Nazi Threat on Packwood Told by Aide

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) and his family received around-the-clock police protection for the last week after a neo-Nazi group allegedly threatened to kill him, an aide said Thursday.

U.S. Capitol police lifted the special protection Wednesday after judging there was no further immediate danger, said Etta Fielek, Packwood’s spokeswoman.

The protection began Dec. 26 after an informant contacted the Eugene, Ore., office of the FBI, contending that the white supremacist group Aryan Nations planned to assassinate Packwood before the new year, Fielek said.

“Specifically, they didn’t say why they had targeted the senator,” Fielek said. She noted, however: “The group is anti-Semitic, anti-everything but what they are. Sen. Packwood has shown strong support for Israel; he’s a strong civil libertarian.”

The security covered Packwood; his wife, Georgie; their son, Bill, 17; and their daughter, Shyla, 14.

Meanwhile, a second member of a white-supremacist group affiliated with the Aryan Nations was arrested in Spokane, Wash., Thursday on charges of taking part in a $3.6-million armored car robbery in Northern California last July, federal authorities said in San Francisco.

James Dye, 31, was arrested without incident by FBI agents around noon, said U.S. Atty. Joseph Russoniello, who gave no other details.

Right-Wing Splinter Group

The FBI says 12 members of the Order, which it describes as a “right-wing splinter group affiliated with the Aryan Nations,” robbed a Brink’s armored car July 19 near Ukiah, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.

The only other defendant identified so far is Denver Parmenter, 32, of Cheney, Wash., who was arrested in Seaside, Ore., Dec. 18 and was charged last Friday. He is being held without bond in Portland.

Parmenter and five other white supremacists are also charged in a $500,000 armored car robbery in Seattle last April. Dye is not charged in that robbery.

Also Thursday, four persons arrested last month in raids on suspected neo-Nazi hide-outs in Whidbey Island, Wash., were indicted by a federal grand jury in Seattle on charges of harboring a fugitive, Robert Mathews. Mathews apparently died in a fire started by flares fired by federal agents who had surrounded his cottage.