Know your enemy

[Edgar Suter]

Edgar A. Suter MD
National Chair
Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc. (DIPR)
5201 Norris Canyon Road #220
San Ramon CA 94583-5405 USA
voice 510-277-0333
FAX 510-277-1568
CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME and NEEDED
********************************

WITH FRIENDS LIKE DEES

By Tucker Carlson

THE WEEKLY=20
STANDARD,

MAY 20, 1996

page 23

While the rest of the country watched in shock as the bodies of 169=20
people were carried from the rubble of the Murrah Federal Building in=20
Oklahoma City last spring, Morris Dees was busy writing direct mail.=20
Just two weeks after the bombing, Dees, famed director of the Southern=20
Poverty Law Center, sent out thousands of letters to donors using the=20
explosion as an example of the kind of atrocity his organization was=20
working to prevent. Two weeks after his first mailing, Dees sent a=20
follow=1Eup letter, this one touting his new, and suddenly very timely,=20
Militia Task Force.
"We must do all we can to help prevent more bombings and loss of=20
life," he wrote in his pitch from headquarters in Montgomery, Alabama.=20
"These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary commitment.=20
Send the most generous renewal gift possible." Donors, Dees suggested,=20
should send at least $150=8B"or more if you can."
Oklahoma City may have been the worst act of domestic terrorism in=20
recent memory, but for Morris Dees it has been a marketing bonanza. In=20
the year since the bombing, Dees has parlayed his opinions on militias=20
and extremist groups into countless speeches and appearances on radio=20
and television. Last month, Harper Collins released Dees's latest=20
offering on the subject, a book called Gathering Storm: America's=20
Militia Threat. In its pages, Dees argues that, far from an=20
aberration, Oklahoma City was the logical result of the growth of=20
conservative politics in America. His proof, As he recently explained=20
to public=1Eradio host Diane Rehm, the issues that excite right=1Ewing=20
Republicans are the same issues that motivated alleged mass=1Emurderer=20
Timothy McVeigh: "Fear of immigrants; fear that the government has=20
grown too large, over=1E regulates, over=1Etaxes, is insensitive to=20
people; fear of the English language not being the mother language of=20
the country=8Bin other words, multiculturalism; fear of giving gay=20
people more rights; fear of the laws that allow abortions." According=20
to Dees, politicians and pundits who whip up public fury over these=20
issues=8B and here he points to George Bush, Jesse Helms, and Rush=20
Limbaugh=8Bshare at least part of the blame when like=1Eminded lunatics=20
blow up public buildings.

The connections Dees appears to draw between Timothy McVeigh and a=20
good portion of the Republican party may seem tenuous, even fantastic.=20
But, artfully written, they can make a brilliant fund=1E raising pitch.=20
And Dees, the man whom a former co=1Eworker once described as "the civil=20
rights movement's televangelist," loves nothing more than good ad=20
copy. He's been writing it for years.

