White Supremacists to Go On Trial : Racism: Tom Metzger and three others are charged in a cross-burning incident eight years ago. Prosecutor says there is not much left of the movement.

Draped in orange and black hooded robes, the two men lead a group in prayer, raise their arms in a Nazi salute and then kneel to set fire to an 18-foot wooden cross.

With a huge Confederate flag flapping in the night breeze, 15 men chant “Hail, victory” as, eventually, three crosses wrapped in kerosene-soaked burlap are ignited in a grassy field in the foothills above the San Fernando Valley.

“So long as the alien occupies your land, hate is your law, and revenge is your first duty,” one of the leaders, identified in court papers as Richard Butler, intones. “We light these crosses in the name of our God, over the luciferin scum of the earth.”

This 1983 scene is part of a videotape, made by an undercover free-lance journalist, that will be introduced as evidence when the trial of white supremacist Tom Metzger and three other men begins this month in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Nearly eight years have passed since Metzger and members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations Organization congregated in Kagel Canyon to burn the crosses in a ceremony held, ostensibly, to honor a white police officer killed by a black man--a meeting also used to symbolically unite several of the country’s major white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, authorities say.

Today, what remains of the case is a single felony count of “conspiracy to violate the municipal fire code,” two misdemeanors and a persistent prosecutor determined to send a message to all white supremacists that their activities will not be tolerated.

“There’s not a lot left of the movement, but if it were not for the perseverance of prosecutions like this, I think the movement would have more energy in it,” said John Phillips, a former deputy city attorney who brought the charges. In an unusual move, the district attorney’s office hired Phillips, now in private practice, as special prosecutor.

In the time that has transpired since that rainy night in 1983, defendants have been dropping out like leaves off a dead tree, their fates reflecting the recent unsavory history of the white supremacist movement:

One is in prison for killing a Missouri state trooper. Another is serving time for conspiracy in the murder of a controversial radio talk show host in Denver. A third, convicted of attempting to carry out a white-power revolution, is also in jail.

Metzger expects his San Diego County home to be auctioned from underneath him any day now, part of a $12.5-million settlement awarded to the family of an Ethiopian emigre beaten to death by Oregon skinheads allegedly incited by Metzger.

New notoriety has also come to Lake View Terrace, the area where the crosses were burned. Not far from the site of the klan ritual, a black man would be beaten by white police officers 7 1/2 years later. Rodney G. King would become, for many, as much a symbol of racially inspired violence as burning crosses represent for others.

The case has taken an unusually long time to reach trial, in part because charges were thrown out and reinstated on appeal. Metzger questions the prosecution’s motives in pressing the case.

“Everyone knows it’s just a political case,” Metzger, 52, said in an interview this month from his home in Fallbrook. “This is another witch-hunt trial. They are using it to harass (me).”

Metzger is a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in California who has spent the last decade fine-tuning his message of racial separatism and attracting disaffected white youths, especially skinheads, to his movement.

In 1980, he won the Democratic nomination for Congress in the San Diego area before being overwhelmingly defeated by a Republican incumbent--and then expelled from the Democratic Party for “espousing bigotry (that) includes the wholesale removal of blacks and Latinos from the United States.”

Later that year, Metzger left the KKK to form his own organization, White Aryan Resistance, or WAR. In 1983, he began producing a cable TV program, “Race and Reason,” which promotes the worldwide separation of races.

He publishes a newsletter and is part of an international fax network of racist groups.

He also operates a telephone hot line. The current recorded message purports to depict a group of “WAR troops” at the border firing weapons on “tens of thousands of Mexicans . . . swarming” into Southern California. It calls on right-thinking white men and women to “arm themselves intellectually, physically and spiritually” for the “ultimate showdown.”

While Metzger’s critics say he incites violence against Jews and minorities, Metzger says he advocates violence primarily as a defense mechanism, noting that his group is not large enough to achieve its goals with violence.

Many civil rights activists had hoped that a devastating blow would be dealt Metzger and his organization last year when a jury in Portland, Ore., agreed that skinheads who killed the Ethiopian man were inspired by Metzger and his son, John, who heads WAR’s youth faction.

