New York, NY, October 10, 1996...The three men arrested and charged with bank robbery, auto theft and the use of bombs in connection with two bank robberies and three bombings in Spokane, Washington earlier this year have ties to white supremacists, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said today.

The three accused men, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell, have been linked to the anti-Semitic and racist Christian Identity movement. Christian Identity is a pseudo-religion that preaches that white Europeans are the true chosen people and that Jews are descendants of Satan. Identity also regards blacks and other non-whites as sub-human.

Letters left at the scene of the April robbery contained Identity propaganda as well as diatribes against the banking system. They were signed with the symbol of the "Phineas Priesthood," a violent credo of vengeance that has gained some popularity among white supremacists and other extremists in recent years. The Phineas Priesthood has been used as a calling card by the perpetrators of several violent crimes, but there is little evidence of organized activity among its adherents.

So-called "Phineas Priests" are guided by Identity leader Richard Kelly Hoskins' book, Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood (1990). This lengthy manifesto perverts passages of the Bible to justify racist and anti- Semitic acts of violence. The Phineas symbol used by the Spokane robbers is depicted in Vigilantes.

Two of the accused, Barbee and Berry, reportedly met at a Sandpoint, Idaho, Christian Identity church called America's Promise Ministries (APM). APM has long promoted a host of anti-Semitic propaganda including the notorious Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's The International Jew and books denying the reality of the Holocaust.

The third man arrested, Jay Merrell, has a longstanding association with APM. The group's newsletter has listed Merrell as a scheduled speaker at several of its gatherings and has promoted numerous Identity-oriented video tapes featuring Merrell.

Barbee has admitted his involvement with other armed anti-government extremists in the Northwest. In a 1995 interview, Barbee said he belonged to a small cell of extremists who were training to fight the federal government. "We have to be ready to conduct guerrilla warfare. That's how it will be won," he said. Using a phrase popular in the militia movement, he claimed that as a "sovereign citizen," he was not obliged to follow laws he considered invalid.

In 1995, Barbee and Berry were found guilty of misdemeanor weapons and drug charges. At the time of the arrest, police found in their possession an array of military supplies and weaponry as well as a list of contacts in the militia movement.

Editors' Note: For additional information on Christian Identity and other anti-Semitic and racist groups and/or to speak with ADL experts, 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.