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Tuesday, January 29, 2002
By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A cadre of top lieutenants says it has ousted Richard G. Butler as head of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations and will move its headquarters to northern Pennsylvania.
"He's recognized as nothing more than the founder and figurehead of this organization," said August Kreis III, whom Butler appointed Minister of Information and Propaganda four months ago during a visit to Kreis' compound near Ulysses, Potter County.
Kreis announced yesterday that he and Ray Redfeairn, to whom Butler handed day-to-day management of the 25-year-old neo-Nazi group in September, would not recognize directives from Butler from now on. Redfeairn is making plans to move to Potter County and Kreis said ground will be broken this spring for a new church and Aryan Nations headquarters building on his property.
"This was something that was discussed for the last several months within the membership of Aryan Nations -- what are we going to do with Idaho?" Kreis said.
Founded in 1978 and based in Hayden Lake, Idaho, Aryan Nations became the nexus of a cadre of right-wing extremists, some of whom broke off into smaller groups that carried out a string of bank robberies, murders and counterfeiting activities. In 1999, Buford O. Furrow, an Aryan Nations guard, killed a postal worker in Los Angeles and opened fire on a Jewish preschool class.
Yesterday, Kreis issued a statement saying the Aryan Nations staff "are no longer answerable or accountable to ... initiatives of Richard G. Butler and associates located in Hayden Lake, Idaho."
Kreis also said that James Wickstrom, a longtime fixture in the racist Posse Comitatus and Christian Identity religion, would take the post of special adviser to the Aryan Nations. Kreis and Wickstrom have been associates for a decade. A federal court in Pittsburgh convicted Wickstrom in 1991 of plotting to distribute $100,000 in counterfeit currency during the 1988 Aryan Nations National Congress in Idaho. Wickstrom was paroled from federal prison in 1994.
Kreis blamed the takeover on long-festering disputes with Shaun Winkler, a Pennsylvania-born aide de camp to Butler, and said the decision to remove Butler from authority came after Winkler announced plans for a Hitler's birthday rally in York County without first consulting other Aryan Nations officials.
"There is no rally. We didn't call any rally there," Kreis said. "We can't tolerate this anymore. Pastor Butler's there and he's like Shaun's yes-man."
Butler, who lost his rambling, fenced compound last year after he was sued by a mother and son who were attacked by Aryan Nations guards, accused Kreis and Redfeairn of plotting to seize control from the moment he appointed them.
"They want to take something someone put 25 years into and they're trying to take it away after a few months," Butler said.