Dees began his career as a direct=1E mail solicitor while still in law=20
school, selling birthday cakes to the parents of classmates. The=20
business was an instant success, and Dees kept at it after graduation,=20
branching out into product lines as varied as tractor cushions, holly=20
wreaths, cookbooks, and rat poison. In 1969, while still in his early=20
30s, Dees sold his mail=1Eorder company to the Times Mirror media=20
conglomerate for $6 million and retired to a sprawling estate he'd=20
built outside of Montgomery called Rolling Hills Ranch. Three years=20
later, however, Dees was back in direct mail, this time for George=20
McGovern, who was then running for president.
As McGovern's finance director, Dees became famous for his emotionally=20
written fund=1Eraising letters. He eventually raised more than $8=20
million for the campaign, most of it from small donors. (In later=20
years, Dees also acted as finance director for presidential candidates=20
Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, and Edward Kennedy.) When the campaign ended,=20
Dees went back to Montgomery to run the Southern Poverty Law Center.=20
In addition to his political experience, Dees returned with the=20
McGovern campaign's list of 700,000 financial contributors, whose=20
names he promptly used to establish his own donor base.
Founded by Dees and a partner in 1971, the Southern Poverty Law Center=20
spent many of its early years filing lawsuits on behalf of criminals=20
facing the death penalty. Racially charged though the cases were=8B many=20
of them involved black prisoners who had murdered whites=8BDees does not=20
seem to have harbored many illusions about his clients. "Ninety=1Efive=20
percent of them are guilty as hell, no way around it," he told=20
Newsweek in 1977. Nor was Dees himself free from controversy. In 1975,=20
he was charged by a judge with felony witness=1Etampering and thrown off=20
a case. Though the charges against him were later dropped without=20
explanation, rumors of unscrupulous behavior continued to swirl around=20
the young lawyer. Still, the Center grew quickly, thanks largely to a=20
sophisticated and continuous direct=1Email campaign that Dees directed.
In the early 1980s, finding it increasingly difficult to raise money=20
for his anti=1Edeath=1Epenalty work, Dees created Klanwatch, an=20
organization dedicated to exposing the activities of the Ku Klux Klan=20
and other racist organizations. Over the next decade, Dees made=20
headlines by using a previously obscure legal principle called=20
"vicarious liability" to bankrupt white=1Esupremacist groups around the=20
country. In a typical action brought in 1989, Dees and Klanwatch won a=20
$12.5 million wrongful death suit in civil court against a race=20
agitator and sometime television repairman from California named Tom=20
Metzger. Dees claimed that Metzger and his group, White Aryan=20
Resistance (WAR), were responsible for the murder of Mulugeta Seraw,=20
an Ethiopian immigrant beaten to death by skinheads in Oregon.

No evidence was ever produced that tied Metzger directly to the crime.=20
Yet, using the same line of reasoning he would later employ to connect=20
mainstream conservatives to the Oklahoma City bombing, Dees was able=20
to convince a jury that Seraw's murder was "undertaken pursuant to the=20
custom and practice of the defendant [Metzger and WAR] of pursuing its=20
racist goals through violent means." Metzger was liable, in other=20
words, because his destructive ideas had inspired others to commit=20
destructive acts.
Odious as Metzger was, Dees's tactics didn't sit well with some civil=20
libertarians. "Supremacy Verdict Hurts Civil Liberties," blared an=20
editorial in the leftist magazine In These Times. But the Metzger case=20
did win Dees fame. In 1991, NBC honored him with a television movie=20
called Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story. And of course, the=20
publicity did nothing but good for Dees's fund=1Eraising efforts back in=20
Montgomery. By 1994, the Center was pulling in an average of $41,602 a=20
day from donors, making it one of the most amply funded charities in=20
the country. Today, Dees's organization has reserves that total close=20
to $70 million, many times larger than those of better=1Eknown=20
nonprofits like the Sierra Club, the ACLU, the NAACP, and Planned=20
Parenthood.
If the Southern Poverty Law Center under Dees was growing rich,=20
however, its clients=8Bthe impoverished black victims of racism featured=20
in its mailings=8Bwere not. According to a series of articles published=20
by the Montgomery Advertiser, although Dees and his organizations=20
raised $62 million in contributions between 1984 and 1993, only about=20
$21 million of those funds was spent on public programs. The rest went=20
into investments, six=1Efigure executive salaries, and the upkeep of the=20
Center's lavish glass headquarters in downtown Montgomery. Meanwhile,=20
Dees continued to send out fund=1E raising pitches, largely aimed at=20
donors in distant northern cities, that described the Center as=20
financially desperate.

In one particularly damning example of misleading advertising,=20
Advertiser reporter Dan Morse found that Dees had been featuring a=20
1987 court case brought by the Center against the Klan in his=20
mailings. To donors, Dees had implied that his client in the case, the=20
mother of a murdered black man named Michael Donald, had received a $7=20
million judgment from the Klan thanks to the Center's efforts. As it=20
turned out, however, the Klan had been nearly broke when it lost the=20
case. Michael Donald's mother received less than $52,000.

