Metzger Denies Any Role in Bombing

Tom Metzger, the white supremacist from Fallbrook, told a federal grand jury Thursday that he was not involved in the Sept. 15 bombing of the San Diego federal courthouse and neither was anyone else connected to his racial-separatist organization, White Aryan Resistance.

During several hours of closed-door questioning, meanwhile, prosecutors seemed just as interested in finding out what was printed in a newspaper or said on a telephone call-in line run by WAR, and who buys the paper or calls the phone line, Metzger said.

He said he declined, however, to answer those questions. He also said he would refuse prosecutors’ demand to turn over the paper’s subscription list by the next session in the case, set for next Thursday. A refusal could prompt a contempt hearing.

Prosecutors apparently were “fishing” for information about WAR, Metzger said, since they quickly moved on to questions about the newspaper and phone line after asking briefly about the bombing, which damaged the front entrance to the courthouse but caused no injuries.

“These guys are interested in thought crimes, not who blew up the federal building,” he said during one recess. He also said he did not expect to face federal charges for anything, “not based on evidence. But in this country today, who knows?”

Perhaps, he said, prosecutors were looking for “some other way they could cause me problems.” Or, he said, maybe prosecutors think that “anything Tom Metzger said incites people all over the country. They give me much more credit than I’m due.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry Burns, the prosecutor investigating the bombing, declined Thursday to comment on the case.

Metzger was ordered last month by a federal judge to testify at the grand jury proceedings, one of several court actions in which he recently has been involved.

In October, a jury in Portland, Ore., found Tom Metzger, his son, John, the White Aryan Resistance and two skinheads liable for $12.5 million in the beating death of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant living in Portland whose skull was split open when he was attacked by skinheads in November, 1988.

The jury found that the two skinheads, who pleaded guilty in the slaying, were incited by the Metzgers and WAR’s racial-hate campaign.

Tom Metzger, who calls himself a “white separatist,” is appealing the judgment. Meanwhile, lawyers have been busy in various courts trying to get to the millions.

The Sept. 15 bombing, caused by a pipe bomb placed near the Front Street entrance to the five-story courthouse in downtown San Diego, damaged the building’s two front doors. They were only recently replaced.

On Oct. 16, the federal grand jury indicted an unemployed Ocean Beach man who reportedly claimed credit for the bombing, charging him with sending threatening letters to a San Diego television station, a civil rights activist and a lawyer.

However, Mark George Somes, 44, was not indicted on charges connected to the bombing. A source close to the case said authorities do not believe he was responsible.

Tom Metzger became involved in the grand jury proceedings only after he appeared Dec. 20 at the federal courthouse in a show of support for several associates who had been called to testify before the panel.

Quickly slapped with a subpoena himself, he refused to testify but was ordered Dec. 21 by Chief U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. to tell the panel what he knew about the pipe bomb.