Hate Group Was Shadowed by Mysterious Informant

The federal investigation of white supremacists that erupted to national attention last week began with a quiet set of introductions more than two years ago, after an FBI informant managed to win the trust of some hate group members by pretending to share their ideas.

The informant--who has not been identified by the FBI but who white supremacists believe is a man they know as the Rev. Joe Allen--eventually arranged introductions for an FBI agent, who nurtured his contacts in the hate movement throughout Southern California. Together, that informant and agent traveled a dangerous road on the way to filing charges against eight suspects last week.

In fact, their investigation had been under way for more than a year before they came upon what investigators considered the most dangerous group that they had uncovered: The Fourth Reich Skinheads, a band of between 18 and 50 young white supremacists who authorities say were determined to start a race war by killing Rodney G. King and attacking the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in Los Angeles.

“Once the agent got in there, the whole investigation took a turn,” one law enforcement source said. “That was a whole different level of danger.”

Interviews with law enforcement sources and a review of federal affidavits filed in connection with charges against eight Southern Californians reveal an extraordinarily active and detailed federal investigation. At its height, the probe involved dozens of agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms, and it took those agents to every corner of Southern California, meeting with alleged hate group members on airstrips, a converted warehouse, video-equipped apartments and an FBI undercover boat, among other places.

U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers called the operation “one of the most successful infiltrations of white supremacists to date” and credited the undercover agents with preventing “future violence and possibly future loss of life.”

Members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads and their friends said Saturday they were set up, lured into violence by the FBI, which invited the young skinheads to a Newport Beach gym where guns were hung from the ceiling and walls. They said the informant and agent pretended to be white supremacists and urged the young, impressionable members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads to commit acts of violence.

Authorities say just the opposite, contending that the undercover FBI agent held off the Fourth Reich Skinheads for as long as he could, and recommended that the investigation be halted as soon as he feared that the group might act violently without telling him.

“People will always yell entrapment in a case like this,” Charlie J. Parsons, the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, said Saturday. “We very carefully monitor these undercover operations to ensure that there is no entrapment of innocent individuals.”

Although it was not until late 1991 that the FBI formally began investigating Southern California skinheads, the roots of the inquiry date back to spring of that year. It was then that a man using the name Joe Allen began making the rounds of local hate groups.

Pat McCarty, executive director of the Church of the Creator--a nationally known white supremacist group--said he got Allen’s name from another member and called him to see if he would be willing to organize for the church in Southern California.

“I talked to him on the phone, and he sounded legitimate,” McCarty said. “He said he had a gym, where our people could work out for free. He wanted to do things. He wanted to pass out literature. He had a place where we could meet. He seemed perfect.”

So the Rev. Joe Allen set up shop with an Orange County apartment and a Newport Beach mail drop under the name Allen and White Creations, Ltd. He rented a gym and invited young skinheads to work out for free. He called himself a minister of the Church of the Creator, and he pledged his commitment to furthering the cause of whites.

According to McCarty, some white supremacists became suspicious. Allen talked indiscreetly about guns, said John Metzger, a leader of the White Aryan Resistance, and Metzger warned McCarty that he had doubts about Allen’s credentials.

Those doubts were reinforced a couple of months ago, McCarty said, when Allen traveled to Milwaukee for a white supremacist party. Allen was taking pictures at the event, McCarty said, and some party-goers saw him out in the parking lot, apparently snapping photos of license plates.

Tom Metzger, a founder of the White Aryan Resistance, said he heard that Allen had set up a gym for skinheads and sent out word that Allen should be avoided. “He had video cameras all around, and I told everyone: ‘If I were you, I would stay away from this guy,’ ” Metzger said. “He has the classic signs of an ATF or FBI guy.”

After doing a background check on Allen, Metzger said, he concluded the week before the raid that Allen was an informant.

Authorities will not officially discuss Allen, but two sources familiar with the investigation confirmed that although there were a number of informants, the man who went by the name Allen was the primary one. In September, 1991, that informant met with FBI Special Agent Theodore Kosturos and the FBI probe was officially launched. After a number of local hate crimes, agents had been considering an undercover operation for some time; now they began.

Allen agreed to introduce the undercover FBI agent to a number of white supremacists, and in September, 1991, the FBI formally launched its investigation. Allen and the agent were joined by a second informant, and soon made contact with two young Orange County white supremacists, Geremy C. von Rineman and Jill Scarborough, described as his longtime girlfriend.

According to the affidavits, Scarborough and Rineman--who has been confined to a wheelchair since he was shot in 1989--gave the two informants a sawed-off shotgun on Nov. 24, 1991. One informant later paid Scarborough and Rineman $400 for the loss of their weapon.

