Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. The sun was already starting to set
Speaker 1: by the time the couple pulled up outside of their
Speaker 1: apartment on November sixth, nineteen eighty seven. This trip to
Speaker 1: Mexico had initially been pitched to Sheila as a honeymoon,
Speaker 1: but they'd been staying in this little xpac community outside
Speaker 1: of Guadalajara for more than six months. She was young
Speaker 1: and in love, and she'd adjusted easily to her new
Speaker 1: role as the stepmother to her husband's seven year old
Speaker 1: daughter from a prior marriage, but she was so terribly
Speaker 1: worried about crime. She and her husband just didn't trust Mexicans,
Speaker 1: so they rarely strayed beyond the boundaries of their little
Speaker 1: neighborhood of white Americans. That evening, Sheila went straight inside
Speaker 1: and started bustling around the kitchen, preparing to get started
Speaker 1: on making dinner. With the groceries just picked up. She
Speaker 1: was standing at the scenk looking out the kitchen window
Speaker 1: to see what was taking her husband so long when
Speaker 1: she saw her worst fear. A gang of Mexican bandits
Speaker 1: was assaulting her husband. They were holding him face down
Speaker 1: on the hood of the car at gunpoint. At least
Speaker 1: that's what she told a Mexican judge she thought she
Speaker 1: saw through the window. She claimed the officers with the
Speaker 1: Mexican Federal Police never identified themselves. She never would have
Speaker 1: fired on them if she'd known they were police officers,
Speaker 1: and maybe the judge believed her, or maybe they just
Speaker 1: wanted to be rid of her. She spent just ten
Speaker 1: days in a Mexican jail before all of her charges
Speaker 1: were dropped. The officer she'd shot three times in the
Speaker 1: torso was still in the hospital in critical condition. When
Speaker 1: Sheila was deported back to the United States, she rejoined
Speaker 1: her husband, who was being held on some very serious
Speaker 1: federal charges. That's why they'd been hiding out in Mexico.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an extended honeymoon. Her husband was on the
Speaker 1: FBI's most wanted list. Of course, Louis Beane was no
Speaker 1: stranger to a courtroom, and he would end up wriggling
Speaker 1: his way out of those sedition charges in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: just like he always did. Nothing ever, seemed to stick
Speaker 1: to him, not even that time. He hosted a boy
Speaker 1: scout camp where his klansmen taught teenage boys how to
Speaker 1: decapitate communists. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, little guys.
Speaker 1: A lot of what we know about what was happening
Speaker 1: on Lewis Bem's paramilitary training compound outside Houston comes for
Speaker 1: a lawsuit that was filed in nineteen eighty one. The
Speaker 1: suit was filed by the Vietnamese Fishermen's Association against Lewis
Speaker 1: Bean and his Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen seventies, there were significant communities of
Speaker 1: Vietnamese refugees and immigrants who had settled in the Gulf
Speaker 1: Coast area. The climate was similar and there were opportunities
Speaker 1: there for fishing and crabbing, which was how many of
Speaker 1: those refugees had fed their families back home in Vietnam
Speaker 1: before the war. The story of the Texas clans war
Speaker 1: with the fishermen comes later, though. But if the Klan
Speaker 1: being weird near Galveston was sounding familiar to you, that's
Speaker 1: probably why the clans escalating confrontations and threats against the
Speaker 1: fishermen and the subsequent lawsuit are what made that compound famous,
Speaker 1: and the injunction in that lawsuit is what ultimately shut
Speaker 1: the camp down and made Lewis Bean so bad that
Speaker 1: he left Texas entirely for a while, but that didn't
Speaker 1: really get going until nineteen eighty one, and locals knew
Speaker 1: what was going on at that camp in the fall
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty. You see, sometimes I just want to
Speaker 1: tell you guys one funny little anecdote, but I can't
Speaker 1: just drop you off in the middle of a guy's life.
Speaker 1: You would have so many questions about how we got there.
Speaker 1: But it's summertime. A lot of you have kids who
Speaker 1: aren't in school this month. Maybe you've got them signed
Speaker 1: up for some kind of camp, some educational program. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're going to spend some time out in nature, learn
Speaker 1: some new skills, make some new friends. And this seasonal
Speaker 1: shift reminded me of the time a bunch of teenage
Speaker 1: boys got sent off to what their mothers believed was
Speaker 1: a perfectly normal boy scout camp, only to find out
Speaker 1: that their sons were being trained for the race war
Speaker 1: and a clan compound. So we're not going to get
Speaker 1: the whole picture of Lewis Beam today, but I will
Speaker 1: at least orient us a little bit before we get
Speaker 1: into the kid's garrotting lessons. Okay, first of all, I
Speaker 1: have to start with a confession. I have just now
Speaker 1: discovered that I've been saying this man's name wrong for
Speaker 1: a decade and nobody ever said anything to me. I
Speaker 1: had to take a lap around the apartment, sighing and
Speaker 1: groaning and slamming cabinets. Are you kidding me? Louis Louis Beam,
Speaker 1: l o U I s that could be Lewis or Louis.
