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July 16, 1999/3 Av 5759, Vol. 51, No.41
Fear stalks Jewish community over alleged 'hit list'
REBECCA ROSEN LUM
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California
SAN FRANCISCO - Since emerging ashen-faced from a private meeting at the FBI's Sacramento offices Friday, July 9, the Jews whose names appear on a so-called "hit list" compiled by two brothers linked to recent arsons and murders have struggled with turbulent emotions.
"It's been a very surreal four weeks," said one Jewish community leader on the list, who requested anonymity, "and this is just the most recent of some very strange events."
Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams are being held at the Shasta County jail on charges of accepting stolen property in connection with the July 1 murder of a Happy Valley gay couple. In a search of the Williams' home, investigators uncovered evidence allegedly linking them to the June 18 arson attack on three Sacramento-area synagogues. The evidence includes a list of 32 prominent Jews. All but one live in the Sacramento area and most are connected with the three synagogues.
FBI agents counseled those named on the list against speaking to the media for fear of drawing further attention to themselves.
The fact that the suspects apparently copied names out of newspapers "makes it really spooky," said another man, a Jewish agency official who also learned from FBI agents he had been named.
At least one person on the list, a synagogue official, has left town temporarily. Others contacted by the Jewish Bulletin said they were too frightened to speak. "My husband would kill me if he knew I was talking to you," one woman told a Bulletin reporter.
The only person who has chosen to speak publicly about his appearance on the list is Marc S. Klein, editor and publisher of the Jewish Bulletin. The FBI told him that next to his name were the words "Nor Cal Jew Bulletin."
"I was a little surprised to turn up on a Sacramento list," Klein said this week. "But as the publisher of a Jewish newspaper, I can't say I was terribly surprised."
At least one Sacramento rabbi is telling those on the list not to be afraid. "Although it's very disconcerting, we've got to have a little emunah and b'tachon (faith and security) in God that we are not going to be intimidated," said Rabbi Stuart Rosen, spiritual leader of Kenesset Israel Torah Center, the Orthodox synagogue rendered homeless in the arson attack. Rosen would not say whether he was on the list.
Meanwhile, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department and the Sacramento Police Department have stepped up patrols. Local law enforcement officials have asked for a roster of events and activities from the synagogues.
As investigators try to amass evidence to charge brothers Benjamin Williams, 31, and James Williams, 29, with arson attacks on the three synagogues, they also are tracking others who may be involved. One person close to the investigation said police believe more suspects are at large.
"We are certainly pursuing other possibilities," said FBI Special Agent Nick Rossi. "I don't want to underestimate the impact of this list, but it does appear those who compiled it are in custody. That should give some measure of relief."
The list was one of many items linking the Williams brothers, who live in Palo Cedro, about six miles east of Redding, to the arsons. In a search of the brothers' home, deputies found hate literature, a journal containing the list of names, and a torn note whose edge matched a scrap of paper found at Sacramento Congregation B'nai Israel. The Arson Task Force, staffed by FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, conducted their own sweep of the sites.
Jonathan Bernstein, director of the Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific Region, confirmed that "at a minimum" the suspects "had knowledge of (the arsons) and possibly played a role. What direct involvement they had is still not clear." Bernstein emphasized that the roster was "just a handwritten list." Media accounts describing it as a "hit list" are "very much overblown," he added.
In a taped message, Rossi said any link between the suspects and the Illinois-based hate group, the World Church of the Creator, was an invention of the media. But San Francisco agents told Klein they were exploring connections between the suspects, the arsons and the group because its literature was found at two of the three torched congregations.
Gary Matson, 50, and Winfield Scott Mowder, 40, were found slain in their home on July 1. Matson's car, a 1987 Toyota, turned up about 50 miles away, and evidence in the car led them to the Williams brothers. Shasta County deputies arrested the two Thursday, July 8, in a Yuba City shopping mall after they allegedly attempted to pay for items using Matson's credit card. The brothers were armed with semi-automatic pistols and one was wearing a bulletproof vest when they were taken into custody. Deputies found a shotgun and two semi-automatic rifles in the car. One of the brothers carried Matson's wallet, driver's license and Social Security card.
