Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and happy New Year, everybody. I
Speaker 1: think twenty twenty five is going to be a banner
Speaker 1: year for weird little guys, and I don't mean the
Speaker 1: show Unfortunately. They're just making newer, weirder guys all the
Speaker 1: time lately, and I can hardly keep up. And as
Speaker 1: time marches on, I'm stuck in the past, connecting the
Speaker 1: dots on decades old stories of the weird little guys
Speaker 1: who came before the right wing terrorists of today. I
Speaker 1: hope you're having a peaceful and cheerful holiday season, whatever
Speaker 1: that looks like for you. I had every intention of
Speaker 1: using that week of relative downtime to get caught up,
Speaker 1: maybe even get ahead. It probably won't surprise you to
Speaker 1: hear that absolutely did not happen. Something about the twinkle
Speaker 1: of Christmas lights pulled me away from my maniacal sprawling
Speaker 1: notes about Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories. I can't explain it,
Speaker 1: And as I was chipping away at the next chapter
Speaker 1: of Dennis Mayhon's life, I realized there was a strange
Speaker 1: little side story that I was going to have to cut.
Speaker 1: It just didn't fit in the narrative flow, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't one hundred percent relevant to the story arc I
Speaker 1: was plotting out, so I was prepared to scrap it.
Speaker 1: It certainly wouldn't be the first time, and I know
Speaker 1: it won't be the last. I love a little side story,
Speaker 1: but I'm starting to get the feel for the kinds
Speaker 1: of side stories that will take us off course for
Speaker 1: an interesting few minutes and the ones that are going
Speaker 1: to derail the whole episode. And this was the latter.
Speaker 1: But then I remembered this is my show. I'm the
Speaker 1: captain of this ship, and for me, getting to the
Speaker 1: point has never been the point. We're on a journey here,
Speaker 1: and I never really know where I'm taking making us
Speaker 1: until I get there. We'll get back to Dennis Mahon
Speaker 1: in Eloheim City and the bomb he mailed to a
Speaker 1: public library in Arizona for the next episode, I promise.
Speaker 1: But this week we're going on a side quest because
Speaker 1: I just couldn't bear to cut the story of one
Speaker 1: of my favorite kinds of things to find in a
Speaker 1: weird little guy's past, a lawsuit about anti white discrimination.
Speaker 1: So if you'll indulge me, here's the story of our
Speaker 1: convicted bomber's twin brother getting fired because he wouldn't stop
Speaker 1: wearing the Nazi T shirt he bought it a gun show.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conker and this is weird, Little guys. The
Speaker 1: last few episodes have been about Dennis May. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the first few decades of his life. He was
Speaker 1: born in a small community in northern Illinois nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: He served in the army after high school and trained
Speaker 1: as an aircraft mechanic. In the late seventies, he joined
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan and then the neo Nazi group
Speaker 1: National Alliance. In interviews with journalists over the years, he's
Speaker 1: often claimed his belief in the importance of racial separatism
Speaker 1: arose from his experience in the Florida National Guard, when
Speaker 1: his unit was deployed in May of nineteen eighty to
Speaker 1: assist in transporting Cuban refugees during the Mariial boat lift crisis.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that he was there, or that having
Speaker 1: to interact with asylum seekers deepened his hatred of people
Speaker 1: who aren't white, but the record does seem to indicate
Speaker 1: that he'd already joined the clan before the first boat
Speaker 1: arrived in Miami that month. From there, Dennis disappeared for
Speaker 1: a few years. It claims to have been underground carrying
Speaker 1: out clan bombings in Florida, Michigan, and Oklahoma, targeting synagogues,
Speaker 1: government office buildings, and abortion clinics. He re emerged in
Speaker 1: Kansas City in nineteen eighty seven and as a regional
Speaker 1: organizer for the clan. I won't retread the entirety of
Speaker 1: those last two episodes, but we've been following Dennis all
Speaker 1: over the country the world, even from Kansas City to Canada,
Speaker 1: from Tulsa to Berlin. He won a lawsuit over his
Speaker 1: right to broadcast to race his public access TV show.
Speaker 1: He lost a lawsuit to Fred Rogers, he got banned
Speaker 1: from Canada. He tried to revive the clan in Germany,
Speaker 1: and he absolutely loved talking to reporters. As far as
Speaker 1: mid level hate group organizers go, he's a little unusual
Speaker 1: in that respect. So there's ample record of where he was,
Speaker 1: what he was up to, who his friends were, and
Speaker 1: the narrative about himself that he wanted you to believe.
Speaker 1: But all this time we've been talking about Dennis Mayhan,
Speaker 1: and there's been someone else in the story that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked much about. He's been there. He's always there,
Speaker 1: but he's much quieter. He keeps his name out of things.
Speaker 1: But Dennis Mayhan's identical twin brother, Daniel Mayhan, was there
Speaker 1: all along. As I mentioned in the last episode, Daniel
Speaker 1: Mayhon has never been convicted of a crime. He was
Speaker 1: indicted alongside his brother in two thousand and nine saga
Speaker 1: will cover next week, but unlike his brother, who is
Speaker 1: serving a forty year sentence in terre hate, Daniel wasn't convicted.
Speaker 1: And if you ask Daniel, he'd tell you that he
Speaker 1: was never a member of any of those groups his
Speaker 1: brother was mixed up in. I mean I didn't ask him.
Speaker 1: I guess I could have tried to reach him for comment,
Speaker 1: but I think he'd tell me the same thing. He
Speaker 1: told an attorney for American Airlines during a deposition in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three that he was never what he
Speaker 1: called a card carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: or White Arian Resistance or National Alliance. So, just for
Speaker 1: the record here at the top, I'll make no allegations
Speaker 1: that haven't been made in sworn statements by agents of
Speaker 1: the FBI or the ATF. Daniel Mahon isn't guilty of
Speaker 1: any crimes. A matching set of genes doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: you carry a matching set of beliefs. But I read
Speaker 1: a few hundred pages of his own sworn testimony that
Speaker 1: left me with the impression that these identical twins share
Speaker 1: a little bit more than their DNA. With Denis occupying
Speaker 1: the spotlight, the record on Daniel is actually pretty sparse.
