Aryan Nations

A suspected member of the Aryan Nations white-supremacy group once named on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list pleaded guilty Monday to robbing a North Dakota bank. Thomas George Harrelson, 29, agreed to a plea bargain last Thursday in the Feb. 19 robbery of Drayton State Bank. He also is expected to plead guilty in eight other bank robberies in five Midwestern states.

For 27 years, Norm Gissel never could have made it past the guard shack at the Aryan Nations headquarters. Now he and other human-rights activists roam the 20-acre compound as if they own the place. That's because they do own it--the result of a lawsuit that bankrupted Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler--and this week they are savoring the demolition of what they call "the campus of hate."

In a verdict likely to bankrupt one of the nation's most violent white supremacist organizations, an Idaho jury Thursday returned a $6.3-million civil judgment against the Aryan Nations and its founder, Richard Butler--the rural Idaho pastor who has been called "the elder statesman of American hate."

Seven undercover federal agents who posed as journalists to photograph protesters at a civil trial targeting the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations group were stripped of their media passes Thursday after a reporter complained. The FBI agents had obtained the media credentials earlier this week in the trial aimed at bankrupting one of the most potent forces in the U.S. white supremacist movement. On Thursday, Capt.

Angry citizens in Pulaski, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, closed their businesses Saturday and bedecked the town with orange ribbons in silent protest to a march by 200 white supremacists. "Our protest is to turn our back on them. We're shunning them to let them know they don't have a welcome mat here," said Bob Henry, a leader of Pulaski's show of solidarity against the rally by the Aryan Nations. "We think brotherhood is better than prejudice."