Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: In February of twenty nineteen, a federal prosecutor in Maryland
Speaker 2: made an unusual presentation to a magistrate judge in support
Speaker 2: of pre trialed attention. Christopher Paul Hassen had just been
Speaker 2: arrested on charges of possession of a firearm by an
Speaker 2: unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a technicality. If you've been convicted of drug possession,
Speaker 2: usually you'd have caught a felony and you can't own
Speaker 2: a gun anyway. But he hadn't been, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: and he owned those guns legally. Hassen was a fifty
Speaker 2: year old married father of two and a lieutenant in
Speaker 2: the United States Coast Guard with no criminal history to
Speaker 2: speak of. He was also addicted to tramadol, an opioid
Speaker 2: pain medication that he didn't have a prescription for pre
Speaker 2: trial attention In a case like this seems a little excessive.
Speaker 2: You could probably just let him go home home, make
Speaker 2: him turn in his guns, and order weekly drug screenings
Speaker 2: with pre trial services. But there was something else going
Speaker 2: on here. His apartment was packed to the brim with guns, ammunition,
Speaker 2: and tactical gear, and on his computer they found mass
Speaker 2: shooter manifestos, terrorism manuals, and a list of names. I'm
Speaker 2: Molly Conger, and this is weird, little guys. I thought
Speaker 2: we could use something a little lighter this week after
Speaker 2: last week's episode. I know it was a pretty dark
Speaker 2: one for me to research and write, and I saw
Speaker 2: some feedback from listeners who said it ruined their day.
Speaker 2: So fair enough, So nobody dies this week, nobody has
Speaker 2: a hard drive full of child sexual abuse material, nobody
Speaker 2: gets shot or raped. There's barely even any hate crimes.
Speaker 2: It wasn't easy to find a story like that in
Speaker 2: my mental rolodex, but I.
Speaker 1: Thought you guys deserved a break.
Speaker 2: Now, I will admit, upon further reflection, this whole story
Speaker 2: isn't exactly as funny as my spotty memory had me
Speaker 2: thinking when I started. I think my own recollection of
Speaker 2: this being a silly little legal mishap was heavily colored
Speaker 2: by my own mental state back in twenty twenty when
Speaker 2: I drove to Maryland to watch this sentencing hearing.
Speaker 1: When I drove up to the Federal.
Speaker 2: Courthouse in green Belt, Maryland to see Hassen sentencing hearing
Speaker 2: on January thirty first, twenty twenty. It's actually my second
Speaker 2: trip up to that courthouse that month. Just a week earlier,
Speaker 2: i'd been in another courtroom in that massive building for
Speaker 2: a detention hearing in another case, three members of the
Speaker 2: neo Nazi paramilitary group the Base had just been arrested.
Speaker 2: The government alleged they'd been picked up just days before
Speaker 2: they could carry out a plan to open fire into
Speaker 2: a large crowd of heavily armed gun owners in the
Speaker 2: hopes that the chaos would result in mass casualties. The
Speaker 2: event they were targeting was one that I had attended
Speaker 2: as a journalist. It's the annual gun lobby Day in Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 2: our state capital. The idea that we'd perhaps just by
Speaker 2: the skin of our teeth, avoided being massacred in a
Speaker 2: confused crossfire left.
Speaker 1: Me feeling a little queasy.
Speaker 2: I'm not too proud to admit that I was a
Speaker 2: little on edge at that detention hearing. I dug out
Speaker 2: my old notebook this weekend to try to remember what
Speaker 2: was going on back then, to sort of get back
Speaker 2: into that headspace and remind myself of what was going
Speaker 2: on in these cases. And apparently I did take notes
Speaker 2: pretty good ones. But my only memories of that day
Speaker 2: are how clean the bathrooms were, that I walked out
Speaker 2: of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck in my tights,
Speaker 2: and the look on that FBI agent's face when I
Speaker 2: grabbed his phone. So it was a small courtroom. It
Speaker 2: was just a hearing with a magistrate judge on detention,
Speaker 2: and normally in court, I try to sit by myself
Speaker 2: because I like to sit with my legs sort of
Speaker 2: fold it up underneath me because my feet don't reach
Speaker 2: the floor. And I have my huge hardcover spiral notebook
Speaker 2: open in my lap and I sort of hunch over
Speaker 2: it like a little gremlin while I take my notes.
Speaker 2: But it was crowded, so I had to sit next
Speaker 2: to some federal agent or another, and he was having
Speaker 2: the damnedest time trying to figure out how to turn
Speaker 2: off his iPhone. He just kept locking and unlocking it,
Speaker 2: locking it and unlocking it, and he couldn't figure out
Speaker 2: why wouldn't turn off? And you know, my general preference
Speaker 2: to never have a conversation with a cop if I
Speaker 2: can help it is apparently trumped by my inability to
Speaker 2: sit idly by while someone is very busy being wrong,
Speaker 2: and I remember sitting there trying to explain to him
Speaker 2: that you have to hold down the volume button and
Speaker 2: the lock button at the same time until it turns off.
Speaker 2: It's not that complicated. I was trying to explain it.
Speaker 2: He just kept locking it, unlocking it, turned the volume
Speaker 2: up and down and locking it, unlocking it, and he.
Speaker 1: Couldn't turn it off.
Speaker 2: So god knows what came over me, But I just
Speaker 2: I reached over and I did it myself, and you
Speaker 2: would have thought I grabbed his gun.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: She just looked scandalized. But I was just trying to
Speaker 2: be helpful. You know, I'm a helpful girl. But this
Speaker 2: isn't a story about Patrick Matthews, Brian Lemley, and William Bilbrow.
Speaker 2: Of course, that hearing has nothing really at all to
Speaker 2: do with Christopher Hassen. All that to say, it was
Speaker 2: my second time that month driving the nearly three hours
Speaker 2: to Marilyn to sit on a bench in an unfamiliar courtroom,
Speaker 2: and by the time I was there the second time,
Speaker 2: I was really ruminating on that apparently very nearly successful
Speaker 2: plot that probably would have claimed my own life among
Speaker 2: the thousands would have been shot or trampled if Matthews,
Speaker 2: Lemley and Bilbro had been successful.
Speaker 1: And it had been a busy week in between.
Speaker 2: Overall, I sat through an eight hour city council annual
Speaker 2: retreat and went to a school board budget meeting. You know,
Speaker 2: I just can't resist a municipal government meeting. And the
Speaker 2: pissant Nazi cry baby who'd spent years threatening me finally
Speaker 2: got arrested in a pre dawn raid by the FBI,
Speaker 2: but it was for.
Speaker 1: Something totally unrelated.
Speaker 2: And I'd put damn near a thousand miles on my
Speaker 2: car driving back and forth to this courthouse, even though
Speaker 2: I had no real plan for how he's going to
Speaker 2: afford to replace my tires. I was having a weird week.
Speaker 2: So by the time I was reading this government and
Speaker 2: sentencing memo in the hass in case, I was just
Speaker 2: looking for a recent to laugh, you know, And like
Speaker 2: I said, nobody died, it's safe to giggle a little.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying the whole story as a joke, but
Speaker 2: you have to find levity where you can, and where
Speaker 2: would I even be with a little gallows hue, And
Speaker 2: all the better when the would be hangman is shackled
Speaker 2: at the ankles.
Speaker 1: But like I.
Speaker 2: Said, this is a story about Christopher Hassen, not me,
Speaker 2: and Christopher Hassen may never have been caught at all
Speaker 2: if he just kept his extracurricular interests at home. Evidence
Speaker 2: produced in this case includes hundreds of pages of logs
Speaker 2: of his computer activity, mostly computer activity he was engaged
Speaker 2: in network. Generally speaking, I'm opposed to the idea of
Speaker 2: your employer monitoring your Internet history. If you're getting your
Speaker 2: work done, what difference does it make if you take
Speaker 2: some breaks during the day to look at Reddit or
Speaker 2: do a little online shopping, you know. But Hassen worked
Speaker 2: for the government. He was using a government computer on
Speaker 2: a government Internet connection to look at extremist content online.
Speaker 2: And honestly, I have no idea what his day to
Speaker 2: day workplace responsibilities could possibly have been, because based on
Speaker 2: these Internet history logs, he was spending hours and hours
Speaker 2: almost every day looking at things that weren't work And again,
Speaker 2: in another context, I support time theft, especially from the government,
Speaker 2: you know, rock on, but he wasn't scrolling social media.
Speaker 2: The investigation began in November of twenty eighteen. Something he
Speaker 2: did on his work computers set off an internal flag.
Speaker 2: They never say exactly what it was that ended up
Speaker 2: getting him flagged. The Coastguard's Internal Threat Assessment report covers
Speaker 2: his Internet activity from July of twenty sixteen through his
Speaker 2: arrest in February twenty nineteen, but that report was created retroactively.
Speaker 2: They didn't actually start monitoring him until something happened in
Speaker 2: November twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: And looking at this report, I.
Speaker 2: Can't explain why nothing's set off an alarm in the
Speaker 2: IT office before that, but that's what it says, so
Speaker 2: I guess we just have to take it as written.
Speaker 1: Throughout the report, you can see that.
Speaker 2: He was emailing links and PDFs to himself between his
Speaker 2: personal and work email addresses. I don't know why he
Speaker 2: was doing that. I wonder if maybe he couldn't access
Speaker 2: his personal email at work, and he couldn't access his
Speaker 2: work email at home, and he wanted to be able
Speaker 2: to pick up where he left off in either location. So,
Speaker 2: for example, in the late evening hours of June seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, he sent himself five emails from his personal
Speaker 2: email address to his work email address, and each email
Speaker 2: had an attachment. He was checking out the Anarchist Cookbook,
Speaker 2: you know, a classic. He sent himself a PDF called
Speaker 2: US Army Improvised Munition's Handbook and these next three well,
Speaker 2: I think you will get why I'm confused. He didn't
Speaker 2: get flagged until a year later, because does he emailed
Speaker 2: himself PDFs called emailing a non how to make semtechs
Speaker 2: in one called home Workshop Explosives by Uncle Fester, and
Speaker 2: a document just called the Terrorist's Handbook, which is mostly
Speaker 2: instructions on how to make IEDs. I guess he was
Speaker 2: smart enough to understand that he shouldn't download these at work,
Speaker 2: so he emailed them to himself so he could read
Speaker 2: them there. Semtex is a plastic explosive originally developed by
Speaker 2: the Czech military that has become quite popular with terrorists.
Speaker 2: And Uncle Fester is a seventy five year old man
Speaker 2: named Stephen Preisler who was arrested last year in Wisconsin
Speaker 2: for making meth. In case you were wondering, I spent
Speaker 2: hours combing through these reports trying to make some sense
Speaker 2: of them. And the only thing I can figure that
Speaker 2: really changed in November of twenty eighteen that may have
Speaker 2: triggered his employer to start looking at his computer activity
Speaker 2: was a sudden intensification of his interest in Russia, and
Speaker 2: this wasn't entirely new. The report shows activity going back
Speaker 2: to early twenty seventeen for searches like Russian far right
Speaker 2: Russian Nationalists immigrate to Russia. In June of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: he spent an entire workday accessing what the report calls
Speaker 2: quote extensive pro Russian and neo fascist content end quote.
Speaker 2: He searched for things like national Bolshevism and Fourth Political Theory,
Speaker 2: which is the title of a book by Alexander Dugan
Speaker 2: that was a favorite of American neo Nazi Matthew Heinbach.
Speaker 2: In March of twenty eighteen, he spent another full workday
Speaker 2: clicking around websites with pro Russian neo fascist content, but
Speaker 2: none of that triggered any kind of internal alarm on
Speaker 2: his account. The activity logs for November twenty eighteen, though,
Speaker 2: show his first searches for and visits to sput News
Speaker 2: and RT, which are Russian state run media sites. This
Speaker 2: is another one of those questions we're just not going
Speaker 2: to get an answer to. But my gut reaction to
Speaker 2: the way those things coincide is that maybe there was
Speaker 2: an automatic flag placed on some particular website, and maybe
Speaker 2: it was a website that is Russian state on media,
Speaker 2: or maybe somebody at work just saw him dicking around
Speaker 2: at his desk and reported him. We'll never know, but
Speaker 2: apparently there is no internal monitoring system that automatically reports
Speaker 2: you to the Coastguard for being on Reddit all day,
Speaker 2: every day, so browse away, I guess. The Coastguard's one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty page internal Threat Assessment report outlining the
Speaker 2: concerning computer activity over that two and a half year period,
Speaker 2: starts out with a summary of his findings, which includes
Speaker 2: this incredible paragraph.
Speaker 3: Subject's most frequently visited website from twenty seventeen to twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen was the men Going their Own Way migtoe subreddit
Speaker 3: at www dot reddit dot com, to which subject made
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of total URL visits over a two
Speaker 3: plus year period. Will at the MiG toast subreddit, subject
Speaker 3: routinely access gender based extremist content that promoted discrimination of
Speaker 3: women or hatred towards women on a daily basis. Due
Speaker 3: to the persistence of the behavior, subject's routine daily activity
Speaker 3: in browsing the MiG toast subreddit is not included in
Speaker 3: this chronology of activity.
Speaker 2: So we don't know why they started looking, but they did.
Speaker 2: Starting in November of twenty eighteen, the Coastguard started monitoring
Speaker 2: his workplace computer activity in real time. They were logging
Speaker 2: his keystrokes.
Speaker 1: They set up a hidden.
Speaker 2: Camera near his desk to record him during the day,
Speaker 2: and then they started reporting their findings to the FBI,
Speaker 2: and by January the FBI was worried too. They got
Speaker 2: warrants for his email accounts, a warrant for his historical
Speaker 2: cell location data, and placed a GPS tracker on his car.
Speaker 2: They installed a pole camera outside his home, They searched
Speaker 2: his desk at work, and on February fifteenth, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: they arrested him in the parking garage outside of Coast
Speaker 2: Guard headquarters in Washington, d C. When he appeared in
Speaker 2: front of a magistrate judge a week later, the government
Speaker 2: was really only talking about these charges for possession of
Speaker 2: the tramadol that they found in his desk and the
Speaker 2: charge for possessing the firearm while being an unlawful user
Speaker 2: of a controlled substance. That is, as the judge noted,
Speaker 2: a pretty unremarkable charge. That's not really the kind of
Speaker 2: crime that warrants real time surveillance, secret cameras, parking lot
Speaker 2: ambush arrests, and pre trialed attention. But with that real
Speaker 2: time access to his computer activity at work, the investigators
Speaker 2: saw what they interpreted as a shift. He'd spent years
Speaker 2: accumulating knowledge and supplies, reading manifestos, buying guns, and now
Speaker 2: it seemed like he was preparing for something. So when
Speaker 2: an FBI agent writes out an affidavit in support of
Speaker 2: a search warrant, he has to tell the judge what
Speaker 2: he's looking for and why he needs probable cause.
Speaker 1: Obviously you know that one.
Speaker 2: But what makes probable cause depends on what you're investigating.
Speaker 2: What crime do you think you're going to find evidence
Speaker 2: of and why do you think you're going to find
Speaker 2: it there? Well, Hassena was charged with having a gun
Speaker 2: and a pill problem, So maybe that's what they wrote
Speaker 2: down on the affidavit, right, something about.
Speaker 1: The drugs now.
Speaker 2: According to a defense motion to suppress the evidence sees
Speaker 2: pursuant to those searches, which was unsuccessful. Quote Agent Harrison
Speaker 2: asserted he had probable cause to believe the warrants would
Speaker 2: produce evidence of violations of eighteen usc V. Section one
Speaker 2: one one one murder in federal jurisdictions one one one
Speaker 2: four murder or attempted murder of officers or employees of
Speaker 2: the United States, three five to one, assassination of Cabinet secretaries,
Speaker 2: members of Congress, or Supreme Court justices, and three seven
Speaker 2: to one conspiracy to commit the foregoing crimes. That is
Speaker 2: not what he was charged with. The government's motion for
Speaker 2: detention calls the charges that they actually filed that drug
Speaker 2: stuff quote the tip of the iceberg. And they opened
Speaker 2: their memo with a pretty bold statement, writing, the defendant
Speaker 2: is a domestic terrorist bent on committing acts dangerous to
Speaker 2: human life that are intended to affect government conduct. And
Speaker 2: so instead of sending the defendant on his way with
Speaker 2: court orders to behave himself until his trial, the government
Speaker 2: said there is absolutely no way to assure the safety
Speaker 2: of the community except to keep him in custody. And
Speaker 2: this is where it becomes clear that this case was
Speaker 2: never about pain pills. On June second, twenty seventeen, Christopher
Speaker 2: Hassen wrote, then deleted an email draft. He never sent
Speaker 2: this to anyone. It just stayed there in his recoverable
Speaker 2: deleted drafts folder for a year and a half.
Speaker 3: Dear friends, maybe that's a bit of a misnomer. Acquaintance
Speaker 3: is more likely. Hope this finds you well. I am
Speaker 3: dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person
Speaker 3: on the earth. I think a plague would be most successful.
Speaker 3: But how do I acquire the needed Spanish flu, bachulism, anthrax?
Speaker 3: Not sure yet, but we'll find something interesting. Idea the
Speaker 3: other day. Start with biological attacks followed by attack on
Speaker 3: food supply. Have to research this. Two pronged attacks seems
Speaker 3: it might be more successful. Institute a bombing sniper campaign.
Speaker 3: What can I do? I will not do. Nothing seems
Speaker 3: inevitable that we are doomed. I don't think I can
Speaker 3: cause complete destruction on my own. However, if I could
Speaker 3: enlist the unwitting help of another power, country would be best?
Speaker 3: Who and how to provoke?
Speaker 2: The letter continues, outlining a plan to purchase land in
Speaker 2: a remote area, noting that he needs to get off
Speaker 2: drugs to clear his mind to plan this attack, and
Speaker 2: he needs to start stockpiling food and supplies at multiple
Speaker 2: hidden locations.
Speaker 1: He writes that he needs to quote.
Speaker 2: Have a serious look end quote at what kinds of
Speaker 2: targets would be most effective, speculating that doctors, professors, politicians, judges,
Speaker 2: and leftists in general would be a great place to start.
Speaker 2: He wants to provoke unrest and then target both sides
Speaker 2: of it to exacerbate tension and maximize casualties, to provoke
Speaker 2: the government to overreact to escalate the violence, and once
Speaker 2: major unrest is underway, he plans to dress as a
Speaker 2: cop and execute looters. Please send me your violence that
Speaker 2: I may unleash it onto their heads. Guide my hate
Speaker 2: to make a lasting impression on this world.
Speaker 1: So be it, he writes.
Speaker 2: The email is signed very respectfully, Lieutenant Christopher P. Hassen,
Speaker 2: National Security Cutter Acquisition. Three months later, in September of
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, drafted another letter. This one has a clear recipient,
Speaker 2: although there is no concrete proof he ever mailed it.
Speaker 2: On September fifth, he did a little online shopping at work.
Speaker 2: He purchased eleven books from Amazon, mostly those by Life
Speaker 2: Long neo Nazi activist Harold Covington. Covington is a man
Speaker 2: who deserves his own episode. He was a member of
Speaker 2: the American Nazi Party in his youth and was discharged
Speaker 2: from the US Army in nineteen seventy three after just
Speaker 2: two years. Accounts very a little bit here. One nineteen
Speaker 2: to eighty New York Times article says he quote accepted
Speaker 2: an early honorable discharge after getting into a tavern brawl
Speaker 2: with blacks end quote. I didn't realize we were still
Speaker 2: saying that in nineteen eighty. I don't really care for
Speaker 2: that New York Times. But the real problem here is
Speaker 2: that the paper was accepting Covington's own account of things.
Speaker 2: That was his version of why he wasn't in the
Speaker 2: army anymore. He was actually pushed out of the army
Speaker 2: because of his habit of handing out neo Nazi pamphlets
Speaker 2: to his fellow soldiers. He also has the distinction of
Speaker 2: being the only man I've ever heard of who was
Speaker 2: deported from Rhodesia for.
Speaker 1: Being too racist.
Speaker 2: Our guy, Frank Sweeney from a few weeks ago, was
Speaker 2: deported from Rhodesia for stabbing a guy, but there was
Speaker 2: no indication they had any problem with the Nazi stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil too much now. We will
Speaker 2: definitely have to cover Harold Covington eventually. I want to
Speaker 2: at least make it clear why it's a little troubling
Speaker 2: to be filling your bookshelves with his work. So it's
Speaker 2: September twenty seventeen. Hassen is buying a bunch of Covington's novels.
Speaker 2: He saves a copy of Covington's Northwest Front Handbook to
Speaker 2: his Google Drive account, and he's spending some time on
Speaker 2: Covington's website learning about his idea for the Northwest Territorial Imperative.
Speaker 2: This is the idea that American white supremacists should all
Speaker 2: move out to the Northwest and settle in Washington, Oregon, Idaho,
Speaker 2: and Montana and start taking control of local governments, eventually
Speaker 2: turning the entire region into a white ethno state. Covington
Speaker 2: didn't invent the idea, of course, but he was one
Speaker 2: of its biggest boosters. He founded the Northwest Front and
Speaker 2: wrote a bunch of books about the topic to try
Speaker 2: and make it a reality. After reading up on Covington
Speaker 2: and the Northwest Imperative, Hassen looked at some areas in
Speaker 2: Washington and Idaho on Google Maps. Then he did a
Speaker 2: bing so for is Harold Covington. FBI informant has since
Speaker 2: spent most of the next work day browsing Reddit and
Speaker 2: as he did every day, and doing a little research
Speaker 2: on Christian identity. It's a twisted theology that has really
Speaker 2: almost nothing to do with the Christianity you're familiar with.
Speaker 2: It preaches that white Europeans are God's true chosen people.
Speaker 2: Racial purity is valued above all else. Racial mixing is
Speaker 2: a violation of God's law. Christian identity believers yearn for
Speaker 2: a white Ethno state, and some of them are willing
Speaker 2: to kill for it. It was Richard Butler's devotion to
Speaker 2: Christian identity that led him to found the Aryan Nations
Speaker 2: and establish a large Nazi compound outside of Kurdalene, Idaho.
Speaker 2: Butler's dedication to establishing a sovereign Aryan territory in the
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest is what inspired Harold Covington to name the
Speaker 2: plan outlined in his Northwest Front Handbook after him calling
Speaker 2: it the Butler Plan. That's something Hassen probably learned when
Speaker 2: he conducted a being search at his work computer for
Speaker 2: the Butler Plan after spending all afternoon reading about Christian identity.
Speaker 1: He must not have.
Speaker 2: Been totally sold on Christian identity, though, because records show
Speaker 2: he also sent an email that same week to someone
Speaker 2: at the Asatru foc Assembly. Far from the harmless, if
Speaker 2: sometimes questionable practice of paganism by people of European heritage
Speaker 2: who are trying to connect with their ancestral ways of
Speaker 2: life or whatever they believe that might be. The Assatru
Speaker 2: Focussembly is an explicitly white nationalist organization, and they get
Speaker 2: heavy criticism from their fellow Pagans for the racial hatred
Speaker 2: that's built into its founding doctrines. But Hassen wrote to
Speaker 2: someone at the FOCU assembly asking if they had any
Speaker 2: members in his local area, and he expressed a willingness
Speaker 2: to drive up to two hundred miles to participate in
Speaker 2: group meetings. He ends the email, signing off not by
Speaker 2: saying you know sincerely, or best wishes or thank you,
Speaker 2: or some normal way of ending an email, but instead
Speaker 2: he writes fourteen words Chris Hassen. The fourteen words refers
Speaker 2: to the slogan coined by David Lane, the neo Nazi
Speaker 2: domestic terrorist who died in prison for his role in
Speaker 2: the assassination of Jewish broadcaster Alan Bergh. It's commonly used
Speaker 2: in a wide variety of Nazi spaces. It's one of
Speaker 2: the few things most white nationalists seem to agree on.
Speaker 2: They love the fourteen words, and this isn't actually the
Speaker 2: first time I've seen it used as the closing of
Speaker 2: a letter. For the record, if we must, the fourteen
Speaker 2: words are we must secure the existence of our people
Speaker 2: and a future for white children. And then there's sort
Speaker 2: of a second fourteen words, and you can use them both,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're super into it. The latter half
Speaker 2: is because the beauty of the white Aryan woman must
Speaker 2: not perish from the earth, So that's really beautiful stuff.
Speaker 1: David Lane was quite the wordsmith. But back to Chris Hassen.
Speaker 2: After spending a few days on his research into Harold Covington,
Speaker 2: he did another being search. He searched for formal introduction letter, example,
Speaker 2: and he read an article about how to write a letter,
Speaker 2: and then he drafted a letter to Harold Covington himself.
Speaker 3: Mister Covington, I am writing you regards to your ideas
Speaker 3: behind Northwest migration to date, I have read most of
Speaker 3: your books and briefly looked at your website. I am
Speaker 3: a longtime white nationalist, having been a skinhead thirty plus
Speaker 3: years ago. Before my time in the military, a.
Speaker 2: Longtime white nationalist and a former skinhead.
Speaker 4: That's quite a revelation. We'll get to that. The letter continues,
Speaker 4: My plans are upon retirement to move to the Northwest,
Speaker 4: most likely Idaho. While I fully support the idea of
Speaker 4: a white homeland, my friends who are still playing it
Speaker 4: being a skinhead at forty plus years old, say that
Speaker 4: you are an informant. That isn't neither here nor there.
Speaker 4: It is not an accusation. The person who told me
Speaker 4: this served a twelve year prison sentence and never rated
Speaker 4: me out, so I will not dispute him, nor will
Speaker 4: I accuse you.
Speaker 2: So that explains his multiple searches for Is Harold Covington
Speaker 2: an FBI informant? Someone had told him that, but he
Speaker 2: decided to write to Covington anyway, it seems. Hassen's attorney
Speaker 2: emphasizes that this was only an email draft. He wrote
Speaker 2: this on his computer, but he never actually sent this
Speaker 2: as an email. Harold Covington died in twenty eighteen, so
Speaker 2: he's sign around anymore to ask if he ever got
Speaker 2: a letter in the mail, But his mailing address is
Speaker 2: printed right there on the cover of the Northwest Front Handbook.
Speaker 2: So Hassen may have drafted the letter in his email
Speaker 2: and then printed it out at home or handwritten the
Speaker 2: final version and sent it in the mail.
Speaker 1: We'll never know.
Speaker 2: And in the letter, Hassen says he's reluctant to start
Speaker 2: or join any kind of movement because he's concerned that
Speaker 2: they're all just absolutely infested with informants, and he sees
Speaker 2: no value in public protests, writing.
Speaker 3: I never saw a reason for mass protests or wearing uniforms,
Speaker 3: marching around provoking people with swast, because et cetera. I
Speaker 3: was and am a man of action. You cannot change
Speaker 3: minds protesting like that. However, you can make change with
Speaker 3: a little focused violence.
Speaker 2: His Internet activity does show a casual interest in real
Speaker 2: estate in remote areas, looking on several occasions at listings
Speaker 2: for cabins in the mountains of North Carolina or Alaska,
Speaker 2: as well as looking at properties for sale in Montana, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and Idaho, but these searches were relatively few and far between.
Speaker 2: They seemed to interest him only sporadically. He would sort
Speaker 2: of check in on the idea every couple of months,
Speaker 2: compared to his daily obsession with in cell ideology, buying guns,
Speaker 2: studying mass murder, unders Brave's manifesto, and eventually building his
Speaker 2: target list. But before we move on, I want to
Speaker 2: revisit something he said in that letter, not the stuff
Speaker 2: about the White homeland. That's pretty straightforward. He said he
Speaker 2: hesitated to reach out to Covington because someone told him
Speaker 2: that Harold Covington was a snitch, and whoever told him
Speaker 2: this was someone he considered incredibly trustworthy, because apparently this
Speaker 2: guy did twelve years behind bars and never read it
Speaker 2: him out. The government alludes to this person and this
Speaker 2: underlying incident that put him in prison a couple of times,
Speaker 2: but it's all either terribly oblique or heavily redacted. And
Speaker 2: when I see a government reaction over something that I
Speaker 2: would like to read, I consider that a personal challenge.
Speaker 2: Someone has thrown down the gauntlet. I mean, ultimately, whatever
Speaker 2: happened one night in Hampton, Virginia in nineteen ninety five
Speaker 2: doesn't necessary have any bearing.
Speaker 1: On this case.
Speaker 2: I could have just moved on, but they blacked out
Speaker 2: those details, and I wanted them, and I couldn't let
Speaker 2: it go, so I figured it out anyway. On February eleventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, there was an incident. There's a little
Speaker 2: bit of a Raschamon situation going on here, with sort
Speaker 2: of competing and conflicting accounts. There's you know, self serving
Speaker 2: half truths, spotty reporting, faded memories.
Speaker 1: It's not a crystal clear picture, but.
Speaker 2: We do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that
Speaker 2: a skinhead named Stephen Casey Jones went to prison. He
Speaker 2: was convicted by a jury in Hampton, Virginia in September
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety five on two counts of the use
Speaker 2: of a firearm in the commission of a felony, attempted
Speaker 2: murder and maiming. He spent over a decade behind bars,
Speaker 2: serving at least part of his time just down the
Speaker 2: road from where I'm writing this now. Of course I
Speaker 2: can't find a thirty year old inmate roster. That's not possible.
Speaker 2: But I do have a Buckingham County record of a
Speaker 2: marriage license issued in two thousand and two and a
Speaker 2: photo of the happy couple.
Speaker 1: No one is smiling.
Speaker 2: He has one arm slung over the woman's shoulders and
Speaker 2: his other arm is supporting a little girl.
Speaker 1: She's sort of sitting in the crook.
Speaker 2: Of his elbow and the way that his hand is
Speaker 2: situated sort of pressing her into his chest to study her.
Speaker 2: You can read his knuckle tattoos, Her little pigtails and
Speaker 2: cute plaid romper seem so at odds with the letters
Speaker 2: h a te spread out over her torso on his fingers.
Speaker 2: It's hard to tell in this photo, but I don't
Speaker 2: think he had that big swastika tattoo on the side
Speaker 2: of his neck back then. But the question I set
Speaker 2: out to answer, and I'm getting to it, is how
Speaker 2: did this guy from out of state end up here?
Speaker 2: And how does stir her Hassen factor into this? Turning
Speaker 2: to the newspaper archives, we can start to lay out
Speaker 2: the story. That night in February of nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: a couple of skinheads rolled up to a house in
Speaker 2: buck Row Beach.
Speaker 1: It's a neighborhood in Hampton.
Speaker 2: They were looking for the homeowner's seventeen year old daughter,
Speaker 2: but it was her father who met them in the
Speaker 2: front yard. He told them to leave. They refused, and
Speaker 2: then they argued. Stephen Casey Jones reached into his jacket
Speaker 2: and pulled out a gun. He pointed the pistol at
Speaker 2: the girl's father, putting it right in his face and
Speaker 2: pulled the trigger, but it didn't fire, by the grace
Speaker 2: of God or pure luck, or because it was a cheap,
Speaker 2: poorly maintained weapons stored inside the sweaty pocket of a
Speaker 2: skinhead swastika covered jacket, the gun didn't fire, so instead
Speaker 2: he beat the man around the head with the gun,
Speaker 2: leaving him concussed, her really damaging his hearing and cutting
Speaker 2: open his head pretty bad. He needed ten stitches, and
Speaker 2: the police report says that Christopher Hassen was standing right
Speaker 2: there next to Jones when all of this went down.
Speaker 2: Newspaper accounts name only two of the men who were
Speaker 2: there that night, and they don't actually specify exactly how
Speaker 2: many of them there were, just that it was several
Speaker 2: or a group, you know, a group of skinheads. Stephen
Speaker 2: Casey Jones was there. Of course he was arrested, but
Speaker 2: there's no mention in the newspaper at all of Christopher Hassen. Now,
Speaker 2: I thought I knew the Hassen case pretty well topped
Speaker 2: to bottom from following it when it happened, But I'd
Speaker 2: never explored this aspect of the story before. And I
Speaker 2: tell you, when I found a thirty year old newspaper
Speaker 2: article naming the third man who is there that night
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: Who's the highlight of my wheat?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I squealed. I was so excited. I love a crossover event.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't believe these two paths had crossed so
Speaker 2: many years ago, because when I read that name, I
Speaker 2: didn't need to look him up. I already know exactly
Speaker 2: who Ryan Maziarka is. In twenty nineteen, the FBI paid
Speaker 2: Ryan Maziarka a visit. They wanted to get his version
Speaker 2: of events about this incident in nineteen ninety five. He
Speaker 2: confirmed to them that yes, Hassen had been a skinhead
Speaker 2: back then, but he didn't know him really very well.
Speaker 2: He said, on the day in question, he was hanging
Speaker 2: out with Jones and Hassen, and the three of them
Speaker 2: were drinking, and a few hours in they were pretty
Speaker 2: drunk and they.
Speaker 1: Ran out of alcohol.
Speaker 2: In his of events, someone suggested that they should go
Speaker 2: over to that girl's house because they knew there was
Speaker 2: alcohol there and she could.
Speaker 1: Get it for them.
Speaker 2: This doesn't quite match up with the accounts provided in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen by the girl in question. Who is now
Speaker 2: a grown woman and her mother, And it's very different
Speaker 2: from the story that was in the newspaper back when
Speaker 2: it happened.
Speaker 1: You see, Ryan.
Speaker 2: Maziarka has a history, and that history starts a few
Speaker 2: months before that night, in February of nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: The summer before that, in nineteen ninety four, I and
Speaker 2: a couple of his teenage skinhead pals had defaced a
Speaker 2: black church. They spray painted white power, you know, leave
Speaker 2: or else, and die n words in fluorescent paint all
Speaker 2: across the exterior walls of this church. One of the
Speaker 2: boys was still a minor, so he got a slap
Speaker 2: on the wrist. A second boy, Ricky Hunt, was initially charged,
Speaker 2: but his charges ended up getting dropped. It's not clear why.
Speaker 2: And in February of nineteen ninety five, Ryan Maziarka had
Speaker 2: just been convicted and he was facing the possibility of
Speaker 2: some real jail time under a new hate crime statute
Speaker 2: here in Virginia. They weren't looking for Booze that night.
Speaker 2: They were looking for Ricky. The teenage girl they were
Speaker 2: there to question was Ricky's girlfriend. In her statement to
Speaker 2: the FBI in twenty nineteen, she said they believed they
Speaker 2: were looking for Ricky that night, quote because they wanted
Speaker 2: to cause trouble end quote. Newspaper articles from the time
Speaker 2: stayed outright that Maziarka was looking for Ricky because he
Speaker 2: wanted to fight him. Maziarka ended up getting two years
Speaker 2: for the church vandalism. He caught a conviction that same
Speaker 2: year for having a sawed off shotgun, but for some reason,
Speaker 2: they let him slide on that one. He didn't get
Speaker 2: any additional jail time for it. And in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven he shows up in the local paper again. So
Speaker 2: he's fresh out of jail and he needed to register
Speaker 2: his car. You know, there's a lot of errands you
Speaker 2: just can't run when you're locked up, and going to
Speaker 2: the DMV as one of them. So it's nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven and he's getting a new license plate. Vanity plates
Speaker 2: are huge in Virginia. I'm not really sure why, but
Speaker 2: we have more of them than any other state. I
Speaker 2: think it's because they're like a little cheaper here than
Speaker 2: they are in some other states. I think some states
Speaker 2: charge a lot of money for it, and it's a
Speaker 2: pretty nominal fee here, but we just love to pay
Speaker 2: the DMV a little extra money to put some kind
Speaker 2: of personal message in the back of our cars, and
Speaker 2: Ryan Maziarka the personal message he wanted to drive around
Speaker 2: town with was zyklon B. He told the newspaper that
Speaker 2: he enjoyed the attention the plate got, saying, quote, I
Speaker 2: want people to ask me what it is to tell
Speaker 2: them it's a big lie.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 2: Zyklon B is, of course, the side gas used in
Speaker 2: the Nazi death camps during the Holocaust, an event Maziarka
Speaker 2: says he does not believe happened. After a decision by
Speaker 2: the State Department of Motor Vehicles to pull the plate
Speaker 2: for offensive content, Maziarka said.
Speaker 3: When I see displays of black pride or black power,
Speaker 3: I don't go running to my senator, But as soon
Speaker 3: as I get something that represents my race's dominating spirit,
Speaker 3: I get put down for it. Apparently I lost all
Speaker 3: civil rights in this community.
Speaker 2: He was ultimately unable to return the plates to the DMV.
Speaker 2: Somebody stole them off the back of his car while
Speaker 2: he was at work, and the FBI interview with the
Speaker 2: wife of the man who was pistol whipped back in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five reveals the presence of a fourth person
Speaker 2: who was there that night. She too confirmed that Christopher
Speaker 2: Hassen and Stephen Jones were skinheads, but in her interview
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen she mentions the presence of a woman,
Speaker 2: the girlfriend of someone whose name is redacted. These reports
Speaker 2: are all heavily redacted, but they are typed in monospace font,
Speaker 2: which means every character has an identical width. So when
Speaker 2: you're typing on your computer, you're almost certainly using a
Speaker 2: variable width font. So the letter I, for example, takes
Speaker 2: up less width on the page than the letter M,
Speaker 2: so different letters have different widths. But in a monospace font,
Speaker 2: every character takes up the same amount of space, so
Speaker 2: you can more or less tell how many characters are
Speaker 2: being obscured by a redaction. And so in this instance,
Speaker 2: the reaction here is too long to say Jones and
Speaker 2: too short for it to say Stephen Jones, and Hassen's
Speaker 2: name isn't redacted in the documents, his name is just there,
Speaker 2: so that just leaves masi arca. So maybe the woman
Speaker 2: in the van was Ryan's girlfriend, whoever she was, though
Speaker 2: she seemed to be calling the shots, according to what
Speaker 2: the victim's wife told the FBI years later, when the
Speaker 2: woman in the van demanded they all get back in
Speaker 2: the vehicle to leave, hasn't obeyed. The witness recalled hearing
Speaker 2: him say yes, ma'am as he climbed back in. It's
Speaker 2: hard to pin down exactly if Maziarka was already dating
Speaker 2: back then the woman who has been his common law
Speaker 2: wife for decades now, but by two thousand they were
Speaker 2: both contributors to Resistance. The quarterly magazine for Resistance records
Speaker 2: a white power music label, and by two thousand the
Speaker 2: company had been acquired by National Alliance under William Luther Pierce,
Speaker 2: and the magazine's staff and most of its guest contributors
Speaker 2: were affiliated with the group. Shortly after William Luther Piers
Speaker 2: died in two thousand and two. Corporate pilings reflect a
Speaker 2: series of changes to the Neo Nazi organization's leadership structure.
Speaker 2: I got into a little bit of that period of
Speaker 2: power struggle in the episode about Kevin Alfred Strom. In
Speaker 2: paperwork filed with the Virginia Corporation Commission in two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, Ryan Maziarka is listed as National Alliance's treasurer,
Speaker 2: and he remained on the board until he was pushed
Speaker 2: out in a lawsuit in twenty fourteen. His wife, Angela Forbes,
Speaker 2: had been handling orders for the skinhead street wear you
Speaker 2: could buy from an ad in Resistance magazine since two
Speaker 2: thousand and By two thousand and two, the ad copy
Speaker 2: directed the buyer to make out the money orders to
Speaker 2: her personally, not to National Alliance. I guess what I'm
Speaker 2: getting at here is I don't think he was telling
Speaker 2: the truth.
Speaker 1: When the FBI stopped by in twenty.
Speaker 2: Nineteen, he admitted to hanging out with Hassen a bit
Speaker 2: back in the mid nineties, but he said it was
Speaker 2: only ever about their shared love of skinhead music. He
Speaker 2: says Hassen was always going on about Hitler, but he
Speaker 2: personally didn't really get into that fascist stuff. I know,
Speaker 2: it probably seems weird to spend this much time trying
Speaker 2: to dissect this incident from nineteen ninety five. That's not
Speaker 2: what Christopher Hassen is charged with. It was thirty years ago.
Speaker 2: A lot of you probably weren't even born then. But
Speaker 2: the FBI was really interested in it. They sent agents
Speaker 2: out to talk to a lot of people about this,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what happened that night, a month
Speaker 2: after Hassen was arrested, and agent spoke with the assailant himself,
Speaker 2: Stephen Casey Jones. And immediately after that interview, Jones contacted
Speaker 2: a member of Hassen's family to say he'd been visited
Speaker 2: by an agent. And we know this because that unnamed
Speaker 2: family member in turn called Hassen immediately to tell him
Speaker 2: about the phone call they had gotten from Stephen Casey Jones,
Speaker 2: and jail phone calls are recorded. When Hassen heard that
Speaker 2: the FBI had spoken to Jones about him, his reply was,
Speaker 2: oh shit. Hassen was very concerned that Jones would think
Speaker 2: that he'd been talking, but.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say about what.
Speaker 2: He was worried the government would offer him a deal
Speaker 2: in exchange for information, saying he thought the FBI quote
Speaker 2: would try to get me to inform. I wouldn't do that,
Speaker 2: but I'm just saying I got this thing in my
Speaker 2: head where they'd offer me. But he doesn't finish the thought.
Speaker 2: The person on the other end of the line interrupted
Speaker 2: him before he could finish, saying, quote, there's nothing there
Speaker 2: to inform and they could never prove anything, and I
Speaker 2: kind of doubt that anyone was worried the FBI was
Speaker 2: interested in this thirty year old closed case involving non
Speaker 2: life threatening injuries to a victim who has since passed
Speaker 2: away of unrelated causes. Right, they're not talking about this
Speaker 2: thing from nineteen ninety five. Stephen Jones was convicted and
Speaker 2: he served his time. He can't be tried for that again.
Speaker 2: It's over. That can't be what Hassen was worried they'd
Speaker 2: make him talk about. So this raises there's a lot
Speaker 2: more questions than it answers.
Speaker 1: And it turns out it's pretty.
Speaker 2: Hard to track down the exact identity of a guy
Speaker 2: named Steve Jones who was either twenty or twenty one
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety five and was from either Tulsa or Atlanta,
Speaker 2: depending on the newspaper you're reading, but it can be.
Speaker 1: Done in these days.
Speaker 2: Stephen Jones is living in Missouri and is a member
Speaker 2: of an outlaw motorcycle gang called the Sons of Silence.
Speaker 2: Normally I would couch something like that and allegedly or ostensibly,
Speaker 2: but I know Stephen Jones is in the Sons of
Speaker 2: Silence because the Missouri chapter of the Sons of Silence
Speaker 2: has a clubhouse in Saint Louis, and that clubhouse is
Speaker 2: owned by a corporate entity that the state of Missouri
Speaker 2: dissolved in twenty twenty two because they didn't keep up
Speaker 2: with their annual paperwork. But the last time they did
Speaker 2: file paperwork, that corporate entity, Bad Influence, Inc. Listed A
Speaker 2: Stephen Casey Jones as it's president. Photos of Jones taken
Speaker 2: more recently than the decades old picture of him in
Speaker 2: his Virginia prison jumpsuit show an older Stephen Jones, bearded
Speaker 2: now and heavy set. He's usually wearing his leather motorcycle
Speaker 2: vest with a regional enforcer patch just above his one
Speaker 2: percenter patch, a designation used by motorcycle clubs that embrace criminality.
Speaker 2: The line work is blown out now. It's faded and
Speaker 2: muddied by the years, but you can still just make
Speaker 2: out hate spelled across his knuckles. The Department of Justice
Speaker 2: has listed these Sons of Silence as a criminal organization
Speaker 2: for at least twenty years. The group's official logo is
Speaker 2: a bald eagle on top of a stylized letter A,
Speaker 2: which looks remarkably like the Ennheuser Busch A. But I
Speaker 2: don't know if the beer company's ever considered suing over it.
Speaker 2: But you also see a different logo sometimes SS bolts
Speaker 2: with sp LSOs written down the lightning bolts that stands
Speaker 2: for support your local Sons of Silence. One recent photo
Speaker 2: of Jones with his wife shows her sporting some Sons
Speaker 2: of Silence merchandise. It's a gray T shirt with the
Speaker 2: outline of the state of Missouri with s y l
Speaker 2: SOOS written inside and next to the image in this
Speaker 2: sort of Germanic looking antique style font The shirt reads
Speaker 2: mine eira heist troya. My honor is loyalty. That was
Speaker 2: the slogan of the SS.
Speaker 1: But whatever it was.
Speaker 2: That Hassen was worried the government was going to ask
Speaker 2: him about, he clearly wasn't willing or able to parlay
Speaker 2: it into a deal. He ultimately put to two counts
Speaker 2: of owning unregistered silencers, one count of possession of a
Speaker 2: firearm while unlawfully using controlled substances, and one count of
Speaker 2: possession of a controlled substance, and because he pled out
Speaker 2: rather than take the case to trial, everything we know
Speaker 2: about the case against Christopher Hassen comes from those initial
Speaker 2: detention hearings and the sentencing memos filed after the plea.
Speaker 2: There is this myth that the courts are some kind
Speaker 2: of final arbiter of the truth. What the court determines
Speaker 2: to be fact simply is now legally true. Right, if
Speaker 2: someone is acquitted of a crime, it can be slanderous
Speaker 2: and defamatory to say otherwise, even if you were the
Speaker 2: victim of that crime and your own recollection is at
Speaker 2: odds with the verdict. But there's a difference, I think,
Speaker 2: between arriving at the truth and decreeing it, And I
Speaker 2: would argue that the courts are not really equipped to
Speaker 2: locate the truth a just rule on which version presented
Speaker 2: to them is going to be legally true from now on.
Speaker 2: So at this stage in the case, both the defense
Speaker 2: and the prosecution right these long memos explaining to the
Speaker 2: judge why the defendant deserves a particular sentence. He's legally guilty.
Speaker 2: Now the court accepted his plea, so that's the truth.
Speaker 2: He's guilty, But what kind of punishment he deserves requires
Speaker 2: the court to consider these competing truths. Was he a
Speaker 2: loving family man who left his youthful indiscretions in the
Speaker 2: past decades ago, a responsible gun owner, who just had
Speaker 2: a little trouble with pills. Or was he an avowed,
Speaker 2: lifelong white supremacist who, after years of study and stockpiling weapons,
Speaker 2: was in the early stages of preparing for a massive
Speaker 2: terrorist attack. Is there room for something in between? The
Speaker 2: Defense paints Hassen as the former. Obviously, the memo begins
Speaker 2: with a bit of biography. Hassen served in the Marine
Speaker 2: Corps from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety four, when
Speaker 2: he was honorably discharged after several overseas deployments during the
Speaker 2: First Gulf War. He struggled to adapt to civilian life
Speaker 2: and enlisted in the Army National Guard in Virginia barely
Speaker 2: six months after leaving the Marines. But this memo skips
Speaker 2: right to his enlistment in the Coast Guard in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, and it leaves out the fact that he
Speaker 2: transferred from the Virginia National Guard to Arizona in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five. He told the psychologists who examine him in
Speaker 2: this case that he moved to Arizona in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five so he couldn't be made to testify against Stephen
Speaker 2: Casey Jones. The Defense memo and many of the letters
Speaker 2: written by his friends and family mentioned that he had
Speaker 2: no issues working with colleagues of all races, and mentioning
Speaker 2: a particular black coworker he befriended in two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: The memo waxes poetic for an entire page about his
Speaker 2: loving and supportive relationship with his children, both grown by
Speaker 2: now and with military careers their own. His children shared
Speaker 2: anecdotes about fond childhood memories of their father's love and
Speaker 2: care for them buried deep in the report prepared by
Speaker 2: the defensive psychologists, though there is a passing mention that
Speaker 2: his daughter's decision to marry in secret caused immense strain
Speaker 2: in the family. In her letter, his daughter writes that
Speaker 2: Hassen met his grandson for the first time when she
Speaker 2: brought the boy to the jail for a visit. There's
Speaker 2: no mention in this memo, but the man his daughter
Speaker 2: married in secret is not white. Was this on his
Speaker 2: mind when he typed best N word killing gun into
Speaker 2: a search engine? What was he thinking about when he
Speaker 2: googled I think my wife is an N word lover.
Speaker 2: The defense says that Hassen's abuse of tramadol got out
Speaker 2: of hand after he moved to Maryland in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: he'd gotten a promotion and moved from North Carolina to
Speaker 2: accept a position in D at Coast Guard Headquarters. He
Speaker 2: and his wife are going through a little bit of
Speaker 2: a rocky period, having trouble adjusting to their kids leaving home,
Speaker 2: and they separated for a while. She didn't join him
Speaker 2: in DC right away, and they reconciled after about a year,
Speaker 2: but they spent that first year he was in DC apart.
Speaker 2: The memo says he was lonely. He was having a
Speaker 2: hard time adjusting to city life, and he hated commuting.
Speaker 2: He hated sitting at a desk all day, and so
Speaker 2: he became increasingly dependent on a drug he'd been abusing
Speaker 2: since twenty twelve. His wife had a prescription for tramadol
Speaker 2: for a chronic pain condition, but now he was turning
Speaker 2: to illegal online pharmacies to buy hundreds of pills at
Speaker 2: a time. The defense hired a medical doctor who diagnosed
Speaker 2: Hassen with opioid use disorder and offered an expert opinion
Speaker 2: that such a condition can cause serious mood disturbances, which
Speaker 2: is true right But in the memo, the attorney stops
Speaker 2: just short of outright claiming that being addicted to opiates
Speaker 2: makes you google where do most Senators live while you're
Speaker 2: shopping for rifle scopes. They do make some valid points
Speaker 2: about the fact that it isn't that weird to own
Speaker 2: a ton of guns.
Speaker 1: A lot of people do.
Speaker 2: And a thousand bullets might sound like a lot of
Speaker 2: bullets if you're not a gun owner, but a serious
Speaker 2: hobbyist could blow through that in a day at the range.
Speaker 2: But overall, the defense sentencing memo rests heavily on this
Speaker 2: very narrow angle of the truth. Friends and relatives and
Speaker 2: neighbors and co workers sent letters of support saying that's
Speaker 2: just not the Chris Hassen I know. One coworker wrote,
Speaker 2: unless the definition of white nationalists has changed, Christopher Hassen
Speaker 2: is not one, noting that he had worked successfully with
Speaker 2: black and Hispanic colleagues for years. There was even a
Speaker 2: letter submitted that was written by a man who'd shared
Speaker 2: a cell block with Hassen while he was in pre
Speaker 2: trial attention. The handwritten letter said he'd gotten to know
Speaker 2: Hassen over the last few months and he had no
Speaker 2: issues with anyone on their quad, but they played chess together,
Speaker 2: work out and share food, and the man adds helpfully
Speaker 2: that as a black person, he'd never felt that Chris
Speaker 2: was prejudiced in any way. There were multiple letters from
Speaker 2: priests and lay ministers who'd been meeting with Hassen in jail.
Speaker 2: Apparently he was Catholic again, despite his exploration of Christian
Speaker 2: identity Asatru and a couple of months where he was
Speaker 2: really seriously considering converting to Russian Orthodoxy, but in jail
Speaker 2: he's Catholic again. He confessed and received communion, and a
Speaker 2: priest wrote to the judge that they'd been meeting weekly
Speaker 2: and found Hassen's contrition to be genuine. The defense asked
Speaker 2: for a sentence of time served, immediate release in three
Speaker 2: years of supervision. He just needs treatment. He was never
Speaker 2: going to hurt anyone. The government did something very different.
Speaker 2: In mind, the bulk of the material produced in this
Speaker 2: case outlining his online activity was filed alongside this sentencing memorandum,
Speaker 2: and with everything on the table, a very different picture
Speaker 2: starts to form. In early twenty seventeen, Hassen began obsessively
Speaker 2: studying unders Bravi's manifesto. It's a sprawling fifteen hundred pages,
Speaker 2: part diary, part manual. There's big chunks of plagiarized content
Speaker 2: from other sources.
Speaker 1: It's not great. I mean it's not.
Speaker 2: Great for a lot of reasons. Unders Bravic did murder
Speaker 2: seventy seven people, and most of them were children. But
Speaker 2: the Manifesto was also just kind of bad. But Hassen
Speaker 2: would spend hours at a time, some days reading and
Speaker 2: rereading passages of the Manifesto, and then he'd get online
Speaker 2: and research topics related to those passages. And while the
Speaker 2: defense was telling the truth and they argued that he'd
Speaker 2: always been a gun enthusiast, his purchasing history shows a
Speaker 2: distinct change in his spending habits after he became obsessed
Speaker 2: with the Manifesto.
Speaker 1: In just two years, he.
Speaker 2: Spent over twelve thousand dollars on holsters, knives, magazines, ammunition, handguards,
Speaker 2: camping supplies, survival foods, steel body armour plates, plate carriers,
Speaker 2: tactical vests and pouches, firearm repair kits, a firearm barrel,
Speaker 2: firing pins, and a thirteen hundred dollars rifle scope. And
Speaker 2: that twelve thousand dollars does not include the money he
Speaker 2: spent on guns themselves. This was accessories, and As was
Speaker 2: already a proficient marksman, but now he's developing an interest
Speaker 2: in long range shooting. He bought a sniper rifle. He
Speaker 2: took it to the shooting range and recorded the rifle's
Speaker 2: performance in a little notebook after he read online that
Speaker 2: snipers use a paper log called a sniper data book
Speaker 2: to document the performance of a particular rifle under different conditions,
Speaker 2: things like temperature, wind, elevation, and anything else that would
Speaker 2: affect the external ballistics of a bullet. He searched for
Speaker 2: information on subsonic rounds, ammunition that doesn't break the sound barrier.
Speaker 2: Sometimes snipers use it because it makes it more difficult
Speaker 2: to determine where the shots are coming from. He searched
Speaker 2: for information about frangible rounds, ammunition that breaks apart on
Speaker 2: impact that can make it impossible for law enforcement to
Speaker 2: learn anything about the gun it was fired from. And
Speaker 2: he bought all the materials he would need to make
Speaker 2: silencers at home, and then he did. And all this
Speaker 2: time he's obsessively searching for things like how to rid
Speaker 2: the US of Jews, how can whites rise up? How
Speaker 2: to bring down US government? And he's reading the unibomber's Manifesto,
Speaker 2: and he's reading the book written by Eric Rudolph. You
Speaker 2: probably know Eric Rudolph as the nineteen ninety six Olympics bomber,
Speaker 2: but he was also a Christian identity extremist who bombed
Speaker 2: two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar.
Speaker 3: I.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Hassen is going deeper and deeper down this rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: He's taking more and more more tramadol and buying more
Speaker 2: and more guns, and he knows he needs to get
Speaker 2: off the drugs. Not for his family or for his
Speaker 2: job or his health. No, he's buying fake urine online
Speaker 2: to beat the PIS tests at work. He doesn't care
Speaker 2: about that, And I don't know. Maybe he was thinking
Speaker 2: about his family, but that's not what's on his computer.
Speaker 2: On his computer, it's clear that he wanted to get
Speaker 2: off the drugs to clear his mind so he could
Speaker 2: focus on preparing his attack, And in January of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: it was starting to look like he might be working
Speaker 2: up to it. He'd been reading unders Braby's Manifesto like
Speaker 2: it was the Bible for years now. Analysis of his
Speaker 2: computer activity showed that he returned to it often and
Speaker 2: would supplement his reading with additional research on the topics
Speaker 2: it contained. And on January third, twenty nineteen, he opened
Speaker 2: the Manifesto on his computer and he searched the text
Speaker 2: for the term category A to read about passage where
Speaker 2: Brewick lays out the three categories of what he calls traders,
Speaker 2: with Category A being the most influential and highest profile targets.
Speaker 1: Now I've got.
Speaker 2: My own copy of the Manifesto and I searched for
Speaker 2: Category A. There are at least ninety pages spread across
Speaker 2: this fifteen hundred page document in which Brewick expounds on
Speaker 2: his theories about category A, B, and C traders to
Speaker 2: the white race or whatever. But to be honest, I'm
Speaker 2: not a pilled out white supremacist, so it's just not
Speaker 2: interesting to me. But Hassen seemed persuaded by Breveck's rambling,
Speaker 2: and he started making a spreadsheet, and, consistent with Brevieck's
Speaker 2: advice to target politicians, journalists, Marxists, and nonprofit leaders, he
Speaker 2: filled in names on his Excel spreadsheet. He lists some
Speaker 2: journalists and political commentators MSNBC's Chris Hayes and Ari Melber,
Speaker 2: CNN's Don Lemon and Van Jones. One cell just says
Speaker 2: Joey in all caps, but based on corresponding Internet activity,
Speaker 2: he'd been googling Joe Scarborough and then he searched for
Speaker 2: where is morning Joe filmed? And then he found Joe
Speaker 2: Scarborough's home address, and then he spent about thirty five
Speaker 2: seconds just sort of zooming in and out on the
Speaker 2: satellite image of the house in Google Maps. For politicians,
Speaker 2: he selected a wide variety of senators and congressional representatives.
Speaker 2: He wrote down Helosi and Schumer, though he spelled it wrong.
Speaker 2: Some targets just got crude nicknames, like Senator Bloomin Jew,
Speaker 2: which seems to refer to Senator Richard Blumenthal. He was
Speaker 2: also considering targets like ilan Omar, Alexandria Casio Cortez, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 2: Maxine Waters, Kristin Gillibrand, and DSA like he just wrote
Speaker 2: the acronym, presumably referring to the organization Democratic Socialist of America.
Speaker 2: He would later find personal information for two female members
Speaker 2: of the organization's national political Committee, and that same week
Speaker 2: he queried the Brevic Manifesto again, this time for the
Speaker 2: word steroids. Hassen's computer records show he made quite a
Speaker 2: few online purchases for steroids, human growth hormone, and testosterone,
Speaker 2: and they found a lot of human growth hormone in
Speaker 2: his apartment. A blood test performed when he was arrested, though,
Speaker 2: showed no trace of anything except the tramadol. In Brevick's manifesto,
Speaker 2: he recommends beginning a six week steroid cycle once you've
Speaker 2: got all your supplies together and you're finished planning your
Speaker 2: attack and you're entering.
Speaker 1: The preparation phase.
Speaker 2: The idea is to ensure that you are maximally aggressive
Speaker 2: when it's time to strike.
Speaker 1: But he never did. Did he Hassen didn't.
Speaker 2: He was arrested, charged and convicted of a crime that
Speaker 2: really just kind of feels like a technicality. It's legal
Speaker 2: to have a silencer in most states. He just didn't
Speaker 2: do the paperwork. He owned those guns legally, He just
Speaker 2: lied on a form about his drug use. Ordering thousands
Speaker 2: of prescription pain pills from a Mexican pharmacy over the
Speaker 2: internet is definitely illegal, no argument there. But if that's
Speaker 2: all that was going on, then he needs rehab prison.
Speaker 2: And if this case had gone to trial, they almost
Speaker 2: certainly would not have been allowed to admit most of
Speaker 2: this material. It's inflammatory and prejudicial and not directly germane
Speaker 2: to the actual criminal charges here. The defense was right
Speaker 2: about that. Legally speaking, a jury would not have seen
Speaker 2: all of this, but a judge is allowed to consider
Speaker 2: uncharged conduct at sentencing. In that sentencing, the government did
Speaker 2: something a little unusual. Hassen is obviously not charged with
Speaker 2: any crime of terrorism. You didn't derail a train or
Speaker 2: join isis or you know, terrorist stuff. But there's something
Speaker 2: called a terrorism sentencing enhancement.
Speaker 1: So this is not a criminal charge.
Speaker 2: This is just something you sort of put on top
Speaker 2: of the sentencing. You know, it sprinkles on top of
Speaker 2: your federal sentence. And typically you see this used in
Speaker 2: cases that actually include a charge of terrorism related crime.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, but in this case, the prosecutor argued
Speaker 2: that terrorism isn't really as well defined in the code
Speaker 2: as you might think, writing that there is actually no
Speaker 2: requirement that the defendant have committed a federal crime of terrorism,
Speaker 2: just that the conduct was calculated to influence or affect
Speaker 2: the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to
Speaker 2: retaliate against governmental conduct.
Speaker 1: All that is required is that the crime of conviction
Speaker 1: or relevant conduct involved.
Speaker 2: Or was intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.
Speaker 2: So what he's saying here is that you don't actually
Speaker 2: have to charge or convict someone on a terrorism related
Speaker 2: crime to use the terrorism sentencing enhancement. All that is
Speaker 2: required is that some relevant conduct here was intended to
Speaker 2: promote a crime of terrorism. And that feels so thin
Speaker 2: to me. That feels so tangential. It doesn't feel good.
Speaker 2: But they argue that the conviction on the counts related
Speaker 2: to those illegal silencers are inextricably linked to his searches
Speaker 2: for things like most liberal senator? Where do most senators
Speaker 2: live in DC? Do senators have Secret Service protection? Are
Speaker 2: Supreme Court justices protected? All while he's training to use
Speaker 2: a sniper rifle and making his own silencers. So they're
Speaker 2: saying that that that is relevant conduct here. That's not
Speaker 2: what he was charged with, that's not what he was
Speaker 2: convicted of, But there's relevant conduct here that has terrorism vibes.
Speaker 2: This is a vibes based enhancement. Ultimately, Judge Hazel was
Speaker 2: unmoved by the four hours of testimony from a psychologist
Speaker 2: hired by the defense to opine that Hassen was never
Speaker 2: really going to hurt anybody. Hazel said from the bench
Speaker 2: that zooming in and out on a satellite image of
Speaker 2: someone's house feels like pretty convincing evidence that you are
Speaker 2: targeting particular individuals, and said that quote, there is little
Speaker 2: doubt in the court's mind that the defendant was planning
Speaker 2: to carry out a mass casualty assault in furtherance of
Speaker 2: his white nationalist views. Now forgive me, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: stomach the thirty dollars price tag for the official transcript
Speaker 2: of that sentencing hearing, so I'm relying on my own
Speaker 2: handwritten notes here. But before Judge Hazel denounced Hassen's thirteen
Speaker 2: year sentence, he made it clear that he was quote
Speaker 2: not seeking to protect the public from his views end quote,
Speaker 2: but from his actions, adding that the defendant is not
Speaker 2: alone in those views, that white supremacist ideology is deeply
Speaker 2: embedded in the soul of this country.
Speaker 1: Quote. The seeds were.
Speaker 2: Planted in sixteen nineteen, and those seeds have grown and
Speaker 2: produced dangerous fruit. Mister Hassen is but one leaf that
Speaker 2: has fallen from that tree. Maybe one day, we as
Speaker 2: a nation will do the hard work of digging up
Speaker 2: the roots of that tree. This sentence is in no
Speaker 2: way intended to be an attempt at that work. It
Speaker 2: simply addresses the conduct of one man end quote. What
Speaker 2: makes me so uneasy in this case is that do
Speaker 2: I think that Christopher Hassen belongs in jail to the
Speaker 2: extent that anyone belongs in jail? Like as sort of
Speaker 2: my own views on prison abolition aside that you know,
Speaker 2: if anyone belongs in jail, then yeah, he seemed like
Speaker 2: he was planning something, right, But the government was clearly
Speaker 2: asking the judge to sentence Hasten for something they didn't
Speaker 2: think they could actually charge him for because.
Speaker 1: They didn't try.
Speaker 2: And if I'm being really honest with myself, that's not
Speaker 2: how it's supposed to work. Technically, he was convicted and
Speaker 2: sentenced for these concrete criminal actions and given sentences that
Speaker 2: technically fall within the guideline range for those crimes, although
Speaker 2: with this dubious terrorism enhancement tacked on, they didn't actually
Speaker 2: charge convict or sentence him for his thoughts and ideas
Speaker 2: and beliefs, right.
Speaker 1: But they kind of did. And how are you supposed
Speaker 1: to feel about that?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you have to sit with that, because
Speaker 2: the alternative was waiting right, keep that pole camera up
Speaker 2: outside his house, keep logging his keystrokes at work, put
Speaker 2: a flag on his name so you know if he
Speaker 2: buys an airline ticket or gets pulled over, just watch
Speaker 2: and wait and hope that you're watching close enough that
Speaker 2: you can intercept him sometime after he sets up the
Speaker 2: sniper's nest, but before he opens fire.
Speaker 1: And is that good enough? Can we find peace.
Speaker 2: With the idea that technically he went away on a
Speaker 2: technicality because they couldn't charge him with what they really
Speaker 2: thought he was doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I know I promised you something a little lighter instead,
Speaker 2: I've left you with this ethical quandary about the nature
Speaker 2: and purpose of our justice system. But I think I
Speaker 2: remember this case being funny because I just thought it
Speaker 2: was outrageously silly, how specific the documentation was that he
Speaker 2: was using bing to search for information on how to
Speaker 2: make IEDs and also how to write a letter? Does
Speaker 2: anyone use bing? But my favorite Christopher Hassen case fact
Speaker 2: has got to be this one. It's a callback to
Speaker 2: the first episode of this show. Actually on the spreadsheet
Speaker 2: where he was tracking hysteroid cycles. He had the top
Speaker 2: row of the spreadsheet merged into one continuous cell all
Speaker 2: across the top of the sheet, So underneath it's all
Speaker 2: this technical nonsense about dosages and timing and things like
Speaker 2: a reminder to take a shotgun of one thousand units
Speaker 2: of E three D in the last three weeks of
Speaker 2: cycle to prep your testes. I don't know what you're
Speaker 2: preparing your testicles for. That's not my business. But at
Speaker 2: the top of the spreadsheet it says, quote to learn
Speaker 2: who rules over you, simply find out who you were
Speaker 2: not allowed to criticize. And that is the only place
Speaker 2: I have ever found that quote in a federal court filing,
Speaker 2: and I spent some time looking, you know, I did.
Speaker 2: I can't find this in any other federal criminal case.
Speaker 2: It's not clear if Hassen knew who really said that,
Speaker 2: or if he was suffering from the common but mistaken
Speaker 2: idea that it was Voltaire. But given his other online activity,
Speaker 2: I think he probably knew it was a Nazi pedophile.
Speaker 2: And that's all I have for you about Christopher Hassen.
Speaker 2: But our journey through his life and internet history did
Speaker 2: introduce some exciting new characters. In the Weird Little Guy's
Speaker 2: extended universe. I hope you'll stick around to find out
Speaker 2: more about the man who was too racist for Rhodesha,
Speaker 2: or the teenage skinhead who ended up in charge of
Speaker 2: the black metal label that funded a Nazi hate group
Speaker 2: for years.
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys ziproduction of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: from quot Zone
Speaker 2: Media, visit our website polezonmedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 2: out on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.