Va. neo-Nazi is accused of Web threats

By Rex Bowman

Published: December 12, 2008

A Roanoke racist known to occasionally wear a Nazi-style uniform faces federal charges of using the Internet to threaten five people, including a prominent black newspaper columnist and a Delaware professor.

In a federal grand jury indictment, William A. White, 31, who calls himself the commander of the Roanoke-based American National Socialist Workers Party, also is accused of sending threatening letters marked with swastikas to several black Virginia Beach residents who were involved in a dispute with their landlord.

White, a Roanoke landlord, already was being held in Chicago when the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke announced the seven-count indictment yesterday.

He is accused in Chicago of soliciting the injury of the jury foreman in the 2004 trial of Matthew Hale, the leader of a white-supremacist organization. Hale is serving a 40-year sentence for soliciting the murder of a judge.

Yesterday, Julia C. Dudley, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said White threatened five people in the United States and Canada. His Web site postings, which included the addresses of his targets, had crossed the line from offensive but constitutionally protected speech to unlawful threats, Dudley said.

"This case will not serve as a referendum on freedom of speech," Dudley said. "This case is about innocent people being threatened, intimidated and extorted by a man that, in most cases, they don't know and have never met."

The indictment says White threatened nationally syndicated newspaper columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.; a professor at the University of Delaware who administered a diversity training program; a Citibank employee in Kansas City, Mo., who was assigned to handle a dispute between White and the bank; a Canadian lawyer who helped shut down White's Canada-based Internet Web site; and the black mayor of South Harrison Township, N.J.

White used various Web sites, including his own, www.overthrow.com, to post threats against people, according to the indictment.

His attorney could not be reached for comment. Federal officials do not know the size of White's American National Socialist Workers Party, but the Anti-Defamation League's Web site says the organization "appears to have few active members."

The indictment charges White with seven counts: five counts of making a threat to injure via e-mail, Internet or telephone; one count of making a threat to injure with the intent of extorting something of value; and one count of threatening to injure with the intent of intimidating a witness. If convicted of all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 55 years.

Contact Rex Bowman at (540) 344-3612 or .