The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 113

-SUNDAY, APRIL' 28, 198? 4F. THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR- His conscience made him finger athews, numbered and now Sam knows his days are among them three Philadel-phians on racketeering, charges. Six of the 23 are still at large. AST Monday, members of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord surrendered without a struggle after a three-day standoff at their camp near Three Brothers, in the Ozarks. Two of those arrested are reputed members of The Order.

A machine gun found among a cache of weapons and explosives at the CSA camp is nearly identical to the guns used in the slayings of Missouri state Trooper James. Linegar, and. Alan Berg. "People were going to There was supposed to be an assassination and another armored car Sam said. "About seven or eight things I prevented.

"What do you think?" he asked the reporter. "Did I do the right thing?" AM GREW UP in a tough white, working-class neighborhood known as "Fishtown." Public school records show he bounced from school to school. He was "ordinary, like the rest STAFF ILLUSTRATION 1 As for the traitor in Room 14. we will eventually find him. If it takes 10 years and we have to travel to the far ends of the earth, we will find him.

And true to our oath, when we do find him. we will remove his head from his body. Robert Jay Mathews, founder of The Order By KITTY CAPARELLA KNKjHT-RIDOER newspapers PHILADELPHIA The man marked for death by the most violent right-wing extremists in America stood behind his wife as she cautiously opened the door of their rowhouse in the Richmond neighborhood to the reporter who had tracked them down. The former Philadelphia Housing Authority maintenance man was on edge. Only weeks before this chilly day, he had led government agents to Robert Jay Mathews, leader of the national neo-Nazi network known as The Order.

It was a decision that cracked the government's case and culminated in Mathews' fiery death in a Dec. 7 battle with the FBI. Sam (not his real name) knew that the remnants of the racist organization that had pulled off a $3.6 million Brinks robbery and gunned down Denver talk show host Alan Berg were after him. He knew he shouldn't be anywhere, least of all his Philadelphia home, without FBI protection. He said he'd come to Richmond to read his gas meter.

Reluctant to speak at first, Sam went on to talk for 4Vi hours about his association with the fieavily armed revolutionary "ar-roy" of factory workers, postal clerks and ex-convicts also known as the "Bruder Schwei-gen" (Silent Brotherhood) and the White American Bastion. He was obsessed with the events that had turned 1984 into a nightmare for him and his family. Faced with a prison term on counterfeiting charges, he had turned in a friend. The decision to expose The Order, he said, cost him dearly. "I LOST he said.

"I had to quit my job of six years, my wife had to quit the job she had for 10 years. We had to take our daughter out of private Catholic school. We just finished fixing up this house 'People were going to die seven or eight things I prevented." Although he didn't want a story written about him, he thought the public should know about the organization that has dedicated itself to overthrowing what it calls the "Zionist Occupation Government" (ZOG) and slaughtering blacks and Jews in the streets. He wanted it known that "I saved people from getting killed." Within months of Sam's cooperation, the FBI arrested 28 extremists in 13 states, including Robert Mathews' successor, Bruce Carroll Pierce, "the most wanted man in the West." A federal grand jury in Seattle, earlier this month indicted 23 members of The Order Manual on he had begun to realize minorities were not responsible for all the ills of the world. There was also the house.

That fall he and his wife had just bought the Richmond "handyman's special" for $24,000. They wanted to work on it In January 1984, however, Mathews contacted him to tell him he was coming to Philadelphia. Sam was eager to introduce Mathews to his wife and kids and "show him Philly. HUT MATHEWS had other plans. He was recruiting racists for The Order.

"I was in the racist movement nine years," Sam said, "but in 1984 my whole life changed." Sitting on an orange pile sofa in his living room, an Army jacket pulled tightly around him and his wife shivering by his side, Sam had been talking in fits and starts for several hours. Over their three-year acquaintance, he said, he saw Mathews change from a paunchy, devoted family man who adopted a son and fought in the tax rebellion movement to a slimmed down, tough revolutionary who would recruit nearly 50 of America's most hardcore Klansmen and neo-Nazis to wage war on the ZOG. Sam walked to a bookshelf and picked up The Dispossessed 'Majority, a book of "scientific" racism by Wilmot Robertson. "Mathews became more radical after reading this," Sam said. "He was really crazy." MATHEWS ALSO was heavily, influenced, Sam said, by The Turner Diaries, a novel by National Alliance founder William Pierce.

