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Skinhead plot to assassinate Obama 'not fully formed'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-29 08:10 But that may have been as detailed as it got. Last week, Cowart drove to pick up Schlesselman from his Arkansas home so the plot could begin, according to the affidavit. They decided to start with a house robbery, and asked a friend to drive them. But when they got to the driveway, they saw a dog and two vehicles, and got spooked. Armed with ski masks and nylon rope they purchased at a Wal-Mart, they tried again the next day to get started. Authorities say they decided to fire on the windows of a church, then bragged about it to a friend. She told her mother, who alerted the local sheriff. Investigators were able to trace the shell casings to the pair, and took them into custody after spotting their car, decorated with chalk-drawn swastikas and racially motivated words, along with the numbers "88" and "14." Schlesselman's family said Tuesday that it was unlikely he was seriously planning an attack, even though he expressed hatred for blacks. A high school dropout who was unsuccessful finding work, he often spent time on the computer, his 16-year-old sister, Kayla said. She said she often argued with him about his racial beliefs, and he would say things like "Obama would make the world suffer." He hated his tiny Delta hometown of Helena-West Helena because it was predominantly black, she said. "He just believes that he's the master race," she said. "He would just say things like 'white power' and 'Sieg Heil' and 'Heil Hitler.'" His father, Mike, also doubted the plot was serious. "I think it's just a lot of talk. He would never do something like this," he said. Cowart worked at a grocery store in Bells for about a year, according to Scotty Runions, 54, who supervised him. Runions said Cowart was preoccupied with computers and bagged groceries at the store until about May 2007, before moving to Texas. "The guy I saw on TV last night was not the same person that I knew, and I saw him about a month ago," Runions said. "This is something he's created in the past month — that's not the young man that we know." The Southern Poverty Law Center traced Cowart to the Supreme White Alliance, a skinhead hate group organized this spring that describes itself on its Web site as a "Club based on Racial beliefs. and for those of you who don't know what that means, we are in fact Racist's." But the link doesn't appear strong, and the group apparently kicked him out earlier this year. A post on the alliance's Web site accused the law center of lying about the extent of its connection with Cowart, but acknowledged that "one of the two young men was in fact a probate earlier this year but was ousted." The group's leader on Tuesday condemned the plot and denied that Cowart had been a part of his "club," but nevertheless said he was resigning as its president over negative publicity the case generated. "We don't go out and start trouble. We are more like a social club. We just hang out," Steve Edwards of Central City, Ky., told The Associated Press. Potok, the law center's intelligence director, said Cowart is shown in a photograph of an April alliance gathering to commemorate Hitler's birthday. |
