N.C. Slayings Put Army on Guard Against Hate Groups : Military: Arrest of soldiers in deaths of two African Americans lifts lid on troubling infiltration by extremists.

In James Burmeister’s world, a spider web tattoo was like a soldier’s combat medal, a sign that the bearer had passed a crucial test, had proved his mettle on the field of battle.

Barely 20 years of age and on his first Army posting, the gangling private had not yet seen combat. No ribbons hung from his scrawny chest. But last week, as troops from his division prepared to ship out to risk their lives in Bosnia, police say Burmeister, a nerdy-looking man in glasses who struck some as a loner, set out on a mission of his own--to earn a spider web tattoo.

With two fellow soldiers from the Ft. Bragg Army base here, he went cruising with a 12-pack and his father’s Ruger handgun.

He completed his mission shortly after midnight, Dec. 7, police say, when he pumped six bullets into the heads of Michael James, 36, and Jackie Burden, 27, two African Americans he found at random in a black neighborhood near downtown.

The killings, which shocked this city and sparked a massive investigation of extremist activities in the Army’s ranks, pulled back a curtain on a troubling but little-examined aspect of military life--infiltration by violent racial hate groups.

Officials at Ft. Bragg insist that the number of soldiers here who participate in neo-Nazi and racist skinhead activity is small--perhaps about a dozen. But soldiers from the base have been linked with white supremacist organizations for more than a decade. In several alarming episodes, Special Forces soldiers were accused of helping groups stockpile stolen military weapons, allegedly for use in racial warfare. Two soldiers were convicted of doing just that in 1991.

Burmeister and his friends, while apparently not officially affiliated with any national organization, belonged to racist elements of the local skinhead subculture. By day, they moved in lock-step through the disciplined world of the military, training and working alongside blacks, Asians and Latinos. At night, they doffed their Army fatigues and donned uniforms of a different type--the jackboots, leather jackets and Nazi insignia of Hitler-loving skinheads. Thus adorned, they swilled beer and fought and thrashed all night to the throbbing beat of heavy metal music in the city’s nightclubs.

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Police say the rented room where Burmeister illegally lived off base was a Nazi shrine covered in flags and littered with racist pamphlets and tracts on Adolf Hitler--even a book on bomb making.

Among his possessions they found scrapbook photographs of Burmeister and his friends in skinhead garb giving Nazi salutes, according to Bob Smyntak, a local club owner who said Army officials showed him the photographs in an effort to identify the other men.

“I recognized about six of them,” said Smyntak, whose 5-week-old nightclub, Purgatory, is a favorite skinhead hangout. He maintains that the vast majority of the estimated 200 skinheads in Fayetteville are not racists. They come to his club, with its black walls, concrete floor and fake skull candelabra, to listen to heavy metal and gothic music, drink beer and dance.

Smyntak said he has seen Burmeister in the club only twice. The first time he came in, accompanied by fellow private Malcolm Wright and several other skinheads, it was clear from their Nazi insignia and colors that they were part of a racist skinhead faction.

He approached the group and told them the club rules: no fighting and no politics inside the club. He addressed the 5-foot, 9-inch Wright, he said, because “he was the one with the biggest smile on his face and the smallest build.”

Burmeister, he said, struck him both times he came in as a loner, someone who didn’t want to be approached. On one of his visits, Smyntak said, Burmeister complained to a white bouncer because he saw a Korean working there.

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In response to last week’s shootings, the Army is investigating extremist activities throughout its 510,000-member ranks. “The duty of the American soldier is to protect the American people, not to put any one or two of them in fear of their lives,” Army Secretary Togo West Jr. said Tuesday as he decried the shootings and apologized to the victims’ families.

But locally, many people are asking if Burmeister’s superiors at Ft. Bragg shouldn’t have recognized earlier that he was trouble waiting to happen.