The book, which federal investigators have called a "blueprint" for The Order's activities, chronicles the adventures of a hero-soldier in a white underground army who dies in a suicide nuclear attack on the Pentagon. Mathews "really thought he was Turner," Sam said. For about four years, ultra-right-wing literature had been predicting that an extremist army would be formed to undergo survivalist training in preparation for the "great revolution." Recruits got "point for murder, counterfeiting or robbery. During his Philadelphia visit, Mathews tried to recruit Sam for The Order. He told him that "The revolution had begun," and that he had already robbed a Seattle bank of $25,000 to finance the fight.

Mathews had convened the founding meeting of The Order in Metaline Falls the year before. Each "Aryan warrior" was to swear an oath, "something about dedicating your life to taking care of your own," Sam recalled. There was also, Sam said, a belt buckle in the shape of a medallion containing a cyanide capsule with which warriors were to kill themselves rather than betray The Order. of filth showing homosexual and Zionists of us," a former classmate said. He remained in 10th grade for 2Vt years, dropping out on Dec.

22, 1972. A year later, he joined the Army and underwent two months of basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., before he was discharged. (The Army will jaot dis-. close information about discharges.) He got married that same year. He was 19, his wife was pregnant and he couldn't find a job.

Sam, an unskilled teen-ager, blamed affirmative action hiring for his woes. He was finally hired "by mistake," he said, by an affirmative action employer who thought he was a minority because of his last name. The bitterness of his job search stayed with him. He began subscribing to extreme right-wing These groups, in turn, contacted him and soon he was attending a racist Nietsche Club and there was only one thing on his mind. "You talk to people who feel like you do, and you dont want to talk about anything else," Sam said.

"You don't read sports. You don't watch TV. All you do is read about Israel and race. It's race, race, race." TT WAS IN this world of hate that Sam distinguished himself, distributing on street corners anti-black and anti-Semitic propaganda he'd ordered and paid for himself. He became head of the local chapter of the National Alliance, a spinoff of the 1968 Youth for Wallace movement.

He became well-known among racist leaders he met at national conferences. Among those leaders was Robert Jay Mathews, a charismatic cement worker from Metaline Falls, Wash. "They liked me," Sam said, "because I'm a talker and I have a nice personality." In late 1983, things began to change for Sam. He "got fed up" with the racist movement and resigned from the National Alliance. In discussions with black and Jewish co workers, he said, TO BECOME a full fledged member.

Mathews told Sam. each recruit had to acquire a certain number of "points" for murder, counterfeiting' or robbery. But Sam was not ready to join. "I didnt want to tell him I wasnt into crimes. I didn't want him to think I was a coward," Sam said.

"I dont even own a gun." Sam contends he never joined The Order. He said Mathews gave him money so one of the four members of his Phildel-phia National Alliance "cell" could fly to Spokane, to join up. The recruit was James Sherman Dye, 36, a factory worker and Marine veteran of Vietnam who eventually was joined by two other Philadel-phians, George "Leggs" Franklin Zaengle and William "Smith" Anthony Nash. Three months later, on July 16, Dye, who had acquired the code name "Mr. May," was one of 12 masked men who held up a sign reading "Get out or die" as they robbed a Brinks truck in Ukiah, of $3.6 million.

HE SAME "month Mathews came to Philadelphia, Sam also met David "Lone Wolf" Lane, a founding member of The Order. Lane had been, minister of information for the Aryan Nations, a racist alliance that waged on-air battles with talk show host Berg, who was known his. acid critiques of. the fringe right. On June 18, Berg was gunned down as he got out of his car to walk to his Denver apartment.

