WEBVTT - Klansas City Kable: Dennis Mahon, Part 1 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:09.880 Cool Zone media. As the sun began to set on 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:13.399 a cool fall evening in late September nineteen ninety one, 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.520 TV reporter Harold Spiegel was waiting nervously at the edge 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:19.840 of the woods outside of a small town about an 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.840 hour south of the nation's capital. The reporter was waiting 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:28.120 for more information about their destination. That evening. He'd received 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.920 a tip about an event and managed to secure a 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:32.800 meeting with some of the men who would be attending. 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.280 They wouldn't tell him exactly where they were going, but 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.680 after a short discussion in a parking lot, they allowed 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.960 him to follow along. He drove deeper and deeper into 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.120 the countryside for half an hour before the men parked 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.600 at the edge of the forest and got out. More 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:57.160 men arrived. Some were wearing white robes and pointed hoods, 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:02.120 the traditional garb of members of the ku Klux. Others 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.040 wore motorcycle jackets with SS patches on them and unfrilled 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:10.960 flags and banners with swastivas. And then he followed them 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.360 into the woods. The reporter, alone in the woods with 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.800 a few dozen Nazis and clansmen, knew what these men 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.400 were capable of. A nearby town was in the throes 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.560 of a week long pogrom, with gangs of young Neo 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.560 Nazis laying siege to apartment buildings that were home to 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:34.280 Vietnamese and Mozambique immigrants. In a clearing, the men surrounded 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.840 a large wooden cross as it burned. A man in 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:41.560 a leather jacket adorned with SS ruins stood in the 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:46.280 center of the circle and shouted, seeghaile I come to 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:52.080 you from America. The cross was burning an hour south 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:59.080 of the nation's capital, but the capitol in question was Berlin, Missouri. 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:01.800 Clansmen Dennis Mahon was at the height of his career 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.720 as a professional racist. He had formed his own clan group, 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.640 the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and he 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:12.040 was Tom Metzker's right hand man in the White Aryan Resistance. 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.600 His trip to Germany promised to strengthen international ties between 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:20.160 hate groups in Europe and the United States. From the 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.320 time he joined the Klan in nineteen eighty, his life 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.600 story is inextricably intertwined with the history of the white 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:30.399 power movement. He made summer time visits to the Aryan 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.880 Nation's compound in Idaho. He ran paramilitary training drills on 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.400 a compound in Missouri. He was hauled into court to 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.440 testifying grand jury proceedings about the Oklahoma City bombing after 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.040 a former girlfriend accused him of helping plan the attack, 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.200 and by the time the FBI hired an exotic dancer 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:51.880 to seduce him into confessing to mailing a pipe bomb 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.920 to a public library in Scottsdale, Arizona, he was an 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:03.120 old man that the movement had mostly forgotten. I'm Molly Conger. 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:24.520 This it's weird, little guys. Last week, I said, I 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:27.880 wasn't sure if Dennis Mahon ever did try his hand 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:32.400 at producing his own public access television program. He was 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.360 just a brief side character and a larger story about 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.360 Tom Metzger, a klansman and the founder of the white 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:43.560 supremacist group White Arean Resistance. Metzger had received a generous 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.160 gift in nineteen eighty four three hundred thousand dollars in 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.320 cash from the members of the Order proceeds from their 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.720 armored car robbery earlier that year, and almost immediately after 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.680 Metzger got this massive cash and fusion, he set to 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:03.080 work producing a virulin racist television show called Race and Reason. 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.240 His goal was to get his racist propaganda into the 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.400 home of every working class white man in America by 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:15.680 way of public access TV. Across the country, Metzger supporters 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.039 dutifully ordered VHS tapes of the show and applied to 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.840 broadcast it on their own local channels. Others took up 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.719 the cause and produced their own original versions based on 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.960 Metzger's idea. One of the men who did both was 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:35.440 a klansman in Missouri named Dennis Mahon. I didn't set 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.760 out to write about Dennis this week. I had something 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.800 else in mind, but I asked myself a question last week. 