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Legislator intervened in Nuwaubian case
More articles on this topic: NuwaubiansBrooks warned of Waco-like violence
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Aug. 31, 2002
http://www.accessatlanta.com/
Bill Osinski – Staff
Atlanta state Rep. Tyrone Brooks warned Gov. Roy Barnes in 1999 that Dwight York and his predominantly-black Nuwaubian cult were being targeted for Waco-like racial violence.
During the same time period, the government now says York was repeatedly molesting dozens of black children.
For three years in the massive four-year investigation, officials of various federal agencies were concerned that the case against York would be perceived as racially motivated, said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills.
“The race card was being played, and Tyrone Brooks was the dealer,” Sills said, but “the only racial issue was that every victim [York] preyed upon was black.”
York was arrested in May in an operation involving about 200 FBI agents and 100 sheriff’s deputies from six Middle Georgia counties.
Federal authorities have charged York, 57, with four counts of transporting children to the Disney World area for the purpose of having sex with them. Local prosecutors have filed 116 counts of child molestation against York.
In both the federal and state cases, the alleged victims are children of York’s followers.
Brooks said he visited the Nuwaubians’ Egyptian-themed compound in Putnam County at least three times but heard nothing of the allegations against York.
Veteran legislator
Before and after York’s arrest, Brooks — a veteran legislator and president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials — sought to intervene, much the way he has in other racially sensitive cases.
GBI investigative reports indicate that Brooks was involved in sending a group of armed but unlicensed private security guards, called the Georgia Rangers, to Putnam County for an “investigation.” At the time, York was under threat of a jail sentence for refusing to appear in court.
Brooks met privately with Barnes in June 1999 to discuss his fears that Putnam County could become another Waco, with York and the Nuwaubians as victims.
Barnes took Brooks’ warnings seriously enough to summon Sills to a meeting at the Capitol a few days later, where Brooks, Barnes’ Chief of Staff Bobby Kahn and then-GBI Director Buddy Nix discussed the potential for racial violence.
Brooks testified as a character witness for York at a federal court hearing in May, where York was denied bail. Since then, Brooks also publicly stated his support for the Nuwaubians in opinion articles in both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Macon Telegraph.
In a recent interview, Brooks contended that these actions do not necessarily amount to personal support for York.
“It wasn’t political support for York, it was political support for civil rights and peace,” Brooks said. “Nobody was rushing down there to support York.”
Brooks said he has accepted no consulting fees, campaign contributions or other payments for his support of York or the Nuwaubians.
A brief meeting
Barnes said in a recent interview that his meeting with Brooks on the Nuwaubian matter was brief and focused mostly on Brooks’ concern that racial violence could erupt in Putnam County.
He added that state law enforcement agencies have thick investigative files on the Nuwaubians and that the group was considered “always suspicious.”
Barnes said no one in his office ever met personally with the Georgia Rangers or in any way sanctioned their intervention in the Putnam County-Nuwaubian situation.
No one disputes that racial tensions in Putnam County were at a peak in June 1999.
Thousands of Nuwaubians and their supporters gathered at the group’s rural property for their annual Savior’s Day festival, held on and around York’s birthday. Hundreds stayed over to protest a hearing in the county seat of Eatonton.
Barnes ordered more than 100 state troopers and GBI agents to be secretly dispatched to an Eatonton armory, in case trouble broke out.
The hearing was part of the County Commission’s suit against the Nuwaubians over a series of zoning violations. The judge had threatened York with a contempt citation and jail.
Into that volatile mix dropped a group of Atlanta-based security guards and repo men who called themselves the Georgia Rangers. About a week before the festival, a group of seven Rangers came to Eatonton.
They carried guns, they drove cars with police-type markings, they flashed official-looking badges. They went to several offices in the county courthouse asking pointed questions about why the sheriff was treating the Nuwaubians so harshly.
The Rangers went to Sills’ office. After they informed him that some of them were armed, Sills ended the meeting and told them they were subject to arrest.
The next day, Putnam and Fulton County Sheriff’s deputies arrested seven of the Rangers in Atlanta. The Rangers were charged with impersonating police officers, and three of them also were charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Brooks acknowledges that he met with the head Ranger, Edward Coughenour, for about an hour and a half on the day before the Rangers’ expedition to Eatonton. He denies, however, that he dispatched the group.
Coughenour says that Brooks not only sent the Rangers, he told him the Rangers would have “the blessing of the governor.”
Coughenour, who now lives in North Carolina, said the Rangers would never have gone without assurances of political protection.
“We made some stupid mistakes in this incident,” Coughenour said, “but we would never have been stupid enough to try to take on a county sheriff, if we didn’t think our butts would be covered by a higher power.”
The Rangers were “working under the assumption that we were protected by the governor of the state of Georgia,” he said.
The GBI investigation of the Ranger incident includes a handwritten note faxed to Coughenour by Brooks before the trip.
In it, Brooks states: “Indeed, we are very concerned that county officials in Putnam are trying to force the Nuwaubians into a violent confrontation. Whatever your agency can do to convince the county to just let these people live in peace will certainly be in the best interest of Ga.”
Brooks explained that, when he sent the note, he assumed the Rangers were some sort of federal agents. He later determined they were not legitimate police officers, he said.
Involving the GBI
Coughenour said he had no direct contact with the governor’s office before the trip, but on his way back to Atlanta he stopped and called Penny Brown Reynolds, then Barnes’ executive counsel, and told her he thought the GBI should be involved in the Putnam County situation.
The next day, he said, he met with and briefed a high-ranking GBI official.
Reynolds, who is now a state court judge in Fulton County, was unavailable for comment for this article.
The feared racial violence never happened.
The judge in the zoning case called the parties into his chambers and brokered an agreement in which York transferred the property to three of his followers.
York emerged from the courthouse to the cheers of his followers. He commented briefly for the television cameras and drove off.
Coughenour served five months in the Putnam County jail, entered a guilty plea to impersonating an officer and returned to North Carolina.
After the showdown in Eatonton, York started spending more time at a $500,000 home he bought in Athens. Aside from some zoning disputes there and some unsuccessful attempts to buy an unused Shrine temple and then a former Baptist church in downtown Macon, York stayed mostly out of public view until his arrest.
His followers continue to depict York, both in Nuwaubian publications and in public statements, as a victim of racial harassment.
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