Speaker 1: A lot of what I can say about him with
Speaker 1: any degree of certainty came out of his own mouth
Speaker 1: in this deposition he sat for on October twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. He was three years into a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against his former employer, American Airlines over his termination
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen ninety nine. For nine hours, he
Speaker 1: answered questions about his involvement in the company's Caucasian employee
Speaker 1: resource group. But even a side story has to start
Speaker 1: before the beginning. So before we get to the strange
Speaker 1: revelations in that conference room in Tulsa, I want to
Speaker 1: set the scene a little bit with some history about
Speaker 1: the concept of employee resource groups. If you've ever worked
Speaker 1: for almost any big corporation these days, you've probably seen
Speaker 1: a flyer in the break room for something like this,
Speaker 1: they might be called employee resource groups ergs, employee affinity groups,
Speaker 1: business network groups, or some other mishmash of corporate buzzwords
Speaker 1: about mentorship and networking. Ergs are, according to a continuing
Speaker 1: education module for corporate lawyers that I found, quote, organize
Speaker 1: based on social identity, shared characteristics, or life experience. Affinity
Speaker 1: groups are generally initiated by employees and often involve or
Speaker 1: implicate protected classes such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, race,
Speaker 1: national origin, disability, and veteran status. Today's employee resource groups
Speaker 1: have expanded to include other kinds of shared interests, but
Speaker 1: at their core, they allow employees who belong to a
Speaker 1: particular group to network, support and mentor one another, and
Speaker 1: advocate for themselves within the company. The gules at McKinsey
Speaker 1: say that they can be a valuable tool to recruit
Speaker 1: and retain a diverse workforce by fostering a sense of inclusion,
Speaker 1: and they can provide a ready pool of diverse spaces
Speaker 1: to send to panels and recruitment events. I found one
Speaker 1: press release praising the efforts of the Hispanic Employee Resource
Speaker 1: Group at JP morgan Chase. The group's mentorship program led
Speaker 1: to a measurable increase in Hispanic women in management positions.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, these groups sound like something
Speaker 1: cooked up by an HR department to put in a
Speaker 1: shareholder meeting slide show. But there's a history here. The
Speaker 1: idea of people who share a particular life experience getting
Speaker 1: together to talk about it is obviously not new. That's
Speaker 1: not something anyone came up with. You don't have to
Speaker 1: invent that. But the employee resource group as it exists
Speaker 1: in corporate America today originated with the National Black Employee
Speaker 1: Caucus at Xerox in nineteen seventy. All of the human
Speaker 1: resources blurbs and business press puff pieces about employee resource
Speaker 1: groups kind of just leave the story there they started
Speaker 1: at Xerox nineteen teen seventy. But there's always more to
Speaker 1: a story than that, And apparently Xerox was up to
Speaker 1: some pretty radical diversity, equity and inclusion corporate practice decades
Speaker 1: before anyone ever said that phrase out loud. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, the first student at Xerox's International Fellowship program
Speaker 1: was a Fulbright scholar from Ethiopia who happened to be
Speaker 1: the younger brother of a member of highly Selassie's Cabinet.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, the company spent a million dollars
Speaker 1: to sponsor a television series called of Black America. The
Speaker 1: seven part documentary on black history from slavery through the
Speaker 1: still ongoing riots that followed the assassination of doctor Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Junior, aired in prime time, and it earned
Speaker 1: Xerox threatening letters from the ku Klux Klan and hysterical
Speaker 1: letters to the editor in papers across the country from
Speaker 1: small business owners swearing they're going to throw out their
Speaker 1: copy machines. An op ed in The London Evening Standard
Speaker 1: described the program as quote unmistakably hostile to the establishment.
Speaker 1: That same year, nineteen sixty eight, Xerox partnered with a
Speaker 1: Rochester based civil rights group called FIGHT, which stands for Freedom, Integration, God,
Speaker 1: Honor Today. The New York Times called Fight quote a
Speaker 1: militant Negro organization and made a pointed note that professional
Speaker 1: radical Saul Alinsky had had a hand in it, and
Speaker 1: that the press conference announcing this new venture was held
Speaker 1: in a room decorated with posters of h Rap Brown,
Speaker 1: Stokely Carmichael, and Shay Guevara. But Xerox's partnership with Fight
Speaker 1: created the first black run community development corporation in the
Speaker 1: United States. Xerox spent millions on manufacturing equipment and job
Speaker 1: training in the creation of these black owned manufacturing companies
Speaker 1: that employed hundreds of black employees in Rochester. A manager
Speaker 1: at Xerox who'd worked on the plan said, my only
Speaker 1: question is why didn't we do it sooner? The first
Speaker 1: manufacturing plant funded by Xerox through the Fight Partnership opened
Speaker 1: at what used to be a boarded up factory, just
Speaker 1: a few blocks away from the center of the violence
Speaker 1: that had inspired Xerox president Joseph Wilson to pour millions
Speaker 1: of dollars into diversifying his workforce the nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: Rochester riots. I know we're a little far afield here.
Speaker 1: Daniel Mahon was fourteen years old and living in Davis Junction, Illinois,
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen sixty four. But sometimes the
Speaker 1: way history repeats and rhymes and echoes is just irresistible
Speaker 1: to me. Because there is another race riot later in
Speaker 1: this story, and it seems irresponsible not to draw the
Speaker 1: lines that connect these things. On Friday, July twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, in Rochester, New York, the Northeast Mothers
Speaker 1: Association had a permit to hold a block party in
Speaker 1: Rochester Seventh Ward. They were raising money to build a
Speaker 1: playground in the neighborhood. Around two hundred people attended the
Speaker 1: event in the early evening, but as the night wore
Speaker 1: on and the children went to bed, the streets were
Speaker 1: still full of people having a good time. On a
Speaker 1: hot summer night, around eleven p m. Two Rochester police
Speaker 1: officers confronted a man they said was behaving in an
Speaker 1: unruly manner. They moved to arrest twenty year old Randy Manigal.
Speaker 1: Bystanders saw the officers using excessive force on a young
Speaker 1: black man, and some of them tried to intervene. Within
Speaker 1: half an hour, the Rochester Police Department had set dogs
Speaker 1: on the neighbors, something they'd promised they wouldn't do again
Speaker 1: after prior incidents involving police dogs mauling black residents. By
Speaker 1: one a m. The fire hoses were out, the crowd
Speaker 1: had swelled to hundreds, and officers were firing tear gas
Speaker 1: canisters indiscriminately. When the sun Rose State Police arrived to
Speaker 1: a crowd that had grown to the thousands. The violence
Speaker 1: continued for a full forty eight hours, but by the
Speaker 1: time one thousand National guardsmen arrived on Sunday, it was over.
Speaker 1: The county Civil Defense director Robert Abbot was surveying the
Speaker 1: scene from a helicopter hours after the riot ended, when
Speaker 1: the pilot lost control of the aircraft and crashed into
Speaker 1: a house on Clarissa Street. Two occupants of the home
Speaker 1: were burned to death. Both the pilot and Robert Abbot
Speaker 1: died of their injuries. A later report on the crash
Speaker 1: says that alcohol played a role, and no reporting I
Speaker 1: could find from the time period named the two black
Speaker 1: men who burned to death inside their own home. By
Speaker 1: the time the dust settled, five people were dead, hundreds
Speaker 1: had been injured, and nearly one thousand people had been arrested.
Speaker 1: Initial reporting, as ever, blamed the unrest on outside agitators.
Speaker 1: Later analysis of those arrests, however, would show that only
Speaker 1: fourteen of the people arrested lived outside of Monroe County.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the riot, Joseph Wilson asked a
Speaker 1: manager at Xerox how many black employees he had. The
Speaker 1: answer was six. Determined to change that, he approached local
Speaker 1: civil rights leader Reverend Franklin Florence to work out a plan.
Speaker 1: One of the barriers the company had to hiring more
Speaker 1: black employees was a systemic one. An unemployed black man
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five was less likely than his white
Speaker 1: counterpart to have a high school diploma. The program they
Speaker 1: developed was called Operation Step Up. Black men in ages
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty five without high school diplomas would work
Speaker 1: half a day on the factory floor and spend half
Speaker 1: a day in a classroom with teachers hired by Xerox
Speaker 1: to prepare them for a high school equivalency test. By
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, Xerox was bringing classes of twenty five
Speaker 1: men at a time through the program. After finishing their
Speaker 1: high school courses, the men became full time union factory employees.
Speaker 1: Wilson worked closely with Reverend Florence to bridge cultural gaps.
