Arrest on germ warfare charge start of a legend?

Larry Henry

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 1998 | 10:24 a.m.

To many, Larry Wayne Harris is a racist whose interest in germ warfare attracted the attention of two quirky Nevada medical researchers and the FBI.

But to the white supremacist movement, which bristles with theories about government persecution, Harris could become a hero.

Conspiracy theorists might try to assert that Harris beat the FBI in Las Vegas this week and and made the federal government look inept, according to two experts who monitor hate groups.

"The radical right lives in a conspiratorial world," Dr. Leonard Weinberg, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said. "To the extent you can be identified as a victim, your reputation is enhanced."

FBI agents on Wednesday arrested Harris and another man, Overton researcher William Leavitt, under suspicion that they were in possession of the lethal germ anthrax.

The arrests came after an FBI source claimed Harris, a former lieutenant in the separatist Aryan Nations, said he had enough anthrax to wipe out Las Vegas.

Tests disclosed that the substance was a harmless animal vaccine.

Criminal charges against Harris and Leavitt were dismissed Monday, and the FBI source, Ronald Rockwell, has been discredited as an off-beat scientist with an interest in time travel and UFOs. The FBI defends its action, saying it cannot take chances with people alleged to be threats to public safety.

"The extremist right thrives on its martyrs," Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which operates Klanwatch from its headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., said.

Potok is a former USA Today reporter who covered the Branch Davidian aftermath in Waco, Texas.

In that 1993 incident, cult leader David Koresh died with 80 followers after a 51-day standoff with authorities.

Potok said right-wingers view Koresh as a fallen hero.

Other separatists who have received attention for their encounters with federal authorities include Randy Weaver, whose wife was killed in 1992 by an FBI sharpshooter in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Gordon Kahl, a Posse Comitatus member killed in a shootout in 1983 with federal authorities in Smithville, Ark. Kahl was accused of killing two U.S. Marshals near Medina, N.D.

And in 1996, an Atlanta security guard, Richard Jewell, while not affiliated with racist groups, was falsely accused by the FBI in an Olympic bombing.

Potok said Harris could become a "minor" legend in right-wing circles.

Harris' story will receive added national attention Wednesday at 10 p.m. during a broadcast of ABC's PrimeTime Live.

Reporter Diane Sawyer interviewed Harris for a story on biological warfare a few weeks before he was arrested in Henderson.