by Paul Richert

from the April 1994 issue of The Nationalist Times.

Tom Metzger, one of the most vocal critics of Morris Dees, the Alabama-based professional liberal who has made a lucrative living suing white racialist groups which have little money with which to defend themselves, calls Dees' fundraising vehicle, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the "Southern Millionaires Law Center." It appears Metzger's sneering pejorative is an understatement of the case.

Dees, an opportunist who started out raising money for George Wallace but quickly found out that white liberals were an easier mark, has raised an astounding amount of money for the SPLC, but most of it is still stashed in bank accounts controlled by Dees. The SPLC, in fact, has raised more money from its investments in the last 10 years, $22.1 million, than it has spent on its actual programs, $20.8 million. The organization currently has over $60 million on hand, yet is still repeatedly sending fundraising letters to its sucker list.

These and other revealing facts were laid bare in a nine-part series published recently in The Montgomery Advertiser, the largest daily paper in Alabama. The paper took over two years preparing the series. Its finding: "What emerges is a complex portrait of a wealthy civil rights organization essentially controlled by one man: Morris Dees."

Dees has put two Klan organizations out of business by suing the national organization for damages because of the isolated activities of one or more of its individual members. For example, one Alabama-based Klan, the United Klans of America, was successfully sued and ruined after several members lynched a black man in 1981, one of the very few lynchings committed in the past 30 years. Dees' novel --- and extremely dangerous --- legal theory is that the leadership of an organization is responsible for the acts carried out by individual members, even if the leadership didn't authorize the acts or knew nothing of them.

Dees used the same theory against Tom and John Metzger, the leaders of White Aryan Resistance (WAR), winning a multi-million dollar civil judgment against them after an Ethiopian was beaten to death by several skinheads in Portland, Oregon in 1988. The skinheads said they acted in self-defense. The Metzgers were in California at the time and knew nothing of the attack, yet Dees convinced a jury that the literature put out by WAR had caused the skinheads to commit violence, along with the efforts of recruiter Dave Mazzella, who was in Portland at the time of the attack but apparently was paid off by Dees to testify against the Metzgers. Despite losing his home and all his business related assets, Tom Metzger has managed to keep WAR going, and may well be going strong long after Dees is out of business.

The Advertiser series noted that the KKK is no longer a serious threat to the powers-that-be, and that Dees has focused on the Klan not because of its influence "but because it plays well with liberal donors."

Besides documenting the SPLC's income over the past decade of $84 million, compared with just $20.8 million in expenses, the Advertiser also found:

* A random sampling of donors showed that they had no idea that the SPLC was so wealthy * The SPLC is controlled solely by whites. In its 23 years there have been only two Negro staff attorneys and they both left under less than happy circumstances

* Twelve former black employees said they either experienced or observed problems with the way blacks were treated inside the Law Center, with problems ranging from "paternalistic attitudes to racial slurs"

* In a series of fundraising letters, the Law Center implied it forced the United Klans of America to pay $7 million to the mother of the lynching victim, but the woman actually received only $51,874.70, while the SPLC was collecting millions as a result of fundraisers bragging about the case

Not mentioned by the expose is the fact that Dees is a sexual pervert. During Dees' messy divorce several years ago, his ex-wife, during sworn testimony, laid out a shocking story of the hijinks of the bisexual Dees.

Dees publishes an "intelligence report" which is sent to police departments and other law enforcement officials throughout the United States. It contains the usual distortions and smears about many well-motivated patriotic individuals and groups. The latest issue, for example, joins in the shrill chorus of hate the radical left has recently started against Col. Bo Gritz, the Populist Party's 1992 presidential candidate, who is starting a camp for Christian patriots in Idaho. The lunatic left claims that Gritz is a dangerous white supremacist when Gritz in reality has numerous times gone out of his way to disassociate himself from such groups. But then liberals like Dees have never let truth get in the way of ideology --- or of making a fortune.