April 28, 2004 — The FBI has increased its monitoring of hate groups’ Web sites after the conviction of a white supremacist on charges he sought to have a judge murdered, agency officials said.
Federal officials won’t tolerate anyone crossing the line from protected free speech to advocating violence in the wake of Matthew Hale‘s conviction, said Richard K. Ruminski, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism investigations in Chicago.
Ruminski said Tuesday that a couple of unnamed Web sites have been of particular concern, with views “almost threatening in nature.”
“It concerns us to the point where we’re going to see what legal actions can be taken in order to maybe legally take that Web site down,” he said.
One racist Web site posted an incorrect home address and cell and home phone numbers for FBI informant Anthony Evola, with the title, “In Case Anyone Wants To Say Hi,” Ruminski said. The site listed information for a man named Anthony Evola, but he wasn’t the person who testified during the trial, officials said.
“You don’t know who is going to show up at the house,” said Joseph Evola, the son of the man misidentified on the Web site.
FBI agents and local police are providing round-the-clock protection, authorities said.
Hale, whose gospel of “racial holy war” was linked to a follower’s deadly shooting rampage five years ago, was found guilty Monday of trying to have U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow killed.
Prosecutors said Hale was furious after Lefkow ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator because it had been trademarked by an Oregon-based religious group that has no ties to Hale.