Order in Court

By Frank Trippett

When the eleven prisoners were being delivered to the U.S. courthouse in Seattle, the security was stricter than at any other time in memory. Parking was prohibited in all areas nearby. More than 30 deputy marshals imported from around the nation stood on duty with shotguns and rifles. In addition to the metal detector that is normally in use at the building's main entrance, a second magnetometer was installed to screen all who entered the courtroom. As one final precaution, officials bolted down the chairs to be occupied by the prisoners and their lawyers. Overkill? Said Chief Deputy Robert Christman of Seattle's U.S. Marshals Service: "It's not extraordinary, given the nature of the defendants and their record for violence."

The defendants are all members of an anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti- Government hate group known variously as the Order, the Silent Brotherhood, the White American Revolutionary Army and the Aryan Resistance Movement. A 93- page indictment charges 23 members with violating the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a statute the Government has hitherto used against organized crime and terrorists. Ten of the accused had pleaded guilty, and an eleventh changed his plea to guilty last week; at . least eight of these have drawn 20-year prison terms. One of the 23 has never been caught, and another, David Tate, is being held in Missouri to face charges of killing a state trooper.

The Government has accused various Order members of a $3.6 million armored- car robbery in Ukiah, Calif., last year; the machine-gun slaying last year of Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk-show host in Denver; and other crimes ranging from bank robberies to counterfeiting. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Ward launched the Government's case by stating that he would prove, with testimony and documents, that Jean Craig, the only woman defendant, did reconnaissance for the Berg shooting and that Bruce Carroll Pierce acted as triggerman. Ward also asserted that Order members received tax-free "salaries" of $20,000 annually and bonuses from crimes furthering Order goals. In response, Defense Attorney Fred Leatherman, representing Randolph Duey, called the proceeding "a political trial." Duey is charged with participating in the slaying last year of fellow Neo-Nazi Walter West, suspected by the Order of being an informer.

The case the Government hopes to make under the RICO Act is that Order members committed their crimes to further their declared violent revolution against what they call the "Zionist-occupied Government" of the U.S. Conviction under the act could bring maximum sentences of 40 years and fines of $50,000 and would allow the Federal Government to confiscate all assets of the organization.

The trial may take some three months. The prosecution has a list of 568 potential witnesses, including some Order members who have already pleaded guilty. Jury selection, which used up much of last week, ended with the impaneling of an all-white, twelve-member jury with three alternates. Three blacks, one Asian and one Jew were among potential jurors but were eliminated. Potential jurors were asked if they were Jewish, or had sympathies for anti- black, anti-Jewish or tax-protest groups. They were also asked if they could be fair to defendants who may not believe the Holocaust occurred. The Government hopes the trial will bring to fruition its fight against radical neo-Nazi hate groups. The drive was launched last year when authorities uncovered evidence (confirmed by the two witnesses heard before the trial recessed at week's end) that the Order had begun acting out a plot laid out in The Turner Diaries, a bizarre novel written by White Supremacist William Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. The book tells how a group called "The Order" robs banks and counterfeits money to finance a revolutionary movement against Jews, other minorities and the Government.

The Order's founder, Robert Jay Mathews, 31, died last December. Holed up in a waterfront house on Whidbey Island in Washington State, Mathews fired some 1,000 rounds of ammunition at an army of federal and local police who were trying to arrest him. The fusillade ended when an illumination flare blew up a cache of ammo, the house--and Mathews.

With reporting by Meg Grant/Seattle