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A Ku Klux Klan group's Imperial Wizard led the FBI to four of his KKK colleagues accused of plotting to blow up a natural gas plant and rob an armored car in Wise County, numerous people familiar with the case said Wednesday.
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Mr. Spence, 51, a longtime Klansman who founded the True Knights of the KKK in 1994, could not be reached for comment this week. Law officers said Mr. Spence disappeared after the suspects were arrested on April 22.
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note he was leader and it was his idea and oh btw he was fbi informant or whatever. btw, if youre involved in any group (say a totally peaceful property rights group, whatever), if anyone comes along and starts talking about violence, that guy is an undercover cop, 100% guaranteed.
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http://www.web.apc.org/~ara/document...fbiinform.html
KLAN LEADER LABELED INFORMANT
SUSPECTS IN ROBBERY PLOT SAY HE TALKED TO FBI
By Scott Parks, The Dallas Morning News
05/01/97
A Ku Klux Klan group's Imperial Wizard led the FBI to four of his KKK colleagues accused of plotting to blow up a natural gas plant and rob an armored car in Wise County, numerous people familiar with the case said Wednesday.
The four white supremacists, who were arrested last week, have told their attorneys and close family members that Robert Spence was the confidential source who alerted the FBI to the bombing-robbery plot before it could be carried out in May.
If Robert Spence is going to deny he is involved in this thing, then the government is not gonna be able to put on a case," said Davis McCown, a Fort Worth attorney who represents suspect Shawn Dee Adams, 37, of Boyd.
Yeah it was Spence," said Wanda Taylor, mother of suspect Edward Taylor Jr. of Bridgeport. "My son had even lent him money. They were close."
Mrs. Taylor and one state official in Austin said Mr. Spence has been an informant for the government in other cases, but Mr. Spence was not around to speak for himself Wednesday.
Wise County lawmen and Mr. Spence's neighbors in a Newark, Texas, trailer park say he has disappeared.
The government has charged all four suspects with conspiracy to commit robbery affecting interstate commerce. The four are Mr. Taylor, Mr. Adams, Carl J. Waskom Jr., 31, of Boyd, and Catherine Dee Adams, 35, of Boyd. The Adamses are husband and wife.
FBI agents said the four Klan members plotted to blow up a Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. natural gas refinery near Bridgeport to divert law officers away from a simultaneous armored car robbery at the Chico State Bank about nine miles away.
Government documents said the plot was hatched during numerous meetings in March and April. The informant, who wore a hidden microphone, attended several of the planning meetings and reported back to FBI agents.
Marjorie Poche, an FBI spokeswoman in Dallas, said federal agents will not comment on their investigation. Public filings in the case refer only to a "Confidential Source-1."
"We can only talk about what is in the arrest warrant and search warrant," Ms. Poche said.
Mr. Spence, 51, a longtime Klansman who founded the True Knights of the KKK in 1994, could not be reached for comment this week. Law officers said Mr. Spence disappeared after the suspects were arrested on April 22.
"I haven't seen him since and don't know anyone who has," Wise County Sheriff Phil Ryan said Wednesday. "He had always shown a willingness to coordinate his Klan activities with us, but I didn't know him as a snitch."
Mr. Spence, a Dallas cab driver and laborer who lives in Wise County, has been a visible Klan member in Texas for several years. In March 1994, he was one of several Klan protesters gathered outside the wedding of Roger Clinton at the Dallas Arboretum. Mr. Clinton is President Clinton's half-brother.
Mr. Spence also was involved in the 1993-94 Klan protests of the government's efforts to desegregate public housing complexes in Vidor in Southeast Texas. At the time, he was a member of the Arkansas-based Knights of the KKK and worked closely with Michael Lowe, a Waco-based leader of that group.
"He [Mr. Spence] got upset with us and broke off to form his own group," Mr. Lowe said Wednesday. "He was too radical. He had his own agenda and it was not our agenda. He was a braggart who talked about stuff like being an assassin for the CIA."
