The Money Men (By Ken Lawrence)
Foreword: This is from a text transcript of the article by Ken Lawrence on which Dave Emory and Nick Tuck based their radio show, found online under the title “Duke And Friends’ Involvement In Operation Red Dog / Bayou of Pigs”.
Source: Covert Action Information Bulletin, Number 16, March 1982, $2.50
Behind The Klan’s Karibbean
Koup Attempt
Part II
By Ken Lawrence
The Money Men
Ever since the first details of the Klan/Nazi coup plot were revealed to the public last April there has heen considerable speculation as to the identities of the mercenary group’s backers. In May the Toronto Globe and Mail reported that “law enforcement authorities in Canada and the United States believe as many as 80 people may have been behind the venture.” Later, during a federal grand Jury investigation in New Orleans, a U.S. investigator told the Birmingham News, “There were probably 40 names or more mentioned before the grand jury.” The Houston Post reported that the grand jury had “a list of at least 12 unindicted co-conspirators who are believed to have financed the venture.”
The grand jury went on to indict only James White and L. E. Matthews, charging them with having furnished $57,000 of the $88,000 Michael Perdue said he had raised, despite the Los Angeles Times’s prediction that “several others” would be indicted. DEavid Duke reportedly refused to cooperate with the grand jury but was never charged with anything. During Matthews’ and White’s trial, Perdue admitted that he was trying to shield Duke and Ronald Cox from criminal indictments – easily understood as to Cox, Perdue’s lover, but difficult to grasp in the case of Duke, who has repeatedly blasted Perdue in the press as “a liar.” The defense introduced documents, later proven to have been forged, in an attempt to discredit Perdue, and Perdue’s initial uncertainty as to whether they ewre genuine apparently caused the jury to doubt his reliability as a witness. White and Matthews were acquitted, leaving the always murky question of who finances today’s fascist movement still in doubt.
Meanwhile, ever since August journalists on both sides of the border have expected charges to be laid by the Canadian government against at least four people – Alex McQuirter, Martin Weiche, Charles Yanover, and Mary Anne McGuire – but that hasn’t happened as of this writing. The list presented here is compiled from trial testimony, news reports, and interviews in the U.S., Canada, and Dominica.
JAMES C. WHITE of Lakeland, Louisiana, apparently made the largest contribution to the coup attempt – $45,000, according to testimony by Michael Perdue, plus use of his credit card and E. & S. Construction Company’s Longview, Texas post office box. In other respects White remains a mystery, so it is unclear whether his interest was simply lo pillage Dominica or whether he intended also to back the more long-term genocidal while-supremacist policies of the Klansmen and Nazis.
LODRICH F. MATTHEWS of Florence, Mississippi, contributed a total of $12,800 and a gift-wrapped box of dynamite, according to Perdue. Matthews, an electrical contractor, has long been associated with Ku Klux Klan terrorism. On April 10, 1968, Matthews was one of ten men indicted for bombing the Blackwell Real Estate Company of Jackson a year earlier – presumed to have been a reprisal against Blackwell for selling property to Black families in previously all-white areas of Jackson. A wave of terror bombings had plagued the city after the one at Blackwell, including blasts at Temple Beth Israel and the homes of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, civil rights advocate Robert B. Kochtitsky, and Jane Schutt, former chair of the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Among those indicted along with Matthews were Sam Bowers of Laurel, convicted of participation in the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoha County in 1964 and the killing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer of Hattiesburg in 1966. Another was KKK hit man Joe Daniel Hawkins, one of the Dominica mercenaries. At the time of his 1968 arrest, Matthews was described by the FBI as a former province giant (local leader) of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent of the Klan groups active in the sixties. The FBI believed Matthews was involved in making clock-operated detonating devices used in several Klan bombings of that era including one intended to blow up the home of Jewish businessman Meyer Davidson of Meridian in 1968 and another aimed at A. I. Botnick, director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith in New Orleans. Both of these cases are now thought to have been set up with advance knowledge by the FBI: in the Meridian case, FBI agents ambushed and seriously wounded Klansman Thomas A. Tarrants III and killed his companion, Kathy Ainsworth; in the New Orleans incident, Byron de la Beckwith, charged with the 1963 murder of NAACP leader Medgar Evers hut never convicted, was intercepted by authorities on his way to Botnick’s house. Despite his long history of keeping this kind of company, Matthews was never brought to trial on the bombing charge.