Dees, on the other hand, reaped considerably larger benefits from the=20
lawsuit. Long before the jury had even reached its verdict, Dees began=20
sending out fund=1Eraising letters that included graphic photos of=20
Michael Donald's corpse. As in the McGovern campaign, emotional pleas=20
met with impressive success. Between 1985 and 1987, the Center raised=20
$9.7 million, partly on the strength of the Donald case. In the seven=20
years following the case, the Center referred to the lawsuit in at=20
least 11 different fund=1Eraising pitches, over which time Dees and his=20
associates raised nearly $48 million.

During the same period that Dees and his group were taking in millions=20
for their work on behalf of oppressed minority groups, a number of=20
black employees at the Southern Poverty Law Center were complaining=20
about racial bias=8Bincluding anti=1Eblack slurs=8Bin their own office. O=
f=20
the 13 black former staff members contacted by the Advertiser, 12=20
reported seeing or experiencing racism at the Center, often from Dees=20
himself. Moreover, for an organization ostensibly dedicated to=20
affirmative action in its strictest manifestations, the Center's upper=20
management turned out to be surprisingly pale. In 1994, only one of=20
the organization's eight department heads was black. She ran the mail=20
room. By the late=1E1980s, it was becoming clear that, as anything other=20
than a nasty historical curiosity, the Ku Klux Klan was rapidly=20
ceasing to exist. As early as 1986, Dees acknowledged this fact by=20
announcing that the Center planned to change its focus from white=1E=20
supremacist groups to other causes, particularly lawsuits against anti=1E
abortion activists. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Dees had investments=20
in at least one Montgomery abortion clinic, which was being run by his=20
then=1E wife, Mary Farmer.) "We'll be out of this Klan stuff sooner or=20
later," he told a reporter.
Much later, it turned out. Although Dees publicly admitted more than=20
once that the Ku Klux Klan "doesn't really exist much" anymore, the=20
Center in 1994 was still sending out fundraising letters claiming=20
"Your help is especially needed now" because of threats from the Klan.

Accurate or not, such letters were among the Center's most reliable=20
sources of income. As one of Dees's former staff attorneys explained=20
to a reporter, "The market is still wide open for the product, which=20
is black pain and white guilt."
It's not clear what Dees would have done for a living had the militia=20
movement not appeared when it did. As it was, the clusters of armed=20
paramilitary organizations that seemed to be popping up all over rural=20
America provided Dees with a perfect threat with which to inflame the=20
generosity of his donors. Before long, with his newly formed Militia=20
Task Force, Dees became a national authority on the loosely bound=20
collection of groups he called the "Patriot movement." In October=20
1994, Dees wrote Attorney General Janet Reno to warn her of the threat=20
of militias. After the explosion in Oklahoma City, which he seemed to=20
take as a sign of his own prophetic abilities, Dees took to soapboxes=20
around the country to offer his diagnosis. "The Patriot movement," he=20
wrote in materials sent to Reno, "is a potpourri of the American=20
right, from members of the Christian Coalition to the Ku Klux=20
Klan=8Bpeople united by their hatred of the federal government."
This last point=8Bthat hating the federal government is, if not=20
technically a criminal act, then dangerously close=8Bforms the core of=20
Dees's new philosophy. In a strange reversal, Dees, like much of the=20
Left in the 1990s, now finds himself squarely on the side of the=20
official establishment: the federal government, law=1E enforcement=20
agencies, even the military. Dees's remarks at the National Press Club=20
last month, for example, could have been cribbed directly from a law=1E
and=1Eorder address by Spiro Agnew. As Dees explained it, "It's speakers=20
who put our government down=8B whether it's on television, whether it's=20
on radio talk shows, or whether it's a member of Congress or=20
candidates who bash our government on a regular basis=8B that give these=20
paranoid individuals who make up the dangerous element of the militia=20
movement in America a belief that, well, these important people are=20
saying this, it must be true. And it certainly gives them=20
encouragement."

