Church Thanks Agents Who Thwarted Attack

Six months after federal agents thwarted a group of skinheads bent on assaulting Los Angeles’ oldest black church, hundreds of congregants emotionally thanked those agents Sunday for, in the words of one church leader, “saving our women, our children, our aged, our men . . . for sleeping less that we might sleep in peace.”

Members of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church gave a standing ovation to the FBI agents, Los Angeles police officers and the federal prosecutor who oversaw the case against the skinheads. Congregants, some near tears, hugged the law enforcement officials who investigated the Fourth Reich Skinheads, a violent group of young racists who set out to bomb the church, strafe the congregation with gunfire and murder its pastor, the Rev. Cecil L. Murray.

“Never, ever, ever will you find us ungrateful for those who give us life,” Murray said from the pulpit Sunday as the five law enforcement officers gathered before the congregation. “Thank you to these agents, who delivered us from death, destruction and mayhem.”

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The service came as First AME and churches across the nation marked the 65th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth--the anniversary was Saturday although the holiday marking the occasion is today--and federal agents and members of First AME Church noted the irony of simultaneously honoring King and the FBI. While King was alive, he and his aides were wiretapped and zealously investigated by the FBI under its then-director, J. Edgar Hoover.

But at least in Los Angeles, the skinhead case and the FBI’s investigation of the police officers who beat Rodney G. King have thawed the relationship between the FBI and many in the African American community.

Charlie J. Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said he has been gratified by the warm reception. On Sunday, Murray praised Parsons and his agents.

“Thank you, Charlie Parsons, thank you, FBI,” said Murray, who plans to speak to FBI agents here next month as part of Black History Month. “They told us about the plot, and God told them.”

Julius Butler, chairman of First AME, said many church members share those feelings.

“The gratitude is very deep,” Butler said. “It has given us the beginnings of a new relationship with the current administration of the FBI.”

Glenice Como, a member of the church, agreed. “We were in shock when we first heard about this. . . . We owe these agents everything. We owe them our lives.”

Parsons was in the congregation Sunday, and he said he pondered the evolving relationship between the bureau and the African American community as he listened to the service.

Afterward, he conceded that there have been times when the FBI and civil rights leaders have been at odds, but he expressed hope that those days have passed.

“There is a new FBI,” Parsons said after the service. “I think the African American community appreciates that. . . . As Reverend Murray said, we are focused on the future, not on the past.”

An FBI agent and an informant spent almost two years undercover investigating the activities of Southern California white supremacists. But it was only in April that their investigation brought them into contact with the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

After the informant left a message on a hot line espousing racist philosophies, he got a call back from a young man named Christopher David Fisher. Fisher told the informant that he led a group of skinheads, and the two agreed to meet.

Over the coming months, Fisher and other members of his group would meet time and again with the informant and agent, who posed as representatives of a white supremacist organization known as the Church of the Creator. Unbeknown to the skinheads, many of the meetings were captured on video or audiotapes.

Transcripts of those tapes show that the skinheads discussed killing a number of prominent blacks, for a time debating the merits of assassinating Rodney G. King. They devoted their most concentrated efforts, however, to attacking the First AME Church.

On June 11, 1993, Fisher and Carl Daniel Boese, another member of the group, briefed the Fourth Reich Skinheads on their plans. They discussed dividing up responsibilities--some of the attackers were to monitor police scanners or drive getaway cars, while others would lob pipe bombs and open fire on Murray and the congregation.

As Boese described it, the skinheads would wait until Murray was “preaching about how the Bible says justice will be done, and just about when he’s saying that, justice will be done by a couple of Aryan brothers who are . . . busting open the doors, popping off.”

FBI agents and Marc R. Greenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney who was coordinating prosecution of the case, were concerned enough about the skinheads’ threats that Parsons briefed Murray about the case. Murray was asked to keep quiet, and Parsons pledged that if the agents believed that they were losing the ability to stop the skinheads from carrying out their threat, investigators would act.

On July 15, with the skinheads plotting to begin a campaign against Orange County rabbis and Jewish leaders, agents from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and officers from the Los Angeles Police Department moved in. They arrested Fisher, Boese and a third member of the skinhead group.

Fisher and Boese pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bomb the church and other offenses. They were sentenced last week to prison terms--Fisher to more than eight years and Boese to just under five.

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Although Greenberg oversaw the criminal case for the government, he also spearheaded an effort to counsel Fisher, Boese and the other Fourth Reich Skinheads--a program he dubbed “Operation Grow Hair.” A number of local organizations participated, including First AME Church.

Last month, Operation Grow Hair allowed more than a dozen skinheads to visit the County Jail, meet with a federal judge, listen to two Holocaust survivors, share views with other young people and, for the first time, meet Murray and other leaders of First AME Church.

Some skinheads continued to boast of their racism at the end of those sessions, but Fisher wrote to U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. to say that the counseling had moved him profoundly. Another skinhead wrote to Greenberg, saying that he was now determined to stay out of trouble and to get a job.

Church leaders paid a special nod to that counseling effort Sunday. The church awarded plaques to each of the agents and officers, thanking them individually for protecting lives. “You have given us tomorrow,” the plaques read.

In their award to Greenberg, the church leaders recognized his management of the criminal case. But they also paid tribute to his groundbreaking attempt to “change the negative into the positive.”

“It makes you feel good about what you do,” Greenberg said afterward. “It makes you feel like you did something worthwhile.”