Speaker 1: You know, say Louis King, Louis Louis Armstrong. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It could go either way, and I've always said Louis Beam,
Speaker 1: And now that I'm stressing out about it, I don't
Speaker 1: know why did I hear someone say that? Or did
Speaker 1: I just make it up and never check. His name
Speaker 1: is Louis ray Beam Junior l o UIs, but his
Speaker 1: father is Louis Raybeams Senior l e Wis. He's named
Speaker 1: after a guy whose name isn't even spelled the same
Speaker 1: if they called him junior, so you gotta figure they
Speaker 1: called the kid Lewis. I didn't want to believe it.
Speaker 1: I hate to be wrong. I'm so embarrassed. Lewis Texas
Speaker 1: Klansman Louis Beam. Everybody knew this, but me. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it that way, but I'll be damned.
Speaker 1: It turns out there are actually a lot of recordings
Speaker 1: of this man saying his own name. As someone once
Speaker 1: told me, Louis, your reputation precedes you. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to look very hard to hear him
Speaker 1: saying his own name. And I've had this problem before,
Speaker 1: and it is usually very hard to find a recording
Speaker 1: of someone saying their own name. So I'll just call
Speaker 1: Louis Thames name because I take you can't stand the
Speaker 1: hate and get out of the kitchen. I'm in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: For those of you who haven't figured it out yet,
Speaker 1: my name's Louis. Bam. Okay, okay, I get it, I
Speaker 1: get it. You got me, Louis. This has shaken me
Speaker 1: to my core. I'm tempted to just keep saying Louis.
Speaker 1: You know sunk cost at this point, But apparently I'm
Speaker 1: just the only one. I was so desperate to prove
Speaker 1: that maybe people say it both ways that I found
Speaker 1: dozens of recordings of people saying his name over the decades.
Speaker 1: The man himself, his friends, and colleagues, news anchors, an
Speaker 1: episode of PBS Frontline Professors everybody says Louis. But if
Speaker 1: you google Louis, beam pronounce, the AI overview says Louis
Speaker 1: quote pronounced exactly like the name Louis or the French Louis,
Speaker 1: with the s remaining completely silent. Now, normally I would
Speaker 1: not admit to even having allowed my eyeballs to pass
Speaker 1: over the AI overview. I need to figure outw to
Speaker 1: turn it off because it is not a useful resource.
Speaker 1: But in this case, I was curious what the citation
Speaker 1: for this is, because there's always a citation. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean the information it's pulling is correct or that it
Speaker 1: has correctly digested it. But it got this from somewhere.
Speaker 1: And the citation for this is an essay by doctor
Speaker 1: Lawrence Min Bui Davis, the former curator for the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: Asian Pacific American Center. According to doctor Davis, the Vietnamese
Speaker 1: population in South Texas did call him Louis Bim, and
Speaker 1: apparently bimb is a sort of vulgar Vietnamese slang term
Speaker 1: for vagina. So a bunch of old Vietnamese guys were
Speaker 1: sitting on their fishing boats in the bay talking about
Speaker 1: their enemy Louis pussy. What a fun piece of cultural history.
Speaker 1: Still never trust the AI overview. I got to figure
Speaker 1: out how to turn that thing off, because even if
Speaker 1: you're not trying to use it, it's just there at
Speaker 1: the top of the page making stuff up. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was telling me something that had an element of
Speaker 1: truth to it, and that is a cool story. But
Speaker 1: by presenting that as the proper pronunciation, no explanation, it
Speaker 1: erased an extremely specific context, and it was effectively telling
Speaker 1: me something that is not true. Remember AI does not
Speaker 1: know anything. AI doesn't do your research for you. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure you knew that. So I wasn't completely alone
Speaker 1: in calling him Louis. But I don't have a Vietnamese accent,
Speaker 1: so I guess I have to start calling him Lewis.
Speaker 1: I could have kept this whole embarrassing digression to myself,
Speaker 1: but I think we have the kind of relationship that
Speaker 1: prioritizes honesty, and I wanted to tell you the pussy thing.
Speaker 1: The second earth shattering revelation I had while I was
Speaker 1: researching this week came when I found out he's still alive.
Speaker 1: I genuinely had no idea Lewis being was still. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but I assumed he'd been dead for years,
Speaker 1: like twenty years maybe. I guess they'd mostly think of
Speaker 1: him as being in his prime in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: and that was so long ago, you know. He was
Speaker 1: a key figure in that time period, sort of on
Speaker 1: the level with guys like William Luther Pierce. And Pierce
Speaker 1: did die twenty five years ago, but he was significantly
Speaker 1: older than Beam was. Lewis Beam is, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: the exact same age as the President, So he'll be
Speaker 1: turning eighty this summer. He dropped out of the public
Speaker 1: eye three full decades ago, so I'm sure I wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one who assumed he was dead. His last
Speaker 1: public appearance was in nineteen ninety six, around the time
Speaker 1: he announced that he was retiring after thirty years in
Speaker 1: the movement so he could spend more time with his family.
Speaker 1: He also blamed his withdrawal on his declining health, which
Speaker 1: he claimed was due to exposure to agent orange during
Speaker 1: his service in the Vietnam War. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: if the aging Klansman really was sick from exposure to
Speaker 1: the chemical Defolian that the US military sprayed all over Vietnam,
Speaker 1: but if he just wanted to spend more time with
Speaker 1: his family, he picked a bad time to do it.
Speaker 1: A few months after he stepped back from public life
Speaker 1: to devote himself to his family, he didn't have one anymore.