Speaker 1: Assembly line foremen received additional training on race relations, clergy
Speaker 1: were hired to assist in classroom management and guidance, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of young men got high school diplomas and good
Speaker 1: union jobs. When I first read that Wilson started the
Speaker 1: Black Employee Resource Group in nineteen seventy in response to
Speaker 1: those riots in nineteen sixty four. I didn't understand why
Speaker 1: there were six years in between the inciting incident and
Speaker 1: the actual formation of the group, But this is why
Speaker 1: there weren't any black employees in nineteen sixty four. He
Speaker 1: spent that time investing in the community and building a
Speaker 1: more diverse workforce. Today's HR guidance talks about how ergs
Speaker 1: can attract a diverse workforce, but the very first one
Speaker 1: only existed at all because work was done to address
Speaker 1: the systemic problems facing those employees. The formation of the
Speaker 1: National Black Employee Caucus in nineteen seventy is the only
Speaker 1: part of this work that seems to get remembered in
Speaker 1: human resources industry newsletters about workplace diversity. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why Corporate America isn't interested in celebrating his financial support
Speaker 1: of black radicals. But that's the story of how we
Speaker 1: got employee resource groups, which brings us back to Daniel
Speaker 1: Mayhuntsman's brother making flyers for a Caucasian Employee Resource Group
Speaker 1: at the American Airlines Diversity Fair nineteen ninety nine. Daniel
Speaker 1: Mahon did not start the Caucasian Employee Resource Group, but
Speaker 1: the American Airlines Maintenance and Engineering facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: By his account, he wasn't even interested in being a
Speaker 1: member and didn't attend a meeting of the group at
Speaker 1: all in its first few months, and the fact of
Speaker 1: the group's existence wasn't even the issue here. Nowhere in
Speaker 1: the procedural history of the lawsuit that follows does anyone
Speaker 1: even say that there should not have been an affinity
Speaker 1: group for white people. In fact, the Diversity Advisory Council
Speaker 1: said that they were quote saddened by the need to
Speaker 1: suspend the group for six months over Daniel's actions, and
Speaker 1: they called the group a valuable member of the Diversity
Speaker 1: Advisory Council family. There was inexplicably no problem at all
Speaker 1: with the Caucasian Employee Resource Group until Daniel Mayhon showed
Speaker 1: up in a Turner Diaries T shirt at a meeting
Speaker 1: to discuss the racist pamphlets he made for the diversity fair.
Speaker 1: Everyone agrees that Daniel Mayhon wasn't fired just because he
Speaker 1: was a member of the white employee group, but Daniel
Speaker 1: went to court claiming that he was fired just for
Speaker 1: being white. On March eleventh, nineteen ninety nine, there was
Speaker 1: a diversity fair at the American Airlines maintenance and engineering
Speaker 1: base in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The company had, as a part
Speaker 1: of their corporate diversity program, encouraged the formation of a
Speaker 1: variety of employee recas groups. There was an African American ERG,
Speaker 1: an Asian Culture Association, one for women in aviation, a
Speaker 1: Jewish ERG and Employees with Disabilities ERG, a Gay, Lesbian,
Speaker 1: Bisexual and Transgender ERG, Christian, Muslim, Latin, Indian, Native American
Speaker 1: one for employees over forty one for people interested in
Speaker 1: improving their work life balance, and of course there was
Speaker 1: the Caucasian Employee Resource Group. There may have been others
Speaker 1: later on, but these are the ones that were listed
Speaker 1: in a company pamphlet about the program that was written
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, and just as an aside, I
Speaker 1: was kind of struck by the inclusion of the T
Speaker 1: in the LGBT group in nineteen ninety nine. You forget
Speaker 1: sometimes that it wasn't always the lightning rod that it
Speaker 1: is today. I guess for a long time, everybody just
Speaker 1: hated all queer people the same. It's hard to feel
Speaker 1: like it's progress to get assimilation for some at the
Speaker 1: cost of heightened demonization of part of our community. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: shout out to the trans Aircraft Mechanics in Oklahoma in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. I know you were going through it.
Speaker 1: The Diversity Fair was an opportunity for every Employee Resource
Speaker 1: group to set up a booth and talk to their
Speaker 1: fellow employees about the group and hand out flyers and network.
Speaker 1: It's a nice idea. You don't have to be a
Speaker 1: member of a particular group to show an interest in
Speaker 1: the work being done by their ERG, and this kind
Speaker 1: of thing might provide an employee with a chance to
Speaker 1: find out about something like the Disability erg's advocacy around
Speaker 1: company policies that impact disabled customers. To be honest, I
Speaker 1: imagine you probably didn't have to clock out to take
Speaker 1: an hour to walk around the Diversity Fair. So even
Speaker 1: if you got nothing out of it, maybe you wasted
Speaker 1: a little time at work. You know, everybody wins, but
Speaker 1: it's always ruined the fun. Dando Mahon wasn't there that day,
Speaker 1: but the pamphlets he made were Other members of the
Speaker 1: Caucasian Employee Resource Group handed out a flyer celebrating aviation pioneers.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amateur stuff. This was before people really had
Speaker 1: access to computers. Computers existed. Obviously, the nineties weren't the
Speaker 1: stone ages. I personally was spending hours coloring in shapes
Speaker 1: on kid picks. But we were pretty lucky to have
Speaker 1: a computer at home in the nineties, So this wasn't photoshop, right.
Speaker 1: He cut out pictures of famous aviators and glued them
Speaker 1: to a piece of paper, and then he ran that
Speaker 1: sheet through a manual typewriter to type the captions onto it,
Speaker 1: and then he took the resulting Frankenflyer to a Kinko's
Speaker 1: and ran copies. So it's not a high quality product
Speaker 1: even before we get to the racism, and it's got
Speaker 1: some of the historical aviators you're probably imagining. A picture
Speaker 1: of Amelia Earhart is captioned pioneer woman aviator Wilbur Wright
Speaker 1: gets first powered flight. Chuck Yeger is captioned first to
Speaker 1: break the sound barrier. Nothing weird here. Charles Lindbergh was
Speaker 1: a Nazi sympathizer and a virulent anti Semite, and Verner
Speaker 1: von Braun was literally a Nazi. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: technically personal lives aside to the extent that being a
Speaker 1: member of the SS is your personal life. They do
Speaker 1: fit the bill here as pioneers in aviation. The problem
Speaker 1: with the flyers becomes apparent when you get to the back,
Speaker 1: because underneath a cut and pasted picture of a cartoon airplane,
Speaker 1: it says, these famous men and women who made aviation
Speaker 1: history all have one thing in common. They are members
Speaker 1: of the white race, race of explorers, discoverers, scientists, and philosophers.
Speaker 1: We are proud of the accomplishments of our noble race
Speaker 1: in the past, present, and future. Several of these heroes
Speaker 1: of aviation have their names misspelled. He's missing the H
Speaker 1: and Varner von Braun, and I swear it looks like
Speaker 1: he spelled Braun with a W instead of a U.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, that could be a photocopyr artifact.