Army officials acknowledge that, earlier this year, a supervisor spotted a “Nazi-like medallion” hanging from the young private’s neck. In his report, the supervisor said he instructed Burmeister to take off the medallion and put on his dog tags. Then, in August, Burmeister reportedly spat racial slurs during a fight with a black soldier. The same night, a fellow soldier complained of a Nazi flag hanging in Burmeister’s room on the base.

After the fight, the Army revoked Burmeister’s security clearance and his commander counseled him about his activities, but did not refer him to the Army office that deals with racial problems. Army officials say the Nazi flag had been taken down when a commander went to check and racial tension was not reported as the cause of the fight, which sent Burmeister to the infirmary with a broken nose.

“We got conflicting reports,” said Maj. Rivers Johnson, spokesman for the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg. Despite these incidents, officials say they were not aware of Burmeister’s virulent racial views. “There had not been any problems,” Johnson said. “That’s why this took everyone by surprise.”

Apparently without the knowledge of his superiors, Burmeister lived at least part of the time off base in a rented room in a trailer reportedly owned by a white separatist couple, one of whom was also stationed at Ft. Bragg. As an unmarried private first class, it was against regulations for Burmeister to live off post, Johnson said, “but he met all inspections, all formations and things of that nature, and appeared to be living in the barracks.”

Wright was at the trailer with Burmeister and arrested along with him. On his left arm, police saw a tattoo of a spider web--the racist badge of honor that Burmeister reportedly had been intent on earning the night of the shooting. Police say the tattoo signifies that the wearer has killed for the Nazi cause, but they have no evidence linking Wright to any other murder.

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On the night of Wednesday, Dec. 6, Wright and fellow private Randy Lee Meadows gathered at Burmeister’s trailer north of town, according to police. After having dinner at a restaurant, the three went to a sports bar that features topless dancers and pool tables. Then they stopped at a store to buy beer.

All the while, according to a police affidavit, Burmeister talked of wanting to go hunting for black people so that he could earn a spider web tattoo. Meadows told police Burmeister carried his father’s 9-millimeter Ruger handgun.

Police intelligence officers say skinheads have been present in Fayetteville for years, although they say have no knowledge of their involvement in previous murders. It is a subculture with distinct factions, each with their own identifying colors, much like the Bloods and the Crips. There are the racist skinheads who wear black jackets and red or white laces in their jackboots. There are gay-unity skinheads and a faction that calls itself SHARP, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, both of which can be identified by the purple laces or by their blue or green leather jackets.

“The SHARPS fight racism, in their own way,” said Smyntak, the bar owner. “Unfortunately, they fight it by getting together in groups, having some beers and then going out to beat up on racist skinheads.”

There are independents who do not belong to any faction and wear no identifying colors or insignia.

Burmeister and Wright wore red laces, allegedly signifying that they were white supremacists, a step above the white power skinheads who wear white laces, police say.

Tanked up on beer, Meadows, Wright and Burmeister drove Meadow’s black Chevrolet Cavalier into the heart of the city on the night of the shootings, police say. Witnesses in a modest neighborhood south of downtown told police they saw a car stop and two white men get out. Within seconds after the men disappeared around a corner, the witnesses said they heard shots.

The first officer on the scene saw no one on the narrow dirt road except the victims, both bleeding from the head. Later, when a crowd gathered, police noticed that one of the onlookers was white. It was Meadows.

After initially saying he was visiting friends, police say Meadows admitted that he was with Burmeister and Wright, that they had gotten out of the car and approached the black couple while Meadows was parking the car. The two soldiers apparently had fled on foot.

It was Meadows who directed police to Burmeister’s rented room, where he and Wright were arrested the next morning. The two men were charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and are being held without bail.

Meadows, who cooperated with police, was charged with conspiracy.

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Army officials acknowledge that, in hindsight, it looks as if there was ample reason to suspect that Burmeister had racial problems that needed attention, although they stress that many people are only now coming forward now with allegations of skinhead activity.

But if superiors did not recognize that Burmeister was a powder keg, how many others are there in the Army just like him?

“We are actively investigating right now, but we really feel that this is an isolated incident,” Johnson said. He added that a report would be issued on Monday detailing the installation’s findings.