Six days after Berg's the chief suspect in the killing, arrived in Philadelphia carrying two boxes wrapped in brown paper bearing Sam's daughter's name. They were filled with $30,000 in uncut, counterfeit $10 bills. It was the beginning of the end for Sam. Lane, Zaengle and Sam cut apart sheets of the counterfeit money. Sam was told to keep $1,100 for himself and take another $20,000 out of state to launder it, or drop it off in black neighborhoods so blacks would distribute it and foul the Federal Reserve System, EOPLE ARE thrifty in Sam's neighborhood.

It didn't go unnoticed that the family whose curtains were always drawn suddenly could afford a video cassette recorder, lawn furniture, a lawn mower and car rentals while rehabilitating their "How I got caught," Sam said, "was greed." He'd just discovered he need-; ed about $2,000 to replace rotting beams in the roof of his house. "I thought if I just took a little of the money, maybe $4,000, 1 could pass it out and get the money I needed to fix the. beams," he said. "But I made a stupid mistake." On June 28, he bought a 50-cent lottery ticket with one of the bills from a beer distributor about a block from his. house.

The next day, he tried it again; But the beer distributor was ready this time, taking down the license plate of Sam's car. Three days later, the Secret Service arrested him. Later that month, a few weeks before Sam's trial was to begin, Mathews came back to Philadelphia with his young blonde girlfriend, who would soon do her "Aryan duty" by bearing a baby girl. Mathews and his girlfriend and Sam and his wife went to a restaurant in Kensington. The men talked about Sam's counterfeiting case.

The women, the girlfriend recalls, talked about raising children. QN OCT. 1, Sam entered a guilty plea to three counts of counterfeiting. The FBI was pressuring him to cooperate. Mathews was telephoning him to reassure him he wasn't going to go to jail.

Sam lay awake at night for weeks, holding his wife, thinking about his children. Til tell you why I did he said of his decision to cooperate with the FBI. "I got a conscience. I thought if it was only for me, I'd run. But I got them to think of my wife and kids And people were going to die." Sam was the FBI's big break.

Now known by the code name "C.S. (Confidential Source) 1," he agreed to lead them to Mathews. He wouldn't wear a body wire, he said. He knew Mathews would check him out. Of all the members of The he warned the FBI, Mathews was the one who would not be taken alive.

When Sam arrived at the airport in Portland, on Nov. 23, he said, FBI agents were everywhere. Mathews motioned for Sam to follow him down an escalator to a little-used section of the airport. Mathews pulled out a gun, and they leaned against a wall ready to ambush any 1 agent who might come down the escalator. No one came.

HEY RODE back up the escalator and walked to the car. As Sam was climbing in, a hand reached by him to unlock one of the doors. Sam turned around, startled to see "a white guy" in a Jeff cap." Mathews laughed, saying, "This is Reds." On the way to the motel, Reds began bragging about a shootout with the FBI. Sam realized "Reds" was Gary Lee Yar-brough, a key figure in The Order and a suspect in the Berg killing. The FBI had bugged the motel where Sam had told them he'd being staying.

However, Mathews drove them to another place, the Capri, where the three men were registered under aliases. The men talked for hours at the Capri about Sam's case. Mathews wanted Sam to bring his family out to the Pacific Northwest and then "go on the road" with Lane. Sam was trying to figure out how he could get away to call the FBI's emergency number to tell them where he was. He told Mathews and Reds he wanted to "find some ladies" and left the motel.

Walking down the road, he noticed a car was following him, its lights blinking. Unsure whether it was the FBI or The Order, he kept walking until he reached a hamburger stand. Inside, an undercover agent approached him, identifying himself with a code word. Sam told the agent about Reds. He made the -agent promise, he said, that the FBI would not move in on Mathews and Yar-brough until Sam was safely back at the airport.

sneaked out ot the motel to a nearby restaurant, where he called the FBI to "tell them to get me the hell out of here." 'i 'The FBI screwed me and screwed up the i investigation. Two weeks later, Mathew? kept federal agents at bay for almost 30 hours with automatic weapons fire until a helicopter dropped illumination flares -inte the house on Whidbey Island. Mathews died in an explosioA touched off when the flares lit i cache of ammunition' in the house. When word of Mathews' death reached Sam, he said, "I cried for a half-hour in the bathj room. I really cared about thq guy." HAT DAY, Sam quit hil maintenance job for the Philadelphia Housing Authority, where he was bered as "a guy who got along with everyone." A week later, a U.S..