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:50.239 Did Dennis ever actually produce a show called Clansis City Cable. 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.800 We didn't have time last week for another tangent to 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:57.760 find out about this. I was following Tom Metzger and 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:02.440 the Stolen money, but I just can't leave an itch 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:08.680 like that unscratched. And it turns out he did and 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:14.520 I found it. A single fifteen minute episode of Klansas 0:05:14.640 --> 0:05:18.679 City Cable aired in Kansas City, Missouri, on April third, 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:20.160 nineteen ninety. 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:27.440 We're going to discuss Klansas City Cable, which took two 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:33.680 and a half years, a sweat blood persecution, getting five 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:39.880 more jobs, getting harassed by fence, bomb shot at, assaulted 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.560 death threats constantly. Well we've succeeded. 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:52.360 Just a quick note on pronunciation. Dennis's last name, maho 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:57.039 n can be pronounced a variety of ways. It's a 0:05:57.200 --> 0:05:59.400 common enough name, and I'm sure a lot of people 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.000 say it a lot different ways. I've chosen the pronunciation 0:06:03.200 --> 0:06:06.320 used by his attorney in a twenty fifteen oral argument 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:11.480 before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Good morning, mister 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:13.320 Chief Judge Thomas, and may it plays the court. 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:14.440 I'm Daniel Cablan. 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:21.560 I represent the appellant, Dennis Mayhon. Identical twin brothers, Daniel 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.920 and Dennis Mayhon were born in Illinois in nineteen fifty. 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.599 After high school, they both found their way into military service. 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.479 Daniel served in the US Navy and the Coast Guard 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:38.160 from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy nine, and Dennis was 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.960 definitely in the Florida National Guard in the early eighties. 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:46.400 I know that, and a lot of sources indicate that 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:50.000 he spent time in the Army in the seventies, including 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.360 a tour in Vietnam, but I can't find that actually 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.520 sourced to anything in particular It's just repeated a lot, 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:02.200 often by Dennis himself. Both brothers trained as and became 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:07.120 aircraft mechanics classified ads in Miami in nineteen seventy two 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:09.080 showed that brothers were making a little money on the 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:14.200 side teaching flying lessons. By his own account, Dennis Mahon 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.400 was already a klansman by nineteen eighty, which is the 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:22.160 year he joined National Alliance. William Luther Pierce's novel The 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:25.440 Turner Diaries was published in nineteen seventy eight, and it 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.320 was often sold at gun shows, which is probably where 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.239 Dennis picked up a copy in nineteen eighty. The book 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.800 was eye opening, but what he claims really radicalized him 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:41.160 that year was the Maurial boat Lift. For six months 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.320 in nineteen eighty, there was a mass exodus from Cuba. 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:48.920 By October, an estimated one hundred and twenty five thousand 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:53.080 Cubans and twenty five thousand Haitians arrived in South Florida. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:59.000 In May of nineteen eighty alone, eighty six thousand Cuban 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:04.720 emigrants reached Florida during that chaotic month. Dennis Mahon was 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.400 one of the Florida National Guardsmen assigned to assist in 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:12.760 transporting the asylum seekers to processing centers. In an interview 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.040 with Matthew Kennard for his book Irregular Army, Maihon refers 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:22.200 to that time period as quote the Haitian invasion, though 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.880 in all likelihood the vast majority of the people he 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:31.120 interacted with that month were Cuban. Regardless, he was repulsed 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.200 by these people that he had been deployed to help. 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:39.560 An older interview, one from nineteen eighty eight, attributes this 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:44.800 shift in attitude to just being in Miami at all, saying, quote, 0:08:45.679 --> 0:08:50.480 all the brown skinned, Spanish speaking people made him feel 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:55.280 like a stranger in his own land. He was already 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.600 a klansman by then, so you can't really call this 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:03.520 the origin story of his racism. But in his mind, 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:09.120 this is where things changed. Something had to be done 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:15.800 about this, and then he goes dark. There is not 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:20.520 a single trace of Dennis Mayhon in the early to 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:25.320 mid eighties. I was tearing my hair out trying to 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:30.600 find any evidence that he even existed after his thirtieth birthday. 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:34.240 I tried all my usual tricks, and I came up 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.640 empty handed. He was driving refugees to detention centers in 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:43.360 Miami in May of nineteen eighty and then nothing. He's 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:45.920 a ghost until he turns up in Kansas City in 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.079 nineteen eighty seven, suddenly emerging as a clan leader of 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:54.640 some influence. In a nineteen ninety one interview with a 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:59.000 reporter from the Oklahoma and Mayhan says I was underground 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:03.680 from eighty t eighty seven. He'd spent those years doing 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:08.880 things he can't talk about, things he can't do anymore 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:11.880 now that he's a leader in the movement, telling the reporter, 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.240 I don't regret doing them, but I realize I can't 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.079 do those kinds of things now. And this wasn't a 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.800 one off comment. It wasn't bluster and bravado for a 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.960 newspaper reporter, because I have a matching statement that he 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.760 made eighteen years later. And he didn't know he had 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:37.560 an audience that time. In two thousand and nine, on 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:41.480 a line he didn't know was tapped, Dennis Mayhon was 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:46.000 arguing with a friend, Charles Denman. Kunz, a member of 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.679 the Kuhn's family that founded the first National Bank of Omaha, 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.400 is described by an ATF agent in court documents as 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.400 quote a white supremacist and a friend of Dennis Mayhon, 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:00.480 and he had been providing financial assistance to the Mayhon 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.160 brothers for some time. In two thousand and nine, he 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:06.800 was concerned that a woman Dennis had grown close to 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.520 maybe lying to him. Koons was right, of course, that 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:14.959 woman that he was worried about worked for the FBI, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:20.040 but Dennis didn't want to believe that. In a rage 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:24.439 on that recorded line, he said, you don't know how 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.199 many pipe bombs I've lit off. You don't know how 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.040 many transformers I've destroyed and put people out of power 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:35.040 in the eighties until I got outed in other recorded 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.480 conversations with that FBI informant that Kons had grown so 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:43.320 wary of Dennis Mayhon claims that he bombed an abortion clinic, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:48.160 a Jewish community center, and various government offices during that 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:53.080 time period, but no concrete allegations have been made about 0:11:53.240 --> 0:11:59.040 his involvement in any particular incident. What is consistent is 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:03.520 the time period from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty seven. 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:09.719 He's a ghost, a ghost in a white robe. In 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.520 nineteen eighty seven, he appears again in the public record, 0:12:12.679 --> 0:12:16.720 and with quite a splash. He's not just a clansman. 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:22.400 He's a very important clansman. Maybe whatever he did during 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.760 those years underground gave him the credibility he needed in 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.360 the movement to emerge fully formed as a public face, 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.040 a man of some authority and influence, because by the 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:39.000 time he resurfaces, he's the King Klegal for the Missouri 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:43.400 Nights of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, if you remember 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:47.280 your clan vocabulary from the Very Black episodes, a klegal 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:53.040 is a local clan recruitment officer, but a King klegal 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.000 is kind of like a clan regional manager. So he's 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.560 overseeing the recruitment f by other legals in Missouri, and 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:07.640 he's managing the clan's affairs in the state. In nineteen 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.800 eighty eight, the Kansas City Stars Star magazine ran a 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:17.599 lengthy feature story profiling j Allan Moran and exalted Cyclocks 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.480 with the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Between 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:26.120 full page photos of a glowering clansman in his full regalia, 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.880 Veteran reporter Bill Norton wove the tale of a Platte 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:35.120 County cop who radicalized quickly losing his job and getting 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:52.719 recruited into the Klan by Dennis Mayhon In nineteen eighty seven. 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:56.439 Jay Alan Moran's first encounter with Dennis Mayhon, at a 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:59.480 Christian identity church in Missouri in the spring of nineteen 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:02.800 eighty seven is the first place I find him again 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.200 after the underground years, and he's just arrived in Missouri 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.320 to take on the role of King Kleagel after some 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:15.880 time organizing new clan chapters in Oklahoma and Michigan. J 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:18.800 Allen Moran was still an officer of the law when 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:21.440 he showed up at that church, which made a lot 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:26.800 of people uneasy. It was Dennis Mayhon's responsibility to feel 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:31.680 him out. Was this newcomer a true believer or a threat? 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:36.240 But the two men became close friends, bonding over their 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:40.920 shared love of the white race. Early in their friendship, 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.640 Mayhon told Miran that he'd been a suspect in bombings 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.240 in at least three different cities, though if he told 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:51.240 Miran which ones, Moran didn't repeat that to the reporter. 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.480 And it appears that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:59.240 Tobacco and Firearms the kind of agents who might investigate 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:03.600 a serial bomber. We're keeping an eye on Mayhon because 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.120 about six months into their friendship, j Alan Moran was 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:12.520 called into his boss's office. Flat City Police Chief Charles Masoner, 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:16.120 a man apparently known as Chuggy to his friends, according 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:19.240 to his obituary, was sitting in his office with an 0:15:19.280 --> 0:15:24.080 agent from the ATF. The agent had seen Moran passing 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.880 out Clan flyers with Dennis Mayhon, and they had an 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.520 ultimatum for him. If he wanted to keep his job 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.760 as a cop, he needed to play ball. They wanted 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:41.200 information about his new friend. The ATF disputes Moran's claim 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.640 that they tried to force him to plant a bomb 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:48.479 in Mayhan's trailer. An agent told the Kansas City Star, quote, 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:53.160 we never encourage anyone to commit a violation. That just 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:59.040 did not occur. Now would the ATF pressure someone to 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:02.680 commit a crime. I'm not saying it's out of the question, 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.480 but I don't think the ATF needed to plant a 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:10.440 bomb in Mayhon's trailer. There were bombs in Mayhan's trailer. 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:16.160 But Moran's story gets even stranger from there. He claims 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.520 the agents told him that the gun used to murder 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:22.760 Missouri State Trooper Jimmy Linegar in nineteen eighty five had 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:28.520 been registered to Dennis Mayhon, which is a wild thing 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:34.280 to say. Jimmy Linegar initiated what he thought was a 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.720 routine traffic stop a little south of Branson, Missouri, on 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:42.480 April fifteenth, nineteen eighty five. He didn't know he was 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.800 pulling over David Tate, a member of that Nazi bank 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:51.120 robbery gang, the Order. And David Tate was a fugitive. 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:54.920 A Grand Juri in Seattle had just indicted him and 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:58.160 twenty three others for conspiracy and racketeering related to the 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.320 Order's robberies. Who's also wanted in Washington State on an 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:08.280 older weapons charge. He felt cornered, so he opened fire 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.159 on the two state troopers with a mac ten, killing 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:15.720 Linegar and wounding Alan Hines before fleeing on foot. Tate 0:17:15.840 --> 0:17:18.680 was missing in the Ozarks for a week before officers 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:24.399 spotted him drinking from a creek, hungry and confused. David 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:26.880 Tate is serving a life sentence in Missouri for first 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.960 degree murder. And this is the only time I've ever 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:35.040 seen Dennis Mayhon's name dragged into that story. Because the 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.720 thing is according to an opinion issued by the Eighth 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:42.960 Circuit Court of Appeals, the guns David Tate left behind 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:48.399 in that van weren't registered to Dennis Mayhon because they 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.840 weren't registered to anybody at all. I mean, that was 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.600 part of the problem. He had a van full of 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:01.800 unregistered guns. But what an odd claim to make, and 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:06.160 where would Moran even get an ideal like that? Had 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:10.480 Mayhon been telling him stories about the Order. Mayhon's on 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.639 record as having been a big fan of their work. 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:16.600 But I can't find a claim anywhere else that he 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.400 ever had his hands on any guns or money connected 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:25.040 to the Order. Did the ATF agent just make that up? 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:32.600 That seems unnecessary. I guess we'll never know, But regardless, 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.440 the claim does make for a neat little narrative device. 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.320 In that magazine article, you know in nineteen eighty seven, 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.879 the ATF is appealing to Moran's honor and loyalty to 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:48.240 a fellow cop. Surely you'll help us send Mayhon to jail. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:50.920 He was involved in the murder of a state trooper, 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.720 but Moran declined the offer. He refused to assist the 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:59.800 agents in any way, and he soon lost his job 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:04.160 a Platte City police officer. And then a year later 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.399 he's a rising star in the Ku Klux Klan and 0:19:07.480 --> 0:19:11.200 he's telling this Kansas City Star magazine writer that men 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:14.399 like David Tate, the man who murdered that state trooper, 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:19.000 were heroes to him. He told the reporter that he 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:23.199 dreamed of a perfect aryan nation where white men and 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:27.359 women lived under God's law alone, a place where non 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:30.600 whites could only visit on work fiesus, and anyone who 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:35.119 stepped out of line could be executed. In his vision 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.879 of this white utopia, there would be statues lining a 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:43.000 wide boulevard in the capitol, statues of men who had 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.720 killed in service of the Ethno State, men like David Tate. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:53.320 After becoming fast friends in nineteen eighty seven, j Allen 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:57.680 Moran and Dennis Mahon got down to business clan business, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.560 and by January nineteen eighty eight, they were trying to 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:07.159 get on TV. Tom Metzger's Race and Reason program had 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:09.360 been on the air in cities all over the country 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.400 for a few years by then, with city after city. 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:18.480 But grudgingly taking their lawyer's advice, if the Klan wants 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:22.760 to be on public Access TV, you have to let them, 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.760 and it was Metzger's Race and Reason program that Moran 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.800 and Maehon were hoping to air in Kansas City. The 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:33.840 city initially rebuffed them by making up new rules. When 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.399 the men arrived at the studio with a VHS tape 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:41.119 of Metzger's show, they were told that public access programming 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.840 had to actually be produced in the studio by local residents. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:50.000 They couldn't broadcast pre recorded content, and if they wanted 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.760 to use the studio to record a show, they'd have 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.960 to receive training from station employees on how to properly 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:00.000 use all the equipment. And you know, we just don't 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:06.359 actually have any openings for training right now, so they're stalling. 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.520 No data is scheduled for this training, and they can't 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:11.320 make the show until they get the training. You can 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:13.479 make the show, but you have to get the training. 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:16.280 And it's just not time. They're just kicking the can 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.120 down the road, buying time. While the Kansas City City 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:22.919 Council meets with lawyers to try to figure out how 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:41.040 to stop this. The conflict over what could be aired 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.920 on TV in Kansas City caught the attention of Harry Jones, 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:49.360 a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas. He thought 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.119 it would be a valuable learning opportunity for his students 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.320 to hear from Moran and Mayhon, saying it would be 0:21:55.400 --> 0:22:01.760 a lesson in challenging interviewing. Campus protests forced him to 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:06.240 rescind the invitation to appear on campus. The class was rescheduled. 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.280 Twenty two journalism students were shuttled to an empty airplane 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.199 hangar at a nearby regional airport for a class that 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:20.359 looked more like a press conference. The two clansmen held court, 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:24.439 expounding on their philosophies on race mixing and the evil 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:29.160 influence exerted by Jewish people, and then they took questions 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:33.520 from the students afterward. One student said the men's views 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:39.600 were quote unrealistic and laughable, and noted that they avoided 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.600 answering certain questions, refusing to give any hard answers on 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:47.719 the actual size of their organization or exactly how they 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:50.800 intended to remove black and Jewish people from the land 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:54.800 they would use for their ethno state. Another student said 0:22:54.840 --> 0:23:01.480 the men's remarks were gross and obscene and completely unprintable, 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:06.960 particularly on the subject of Jews. All in all, the 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:10.439 instructor viewed the event as a success, telling the paper 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:12.960 that about a third of the students engaged in the 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:19.040 interview practice and were vigorous and polite but persistent. I'm 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:21.360 sure the decision to hold the class in the end 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:23.840 had nothing to do with the clan's threats against the 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:28.720 university after the invitation was originally withdrawn. Moran's threats to 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.560 sue over a canceled class probably didn't have them shaking 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:36.520 in their boots, but the promise of impending clan rallies 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:42.080 on campus was unappealing, and it wasn't just the University 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:45.240 of Kansas that he was threatening with lawsuits and clan marches. 