Noting that the base has a population of 45,000, he said: “We represent a cross-section of the American public. A few soldiers get a lot of press for some of the bad things that they do.”

But some are questioning whether base leadership tried strenuously enough to stop the infiltration of racist hate groups and whether the Army is taking the necessary steps to protect the public from rogue soldiers.

For James Florence, president of the Fayetteville chapter of the NAACP and a retired Ft. Bragg tank soldier, the answer is no. “It’s out of control,” he said. He noted, and police confirmed, that within the past two months live anti-tank rounds were found away from the base, within Fayetteville.

“The concern is how can a military person get this, have it off post and have it downtown and nobody knew anything about it. How did it come about that nobody missed it?” he asked.

The military must be vigilant, he said, because young privates away from home for the first time are lonely and susceptible to recruitment by hate groups.

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Perhaps realizing this, such groups strenuously recruit on or near bases. In the 1980s, a militaristic neo-Nazi organization that called itself the White Patriot Party drew members from Ft. Bragg. The group, founded by a former Green Beret, received military training and stolen explosives and firearms from Ft. Bragg soldiers.

As recently as last summer, one neo-Nazi organization, the National Alliance, erected a billboard near the base, advertising for members. Burmeister allegedly looked into joining but never did. The National Alliance publishes “The Turner Diaries,” which law enforcement authorities and civil rights organizations describe as a virtual guidebook for racial terrorism. Last April’s Oklahoma City bombing closely mirrored a scene in the book. The two suspects in the case are former Special Forces soldiers.

Florence said the leadership at Ft. Bragg has been responsive when complaints are lodged about, for instance, a soldier displaying a Confederate flag out of a window on base, but he argued that more needs to be done.

He urged stepped-up security to make sure dangerous explosives and weaponry can’t be smuggled out. He also said he favors a system whereby soldiers may divulge information about fellow soldiers without having to identify themselves. “There is always a fear of reprisals,” he said.

Security reportedly was tightened after a General Accounting Office report in 1986 detailed the massive theft of explosives, anti-tank rockets, hand grenades and automatic rifles from military bases.

Shortly after that report was released, three members of a hate group were arrested in Fayetteville as they tried to rob a fast-food restaurant to finance a terrorist plot. Authorities learned that soldiers at Ft. Bragg allegedly helped in the unsuccessful plot to use stolen Army explosives to blow up the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

In 1991, three Green Berets stationed at the base were arrested in a similar plot to stockpile explosives and other weapons stolen from Ft. Bragg and Ft. Campbell. Prosecutors said the weapons were for the use of a white supremacist group called the New Order Knights and that the men had planned to use the weapons to start a race war. Two of the soldiers were convicted.

Lt. Col. Ken McGraw, spokesman for Special Forces at Ft. Bragg, said he could not discuss what--if any--efforts had been made to increase security after those arrests because records are destroyed after two years. In addition, he said, turnover at the base is so great that few people there now were there four years ago.

One area in which he could say for certain that the Army took action involved the Resister, which civil rights advocates describe as a white supremacist magazine published quarterly by a clandestine group of 35-80 active-duty Special Forces soldiers at Ft. Bragg.

The Army launched an investigation of the Resister after the Oklahoma City bombing shone new light on militias and other extremist groups. The Army never did find out where the magazine is published or if active-duty soldiers are involved, but it concluded that the publication did not violate Army policy.

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The Army surveyed 1,111 soldiers of the 25,000-member Special Operations Command stationed worldwide over a three-month period. The inquiry, completed in September, showed that Special Forces soldiers did not participate in extremist groups and did not know of other soldiers who participated.

But steps have been taken to make sure Army personnel are aware of policies that prohibit active participation in extremist organizations, which it defines as attending rallies, soliciting or recruiting. “It goes against what we stand for in the military,” Johnson said.

What the military calls “passive” participation--paying dues to an extremist organization and receiving literature--is allowed but frowned upon. Soldiers known to be involved with such groups are counseled against it, Johnson said.