LINK SEEN AMONG HEAVILY ARMED MAGA RIGHTIST HATE GROUPS

San Francisco CA

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The Federal authorities investigating the gun battles that led to the death of the tax protester Gordon W. Kahl say they are uncovering troubling links among small groups of heavily armed right-wing extremists. The ties cut across organizational lines from the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan to radical elements of the farm protest movement. Adherents are armed in some cases with explosives, grenade launchers and automatic and semi-automatic weapons and trained in guerrilla warfare. They are said by these authorities to be bound by anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, religious tenets and beliefs that taxation is illegal and that currency is debased by an amorphous conspiracy of Jews, bankers, Communists, their dupes and corrupt government officials. The link among the disparate right-wing groups is not organizational but ideological and theological. Federal officials said they could not say that a formally organized national network existed. ''There may be support among different extremist groups,'' said Roger S. Young, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for Congressional and Public Affairs, ''but so far, a national conspiracy has not surfaced. Whether other groups or individuals provided support for Kahl is under investigation now.'' A common thread between the groups is violently racist religious teachings like those of a California-based organization called the Ministry of Christ Church, which is known to its adherents as Identity, after its quarterly newsletter of that name. Among the church's teachings is that Jews are children of Satan and should be exterminated. The church is closely associated with Posse Comitatus, the radical antitax group with which Mr. Kahl, who was buried yesterday, was affiliated. In Shawano, Wis., yesterday, James P. Wickstrom, the head of Posse Comitatus, was convicted of impersonating a public official by acting as the judge of a township not recognized by the state. The group claimed to have set up its own government over 1,400 acres of mostly wooded land it owned in east central Wisconsin. The loosely knit extremist connection is said to be nationwide but concentrated in small enclaves in the Middle and Far West and in Arkansas, where Mr. Kahl found refuge in a bunker-style ''safe house'' owned by people of similar beliefs. Such links are also being reported by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, concerned because of the groups' anti-Semitism, and by a knowledgeable former activist in right-wing groups. A 16-page report, prepared by Anti-Defamation League staff members who monitor the right wing, was made public this week. It focused on the Identity movement, saying the church's ''ideological thread of bigotry'' was shared by extremist groups that include the Posse Comitatus, the Christian Defense League, the Aryan Nations, the Christian Patriots Defense League and elements of the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party. The detailed report draws numerous connections among far-right groups and individuals and observes that many stockpile weapons and participate in paramilitary training. Some law-enforcement officials, including Thomas C. Kupferer, chief of the fugitive section of the United States Marshals Service, who headed the search for Mr. Kahl, assert that the threat posed by armed right-wing extremists has increased as these groups have proliferated. Number in Groups Unclear A Federal official who asked that his name not be used said Mr. Kahl might have had mental problems that made him especially violent and dangerous, and another official described some of the former military men who are active in training members of the right-wing groups as ''psychotics'' who had ''lost touch with reality.'' The number of people connected with these armed groups is unclear. Federal officials say that membership of Posse Comitatus, for example, may exceed 3,000. But that includes members who are not part of what one official called a ''hard core'' of seriously violent people. Oliver B. Revell, assistant director of the F.B.I. in charge of criminal investigations, would not comment on whether the Posse was affiliating itself with other reactionary groups or whether other extremist groups provided aid or shelter for Mr. Kahl. But Federal officials speaking on the condition that their names not be used said Posse members did try to align themselves with extreme religious groups believing ''God save us from the Commies, the Jews, the blacks and the Catholics.'' Overlap of Members Cited ''There's some overlap of members and some similarity of views,'' one official said. ''But not every member and every chapter of the Posse has the same views as the Klan.'' He said many were probably not involved in criminal activity other than not paying taxes. Nevertheless, The existence of heavily armed right-wing extremist groups associated with various Ku Klux Klans, American Nazis, survivalists, racist religious sects and similar groups has been of increasing concern to state and Federal officials for several years. For the most part, their activities have taken place with little public notice except for periodic news accounts about paramilitary training