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Shawn Hornacek lifts the sleeves of his Alabama Department of Corrections inmate uniform to reveal spider web tattoos on both elbows. The one on the right contains a swastika. Hornacek claims it represents "peace." But there's nothing peaceful about the spider web on his left elbow. At its center are two lightning flashes, or "cracker bolts," orbited by three rings. Hornacek explains that one ring is added to his loosely sketched web every time he attacks a black or gay person.

The tattoos — spider web, rings, cracker bolts — are membership patches, indicating that Hornacek belongs to the fastest growing and lately the deadliest white supremacist prison-based gang in the country.

"Aryan Circle," Hornacek says. "In it for life."

Once concentrated solely in Texas, the Aryan Circle currently operates inside and outside prisons in at least 13 other states, according to law enforcement officials as well as Aryan Circle websites and publications. The gang is more ideologically driven by a white nationalist revolutionary agenda than other racist prison gangs — and just as violent, if not more so. In recent months, it has been making a name for itself with a string of murders and other attacks, both inside the nation's prisons and in its communities, that have officials seriously worried.

Two police officers were killed in August in a shoot-out with Aryan Circle members in Louisiana. In Texas, law enforcement investigators believe the gang is responsible for a string of shootings last year, including at least three murders.

Hornacek, 31, is currently serving a 10-year sentence at Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton, Ala., for, he says, stealing a trailer of guns. He told the Intelligence Report in a recent interview that he joined Aryan Circle in 2003 while incarcerated for possessing a crack pipe in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Circle leaders inside jails and prisons typically screen potential recruits by instigating fights between the prospective member and a "toad," a black inmate. Hornacek calls this exercise a "heart check."

Aryan Circle members have developed a reputation for violence that rivals that of their progenitors, the Aryan Brotherhood.

"If he don't fight, that shows he's a little weak, and we weed him out," he says.

"Lotta cowards hide behind shit," Hornacek says in justifying the Circle's sadistic induction procedures. "They wanna be a part of something in prison to protect themselves, and one of Aryan Circle's laws is this ain't a tool for protection."

Circle leaders portray the gang as a nationwide clan of race warriors fighting for a grand cause. "In the beginning, the organization centered on the preservation of the race within a hostile prison environment," reads a history chapter in The Official Handbook of the Aryan Circle. "Today, it has expanded to much more than that."

Now, according to this official history, the goal of the Circle is to violently promote white nationalism, "both in prison and in the world throughout."

White inmates at the maximum-security prison in San Quentin, Calif., founded the Aryan Brotherhood in 1964. When the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas attempted to renounce crime and refashion itself as a "church," inmates started the Aryan Circle in 1985 to preserve radical white supremacist beliefs and remain on the defense against black and Hispanic prison gangs.

The Circle was built, as its history says, "on a prospective confidential basis. At no time will there be a membership rally held. In this way each member knows that the next member in line was a hand picked prospect."

Gang leaders often recruit white convicts who are serving relatively short sentences, because the sooner a Circle member is released, the sooner he can expand the gang's network outside prison. A "prospect" or "recruit" who passes the heart check is subject to a 12-month probationary period including a "hit" or "smash" against a gang enemy ordered by Circle leaders in order to "blood in" as a full member. New recruits swear allegiance until death. There's no quitting the Aryan Circle without going "blood out," meaning violently.

Circle prospects and members, or "patch holders" (each member has an identifying "patch number"), are ruled by hierarchical structures, which exist in geographical regions carved out both within the Texas state prison system, and also in federal penitentiaries across America. The gang leader who oversees a national region is called a "Leaf."

According to Aryan Circle documents obtained by Intelligence Report, the Leaf for Region One — which consists of federal and state prisons in Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas -—is 48-year-old Danny "Danny Boy" Lee Bonham, who's currently serving a life sentence in the Coleman federal prison near Orlando, Fla., for conspiracy to distribute narcotics.

The Leaf for Region Two — which includes prisons in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia — is 42-year-old Tracy "Blayze" Kenyon Sexton, who's serving a 105-month sentence in the Allenwood federal penitentiary in central Pennsylvania for illegally possessing and transporting firearms.

The Circle produces a bimonthly magazine called The Circular, which has a post office box in Carnegie, Okla., and a mailing address in Lubbock, Texas. The editor-in-chief of the publication is Aryan Circle founder Mark Cooper Gaspard, also known as Mark Cooper Patterson. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, Gaspard is currently under parole supervision until 2010. Arrested five times on burglary, armed burglary and drug charges, Gaspard has been in and out of Texas state prisons since 1979. In 1985, the year he started Aryan Circle, Gaspard was serving time in a Huntsville state prison, according to Texas DPS records.

Gaspard is a small man — just 5 foot 7 inches and 132 pounds. What he lacks in physical stature, though, he makes up for in charisma, according to Sigifredo Sanchez, head of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice gang department, and the official who confirmed Gaspard as the Aryan Circle founder. "He could talk people into doing things," Sanchez said. "He's a very smart and conniving individual."

According to Sanchez, Gaspard never wanted the lead role, despite his formulating the group's precepts, including the ideas that all who oppose the white race are sworn enemies and that all crimes against the white race are punishable by death.

"The people who are the innovators all were white. They generally had the freedom to be inventive without ZOG [Zionist Occupational Government] breathing down their neck," reads one article in an undated copy of The Circular. "It is clear that for many years these people have been trying to destroy us culturally and genetically. This is the reason the media promotes interracial marriage and racial integration."

When the Aryan Circle attempted to give Gaspard the rank of general, "he tossed it back," Sanchez said, because the group had grown too radical.