Insights into an Aryan assault
Last week (9/21/11) on Idaho PBS, my wife and I watched the documentary entitled "The Color of Conscience" concerning, mainly, the Aryan Nations' presence in North Idaho. As the program progressed, we couldn't help thinking of a number of memories we personally have of this bleak period in North Idaho's history, as well as the effect it had on our city, state, and nation. And while the film was well done with its emphasis on our citizens' successful fight for human rights, we believe there should have been much more emphasis on what a dangerous nest of vipers the Aryan Nations truly were.
For example: There was no mention of the killing of the Jewish TV talk host in Denver; nor of the robbing of the Brinks truck in Washington and/or Oregon to obtain monies for their nefarious operations; the counterfeiting right here of U.S. money; nor of the finding of the construction plans for Boundary Dam in Robert Matthews' apartment in Metaline Falls, Wash., after he was killed in a hail of bullets by the FBI on Whidbey Island.
About 9 a.m. a few days after Father Bill Wassmuth's home had been bombed, I was in my office on the corner of Fourth and Sherman, idly gazing north out the window (and my wife was at the post office picking up the mail) when I saw the bomb go off in the window well of the then-Federal Court House at Fourth and Lakeside. I immediately dialed The Press, telling them what I had just viewed and suggesting they get a reporter up to the scene. Hardly had I hung up when I received a call from a TV station in Seattle asking me about the three bombs which had just gone off in Coeur d'Alene - one at the post office, one at a luggage business on Northwest Boulevard, and the third at the Federal Building.
I replied that I'd just seen the explosion at the Federal Building. They asked if I'd been scared. "No," I replied, "but it reminded me of my advance through Germany's Siegfried Line on the Belgian border during World War II!" At this, they asked me who I was, and I told them my name and that I was a local attorney.
The Seattle TV station said, "We thought we had the Cd'A Press on the line!" And I rejoined that I didn't think they should call The Press for a little while yet, since I was the one who'd told The Press in the first place that I'd seen the bomb go off. Seattle hung up.
Having been told about the post office bomb, I became concerned for my wife's safety. Fortunately, however, the bombers, frightened by the number of people at the post office at nine in the morning, instead set off that bomb in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant, harming no one. Later that evening we received a telephone call at home from Miami; who said he was a voice from our past - and who I recognized immediately as my wife's former boss, a corporate attorney who happened to be Jewish, who was concerned about the exploding bombs in Cd'A and who wanted to make sure we were OK. We assured him that we were.
Also not brought up in the TV film was the unexploded bomb found later in a search by the FBI hidden on the roof of a building cater-corner to the Federal Building which housed the Army-Navy-Marine recruiting offices! Certainly the Aryan Nations' intentions were malevolent!
A few weeks later my brother in Sandy, Ore. (near Portland), called, wondering how come we had so many nuts in North Idaho. "Well," I retorted, "these kinds of people are all over the U.S. They're just trying to establish their headquarters in the Northwest." "Furthermore," I pointed out, "the professor from one of the Oregon universities who wrote the book apparently used by the Aryan Nations as their Master Plan for raising money by robbing Brinks vehicles, counterfeiting, etc., lives right in Sandy!"
The third bomb that day badly damaged New Era Luggage on Northwest Boulevard. I had a client at the time made nervous by that bombing; for my client owned a business with a very similar name, was of Jewish descent, and wondered if it might have been he who'd actually been the bombers' target. Which may have been the case.
The film pointed out that the Aryan Nations intended for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to become the "homeland" for their white extremists. I can still recall as a young boy being told by my mother that when my parents were living in Burley, Idaho, in the 1920s, she saw burning crosses throughout the area on a number of occasions. Through my reading I've learned that Oregon was one of the top states in the nation for the number of Ku Klux Klan organizations; and that at one time the Klan even obtained control of Portland's city government!
The film did an excellent job giving credit to our local citizens who worked so hard on preserving human rights: Father Bill Wassmuth, Tony Stewart, Norm Gissel, Ken Howard, Marshall Mend - all were rightfully recognized.
When I saw and heard Richard Butler spewing forth such hatred from his pulpit in his "church," it did, indeed, remind me of Adolph Hitler! Yet when I talked to him, he seemed like a perfectly calm and reasonable person! Twice in my professional life Richard Butler asked me to represent him. The first time I had a genuine conflict of interest and could not. But when he approached me the second time, when Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Firm was representing the Plaintiffs, I told Butler he needed to hire a firm having several attorneys in the firm, because I didn't think a one-man law firm could ever do all the legal research needed to adequately represent him. While I've always believed that everybody is entitled to adequate representation, and it is part of the oath of an attorney not to refuse same, nevertheless, I was glad that I was unable to represent him.
Bliss Bignall is a Coeur d'Alene attorney.