Speaker 1: World War One fighter pilot Edward Rickenbacker is missing the
Speaker 1: last two letters of his last name. Italian aviator Francesco
Speaker 1: brack Papa is captioned as Francisco, and Francisco isn't even
Speaker 1: spelled right. And in the little racist blurb on the back,
Speaker 1: the word philosopher doesn't have an L in it. I'm
Speaker 1: not just pointing this out to clown on a working
Speaker 1: class man who can't spell it's okay if you can't spell,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make you a bad person, because in the
Speaker 1: interest of fairness, I do want to say that the
Speaker 1: flyer is full of typographical errors, because he would later
Speaker 1: claim to have made another typo. He capitalized the first
Speaker 1: letters in the words white race, where they appear in
Speaker 1: the middle of a sentence with otherwise standard capitalization, and
Speaker 1: this is a standard practice in white supremacist literature. During
Speaker 1: the investigation, he maintained that it had no particular meaning.
Speaker 1: He was just a bad typist. So, yes, he did
Speaker 1: spell a lot of these words wrong, but that's a
Speaker 1: combination of this admittedly poor typing and probably just plain
Speaker 1: not knowing. But there aren't any other errors in capitalization,
Speaker 1: so all things considered, this looks like a style choice,
Speaker 1: not a mistake. Within hours of the pamphlets being distributed
Speaker 1: at the Diversity fair, there were complaints. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: the Diversity Advisory Council that oversaw the resource groups made
Speaker 1: the decision to suspend the Caucasian Employee Resource Group for
Speaker 1: a period of six months. No one was really in trouble.
Speaker 1: None of the employees involved with the group were being disciplined.
Speaker 1: The group wasn't even being banned. They just needed to
Speaker 1: take a few months off to reassess their alignment with
Speaker 1: the company's policies governing such groups, including requirements that all
Speaker 1: employee resource groups support the company's policy on non discrimination
Speaker 1: and a harassment free workplace, promoting tolerance and respect for
Speaker 1: other employees, and not having any financial or organizational ties
Speaker 1: to outside groups. And Daniel's flyer seems to violate all
Speaker 1: of these rules. In the earliest meetings that management had
Speaker 1: about these flyers, it was clear that everyone knew who
Speaker 1: Daniel's brother was. To place us back in Dennis's timeline,
Speaker 1: it's nineteen ninety nine. Dennis Mayon was a well known
Speaker 1: white supremacist, neo Nazi, and Ku klux Klan organizer. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be in the know about clandestine organizations
Speaker 1: to know that it wasn't a secret. He ran for
Speaker 1: mayor of Tulsa in nineteen ninety two and again in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. In the mid nineties, he paid to
Speaker 1: have a billboard put up in Tulsa honoring Robert Matthews,
Speaker 1: the leader of the Nazi bank robbery gang that murdered
Speaker 1: Alan Berg. The Nazi skinhead gang that he cultivated for
Speaker 1: white Arian resistance shot a little girl in the face
Speaker 1: in Tulsa. In the late eighties, he was banned from
Speaker 1: entering Canada, the UK, and Germany, And by this point
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, Dennis was at the center of
Speaker 1: a number of conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma City bombing
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, and he had just been quite
Speaker 1: publicly called before a grand jury on the matter in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, just a few months before all of
Speaker 1: this is happening. This isn't niche stuff. One hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy people, including an entire daycare center, were murdered an
Speaker 1: hour and a half away from where this workplace meeting
Speaker 1: is happening, and a lot of people thought that Dennis
Speaker 1: helped make that bomb. Plenty of people were very aware
Speaker 1: that Dennis Mayhon was fond of telling reporters that he
Speaker 1: thought Timothy McVay was a very courageous man with tremendous
Speaker 1: drive and quote, if we had one hundred men like
Speaker 1: him in this country, we'd probably change things around. So
Speaker 1: when the Diversity Advisory Council met to discuss the flyers
Speaker 1: two weeks after the Diversity Fair, they knew. They knew
Speaker 1: who Daniel's twin brother was. The minutes from that meeting.
Speaker 1: Don't mention either mayhon brother by name, but they save
Speaker 1: The flyer was developed by individuals believed to have an
Speaker 1: affiliation with local extremist groups, and they even seemed to
Speaker 1: indicate a familiarity with some of the particulars of Dennis's publications,
Speaker 1: noting that quote, some of the comments on the flyer
Speaker 1: were similar to the rhetoric used by those groups in
Speaker 1: a racist nature. You know, I have to hand it
Speaker 1: to them. It's very clear that they knew what they
Speaker 1: were looking at, and they understood the importance of nipping
Speaker 1: it in the bud. And it could have ended there.
Speaker 1: Nobody was in trouble. A line had been crossed. The
Speaker 1: company made it clear where that line was, and everybody
Speaker 1: was just going to take a beat to reflect on
Speaker 1: the experience. But if there's one thing so many of
Speaker 1: these weird little guys have in common, it's that they
Speaker 1: absolutely do not know when to shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1: The company made the decision at the end of March
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine to suspend the Caucasian Employee Resource Group
Speaker 1: just for six months, but it wasn't until the April twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine meeting of the Caucasian ERG that some
Speaker 1: members of management met with the group to explain this decision.
Speaker 1: Daniel Mahon arrived at the meeting wearing a T shirt
Speaker 1: printed with the picture of the cover of a book.
Speaker 1: The cover depicts a man pointing a rifle and a
Speaker 1: woman pointing a handgun. You can't see what they're aiming at,
Speaker 1: but they both clearly have something in their sights above
Speaker 1: their heads. The text reads The Turner Diaries. This book
Speaker 1: comes up too often on this show. I never know
Speaker 1: how thoroughly to rechhread this ground. But this could be
Speaker 1: your first episode, and how confused must you be? Right now?
Speaker 1: We're kind of in the middle of a longer story here,
Speaker 1: But The Turner Diaries is a novel written by the
Speaker 1: founder of the neo Nazi group National Alliance. After a
Speaker 1: few years coming out in a serialized format and a
Speaker 1: Nazi Now newsletter, it was published as a book in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight and sold through the mail and ads
Speaker 1: in Nazi newsletters and at gun shows and cross burnings.
Speaker 1: The violence in the novel is fictional, of course, but
Speaker 1: It's been the inspiration for many murderers and domestic terrorists.
Speaker 1: When Robert Matthews formed the Order of the Nazi terrorist
Speaker 1: group whose bank robberies financed paramilitary compounds, he borrowed the
Speaker 1: name from the book. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested after
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bombing, he had the pages of his
Speaker 1: favorite passages sitting on the seat in the car next
Speaker 1: to him. When John William King chained James Byrd Junior
Speaker 1: to the back of his truck moments before dragging him
Speaker 1: to death in Texas in nineteen ninety eight, he joked
Speaker 1: to his accomplices that we're starting the Turner Diaries early
Speaker 1: because that's what happens in the Turner Diaries. The day
Speaker 1: of the rope nationwide mass lynching of black people, Jewish people, journalists,
Speaker 1: race traders. It's not a good book. It's not well written.
Speaker 1: One online review of the book complains that despite all
Speaker 1: the violence in this novel, there is much tedium meant
Speaker 1: little conflict, But literary abomination or not, the book has
Speaker 1: inspired murders all over the world for decades. And that's
Speaker 1: the shirt that Daniel wore to the meeting about his
Speaker 1: white pride pamphlets and that was the line. Apparently there
Speaker 1: were more complaints. The initial decision to just suspend the
Speaker 1: group's activities obviously wasn't going to cut it. An investigation
Speaker 1: was opened into the complaints about Daniel's workplace conduct, and
Speaker 1: on May tenth, nineteen ninety nine, he was fired. The
Speaker 1: termination letter says, in addition to other findings in the investigation,
Speaker 1: wearing that shirt to the meeting created a racially hostile
Speaker 1: work environment as a member of the Transport Workers Union.
