The Order Planned to Ask Syria for Funds, Ex-Member Testifies

Members of the white supremacist group The Order planned to ask the Syrian government to help bankroll an “Aryan revolution” in this country, a former member of the organization testified Wednesday.

In his fourth day of testimony in the trial of 10 alleged Order members, Denver Daw Parmenter II said the late Robert Mathews, The Order’s founder, and defendant Randolph Duey discussed the plan Oct. 20, 1984, at a house at Bluecreek in northeastern Washington.

The 10 are accused under the federal racketeering law of plotting a revolution to eliminate Jews and racial minorities and of committing a string of crimes, including two murders, armored car robberies and counterfeiting.

11 Plead Guilty

Twenty-three persons were charged in a 21-count indictment alleging 67 separate crimes. Parmenter and 10 others have pleaded guilty, and one defendant remains at large. The 23rd, David Tate, faces trial in Missouri in the killing of a state trooper.

Mathews and Duey discussed efforts to contact the Syrian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to solicit monetary support, Parmenter said.

They decided Duey would visit the embassy, and Mathews spent some time teaching Duey how to greet Syrian officials in the “Aryan way”--”putting hands on them, as opposed to just shaking hands as we do; a more personal effect,” Parmenter said.

Unknown If Contact Took Place

He did not say whether Duey ever actually tried to contact the Syrians.

Mathews was killed last December during a shoot-out with the FBI north of Seattle.

Parmenter testified Tuesday that The Order planned to battle the “Zionist Occupied Government” of the United States with lasers, “thought-control projects” and other high-tech gadgets it hoped to buy from scientists. Members began planning the fight after they suspected they were being watched in October, 1984, he said.