NPR “Embedded” Podcast: “The Terrorist”
In the 1980s, white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, founder of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, got active duty Marines to train his followers in violence, plotted to murder civil rights leaders and others, and was finally arrested in a Missouri trailer with a huge cache of military-grade weapons. But prosecutors offered him a remarkable deal, a five-year sentence (of which he ultimately only served two) in exchange for his testimony against other racist leaders. But the case fell apart and a jury acquitted all 13 defendants on all counts. In 2014, Miller murdered three people he mistakenly thought were Jewish in Kansas. Should law enforcement have been watching him? Did it screw up by giving him his incredibly light plea bargain? University of Chicago historian Kathleen Belew, Southern Poverty Law Center official Heidi Beirich and CARR Senior Fellow, Mark Potok, are interviewed in this interesting, 36-minute podcast by reporter Tom Dreisbach.