Investigators recovered a massive stockpile of firearms from the home and a storage rental, including AK-47s, M-16s and 100-round rifle magazines.
Benjamin Williams has an extensive history with militant groups, including the Living Faith Fellowship cult in Idaho, the King James Only group and others he hooked up with on the Internet. A link with the World Church of the Creator has not yet surfaced.
Former neighbors of the Williams family in Gridley, Calif., say they were raised in near-isolation by rigid, fundamentalist Christian parents. The Williamses were self-sufficient farmers. They home-schooled the brothers through high school and forbade them from participating in activities outside the home. Neighbors recalled watching the father walking up and down the street "preaching the gospel."
"I can't understand the kind of hate that would enable someone to do something like this to complete strangers," said one of the Sacramento-area Jews on the list. "You wonder how much love they had (in the home) to have this much hate as adults."
There are more rallies and public meetings scheduled, said a community leader who asked not to be identified.
Hitler had the right idea, but should have promoted the supremacy of all whites, rather than just Germans.
Although the group claims not to condone violence, the July 2 shooting spree carried out by Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old follower of Hale's, was only the latest in a string of violent attacks associated with the group. Smith's rampage, which left two men dead and at least seven others — including six Jews — injured, ended Sunday, July 5, when the alleged gunman took his own life.
Federal agents are investigating the group's possible ties with last month's bombing attacks on three Sacramento synagogues. World Church fliers were left at one of the three torched sites prior to the attacks, according to the ADL.
The group's predecessor, the Church of the Creator, was also linked to the 1991 murder of a black sailor in Florida returning from the Persian Gulf War and to foiled plots to assassinate black and Jewish leaders and to bomb black and Jewish agencies, synagogues and churches. In the last year, three members of the group have been accused of pistol-whipping and robbing a Jewish video store owner in Florida, purportedly to raise money for "the revolution."
Smith, meanwhile, had already come to the attention of students and administrators at both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which he attended in 1997-1998, and Indiana University at Bloomington, where he was enrolled. At both schools, police say, he distributed hate literature, and at Indiana he formed a group he called the White Nationalist Party of Indiana University. While he was a student there he joined Hale's World Church of the Creator, according to the Center for New Community, an organization that works to counter hate-group activity. The organization says that in January, 1999, Smith was named "Creator of the Year," the group's highest honor.
The World Church of the Creator was the invention of Ben Klassen, a one-time Florida state legislator who formed the organization in 1973, according to the ADL. Hale, now 27, discovered the organization while he was attending Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., where he had organized a campus group called the American White Supremacist Party. Klassen committed suicide in 1993.
In 1995, Hale took over the group's leadership and launched a new recruitment effort. He claims a current membership of 7,000; the ADL estimates the figure is closer to 2,000.
The Center for New Community says that Hale has taken the group "from the brink of extinction to prominence within the racist movement," increasing the number of chapters nationwide from eight in 1995 to 31 today.
Hale, who works out of an office in his parents' home in East Peoria, Ill., where an Israeli flag serves as a doormat and swastikas adorn the walls, insisted in an interview with the Associated Press that members of his church follow the law. "I've always encouraged our members to be legal. I've certainly never encouraged violence," he said. "People have their own free will. They do what they please." Blaming Smith's shootings on the church, Hale added, is "the same as people accusing the pope of being behind all those abortion clinic bombings."
Harlan Loeb, Midwest civil rights counsel for the ADL, said Hale's assertion that he bears no responsibility for the attacks defies common sense, "as if holding a match next to a gasoline tank has no connection to the ensuing fire."
"He has set in motion a process to which he's inextricably wedded," Loeb said, adding that his connection deserves legal scrutiny. On Monday, July 6, the ADL called on the Justice Department to launch an immediate, full-scale investigation into the World Church of the Creator.
Asked if the ADL regretted issuing a statement earlier this year on the denial of Hale's law license, Loeb said, "As an agency that is a strong supporter of the First Amendment, we stand by our commitment that viewpoint discrimination is murky territory." But now that "we've made our statement on the free speech and free expression issue," he said, his group "will devote all of our energy to exposing Matt Hale for what he is."
Pauline Dubkin Yearwood of the Chicago Jewish News contributed to this report.
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