To combat this danger, Dees advocates the same kind of federal=20
action=8Bmore FBI surveillance, fewer civil rights for political=20
extremists=8Bthat liberals have spent much of the past 30 years worrying=20
about. And Dees doesn't just advocate it; he lives it.

For an old=1Eline liberal, Dees seems remarkably enamored of cloak=1Eand=1E
dagger affectations. According to a 1991 People magazine profile, Dees=20
"has so many credit cards with fake names, he sometimes forgets who he=20
is when checking into hotels or making airplane reservations." The=20
long=1Etime gun=1Econtrol advocate also frequently carries a pistol in hi=
s=20
waistband, protection, he says, from the racists who have tried on=20
many occasions to kill him.

Perhaps more significantly, since the 1970s, the Southern Poverty Law=20
Center has employed informants=8B"agents," as Dees calls them=8Bto spy on=
=20
rightwing organizations. At times, Klanwatch has even run its own=20
witness=1Eprotection program. Dees won't elaborate on the specifics of=20
his intelligence operation. "That's something we don't give out," he=20
says cryptically. But he does allow that "we have a network of people.=20
Some are our people, some are other people's people that are=20
undercover. We've been doing it for 18 years, it's nothing new."=20
According to Dees, many informants are recruited when marriages among=20
white supremacists break up. "A girlfriend or wife falls out with her=20
husband and we get this detailed letter about some plot to bomb=20
something. Spouses fall out a lot, you know. There's nothing worse=20
than a woman scorned," says Dees, who is currently on his fourth wife.

With all these secret agents, it is strange that Dees seems to have=20
missed a good deal of the antigovernment extremism that has taken=20
place in America over the past two decades=8Bnamely, terrorist acts=20
committed by the Left. In fact, Dees can't name a single one, or the=20
group that committed it. "Since the Weathermen back in the Vietnam War=20
days blew up a building at the Wisconsin University science building,=20
that's the last such group I knew about," he says.
Clearly, he hasn't looked very hard. For during the 1980s=8Bthe same=20
period, Dees says, when the government first began cracking down on=20
the racist Right=8B federal agents were also engaged in a continuing=20
battle with the militant Left, with groups whose plan of action was,=20
if anything, more ambitious and more antigovernment than anything the=20
Klan ever attempted.
In 1987, for instance, the Justice Department charged a Marxist group=20
called the United Freedom Front with "seditious conspiracy," a charge=20
rarely invoked since the Civil War. According to the indictment, the=20
group bombed at least two chemical plants, three oil=1Ecompany=20
buildings, two IBM offices, several military installations, and a=20
courthouse, among a number of other targets. In addition, two members=20
of the group, self=1Edescribed "anti=1Eimperialist revolutionary freedom=20
fighters," murdered a New Jersey state trooper and fired on various=20
other law=1Eenforcement officers.
Nor was the United Freedom Front the only leftist group to target the=20
government during the 1980s. Throughout the decade, in fact, it was=20
organizations with names like Armed Resistance Unit, the Revolutionary=20
Fighting Group, and the Puerto Rican nationalists of FALN that kept=20
the FBI busiest on the domestic=1Eterrorism front. On a single night in=20
1982, for example, leftist groups exploded bombs at four different=20
government targets in New York City alone=8B police headquarters, the=20
federal building, a city jail, and the U.S. district court in the=20
Bronx. A year later, it was not the Christian Coalition but an outfit=20
called Red Guerrilla Resistance Unit that bombed the U.S. Capitol=20
building, blowing the doors off Sen. Robert Byrd's office in the=20
process.
The prevalence of violence=1Eprone groups on the Left, of course,=20
doesn't make the Klan or racist militias any less menacing. But it=20
does put some of what Morris Dees says into clearer perspective.=20
Hating

government and blowing up buildings is hardly the exclusive dominion=20
of the Right, or of any other political element, though perhaps Dees=20
can be forgiven for ignoring subtleties that might confuse potential=20
donors. As Dees himself admits, "Fund=1Eraising is hard work."