaders, as well as press and law enforcement, regarding our concerns,” wrote William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), in a news release. “Shawna Forde does not reflect the immigration enforcement movement or the millions of Americans concerned about illegal immigration and border security.”

Among those releasing similar statements were Chris Simcox, former president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Jeff Schwilk, leader of the San Diego Minutemen, and Chelene Nightingale, managing director of Save Our State. Police say Forde and two associates used a ruse to enter the home of 29-year-old Raul Flores on May 30 with the intent of killing his family and stealing cash to finance her group’s border operations. Flores and his daughter, Brisenia, were shot and killed. His wife was wounded when she returned fire.

Anti-immigration activists are just as forcefully repudiating Minuteman Project president Jim Gilchrist, who was allied with Forde. Gheen called for Gilchrist’s resignation both in his news release and — much less politely — in an E-mail to Gilchrist that’s posted in the “Hate Mail” section of the Minuteman Project’s website. “Jim, you [sic] and Shawna’s close and vibrant relationship is well documented in many different places,” he wrote. “Do the movement and yourself a favor and announce your resignation …” ( continue to full post… )

Since the mid-1990s, Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) has spelled out its core message in neon-rainbow picket signs that read, “God Hate Fags.” In a series of outrageous stunts, members of WBC have disrupted the funerals of servicemen killed in Iraq for supporting a “Fag-loving” country, protested a memorial for victims of the 2006 Sago mine disaster claiming it was God’s punishment on the US for tolerating homosexuality, and picketed the University of Wisconsin, where three students had recently died in a house fire, claiming the parents were to blame for “teaching them to be whores and bastards.”

Now WBC has turned its ire on the Jewish community, targeting synagogues and Jewish community centers with a new hate-filled taunt, “God Hates Jews.”

The Topeka, Kan., based church began picketing Jewish religious and cultural institutions in April of this year when they issued a press release that read, “Yes, the Jews killed the Lord Jesus…Now they’re carrying water for the fags; that’s what they do best: sin in God’s face every day, with unprecedented and disproportionate amounts of sodomy, fornication, adultery, abortion and idolatry!” ( continue to full post… )

Scott Lively has made a ministry career that spans two decades and three continents, in part by preaching that the Nazi Third Reich was helmed and orchestrated by gay men. That’s the central thesis of his book The Pink Swastika, and it played a pivotal role in Lively’s co-founding of the international anti-gay hate group Watchmen on the Walls. For years now, historians, watchdog and gay civil rights groups have called Lively out on his slander.  But now, the anti-gay crusader faces a formidable new critic on his own home turf. Warren Throckmorton, a well-respected conservative Christian psychology professor, has been exposing Lively’s false claims in evangelical Christian magazines and blogs.

What set Throckmorton off was Lively’s March appearance at an anti-gay rights conference in Uganda, where homosexuality is already a crime punishable by life in prison. In the capital city of Kampala, Lively rehashed his gay Nazi stump speech and called for Ugandan gays and lesbians to be forced into so-called “conversion therapy.”  Since then, as Throckmorton notes, “lists of people suspected to be gay have been included in tabloids, various ministers have accused other ministers of being homosexual, and Christian groups are calling for the government to create a commission to eliminate homosexuality — all supported by American Christian ministries.”

“[T]here is a disturbing parallel with the Nazis, but it is not with the homosexuals,” Throckmorton writes in the Christian web magazine Crosswalk. “In Uganda among Christian groups and government leaders, and encouraged by Mr. Lively, homosexuality is considered the root of society’s evils.” In response, Throckmorton has launched an ambitious project to discredit Lively’s books and analyze how the anti-gay rights leader came to formulate his idea that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history.”

Throckmorton says Lively’s obsession with linking gay men to Nazi fascism began in 1992 with Oregon’s Ballot Measure 9, which would have mandated that public schools teach that homosexuality is “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse.” The ballot measure was drafted and supported by the Oregon Citizens Alliance, whose communications director was Scott Lively. As gay rights activists drew comparisons between Measure 9 and the Nazi treatment of homosexuals, Lively and his Pink Swastika co-author Scott Abrams sought to make, in Throckmorton’s words, the “massive leaps of logic and fact required to make National Socialism an invention of a cohesive homosexual plot.” ( continue to full post… )

Over at Adam Holland’s blog, a fascinating post offers some new details of the links between James von Brunn — the accused murderer of a guard at the Holocaust Museum — and major figures on the radical right. They include people like Willis Carto, founder of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby and a slew of other organizations; David Duke, the one-time Klan leader and current neo-Nazi ideologue; and, perhaps most fascinatingly, the late Marine Corps Gen. Pedro A. Del Valle, an infamous anti-Semite. Holland’s unearthing of some of von Brunn’s correspondence is only the latest evidence (see here and here, for instance) of von Brunn’s longstanding role in the organized radical right.