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Posted: October 18, 2002
Police from Iowa, Louisiana, arrested Ku Klux Klan leader David Fusilier on October 11 following a drug raid on his home. Fusilier, a "Grand Titan" in the Alabama-based Klan group America's Invisible Empire (AIE), was allegedly found with marijuana, pills, and other drugs.
Following the raid, Fusilier's girlfriend, Heaven LeBlanc (according to law enforcement also a member of the Klan group) was also arrested. Both were charged with drug possession and given a $90,000 bond.
The arrests capped a six month police investigation of Fusilier and LeBlanc for suspicion of drug possession. However, it is not the only investigation of America's Invisible Empire that has been underway.
FBI and Louisiana State Police agents were present during the raid to gather information, while on the same day as the raid, the FBI executed a search warrant against other members of Fusilier's Klan chapter, in connection with an ongoing investigation into a September 1 incident in nearby Longville, Louisiana, where a cross was burned on the front lawn of the home of an African-American family.
The Klan's initial reaction to the arrest was hostile. A posting on one AIE website announced a planned protest "against the city of Iowa, La., due to a [sic] unjust arrest made to members….Firearms will be allowed."
However, later it claimed that "AIE is not responsible for the actions of the following banished members for the unjust wrong doings [sic] of their actions or in anyway [sic] were involved with the following persons…David Fuselier, Robert and Rochelle Dartez, are the persons that were banished prior to the September 1st incident in Longville and Iowa...We are a [sic] organization of Racial Purity, Non Violence [sic] and of Christian Ways." The Dartezes were subjects of the federal search warrants.
AIE was founded in northern Alabama in 1993 by its Imperial Wizard, Ricky Draper, a worker at a pet food factory near Hartselle, Alabama. According to the AIE, it is an organization "dedicated to bringing about political change through peaceful political agendas, if possible."
At different times, it has had members or chapters in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Texas, although Draper has claimed to have members in 37 states and has predicted his group would reach 100,000 members.
Its ostensible goal is to "educate the people of the White Race, and to warn them against the brain washing and demoralizing tactics of the Government, which has been taken over and controlled by the Non-white Non-Anglo-Saxon, Non-Protestant groups, which would put an end to the descendants of the White Race."
The group has held protests or rallies in recent years in Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. At some events over 40 Klan members showed up to participate.
Draper has boasted that members of his group have never been arrested; earlier this year, the Klan leader told a reporter that "You can look back at the Klan and see how many leaders, how many idiots (were) arrested for stupidity, complete stupidity. Well, we've gotten a little smarter. We know the laws; we've learned the laws."
Federal officials said they expected more arrests to be made in the near future.
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