Aryan Nations chief quits after booting out Butler

Associated Press

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The new leader of the Aryan Nations has announced his resignation, just one day after he ousted the group’s founder, Richard Butler.

In a statement on the Aryan Nations Web site, Ray Redfeairn said he would resign his post and leave the organization March 30. Leadership would then belong to a "high council" consisting of national spokesman August Kreis, Pennsylvania state leader Charles Juba and a third person who has not yet been named.

"This came as a shock to me," said Kreis, contacted at his home outside Coudersport, Pa., near the New York border.

Redfeairn’s announcement came just a day after he and Kreis distanced themselves from Butler, saying the one-time Aryan Nations leader had damaged the reputation of the white-supremacist organization.

Kreis said Butler and a handful of supporters in Idaho refused to recognize the chain of command, issuing their own directives and calling their own meetings.

"We couldn’t continue having to deal with what he would say to the press, and then the press would call me and ask if this is true, and I’d have to say no," Kreis said. "We had to deal with that on a daily basis, and you just can’t run an organization like that."

Kreis said he had not talked with Redfeairn about Redfeairn’s resignation. Redfeairn did not immediately return an e-mail request for an interview.

Butler led the Aryan Nations until last fall, when he turned over leadership to Redfeairn. That decision came a year after a $6.3 million civil rights judgment against Aryan Nations that forced the group to sell the 20-acre Idaho compound that had served as its headquarters and as Butler’s home.

"It saddens us to see Pastor Butler allowing himself to be directed by idiots and saboteurs," the statement said. "We … have decided that we will not stand idly by and allow the demise of the Aryan Nations or the Church any further because we ignored evidence of incompetence and stupidity, allowing idiots and those of diminished mental capacity to remain members of the Aryan Nations and/or to serve over us."

Butler, who turns 84 next month, did not return a message left at the Aryan Nations office in Hayden, Idaho. He told The Spokesman-Review of Spokane that he was still the Aryan Nations leader and that Redfeairn and Kreis were "just trying to usurp my position."

"We’re calling it a ‘kook d’etat’," said Joe Roy, director of the Intelligence Project at the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. "It’s been in the making for some time now."

Last week, Butler tried to fire Kreis and Redfeairn, but the two said he lacked the authority to do so. Kreis said the Aryan Nations’ state leaders supported the removal of Butler from the group.

Butler’s ouster clears the way for the group to move its national headquarters to Kreis’ property near Coudersport. The group’s minister of security lives nearby in Bradford.