Latest Incidents Linked To Extremists Draw Attention To Northern Idaho -- Suspects In Spokane Robberies, Bombings Lived Near Sandpoint

SPOKANE - Randy Weaver. Mark Fuhrman. The Aryan Nations. The Order. Christian Identity. Now possibly the Phineas Priesthood.

Once again, extremists who are anti-government, white separatist, or both, are in the news. Once again, that news is coming out of northern Idaho.

Three men charged in the bank robberies and bombings that shook the Spokane area this year allegedly traveled from Pocatello to Portland committing crimes.

But it was the Sandpoint, Idaho, area where they lived, raised their families, and stockpiled weapons.

In a year that already has seen the capture of the Unabomber and the standoff of the Freemen, both next door in Montana, this story again has revealed the discontent that boils just beneath the surface of the rural Rocky Mountain West.

The three men are charged with two bank robberies and the bombings of a bank, newspaper and Planned Parenthood clinic in the Spokane Valley. The violence was accompanied by letters linked to the white separatist Phineas Priesthood and promising apocalyptic punishments for enemies.

"The individuals associated with these crimes claim to be associated with the Phineas Priesthood," said Burdena Pasenelli, the FBI special agent in charge in Seattle, at the news conference announcing the arrests.

"They're charged with crimes," she added. "Not for being members of the Phineas Priesthood."

The priesthood is a shadowy white-separatist organization that is opposed to Jews, blacks, homosexuals and racial intermarriage. It is named for an Old Testament priest who killed a couple involved in an intertribal marriage.

Brian Levin of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey has studied the Phineas Priesthood.

"These are people who regard violence as biblically sanctioned," Levin said.

Charged are Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell.

Federal agents have searched the homes of the three men, and from Berry's home they recovered a large cache of weapons, ammunition, bomb-making supplies, camouflage clothing and flak jackets.

Each man faces nine federal counts involving bank robbery, car theft and use of bombs in crimes. They are being held without bail in the Spokane County Jail pending appearance before a grand jury, which is expected next month.

They were arraigned in federal court last week. Authorities are hunting for additional suspects.

The three reportedly have attended a Christian Identity church known as America's Promise Ministries in Sandpoint. Christian Identity is a religion that contends whites are God's chosen people.

Pastor Dave Barley and 40 church members relocated from the Phoenix area to Sandpoint in 1991.

Barley issued a press release last week saying that the three suspects are not members of the church and that the church did not condone senseless acts of violence.

Sandpoint, a lakefront resort town of 5,000, is 90 miles northeast of Spokane. The community already was stung by unwanted attention when former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, vilified as a racist during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, moved to the area last year.

In 1992, racist Randy Weaver stood off federal agents at his home on Ruby Ridge, near Sandpoint, in a case that many credit with jump starting the anti-government patriot movements around the country.

In 1984, a white-supremacist splinter group known as The Order went on a bank robbery and bombing rampage to finance a race war. The Order was an offshoot of the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi group based since the late 1970s in Hayden Lake, 30 miles south of Sandpoint.

Despite the confluence of hate groups, Sandpoint residents insist those who bring shame to the area are transplants. Many are urban dropouts lured by the isolation and myth of self reliance in north Idaho.

But residents also worry that so many of these people have come to the area that they have created a self-sustaining critical mass.

"We are concerned not so much with the image of the community as the effect of that image," said Brenda Hammond, a human-rights activist in Sandpoint. "We are concerned that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy."

Shop owner Pat Doe thinks Sandpoint is unfairly singled out as a racist haven, when there are many such people in larger cities.

"It's going to be a mediafest once again. You don't talk about any of the other things going on here."

What Sandpointers would prefer to talk about is Lake Pend Oreille, the ski resort, the hunting and fishing, and local arts festivals.

But it's hard to compete with the glare of international media attention that accompanied Weaver, Fuhrman, and now the latest three suspects.

Levin said northern Idaho has become a place where people with extreme beliefs feel at home.

"I don't want to indict the whole state," Levin said. "The Aryan Nations is headquartered there. Within the (extremist) folklore, that area of the country is regarded as an area reserved for the white race."