Speaker 1: His fourth wife, Sheila, the one who'd shot that Mexican
Speaker 1: police officer for him a decade earlier, filed for divorce
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, and the judge granted him very
Speaker 1: limited access to the couple's two young daughters. His oldest daughter,
Speaker 1: the one who'd been caught in that shootout in Mexico,
Speaker 1: was returned to her mother, Beams third wife, Kara, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, after Mexican authority sent the girl home
Speaker 1: to the US. Her father had abducted her during a
Speaker 1: custodial disagreement in nineteen eighty two when she was a
Speaker 1: top That may have played a role in the judge's
Speaker 1: decision to give Sheila primary custody of the girls in
Speaker 1: her divorce. The man had a history, but I guess
Speaker 1: I should have started by telling you what that history was.
Speaker 1: He's come up in passing here and there. It's hard
Speaker 1: to avoid him, really, if you're talking about the American
Speaker 1: far right in the seventies and eighties. He was a klansman.
Speaker 1: Not just any clansman. He was kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1: He was the architect of the leaderless resistance model of
Speaker 1: right wing violence in the United States, that cell based
Speaker 1: structure for terrorist attacks that makes the movement harder to
Speaker 1: track and harder to stop. This week I returned once
Speaker 1: again to one of my favorite books, Kathleen BLUs Bring
Speaker 1: the War Home. I know I've said it before, but
Speaker 1: it's worth saying again. If you haven't, go ahead and
Speaker 1: pick up a copy. It really is one of the
Speaker 1: best books out there on the white power movement in
Speaker 1: the United States. And not to beat a dead horse,
Speaker 1: but I did find audio of Kathleen saying his name.
Speaker 1: She says Louis, because that's his name. Honestly, I trust
Speaker 1: her more than I trust the man himself, so I
Speaker 1: give up. Nobody says Louis. Her book isn't exactly a
Speaker 1: biography of Louis Beam, but the modern militant far right
Speaker 1: in America doesn't really exist without him, so it's as
Speaker 1: close to one as you're going to find. The title itself,
Speaker 1: bring the War Home, is a reference to one of
Speaker 1: Beam's essays in his nineteen eighty three collection Essays of
Speaker 1: a Klansman. One of the essays is called Vietnam, Bring
Speaker 1: It On Home. Beam was a Vietnam War veteran, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't done fighting when he got home. He'd fought
Speaker 1: for the US government in Vietnam, and now he wanted
Speaker 1: to wage war against the US government. Lewis Raybeaham Junior
Speaker 1: was born on August twentieth, nineteen forty six, in Lufkin, Texas.
Speaker 1: And I know I said I was done, meaning a
Speaker 1: dead horse. But according to the Texas Department of Health
Speaker 1: Bureau of Vital Statistics, the name on his birth certificate,
Speaker 1: the name that was recorded with the State of Texas
Speaker 1: at the time of his birth is Lewis with a W,
Speaker 1: just like his father's. So I don't know when he
Speaker 1: started spelling his own name wrong. But okay, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm done. He was the eldest of four children born
Speaker 1: to Madeleine and Louis Beam Senior. Most sources just skip
Speaker 1: over his childhood and pick up with his enlistment in
Speaker 1: the army in nineteen sixty five. The Southern Poverty Law
Speaker 1: Center is biographical sketch even says that there isn't much
Speaker 1: known about beams childhood. Obviously, the couple of hours I
Speaker 1: spent poking around on my computer here in my home
Speaker 1: office wasn't going to dig up some previously unknown primary
Speaker 1: source that the experts missed all these years. So I
Speaker 1: don't have a bombshell for you. I don't have any
Speaker 1: new information about his childhood, but I did find kind
Speaker 1: of a fun fact about his conception. Lewis Senior was
Speaker 1: a soldier to He was in the Army. He was
Speaker 1: deployed in nineteen forty three, serving in Algeria, France, and Italy.
Speaker 1: He was injured several times over the course of the
Speaker 1: war and received a bronze star at a purple heart.
Speaker 1: He attended Officer candidate school in France during the war,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen forty five he was a lieutenant and
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen forty five he received a
Speaker 1: new assignment. He was a prison guard at Nuremberg. The
Speaker 1: Klansman's father was one of the soldiers standing guard over
Speaker 1: the Nazi war criminals. He met Hermann Gurring in November
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty five, after thirty three months deployed in
Speaker 1: the European theater, Lewis Senior was granted a six week
Speaker 1: furlough to travel home to Texas to see his wife.
Speaker 1: He'd married Madeline in nineteen forty one before he left
Speaker 1: Texas for the army, but he'd barely seen her since.
Speaker 1: The Tyler Morning Telegraph ran a story about his visit home,
Speaker 1: describing what he'd been up to for the last three years.
Speaker 1: The headline was gurring looks, beaten, morose, avoids meeting eyes
Speaker 1: of others, reports jail guard from East Texas. Based on
Speaker 1: Lewis Junior's state of birth, he would have been conceived
Speaker 1: about halfway through his father's visit home. So maybe some
Speaker 1: residual Nazi vibes from Nuremberg had transferred directly into him
Speaker 1: at conception or something. I don't know. Those old local
Speaker 1: newspapers had one more curious tidbit about Louis's childhood that
Speaker 1: I hadn't found anywhere else. When he was a junior
Speaker 1: in high school, his mother shot his father during an
Speaker 1: argument one evening at home. She shot him once in
Speaker 1: the stomach with a German made twenty two caliber pistol.
