Ex-Idaho neo-Nazi arrested

A neo-Nazi felon formerly from North Idaho was arrested Tuesday by federal agents in Seattle on charges of possessing and selling machine guns to an undercover informant working with a terrorism task force.

Keith D. Gilbert, formerly of Post Falls, was ordered held in jail without bond until a detention hearing is held on Friday in U.S. District Court.

The 65-year-old white supremacist, convicted of crimes in North Idaho in the 1980s, posed for a photograph last year near Boeing Field alongside a motorcycle sidecar equipped with a machine gun, court documents allege.

Federal agents who made the arrest also served search warrants at Gilbert’s home and a nearby residence. Numerous semi-automatic firearms were removed from both homes, authorities said.

Gilbert is charged in U.S. District Court in Seattle with being a felon in possession of a firearm, two counts of illegally possessing a machine gun and two counts of possessing an unregistered firearm.

Because of his lengthy criminal record, Gilbert could face a minimum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

The charges involve alleged conduct that occurred between July 2003 and last August, court documents say.

Authorities would not say why they waited until Tuesday to arrest Gilbert and William D. Heinrich, 50, of Seattle, but court documents suggest the investigation involved a larger ring of suspected illegal gun dealers, including Russian immigrants.

Two other men, identified as Barton Carter and Alen J. Long, are fugitives who are accused of selling the plastic explosive C-4, the Associated Press reported.

The case against Gilbert was developed by a Joint Terrorism Task Force, based in Seattle. It and similar task forces, including one based in Spokane, track domestic and international terrorists.

The complaint against Gilbert was signed by an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, assigned to the terrorism task force.

One of the assault rifles involved in the investigation was manufactured in Romania and sold to Gilbert by a discount gun store in Federal Way, Wash., the court documents say.

It is not known if administrative action has been initiated to revoke the federal license of the gun dealer, who is forbidden by law from selling firearms to felons and required to do criminal background checks before sales.

Court documents also allege Gilbert was attempting to buy firearms from a man who authorities say is an immigrant from the former Soviet Union. He has not been charged.

It is Gilbert’s previous criminal convictions in Idaho and California that make it illegal for him to possess firearms or ammunition.

In the 1980s, Gilbert was convicted in Kootenai County of state welfare fraud and violating the civil rights of African Americans.

He was convicted in California of a foiled 1964 plot to use 1,400 pounds of dynamite to kill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He served five years in San Quentin before moving to North Idaho.

He moved to North Idaho in the late 1970s after involvement in California in the 1960s with an extremist organization known as the Minutemen.

Richard G. Butler also was involved with that organization in California before moving to Hayden Lake in the mid-1970s and starting the Aryan Nations and its religious arm, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian.

Gilbert briefly attended the Aryan Nations, but later broke from Butler and formed his own white supremacy group, the Social Nationalist Aryan People’s Party, which he operated out of his home in Post Falls.

In 1985, authorities who tracked those groups estimated Gilbert’s group had eight or fewer followers.

Still, he repeatedly drew national media attention, frequently dressing in his Nazi SS uniform and willingly posing for photographs.

In 1982, he unsuccessfully ran for City Council in Post Falls. Later, he failed in similar bids to become the sheriff and assessor of Kootenai County.

He was investigated in 1983 after spitting on a mixed-race child who was retarded and swerving his “Nazi-mobile” at a black teenager in Coeur d’Alene. Those incidents resulted in federal charges.

In 1984, with a computer set up in a North Division office building in Spokane, Gilbert became one of the first white supremacists to use the early version of the Internet to exchange hate literature.

About that same time, he told The Spokesman-Review, “We do believe in armed resistance against our enemies. And if force and violence are necessary, then, of course, they’re going to be used.”

On another occasion, the Arkansas native told the newspaper he was a “disciple of Adolf Hitler” who despised Jews and minorities.

It was a state prosecution for welfare fraud in Kootenai County in 1985 that ultimately sent Gilbert to prison in Idaho for nine years. After getting out of prison in the mid-1990s, he moved to Seattle and became a landlord of a low-income apartment.

While serving time in Idaho, he was convicted on the federal civil rights charges from the earlier harassment incidents, leading to an additional 18 months in prison.

At his sentencing on those charges, Gilbert told the court: “I am the victim of a conspiracy by these people to shut me up and get me out of town.”