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American Morning

Opening Statements Scheduled to Begin in Trial of White Supremacist and Girlfriend

Aired July 15, 2002 - 09:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Opening statements are scheduled to begin today in the trial of a white supremacist and his girlfriend, charged with plotting to blow up Jewish and African-American landmarks in Boston.

Our bureau chief there Bill Delaney has more on their upcoming trial.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A humble Dunkin' Donuts in east Boston, a way station on the war on terror. In April 2001, a regular Boston beat cop arrested two people there...

(on camera): ... for allegedly trying to pass a fake $20 bill, old fashioned street-level police work that may have prevented act of terror five months before 9/11, of a variety not much talked about these days: violence, not bred thousands of miles away, but homegrown.

(voice-over): After his arrest for the bad bill, police found out a lot more about 30-year-old Leo Felton, a 6'7" ex-con and professed member of racist White Order of Thule, and about his girlfriend, 21-year-old Erica Chase, both charged with planning to insight a racial holy war by blowing up sites in Boston with perceived ties to the Jewish and the African-American communities.

In an apartment Felton and Chase shared in Boston's north end, authorities allege finding wiring, heating elements and a 50-pound bag of ammonium nitrate, what Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City. Prosecutors allege documents in the apartment indicated Boston targets, including the city's Holocaust Memorial, and New Leonard Zacom Bridge named for Jewish crusader for racial equality. The white order of Thule, the experts say...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Nazism, and basically anti-Semitism.

DELANEY: One of several preaching racial hate in the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are all about how heroic white people rise against the Jewish conspiracy and the homosexual black people of color conspiracy, and they create a revolutionary situation in the U.S. DELANEY: Domestic groups some worry law enforcement agencies could now overlook amid the intense focus on hunting Al Qaeda. In this video game, the object is to kill Jews and blacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's celebrating hate in rawest form. Downloaded off the Internet by the civil right advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League, another alleged target of Leo Felton, diversion for a subculture of American citizens, experts says, organized like Al Qaeda, in small cells, but of mostly inconspicuous average white males.

DELANEY: There are other people out there, who certainly are harboring similar ideas to what Felton's accused of doing. You can't really look at any part of the United States and say that they're immune from this type of thing happening.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Though the White Order of Thule might not be immune from what Leo Felton knows about. Hopes are he may name names, reportedly alienated from the group now since a revelation. His father an African-American.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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