That was the first of dozens of weapons transactions between undercover operatives and suspected white supremacists. As the investigation moved into the spring of 1992, it drew in a young, federally licensed gun dealer from Orange County and a well-to-do professional couple from North Hills in the San Fernando Valley.

In one 16-day period during May, 1992, according to federal affidavits, agents shuttled from Huntington Beach, where they bought illegal weapons from Josh Daniel Lee, to North Hills, where they purchased a machine gun from Christian Gilbert Tony Nadal, and back to Huntington Beach, where they made another buy from Lee.

By the end of 1992, the FBI had amassed considerable information regarding illegal gun sales, and their investigation was increasingly focused on that aspect of the white supremacy movement. In December, the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office called in the ATF, whose agents specialize in weapons cases.

“When it started, the FBI didn’t know what it might have,” said one federal agent. “But as it developed, it looked like they were going to bring weapons charges. That’s the ATF’s area of expertise, so they joined up.”

The ATF supplied a full-time agent, Lawrence A. Bettendorf, and chipped in others to trace the weapons that were obtained through purchases from the various suspects.

In March and April of 1992, with the ATF now on board, agents made several gun purchases from Christian Nadal. During one conversation, Nadal allegedly described minorities as “mud people” and later drew a swastika on a $100 dollar bill as the agent watched.

Then, on April 17, 1993, two Los Angeles police officers, Laurence M. Powell and Stacey C. Koon, were convicted of violating King’s civil rights. The verdicts were cheered in the streets of Los Angeles, but white supremacists were infuriated.

Two days later, Allen allegedly got a phone call that would take the weapons case in a new and more frightening direction.

After leaving a message on a White Aryan Resistance telephone hot line, Allen allegedly heard from Christopher David Fisher, a 20-year-old Long Beach resident who agents say claimed to head a group that he called the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

According to an affidavit, Fisher said there were more than 50 members of the skinhead group. The informant suggested that they get together, and on April 20, Fisher, Allen and the undercover FBI agent all met for the first time.

In the next eight days, Allen and the agent would hold three meetings with members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads, a few of whom allegedly discussed past pipe bomb attacks and plans to rob a Westminster gun shop. Many of the conversations were recorded on tape, and authorities say the discussions of past bombings will help rebut the charge that they entrapped any of the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

The agent quickly was enmeshed in the Fourth Reich group and appeared to have won Fisher’s trust. On April 29, nine days after they first met, Fisher allegedly delivered the first of four bombs to the agent in Peck Park, near San Pedro. An LAPD bomb squad disposed of the weapons once Fisher had left them.

Although Fisher’s weapons were of some concern, the plans he had for them were more chilling, according to the FBI. Fisher and other members of his group--including the two juvenile suspects arrested last week--researched King’s whereabouts so that they could find and kill him, and they began stockpiling guns and bomb materials for an assault on the First AME Church, agents say in their affidavits.

The Fourth Reich Skinheads, who have no known connections to any of the other suspected white supremacists arrested last week, quickly became the focus of the inquiry. Working closely with Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc R. Greenberg, agents said they kept extraordinarily tight scrutiny on the group, fearful that its members might launch the attacks that they discussed in front of the undercover operatives.

For a time, the agents felt that they could stifle any activity by the skinhead group. Fisher had entrusted the FBI agent with the weapons he allegedly intended to use against First AME, and Parsons, the head of the Los Angeles FBI, believed that that gave investigators a measure of control.

Still, they fretted when South African leader Nelson Mandela paid the First AME Church a visit on June 9, but were confident that the Fourth Reich Skinheads could not act then because the FBI controlled the weapons that the skinheads hoped to use in their attack on the church.

During the past week, prosecutors and investigators worried that the skinheads were preparing to launch a different offensive. According to law enforcement sources, the skinheads were planning a series of attacks against Orange County Jewish leaders and synagogues, using pipe and mail bombs.

Greenberg said some Fourth Reich members were making bombs on Wednesday night. But even as the Fourth Reich Skinheads were allegedly making those weapons, agents, prosecutors and police officers gathered at the FBI headquarters in Westwood. They fanned out before dawn Thursday morning, arresting six suspects immediately and filing charges against two more.

More than two years after the first approach by the mysterious Rev. Joe Allen, the undercover probe was over.

“We thought we had control over the thing,” said one person close to the investigation. “Then, all of a sudden, they were going off on this new campaign. . . . It was time to end it.”

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez in Orange County contributed to this story.