"I Infiltrated the K Klux Klan And Lived" by Edit International

By Ron Laytner Copyright Edit International HOUSTON – They came for me at three in the morning. In a deserted parking lot behind my hotel in downtown Houston I was blindfolded and placed in the back seat of an old high powered car. My driver, an automatic pistol sticking out from his belt, reported in by two-way radio, ‘Car five and pickup heading to meeting’. I was given instructions: I was not to talk to anyone whose photograph I was about to take. I was to obey any order given me – and above all. I was not to make anyone nervous. When the car ground to a stop. A powerful flashlight was turned on me and I began to see a City of Houston police officer removing my blindfold. Silently, he searched me in case I was concealing a tape recorder. He was the most frightening policeman I had ever seen in the United States. For across his face and over his head he wore the mask and hood of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret terror organization dating back to the American Civil War. His face was hidden, the number of his police badge was covered with masking tape and so were the identifying numbers on his Houston police car. Soon we were joined by an anonymous member of the Galveston, Texas, Sheriff’s Department, also a member of the Klan. The pre-dawn meeting with the masked policemen was the highlight for me of two weeks of night-riding with the Texas Ku Klux Klan. And it was the modernday Klan’s way of showing me the power of the secret terrorist organization. And for me, it proved conclusively what black people have been crying out for years. The Ku Klux Klan has Klansmen who are members of police departments in the South.

I had been secretly approached by the Klan and made a tempting offer. The Klan, I was told, had a message for the world. To get this message across they would be willing for the first time to make some major concessions in their century-old policy of ultra-secrecy. The message from the Ku Klux Klan turned out to be both an admission of defeat and the announcement of an entirely new battle and purpose for the organization. I was told it had been “decided” by the new and younger leaders of the Ku Klux Klan that black people in America “are here to stay,” that the Klan had given up for now its long battle against integration and acceptance of blacks into American society. The Klan in 1972 was battling a new and far more dangerous enemy to America: Communism. The burning issue of the modern Klansman of today is the grave threat to America of a “world Communist conspiracy.” I would be allowed to photograph night riders and even members of Texas police departments who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. I was warned, however, that police members of the Klan would be extremely nervous of having their identities revealed, that they faced losing their jobs and possible prison terms if their Klan association became known. And so for two weeks I was allowed to enter the night world of the Ku Klux Klan. I discovered that in Houston today, when the modern Klansman leaves his blue -collar, hard-hat construction, auto mechanic or service station job at the end of the day, he enters a world of espionage, terrorism, infiltration and counterintelligence activity. This is the KBI, the Klan Bureau of Intelligence. The Klansman who might be a gas station attendant by day can spend his off-hours infiltrating suspected Communist front organizations, terrorizing leftists, socialists and liberals; all members, according to the Klan of a massive army of subversives trying to take over the US. 2

The battle between right and left in Houston has been marked by bombings, shootings, beatings and burnings, many of them attributed to the Klan. My contact man in the Houston Klan was Louise Beam Jr. of Houston, a Vietnam war hero, holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross. His friends in and out of the Klan consider him to be an American Super Patriot. Shortly after returning from Vietnam, Beam gained national and international attention when he charged into a crowd of 500 antiwar demonstrators in Houston and seized a Viet Cong flag they were carrying. The 150-pound Vietnam War hero was rescued by police. “They had to arrest me,” he said, “but they really wanted to shake my hand.” Beam was fond of his M60 machine-gun, which fired 750 rounds per minute in Vietnam and allowed him to run up one of the highest personal scoring body counts of any American helicopter gunner in the war. He still likes guns. “I keep several weapons in my house. I have one by the door and another in the bedroom and I always have a weapon in my car. I won’t drive my car without one.” When I met him he was a Texas university honor student, hoping to become a lawyer. He also told me that he was an officer in the Houston Ku Klux Klan and an active member of the KBI. The war hero was attending meetings of the Klan and university classes under the weight of two State of Texas Grand Jury in connection with the mysterious bombing of a liberal Houston radio station. Beam didn’t believe Texas had grounds for a case against him and later, just as he had predicted and to the exact day, the indictments against him were dropped. “After I got home from the war,” the 27-year-old Beam told me. “things didn’t seem like they were before I went to Vietnam. Everything seemed different. The whole climate of the US had changed. Before I went over to fight, most of the people seemed behind us soldiers, but when I returned it seemed the majority of Americans were against us, against the war as a whole.” 3

Shortly after Beam’s Viet Cong flag incident, he was approached by the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas. “His name is Frank Converse and he’s and extremely big man,” said Beam. “And yet, this man is intelligent also, a very good and gentle man and he’s not opposed to the black man either. “Converse owned a gun shop before his leadership in the Klan was made known and before he was shut down, harassed, arrested by the Federal government and burned out of business,” said Beam. “He is an extremely well educated man. When I got back from Vietnam he told me a lot of things that astounded me. He put forth the idea to me for the first time that there was a conspiracy to bring about Socialism. And he said the United Nations had a lot to do with it. “This sounded preposterous to me. I thought there must be something wrong with this guy. But he gave me many books and the more I read and the more I investigated, I began to believe the there actually was a conspiracy… And I decided then that the Klan was the proper organization to fight Communism.” Beam said at first he didn’t want to join the Klan because he knew it had a bad reputation. “There’s a saying here in the South that on Saturdays the Klan goes out and hangs a nigger from a tree.” The Klan, however, turned out to be the type of organization that some of its newer publications said it was, according to Beam. 5

