America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States Read Online Free PDF

suspicion to rest. The FBI transferred a number (but not all) of its files on Stoner to the National Archives. The author’s FOIA request for that material resulted in the release of twenty-five hundred pages—but four hundred pages were withheld in full because they were wiretap records. This may not even represent the full amount. Other files have not been released to the author, and the FBI refused to release or even acknowledge the existence of anything relating to Stoner from its National Security Electronic Surveillance File.
    When told about this development, Bob Eddy was surprised. He never saw any records of any transcripts or recordings on J.B. Stoner. Moreover, he never had any reason to think they existed because the original Hoover memo, requesting the TESUR, was never given to him. Bill Fleming, an FBI agent who reviewed FBI files in connection with the later prosecutions of Blanton and Cherry, was also contacted by the author. Fleming said that he never saw any records on a Stoner wiretap; nor did he have any reason to suspect they existed. 22 Attorney General Bill Baxley was also surprised to learn about the Stoner wiretaps. Stoner was the first person Baxley investigated for masterminding the church bombing. 23 Although Baxley is still less convinced of Stoner’s guilt than Eddy, both men believe the transcripts should be released.
    There is reason to be concerned that some material, at least on Stoner, could have been destroyed. Researcher Ernie Lazar claims that the FBI destroyed its Birmingham field office file on Stoner. Obviously, this would be the most likely file to hold any new information on Stoner’s connection to the Birmingham bombing. The destroyed file might augment information, reported in Birmingham police files, that Admiral John Crommelin stayed with Stoner in Birmingham the weekend of the church bombing.
    All five Christian Identity zealots who met in Birmingham on September 14, 1963, were, in fact, also members of the NSRP. Gafford’s friends Mary Lou and Bill Holt were also on the mailing list for Wesley Swift’s sermons. If Stoner was not an official minister in the church, he acted like one. Stoner used the official NSRP newsletter, The Thunderbolt, to promote ideas that could have served as sermons for Wesley Swift. Regarding Jews, the publication said that “Jew-devils have no place in a White Christian nation.” 24 Of blacks it said, “The Negro is actually a higher form of gorilla. God did not wish for the white race to mix with these animals. Tell your friends and children these scientific truths so that communist teachers and preachers will not be able to brain wash them with ‘the Big Lie’ that all men are equal.” 25
    Stoner, of course, also traveled the country with Identity minister Connie Lynch, riling up southerners into fits of violence. On the surface, this work appears to be counterproductive. By inciting violence, the rabble-rousers increased the chances that a riot would elicit federal intervention, a development that few southerners, raised from childhood to resent military occupation under post–Civil War Reconstruction, would welcome. This would be particularly true for a provocative attack like the shrapnel bomb that struck the Birmingham neighborhood of Titusville on September 25, 1963.
    No right-thinking person who experienced the riots that followed the murders of little Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, and the other children could expect such an attack to do anything other than incite further violence. Klan terrorists often used conventional dynamite bombs to cause property damage and to scare targeted groups rather than to kill victims. This appears to have been the intended purpose of the bomb that exploded on September 15; an apparent problem with the triggering mechanism delayed the detonation, and thus the four girls died. 26
    But the shrapnel bombs used on September 25 had only one purpose: to maim and