Speaker 1: She was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Speaker 1: He survived, but the marriage didn't. The divorce was finalized
Speaker 1: the week of Louis's eighteenth birthday. His three younger siblings
Speaker 1: were sent to live with their uncle. It doesn't say
Speaker 1: what happened to Louis. Madeline Beam ended up being tried twice,
Speaker 1: time ended in a mistrial, but she was ultimately acquitted.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen sixty five, a full year after
Speaker 1: the incident, Lewis seemed to be struggling his senior year
Speaker 1: of high school. A few months after his mother shot
Speaker 1: his father, Lewis Junior was arrested on a charge of
Speaker 1: criminal mischief in some unspecified incident involving throwing a bottle
Speaker 1: at a house. A few months later, right around the
Speaker 1: time of his mother's second trial for shooting his father,
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old Lewis got a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: girl pregnant. They married shortly after he graduated high school.
Speaker 1: Marilyn Milligan was the first of Lewis Beam's five wives,
Speaker 1: and the first of three women who would be sixteen
Speaker 1: years old at the time of their marriage to Beam.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen the first time, but he kept getting older,
Speaker 1: and the wives stage sixteen before his first child was
Speaker 1: even born, Louis Bean was off to the army. Maybe
Speaker 1: he felt like he didn't have other options. His parents
Speaker 1: were kind of dealing with their own stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: even clear where he'd been living when he got his
Speaker 1: teenage girlfriend pregnant. So he enlisted in the army in
Speaker 1: September of nineteen sixty five. He just turned nineteen and
Speaker 1: he had a teenage wife with a baby on the way.
Speaker 1: He was sent to a base in Germany first, but
Speaker 1: from the spring of nineteen sixty seven to the fall
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight he spent eighteen months in country.
Speaker 1: He served as a machine gunner on a helicopter with
Speaker 1: the twenty fifth Aviation Battalion. By his own account, he
Speaker 1: quickly grew to enjoy the killing. He was good at it,
Speaker 1: and his country thanked him for it. He came home
Speaker 1: a highly decorated veteran, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross, an
Speaker 1: Army Commendation Medal, and the Air Medal for Heroism. He
Speaker 1: claims to have killed fifty people during his year and
Speaker 1: a half in Vietnam. All it did was give him
Speaker 1: PTSD a taste for killing communists and the best training
Speaker 1: a future paramilitary commander. Could ever hope for. Not to
Speaker 1: be clear, he was already racist. Getting a free pass
Speaker 1: from the US government to shoot Vietnamese people didn't implant
Speaker 1: the notion of white supremacy in his head. A now
Speaker 1: deleted website maintained by veterans of the twenty fifth Aviation
Speaker 1: Battalion shows a photo of a young Lewis Beam posing
Speaker 1: in his quarters. He's posing in front of a big
Speaker 1: Confederate flag hanging on the wall in a little thatched hut,
Speaker 1: and the caption reads, all I gotta say is vote
Speaker 1: for Wallace. He was apparently well known for talking about
Speaker 1: how much she liked George Wallace, the segregationist running for
Speaker 1: president in nineteen sixty eight. According to his Essays of
Speaker 1: a Klansman, he joined the Klan shortly after returning home
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. Maybe he joined in sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Certainly by nineteen seventy he was allegedly already carrying out
Speaker 1: bombings for the Klan by the beginning of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: His own timelines are a little scattered. In Essays of
Speaker 1: a Klansman, he says he joined the Klan after watching
Speaker 1: footage of an anti war demonstration on TV. He was
Speaker 1: sitting at home in Texas, just freshly home from the war,
Speaker 1: and he watched people that he calls pro Vietcong communist
Speaker 1: sympathizers picketing outside the Capitol Building in DC, and those
Speaker 1: demonstrators set an American flag on fire and spat on
Speaker 1: its ashes. Now, it's unclear if the demonstrators in question
Speaker 1: were actually Communists or if this is just another instance
Speaker 1: of a reactionary labeling all of his enemies communists. That
Speaker 1: is something he specifically did a lot, and I'm not
Speaker 1: able to tell you with any kind of certainty what
Speaker 1: day this would have occurred on. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of demonstrations against the war, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: featured flag burning. So this may have been a real
Speaker 1: specific incident, or it may not have, but it represented
Speaker 1: something that he certainly could have seen on TV. He
Speaker 1: describes this incident as taking place in the late fall
Speaker 1: quote one hundred and seven years after Fort Sumter, referring
Speaker 1: to the battle that started the Civil War in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one. So he doesn't say when this happened, but
Speaker 1: it sounds like he's saying he joined the Klan in
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen sixty eight. Although in other writings
Speaker 1: he describes having joined the movement in April of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, but around then, in March of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: he was briefly detained after snatching a flag from a
Speaker 1: left wing demonstrator at a rally against the draft in Houston.