“Now this is not to say that the Klan doesn’t believe in white supremacy. They do. However, nowadays this is secondary. I personally am a segregationist… However, I am not prejudiced. I judge each black man on an individual basis and then make my value decision on him personally.” Now he spoke to me of policemen in the Klan. “There are definitely quite a few policemen who are members of the Klan. And also we have other people who are secret members of the Klan who are in City and State government.” How big is the Klan in the United States today? According to Beam, “The Klan in the US has almost reached the point now where we have more members in the northern states then we do in the South. Michigan is the largest Klan in the US. Our total membership is well over 100,000. “And the new Klan has gone international,” Beam said. “We have a unit in Australia. We have one in Italy and we have one in England.” “In Canada we have just recently opened up a brand new Klan. Up in Calgary, Alberta, our new Klan almost overnight has become a tremendous influence on the people. It has achieved more success than I had any idea it would.”

John Grindle, 31, gas station owner white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, staunch member of the Texas Ku Klux Klan, was sitting on the edge of his desk in Livingston, a few hours drive southwest of Houston. In one hand he held a big black Bible. In the other he held a hair trigger semi-automatic rifle. On his head he wore a Western hat with a Confederate flag. He spoke of God and love, but on the wall behind him was a yellow Klan bumper sticker of hate. It listed as “signs of the Anti-Christ” peace movements, the United Nations, Jews and communism. A giant American flag was pinned on the wall in a nearby room next to the rest rooms and beside an assortment of Confederate flags was a badge sticker on a wall saying “Friend of Police.” A collection of loaded rifles and shotguns stood in various corners around the room. Staring down from its place of honor was a glass-covered colored portrait of the Imperial Grand Wizard of the United Klans of America, Robert Shelton, complete with fiery cross in the background. Beam had been excited about our trip to Livingston, loading up his semi-automatic carbine in his car and laying in a supply of ammunition after hearing “reports” that black militants had 8

But when we got there the only black people around the gas station were the drivers and occupants of out of state cars who dropped in for gasoline. They received quiet but not unfriendly service from the Confederate-flagged attendants. “I have belonged to the Klan for a good while,” said John Grindle. “And I really and sincerely believe it is the last chance for a free and Christian world. And what a lot of people don’t stop to think, when I call myself a Klansman, they say ‘Well, he does this and he does that.’ They’re wrong. “I belong to the Klan because I can do some good for my country, but I’m not appreciated. The local newspaper ran a story on the Klan and said we are a cancer in the community and should be removed. “It really hurt me to have such a thing said. Can you imagine? Me - a cancer?”

THE RESULTS Almost every Klansman I photographed who gave his permission to be identified lost everything he owned. His business or home was burned out. He was fined or sent to jail by the FBI. In fairness I must say the Klansmen I met were dangerous to their enemies but totally loyal to their friends and actually believed they were defending America. The three Texas newspapers I was syndicated in were warned to never run my stories again or risk police tickets on all their cars and trucks and no cooperation on stories. I lost the papers and didn’t go into Texas again for many years. A few years later an FBI task force gave lie detector tests to every policeman in Texas resulting in the firing and resignations of more than 200 Klan member cops and high police officials. I managed to track down Louis Beam when he was organizing American fishermen to fight and terrorize Vietnamese immigrants who were taking over the shrimp trade off the coast of Louisiana. He told me the Klan experiment with me had failed, that black militants attacked and burned down the businesses and homes of the Klansmen identified. Beam went on to become a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan. His name was briefly associated with Timothy McVei, the American terrorist who was executed for blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Beam was last reported to be living somewhere in Mexico. An official of the US Antidefamation League said, “Beam is a brilliant man who went bad. I hear he is sick these days. He won’t be missed.”

THE KLAN TODAY In America today the Klan has been trying legal means to promote its agendas. Klansmen have rallies at which no one wears secret hoods. They have open barbecue parties and promote charities. When they have marches they are often in fear of being attacked by black militants. In 1981 when a black man was not convicted of killing a white policeman, two Klansmen drove around looking for a random victim and hanged 18-year-old Michael Donald. Donald’s mother won a judgment of 7 million dollars in court and bankrupted the United Klans of America (the group Laytner photographed). One of the klansmen killers was electrocuted in 1997 and the other is still in prison. There are still many who believe in the secret society and can be extremely dangerous. In 2005 in Hamilton, Ohio the home of a Latin American man was burned down after he was accused of molesting a 9-year-old ‘white’ girl. Hooded Klansman surrounded his house later an handed out hate literature. The Klan was recently in the news again when Texas preacher Edgar Ray Killen, 80, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in jail in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers no one had ever been punished for. His victims' families were shocked when the former pastor was suddenly freed on bond while he appeals the sentence. At first it was thought that Killen might never spend time in jail. Many wondered: Does the Klan still have a lot of influence? But a huge outcry arose across the United States. And it caused the judge to put Killen back in jail until he finishes appealing his sentence. Killen had testified that he was confined to a wheel chair and could not walk. Investigators photographed him walking around his car filling up with gas and his days of freedom while appealing, were over. By Ron Laytner Copyright Edit International 13

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