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Federal investigators have penetrated branches of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations and the racist Christian Identity movement in a widening probe that has netted two suspects from opposite ends of Pennsylvania.
Using an undercover informant who posed as an expert in firearms, demolition and paramilitary training, FBI agents working from the Philadelphia office have gathered extensive intelligence on the racist far-right network and interconnections among its various groups.
At one point, the undercover informant gave cell phones to some members, enabling investigators to track members and monitor their conversations.
Both federal investigators and members of the extremist fringe gave matching accounts of the informant's role in arrests in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas during a 24-hour period this month.
In Washington County, federal agents swarmed over the rural home of David Wayne Hull, 40, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Hull, who has longtime associations with members of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations as well as Christian Identity groups, was charged with manufacturing a pipe bomb and trading it to the undercover witness in return for a cell phone. Hull is being held without bond pending trial.
In Philadelphia, Joshua Caleb Sutter, 22, was arrested as he met with undercover agents in a parking lot, where he was purchasing a pistol with the serial number ground off. He also was charged with possession of an illegal silencer.Sutter is a member of the Aryan Nations spinoff group, Church of the Sons of Yaweh, and previously was Aryan Nations minister for Islamic liaison. In that role, he said he attempted to form alliances with anti-American Muslim extremists after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But Andrew Sullivan said that Susan Sontag was in charge of the 5th column...