Speaker 1: He attacked a member of Students for a Democratic Society
Speaker 1: and had to be protected by marchers from the Peace Coalition,
Speaker 1: who escorted him at his request through the crowd towards
Speaker 1: the police. At the edge of the rally. FBI agents
Speaker 1: who were there that day were seen photographing the faces
Speaker 1: and license plates of the marchers who were there to
Speaker 1: oppose the war in Vietnam, but the police released the
Speaker 1: violent clansmen without charges. According to an informant, he was
Speaker 1: one of the klansmen responsible for blowing up a radio
Speaker 1: station two months later. Later that year, in October of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, Beam was invited to a banquet hosted by
Speaker 1: Anna Chenault, widow of General Claire Schanalt. Anna Chenault was
Speaker 1: an influential fundraiser for Richard Nixon, and she gave a
Speaker 1: speech that evening about the importance of continuing the war
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, and she presented Louis Beam with a Good
Speaker 1: Citizenship award for his efforts in attacking that peace protester,
Speaker 1: and just by wave a little bit of background on
Speaker 1: Anna Chenault. Two years before that banquet, she was involved
Speaker 1: in Richard Nixon's efforts to sabotage President Johnson's attempts at
Speaker 1: peace talks. Now, the actual impact of the Chenault affair
Speaker 1: on the length of the war is a matter of
Speaker 1: some debate, but it is a historical fact that she
Speaker 1: was working on Richard Nixon's behalf in an attempt to
Speaker 1: prolong the war intentionally, so I guess it does make
Speaker 1: some sense that she was giving out awards for roughing
Speaker 1: up hippies and peacenicks. Beam wasn't publicly identified as a
Speaker 1: clansman until he was arrested in nineteen seventy one for
Speaker 1: a series of bombings that had begun over a year earlier.
Speaker 1: He and more than a dozen other clansmen were indicted
Speaker 1: on a laundry list of charges, including bombing that radio
Speaker 1: station and the offices of the Houston area Socialist Workers
Speaker 1: Party that was a popular target for the time period.
Speaker 1: If you remember from the Joseph Paul Franklin episodes. That
Speaker 1: was one of his first bombings as well, and the
Speaker 1: Socialist Workers Party office in LA was blown up by
Speaker 1: members of the National Socialist White People's Party, all kind
Speaker 1: of around this same time period. It was something these
Speaker 1: guys thought about a lot. And in the case of
Speaker 1: the bombing in Houston, the defense attorney on that case
Speaker 1: is someone you might remember from a lot of other
Speaker 1: stories about unsolved bombings during this time period. Representing one
Speaker 1: of beams co conspirators was National States Rights Party chairman
Speaker 1: and serial bomber JB. Stoner. That doesn't go anywhere, but
Speaker 1: that's a recurring character, So put a pin on the board,
Speaker 1: and oddly this case disappears. In nineteen seventy one, Lewis
Speaker 1: Beam is arrested and indicted for a number of bombings.
Speaker 1: There's credible evidence, there are informants. One guy got convicted,
Speaker 1: but the case against him just kind of never I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's just nothing, like, there's no record I
Speaker 1: can find that it went to trial, or that it
Speaker 1: was dropped, or that a particular reason was given for anything.
Speaker 1: It just disappears from the news. It's in the news
Speaker 1: all the time throughout nineteen seventy one. I mean, Beam
Speaker 1: is testifying for the defense several times and proceedings against
Speaker 1: his co conspirators, and then there's just no more articles
Speaker 1: about it ever. Again. Now, granted, I have limited access
Speaker 1: to archival resources here on my computer at home, but
Speaker 1: Kathleen Blue's book has a footnote that reads, the details
Speaker 1: of these cases are not available in the archival material.
Speaker 1: And I know Kathleen looked at all the archival material.
Speaker 1: So there's just no explanation for this. In the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Lewis Beam changed teams. I mean he was
Speaker 1: still a clansman, don't get me wrong, but he swapped allegiances.
Speaker 1: He'd originally joined a Texas chapter of the Alabama based
Speaker 1: United Clans of America, but he was starting to feel disillusioned.
Speaker 1: I mean, the group was so heavily infiltrated with informants,
Speaker 1: and everybody knew it. I mean people say that today
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things, and a lot of that
Speaker 1: is just paranoia, but they were right. Cointelbro had done
Speaker 1: a real number on the UKA. So in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three he struck out on his own. He wanted his
Speaker 1: own thing, and he called it the Original Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: I wish I was kidding. There was actually already a
Speaker 1: group in Louisiana called the Original Ku Klux Klan, and
Speaker 1: he got that guy's permission to use their charter and
Speaker 1: the name because it was I think, mostly defunct. But
Speaker 1: he called it the Original Ku Klux Klan, which is
Speaker 1: a silly name in the first place, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: even the first group to be called that. But by
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five he'd reached an agreement with David Duke
Speaker 1: to affiliate his organization with Duke's klan group, the Knights
Speaker 1: of the Ku Klux Klan. So you know, normally we're
Speaker 1: just talking about the Klan. That's three ks. This is
Speaker 1: four ks. The internal politics of rival Klan groups is
Speaker 1: something we can talk about another time, but just so
Speaker 1: you know, he was in the Klan the whole time,
Speaker 1: but it was three different clans. There is so much
Speaker 1: more to say about Louis Bean and the Clan in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, but I got into this whole mess
Speaker 1: to tell you a funny story, and god damn it,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to skip to it. Louis Bean is
Speaker 1: so integral to the history of this time period that
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about it. We'll pick up these loose
Speaker 1: ends in a number of future episodes. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to lay a little bit of groundwork for you before
Speaker 1: we get to the fifteen year old boys who begged
Speaker 1: their moms not to make them go back to boy
Speaker 1: scout camp because of the heavy emphasis on learning how
Speaker 1: to murder people. In nineteen seventy seven, Louis Bean purchased
Speaker 1: some land he used to grant from the Texas Veterans
Speaker 1: Land Board to buy fifty acres of swamp land in
Speaker 1: the area of Double By You in Chambers County. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a map handy and you don't know
Speaker 1: where Double Bayou is, the best I can do for
Speaker 1: you is that the nearest city would be Houston, but
Speaker 1: Double Bayou is kind of on the other side of
Speaker 1: the bay. The land was co owned with three other men,
Speaker 1: Beam's younger brother Philip, a local attorney named Dale Paschel,
Speaker 1: and Beam's second in command in his clan paramilitary group,
Speaker 1: Robert Cecente. Cesinte has a number of aliases, but this
Speaker 1: is the one that's used most consistently. So we'll stick
Speaker 1: with that. Paschell would later tell reporters that he'd only
Speaker 1: purchase the land as an investment and he had no
Speaker 1: involvement in or knowledge of how it was being used.