by Klan organizations and similar groups. Marshals Slain in Dakota That changed Feb. 13, when two Federal marshals tried to arrest Gordon Wendell Kahl, a 63-year-old farmer and antitax fanatic in rural North Dakota, on a charge of violating probation in an income tax case. A gun battle ensued in which the two marshals were killed and Mr. Kahl's son, Yorie, and others were wounded. Mr. Kahl disappeared. A week ago, after a manhunt of three and a half months involving hundreds of Federal agents and state and local police around the country, and such advanced equipment as an infrared airborne spotter plane that scanned abandoned farmhouses in the fogbound Dakota countryside, the heavily armed fugitive, who had vowed never to be taken alive, was run to ground in the remote hills of northeastern Arkansas. Another gun battle followed, and when it was over, Mr. Kahl lay dead in a burned-out concrete farmhouse bunker swept by fire and explosions from thousands of rounds of stockpiled ammunition and explosives ignited by tear-gas canisters fired into the bunker. The sheriff who had tried to arrest Mr. Kahl, Gene Matthews, was also dead, killed with either a pistol or the high-powered semi-automatic rifle found beside Mr. Kahl's charred body. About 200 people turned out in Heaton, N.D., yesterday for Mr. Kahl's burial. The World War II gunner was denied the military funeral that his family had sought. ''The North Dakota American Legion, in consideration of all circumstances, does not support formal military rites for the funeral of Gordon Kahl,'' Assistant Adjutant Harry Moore said in a prepared statement. Mr. Kahl, an avuncular, bald and bespectacled man whose benign aspect masked a penchant for violence and devotion to right-wing causes, was an adherent of a nationwide coalition of local groups known formally as ''The Posse by Law of Posse Comitatus,'' generally referred to simply as Posse Comitatus. 'One Great Big Club' But information pieced together from law-enforcement agencies around the country, individuals in the right wing and their publications, along with other sources, point to a wider association of armed extremists. ''The people who sheltered Gordon Kahl in Arkansas were not members of Posse Comitatus,'' said 51-year-old Kurt Saxon, a former Californian who is a leader of the survivalist movement and who now lives in the Arkansas hills some 60 miles from the bunker where Mr. Kahl was killed last week. ''They were members of another right-wing group,'' he said, ''but they were also Identity. Now, the Klan is totally Identity. I don't care what label they use, they are Identity. Most of the Nazi groups are total Identity. I don't care what label they use, they are Identity.'' ''It is like one great big club,'' Mr. Saxon continued, ''and if you are on the run, a believer will shelter you regardless if he wears the overt label or not. I mean these people who sheltered Gordon were not Posse, they were Identity, therefore they were obliged to do everything they could for him. They think alike, they work alike, they work together.'' Member of Various Groups Mr. Saxon said that at various times he had been a member of farright groups, including the American Nazi Party under George Lincoln Rockwell in the late 1960's, the John Birch Society and the Minutemen, an early and fervidly anti-Communist paramilitary group. ''I once worked in a nut house,'' Mr. Saxon said, ''and being with those guys - Nazis, Minuteman, what have you -was like being on duty 24 hours a day.'' Mr. Saxon said he was no longer active in right-wing affairs and devoted himself exclusively to survivalism, a term he is credited with introducing in the early 1970's. Before that, he said, the term for people who stockpiled food and otherwise prepared for the collapse of civilization they believe is imminent was ''retreatists.'' Mr. Saxon is the author and publisher of a newsletter titled The Survivor and a number of other survivalist publications, including ''The Poor Man's James Bond'' and ''The Weaponeer,'' compendiums of ''improvised weaponry, plus poisons such as potassium cyanide and prussic acid, pyrotechnics, blowguns, poison darts, wallet pistols and a host of concealable weapons,'' as outlined in his mail-order brochure. Identity Leader Visited When reached by telephone last Saturday at his mountain retreat at Harrison, Ark., the day after the deadly confrontation between Mr. Kahl and the sheriff at Walnut Ridge, 60 miles away, Mr. Saxon had just concluded a visit with the Rev. William Potter Gale, the founder of the Ministry of Christ Church, the leader of the Identity movement. Both men said the visit was sheer coincidence and had nothing to do with Mr. Kahl's presence in Arkansas. ''From what he said, he and his wife were on vacation,'' Mr. Saxon said of Mr. Gale. ''He didn't know Kahl. I don't think he had any knowledge of the bunker at all. Gale's contact nearest to Kahl was Wickstrom, and of course even Wickstrom wouldn't have known anything about it.'' Mr. Wickstrom's title is Director of Counterinsurgency for Posses of America, the national organization of local Posse Comitatus groups based in Tigerton, Wis. Founded in 1969 by an Oregon man who was a member of the pro-Nazi Silver Shirts in the 1930's, the Posses are ostensibly locally based tax protest groups that believe no governmental agency above the