The Missoulian from Missoula, Montana • 10

A-10 Missoulian, Thursday, September 13, 1990 FROM PAGE A-1 KTMF Suspect ing, Pursley said. "I decided I'd better get out of town and go to Canada," he explained. After fleeing across the border, Pursley said he began working for a moving company in Calgary, Alberta. It was there that he said he was detained last year for working illegally. Pursley, however, applied for political asylum in Canada.

He said he cited harassment from the FBI over the Aryan Nations issue as his reason for wanting to stay. "I was getting literature from (Aryan Nations), but that doesn't mean I'm a member," he said. "I know a few people with them." Canadian authorities denied Pursley's immigration request and he was deported back to the United States last April. However, Pursley said, he was in Canada long enough to become friends with the leader of the Aryan Resistance Movement, a British Columbia-based white supremacist group. "I happen to know the guy who runs it," he said.

"I get some literature from them and I correspond with them off and on." ARM's political slant, Pursley said, is as follows: "They're ami- Jewish. They're not anti-Semitic. They're just anti-Jewish. They're also against people who aren't white." Pursley said he has gathered materials from ARM, Aryan Nations and other groups because he is interested in many points of view. "I've got a poster of Hitler in my living room," along with posters of Napoleon and Einstein, he said.

Hitler, he explained, "was a great leader because he gave the people what they wanted." Pursley also said he has spent time studying the Klu Klux Klan. "From reading history books, I know that (the KKK's) real power is in the unknowing," he explained. "When they have their hoods on, nobody knows who they are or how many of them there ate. I guess that's why they call themselves the Invisible Empire. Pursley, who reads and writes extensively, said he also spends a lot of time reading the Bible.

"I have a lot of contact with my higher power," he explained. "I'm a Christian before I'm anything else. But I may not live the lifestyle most Christians live. I try to live my life as close as I can to God's law. I've broken man's laws, but not God's law." bel for me, it's a Cajun." He also described himself as a "Southern Democrat." Born in El Paso, Texas, Pursley said his family frequently moved around the country due to his father's career in the Army.

In 1985, Pursley graduated from Mount Tahoma High School in Tacoma, according to school officials. He said he came to Montana last year "after I had trouble with the feds." His problems, he said, started about two years ago in southeastern Texas, near Beaumont, when he was accused of recruiting members for the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, a prominent Idaho-based white supremacist organization whose political arm is known as the Aryan Nations. "I had some of their literature, but I wasn't soliciting members," Pursley said. Nonetheless, he claims, FBI agents and deputies from the Orange County, Texas Sheriff's Department one day "picked me up and took me for a ride out to a damn cemetery." "I think they were trying to scare me," Pursley explained. "They started making threats and said, 'What are you doing around here, you Nazi." Then I got the kicked out of me." FBI spokesman Roger Humphrey, in a telephone interview from Beaumont last week, said the agency does not beat up people and that he had never before heard of Pursley.

A spokeeman for the Orange County Sheriffs Department, while saying Pursley had been in "minor trouble" while in the area, said he doubted that Pursley had been roughed up by deputies. "We don't have any charges pending on him and I know one thing," the spokesman said. "We don't want him here." After the alleged beating, which Pursley main- tains has been documented by a physician, he said he headed to Denver. While there, he said, he sold used cars and performed tatooing on the side. After staying in Denver for several months, Pursley said he went to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

During the interview, he made no mention of spending time in Washington state. After a few days in Coeur d'Alene, "a couple of guys came to my motel and identified themselves as federal agents," he said. The men made statements referring to south Texas and Aryan Nations recruit (continued) Pursley explained that when he and the unnamed friend tried the first bomb, "It didn't blow that big of a hole. It kind of moved the dirt a little. I put the other one in the cupboard and forgot about it." After finding the bomb in Pursley's trailer, Lake County authorities called in an explosives crew from Missoula to stabilize the device.

The bomb later was turned over to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is still investigating the incident, a spokesman said Wednesday. Pursley, who said he was curious about pipe bombs because of their uses by rebel groups throughout the world, explained that making one is simple. "What you need is something that can hold pressure and the right kind of powder," he said. "I don't know if we had the right powder." He also downplayed their danger. "You really can't do much damage with a pipe bomb," he said.

"It just can scare the out of people." Along with the bomb, Lake County authorities seized from Pursley's trailer a Montana road map with a number of area dams highlighted on it, Sheriff Joe Geldrich said in a recent interview. "I don't know what his plans were," Geldrich said, noting that Kerr, Libby, Hungry Horse, and Noxon Rapids dams were emphasized on the map. Pursley, in an interview, denied that he has more than a passing interest in water impoundments. "I've got friends that live over in the Noxon area, near the Noxon Rapids Dam, and 1 had them pegged out on a board," he explained. "I also have friends near Libby Dam.

I had areas near what probably are dams marked out where I know friends." Pursley, who apparently has lived on the Flathead Reservation since about February, also denied that he is actively involved in white supremacist activities. He said that he has repeatedly been hassled by the FBI for his closeness to such groups, however. "I'm not a supremacist," Pursley said. "I would describe myself as a white Christian. A supremacist believes his race is the only one who should be in power.

I'm a Christian. I'm white. But if there's a la (continued) KTGF. As Crolla watched workers nail construction forms into place Wednesday, he said that 60 days worth of work remain on top of this mountain, already bristling with towers and antennas. Snow could slow down work just enough to put the station off schedule.

The station has acquired the old Carousel bar on Stephens Avenue in Missoula for its studio. Crolla said the 18,000 square feet, substantial air-conditioning and electrical capacity makes it "an excellent building for us." He expects to hire about two dozen people to start up the station, and about a half-dozen of those will work on the local news. Crolla also said the station intends to be involved in community affairs. In Great Falls, the 4-year-old KTGF sponsors an autumn jazz festival, a fireworks display and live broadcasts of Pioneer League baseball games. When KTMF goes on the air on UHF channel 23, it will be the first time Missoula and western Montana viewers who don't subscribe to cable systems will have access to the complete schedule of all three networks.

KPAX is a CBS affiliate and KECI is now exclusively NBC, although in the past it has carried some ABC programming. Crolla boasted that because of the power of the UHF transmitter, viewers in Kalispell, Whitefish and the far reaches of the existing broadcast market will get a high-quality image on their screen. Bill Sullivan, KPAX general manager, earlier this summer noted that two other organizations in the past applied for the broadcast license KTMF obtained, but decided not to build. He called Missoula a "very competitive and marginal market." Crolla disagreed. "I think Missoula's in a real excellent market," Crolla said.

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