District Court judge gave him three years' probation on the counterfeiting charges. "The FBI didn't stop The Order, I did," Sam insisted. If the FBI hadn't moved in on. Mathews that morning, hq he would have gone on the road; with Lane and found out more about the organization. "The FBI screwed me and screwed up the investigations-he said, quickly rioting that fed-' eral agents are his only protect tion now.

Bill Stanton of Klanwatch, an' arm of the Southern Law Center in Montgomery, monitors America's extreme right-wingers. "His days are probably numbered," said of Sam. Sam says he knows that the computer "bulletin boards" set up by the Nazi underground from North Carolina to Idaho are clamoring for his death. WISHES he could go back in time. He is, again, "fed up" with the racist movement "But you know what the worst thing is television.

They shouldn't, be running all these shows on Hitlpr and t.hp Holn- caust," he said. "Philadelphia is a dead city; as far as the racist movement," he said. "People talk a lot. They give money. But they don't, join, groups.

They worry 'What will my neighbors I In a poem published in the! "Bruder Schweigen" handbook; Robert Jay Mathews wrote this; exhortation to his troops: "Give your soul to God and pick up your gun, "It is time to deal in lead; "We are the legions of the damned, "The Army of the Already Dead." contains advice overthrowin stores are full KNIGtiT-RIODEB NEWSPAPERS HE "BRUDERS (sic) Schweigen" manual, hand- written by charter member David Lane, contains 18 pages of advice for "Aryan warriors" committed to overthrowing the "Zionist Occupational Government," which Lane usually abbreviates to ZOG. Some excerpts: Membership requirements "You must look White, act White and fight White." On transportation "Cars being used for anti-ZOG activities should be registered to a completely fictitious third party Every time you are stopped for a ticket it becomes necessary to sell your car and purchase another (because your driver's license and car tag are tied together by authorities)." On speeding "There is no greater crime against yourself or your comrades than speeding or breaking traffic laws The vast majority of rebels against ZOG as well as common criminals are caught because they broke some silly law On meeting the enemy "That is the reason for your .38 caliber. You must stop and immediately disable the ZOG vehicle. Then, proceed to switch vehicles, safe houses, escape routes or whatever." On bank jobs "Should a unit be inclined to raid the gold of ZOG. beware of exploding dyes and radio beeps planted in money packets." On bombing targets "Porno theaters and book niggers (sic) doing vile acts with white women." On personal camouflage "Until you can sit at a table or in a bar with a beautiful white woman and her nigger boyfriend or husband and convince them that you are overflowing with brotherly love and affection, you are not yet a completed agent of the White underground." On procreation "It is recommended that no kinsman be put in combat situations, i.e., raise their sword against ZOG.

until he has planted his seed in the belly of a woman. The same for kinswomen, if possible they should bear at least one warrior before putting their own life on the line." On fingerprints "ZOG can lift fingerprints from human skin, from inside gloves and from sur-faces which have been wiped. The solutions are obvious. Destroy your gloves when On conspicuous displays of consumption "Beware of displays of wealth. ZOG moniters all large cash transactions." On injuries "On rare occasions you may be able to kidnap a doctor.

Liberate and store all possible pain killers and antibiotics as a routine procedure." On drinking "Just beware, booze lubricates the lips and every young warrior wishes to brag to the fair young damsels." PARLY THE next morning, the FBI called to tell Sam not to come out of his room. Suddenly, gunshots filled the air. Yarborough was captured. Mathews and an FBI agent were wounded. Mathews escaped, hitchhiking 180 miles north to hole up in a house on Whidbey Island, near Seattle.

Hours after the shootout, Sam still was in the motel room, having heard nothing more from the FBI. He heard a maid telling reporters that the FBI "was working with the guy in Room 14." Sam was outraged. He.