Exan discloses death plot Infonnant: Activists, synagogue targeted 0 1992, The Spokesman-Rcvicw/ Spounc Chronklc
By Bill Mortin Staff writer
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 16, 1992 $1.25 VOLUME 6, NO. 40
A group of skinheads and white supremacists with ties to the Aryan Nations plotted the assassinations of two civil rights leaders and the firebombing of a Spokane synagogue, says a former FBI informant. Marshall Mend of Coeur d'Alene and Bill Wassmuth of Seattle confirmed that the FBI warned them of the myrder plot last fall. The terrorism, which the informant says was planned for Feb. I, was scuttled in late Oc- .......- - - - . . . -... tober when immigration agents / moved to deport two skinhead members of the group who were from Italy and Canada, federal authorities say. Federal agents confirmed Friday they ~ew of the plot but would not elaborate on details provided by the informant, Dan Bordner. The group secretly organized last summer in North Idaho and called itself "The Bob Mathews Brigade" in honor of the man who 1oo C.... lv... ll .. rlg"""h..ti leader formed the Aryan domestic terror- Marehall Mend: ist group known ~ The Order in 1 "bought another life 1983, Bordner said:' The FBI monitored the seven- insurance policy." member group for about three months, including recording some conversations and conducting surveillance. But no charges were brought because the assassination and firebombing plot never got beyond talking stages, agents said. Authorities suspended their investigation late last year after determining that Bordner - a mail-order minister who performed Kevin Coe's prison wedding in 1986 may be unreliable. Mend, who is Jewish, is a prominent Realtor and civil rights leader in Coeur d'Alene. "I took it as a serious threat," be said of the FBI warning. " I even bought another life insurance policy." Wassmutb is a former Roman Catholic priest from Coeur d'Alene who now beads the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment in Seattle. He was the target of an assassination plot in 1986 when an earlier Aryan splinter group known as The Order II detonated a pipe bomb at bis Coeur d'Alene home. No one was injured and four Aryans were convicted. Bordner, 36, said he was a Ku Klux Klan leader in Aorida who became an¡ FBI informant after he began attending the Aryan Nations church last July, using the alias of Dan VonReinhard. The paid informant said be Please see PLOT: A18