Speaker 1: He filed a grievance protesting the decision, and it was
Speaker 1: ultimately appealed to the Board of Adjustment. In November of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, a full hearing was conducted, lasting three days.
Speaker 1: Daniel Mahon has always claimed that he had no involvement
Speaker 1: in his brother's activities. At the hearing, the company produced
Speaker 1: as evidence a clan newsletter naming Daniel m of Tulsa
Speaker 1: as White Patriot of the Month, quote for his tremendous
Speaker 1: efforts in financial support of the struggle, and thanking him
Speaker 1: for his help setting up the cross at a cross
Speaker 1: burning event. He also provided the tent, the sound system,
Speaker 1: and the portable generator. The newsletter goes on to describe
Speaker 1: his large collection of Clan and National Socialist white power
Speaker 1: merchandise and praise him for supplying many white power groups
Speaker 1: with T shirts over the years. He would ultimately admit
Speaker 1: that yes, he is Daniel M of Tulsa, but he
Speaker 1: really downplayed the praise that's being heaped upon him here.
Speaker 1: He was just helping his brother out. He wasn't at
Speaker 1: the cross burning. He just gave his brother a ride there.
Speaker 1: The company called an expert witness to present evidence of
Speaker 1: the Mayhun Brothers white supremacist activities, including that clan newsletter
Speaker 1: naming Daniel White Patriot of the Month. The expert also
Speaker 1: explained the significance of the language and the capitalization used
Speaker 1: in the flyer. The board's opinion doesn't name this expert witness,
Speaker 1: but I'm willing to risk five dollars betting that it
Speaker 1: was Daniel Levatas if I'd managed my time better this week,
Speaker 1: I would have written and asked him. But that's my guess.
Speaker 1: Over the course of three days, witness after witness was called,
Speaker 1: and the official reason for the termination had been the
Speaker 1: incident with the Turner Diary's T shirt, but it came
Speaker 1: out in this hearing that this was far from the
Speaker 1: first time Daniel Mayhon's white supremacist ties had caused friction
Speaker 1: at work. His supervisor testified that on Daniel's very first
Speaker 1: day at American Airlines back in nineteen eighty six, he'd
Speaker 1: been complaining loudly about Jews and n words. Two other
Speaker 1: supervisors testified about two separate incidents where they'd warned him
Speaker 1: not to bring clan or white Airan resistance materials to work.
Speaker 1: There had been another complaint about him wearing a KKK
Speaker 1: hat and belt buckle. Multiple employees had complained about a
Speaker 1: KKK knife. A supervisor who worked nights as a security
Speaker 1: guard had been assigned a shift to a local gun
Speaker 1: show where he saw Daniel Mahon selling merchandise at the
Speaker 1: Aryan Nations booth. The supervisor testified that Daniel called him
Speaker 1: over and tried to give him an Arian Nation's T shirt,
Speaker 1: but he declined. The same supervisor testified that Daniel had
Speaker 1: invited him over to his house one night and showed
Speaker 1: him a racially violent movie and tried to give him
Speaker 1: white supremacist texts. A Walgreens cashier testified that some time
Speaker 1: after Daniel's termination. The brothers came into the drug store
Speaker 1: to drop off some film to be developed, and a
Speaker 1: visibly intoxicated Dennis Mayhon was shouting about how if American
Speaker 1: Airlines didn't give his brother his job back, they were
Speaker 1: going to see the biggest bomb they ever had. The
Speaker 1: expert offered evidence that Daniel's grievance with the company was
Speaker 1: a subject of significant discussion and fundraising in white supremacist
Speaker 1: newsletters and broadcasts, which undermines his claim that he had
Speaker 1: no connection to those groups. Daniel Mayhon's union representative advised
Speaker 1: him not to test on his own behalf, but they
Speaker 1: did put on several witnesses who testified that he was
Speaker 1: a model employee, that he had been kind to them,
Speaker 1: or that they personally had not been offended by the flyers.
Speaker 1: Linda Dill and Craig Nichols, the employees who actually led
Speaker 1: the Caucasian Employee Resource Group, testified that it was not
Speaker 1: true that Daniel had explicitly told the group that his
Speaker 1: brother would help him make the flyers. The board was unconvinced,
Speaker 1: writing in their final opinion in March of two thousand,
Speaker 1: clearly he holds white supremacist beliefs and has ties to
Speaker 1: and involvement in such organizations. The opinion is clear that
Speaker 1: he can't be and isn't being disciplined for his brother's
Speaker 1: conduct or even for his own conduct outside of work.
Speaker 1: But this background reflects unfavorably on the underlying intent of
Speaker 1: the flyers and the decision to wear the Turner diary
Speaker 1: shirt to work. Their summary of the evidence concludes by saying,
Speaker 1: the fact that he was technically proficient and nice to
Speaker 1: some people doesn't outweigh all the other evidence, nor is
Speaker 1: it directly related to the specific nature of his conduct
Speaker 1: in this case. The decision to uphold the termination was
Speaker 1: two to one. Arbitrator Gil Vernon, an American Airlines employee,
Speaker 1: Mary Tinsman, agreed with J. C. Brown dissenting. I struggled
Speaker 1: to pin down who j. C. Brown might have been,
Speaker 1: but Gil Vernon is kind of a big deal in
Speaker 1: the world of union arbitration anyway. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: President Clinton appointed him to a commission to help resolve
Speaker 1: a National Railroad labor dispute. President Obama appointed him to
Speaker 1: a similar body in twenty eleven. He's an arbitrator for
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball. He was the president of the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Arbitrators in twenty ten. And he has also
Speaker 1: bond Vere's dad. Well, his son is justin Vernon, the
Speaker 1: frontman of the indie folk band. So next time you
Speaker 1: hear a Bonnie Vere song, I guess you can think
Speaker 1: about the time his dad wrote this about a racist.
Speaker 1: His message was subtle, but in clearly resonant tones, rang
Speaker 1: true only to the sad song of racial superiority. Clever
Speaker 1: equivocation and veiled threats are part and parcel of the
Speaker 1: grievance ilk and he can't hide behind cleverness at the
Speaker 1: expense of the security, dignity, and respect of other workers
Speaker 1: who do not share his race or ethnicity, or his
Speaker 1: attitudes about racial nobility. Much is debated in this record, However,
Speaker 1: in the final analysis, something must be said, in plain
Speaker 1: and simple terms.
Speaker 2: At the root of Grievan's conduct was hate.
Speaker 1: Daniel Mayhon spend the next several months trying to find
Speaker 1: a lawyer. He sent a letter to the law firm
Speaker 1: of former Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Chirpin, but the firm
Speaker 1: turned the case down without even agreeing to meet with him.
Speaker 1: He consulted with his friend Jean, but Jean wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in the case. Gene in this case is a Tulsa
Speaker 1: area bankruptcy attorney named Francis Eugene Huff. Daniel describes him
Speaker 1: as a conservative type person and a real nice guy,
Speaker 1: and they'd been friends for about nine years by the
Speaker 1: time he was deposed in two thousand and three. He
Speaker 1: doesn't offer up any other facts about Gene, like that
Speaker 1: he was a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens,
Speaker 1: or the fact that he may have been too busy
Speaker 1: to take Daniel's case back then because he was in
Speaker 1: the middle of representing the Council of Conservative Citizens in
Speaker 1: their lawsuits regarding Confederate flags on public property. The questioning
Speaker 1: about Huff leave me with the impression that the lawyer
Speaker 1: asking the questions did not believe Daniel when he said
Speaker 1: that Gene Huff never helped him with his case. Sometime
Speaker 1: in the summer of two thousand so, after the arbitrator
Speaker 1: upheld his termination and before he filed his federal lawsuit,
Speaker 1: Daniel Mayhon sent a letter to the ACLU asking them
Speaker 1: to take his case. The letter doesn't read like it
Speaker 1: was written by Daniel Mayhon, and I don't just mean
Speaker 1: diction and spelling, Although those may be dead giveaways. The
Speaker 1: real tip off is a handwritten note in the margin
Speaker 1: of the letter that says, Gene, should you print Daniel
Speaker 1: Mayhon in place of I. So what it sounds like
Speaker 1: is that Jane wrote the letter pretending to be Daniel,
Speaker 1: and when Daniel read it, he didn't understand that, and
Speaker 1: so he was asking why the letter was written in
Speaker 1: the first person, as though he had written it himself,
Speaker 1: And for some reason he mailed the letter to the
Speaker 1: ACLU like that. He didn't get another copy of it
Speaker 1: without that strange note in the margin. The letter is
Speaker 1: also written in cursive that doesn't match the style of
Speaker 1: cursive in Daniel's signature, and then towards the end of
Speaker 1: the letter it abruptly switches to print that does more
Speaker 1: closely match his handwriting. Under oath, he says he wrote
Speaker 1: it himself and that Gene didn't help him. The letter
Speaker 1: itself isn't reproduced in the court record that I could find,
Speaker 1: but it appears to have been riddled with false claims.
Speaker 1: The local ACLU was already very familiar with Daniel Mayhon's
Speaker 1: brother Dennis. They'd represented him a decade earlier in his
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Kansas City over the Klan's public access TV show,
Speaker 1: and it sounds like Daniel was doing his best to
Speaker 1: try to convince the ACLU that his firing had been
Speaker 1: a grave injustice, because not only was he nothing like
Speaker 1: his brother, but his brother wasn't even really so bad.
Speaker 1: He would later claim that Dennis only got deported from
Speaker 1: Canada nineteen ninety three because he was carrying a book
Speaker 1: by an English author that was illegal in Canada, which
Speaker 1: is almost certainly a reference to Holocaust denied David Irving,
Speaker 1: who had himself been banned from Canada in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Daniel neglects to mention that the Canadian government was concerned
Speaker 1: that Dennis would incite violence at a Nazi rally during
Speaker 1: his visit. The violence at that Nazi rally happened anyway,
Speaker 1: but Dennis wasn't there. As for Dennis's trip to Germany,
Speaker 1: his brother says Dennis didn't even do any Nazi stuff there.
Speaker 1: He just went to an old church to lay some flowers.
Speaker 1: But it seems like the ACLU wasn't interested in going
Speaker 1: to bat for another Mahon because they didn't take the case.
Speaker 1: The lawyer he ended up hiring to represent him was
Speaker 1: a man named Robert Eugene Fraser the third, and Fraser
Speaker 1: was young. He'd only just passed the bar in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, the year before he met Daniel in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand. Daniel says they met when Fraser
Speaker 1: answered a classified ad in the newspaper about a boat
Speaker 1: he was selling. Fraser came to look at the boat.
Speaker 1: The men got to talking. Daniel found out he was
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and he agreed to take the case. Daniel
Speaker 1: would claim in that deposition that Dennis had left the
Speaker 1: clan for good in nineteen ninety because Daniel gave him
Speaker 1: an ultimatum. Hey said he didn't want that stuff going
Speaker 1: on in his house, which is where his brother lived.
Speaker 1: He outright says that he's actually responsible for getting his
Speaker 1: brother out of hate group organizing. But when he's pressed
Speaker 1: on this, he can't explain, why then, does his brother
Speaker 1: still live with him now ten years later, and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff was very much still going on in
Speaker 1: his house. The brothers both got their mail of the
Speaker 1: same po box, the one Dennis used for his white
Speaker 1: power newsletters. The phone line at the house they shared
Speaker 1: was the same one Dennis used to run his dial
Speaker 1: a racist hot line. In this deposition in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Daniel claims Dennis hasn't been involved with White Arian Resistance
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety five, and then he hasn't really been
Speaker 1: involved in anything in years. That's just not true. He
Speaker 1: should have been charged with perjury for that, because just
Speaker 1: a few weeks before he sat down to answer these questions,
Speaker 1: his twin brother was in the news in Arizona. Residents
Speaker 1: of Mesa had received a flurry of racist flyers, and
Speaker 1: Dennis has quoted in the paper about it, and the
Speaker 1: Arizona Republic describes him as the state wide director of
Speaker 1: White Arian Resistance. In two thousand and one, when Dennis
Speaker 1: announced that he was moving to Arizona, Governor Jane Hull
Speaker 1: asked residents to wear a green ribbon to show their
Speaker 1: opposition to Dennis, like to Dennis personally. The newspaper quite
Speaker 1: literally says quote Governor Jane Hull wants Arizonans to wear
Speaker 1: a green ribbon to show unity against Dennis Mayhon, leader
Speaker 1: of the White Arian Resistance supremacist group. The headline is
Speaker 1: go away, mister Mayhon, you can't look a court reporter
Speaker 1: in her eyes and say, your brother hasn't been involved
Speaker 1: in racist stuff for years when the actual governor of
Speaker 1: a whole state is denouncing him by name like that.
Speaker 1: The deposition transcript is a perplexing document. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's the most information I have about Daniel, straight from
Speaker 1: his own mouth under oath, but it's riddled with statements
Speaker 1: I know aren't true, either because I have a better
Speaker 1: source that contradicts him, or because it simply can't be
Speaker 1: true due to reality. Now I won't say he's lying,
Speaker 1: because I just did before, but lying under oath is
Speaker 1: called perjury, and it's a crime when he hasn't been
Speaker 1: convicted of a crime. But not everything he said was true,
Speaker 1: and that's a fact I now. Some of it is
Speaker 1: just dates. He says he married his wife, Myrna, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, but the marriage licenses nineteen seventy eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of men don't know their anniversary. But he
Speaker 1: also consistently refers to Myrna as his wife in the
Speaker 1: present tense. But by two thousand and three they'd been
Speaker 1: divorced for nineteen years. They split in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: and she had since remarried At least twice, and several
Speaker 1: times during the proceeding he brings up Mirna's race. They
Speaker 1: met when he was in the Navy and he was
Speaker 1: stationed in the Philippines, And would a man who is
Speaker 1: racist mary a Filipino woman. The answer to that is yes, obviously,
Speaker 1: of course he could. It happens all the time. There's
Speaker 1: no shortage of white supremacist men with Asian Pacific islander
Speaker 1: or Hispanic wives. I once got an elaborate death threat
Speaker 1: from a fairly prominent neo Nazi who uses his Latina
Speaker 1: wife's name on paperwork for his small business so he
Speaker 1: can claim it's a women and minority owned business. It
Speaker 1: happens a lot, but a lot of his answers are muddled,
Speaker 1: dates that aren't possible, locations that don't match, the kinds
Speaker 1: of mistakes you could chalk up to a hazy memory.
Speaker 1: He recollects the time the Secret Service came to his
Speaker 1: house to talk to Dennis about pissing on Air Force one.
