On August 9 Hal Turner is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, for allegedly threatening three federal appeals court judges in an Internet blog post. For the past several years, Turner, an Internet radio shock jock, has been one of the top purveyors of incendiary racist bombast. He has been dubbed the “Host of Hate” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has provided the SPLC and other left-wing activist groups with a handy image to use in smearing conservatives.
The major problem for prosecutors is that Turner was on the payroll of the FBI for much of the time that he was spewing his hate-filled rants across the World Wide Web and delivering speeches throughout the country to Aryan misfits. According to news accounts and Turner’s defense attorney, Turner was recruited by FBI counterterrorism agents in 2002 or 2003 and paid thousands of dollars to engage in his “white power” antics, supposedly to flush out and expose genuine racists who could pose a terror threat. His federal handlers even sanctioned an earlier threat he had made against another federal judge, Turner says. The feds acknowledge that Turner worked for them but claim they severed the relationship in 2007. However, according to Peter J. Sampson, a reporter for The Record in New Jersey, “records show Turner continued to provide tips to the FBI and other agencies until weeks before his arrest last June.”
Hal Turner has been a gold mine for groups like the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), providing the perfect stereotypical image (for them) of the white-male-as-rabid-racist. A special profile on Turner in the SPLC’s Intelligence Report for Fall 2003 describes him thusly:
