Speaker 1: Cool Zone media. As the sun began to set on
Speaker 1: a cool fall evening in late September nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: TV reporter Harold Spiegel was waiting nervously at the edge
Speaker 1: of the woods outside of a small town about an
Speaker 1: hour south of the nation's capital. The reporter was waiting
Speaker 1: for more information about their destination. That evening. He'd received
Speaker 1: a tip about an event and managed to secure a
Speaker 1: meeting with some of the men who would be attending.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't tell him exactly where they were going, but
Speaker 1: after a short discussion in a parking lot, they allowed
Speaker 1: him to follow along. He drove deeper and deeper into
Speaker 1: the countryside for half an hour before the men parked
Speaker 1: at the edge of the forest and got out. More
Speaker 1: men arrived. Some were wearing white robes and pointed hoods,
Speaker 1: the traditional garb of members of the ku Klux. Others
Speaker 1: wore motorcycle jackets with SS patches on them and unfrilled
Speaker 1: flags and banners with swastivas. And then he followed them
Speaker 1: into the woods. The reporter, alone in the woods with
Speaker 1: a few dozen Nazis and clansmen, knew what these men
Speaker 1: were capable of. A nearby town was in the throes
Speaker 1: of a week long pogrom, with gangs of young Neo
Speaker 1: Nazis laying siege to apartment buildings that were home to
Speaker 1: Vietnamese and Mozambique immigrants. In a clearing, the men surrounded
Speaker 1: a large wooden cross as it burned. A man in
Speaker 1: a leather jacket adorned with SS ruins stood in the
Speaker 1: center of the circle and shouted, seeghaile I come to
Speaker 1: you from America. The cross was burning an hour south
Speaker 1: of the nation's capital, but the capitol in question was Berlin, Missouri.
Speaker 1: Clansmen Dennis Mahon was at the height of his career
Speaker 1: as a professional racist. He had formed his own clan group,
Speaker 1: the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and he
Speaker 1: was Tom Metzker's right hand man in the White Aryan Resistance.
Speaker 1: His trip to Germany promised to strengthen international ties between
Speaker 1: hate groups in Europe and the United States. From the
Speaker 1: time he joined the Klan in nineteen eighty, his life
Speaker 1: story is inextricably intertwined with the history of the white
Speaker 1: power movement. He made summer time visits to the Aryan
Speaker 1: Nation's compound in Idaho. He ran paramilitary training drills on
Speaker 1: a compound in Missouri. He was hauled into court to
Speaker 1: testifying grand jury proceedings about the Oklahoma City bombing after
Speaker 1: a former girlfriend accused him of helping plan the attack,
Speaker 1: and by the time the FBI hired an exotic dancer
Speaker 1: to seduce him into confessing to mailing a pipe bomb
Speaker 1: to a public library in Scottsdale, Arizona, he was an
Speaker 1: old man that the movement had mostly forgotten. I'm Molly Conger.
Speaker 1: This it's weird, little guys. Last week, I said, I
Speaker 1: wasn't sure if Dennis Mahon ever did try his hand
Speaker 1: at producing his own public access television program. He was
Speaker 1: just a brief side character and a larger story about
Speaker 1: Tom Metzger, a klansman and the founder of the white
Speaker 1: supremacist group White Arean Resistance. Metzger had received a generous
Speaker 1: gift in nineteen eighty four three hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: cash from the members of the Order proceeds from their
Speaker 1: armored car robbery earlier that year, and almost immediately after
Speaker 1: Metzger got this massive cash and fusion, he set to
Speaker 1: work producing a virulin racist television show called Race and Reason.
Speaker 1: His goal was to get his racist propaganda into the
Speaker 1: home of every working class white man in America by
Speaker 1: way of public access TV. Across the country, Metzger supporters
Speaker 1: dutifully ordered VHS tapes of the show and applied to
Speaker 1: broadcast it on their own local channels. Others took up
Speaker 1: the cause and produced their own original versions based on
Speaker 1: Metzger's idea. One of the men who did both was
Speaker 1: a klansman in Missouri named Dennis Mahon. I didn't set
Speaker 1: out to write about Dennis this week. I had something
Speaker 1: else in mind, but I asked myself a question last week.
Speaker 1: Did Dennis ever actually produce a show called Clansis City Cable.
Speaker 1: We didn't have time last week for another tangent to
Speaker 1: find out about this. I was following Tom Metzger and
Speaker 1: the Stolen money, but I just can't leave an itch
Speaker 1: like that unscratched. And it turns out he did and
Speaker 1: I found it. A single fifteen minute episode of Klansas
Speaker 1: City Cable aired in Kansas City, Missouri, on April third,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: We're going to discuss Klansas City Cable, which took two
Speaker 2: and a half years, a sweat blood persecution, getting five
Speaker 2: more jobs, getting harassed by fence, bomb shot at, assaulted
Speaker 2: death threats constantly. Well we've succeeded.
Speaker 1: Just a quick note on pronunciation. Dennis's last name, maho
Speaker 1: n can be pronounced a variety of ways. It's a
Speaker 1: common enough name, and I'm sure a lot of people
Speaker 1: say it a lot different ways. I've chosen the pronunciation
Speaker 1: used by his attorney in a twenty fifteen oral argument
Speaker 1: before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Good morning, mister
Speaker 1: Chief Judge Thomas, and may it plays the court.
Speaker 3: I'm Daniel Cablan.
Speaker 1: I represent the appellant, Dennis Mayhon. Identical twin brothers, Daniel
Speaker 1: and Dennis Mayhon were born in Illinois in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: After high school, they both found their way into military service.
Speaker 1: Daniel served in the US Navy and the Coast Guard
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy nine, and Dennis was
Speaker 1: definitely in the Florida National Guard in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: I know that, and a lot of sources indicate that
Speaker 1: he spent time in the Army in the seventies, including
Speaker 1: a tour in Vietnam, but I can't find that actually
Speaker 1: sourced to anything in particular It's just repeated a lot,
Speaker 1: often by Dennis himself. Both brothers trained as and became
Speaker 1: aircraft mechanics classified ads in Miami in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: showed that brothers were making a little money on the
Speaker 1: side teaching flying lessons. By his own account, Dennis Mahon
Speaker 1: was already a klansman by nineteen eighty, which is the
Speaker 1: year he joined National Alliance. William Luther Pierce's novel The
Speaker 1: Turner Diaries was published in nineteen seventy eight, and it
Speaker 1: was often sold at gun shows, which is probably where
Speaker 1: Dennis picked up a copy in nineteen eighty. The book
Speaker 1: was eye opening, but what he claims really radicalized him
Speaker 1: that year was the Maurial boat Lift. For six months
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, there was a mass exodus from Cuba.
Speaker 1: By October, an estimated one hundred and twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: Cubans and twenty five thousand Haitians arrived in South Florida.
Speaker 1: In May of nineteen eighty alone, eighty six thousand Cuban
Speaker 1: emigrants reached Florida during that chaotic month. Dennis Mahon was
Speaker 1: one of the Florida National Guardsmen assigned to assist in
Speaker 1: transporting the asylum seekers to processing centers. In an interview
Speaker 1: with Matthew Kennard for his book Irregular Army, Maihon refers
Speaker 1: to that time period as quote the Haitian invasion, though
Speaker 1: in all likelihood the vast majority of the people he
Speaker 1: interacted with that month were Cuban. Regardless, he was repulsed
Speaker 1: by these people that he had been deployed to help.
Speaker 1: An older interview, one from nineteen eighty eight, attributes this
Speaker 1: shift in attitude to just being in Miami at all, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: all the brown skinned, Spanish speaking people made him feel
Speaker 1: like a stranger in his own land. He was already
Speaker 1: a klansman by then, so you can't really call this
Speaker 1: the origin story of his racism. But in his mind,
Speaker 1: this is where things changed. Something had to be done
Speaker 1: about this, and then he goes dark. There is not
Speaker 1: a single trace of Dennis Mayhon in the early to
Speaker 1: mid eighties. I was tearing my hair out trying to
Speaker 1: find any evidence that he even existed after his thirtieth birthday.
Speaker 1: I tried all my usual tricks, and I came up
Speaker 1: empty handed. He was driving refugees to detention centers in
Speaker 1: Miami in May of nineteen eighty and then nothing. He's
Speaker 1: a ghost until he turns up in Kansas City in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, suddenly emerging as a clan leader of
Speaker 1: some influence. In a nineteen ninety one interview with a
Speaker 1: reporter from the Oklahoma and Mayhan says I was underground
Speaker 1: from eighty t eighty seven. He'd spent those years doing
Speaker 1: things he can't talk about, things he can't do anymore
Speaker 1: now that he's a leader in the movement, telling the reporter,
Speaker 1: I don't regret doing them, but I realize I can't
Speaker 1: do those kinds of things now. And this wasn't a
Speaker 1: one off comment. It wasn't bluster and bravado for a
Speaker 1: newspaper reporter, because I have a matching statement that he
Speaker 1: made eighteen years later. And he didn't know he had
Speaker 1: an audience that time. In two thousand and nine, on
Speaker 1: a line he didn't know was tapped, Dennis Mayhon was
Speaker 1: arguing with a friend, Charles Denman. Kunz, a member of
Speaker 1: the Kuhn's family that founded the first National Bank of Omaha,
Speaker 1: is described by an ATF agent in court documents as
Speaker 1: quote a white supremacist and a friend of Dennis Mayhon,
Speaker 1: and he had been providing financial assistance to the Mayhon
Speaker 1: brothers for some time. In two thousand and nine, he
Speaker 1: was concerned that a woman Dennis had grown close to
Speaker 1: maybe lying to him. Koons was right, of course, that
Speaker 1: woman that he was worried about worked for the FBI,
Speaker 1: but Dennis didn't want to believe that. In a rage
Speaker 1: on that recorded line, he said, you don't know how
Speaker 1: many pipe bombs I've lit off. You don't know how
Speaker 1: many transformers I've destroyed and put people out of power
Speaker 1: in the eighties until I got outed in other recorded
Speaker 1: conversations with that FBI informant that Kons had grown so
Speaker 1: wary of Dennis Mayhon claims that he bombed an abortion clinic,
Speaker 1: a Jewish community center, and various government offices during that
Speaker 1: time period, but no concrete allegations have been made about
Speaker 1: his involvement in any particular incident. What is consistent is
Speaker 1: the time period from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: He's a ghost, a ghost in a white robe. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, he appears again in the public record,
Speaker 1: and with quite a splash. He's not just a clansman.
Speaker 1: He's a very important clansman. Maybe whatever he did during
Speaker 1: those years underground gave him the credibility he needed in
Speaker 1: the movement to emerge fully formed as a public face,
Speaker 1: a man of some authority and influence, because by the
Speaker 1: time he resurfaces, he's the King Klegal for the Missouri
Speaker 1: Nights of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, if you remember
Speaker 1: your clan vocabulary from the Very Black episodes, a klegal
Speaker 1: is a local clan recruitment officer, but a King klegal
Speaker 1: is kind of like a clan regional manager. So he's
Speaker 1: overseeing the recruitment f by other legals in Missouri, and
Speaker 1: he's managing the clan's affairs in the state. In nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, the Kansas City Stars Star magazine ran a
Speaker 1: lengthy feature story profiling j Allan Moran and exalted Cyclocks
Speaker 1: with the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Between
Speaker 1: full page photos of a glowering clansman in his full regalia,
Speaker 1: Veteran reporter Bill Norton wove the tale of a Platte
Speaker 1: County cop who radicalized quickly losing his job and getting
Speaker 1: recruited into the Klan by Dennis Mayhon In nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Jay Alan Moran's first encounter with Dennis Mayhon, at a
Speaker 1: Christian identity church in Missouri in the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven is the first place I find him again
Speaker 1: after the underground years, and he's just arrived in Missouri
Speaker 1: to take on the role of King Kleagel after some
Speaker 1: time organizing new clan chapters in Oklahoma and Michigan. J
Speaker 1: Allen Moran was still an officer of the law when
Speaker 1: he showed up at that church, which made a lot
Speaker 1: of people uneasy. It was Dennis Mayhon's responsibility to feel
Speaker 1: him out. Was this newcomer a true believer or a threat?
Speaker 1: But the two men became close friends, bonding over their
Speaker 1: shared love of the white race. Early in their friendship,
Speaker 1: Mayhon told Miran that he'd been a suspect in bombings
Speaker 1: in at least three different cities, though if he told
Speaker 1: Miran which ones, Moran didn't repeat that to the reporter.
Speaker 1: And it appears that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Speaker 1: Tobacco and Firearms the kind of agents who might investigate
Speaker 1: a serial bomber. We're keeping an eye on Mayhon because
Speaker 1: about six months into their friendship, j Alan Moran was
Speaker 1: called into his boss's office. Flat City Police Chief Charles Masoner,
Speaker 1: a man apparently known as Chuggy to his friends, according
Speaker 1: to his obituary, was sitting in his office with an
Speaker 1: agent from the ATF. The agent had seen Moran passing
Speaker 1: out Clan flyers with Dennis Mayhon, and they had an
Speaker 1: ultimatum for him. If he wanted to keep his job
Speaker 1: as a cop, he needed to play ball. They wanted
Speaker 1: information about his new friend. The ATF disputes Moran's claim
Speaker 1: that they tried to force him to plant a bomb
Speaker 1: in Mayhan's trailer. An agent told the Kansas City Star, quote,
Speaker 1: we never encourage anyone to commit a violation. That just
Speaker 1: did not occur. Now would the ATF pressure someone to
Speaker 1: commit a crime. I'm not saying it's out of the question,
Speaker 1: but I don't think the ATF needed to plant a
Speaker 1: bomb in Mayhon's trailer. There were bombs in Mayhan's trailer.
Speaker 1: But Moran's story gets even stranger from there. He claims
Speaker 1: the agents told him that the gun used to murder
Speaker 1: Missouri State Trooper Jimmy Linegar in nineteen eighty five had
Speaker 1: been registered to Dennis Mayhon, which is a wild thing
Speaker 1: to say. Jimmy Linegar initiated what he thought was a
Speaker 1: routine traffic stop a little south of Branson, Missouri, on
Speaker 1: April fifteenth, nineteen eighty five. He didn't know he was
Speaker 1: pulling over David Tate, a member of that Nazi bank
Speaker 1: robbery gang, the Order. And David Tate was a fugitive.
Speaker 1: A Grand Juri in Seattle had just indicted him and
Speaker 1: twenty three others for conspiracy and racketeering related to the
Speaker 1: Order's robberies. Who's also wanted in Washington State on an
Speaker 1: older weapons charge. He felt cornered, so he opened fire
Speaker 1: on the two state troopers with a mac ten, killing
Speaker 1: Linegar and wounding Alan Hines before fleeing on foot. Tate
Speaker 1: was missing in the Ozarks for a week before officers
Speaker 1: spotted him drinking from a creek, hungry and confused. David
Speaker 1: Tate is serving a life sentence in Missouri for first
Speaker 1: degree murder. And this is the only time I've ever
Speaker 1: seen Dennis Mayhon's name dragged into that story. Because the
Speaker 1: thing is according to an opinion issued by the Eighth
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals, the guns David Tate left behind
Speaker 1: in that van weren't registered to Dennis Mayhon because they
Speaker 1: weren't registered to anybody at all. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: part of the problem. He had a van full of
Speaker 1: unregistered guns. But what an odd claim to make, and
Speaker 1: where would Moran even get an ideal like that? Had
Speaker 1: Mayhon been telling him stories about the Order. Mayhon's on
Speaker 1: record as having been a big fan of their work.
Speaker 1: But I can't find a claim anywhere else that he
Speaker 1: ever had his hands on any guns or money connected
Speaker 1: to the Order. Did the ATF agent just make that up?
Speaker 1: That seems unnecessary. I guess we'll never know, But regardless,
Speaker 1: the claim does make for a neat little narrative device.
Speaker 1: In that magazine article, you know in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: the ATF is appealing to Moran's honor and loyalty to
Speaker 1: a fellow cop. Surely you'll help us send Mayhon to jail.
Speaker 1: He was involved in the murder of a state trooper,
Speaker 1: but Moran declined the offer. He refused to assist the
Speaker 1: agents in any way, and he soon lost his job
Speaker 1: a Platte City police officer. And then a year later
Speaker 1: he's a rising star in the Ku Klux Klan and
Speaker 1: he's telling this Kansas City Star magazine writer that men
Speaker 1: like David Tate, the man who murdered that state trooper,
Speaker 1: were heroes to him. He told the reporter that he
Speaker 1: dreamed of a perfect aryan nation where white men and
Speaker 1: women lived under God's law alone, a place where non
Speaker 1: whites could only visit on work fiesus, and anyone who
Speaker 1: stepped out of line could be executed. In his vision
Speaker 1: of this white utopia, there would be statues lining a
Speaker 1: wide boulevard in the capitol, statues of men who had
Speaker 1: killed in service of the Ethno State, men like David Tate.
Speaker 1: After becoming fast friends in nineteen eighty seven, j Allen
Speaker 1: Moran and Dennis Mahon got down to business clan business,
Speaker 1: and by January nineteen eighty eight, they were trying to
Speaker 1: get on TV. Tom Metzger's Race and Reason program had
Speaker 1: been on the air in cities all over the country
Speaker 1: for a few years by then, with city after city.
Speaker 1: But grudgingly taking their lawyer's advice, if the Klan wants
Speaker 1: to be on public Access TV, you have to let them,
Speaker 1: and it was Metzger's Race and Reason program that Moran
Speaker 1: and Maehon were hoping to air in Kansas City. The
Speaker 1: city initially rebuffed them by making up new rules. When
Speaker 1: the men arrived at the studio with a VHS tape
Speaker 1: of Metzger's show, they were told that public access programming
Speaker 1: had to actually be produced in the studio by local residents.
Speaker 1: They couldn't broadcast pre recorded content, and if they wanted
Speaker 1: to use the studio to record a show, they'd have
Speaker 1: to receive training from station employees on how to properly
Speaker 1: use all the equipment. And you know, we just don't
Speaker 1: actually have any openings for training right now, so they're stalling.
Speaker 1: No data is scheduled for this training, and they can't
Speaker 1: make the show until they get the training. You can
Speaker 1: make the show, but you have to get the training.
Speaker 1: And it's just not time. They're just kicking the can
Speaker 1: down the road, buying time. While the Kansas City City
Speaker 1: Council meets with lawyers to try to figure out how
Speaker 1: to stop this. The conflict over what could be aired
Speaker 1: on TV in Kansas City caught the attention of Harry Jones,
Speaker 1: a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas. He thought
Speaker 1: it would be a valuable learning opportunity for his students
Speaker 1: to hear from Moran and Mayhon, saying it would be
Speaker 1: a lesson in challenging interviewing. Campus protests forced him to
Speaker 1: rescind the invitation to appear on campus. The class was rescheduled.
Speaker 1: Twenty two journalism students were shuttled to an empty airplane
Speaker 1: hangar at a nearby regional airport for a class that
Speaker 1: looked more like a press conference. The two clansmen held court,
Speaker 1: expounding on their philosophies on race mixing and the evil
Speaker 1: influence exerted by Jewish people, and then they took questions
Speaker 1: from the students afterward. One student said the men's views
Speaker 1: were quote unrealistic and laughable, and noted that they avoided
Speaker 1: answering certain questions, refusing to give any hard answers on
Speaker 1: the actual size of their organization or exactly how they
Speaker 1: intended to remove black and Jewish people from the land
Speaker 1: they would use for their ethno state. Another student said
Speaker 1: the men's remarks were gross and obscene and completely unprintable,
Speaker 1: particularly on the subject of Jews. All in all, the
Speaker 1: instructor viewed the event as a success, telling the paper
Speaker 1: that about a third of the students engaged in the
Speaker 1: interview practice and were vigorous and polite but persistent. I'm
Speaker 1: sure the decision to hold the class in the end
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the clan's threats against the
Speaker 1: university after the invitation was originally withdrawn. Moran's threats to
Speaker 1: sue over a canceled class probably didn't have them shaking
Speaker 1: in their boots, but the promise of impending clan rallies
Speaker 1: on campus was unappealing, and it wasn't just the University
Speaker 1: of Kansas that he was threatening with lawsuits and clan marches.
Speaker 1: By the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Kansas City had
Speaker 1: voted to shut down their entire public access television station
Speaker 1: rather than air the clan's TV show. The Clan's been
Speaker 1: responded by filing suit with the backing of the ACLU,
Speaker 1: and soon after that suit was filed, the debate about
Speaker 1: what belongs on TV reached Weekday afternoon's most watched TV show.
Speaker 3: In Kansas City. Recently, a civic battle erupted when council
Speaker 3: members voted to eliminate the public access channel rather than
Speaker 3: to allow the Klan to broadcast. Dennis Mayan is a
Speaker 3: KKK official who wanted to be host of the Klansas
Speaker 3: City cable program, which would feature, among other things, footage
Speaker 3: from KKK rallies and cross burnings, and, in Dennis's own words,
Speaker 3: an occasional safari through the black parts of Kansas City.
Speaker 3: Defending Gennis and other clan members. Writes to free and
Speaker 3: equal opportunity to public access cable stations is American Civil
Speaker 3: Liberties attorney John Powell.
Speaker 1: The September first, nineteen eighty eight episode of The Oprah
Speaker 1: Winfrey Show featured Tom Metzker, Dennis Mayhon, and Dennis's ACLU
Speaker 1: attorney squaring off again, C. T. Vivian, a man that
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior himself once called the greatest preacher
Speaker 1: to ever live, Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City City
Speaker 1: councilman who was fighting to keep Mayhon off the air,
Speaker 1: and an Orthodox Rabbi. The show was a bit of
Speaker 1: a circus, but that's obviously what they were going for.
Speaker 1: Members of the John Brown Anti Clan Committee had packed
Speaker 1: the audience and managed to get several comments in as
Speaker 1: Oprah roamed the studio soliciting questions.
Speaker 4: John Brown Anti Clan committeem proud of it. I'd like
Speaker 4: to ask this question, where does free speech end and
Speaker 4: the freedoms organized for murder begin. Where do we draw
Speaker 4: the line. I draw the line with Tom Metzer and
Speaker 4: the klu Klux Klan because behind a man in the
Speaker 4: three piece six is another man in a paramilitary uniform,
Speaker 4: and those people are out there killing people.
Speaker 1: That audience member was Tray more right than she could
Speaker 1: have known. Just six weeks after that episode aired, an
Speaker 1: Ethiopian college student nam Mulagetta Sarah was beaten to death
Speaker 1: in Portland, Oregon by three skinheads. With help from the
Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Law Center, Mullageda's family successfully sued Tom Metzger
Speaker 1: for twelve million dollars. Those murderers were exactly what the
Speaker 1: opera audience member predicted, a paramilitary force behind a man
Speaker 1: in a three piece suit. They were members of White
Speaker 1: Arian resistance who had been incited to kill by Metzger's propaganda.
Speaker 1: Maihon made a whole week out of his trip to
Speaker 1: Chicago to appear on OPRAH. The episode was filmed on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, but he spent the whole week in the city.
Speaker 1: On Sunday, August twenty eighth, he was a headline speaker
Speaker 1: at a White Pride rally in Chicago's Marquette Park. Five
Speaker 1: hundred people turned up to hear speeches from klansmen. The
Speaker 1: events organizers, a clan chapter in Illinois, claimed they'd had
Speaker 1: no idea there was another event in Marquette Park that day.
Speaker 1: Marquette Park is over three hundred acres, and clansmen aren't
Speaker 1: known for their courtesy or flawless event planning, so maybe
Speaker 1: they hadn't done it on purpose. But that Sunday afternoon
Speaker 1: they were sharing the park with several hundred people who
Speaker 1: had marched over together from a nearby church. They were
Speaker 1: commemorating the August nineteen sixty six Marquette Park March, led
Speaker 1: by doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. And history may not repeat,
Speaker 1: but it often does rhyme. That march in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six was confronted by thousands of angry white people, some
Speaker 1: with Confederate flags and swastika banners, and they pelted the
Speaker 1: marchers with objects, hitting doctor King himself in the head
Speaker 1: with a rock. And in nineteen eighty eight, the city
Speaker 1: of Chicago sent eight hundred police officers to keep these
Speaker 1: two events separate. Officers on horseback blocked a contingent of
Speaker 1: klansmen who broke off from the main event to try
Speaker 1: to antagonize the churchgoers. Officers had to form a human
Speaker 1: barricade to hold back the clansmen as the other rally dispersed.
Speaker 1: Newspaper reports say there were no injuries, but they also
Speaker 1: report that a young black man who appeared to have
Speaker 1: no idea that either event was happening in the park
Speaker 1: that day had to be rescued by officers after klansmen
Speaker 1: surrounded him, pelting him with rocks. At least a dozen
Speaker 1: klansmen were arrested for disorderly conduct and one for punching
Speaker 1: a photographer. But Dennis Mayhon's trip to Chicago was a success.
Speaker 1: He gave a speech to a crowd of hundreds of supporters,
Speaker 1: and he appeared on national television. Everybody saw him, everybody
Speaker 1: including his boss.
Speaker 2: If I may lose my job for being on the
Speaker 2: show today, Oprah's.
Speaker 1: Studio audience cheered when Mayhun said he may end up
Speaker 1: losing his job for appearing on the show. In the
Speaker 1: context of the show, he's trying to make a point
Speaker 1: about how he's suffering for his political views, how he's
Speaker 1: constantly being punished for exercising his right to free speech.
Speaker 1: He probably didn't actually think he was going to lose
Speaker 1: his job. His employer, trans World Airlines, said they'd known
Speaker 1: about his clan activities for some time. He's not a
Speaker 1: subtle guy. He was fired shortly after appearing on the
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show, but it wasn't because they learned something
Speaker 1: new about their aircraft mechanic. It was because he kept
Speaker 1: missing work. His trip to Chicago in September was far
Speaker 1: from the only thing take him away from his job
Speaker 1: at the Kansas City International Airport that year. In February,
Speaker 1: he took a week off to go to Arkansas. Klansmen
Speaker 1: and neo Nazis from around the country were demonstrating outside
Speaker 1: the federal courthouse in Fort Smith as the trial began
Speaker 1: for the fourteen white supremacist leaders accused of seditious conspiracy.
Speaker 1: The very first Aryan Fest, a kind of Nazi woodstock
Speaker 1: that Tom Metzger and his son John came up with,
Speaker 1: was held that summer. A nineteen eighty eight issue of
Speaker 1: Metzger's White Arian Resistance newsletter says that over one hundred
Speaker 1: Nazis and skinheads from around the country spent three days
Speaker 1: in June on a farm in Oklahoma listening to white
Speaker 1: power music. He describes a band called the Tulsa Midtown
Speaker 1: boot Boys as quote one of the hottest white power
Speaker 1: bands this side of Screwdriver. A month later, in July,
Speaker 1: Mayhon took a trip out to Idaho to give a
Speaker 1: speech at the air In World Congress, and even when
Speaker 1: he wasn't traveling, he was busy. In nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Mayhon had a falling out with Tom rob. Rob was
Speaker 1: the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: He didn't like being called an imperial wizard. I guess
Speaker 1: he thought that sounded silly, but I can't imagine why.
Speaker 1: But he was the national director and Mayhon was a
Speaker 1: king Klegel in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: But as the sedition trial got underway at Fort Smith,
Speaker 1: Tom Rob thought it would be prudent for the clan
Speaker 1: to publicly stand by only those defendants who he felt
Speaker 1: had a valid First Amendment defense. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: be seen in public defending out and out terrorism. That'd
Speaker 1: be bad for business. Dennis Mayhon, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: was offering his full throated support, not only for all
Speaker 1: of the defendants in the Fort Smith trial, but for
Speaker 1: all of the members of the order. He publicly praised
Speaker 1: Robert Matthews, the gang's leader, who had died in an
Speaker 1: armed standoff with the FBI, calling him a martyr. And
Speaker 1: it was this disagreement about how much you can say
Speaker 1: out loud in public that you love terrorism that caused
Speaker 1: Dennis Mahon to split with the Knights of the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan, and in nineteen eighty eight he formed his
Speaker 1: own organization, calling it the White Knights of the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan. It doesn't look like Dennis Mayhon ever, got
Speaker 1: a new full time job after getting let go in
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen eighty eight, but that just freed
Speaker 1: him up to spend more time organizing. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: he ran for Aldermen in Ward I of the Kansas
Speaker 1: City suburb of Northmore. His candidate profile on the local
Speaker 1: newspaper says only he does automotive work on a contract basis.
Speaker 1: He could not be reached for additional information. Fellow clansman
Speaker 1: Edward Eugene Stephens the Fourth was running for Aldermen and
Speaker 1: Northmore's third Ward Stephen's wife Cynthia, ran for collector and
Speaker 1: his father, Edward Eugene Stephens the third, was running unopposed
Speaker 1: to keep his seat as Northmore's municipal judge. Stephens's wife
Speaker 1: and father told the Kansas City Star that they were
Speaker 1: not members of the clan, although no one denied that
Speaker 1: Edward Stephens fourth was deeply involved in the clan. Two
Speaker 1: years later, after Rodney King was beaten by LAPD officers,
Speaker 1: Stephens and Mayhon were responsible for mailing clan recruitment flyers
Speaker 1: to police departments all over Los Angeles in the midst
Speaker 1: of what appeared to have been a fairly lackluster campaign
Speaker 1: for Aldermen. In nineteen eighty nine, Dennis Mayhon was still
Speaker 1: fighting the Kansas City City Council over his public access
Speaker 1: TV show. The city hoped to get his lawsuit dismissed,
Speaker 1: but after a federal judge denied their motion and set
Speaker 1: a trial date for September, they decided to just settle instead.
Speaker 1: That summer, the city council voted to reinstate the public
Speaker 1: access channel. They signed a settlement agreement with the Klansmen
Speaker 1: for ninety seven thousand dollars. Maehon would go on to
Speaker 1: press his luck trying to get Tom Metzger's Race and
Speaker 1: Reason program on other public access channels in the region,
Speaker 1: threatening to bring in white supremacist leaders like Tom Metzker
Speaker 1: himself and Aran Nation's leader Richard Butler, to stage protests
Speaker 1: outside the studios if they didn't capitulate, and on April third,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety, the first and only episode of his Very
Speaker 1: own show aired in Kansas City. The episode is not
Speaker 1: quite fifteen minutes long. In the open, frames are garbled,
Speaker 1: there's colored bars sort of flickering over the clansmen, and
Speaker 1: the audio is choppy, but it opens on a klansman
Speaker 1: in a red robe with his face entirely covered by
Speaker 1: a red hood, and he greets the viewer with this message, city.
Speaker 2: By city, we're going where we want, certain what we want.
Speaker 2: Nobody no water is born with Starflus.
Speaker 1: Our country.
Speaker 2: He was born out of bloodshed, and from that bloodshed
Speaker 2: was the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: After his introduction, ending with a shout of white power
Speaker 1: punctuated by a Hitler salute, the klansmen in red sort
Speaker 1: of shuffles out of frame and Dennis Mahon walks in.
Speaker 1: He's wearing a bright teal Clan robe with a red
Speaker 1: kate but no hood. What follows is a rambling complaint
Speaker 1: about how unfair the process has been to get the
Speaker 1: show on the air, and then he lays out a
Speaker 1: plan for what the show will be. Episodes will feature
Speaker 1: footage from clan rallies, and they'll have guests with differing perspectives,
Speaker 1: and he promises to feature what he calls quote racial comedians,
Speaker 1: because quote, we all like good racial jokes. I don't
Speaker 1: know who we is. Dennis. He hoped to have episodes
Speaker 1: featuring interviews with his friends, people like Tom Metzger and
Speaker 1: Arian Nation's leader Richard Butler, but he also wanted to
Speaker 1: feature people with other ideas, people like Lewis Ferricon. But
Speaker 1: he never did book any guests. The only episode of
Speaker 1: Klansas City Cable was taped at the American Cablevision studio
Speaker 1: on Main Street in downtown Kansas City, few days before
Speaker 1: it aired. While Mahon was recording, his supporters waited outside
Speaker 1: standing guard. There was no demonstration, there was no protests.
Speaker 1: The public outcry was over it been going on for years.
Speaker 1: Nobody showed up. I doubt anyone had any particular idea
Speaker 1: that the program was even being recorded. In an office
Speaker 1: building on a Thursday afternoon, but one of the two
Speaker 1: dozen clansmen standing on main Street waiting for Denis to
Speaker 1: come out, pulled a gun on a black pedestrian, prompting
Speaker 1: nine to one one calls. In the end, nineteen klansmen
Speaker 1: were taken into custody in the fifteen minutes it took
Speaker 1: Dennis to record the episode. Most of them were released
Speaker 1: without charges. The incident prompted American Cable Vision to announce
Speaker 1: a plan to update their rules for using the studio.
Speaker 1: They were hoping to ban guns on the premises and
Speaker 1: require all visitors to sign in. There's no follow up
Speaker 1: I can find on whether they ended up implementing any
Speaker 1: changes to the rules. But it didn't matter. Dennis got
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He didn't actually want the responsibility of
Speaker 1: creating a weekly television program. He was a man of action,
Speaker 1: not words. Now, Tom Metzker was a committed propagandist, but
Speaker 1: Dennis Mayhon just wanted to force everyone to submit to
Speaker 1: the Clan, and now that they had, he didn't have
Speaker 1: to make any more episodes. He proved his point. I
Speaker 1: had every intention of getting all the way through the
Speaker 1: early nineties in this first episode, but I have to
Speaker 1: confess that I got in a little too deep researching
Speaker 1: the latter half of the story when I should have
Speaker 1: been writing the first half. And it's now very late
Speaker 1: at night, and I need to deliver this recording to
Speaker 1: Rory before he wakes up. Dennis Mayhon has only just
Speaker 1: begun to cause problems at this point, so you'll have
Speaker 1: to come back next week to hear about the Klansman's
Speaker 1: attempt to frighten black children with a bad Mister Rogers impression,
Speaker 1: his efforts to start clan chapters in Germany in the
Speaker 1: time he got deported from Canada, the conspiracy theories linking
Speaker 1: him to the Oklahoma City bombing, and the exotic dancer
Speaker 1: who spent four years gaining his trust, secretly recording him
Speaker 1: until he said enough to tie him to a mail
Speaker 1: bomb in Arizona. And there's also a very weird guy
Speaker 1: with a compound in the Ozarks. He hides his guns
Speaker 1: in the many natural caves around his property. Poo Little
Speaker 1: Guys as a production at Coolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Littterman, and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. Unless it is
Speaker 1: about how I pronounced the name of the city. I'll
Speaker 1: definitely read your email, but I poorly won't answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 1: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys separate it.
Speaker 1: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 1: of my Weird Little Guys