Militias: Defender on the right
Defender on the right
By SUSAN LADD and STAN SWOFFORD
News & Record Staff Writers

   The call came April 17, two days before the second 
anniversary of the incident now known simply as Waco, when 80 
people died in a blaze that erupted as federal officers stormed 
the Branch Davidian sect compound near Waco, Texas.
   That call was to the office of Kirk Lyons, a lawyer in this 
little mountain town about 10 miles east of Asheville.
   "The lawsuits are going nowhere," said a caller who, Lyons 
said, would not identify himself. "The legal process won't 
work. It's time for some real action."
   Two days later, a bomb shattered the Alfred P. Murrah 
federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 167 people, many of 
them federal employees and children.
   Lyons -- who said he reported the incident to the FBI -- gets 
a lot of unusual calls. He knows a lot of unusual people.
   His clients and close friends include some of the country's 
most notorious neo-Nazis and white supremacists. They also 
include many families of the people who died at Waco. Lyons 
filed a lawsuit against the government on their behalf.
   The Waco incident became a lightning rod for the militia 
movement. It was proof, many militia members and sympathizers 
say, that the government intends to take away the guns of its 
citizens and stamp out their rights.
   The 38-year-old Lyons, a transplanted Texan, has also become 
the unofficial legal adviser for militia leaders and people who 
want to establish militias.
   "They call me all the time," he said. "I tell them this. 
I tell everybody this. If you want to stay out of jail, keep 
your ---damn mouths shut because there's a good chance you're 
going to get infiltrated."
   The federal government "is fomenting a civil war in this 
country," Lyons says. "We need to let some steam off the 
boiler before we have a blow-up here."
   Though he says he has represented racists, Lyons says that 
he is not one and that he doesn't hate anyone or any group. 
Lyons describes himself as an idealist, a firm believer in the 
principles of the American Civil Liberties Union. In fact, he's 
a member of the ACLU, he said, and considers the legal 
foundation he has established, CAUSE, as sort of an extension 
of the ACLU for the radical right.
   CAUSE is an acronym for Canada, Australia, United States, 
South Africa and Europe -- areas where Lyons considers the civil 
liberties of right-wing groups and individuals to be 
endangered.
   "These people have rights, too, and deserve to have them 
defended," Lyons said.
   Monitors of hate groups, such as the Southern Poverty Law 
Center's Klanwatch and the Anti-Defamation League, say Lyons 
and CAUSE are indeed racist and anti-Semitic.
   "If someone were to draw an idealized picture of an 
anti-Semite, it would probably be Kirk Lyons," said Hank 
Myers, former chairman of the North Carolina board of the 
Anti-Defamation League.
   "I don't know that he's a card-carrying white 
supremacist," J.T. Roy of Klanwatch once said about Lyons, 
"but, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a 
duck."
   Lyons said the government should stop "trying to put 
everybody in a blender."
   "They've got to stop pushing this one culture as the norm 
and ideal. Let the black community have its own development, 
the Polish community its own development. Putting us all 
together is what's causing all the friction."
   Lyons' clients have included Louis Beam, former Texas Grand 
Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and best man at 
Lyons' wedding; Stephen Nelson, one of three members of the 
Aryan Nations white supremacy group convicted of conspiring to 
blow up gay bars in Seattle; and Douglas Sheets, former White 
Patriot Party associate who was acquitted of killing three men 
in a Shelby adult bookstore frequented by homosexuals.
   Lyons also represented James Wickstrom, former leader of the 
Christian Identity and Posse Comitatus movements, whose members 
proclaim Jews, blacks and other nonwhite people to be 
"subhuman mud races," and that Northern European whites are 
God's chosen people. Wickstrom was convicted in 1991 of 
plotting to distribute $100,000 in counterfeit bills to white 
supremacists at the 1988 Aryan Nations World Congress.
   Lyons' marriage to Brenna Tate took place at the Aryan 
Nations compound in Idaho. The wedding was conducted by Richard 
Butler, Aryan Nations founder and Christian Identity Church 
pastor.
   Lyons shrugs off the hate labels.
   "People love to say I have ties to white supremacist 
groups. Of course I do. I know them. I've defended them. If you 
do it twice, it becomes a pattern. If you do it three times, 
they say you're one of them."
   A label Lyons wears proudly is one pinned on him by Morris 
Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, 
Ala. Dees called Lyons the "William Kunstler of the right 
wing." Kunstler is the lawyer best known for defending 
left-wing individuals and causes. Kunstler is also known as a 
furious legal defender of civil liberties.
   Although Lyons did not lead the defense during the Louis 
Beam trial, Lyons became something of a celebrity among white 
supremacists after Beam and 13 co-defendants were acquitted.
   Lyons took advantage of the publicity by establishing the 
Patriots Defense Foundation, a forerunner to CAUSE, that aimed 
to protect the rights of right-wing extremists and fight the 
federal government's attempts to silence them.
   The PDF was headquartered in Houston. Financial problems and 
urban crime prompted Lyons to move to Black Mountain three 
years ago, he said.
   Lyons said about 100 lawyers -- 80 in the United States -- are 
affiliated with CAUSE. Its mission is much the same as the 
PDF's was, he said, to check the oppression of the federal 
government.
   "Fear of the government has become a very mainstream 
fear," he said. "People are afraid of the government. They 
don't believe it will protect them.
   "They don't even think the government will tell the truth 
when it's not in its best interest."
   Lyons does not, however, subscribe to the New World Order 
conspiracy theory.
   "I'm not afraid of the U.N. I hope the U.N. is behind it -- 
they've been so ineffective in every other conflict, they'd 
certainly be easy to defeat.
   "I'll tell you what scares me: federal law enforcement. I'm 
not worried about a Belgian in a blue helmet kicking in my 
door. I'm worried about red-blooded American boys with badges 
and BATF on their backs. There is just colossal arrogance on 
the part of federal law enforcement. If we don't get 
satisfaction in Waco, they'll be able to do it to anybody."
   Lyons believes that the Constitutionalists and common law 
proponents are wasting their time.
   "That view of government is based in theory, not in fact," 
Lyons said. "It's not based in reality. Trying to argue states 
rights is not going to work; that was decided by the bayonets 
of Union army. It's the same thing with not paying taxes. 
You're not going to get away with it."
   Lyons openly ridicules some national figures within the 
Patriot movement, including ex-Special Forces soldier and 
militia proponent Bo Gritz, and Linda Thompson, who produced 
the video, "Waco: The Big Lie."
   " 'Waco: The Big Lie' is a good description of her video," 
Lyons said. "She's trying to make money. I'm really pissed off 
about people like her. There's a good case that can be made 
against the government without creating inflammatory stuff like 
that."
   For those who come to him and ask his advice on organizing 
militias, Lyons said he tells them that this might not be a 
good time: "I tell them that they would be watched and very 
probably infiltrated. I tell them that if someone starts 
talking illegal nonsense that they had better send them 
packing."
   Lyons says he isn't optimistic that the polarization between 
the people and the government can be eased: "I don't see much 
room for compromise. I think it's unlikely that the government 
will heed the fears a lot of Americans have. The government's 
already got a 1,000-man rapid deployment strike force on the 
books. 1996 should be an interesting year.
   "My fear is there will be another Waco that will inflame 
things even more."

Patriot Aims/The Militias published June 25-27, 1995,
by the News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.
Copyright &copy News & Record and InfiNet
