Anti-defamation League reacts to news Harris has ties to Aryan Nations

Friday, Feb. 20, 1998 | 9:54 a.m.

The Anti-Defamation League, a national organization whose stated purpose is to fight bigotry and hatred, was quick to react after two men were arrested this week in Las Vegas by federal authorities who claim the pair were in possession of a biological agent to be used as a weapon.

Larry Wayne Harris, 46, of Lancaster, Ohio, and William Job Leavitt Jr., 47, of Logandale, were charged Thursday with possessing anthrax. A bond hearing is set for Monday.

Officials say Harris has had ties to the Aryan Nations, a white separatist group.

"It's a very racist and anti-Semitic group," Sue Stengel said Friday.

Stengel is the civil rights attorney for the ADL in 13 western states.

She came to the ADL office in Las Vegas soon after she heard about Harris' arrest to monitor the progress of the case.

"We have had the same information that has been brought out in the press about Harris," said Stengel, who is based in Los Angeles.

Harris was arrested in 1995 after fraudulently receiving bubonic plague toxin through the mail. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud last year and was placed on 18-month probation.

Stengel said that the ADL urged legislators to include a prohibition on the purchase and possession of biological weapons in a federal anti-terrorism statute being written at the time Harris' case was going through the legal system.

Stengel said the new law includes that prohibition.

The ADL, which has been in existence some 85 years, keeps a watchful eye on the Aryan Nations and its members.

"The problem is that the news focuses on these groups and these issues when something like what happened in Nevada occurs," Stengel said. "But we follow this every day."

She said public attention on hate groups such as the Aryan Nations "ebbs and flows, depending on who you are talking about. There was a six-month window last May to October when we didn't hear a lot about Aryan Nations."

After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, many militia groups went underground, according to Stengel.

"They were trying to take themselves away from the eye of the media," Stengel said. "There are events that trigger this ebb and flow."

Shelly Katz, director of the Las Vegas office of the ADL, which became the newest in the nation when it opened two years ago, said "regardless of whether something is in the news, we educate the public to groups like the Aryan Nations."