On the bus yesterday I heard the guy next to me say to his 2 young daughters "look at the drug house" and looked over to see guys coming out of the house in Tyvek suits.
I may have felt better if it had just been a meth lab.
Neo-Nazi, associate nabbed in Seattle
Federal agents lead effort; suspects face weapons charges
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Neo-Nazi Keith Gilbert had just left his home in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood to walk his German shepherd Blondie early yesterday morning when federal agents, including the FBI SWAT team, made their move.
The 65-year-old Gilbert -- a veteran race warrior who once bragged that he planned to blow up the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with 1,400 pounds of TNT and did prison time for threatening black children -- was arrested without incident on multiple weapons charges including selling machine guns and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Agents later removed a small arsenal from his home at 1408 N.E. 65th St.
Just around the corner, at Northeast 66th Street and 14th Avenue Northeast, another detail of agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force waited while members of the Seattle Police SWAT team entered the home of William Heinrich. Heinrich, a 50-year-old associate of Gilbert and former Aryan Nation activist, complied quietly with his arrest on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
At the same time, agents in Aberdeen closed in on John Hejna, 44, who was charged with possession of C-4, a military-grade, plastic explosive, as well as with conspiracy to sell the C-4. An unidentified witness told agents that Hejna was working with the local leader of the Nazi Low Riders who said his crew "routinely roughed up" gays and blacks on Capitol Hill.
All three men, as well as fugitives Barton Carter and Alen Long, who are charged with Hejna in the C-4 accusations, are part of a loose alliance of friends and acquaintances accused of helping each other in illegal sales of firearms or explosives.
The case began with a tip from a convicted felon to an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The felon began working for the feds. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force got involved because of Gilbert's pedigree as a member of such violent, racist groups as Aryan Nations, where he was an aide to leader Richard Butler, and the Social Nationalist Aryan People's Party whose adherents are considered by federal law enforcement to be potential domestic terrorists.
Gilbert, who has a lengthy criminal history, once bragged to a Chicago Tribune reporter that he "was planning to blow up Martin Luther King when he was speaking to 5,000 Jews at the Palladium in L.A."
The terrorism task force is also involved in the case because of unspecified links to a Lebanese man who sold a pistol to an associate of the so-called "Portland Seven," most of whom were convicted last year of conspiring against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to federal criminal justice sources. One of the sources called the links tenuous and emphasized that the case does not involve either domestic or international terrorism.
"They're just a bunch of meth addicts selling guns to petty thugs and people who show up at gun shows," said the source who noted that the investigation had revealed no racist plot either.
Gilbert's credentials as a white supremacist merits his own entry in the reference book "Hate Groups in America, A Record of Bigotry and Violence."
The book refers to Gilbert's plot to assassinate King saying that he planned in the 1960s to explode 1,400 pounds of dynamite at a B'nai B'rith dinner to honor King. Gilbert did five years in San Quentin for possession of the dynamite, according to "Hate Groups in America."
Gilbert "described himself as a disciple of Adolf Hitler, engaged in anti-Jewish and racist activities, including the harassment of local black children," the book says. He served prison time for the threats against the children.
Since the 1990s, Gilbert has been a frequent companion, tenant and apparent right-hand man for the landlord of his home and dozens of other homes in the Roosevelt district owned by Hugh Sisley.
Federal agents and evidence technicians donned protective suits and rubber boots to enter the home yesterday morning because the place was described as disgustingly filthy.
Gilbert faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of the five counts lodged against him.
Heinrich also faces a maximum of 10 years and a $250,000 fine for the single count of felon in possession of a weapon. And Hejna could be sentenced to five years on the conspiracy charge and 10 years on the possession of plastic explosives charge. Each count carries a maximum $250,000 fine.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Monica Benton ordered all three men held yesterday pending detention hearings later in the week.
