Call me “Skin,” Jason Hawthorne said as he introduced himself in 2006 to an undercover agent at a Ralston sports bar.
Friends knew him by no other name.
He boasted about white power, showed off his white supremacist-themed tattoos and told the federal agent about his membership in what he called the Church of the Creator, a loose-knit, white-separatist organization.
As the agent discovered over the next three years, the 36-year-old Hawthorne, who had a shaved head and a hulking frame, hoped to create havoc. He wanted to make money running guns and meth, and he wanted the help of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' agent.
New details, culled from court documents and authorities, provide a deeper look into what feds called Operation Red Swastika — an undercover operation that authorities say disrupted a local methamphetamine and marijuana ring, led to the seizures of weapons and drugs and ended with federal indictments against Hawthorne and six cohorts from Omaha and Council Bluffs.
Some experts say the drug ring is part of a growing and disturbing trend: increased activity from small groups of white supremacists who thrive on criminal enterprise.
On Thursday, Hawthorne sat before a federal judge in U.S. District Court in Omaha and pleaded guilty to seven drug, conspiracy and weapons charges. It had been 11 months since federal agents and police SWAT teams arrested him outside a La Vista storage facility.
Hawthorne was the central figure in the investigation and the second defendant to plead guilty. Prosecutors said two more people are expected to plead guilty today. The remaining suspect is scheduled to face trial in 11 days.
Experts say such white supremacist groups forge bonds in prison, where inmates spread race-based ideologies and link with like-minded peers. When inmate members are released, they get involved in the drug and weapons trades, thefts and robberies.
“Ultimately, they are criminals,” said a national investigator for the Anti-Defamation League, who requested anonymity to protect his ability to examine extremist activity.
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's branch that investigates hate groups, said white supremacist criminals have been associated with identity theft, counterfeiting and violent crime.
“But methamphetamine production has come to be almost entirely dominated by white supremacists and their fellow travelers, which is a remarkable thing,” Potok said. “It's very clear that very many ideologically driven white supremacists are, in fact, engaged in criminal enterprises.”
Potok called supremacists' politics an “overlay” of their moneymaking motives.
“When it comes to business, they're happy to deal with minorities if they feel like that's going to make them money.”
One large, well-organized white supremacist ring — the Aryan Circle — got its start in the Texas prison system during the 1980s. It claims more than 1,000 members spread throughout other states' prisons and ties to organized crime in the outside world.
Hawthorne's group “is an embryonic form” compared with the Aryan Circle, the Anti-Defamation League investigator said, but it shared a similar path from prison to the streets.
Local and national authorities say they've seen an uptick in criminal enterprises with links to white supremacist groups.
“I think the past year has been a record year,” said Alan Potash, the director of the Anti-Defamation League's Plains States region.
The number of hate crimes reported in the United States reached a seven-year high in 2008, according to FBI statistics. Data for 2009 aren't yet available.
In 2008, police agencies nationally reported 7,783 hate crimes, a 2 percent increase from 2007. FBI data indicate that 51.3 percent of the incidents were motivated by racial bias, 19.5 percent by religious bias and 11.5 percent by bias against a person or persons of certain ethnicity or national origin.
Experts believe an increased willingness to report hate crimes could be responsible for part of the increase. More than 13,000 law enforcement agencies submitted figures for the 2008 study, including 193 in Nebraska and 228 in Iowa.
Still, the Anti-Defamation League says, 85 percent of reporting agencies recorded no hate crimes.
Eight Nebraska agencies reported hate crimes in 2008. According to the data, a total of 11 hate crimes were reported in the state that year. In Iowa, 15 agencies reported a total of 33 crimes.
Potok said the FBI statistics are difficult to rely on because the FBI relies on local agencies that may underreport hate crime incidents. Nevertheless, he said, most evidence suggests an increase in hate crimes.
In Operation Red Swastika, a hidden camera the agent carried into Hawthorne's Council Bluffs apartment captured an image visible during almost the entire recording: an enormous black-and-red swastika flag, a symbol of Hawthorne's white pride.
Hawthorne wasn't as eager to publicize his views in court one year later.
Instead, he and his lawyer asked a judge to keep federal prosecutors from referring to several details he once shared openly, including:
Ÿ Nazi images, paraphernalia and other Nazi memorabilia.
Ÿ White supremacists, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Aryan Nation members or any organization to which Hawthorne allegedly was linked.
Such details, the lawyer argued, would be irrelevant to the charges Hawthorne faced and prejudice a jury.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Moran, the federal government's prosecutor, filed a quick rebuttal:
“It would be almost impossible to cleanse all evidence of Hawthorne's group affiliation and Nazi symbols at the trial. He was very open about his membership in the brotherhood. He wore their clothing and tattoos, used their nickname, included references to it in his text messages to (the agent), signed his name only by using ‘Skin' with a swastika by it, and openly discussed his association with other members of his ‘crew.' ”
Essentially, Moran wrote, “it seems inconceivable that evidence of his membership in this group or of his prison associations would not come out in his testimony at trial.”
A judge had planned to consider Hawthorne's motion before trial. Then, on Dec. 30, Hawthorne informed the court that he planned to change his plea. A jury would never hear about Hawthorne and his crew.
Investigators had set their traps for Hawthorne at a cocktail lounge in south-central Omaha, a Burger King near the Interstate and an undercover apartment wired with surveillance equipment near 108th Street and West Maple Road.
The fast-food restaurant and parking lot, bar and living room are where the agent bought guns and drugs and met the group's drug supplier; the same places where Hawthorne told the agent about meeting his skinhead brothers in prison and where the agent was introduced to other suspects eventually linked to the case.
That also was where the agent suggested that Hawthorne and his crew rob the hide-out of a supposed drug supplier — and gain 5 kilos of free cocaine and 5 pounds of methamphetamine in the process.
After some thought, Hawthorne sent the agent a text message on the afternoon of Feb. 13: “We r taken the job.”
So around 6:15 p.m. last Feb. 26, Hawthorne and three associates arrived at the agent's undercover apartment. They'd decided to wear black to make the home invasion look like a police raid.
They had no idea there was no drug-filled house to rob, only a group of heavily armed officers waiting to pounce.
On Thursday — nearly a year after the raid — a prosecutor read the rough details of the case and planned home invasion to a judge.
“Do you agree that the government can prove those facts beyond a reasonable doubt in the event you went to trial in this case?” the judge asked.
Hawthorne leaned forward in his seat, and spoke softly into the microphone.
“Yes,” he said.
Minutes later, U.S. marshals escorted Hawthorne from the courtroom.
Contact the writer:
444-1068, johnny.perez@owh.com
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