New York, NY, December 13, 1995...The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today urged the Government to look into possible links between the National Alliance, the most active neo-Nazi organization in the country, and the murder of two African-Americans in Fayetteville, N.C., allegedly by soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg. In view of media reports that the FBI is examining whether the crime involved civil rights violations, the League shared relevant information it had uncovered, and urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether active-duty military personnel were among those involved in Alliance activities near the North Carolina Army base.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, wrote Attorney General Janet Reno that the National Alliance "has recently boasted of its recruitment efforts in the Fort Bragg area." ADL provided the Attorney General with information that the April 1995 National Alliance Bulletin featured a photograph of a recruitment billboard with a telephone hotline number. An accompanying Bulletin caption read, "North Carolina members rented space on this Fayetteville billboard on a busy street just outside the Army's Fort Bragg, calling attention to their telephone message service....The drawback to the use of a toll-free line is that Jews and their collaborators can sabotage it by generating a large number of spurious calls." The Bulletin further asserted that "North Carolina...continues to be an excellent recruiting area for the Alliance."

ADL suggested that the interstate nature of the National Alliance -- with headquarters in West Virginia and operations in other states, including North Carolina -- may open further avenues for investigation by the Department of Justice. Noting that Alliance material has been tied in the past to heinous crimes, Mr. Foxman wrote, "The Turner Diaries, a violently racist and anti-Semitic novel written by National Alliance leader William Pierce (under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald), served as the inspiration for the terrorist spree of the neo-Nazi gang known as The Order" which in the mid-1980's engaged in "murders, bank robberies, armored car heists, counterfeiting, and the bombing of a synagogue in pursuit of its aim of overthrowing the United States Government."

Mr. Foxman added, "The Turner Diaries were also reportedly a favorite of Timothy McVeigh, suspected in the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City."

Editors' Note: ADL recently released Q&A on Fayetteville Murders and Hate and the Military, and has background information on William Pierce and the National Alliance, entitled William L. Pierce: Novelist of Hate. Please contact the ADL Media Relations Department.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.