Speaker 1: Philip Beam lived in Ohio, and he said if that
Speaker 1: property was being used for anything, it was news to him.
Speaker 1: Cesente lived on the property and he would he actively
Speaker 1: involved in the operations there, but he claimed he had
Speaker 1: no idea it had anything to do with the Klan,
Speaker 1: and he was just an enthusiastic hobbyist with a passion
Speaker 1: for survival training. He just liked camping. By the time
Speaker 1: they're all making these denials to the press, Lewis Beam
Speaker 1: is the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan. He is the highest ranking klansman in
Speaker 1: the state of Texas. And they all knew that. Everybody
Speaker 1: knew that. There's no way they didn't know that. Dorothy Skaife,
Speaker 1: a klansman's widow by the time the compound was built,
Speaker 1: lived in a trailer on the compound. She and her
Speaker 1: husband had been friends with David and Chloe Duke. The
Speaker 1: local newspaper ran a photo of her holding David Duke's
Speaker 1: infant daughter at a Klan bookstore grand opening in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. None of this was a secret. You couldn't
Speaker 1: not know that these people clansmen, and that Lewis Bean
Speaker 1: was using the land as a training facility for clansmen.
Speaker 1: They called it Camp Puller, named for General Lewis Chesty Puller,
Speaker 1: a Marine Corps officer who served in the occupation of
Speaker 1: Haiti in nineteen nineteen, the operation of Nicaragua in the thirties,
Speaker 1: World War Two, and the Korean War. Puller had died
Speaker 1: just a few years before the camp opened, but Marines
Speaker 1: had been naming stuff after Chesty Puller for years already.
Speaker 1: The bulldog that serves as the Marine Corps unofficial mascot
Speaker 1: has been named Chesty since the fifties, when the human
Speaker 1: Chesty was still alive. I think they're on Chesty the sixteenth.
Speaker 1: Now it's a real dog. They just named them all Chesty.
Speaker 1: Robert Cecente, one of the land's co owners, the one
Speaker 1: who said he didn't know anything about the clan stuff.
Speaker 1: He said he chose that name because he'd served with
Speaker 1: Puller in Korea, and Camp Puller sounds like the name
Speaker 1: of a real Marine Corps base. But Kemp Puller wasn't
Speaker 1: a real military base. It was modeled after military basis.
Speaker 1: It was intended to serve a similar function, and many
Speaker 1: of the men running it were veterans. They used what
Speaker 1: they learned in the military to replicate the experience of
Speaker 1: boot camp for their clan recruits. Later court proceedings include
Speaker 1: expert testimony from a former Green Beret who had reviewed
Speaker 1: hours of footage of Lewis Beem providing classroom and tactical
Speaker 1: instruction on the compound. In his opinion, the training was
Speaker 1: consistent with what would be necessary for a viable military organization.
Speaker 1: It was similar to the training that would be occurring
Speaker 1: on a military base. It wasn't survival training, it wasn't camping.
Speaker 1: It was very clear to him that the goal was combat.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen eighty, three, years after being bought
Speaker 1: that land, the Anti Defamation League issued a report about
Speaker 1: clan training compounds, not just this one. There were several
Speaker 1: of these compounds in Texas. There were some in Louisiana, Alabama, California, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and North Carolina. The one in North Carolina was run
Speaker 1: by another guy we've talked about before, Fraser Glenn Miller.
Speaker 1: And the ADL mailed copies of this report out to
Speaker 1: various attorneys general. They talked to the press. The FBI
Speaker 1: said there was nothing they could do about it, and
Speaker 1: the local cops in Chambers County said all they'd ever
Speaker 1: gotten were a couple of noise complaints, nothing illegal going on.
Speaker 1: After the report hit the news, reporters in Texas went
Speaker 1: to go talk to the neighbors and it turned out
Speaker 1: they'd been having issues. On November sixteenth, nineteen e the
Speaker 1: Houston Chronicle ran a story with the headline right wing
Speaker 1: militants operate armed training center in Chambers County. One neighbor
Speaker 1: said it sounded like there was a small war going
Speaker 1: on next door. He told reporters he'd once discovered a
Speaker 1: small troop of armed men and camo hiding in his bushes,
Speaker 1: and that his elderly mother was terrified when she saw
Speaker 1: a group of men with rifles hiding in a ditch
Speaker 1: by the road when she was driving to church. A
Speaker 1: trainer at the camp, who wouldn't give reporters his real name,
Speaker 1: rejected that characterization. It's just survivalist training, he said, quote
Speaker 1: it's trading that any gorilla would need, but it's also
Speaker 1: what any boy scout lost in the woods would need.