The Texas Commission on Human Rights in Austin sued Mr. Lowe's Klan group and the White Camelia Knights, an East Texas Klan chapter. The state contended the Klan groups threatened blacks and whites who supported the desegregation effort in Vidor and other East Texas towns.
William M. Hale, executive director at the human rights commission, said Mr. Spence came to him in 1994 and offered to go undercover to help law officers investigate Klan activities.
Mr. Spence told state officials he could go to the home of Charles Lee, leader of the White Camelia Knights, and get information with a hidden microphone and tape recorder, Mr. Hale said in court papers.
"He had told us that he knew where Mr. Lee lived in Cleveland, Texas, and that he knew all about security devices at Mr. Lee's compound," Mr. Hale said. "It turned out that he didn't even know where Charles Lee lived.
"We had suspicions about anything he said that we could not verify through other sources," Mr. Hale said.
Mr. Spence became a high-profile Klan organizer after his split from Mr. Lowe's Klan chapter. He and his associates, including an array of neo-Nazi skinheads, held a series of recruiting rallies in North Texas in 1994 and 1995.
Federal agents said their "confidential informant" - the suspects and their attorneys have referred to him as "Bob" and "the Grand Wizard" in court appearances - alerted them to the bombing-robbery plot in late March.
During the next month, FBI agents kept up surveillance on the informant and the four suspects as they met and traveled around Wise County to look at the gas refinery and track the armored car's movements.
The informant was wearing a hidden microphone during several meetings. He openly videotaped a trip to test explosives at a remote location in the LBJ National Grasslands north of Decatur.
Agents also installed a tiny spy camera in the dashboard of a pickup driven by the informant.
In one videotape, made just hours before their arrests on April 22, the Adams couple can be seen discussing their plot as the pickup is parked along a road near Bridgport. Two other voices, apparently male, can be heard on the tape, but the speakers are not seen.
"If they can do it in the movies, we can do it," Mrs. Adams observes on the tape.
Inez Adams, Mr. Adams' mother, said one of the voices on the tape belonged to Mr. Spence.
A short time later, the four headed into Bridgeport - Mr. Taylor in his 1970 Chevy pickup; the informant and the Adams couple in the camera-equipped truck.
When they stopped to get gasoline at a Fina service station in Bridgeport, federal agents in helmets and body armor swarmed toward the two pickups.
Mary Young, manager of the Fina, said she saw agents take four people into custody - three men and a woman. Agents drove away in Mr. Spence's pickup, but left Mr. Taylor's sitting at the gas station, she said.
It's pretty amazing to see that many armed people at once," she said.
One source, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Spence was taken into custody at the gas station, but the suspects and their attorneys are left to wonder where he is now.
"There's no mystery about who the guy is," said Warren St. John, attorney for suspect Catherine Adams. "I don't know where he is, but we'll find him."
Government lawyers will be required to formally reveal the informant's name to defense attorneys after a federal grand jury meets to consider indictments in the case.
But defense attorneys say they also want to know what motivated Mr. Spence to report their clients to the FBI.
"The motivation most often is that they [informants] have legal problems of their own and that they are trying to get out of them," said Mr. McCown, attorney for Mr. Adams. "But I don't know if that applies to this case."
Mark Briskman, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, a predominantly Jewish civil rights organization, said it's common for members of white supremacist groups to turn each other in to law officers.
Mr. Briskman, who acknowledged that he has no firsthand knowledge of the Wise County case, said the informant's motivation often is fear of "getting caught up in things that are spinning out of control."
The FBI has characterized their confidential informant as "a concerned citizen."
But Mr. Briskman said it's unrealistic to assume that someone who has spread racial and ethnic hatred for years "all of a sudden has an epiphany of altruism."
"It would be a horrible mistake for anyone to make them a hero when they are really acting out of a sense of self- preservation," he said.
Copyright 1997 The Dallas Morning News
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