Origins of their Wealth

Bigots are sometimes assumed to be unaccomplished, financially frustrated individuals who blame their career difficulties on minorities. Yet National Alliance leader William Pierce is a former physics professor, and Aryan Nations head Richard Butler once was a successful aerospace engineer. Carl Story is similarly accomplished. Before moving to Idaho, he established or helped start three profitable computer firms and earned a fortune by selling his share of them.

In the mid-1970s, Story and business partner Gerald M. Starek operated I.I. Industries, a computer chip processing company. After selling I.I. Industries, Story, Starek and others founded the Silicon Valley Group (SVG) in 1977. Story and Starek were convicted in 1979 for shipping computer chip manufacturing equipment to the U.S.S.R. This equipment allegedly was used to improve Soviet missile-guidance systems. Story pled guilty, paid a fine and was sentenced to three years probation.

In the mid-1980s, Story parted ways with SVG, taking home an enormous profit. Today, SVG is one of the nation's leading companies producing computer chip manufacturing equipment, a publicly traded firm with total assets exceeding $700 million. Story's hateful beliefs have been thoroughly disavowed by SVG's present management.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Story was a fundamentalist Christian, not yet an Identity believer. During those years, he donated millions of dollars to a prominent evangelist and to the nondenominational, racially diverse Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose, California, where Bertollini was also a member. At some point thereafter, according to publicly reported accounts from acquaintances, Story adopted his hard-core racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. In 1994, he stopped attending church at the Jubilee.

After severing ties with SVG, Story started Systems Chemistry, where his longtime friend Bertollini became head of operations. In 1990, while at that company, they established the 11th Hour Remnant. A developer of chemical handling equipment for the computer chip industry, Systems Chemistry was sold at a profit to SubMicron Systems in 1995. After the sale, Story and Bertollini left Silicon Valley.