Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 26, 1995                   TAG: 9504260082
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

DID BOOK INSPIRE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING?

In the search to find reasons for the Oklahoma City bombing, some think they have found an answer in the 17-year-old writings of a West Virginia fuhrer of the white supremacist movement.

In William Pierce's 1978 novel, "The Turner Diaries," a band of white "patriots" uses a fertilizer bomb to blow up a federal government building just after 9 a.m.

But Pierce, the intellectual leader of the American neo-Nazi movement and other far-right radicals, said he doubts his novel was the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing.

"I can't say I'd be upset [if it were] - I'd be surprised," Pierce said Tuesday from his home in Hillsboro, W.Va.

Just in case, though, he checked the records of his publishing business and said there is no record of any of his books being sold to anyone whose name has been connected publicly with the Oklahoma blast.

Pierce is the founder of the National Alliance and runs a publishing company from Pocahontas County, about 100 miles north of Roanoke. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith calls the National Alliance "a neo-Hitlerian, racist, and anti-Semitic extremist group primarily aimed at white youth."

Pierce has been deluged with calls from the news media since someone noticed that the timing of the Oklahoma explosion, the type of bomb, and the target were similar to those in his novel.

He says "The Turner Diaries," which details urban guerrilla warfare in the 1990s, has sold 200,000 copies and that sales continue to increase each year.

"The fact is, conditions in this country continue to develop in the direction I foresaw when I wrote the book," he said. "More and more people are realizing what's happening."

In the novel, private ownership of guns is against the law. White supremacists plot to take over the United States and purge the country of Jews, blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities.

The narrator of the novel, Earl Turner, describes the explosion of the FBI building in Washington shortly after 9 one morning. Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is used to make the bomb. Hundreds die - just like in Oklahoma.

Pierce scoffs at the link and says "Jewish groups" who want to ban hate speech and politically incorrect expression are trying to lay blame for the bombing on "The Turner Diaries."

"There is no reason to assume the book itself would have given these people ideas they couldn't have got 100 other places," he said. "The fertilizer bomb is the bomb of choice for the terrorist who wants to do a lot of damage."

Besides, he added, "It would be the height of folly to plan a bombing based on a novel."

Federal authorities think the book was used as a guide once before, when members of The Order killed some of their "enemies" and robbed banks and armored cars in the Pacific Northwest in 1983 and '84. The Order, which claimed to be starting a neo-Nazi revolution, was founded by Robert Mathews, a friend of Pierce's and a former National Alliance member.

In the 1960s, Pierce put out many of the ideological publications for the American Nazi Party and was a close friend of its founder, George Lincoln Rockwell, before Rockwell's 1967 assassination. Pierce moved to Pocahontas County in the mid-1980s.

In Pierce's most recent novel, "The Hunter," a white hero begins a drive-by shooting campaign against interracial couples and hopes to inspire copycat killers around the country. He goes on to murder Jews as well. Both novels were written under the pen name Andrew Macdonald.

The 63-year-old Pierce, who has a doctorate in physics, speaks matter-of-factly and pleasantly of his anti-Semitic beliefs, which he promotes through a weekly syndicated radio show, a mail-order publishing house and the Internet.

"The only thing the National Alliance can do is continue to develop our means of communicating with people ... to wake people up, galvanize them," he said.

Whether or not the Oklahoma City bombing is tied to right-wing hate groups or militias, the groups are feeling the heat. Pierce believes the bombing will be used by the government to justify more surveillance of Americans.

"The federal secret police dogs," he said, "will be allowed to slip their leashes now."

Pocahontas County Magistrate Jerry Dale was the sheriff in 1986 when he stumbled on Pierce's 350-acre "compound" out in the sticks. He continues to monitor Pierce's writings and activities.

"When you have somebody that's of that nature in your community ... I think it's very important that someone watches and listens," Dale said.

Dale said Pierce uses current events - the O.J. Simpson trial, farmers losing their homes - to stir up anger in down-and-out whites against minorities and the government.

"He capitalizes on any problems going on in the country," Dale said.

Dale has no doubt that Pierce's writings, which are anti-government, anti-Semitic and anti-minority, could have inspired the Oklahoma killings.

When he saw the bombing on TV last week and heard of the possible militia connection, Dale wasn't surprised. "I have spent nine years studying Pierce. It's exactly, exactly like Pierce all over.

"He says [`The Turner Diaries'] is a fictional account, but in reality it's a manual for terrorism," Dale said. "I wouldn't be surprised if those people are connected with Pierce through philosophy or association. He's kind of like the guru, the spiritual leader of that group."