To collect damages, attorneys for the victim’s family have seized some of Metzger’s assets. Last week, a judge ordered Metzger’s home to be sold. He will be allowed to keep $45,000 from the sale of the three-bedroom home, which has reportedly been appraised at between $135,000 and $145,000.

Yet Metzger, described even by enemies as charismatic and committed, does not seem to have let the judgment divert him.

“It may have devastated him financially, but not spiritually,” said Rick Eaton, a researcher with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which traces the activities of racial hatred groups.

Metzger’s current troubles--and his only arrest--began on the night of Dec. 3, 1983. Unbeknown to the klan and Aryan Nation members, free-lance journalist Peter Lake had infiltrated their ranks.

Lake was invited to join 14 other men for the night’s activities. He was to videotape the ceremony, and footage would be used as a recruitment documentary, according to court papers.

Meanwhile, Thomas Miner, described by authorities as a klan sympathizer and owner of the Kagel Canyon property where the crosses would be burned, obtained a barbecue permit for Dec. 3.

The men gathered at the home of Frank Silva, another klan supporter, and then moved to Miner’s house.

Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, alerted to what was going to happen, followed closely. In the videotape, a police helicopter is heard hovering noisily above, illuminating the scene with its spotlight.

Standing in a field behind Miner’s home, Butler, head of the Idaho-based Aryan Nations, and Silva lead the ceremony. Once the prayers and chants are over, the men ignite the crosses.

“Remember this, men of Aryan Nations,” Silva proclaimed. “If one drop of Aryan blood is spilled tonight or any other time, there will be revenge. . . . We will be there fighting with you.”

In the videotape, Metzger’s role seems minor. He stands to one side during most of the ceremony.

Once the three crosses are lighted, about 30 police officers in riot gear sweep through, forcing several participants to the ground, where they are handcuffed and led away.

All 15 men were arrested, but two would not be charged: Lake, who told police he was a journalist, and another man, said to be a paid informant.

Los Angeles officials filed misdemeanor charges against the 13, alleging crimes that included unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace.

Six months later, Municipal Court Judge Sidney A. Cherniss, while calling the defendants “despicable” and “slimy,” dismissed the charges. It seemed there was nothing illegal about burning a cross on one’s property. The city appealed, and in 1986 an appellate court reinstated the charges.

By then, four of the defendants were in prison. Silva and Randall Evans, accused of being members of The Order, had been convicted of federal racketeering and conspiracy in Seattle in connection with a series of armed robberies, counterfeiting and the murder of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg.

The Order, also known as the Bruders Schweigen , or Silent Brotherhood, is a white supremacist group that advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government. The armed robberies were said to be aimed at raising a war chest.

David Tate, another alleged Order member, had begun a life sentence for the murder of a Missouri state trooper. Idahoan Thomas Bentley was serving a 7 1/2-year term for attempting to formulate a white supremacist revolution.

The nine remaining defendants entered not guilty pleas in 1986. Later that year, six of them--led by Metzger--took the unusual tack of seeking to have the misdemeanor charges elevated to felonies. This, they reasoned, would entitle them to a preliminary hearing, where the charges might be thrown out, and would make appeals easier. The request was granted; the single count of felony conspiracy was added to two remaining misdemeanor counts, and a preliminary hearing was held the next year.

Finally, in April, 1987, Municipal Court Judge Larry P. Fidler ordered the six men to stand trial. When the proceeding starts before Judge J.D. Smith, there will be four defendants:

In addition to Metzger, they are Stanley Witek, a Los Angeles leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist American Workers Party who has already been convicted of unlawful possession of billy clubs; Erich Schmidt of Glendale and Brad Kelly of Monrovia.

The prosecution alleges that the cross-burning was intended to intimidate the racially mixed neighborhood of Lake View Terrace. Because the crosses were burned on property that overlooked the community, Phillips said, the flames sent a chilling message to blacks and others in the area.

The defendants claim the ceremony was meant to be private. They say the property was sufficiently remote and shrouded by trees as to remain out of view of residents.