5 White Supremacists Give Up After 4-Day Siege in Arkansas : Supply of Weapons, Explosives Found at Mountain Camp

The leader of a paramilitary survivalist group was arrested on weapons charges at the organization’s compound today after a four-day siege by lawmen, federal officials said.

Heavily armed state and federal lawmen had converged on the camp Friday with an arrest warrant for Jim Ellison, leader of The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord. The warrant charged Ellison, 44, with directing the conversion of guns to automatic weapons at the white supremacist group’s 224-acre encampment.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI and Missouri and Arkansas state police found ammunition, weapons, explosives and detonators at the rural camp.

“This situation carried the seeds for disaster,” Stephen E. Higgins, director of the firearms bureau, said after the surrender. “The fact that the surrender has been peacefully negotiated without a shot being fired speaks well for the . . . professionalism of those involved.”

Four Others Surrender

Four other men, all members of The Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group based in Idaho, surrendered with Ellison, said Tom Hill, a spokesman for the firearms bureau. Two of the men were wanted on federal charges in Seattle, but no federal charges were pending against the others.

The Order and the Aryan Nations Church, closely tied to such anti-Jewish and anti-black groups as the Ku Klux Klan, believe that nonwhites and Jews should be separated from white Christians.

Higgins said that Ellison was charged with conspiracy to manufacture, possess and transfer fully automatic firearms and silencers from 1981 through June, 1984.

Agents, in searching two areas of the compound, found a large amount of ammunition, a number of weapons, several types of explosives and other materials used in detonating explosives, Higgins said.

Man Held in Slaying

David Tate, 22, of Athol, Ida., a reputed member of The Order, was arrested Saturday in Forsyth, Mo., about 25 miles away, and was held without bond on a capital murder charge in the slaying of a state trooper. Police had speculated that he might have been trying to reach Ellison’s camp in the rugged Ozark Mountains.

Lawmen also found 22 hand grenade casings, explosive powder and firing pins on the compound, a spokesman said.

FBI special agent Ray McElhaney said that lawmen also seized computer equipment, assorted guns and ammunition, Nazi literature, hate literature aimed at blacks and Jews, radio equipment and what he described as a substantial amount of new jewelry. The jewelry, which included rings, watches and necklaces, was common yet valuable, he said.

Lawmen moved cautiously in their search to avoid possible land mines, but McElhaney said they found no booby traps. He said officers have taken control of about one-third of the densely wooded camp without meeting any resistance.