FBI Investigates Supremacist Linked to Killer

A week after a member of the World Church of the Creator terrorized two states by randomly gunning down minorities, federal authorities have begun investigating the white supremacist church and its self-proclaimed pontifex maximus, or supreme leader, to determine whether they incited members to violence.

Authorities also are trying to determine whether the Rev. Matt Hale had any advance knowledge that 21-year-old Benjamin Nathaniel Smith planned to go on the Fourth of July weekend rampage that left two dead and nine others wounded.

Two FBI agents and two Skokie, Ill., police investigators--members of a task force looking into the shootings--questioned Hale on Wednesday night. In an interview with The Times on Thursday, Hale said that authorities, armed with a search warrant, took items from his storage shed, including white supremacist books and Nazi posters that Smith had given to the church a few days before the shootings, as well as Smith’s personal computer and TV.

“There’s a witch hunt going on, or a fishing expedition,” Hale said. The investigators “wanted to know if I told him to do this. Obviously not. They wanted to know if he told me he was going to do this. Obviously not. They wanted to know if he gave me any indication that he would do this. Again, obviously not.

“We regret what he did, in terms of his death and the breaking of laws.”

In Washington, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, mindful of laws that prevent the government from suppressing the free-speech rights of unpopular groups, would comment only obliquely on the investigation.

“We’re going to check to see whether there is any basis for proceeding,” she told reporters. “In order to avoid an abuse of authority . . . the FBI doesn’t go out and investigate somebody because they say something that is protected by free speech, they go out and investigate a group when there is a reasonable indication of criminal conduct.”

Also on Thursday, federal authorities said that the man accused of illegally selling Smith the two guns used in the shootings appeared to have had no previous dealings with the white-supremacist or any of his associates.

Donald R. Fiessinger, 64, of Pekin, Ill., is charged with one count of dealing firearms without a federal license for allegedly selling dozens of guns out of his apartment--including the .22-caliber and .380-caliber semiautomatic handguns Smith purchased in the days before the shootings. He was released from jail on a $10,000 bond after a hearing in federal court in Peoria.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who had been tracking Fiessinger, seized 27 guns and numerous gun-sale records during a raid on his apartment just hours before the shooting started July 2. A review of sales receipts to at least 50 people showed no prior link between Fiessinger and Smith or any of Smith’s associates, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Tate Chambers in Peoria.

It appears that Smith saw a classified ad Fiessinger had placed in a local newspaper for the guns, Chambers said. “As far as we can determine, it was simply a cold call. Smith answered an ad in the newspaper.”

The federal investigation into the church and its leader comes as Hale, in the wake of the shootings, repeatedly has changed his story when speaking of his friendship with Smith and Smith’s involvement in the church.

For example, in the hours after Smith was first named as the primary suspect in the crimes, Hale on Sunday told several news organizations that he had met Smith about eight months ago and did not know him very well. Later, Hale said Smith joined his church in June 1998 and that the two had become close friends.

Hale also has said that Smith left the church earlier this year, sometimes claiming that he left in May, sometimes in April. But on April 11, Smith testified before the Illinois State Bar Assn.’s hearing board on Hale’s behalf as Hale appealed a decision not to admit him to the bar because of his racist beliefs. And the June issue of the church’s newsletter, the Struggle, said that Smith “has relocated to central Illinois to assist PM Hale at World Headquarters.”

On Thursday, Hale said the discrepancy comes simply because it is not clear when Smith’s membership expired but that the two remained close. Hale revealed a handwritten, certified letter that he said was from Smith and was mailed before the shootings.

The letter arrived July 2, Hale said, the day Smith began his crime spree. Hale said he did not retrieve it from the post office until Wednesday.

“Although I have not been a member of the World Church of the Creator since April 1999, due to my past public support of that legal religious organization run by Matt Hale, I find it necessary to formerly [sic] break with the World Church of the Creator because I am unable and unwilling to follow a legal Revolution of Values,” reads the letter, signed “Benjamin N. Smith.”

FBI officials in Chicago confirmed that agents had interviewed Hale but declined to elaborate. Hale said the questions focused primarily on when it was he began suspecting Smith was involved and why he did not alert authorities.

Hale said he became suspicious Saturday night--one day after the shootings began and a day before Smith was named publicly as a suspect.

“I hadn’t heard from him in several days,” Hale said. “When I heard it was suspected of being a blue Taurus, the thought crossed my mind.

“But the composite sketch didn’t look anything like him. I wasn’t convinced it was him until he was dead. Since I didn’t know it was him, I just didn’t think it would be right . . . to call the police.”

In retrospect, Hale said, his meeting at the storage shed with Smith a few days before the shootings seems slightly unusual. Smith said there had been a break-in at his apartment complex and he wanted to keep his computer and TV in the storage room while he went to Chicago to distribute leaflets, according to Hale. But Smith said he would be back for the TV and computer.

However, Smith gave Hale a small library of white supremacist books and a collection of World War II-era Nazi posters and photographs.

“I simply said, ‘Well, brother, you can certainly give us this stuff if you want to, but you don’t have to,’ ” Hale said.

The government’s investigation of the World Church falls into the legally murky divide between constitutionally protected speech and criminal conduct.

Some scholars have argued in recent years that certain forms of unpopular speech--such as a rap song that talked about killing cops or one anti-abortion Web site that listed the names and addresses of “baby butchers”--should be prohibited in the name of public safety, while others have said such limits would begin to whittle away at the 1st Amendment.

The Anti-Defamation League, which earlier this week called for a full investigation into the World Church of the Creator, said the group’s actions appear to cross into the area of illegal conduct.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently came out in support of Hale’s quest to be accepted by the bar, agreed.

“This is a group that for . . . years has left a trail of blood across the United States,” said center spokesman Mark Potok. “It doesn’t seem out of the question to pursue the group” under anti-racketeering laws, he said.