county level has any legal authority. The Latin words posse comitatus mean ''power of the county.'' Counterinsurgency Seminars In alliance with Mr. Gale, whose military career included service on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff and supervision in guerrilla operations in the Philippines in World War II, Mr. Wickstrom has sponsored ''counterinsurgency seminars'' around the country, mostly in the Middle West and West. In a typical three-day session in Weskan, Kan., monitored and described by the office of the Kansas Attorney General, Robert Stephan, 56 participants were trained as ''killer teams in hand-tohand combat techniques, the administration of poisons, night combat patrol and murder by ambush.'' In another seminar near Springfield, Colo., believed to be linked to Posse Comitatus, bomb manufacturing techniques were taught. Springfield was also the site of a protest of the forced sale of a farm property where the local police used tear gas to disperse an angry mob. Law-enforcement officials in Kansas and Missouri have expressed concern about right-wing extremist influence in the legitimate farm protest movement, which is currently vocal on such issues as farm foreclosures and farm prices. Meetings With Farm Groups Mr. Gale and Mr. Wickstrom have made joint appearances before dissident farm groups. They came to public attention recently with a series of taped ''sermons'' broadcast by a radio station in Dodge City, Kan. A petition before the Federal Communications Commission seeks to lift the station's license for broadcasting messages that referred to blacks as ''evil beasts'' and suggested that guerrilla warfare tactics would be necessary to fight Jews, whom the broadcasts linked to communism. Similar rhetoric emanates from Posses of America headquarters in Wisconsin, where adherents have attempted to set up their own governmental authority under the name ''Constitution Township of Tigerton Dells.'' The complex is a paramilitary compound and Bible camp of the Life Science Church, the sect in which Mr. Wickstrom and other adherents have ordained themselves. The Wisconsin Attorney General, Bronson LaFollette, has maintained that the township is not legal, and brought the criminal charges against Mr. Wickstrom. Mr. Wickstrom, who could be fined up to $20,000 and sentenced to up to nine months in jail, said yesterday that he did not expect to spend any time behind bars as a result of the conviction. He said the verdict was the product of political and religious bigotry. Church Owns the Weapons Members at the Wisconsin compound donate their possessions to the church to avoid taxes and have maintained that because the church owns their weapons they cannot be prosecuted on any charges of illegal possession of firearms. Mr. Wickstrom said at a news conference in 1981 that Posse members, some of whom wear camouflage military fatigues and stockpile weapons and food, had held ''joint military maneuvers'' in the Sierra Nevada in California with members of a Klan organization and some Minutemen. Without drawing the same direct connection to a single connecting organization as did the the Anti-Defamation League, Federal lawenforcement officials have also noted the stockpiling of armaments and the training in the use of them. Inspector Kupferer of the Marshals Service said: ''There has been some information that they are into R.P.G.'s -rocket-propelled grenades - mortars, explosive and protective equipment, heavy-duty armor, that type of thing. And so with some of the information we got with some of their training grounds and tactics, it fits.'' No Individuals Named Mr. Kupferer did not name any groups or particular individuals. Neither Mr. Gale nor Mr. Wickstrom is currently known to be the subject of any Federal inquiry relating to acts of violence. Repeated telephone calls to Mr. Wickstrom's home and office elicited only the information that he could not be reached for an interview. In a telephone interview with Mr. Gale while he was still in Arkansas last Saturday, he also said that he did not know Mr. Kahl. He maintained, however, that Mr. Kahl was killed ''because he was teaching this law of Posse Comitatus, and the banking system and the reasons for the foreclosures in the farms - the result of the Federal Reserve system.'' ''I guess it doesn't pay to be an anti-Communist in this country,'' Mr. Gale said. ''I think Mr. Kahl found it out. I think the Communists are right in Washington, D.C., and I hope they are listening.'' Identity 'Just a Church' As to Mr. Gale's teaching that Communists and Jews are one and the same, he said that he did not say that publicly, but added: ''It's true. I teach that from the pulpit. It's true. I can show you military intelligence reports galore on that, that say that. Oh, hell yes. The Anti-Defamation League is an active element of the Communists, not only in this country, all over the world.'' Mr. Gale said that although he espoused the doctrine of countylevel Posses, he was not himself a member because he believed his status as a retired military man was in conflict with that. ''The Ministry of Christ Church is just a church,'' he said, adding that his and Mr. Wickstrom's religious views coincided. ''He is a minister. He has come to our seminars. I taught him the law in many cases. We have had an affiliation for many, many years.''