Speaker 1: The plane was apparently parked in a Boeing hangar in Wichita,
Speaker 1: where Dennis was working at the time, and he apparently
Speaker 1: entered the plane and relieved himself on the president's chair.
Speaker 1: The deposition transcript describes this as having taken place in
Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen ninety nine. I think that may
Speaker 1: be a transcriptionist typographical error, because it has to be
Speaker 1: eighty nine. Daniel recalls that it was around two years
Speaker 1: after he and his wife separated, but that's not quite
Speaker 1: right either. They separated in eighty four, and the president
Speaker 1: in question was George Bush. We've had two president Bushes,
Speaker 1: and Daniel occasionally claims that he and Myrna at some
Speaker 1: point got back together. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 1: but even if it is, none of these combinations of
Speaker 1: facts produced the possibility for all of these things to
Speaker 1: have been true at the same time. Based on the
Speaker 1: description of the plane being in Wichita and Dennis being
Speaker 1: employed by an airline called Braniff at the time, it
Speaker 1: could only have been nineteen eighty nine. That's the only
Speaker 1: point in time during which Branef Airlines operated at the
Speaker 1: Wichita airport, and we had a president named Bush. Whether
Speaker 1: Dennis actually pissed on Air Force one is anybody's guests,
Speaker 1: but I don't doubt that he told people he did.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his own clan newsletter in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: that he'd urinated on a memorial to Holocaust victims when
Speaker 1: he visited a concentration camp in Germany, and other important
Speaker 1: dates in his brother's life are similarly confused in Daniel's testimony.
Speaker 1: We know. Dennis himself has said that his racial awakening
Speaker 1: was in Florida in May of nineteen eighty. When Matthew
Speaker 1: Kennard interviewed him for his book about white supremacists in
Speaker 1: the military, he was very clear that his National Guard
Speaker 1: unit had been deployed that month to assist in transporting
Speaker 1: Cuban asylum seekers to processing and detention centers. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the only thing going on in Miami in May
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty. Dennis's unit was deployed on May third,
Speaker 1: we know that, But two weeks later, the National Guard
Speaker 1: was deployed again, this time to put down the Miami riots.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes this pair of events gets muddled together.
Speaker 1: It certainly did for Daniel, But the riots had very
Speaker 1: little to do with the thousands of Cubans arriving by boat.
Speaker 1: On May seventeenth, nineteen eighty, an all white male jury
Speaker 1: returned not guilty verdicts for all four of the Miami
Speaker 1: police officers who had beaten Arthur mc duffie to death
Speaker 1: a year earlier. McDuffie had been a United States Marine,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, in the eyes of the officers who
Speaker 1: shattered his skull, he was a thirty three year old
Speaker 1: black man. Three days of rioting followed the verdict. Eighteen
Speaker 1: people died. On the second day of the riot, the
Speaker 1: National Guard was sent in. I honestly couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: if the units deployed to transport Cuban asylum seekers starting
Speaker 1: on May third were the same men deployed to the
Speaker 1: riots on May eighteenth. I can't find any specifics about that.
Speaker 1: I know the National Guard was transporting those people for
Speaker 1: a longer period of time than that, but I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. Denis never mentioned the riots though when
Speaker 1: he spoke to Kennar at about that time in his life.
Speaker 1: But Daniel is adamant that it was the Miami riots
Speaker 1: that changed his brother that month, describing him as having
Speaker 1: been right in the thick of it and that it
Speaker 1: was a pretty bloody situation. He's mistaken about the dates again.
Speaker 1: He says it was May third, and he says eighteen
Speaker 1: people died the first night, but he's so specific about it.
Speaker 1: He says that Dennis had to use his rifle on
Speaker 1: a civilian and that the police officer next to him
Speaker 1: had a heart attack and died. A Miami Police Department
Speaker 1: after action report confirms at least some of this is
Speaker 1: based in fact. On the afternoon of the second day
Speaker 1: of the riots, so May eighteenth, Miami Police officer Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Edward McDermott was escorting National Guard troops when he suffered
Speaker 1: a massive heart attack and died. The report doesn't include
Speaker 1: any mention of National guardsmen firing their weapons. It only
Speaker 1: outlines the occasions on which Miami police officers did, but
Speaker 1: that's because the report is by the Miami Police Department.
Speaker 1: I think any information about whether guardsmen had fired their
Speaker 1: weapons would be in a report by the National Guard.
Speaker 1: I was unable to confirm whether or not any National
Speaker 1: guardsman shot a civilian during the riots. But ultimately I
Speaker 1: think what happened here is that Daniel thought he was
Speaker 1: telling the truth, and it was Dennis who lied to
Speaker 1: his brother, because telling people that you became racist because
Speaker 1: you killed a man in a race riot sounds more
Speaker 1: impressive than the truth, which is that he was a
Speaker 1: glorified bus driver for a week, and he hates the
Speaker 1: sound of people speaking Spanish. But back on the subject
Speaker 1: of his own life, Daniel says he doesn't still have
Speaker 1: the Turner Diaries t shirt that he wore to that
Speaker 1: meeting because his lady friend threw it away. He says
Speaker 1: her name is Lisa, but he can't give her last
Speaker 1: name because she's married. He's told that he can say
Speaker 1: it off the record, but he does need to provide
Speaker 1: it to the court. And then he backtracks. Actually, there
Speaker 1: is no Lisa. Her name is Millie and she's not married.
Speaker 1: But she has a boyfriend and they aren't having an affair.
Speaker 1: Actually there's no relationship. She's just a little old lady
Speaker 1: who lives next door and sometimes he helps her out
Speaker 1: with repairs. She's more like a mother to him. Now,
Speaker 1: Milly does exist. Lisa might exist too, but Milly definitely does.
Speaker 1: Because I tracked down the property records of every house
Speaker 1: on the block the Mayhon brothers were living on in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, and a woman named Mildred lived three
Speaker 1: houses down from them. She was about twenty years their
Speaker 1: senior back then, so the like a mother comment kind
Speaker 1: of tracks but I don't think she was in his
Speaker 1: bedroom throwing away his t shirts. This isn't a misremembered
Speaker 1: date or a slip of the tongue. There's no rational
Speaker 1: explanation for saying my secret married girlfriend Lisa if there
Speaker 1: is no Lisa and you aren't having an affair, and
Speaker 1: you actually met your elderly neighbor Mildred, who was like
Speaker 1: a mother to you. He also claimed that he'd never
Speaker 1: even read the Turner Diaries before he wore that shirt
Speaker 1: to work in nineteen ninety nine, so he couldn't have
Speaker 1: been sending any kind of message related to the content
Speaker 1: of the book because he didn't know what the book
Speaker 1: was about. And he only wore the shirt that day
Speaker 1: at all because it was the only clean shirt he
Speaker 1: could find that morning. And he swears he had no
Speaker 1: idea when he got dressed that morning that there would
Speaker 1: be a meeting that day with management about his pamphlets,
Speaker 1: and he certainly didn't know was Hitler's birthday. I can't
Speaker 1: prove that's not true, but it feels untrue in my heart.
Speaker 1: It also struck me as odd that a man who
Speaker 1: claims to have no real knowledge of or involvement in
Speaker 1: the movement, who never even read the book and doesn't
Speaker 1: even really know what National Alliance is, consistently refers to
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce as doctor Pierce. Now that's technically correct.