J. W. KIRKPATRICK of Memphis, Tennessee, and an unidentified associate gave $10,000 to Perdue toward his original scheme to conquer Grenada. Kirkpatrick was a prominent attorney specialising in insurance defense, probate, corporate, family, medical malpractice, and personal injury law. He had written to David Duke endorsing Duke’s views following an appearance on television to promote the Ku Klux Klan. and the two were good friends for ahout four years. Duke sent Perdue to Kirkpatrick shortly after the original plot against Grenada was hatched. Five days after Perdue testified in court about Kirkpatrick’s $10,000 contribution, and on the very day that the Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Orleans announced that he planned to seek indictments against the plot’s financial backers, Kirkpairick drove to Earle, Arkansas, and committed suicide with a shotgun.* His law partner, Max Lucas, described him as “a knight of old” who “preferred death to dishonor.” Another colleague called him a “super, ultra-, ultra-, ultra-conservative. He thought the country was going to hell in a hand basket.”
DON ANDREWS of Toronto formerly headed the right-wing Edmund Burke Society and a Nazi group called the Western Guard. He now heads the National Socialist Party of Canada. Four years ago he was convicted of possessing explosives, conspiring to commit arson, and painting swastikas and racist slogans on walls. He was an early member of the group that plotted originally against Grenada, and once this began to look difficult he suggested using Dominica as a base for an invasion force. Andrews has real estate interests in Toronto, and after the coup plot was under way he invested in a coffee business in Dominica. Michael Perdue testified that Andrews raised a $10,000 contribution for the coup from Martin Weiche. Both Andrews and Weiche, facing possible prosecution in Canada, have denied the charge.
MARTIN WEICHE contributed $lO,OOO to the coup attempt, according to testimony by mercenary leader Michael Perdue. Weiche, leader of the Canadian National Socialist Party, fought for Nazi Germany in World War Two. He now lives in a house in London, Ontario, modeled alter Adolf Miller’s Alpine retreat decorated with oil paintings and photographs of Hitler, a photo of the late U.S. Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, swastika flags, and an autographed copy of Mein Kampf. Although Weiche denies having financed the abortive coup, he admits to having been in touch with Perdue concerning the plot, and says he wants to relocate Caribbean Blacks to Canada so that White racists can repopulate the islands and set up an “ideal” fascist society there. Since 1979 he has aspired to create a colony in Dominica for “all pure whites – Aryan stock, physically as well as mentally.”
CHARLES YANOVER, named by Canadian law enforcement officials as an organized crime figure and international gun dealer, conducted reconnaissance missions for the coup plotters. Canadian sources say Yanover, who has also been accused in several reports of furnishing $10,000 to back the coup attempt,** went to Dominica with his Korean associate, CHARLES KIM, a tavern owner and karate instructor, and took aerial photographs of the island. The Klansmen and Nazis called Yanover “The Jew” and planned to kill him alter they seized power in Dominica, but in the meantime promised to commission him [as a] major in the Dominican army as his reward for supporting them.
ARNIE POLI advised Don Andrews on business arrangements in Dominica, according to Judy Stolfman in Today magazine (weekend supplement to the Toronto Star). A frequent traveler from Toronto to the Caribbean, Poli went to Miami on Perdue’s behalf to purchase a hoat for shipments to Dominica. He spent $3,000 of the money that Perdue said came from Don Andrews and Martin Weiche without actually obtaining a boat, and Perdue’s subsequent fury over this ended Poli’s participation in the coup plot. Poli, a stringer for CFTR, was the first one to notify the station of the plot.
TOMMY THOMPSON, a Las Vegas hotel operator, was named as one of the coup&nbpsp; attempt’s backers. He reportedly provided housing for the coup organizers but has not been accused of additional financial involvement.
CHUCK KESSLING of Houston, Texas, furnished rooms in which to store weapons. Perdue testified that he had persuaded Kessling To provide this service by saying he planned to start a survival camp, and that Kessling was unaware of the coup plot.
RONALD L. COX, Perdue’s roommate and lover, provided valuable antiques which Perdue used as collateral for money advanced to pay the mercenaries’ salaries, equipment, and expenses. Cox also allowed checks from the coup’s hackers to he processed through his hank account.
* David Duke has questioned whether Kirkpatrick actually killed himself. It is true that the method – a shotgun blast in the mouth – is one that Col. L. Fletcher Prouty has described as an assassination technique used by the CIA to eliminate evidence of murder. In this case, however, a suicide note not released to the press seems to have convinced Kirkpatrick’s survivors that the act was just what it seems to be.
** Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Peter Moon, who first reported the $10,000 from Yanover (but without naming him) in a copyrighted story last May 13, told CAIB he now helieves his Klan sources lied to him on this point. Other Canadian journalists, however, continue to consider the report credible.