Speaker 1: And it's so funny that he should mention boy scouts
Speaker 1: because a week later, the Houston Chronicle ran another story
Speaker 1: about the compound. The story ran on the front page
Speaker 1: of the Sunday paper announcing Ku Klux klansmen convicted felon
Speaker 1: teach area boy Scouts how to kill Camp Puller wasn't
Speaker 1: just a clan paramilitary training compound. It wasn't just adults
Speaker 1: preparing for the race where it Camp Puller. It was
Speaker 1: part of the Boy Scouts of America's Explorer program. I
Speaker 1: think the program has a slightly different meaning within Scouting today,
Speaker 1: but back then, older boy scouts in the Senior Scout
Speaker 1: program could choose several different paths, and Explorer Scouts focused
Speaker 1: on things like camping sounds great wholesome stuff, and the
Speaker 1: boys did camp. But after those first stories came out
Speaker 1: about the compound being used as a clan training camp,
Speaker 1: some concerned mothers came forward about what else was going
Speaker 1: on there. Obviously, the more important story is the four
Speaker 1: years the Klans spent training militant racists, but the funnier
Speaker 1: story is the few months they spent trying to convince
Speaker 1: high schoolers that they might need to know how to
Speaker 1: hijack a plane. In the aftermath of the revelations about
Speaker 1: what was really going on at Camp Puller, it came
Speaker 1: out that a lot of people should have known this
Speaker 1: wasn't a good idea. A lot of people could have
Speaker 1: stopped this. When the instructors from the camp applied to
Speaker 1: host the Explorer Post in the fall of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: they met with a representative from the Houston Area Boy
Speaker 1: Scout Council, as well as Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Close,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps officer who oversaw the local Civil Air
Speaker 1: Patrol Cadet program, a program for teenagers interested in the
Speaker 1: Air Force. Of that meeting, Lieutenant Close said he'd questioned
Speaker 1: them about their proposed curriculum. Quote. I brought up the
Speaker 1: garrotting and the machete thing, he later told reporters. I
Speaker 1: said it wasn't necessary to teach that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I said, I really didn't see any reason to teach
Speaker 1: them to use a garat or a machete to kill.
Speaker 1: He recalls that they just shrugged and they'd take his
Speaker 1: recommendation under advisement. After that meeting, both the Cadet program
Speaker 1: and the Boy Scouts Explorer program sent boys to Camp Puller.
Speaker 1: They had this meeting, they had this conversation, they did
Speaker 1: not get confirmation that this would not happen, and they
Speaker 1: sent children there. The camp instructors they'd met with should
Speaker 1: have sent up red flags right away, I mean, even
Speaker 1: before they opened their mouths about the murder stuff. Joe Bogart,
Speaker 1: the drill instructor at Camp Puller, had served four years
Speaker 1: in the Marines as a cook. He was also a
Speaker 1: loud and proud member of the Knights of the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan. Granted that wouldn't have come up on a
Speaker 1: background check, and the Boy Scouts of America later defended
Speaker 1: themselves by saying, there's no question on the background form
Speaker 1: that asks about things like that, So how could they
Speaker 1: have found out. They could have found out by simply
Speaker 1: observing Bogart's behavior because he wasn't shy about it, But
Speaker 1: the background check should have caught. John Bryant, the Scout
Speaker 1: leader for the program, was on federal probation. He had
Speaker 1: very recently been convicted for illegally selling automatic weapons. He
Speaker 1: was not legally allowed to handle a firearm of any kind.
Speaker 1: Let alone hand out M sixteen's loaded with live AMMO
Speaker 1: to groups of school children. Another potential scout master never
Speaker 1: actually interacted with the children. John Allen Moser, was arrested
Speaker 1: for murder for hire shortly before the Explorer camp got started,
Speaker 1: but he'd been an instructor on the compound prior to
Speaker 1: his arrest. Moser, a longtime clan member, had previously spent
Speaker 1: time in federal prison for possession of explosives and firearms
Speaker 1: that he'd stolen from the Texas National Guard armory. If
Speaker 1: they had looked into this place at all, they would
Speaker 1: have found out that a recent resident had just gone
Speaker 1: to prison for murder for hire. No one wanted to
Speaker 1: take the blame for this. John Bryant complained that people
Speaker 1: were overreacting to the reports of firearm training, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: we're not teaching these boys how to snipe. They only
Speaker 1: shoot a few rounds, not proficiently by any means of
Speaker 1: his lessons. On strangulation, Joe Bogart said it was perfectly
Speaker 1: normal when he was in boot camp to strangle his
Speaker 1: fellow Marines to the point of unconsciousness, but because these
Speaker 1: were just children, quote, we didn't have the boys choke
Speaker 1: each other out. We just showed them how to do it.
