Court Sees Videotape of White Supremacists at Cross Burning

The Confederate flag was flapping in the night breeze. Hooded figures hefted torches. And Richard Butler, wearing the ceremonial red robe of “an honorary grand dragon” of the Ku Klux Klan, offered a benediction.

On a videotape shown Wednesday in Los Angeles Municipal Court, Butler strained to make himself heard above the noise of a Los Angeles police helicopter overhead. The founder of the white supremacist Aryan Nations, shouted: “So long as the alien occupies your land, hate is your law and revenge is your first duty. The alien this day occupies your land. This is your land!

“So we, in an act of defiance against the forces of Jewry, we light these crosses in the name of our God . . . “

The 15 men gathered in rural Kagel Canyon in the northern San Fernando Valley chanted, “Hail victory! Hail victory! Hail victory!” A rebel yell broke out as an 18-foot wooden cross, covered in kerosene-drenched burlap, was engorged by flames. Flashes of lights and then sudden darkness followed as police knocked down and handcuffed the cameraman.

Crosses Burned in 1983

So ended the videotaped chronicle shown in a preliminary hearing for six men charged with offenses stemming from the Dec. 3, 1983, cross burning.

The tape was made by Peter Lake, a Los Angeles free-lance writer who infiltrated a white supremacist network to write articles for Larry Flynt’s defunct magazine “The Rebel” and to shoot footage for KCBS-TV.

Lake, who posed as a racist tropical-fish merchant, had convinced a loose-knit group of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members that his videotape could document police brutality if officers stormed the site.

Members of the group knew they were being observed by police, who had told them they would be arrested for burning the cross. But they did not set out to be arrested, Lake testified before Judge Larry Paul Fidler.

“It was debated whether we should string the crosses with electric lights rather than ignite them,” Lake said. He said one of the defendants, Southern California Klan leader Thomas Metzger, said he had used that method to avoid arrest in Orange County “cross lightings.”

Obtained Barbecue Permit

The group was diligent enough to get the permit required for a barbecue in a fire area. They even set up a makeshift grill, a thin slab of meat and a pot in the yard of sympathizer Thomas Minor, according to Lake.

The videotape shows defendant Winston Burbage telling the other men, “If the police ask, all we’re having is a barbecue--that’s it. They’d have a hell of a time saying that a barbecue is unlawful assembly.”

At the end of the hearing, which is expected to last at least two weeks, Judge Fidler will decide whether there is enough evidence to order the men to stand trial.

Oddly, the prosecution hinges largely on proving that the men violated fire laws. A 1982 statute outlaws cross burning, but not on private property. Other charges in the case, which in various forms has appeared before at least 10 judges, include unlawful assembly, carrying a night stick and wearing a mask during a crime.

Although charges stemming from the cross burning seem relatively minor, the incident was designed to have a major impact, Lake said. Leaders believed “it was an important event for the unification of the radical right, a show of strength,” he said. It was to serve public notice that Butler’s Idaho-based Aryan Nations and Metzger’s Klan forces had rallied around the same causes, he said.

Lake described life among the white supremacists as tinged with homey touches. The wife of Frank Silva, who has been convicted in the shooting death of Denver radio personality Alan Berg, was sewing Butler his special robe just hours before the San Fernando Valley cross burning. She also sewed Aryan Nations insignia on Lake’s shirt collar.

The six defendants in the preliminary hearing are Metzger, Miner, Burbage, Erich Schmidt, Irvin Alcorn and Stanley Witek, founder of the National Socialist Aryan Workers Party. Charges against Butler will be heard in a separate proceeding.