Anthrax attacks' 'work of neo-Nazis'

War on Terrorism: Observer special

Ed Vulliamy in New York

Sunday October 28, 2001

The Observer

Neo-Nazi extremists within the US are behind the deadly wave of anthrax attacks against America, according to latest briefings from the security services and Justice Department.

Experts on 'survivalist' groups and extreme-right 'Aryan' militants have been drafted into the investigation as the focus shifts away from possible links with the 11 September terrorists or even possible state backers such as Iraq.

'We've been zeroing in on a number of hate groups, especially one on the West Coast,' a source at the Justice Department told The Observer yesterday. 'We've certainly not discounted the possibility that they may be involved.'

The anthrax crisis, which grew last week, had by Friday night spread to mailrooms at CIA headquarters, the Supreme Court and a hospital, and yesterday three traces were found in an office building serving the US Capitol.

'There are a number of strong leads, and some people we know well that we are looking at,' the Justice Department said. 'These are groups organised into militia and "survivalist" movements - which pull out of society and take to the hills to make war on the government, and who will support anyone else making war on the government.'

Investigators are examining threatening letters sent to media organisations - some dated before the 11 September attacks - which did not contain anthrax but contained similar messages and handwriting style as those which later did. The theory is that the anthrax attacks were planned - and the killer germ was obtained and treated - long before the carnage of 11 September.

Speaking to The Observer yesterday, the Justice Department official said: 'We have to see the right wing as much better coordinated than its apparent disorganisation suggests. And we have to presume that their opposition to government is just as virulent as that of the Islamic terrorists, if not as accomplished.

'But that is, in its way, one of the most compelling possible leads in the anthrax trail - that it is not really al-Qaeda's style, but rather that of others who sympathise with its war against the American government and media.'

The official said the investigation had, in the past week, drafted in special teams from the Civil Rights division of the department to reinforce the international terrorism teams. The American neo-Nazi Right is motivated above all by its loathing of the federal government, which it believes is selling out the homeland to a 'New World Order' run by masons and Jews.

Its insane politics have propelled numerous attacks and armed stand-offs over the past eight years, culminating in the carnage at Oklahoma. Now the anthrax investigation is zooming in on possible connections between these neo-Nazis and Arab extremists, united by their mutual anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Such alliances have been common among neo-Nazis in Europe, but have played a lesser role in the US. However, monitoring of the hate groups shows they are now embracing al-Qaeda's terrorism as commendable attacks on the federal government.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal centre in Los Angeles said that at a meeting in Lebanon this year, US neo-Nazis were represented alongside Islamic militants. 'There's a great solidarity with the point of view of the bin Ladens of the world,' said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors the far right. 'These people wouldn't let their daughters near an Arab, but they are certainly making common cause on an ideological level. They see the same enemy: American culture and multiculturalism.'

Neo-Nazi websites, including the largest umbrella organisation, the National Alliance, show support for al-Qaeda. Billy Roper, the alliance's membership coordinator posted a message within hours of the 11 September attacks, reading: 'Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is all right by me. I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude.' Another group, Aryan Action, praised the attacks of 11 September, saying: 'Either you're fighting with the Jews against al-Qaeda or you support al-Qaeda fighting against the Jews.' Others outwardly support the anthrax mailing.

One message, entitled 'No Sympathy for the Devil', was posted in several chat rooms by right-winger Grant Bruer, whose racist writings are circulated among supremacist groups. It reads: 'Is there not a single person who has received these anthrax letters that isn't an avowed enemy of the white race? Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle and the gossip rag offices have all been 100 per cent legitimate targets. Who among us has the slightest bit of sympathy for these pukes?'

Right-wing groups have had an interest in anthrax and other biological agents. A member of the Aryan Nation group once bragged he had a stash of anthrax from digging up a field where cows had died of the disease in the 1950s. Larry Wayne Harris was arrested after trying to obtain three vials of bubonic plague from a mail-order science company.

The trail leading investigators to groups from the domestic ultra-right - rather than the al-Qaeda terror network - comes as a dramatic twist in the confused crisis. Last week, parallel evidence appeared to be linking the now rampant anthrax attacks to another trail: leading from Iraq and through the Czech Republic, with al-Qaeda militants as the likely couriers.

The shift in the investigation echoes that which followed America's other infamous terrorist attack: the destruction of the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The bombing was initially thought to be the work of Arab extremists, but turned out to be the work of the Aryan supremacists.