Speaker 1: Parents reported hearing from their children that they'd received lectures
Speaker 1: on guerrilla warfare that were laden with racial slurs. One
Speaker 1: boy told his mother that he didn't want to go
Speaker 1: back after hearing that their next lesson would be on
Speaker 1: plane hijacking. Two separate families pulled their children out after
Speaker 1: boys confided in a parent that the frequent lectures about
Speaker 1: killing people were frightening them. One mother pulled her two
Speaker 1: sons out of the program when they told her that
Speaker 1: their next outing would be a trip down to the
Speaker 1: border to watch for people crossing illegally. And by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty Louis Beam had rather famously been associated with a
Speaker 1: Clan Vigilanti group at the border. So this wasn't some
Speaker 1: idle notion. This is something that this group had done before.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that they ever actually took these children
Speaker 1: to the border, but that may be because the camp
Speaker 1: was canceled by the following week. In the weeks following
Speaker 1: these initial revelations, spokesmen for various organizations scrambled between was
Speaker 1: it really that bad to we didn't know? We couldn't
Speaker 1: have known. There's no way we could have known. Local
Speaker 1: representatives from the Boy Scouts claim they had the FBI
Speaker 1: run background checks on the camp's instructors. The FBI explicitly
Speaker 1: denied that that wasn't something that they even offer. That
Speaker 1: same spokesman then defended himself, saying, well, it wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: even be possible to look into the backgrounds of all
Speaker 1: their volunteers because there were so many, and all three
Speaker 1: of these Scout masters were already members of the Civil
Speaker 1: Air Patrol, So why hadn't they already known about the
Speaker 1: men's backgrounds. Cescente was pretty publicly the second in command
Speaker 1: of the Texas Emergency Reserve, which was Lewis Beams Clan
Speaker 1: Special Forces paramilitary outfit. Ccente would repeatedly deny being involved
Speaker 1: with the clan in any way, but you can see
Speaker 1: him out in public doing security for clan events, and
Speaker 1: he owned property with the Grand Dragon. And again, they
Speaker 1: weren't being sneaky about their intentions. Aside from Cesente's feudal
Speaker 1: reluctance to admit he was literally a klansman. They weren't
Speaker 1: really lying to anybody about who they were or what
Speaker 1: they planned to do. They told everybody what was going
Speaker 1: to happen. They had those meetings with the leaders from
Speaker 1: the Boy Scouts and the Civil Air Patrol. They filled
Speaker 1: out an application for a charter with the Boy Scouts
Speaker 1: of America, and that charter had already been approved at
Speaker 1: the national level by the time this happened. It was
Speaker 1: pending with the local council. When the story broke, of course,
Speaker 1: they rejected the application. I mean, now that everybody's complaining
Speaker 1: about it, they know better. So Campuller's application for a
Speaker 1: Boy Scout charter did ultimately get denied after the story broke,
Speaker 1: But the county prosecutor said none of this was any
Speaker 1: of his business. There's no crime here. The government declined
Speaker 1: to intervene. Nobody was going to shut them down. But
Speaker 1: in the weeks following these revelations about the Boy Scout
Speaker 1: camp ccente said he was going to close Camp Puller voluntarily.
Speaker 1: He lived on the property and he said all this
Speaker 1: attention was making it unsafe for his family. He also
Speaker 1: complained about it being unfair that he was being smeared
Speaker 1: with the stigma of these clan associations, something which again
Speaker 1: he knew nothing about. A Few weeks later, after the
Speaker 1: Houston Chronicle dug up a photograph of Cesente wearing a
Speaker 1: clan robe and an audio recording of Cesente speaking at
Speaker 1: a clan rally where he was introduced by a clan
Speaker 1: member who said that he also was a clan member.
Speaker 1: He did half heartedly admit that he'd attended a clan
Speaker 1: rallier too. Louis Beam vowed to continue training people of
Speaker 1: all ages for the coming race war. At a clan
Speaker 1: rally a few weeks after Campuller closed in December, he said, quote,
Speaker 1: we've trade eight year olds, but I'd like to start
Speaker 1: him even younger, maybe at six. He denied promoting racial warfare,
Speaker 1: but he said that this military training for clan families
Speaker 1: was a matter of survival for the white race, and
Speaker 1: a few weeks later neighbors heard the gunfire start up again.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen eighty one, the clan's violent harassment of
Speaker 1: those Vietnamese fishermen in the bay was starting to heat up.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about all the loups who sends this week.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to tell you about race war camp
Speaker 1: for kids. But I promise I wasn't wasting your time.
Speaker 1: You'll hear about all these guys again. Eventually, John Bryant,
Speaker 1: the scout master with the Federal Firearms Charge, was found
Speaker 1: dead of an apparent overdose just a few months after
Speaker 1: the boy Scout scandal. His death wasn't related to this scandal, though.
Speaker 1: In the weeks before his death, the FBI and the
Speaker 1: ATF had busted dozens of Nazis and Klansmen in a
Speaker 1: massive international plot to overthrow the government of the Caribbean
Speaker 1: island of Dominica. Bryant had apparently been recruiting aspiring mercenaries
Speaker 1: for the invasion that never happened, and Louis Dean well.
Speaker 1: According to the jury that acquitted him, he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: anything but allegedly maybe, depending on who you believe. He
Speaker 1: spent most of the eighties working behind the scenes on
Speaker 1: a massive nationwide seditious conspiracy. Hard to say nothing ever
Speaker 1: stuck to him. Weird little guys. It's a production of
Speaker 1: Pool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded
Speaker 1: by me, Molly Hunger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtreman
Speaker 1: and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly
Speaker 1: talented Ory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
Speaker 1: You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I
Speaker 1: probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. You can exchange
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going
Speaker 1: to make you one of my Weird Little Guys