ENLISTED KILLERS

By Howard Chua-Eoan

AT FIRST, THE POLICE DIDN'T KNOW quite what to make of Randy Lee Meadows Jr. Responding to reports of a shooting in the predominantly black Campbell Terrace section of Fayetteville, North Carolina, early last Thursday, the officers thought Meadows looked very much out of place. It was past midnight, he was white and he was sitting despondently behind the wheel of his Chevy Cavalier. The cops asked him some questions. His answers led them to a mobile home where Meadows' friend James Norman Burmeister was renting a room. There they found a Nazi flag, bombmaking books and white-supremacist literature, including a thick volume on the Third Reich on Burmeister's nightstand. They also found something else: a 9-mm pistol that they believed was used to kill Jackie Burden, 27, and her friend Michael James, 36.

According to police, Burden and James died because three soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg, the huge Army base adjacent to Fayetteville, decided it was a good night to commit a hate crime. Private Malcolm Wright, 21, Private Burmeister, 20, and Specialist Meadows, 21, had been drinking and nightclubbing when they allegedly drove to Campbell Terrace to harass blacks. The soldiers, members of the 82nd Airborne Division, had reportedly gone on such excursions before. This time, as Meadows waited in the car, Wright and Burmeister allegedly picked their quarry at random, accosted the couple and killed them. Meadows has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder; Wright and Burmeister face first-degree murder charges--and the death penalty if convicted.

Burmeister, for one, is "a complete white supremacist," asserted Christine Menseau, the woman who rented the room to him, in an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer. "My husband and I believe the races should be separated, but [Burmeister] went way beyond that." According to the Washington Post, Burmeister also hung around a handful of other soldiers, secret skinheads, during off-hours. They wore red suspenders and used white laces in their black boots to mark themselves as a select group. Burmeister had moved in with Menseau and her husband in June because he couldn't get along with his fellow paratroopers.

The military bars its troops from actively participating in groups pushing racist or other antisocial aims, but Pentagon officials concede the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and assembly restricts their ability to halt membership in such outfits. Police reportedly found "resistance magazines" among Burmeister's belongings. Fort Bragg is home to the Special Forces Underground, a clandestine group that publishes the Resister, a newsletter that espouses the extreme positions that proliferate among right-wing militias. In a recent policy statement, the Underground announced its opposition to "liberalism, altruism, internationalism, tribalism, democracy ... [and] the ideologies of all tyrannies." The role of actual soldiers in the newsletter is murky.

Fort Bragg's racial problems--and those of the armed forces in general--go beyond this recent incident. Though the Army today is nearly 30% black, overt racism still takes place at some bases, according to a report issued by the House Armed Services Committee last December. Fort Bragg itself has been linked to other violent outbursts. In October an Army sergeant opened fire on colleagues, killing one and injuring 18. In August 1993 a soldier from the post killed four people in a local restaurant. And in 1991 Timothy McVeigh, the chief suspect in last April's bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma, arrived for a 21-day Green Beret selection course. His failure to qualify for the elite group apparently helped turn him against the government.

Military and civilian authorities caution that Fort Bragg, with a population of 75,000, is virtually a small city. Says Major Rivers Johnson Jr., a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division: "You've got to understand that the 82nd Airborne is a reflection of society." Referring to the suspects, a local police officer says, "These guys are just idiots."

--Reported by Lisa Towle/Raleigh and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by LISA TOWLE/RALEIGH AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON