Klansman Behind SPLC Plot Convicted
A sixth man in the alleged plot to blow up the Center and assassinate co-founder Morris Dees has been convicted on federal conspiracy charges. Klansman Wallace Scott Weicherding, a 64-year-old former prison guard and the only one of the group not to plead guilty, faces sentencing later this year.
A sixth man in the alleged plot to blow up the Southern Poverty Law Center and assassinate co-founder Morris Dees was convicted in September on federal conspiracy charges.
Klansman Wallace Scott Weicherding, a 64-year-old former prison guard and the only one of the group not to plead guilty, faces sentencing later this year. The alleged leader of the group, Dennis McGiffen, was sentenced in a separate court proceeding to more than seven years on weapons charges related to the plot.
Prosecutors say McGiffen's group called itself The New Order, after a terrorist group of the 1980s known as The Order that robbed armored cars and killed two people in preparation for a race war. The New Order allegedly planned to blow up buildings, poison the water supplies of major cities, murder a federal judge and other people, and rob banks and armored cars.
McGiffen and the others who pleaded guilty claim that these plans, documented in hundreds of hours of conversations secretly taped by an FBI informant, were nothing but drunken boasts.
