An 88-year-old Maryland man with a long history of ties to white supremacist groups is the suspect in Wednesday’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
James W. von Brunn served six years in prison for trying to make what he called a “legal, non-violent citizens arrest” of Federal Reserve board members in 1981 — a prison term he blamed on “a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys” and “a Jew judge,” he said on his Web site, “Holy Western Empire.”
“He is in our files going back way into the 1980s,” said Heidi Beirich, a researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Alabama. “He has an extremely long history with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He’s written extremely incendiary publications, raging about Jews, blacks and the like.”
Von Brunn is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and a 1943 graduate of Washington University there. According to his online biography, he served as a Navy officer in World War II and became an advertising artist and executive after the war.
But by the late 1970s, Beirich told CNN, he had become a “hardcore neo-Nazi” and an associate of William Pierce — the white supremacist leader whose 1978 book, “The Turner Diaries,” is blamed for inspiring Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
In December 1981, angered by what he called the “treacherous and unconstitutional” acts of the Federal Reserve, von Brunn entered the central bank’s Washington headquarters armed with a pistol, a shotgun, a knife and a mock bomb, according to court records. He claimed to be a photographer who wanted to shoot pictures of the boardroom, and bolted up the stairs when security guards told him to wait.
While being subdued, he claimed to have planted a bomb, forcing the building’s evacuation, court records state. He told officers he was upset over high interest rates — then well into double digits — and the state of the economy, which was in a recession.
Von Brunn, then 62, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on attempted kidnapping, second-degree burglary, assault and weapons charges.
In a December 1984 appeal, his court-appointed attorney, John Hogrogian, asked the court to release the defendant on bail, saying his client had “renounced his actions of December 7, 1981, and expressed remorse in a letter addressed to this court.” Von Brunn has “a young son and aches to see him again,” his lawyer wrote.
His trial dealt extensively with Von Brunn’s “attitudes about black and Jewish people,” which his lawyer said were irrelevant to the charges he was facing.
Documents were read at trial in which von Brunn wrote, “Goal: to deport all Jews and blacks from the white nations,” among other racist statements. In his testimony, he also said “the basic plan was to wind up where I am now,” meaning in court to raise publicity for his campaign against the Federal Reserve.
Von Brunn was in critical condition Wednesday after being shot by a security guard at the museum. Another guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, was killed in the shooting, museum officials said.
Washington police and the FBI said the shooting appeared to have been the work of a single gunman, and there was no prior indication of the attack.
(Source: CNN)
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5 Responses
Shooting at US citizens. On federal property. Killing a federal officer. Less than one-mile from the White House. Just three days after you visited a Buchenwald and supposedly condemed evil and intollerance.
Hey Obama, do you at least wanna pretend that you care and offer some words, if to nobody else, at least to the family of that slain officer.
Don’t be so quick to pass judgement on Obama.
The following can be found on cnn, where this article was linked from:
The shooting sent shock waves throughout the nation’s capital and elsewhere.
“I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,” said President Obama, who just days earlier had spoken emotionally about the Holocaust when he visited Buchenwald, a former Nazi concentration camp with Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.
“This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms,” Obama said Wednesday. “No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/10/museum.shooting/index.html
These neo- yemach schmoes pop up like this from time to time. They create a crime and then are hailed as heroes by their ilk. The FBI needs to be more vigilant and take more seriously threats made on the posting boards of their websites.
Also, some_jew, I also have/had an open mind about Obama mostly because Bush was so bad and because Obama’ race or middle name did not send me yelling the sky is falling. But, while his words about Israel and the Jews have been more supportive than previous administrations, simultaneously, his pressure on Israel has been harsher that previous administrations.
While I did not vote for McCain OR Obama, (because I will not vote for anyone wanting a two-state solution in the middle east), we dont know if McCain would also push the same, but with regards to Obama, I cant tell if he sincerely thinks he is doing something good, if he has no realistic clue on what he is doing and is ultra naive, or if he is untrustworthy.
The reason I am not so sure about the last one is that the pro-Israel and Jewish things he says on arab television and on his visits to the arab countries, even while flattering the arabs to no end, I am guessing the arabs dont want to hear his supportive statements about Israel and Jews as much as I dont want to hear his flattery of Islam and the arabs.
Bottom line, the thought emerges over and over again to trush in Hashem.
now, what would have happened had more people in the museum been armed? the murderer, whomever he was, was able to enter with a gun and shoot. if ordinary citizens had guns, then they would be able to protect people there. maybe that guard would not have been killed if visitors had been quick on the draw.
#4, A few more people probably would have been killed if ordinary citizens would have used their guns.