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:49.159 By the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Kansas City had 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:52.600 voted to shut down their entire public access television station 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:57.679 rather than air the clan's TV show. The Clan's been 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:01.159 responded by filing suit with the backing of the ACLU, 0:24:02.800 --> 0:24:05.840 and soon after that suit was filed, the debate about 0:24:05.880 --> 0:24:13.399 what belongs on TV reached Weekday afternoon's most watched TV show. 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:17.240 In Kansas City. Recently, a civic battle erupted when council 0:24:17.240 --> 0:24:21.320 members voted to eliminate the public access channel rather than 0:24:21.400 --> 0:24:24.440 to allow the Klan to broadcast. Dennis Mayan is a 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:28.560 KKK official who wanted to be host of the Klansas 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:31.800 City cable program, which would feature, among other things, footage 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:35.280 from KKK rallies and cross burnings, and, in Dennis's own words, 0:24:35.280 --> 0:24:38.200 an occasional safari through the black parts of Kansas City. 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:41.560 Defending Gennis and other clan members. Writes to free and 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:45.280 equal opportunity to public access cable stations is American Civil 0:24:45.280 --> 0:24:49.800 Liberties attorney John Powell. 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:53.159 The September first, nineteen eighty eight episode of The Oprah 0:24:53.240 --> 0:24:58.080 Winfrey Show featured Tom Metzker, Dennis Mayhon, and Dennis's ACLU 0:24:58.119 --> 0:25:02.440 attorney squaring off again, C. T. Vivian, a man that 0:25:02.480 --> 0:25:06.120 Martin Luther King Junior himself once called the greatest preacher 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:10.119 to ever live, Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City City 0:25:10.119 --> 0:25:12.600 councilman who was fighting to keep Mayhon off the air, 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:17.159 and an Orthodox Rabbi. The show was a bit of 0:25:17.160 --> 0:25:20.720 a circus, but that's obviously what they were going for. 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:24.879 Members of the John Brown Anti Clan Committee had packed 0:25:24.880 --> 0:25:27.560 the audience and managed to get several comments in as 0:25:27.600 --> 0:25:30.560 Oprah roamed the studio soliciting questions. 0:25:33.240 --> 0:25:36.560 John Brown Anti Clan committeem proud of it. I'd like 0:25:36.600 --> 0:25:39.760 to ask this question, where does free speech end and 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:43.200 the freedoms organized for murder begin. Where do we draw 0:25:43.240 --> 0:25:45.879 the line. I draw the line with Tom Metzer and 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:48.320 the klu Klux Klan because behind a man in the 0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:52.480 three piece six is another man in a paramilitary uniform, 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:54.600 and those people are out there killing people. 0:25:57.720 --> 0:26:02.040 That audience member was Tray more right than she could 0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:05.840 have known. Just six weeks after that episode aired, an 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:09.320 Ethiopian college student nam Mulagetta Sarah was beaten to death 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:13.480 in Portland, Oregon by three skinheads. With help from the 0:26:13.480 --> 0:26:17.880 Southern Poverty Law Center, Mullageda's family successfully sued Tom Metzger 0:26:18.080 --> 0:26:23.040 for twelve million dollars. Those murderers were exactly what the 0:26:23.080 --> 0:26:28.000 opera audience member predicted, a paramilitary force behind a man 0:26:28.040 --> 0:26:31.200 in a three piece suit. They were members of White 0:26:31.200 --> 0:26:36.080 Arian resistance who had been incited to kill by Metzger's propaganda. 0:26:37.480 --> 0:26:39.359 Maihon made a whole week out of his trip to 0:26:39.480 --> 0:26:43.240 Chicago to appear on OPRAH. The episode was filmed on 0:26:43.280 --> 0:26:46.119 a Thursday, but he spent the whole week in the city. 0:26:47.400 --> 0:26:50.520 On Sunday, August twenty eighth, he was a headline speaker 0:26:50.560 --> 0:26:55.480 at a White Pride rally in Chicago's Marquette Park. Five 0:26:55.800 --> 0:27:00.280 hundred people turned up to hear speeches from klansmen. The 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:04.360 events organizers, a clan chapter in Illinois, claimed they'd had 0:27:04.359 --> 0:27:08.280 no idea there was another event in Marquette Park that day. 0:27:09.000 --> 0:27:13.080 Marquette Park is over three hundred acres, and clansmen aren't 0:27:13.119 --> 0:27:17.639 known for their courtesy or flawless event planning, so maybe 0:27:17.640 --> 0:27:22.000 they hadn't done it on purpose. But that Sunday afternoon 0:27:22.480 --> 0:27:25.160 they were sharing the park with several hundred people who 0:27:25.160 --> 0:27:29.160 had marched over together from a nearby church. They were 0:27:29.160 --> 0:27:33.080 commemorating the August nineteen sixty six Marquette Park March, led 0:27:33.119 --> 0:27:37.879 by doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. And history may not repeat, 0:27:37.960 --> 0:27:42.439 but it often does rhyme. That march in nineteen sixty 0:27:42.480 --> 0:27:47.159 six was confronted by thousands of angry white people, some 0:27:47.240 --> 0:27:51.439 with Confederate flags and swastika banners, and they pelted the 0:27:51.480 --> 0:27:55.320 marchers with objects, hitting doctor King himself in the head 0:27:55.359 --> 0:27:58.920 with a rock. And in nineteen eighty eight, the city 0:27:58.920 --> 0:28:03.440 of Chicago sent eight hundred police officers to keep these 0:28:03.480 --> 0:28:07.960 two events separate. Officers on horseback blocked a contingent of 0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:10.560 klansmen who broke off from the main event to try 0:28:10.600 --> 0:28:15.399 to antagonize the churchgoers. Officers had to form a human 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:19.760 barricade to hold back the clansmen as the other rally dispersed. 0:28:21.480 --> 0:28:26.720 Newspaper reports say there were no injuries, but they also 0:28:26.800 --> 0:28:29.280 report that a young black man who appeared to have 0:28:29.640 --> 0:28:31.920 no idea that either event was happening in the park 0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:35.720