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White Supremicist Indicted in Roanoke

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; Page B06

A Roanoke man described as the nation's most prominent neo-Nazi was indicted yesterday on charges that he used the Internet to threaten violence against a bank employee, a university professor, an African American mayor and the African American plaintiffs in a federal housing discrimination lawsuit.

William A. White, a former Montgomery County resident, tried to intimidate at least seven people through his white supremacist Web site and by making threatening telephone calls, prosecutors said. In one incident, White is accused of e-mailing an African American journalist from Bowie and saying: "I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when whites once again rise up and slaughter and enslave your ugly race to the last man, woman and child.'

The indictment in U.S. District Court in Roanoke is the latest criminal case against White, 31, who is being held in Chicago on charges that he threatened the foreman of a jury that convicted white supremacist Matthew Hale in 2004. That case led to the slaying of the husband and mother of a federal judge in what authorities said was a white supremacist plot.

Just before his arrest in Roanoke in October, White had planned to publish a magazine article that prosecutors said pictured Barack Obama, now the president-elect, with his head encircled by the cross hairs of a rifle in the shape of a swastika. Prosecutors in Chicago cited the article -- including a paragraph saying Obama should be prevented from taking office "by any means necessary' -- in persuading a federal judge last week to hold White without bond.

White, who attended the University of Maryland in the mid-1990s, told The Washington Post in October that he espouses nonviolence. His attorney, Nishay Sanan, said yesterday that authorities are opposed to White's political views and wanted "to get him off the streets and shut him up before the presidential election.'

"You can choose different sentences and take them out of context and charge anyone with making a threat,' White said. Likening White to a Howard Stern-style "shock jock,' he said White "likes to put his views out there and draw attention to himself. He wants to cause controversy.'

Julia C. Dudley, the acting U.S. attorney in Roanoke, said the case "is not about William A. White's views or his opinions of the world or his right to exercise freedom of speech. This case is about William A. White making late-night phone calls and sending threats in e-mails to college professors, bank employees, lawyers, mayors, newspaper reporters and their families.'

Mark Potok, who tracks extremist groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, said White is "the most important neo-Nazi leader left in America" after others have died or been jailed in recent years. He said White, who once described himself as "a far left-wing anarchist" before embracing white supremacist views, was involved in several organizations before founding the American National Socialist Workers Party in Roanoke in 2006.

The seven-count indictment charges White with threatening to injure a variety of people via e-mail, Internet or telephone communication. One count charges him with making the threats to extort something of value, and another accuses him of seeking to intimidate witnesses in a court proceeding. If convicted, he faces up to 55 years in prison.

The indictment says White harassed a Citibank employee in a dispute over one of his accounts, threatening to post her home phone number on the Internet and citing the murder of the judge's family in Chicago. It says he mailed swastika-emblazoned letters to African American tenants who sued their landlord in Virginia Beach, telling them: "Know that the white community has noticed you, and we know that you are and will never be anything other than a dirty parasite.'

White is also accused of sending a racist, expletive-laced e-mail to the African American mayor of a New Jersey town and vowing to "hunt down" a University of Delaware professor who administered a diversity training program.

White is scheduled for trial in March in the Chicago case, and prosecutors said he would then be sent to federal court in Roanoke.

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