Speaker 1: He had a pH d. He was a physicist, and
Speaker 1: I often noticed that I do the same thing. I
Speaker 1: call him doctor Pierce, and that's because most of the
Speaker 1: material I consume about him was written by his acolytes.
Speaker 1: Those are the people who call him doctor Pierce. But
Speaker 1: Daniel says he never met doctor Pierce, but his brother
Speaker 1: did once sometime in the mid eighties. And if that's true,
Speaker 1: that means Dennis Mayhon had contact with William Luther Pearce
Speaker 1: during his underground years, the years he claims he was
Speaker 1: conducting a series of bombings. There were more than a
Speaker 1: few times during that nine hour deposition that his mask
Speaker 1: slips a little. He tries to maintain this righteous indignation
Speaker 1: at the implication that he knows anything about the world
Speaker 1: his brother lives in. You know, he loves his brother,
Speaker 1: but they don't share the same views. He doesn't know
Speaker 1: anything about that stuff. But when the attorney says that
Speaker 1: Dennis used to be a grand wizard in the clan
Speaker 1: Daniel's quick to correct him. It's an imperial wizard, not
Speaker 1: a grand wizard. And when he's asked about the people
Speaker 1: he chose to feature on his Caucasian Aviator's pamphlet, he
Speaker 1: corrects the record and says, actually, they aren't all white,
Speaker 1: because Aileen de Troux is quote mixed Mediterranean and French.
Speaker 1: She's not what you would call aryan or a totally
Speaker 1: white person. I tried to track down this woman's genealogy.
Speaker 1: She appears to be thoroughly Flemish, so I don't know
Speaker 1: what he's talking about here. But regardless of the possible
Speaker 1: Mediterranean blood, that is a level of race science that
Speaker 1: just isn't going to come out of the mouth of
Speaker 1: a normal person. Daniel's lawsuit bounced around the courts for
Speaker 1: five years. He was dismissed in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: just six months after they filed it. So they appealed
Speaker 1: to the Tenth Circuit and it was dismissed again. A
Speaker 1: later decision partially reversed the dismissal in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: and so it was remanded back to the lower court judge,
Speaker 1: who again dismissed the case in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: so they filed a second appeal in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: And so in the months between this deposition in late
Speaker 1: two thousand and three and when they filed the second
Speaker 1: appeal in two thousand and four, that's the time period
Speaker 1: during which Dennis Mayhon is building a bomb and mailing
Speaker 1: it to the diversity office in Scottsdale, Arizona. And by
Speaker 1: the time the case was finally dismissed for good in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, the Mayhon brothers were already very
Speaker 1: close friends with the ATF informant who'd been assigned to
Speaker 1: get them to confess to the bombing. When Daniel filed
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy in two thousand and six, his petition shows
Speaker 1: he was still working as an aircraft mechanic, but he
Speaker 1: seemed to be having trouble keeping a job for very long,
Speaker 1: because he lists five different employers from two thousand and
Speaker 1: four to two thousand and six. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I had it in my head that this was going
Speaker 1: to be a quick, easy episode to shake off the
Speaker 1: holiday Hayes. I thought I'd be in and out summarizing
Speaker 1: a silly little lawsuit. But even my side stories have
Speaker 1: side story, and I spent way too long reading white
Speaker 1: power magazines from the nineties. I'll have to save some
Speaker 1: of the odd tidbits that I passed over for another time.
Speaker 1: It turns out the tangent I had to break out
Speaker 1: into its own episode has tangents that might need their
Speaker 1: own episodes. Daniel Mahon's attorney, Robert Fraser, was disbarred in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, who was allowed to resign from
Speaker 1: the bar during an ongoing investigation into several grievances. Two
Speaker 1: of them are pretty standard. He accepted payment from clients
Speaker 1: and then failed to render any services. Unethical, but not crazy.
Speaker 1: The third one was kind of troubling. He was representing
Speaker 1: a mother in a child abuse case, and he concealed
Speaker 1: the fact that he was at the time living in
Speaker 1: his client's home, which made him a material witness to
Speaker 1: the alleged child abuse. He was never charged with perjury,
Speaker 1: but the judge in that case pretty unequivocally stated on
Speaker 1: the record occurred that Fraser perjured himself when he was
Speaker 1: asked directly about this. I know it's a little different
Speaker 1: in every jurisdiction, but I was surprised that Fraser was
Speaker 1: only disbarred in two thousand and eight, because by then
Speaker 1: he had three convictions for domestic violence, one for simple assault,
Speaker 1: he served time for contempt after walking out of a
Speaker 1: hearing during a paternity lawsuit, and he was convicted of
Speaker 1: a felony for registering to vote immediately after being convicted
Speaker 1: of felony domestic violence. Most states would have had his
Speaker 1: bar card after the first felony, surely after the second one, right,
Speaker 1: and the timeline on this is kind of incredible. Fraser
Speaker 1: showed up to oral argument at the Tenth Circuit Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals in Daniel's case just days after bonding out
Speaker 1: of the Tulsa County jail for beating his wife. I'd
Speaker 1: also sketched out a section in my notes to talk
Speaker 1: about a lawsuit that this story really reminded me of
Speaker 1: a much more recent one. But I'm already running way
Speaker 1: too long, and I'll have to save that two thousand
Speaker 1: and two lawsuit filed by an aircraft mechanic who said
Speaker 1: United Airlines fired him for being white. For another time.
Speaker 1: Not to spoil it, but he also did not get
Speaker 1: fired for being white. It had a lot more to
Speaker 1: do with his habit of referring to a black coworker
Speaker 1: using the N word. So he didn't win that lawsuit obviously,
Speaker 1: and his appeal ended up getting dismissed because the white
Speaker 1: supremacist lawyer he hired forgot to file it. Now. In
Speaker 1: his defense, he was very busy at the time. He
Speaker 1: had just been charged with a felony, and unlike Robert Fraser,
Speaker 1: he practices law in a state that does disbar attorneys
Speaker 1: after their first felony. But funny enough, he doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have reported that to the bar association yet. But again,
Speaker 1: the story for another day, because that one's not over yet.
Speaker 1: And as for those Turner Diaries t shirts, I'm sure
Speaker 1: hundreds of people bought one out of Nazi magazines or
Speaker 1: off a table at a gun show. They sold them
Speaker 1: for years. But the only other story I could turn
Speaker 1: up about a guy getting himself into hot water after
Speaker 1: wearing one in public was a Navy seal. That man
Speaker 1: has since changed his name and made quite a career
Speaker 1: for himself as a relationship coach, offering dating advice to
Speaker 1: his nearly half a million followers. You probably have no
Speaker 1: idea who used to be Matt Hale's webmaster. After all,
Speaker 1: that was a long time ago, back before Matt Hale
Speaker 1: went to prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
Speaker 1: Wee Little Guys as a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me Whiley Conger.
Speaker 1: Special thanks this week goes to Wikipedia editor Tulsa politics fan.
Speaker 1: I thought I was losing my mind when I googled
Speaker 1: the subject of the show when I saw that the
Speaker 1: record had been updated to reflect my ongoing research. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Legerman and Robert Evans. The show
Speaker 1: is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme
Speaker 1: music was composed by Brad Diggert. You can email me
Speaker 1: at weard Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: will definitely read it, but I won't answer it. It's
Speaker 1: nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show
Speaker 1: with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just
Speaker 1: don't post anything that's going to make you are my
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys