3 Charged in Alleged Hate Conspiracy

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. —  A man who left the Ku Klux Klan because it wasn’t radical enough, a retired Illinois prison guard and a construction worker plotted to bomb buildings, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and kill a federal judge, prosecutors said.

Federal authorities said the men are members of a white supremacist group called The New Order. They were arrested Feb. 23 in raids at their southern Illinois homes, where authorities found guns, a pipe bomb and hand grenades.

FBI agent Jason Thompson said at the men’s bail hearing Friday that they had formed a hit list that included lawyer Morris Dees, who heads the Southern Poverty Law Center and the unidentified federal judge.

They also planned to bomb the Southern Poverty Law Center’s office in Montgomery, Ala., the Anti-Defamation League’s New York headquarters and the Wiesenthal Center, Thompson testified.

He said the group planned to rob banks and armored cars to finance the plot, as well as contaminate “a large water supply” with cyanide as a diversion while they carried out the bombing in Alabama.

Douglas Forsythe, an attorney for one suspect, said that the government “was relying on a bunch of big talk” and that the men had committed no crime.

The three were identified as former KKK regional leader Dennis Michael McGiffen, 35; retired Illinois Department of Corrections guard Wallace Scott Weicherding, 64; and Ralph P. Bock, 27, a construction worker.

Each is charged with one count of conspiracy to possess and make machine guns and destructive devices, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Glenn Levelle Lowtharp also is in custody but was not in court.