‘No-Fly’ List Named Base, Bowl Patrol Members Prior to Public IDs
White-power extremists including leaders of The Base and Bowl Patrol were named as “selectees” on a 2019 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “no-fly” list months before the previously-pseudonymous men had been publicly identified by journalists and activists.
Members of other far-right groups who were then better known by the public are listed, including members of Atomwaffen Division (AWD), The Right Stuff (TRS) podcast network and the National Justice Party, along with individual extremists, some of whom have committed hate crimes.
The listings confirm that that federal agencies were actively investigating the groups long before the American public learned who was behind the hate crimes, harassment campaigns and murder plots that members carried out.
At the same time, the revelation that Rinaldo Nazzaro, Andrew Casarez and members of associated groups were listed without publicity raises questions about how federal agencies reconcile investigative secrecy and public safety.
Travel bans, increased scrutiny for watchlisted individuals
The air-travel watchlists the men were included on are for official use only, but they are not classified information, and they are circulated widely to government agencies including the Transportation Services Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and to U.S. and international airlines.
Each list is a subset of a larger terrorist watchlist within a monitoring system that was consolidated under the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) within DHS as part of the reorganization of national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and other sites by members of Islamic extremist group al-Qaida.
Hatewatch previously reported that Robert Rundo and other members of the Rise Above Movement (RAM) were included on the air-travel watchlist. Rundo was on the on the “no-fly” list, which should have prevented him from being able to board an aircraft flying within, to, from or over the United States. Other members were on a “selectee” list, which should have mandated enhanced security screening, including increased scrutiny on their persons and luggage, and questioning from officials about their travel plans.
White-power leaders listed before their names were public
The 2019 “selectee” list – which mandates enhanced security screening for those named on it – includes Rinaldo Nazzaro, 49, founder of the now-defunct white-power accelerationist group The Base.
Nazzaro was only publicly identified as the leader of the neo-fascist “social network” in 2020, by which time several members had already been charged for offenses including conspiracy, vandalism, firearms-related crimes, violations of immigration law, and conspiracy to murder.
Nazzaro – who is still based in Russia, as he was when leading the group – was by his own admission disowned by broad segments of the white-power movement after his personal history as a military and intelligence contractor in the U.S. came to light.
Hatewatch emailed Rinaldo Nazzaro seeking comment on his appearance on the list, but he did not respond.
Also listed as a selectee is Andrew Richard Casarez, a proponent of white supremacist terrorism who went by the name “Vic Mackey” online. Casarez’s supporters dubbed themselves the “Bowl Patrol,” referring to the white supremacist mass murderer Dylann Roof’s “bowl cut” hairstyle.
Before he was identified by antifascist activists in 2020 – an identification corroborated by reporters soon after – Casarez used podcasts and various online forums to encourage his followers to commit hate crimes, threaten his perceived enemies and glorify the perpetrators of white-nationalist massacres around the world.
Hatewatch unsuccessfully attempted to contact Casarez for comment.
No other known Bowl Patrol members appear to be listed.
Other Base members listed
Other members of The Base who were not identified until after the date of the list's publication include Jacob Kaderli, 22, of Dacula, Georgia, and Michael Helterbrand, 28, of Dalton, Georgia.
The two had their identities revealed in January 2020 along with the unlisted Luke Austin Lane, when all three were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder and gang charges. The charges were brought over the trio's plot to murder two Atlanta residents they deemed to be antifa activists.
In November 2021, after all three entered guilty pleas, Lane was sentenced to 30 years to serve 13 in prison; Kaderli to 25 years to serve six in prison; and Helterbrand to 20 years in prison with a like amount on probation. (Helterbrand also pleaded guilty to charges on weapons, damage to property, and a fight and sexual assault while at the Floyd County Jail awaiting trial.)
Another man listed, Matthew Ryan Burchfield, trained with The Base at a notorious 2019 meetup at a North Georgia property before traveling to Ukraine, where he claimed to have worked as a volunteer against pro-Russian insurgents. That year, however, Ukraine deported him when his visa expired.
Burchfield’s identity and membership in The Base were not revealed until 2020.
Another listed Base member, Richard “Ricky” Tobin, now 21, of Brooklawn, New Jersey, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison in 2021 after being convicted of conspiring with others to vandalize synagogues in Racine, Wisconsin, and Hancock, Michigan, as well as destroying property belonging to Jewish and Black people, in an operation group members referred to as “Kristallnacht.”
Tobin was known as “Landser” within The Base and in Atomwaffen Division, of which he was also a member.
When was The Base infiltrated?
Court filings in cases brought against other members of the organization indicate that the group had been infiltrated by the FBI by July 2019 at latest, but it is not clear whether the listing of members predates this.
Filings in the prosecutions of William Garfield Bilbrough IV, Brian Mark Lemley Jr. and Patrik Jordan Mathews suggest they were under specific surveillance from, at latest, Aug. 30, 2019. Filings in Tobin’s case suggest he was under surveillance from, at latest, Sept. 15, 2019. In other court documents, the FBI said it had gained access to the group’s internal chats in July 2019.
Internal Base chats obtained by Hatewatch suggest that the group may have been under scrutiny even longer.
When the group received news of the January 2020 arrests in Georgia, Nazzaro, under his alias “Roman Wolf,” claimed in the group’s chat on the Wire platform that a member’s “family members was interrogated at the US-Canadian border 3 or 4 months ago.” Nazzaro added, “On another note, it’s certain that if anyone of us gets hassled at the airport, it means he’s on the FBI watchlist. I’ve experienced that firsthand.”
Nazzaro’s most recent known travel to the U.S. was in late 2018, when a confidential source told Hatewatch that he met with members, and when public records indicate that he purchased land in a remote corner of Washington state.
This timeline suggests that the group or Nazzaro may have been under surveillance earlier than court records indicate.
There are no court documents or anything else on the public record to indicate when the Bowl Patrol first came under surveillance.
‘No-fly’ lists
Mike German is a fellow at the Brennan Center and a former FBI field agent who writes on law enforcement and intelligence oversight and reform. He has previously criticized the agency for its relative neglect of the problem of white supremacist violence.
In a telephone conversation, German said, “The no-fly list and the broader terrorist watchlist have long been problematic.” Each has ballooned in size over decades, since “the impulse to add someone to the list exceeds anyone's motivation for removing anyone from it,” which makes it more difficult for law enforcement officers using it to focus on genuine security threats.
He speculated that the white-power extremists on the lists were added because the individuals and groups in question were “subjects of FBI investigations,” adding, “That could be enough according to existing policy, despite the low evidentiary threshold for opening investigations.”
Asked about the small number of far-right extremists on the lists relative to the large number of proven or alleged members of Islamic extremist and organized crime groups, German said that the listings, in the context of the overall federal response to far-right extremism, “doesn’t recognize the scope of violent white supremacist activity in the U.S. or around the world.”
According to the DHS website, “Intelligence and law enforcement agencies nominate individuals for the watchlist based on established criteria,” where they are arranged in two subsets. The website says that the “no-fly” list includes “individuals who are prohibited from boarding an aircraft,” and the “selectee” list denotes “individuals who must undergo additional security screening before being permitted to board an aircraft.”
According to the website, agencies including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) then check domestic travelers and international arrivals against the list.
The list’s relatively small number of far-right extremists may reflect the renewed focus of DHS on far-right extremists from 2019.
Atomwaffen members also listed
Also on the selectee list are at least three former members of another white-power accelerationist group, Atomwaffen Division (AWD), who by 2019 were well-known as a violent and dangerous white-power group.
One of those listed was 27 year-old Redmond, Washington, man Cameron Brandon Shea – one of AWD’s leaders – who was convicted in 2021 of federal conspiracy and hate crime charges and sentenced to three years in prison after threatening journalists and advocates who had worked on exposing Atomwaffen and other far-right groups. Most of their targets were people of color or Jewish.
Shea was released from federal prison on Dec. 5, 2022, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records.
A second AWD selectee, 26 year-old Brian Patrick Baynes of Maryland, was convicted on federal firearms charges in June 2019 and setenced to 30 days in prison and two years of probation.
A third, Cody William Moreash, 32, of Durango, Colorado, was a member of AWD until 2019, when he was exposed for fabricating his own biography, including false claims of combat service in the U.S. Army.
At that time, Moreash, who was discharged from the Arizona National Guard in 2012 just a month after enlisting, was located in Tempe, but data brokers indicate that he relocated late last year.
TRS podcaster and NJP activist listed
At least two men associated with the TRS podcast network and its outgrowth, the National Justice Party (NJP), are listed as selectees.
Joseph Edward Jordan, whom Hatewatch identified in 2019 as the person hiding behind the “Eric Striker” persona on TRS podcasts, is listed both under his real name and the “Striker” alias.
Jordan, also an NJP member, has repeatedly complained on his National Justice propaganda site and on Telegram about the enhanced scrutiny he has received because of the listing. This week he took to his Telegram to falsely speculate that a Hatewatch reporter had some role in adding him as a selectee.
Also listed as a selectee is Greg Conte, now active in the NJP, who is an associate of Charles Bausman and former collaborator with Richard Spencer.
Accused and convicted murderers are ‘selectees’
Several selectees have been accused or convicted of hate crimes or crimes of violence.
On the “no-fly” list is 32 year-old Australian white nationalist mass-murderer Brenton Harrison Tarrant. In 2019, when the list was published, Tarrant was in custody, and eventually he was imprisoned for life with no possibility of release in New Zealand for the 2019 mass murder of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch.
Christopher Paul Hasson is also listed. In February 2020, Hasson, a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant with a long history of involvement in the white-power movement, was sentenced to 13 years in prison over federal gun and drug charges. Hasson was arrested after the discovery of emails and documents in which he nominated journalists and politicians for assassination, indicated his preparation to use “focused violence” in establishing a white homeland.
Also listed as a selecteee are John Timothy Earnest, who was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole over his murderous antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Poway, California, in 2019; Holden James Matthews, who in 2020 was sentenced to 25 years in prison after carrying out arson attacks on three Black churches in Louisiana; and Dakota Reed, who was sentenced to one year in prison in 2019 for threatening to massacre dozens of Jewish people.
Photo illustration of Andrew Casarez (left) and Rinaldo Nazzaro by SPLC