G21: I'd like to start with the 14 July, 1999, law suit filed by the Illinois Attorney General's office. The lawsuit claims that the World Church of the Creator is not a church, but an unregistered charity. Do you acknowledge this distinction?

HALE: Actually, the church is exactly what it says it is: a church. He is simply wrong in his allegation, and I am looking forward to showing that in a courtroom. In fact, I received the suit today. I was finally served with it today, and I think it has a lot of problems with it. I'm looking forward to fighting him.

G21: Could you enumerate the problems?

HALE: Sure. Throughout it, he talks about our church holding itself out as a charity. It does not hold itself out as a charity, it never has. It's never said, donate to this charity. It simply says, support the church, donate to the church for various religious books, things of that nature. I think that we are a church just as much as any other religious body. The Christians pass the collection plate, we have our form of donations, too.

G21: But in August 1995, the Illinois Department of Revenue denied you tax-exempt status.

HALE: That may be true, but they don't even have a right to ask us for taxes. As far as we're concerned we have no obligation to register whatsoever. We didn't have to register then. The only reason I did was as a formality, as a courtesy. Now they're attempting to use that as evidence that we're not a church, which would probably be inadmissible anyway.

G21: So you don't recognize any authority of the Department of Revenue?

HALE: Right. The constitution is very clear: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." It you have to register a church with the state, it sounds a lot like registering a religion with the government, which is not supposed to be the way it works.

G21: But one would assume that if this was a case of the World Church being an actual religious entity, there would be no problem. Why, then, do you think the tax-exempt status was denied?

Anatomy of The Outsider

SIDEBAR: Recollections of Our Youth by Tom Leyland From 1988-1992 I attended East Peoria Central High School in East Peoria, IL. Matthew Hale was two grades ahead of me. He offered me membership in his adolescent precursor to the World Church of the Creator when I was a sophomore. My earliest recollections concerning Hale was that he was a somewhat unremarkable character one passed in the hallway; a pale ectomorph with dark, wiry hair, thick framed glasses, bad complexion, and uninspired fashion sense. On occasion he might be carrying the violin he played in the school orchestra. CONTINUED

HALE: That's a good question. I think it was denied purely because of our religious beliefs. Some people, including the Attorney General, don't like our religion. Well, I probably don't like his religion. I'm not trying to tell him he can't practice it freely, which apparently he's trying to tell us.

G21: In any case, a church receipt for $6,190 for printing was found in Benjamin Smith's car, sales tax removed. This is one of the facets of the Department of Revenue's and possibly the Attorney General's charges. Given the fact that you were denied tax-exempt status, how can you continue to enjoy it under state provisions?

HALE: We will not pay taxes, period. We are a church. That is the clear answer to that. We are not going to pay taxes as long as other churches don't have to pay taxes. We didn't have to register in 1995, we don't have to register now. As far as the sales taxes, we have always paid sales taxes when we have been asked to pay them. We weren't billed for that by the company that printed our literature.

One thing I might add is that Ben did not pay for that. That was paid for by the church. He was simply given a check from the church to pay for it.

G21: The receipt was found in his car. One can assume it was a recent purchase?

HALE: Yes, about a month ago now.

G21: Yet you've stated, and the certified letter you've made available to members of the press stated that he was not a member of the church after April of this year.

HALE: That's technically true, yes.

G21: Then why was he acting as an agent of the church?

HALE: He wasn't acting as an agent of the church. I simply gave him a check to pay these people. I don't see that as any problem at all.

G21: He was conducting a financial transaction on behalf of the church.

HALE: Even if that's true, so what? Are we to say that guilt by association is the hallmark of our society? That if I know somebody that commits a crime, that we're guilty too? I don't think so.

G21: I wasn't implying any guilt, but I would like to talk about Benjamin Smith, if you don't mind.

HALE: Sure.

G21: The letter you received was mailed on the Friday of the first shooting, and in it he formally renounced his membership in the church. I'm wondering why, if he had left the church in April, he felt it necessary to do that at that point.

HALE: It's obvious now that he wanted to make sure that the world knew, as much as they don't want to know, that he was responsible for his own actions. I certainly think that is the reason he wrote that letter. He wanted to make sure that people realized that, no, he was not sent out to do what he did, and that the church is indeed a legal organization.

G21: That is the language used in the letter. He didn't speak to you about this at all?

HALE: Not at all. One thing people should know is that he did work as a paralegal in a law firm, so he knew the law. He knew various legal terminology.

G21: He transferred to law in his first year at Indiana University. Was this under your guidance?

HALE: I think he was inspired by the fact that I'd just graduated from law school.

G21: Is that something that you've tried to instill in the members of the church? It seems there's a suggestion on the part of the church that the members be versed in law. Is this reactionary?

HALE: Certainly, we have to know our rights. If we don't know our rights, then we will have them taken from us. The government, in our opinion, is very tyrannical, simply put. Even this Attorney General's suit reveals that. He seems to care about equal protection under the law for Blacks or Jews or whatever, but when it comes to our church he forgets about that.

G21: He would seem to be enforcing the letter of the law in enforcing the statute requiring tax-exempt status to be recognized by the Department of Revenue.

HALE: Actually, that's not the case. A church is not required to file with the state. I don't know what you've heard along those lines, but there's no law that says a church must file. What the Attorney General is saying is that a charity must file. He's trying to get in the back door and say we're not a church, we're a charity, so therefore we have to file. However, if it comes out in court, as I believe it will, that we are a church, his whole case falls.

G21: Let's backtrack a bit. You met Benjamin Smith when?

HALE: I met him in August of last year.

G21: Of 1998.

HALE: Yes.

G21: And yet he was named "Creator of the Year" for 1998.

HALE: That's right. He did a very fine job the last four, five months of the year--in fact, probably the last six months of the year--passing out literature. But he did pass out the literature before I'd met him.

G21: The receipt notwithstanding, which you say was given by you to him for his purchase, he withdrew in his last weeks something approximating $17,000. Receipts recovered in his apartment reveal that over $5000 of that was spent on literature. A Chicago investigator has even stated that Smith was subsidizing you. How much money came to you through Benjamin Smith?

HALE: For one thing, the church lost money when he passed out literature. The literature that he would distribute cost 10.6 cents a copy, and he would get them for 5 cents each. That's fine. After all, we are a church. We're trying to bring the word to the people. I'm not sure exactly how much money in total he spent. I would estimate something like two thousand dollars.

G21: Two-thousand dollars, as opposed to the five-thousand dollars he spent with one purchase of literature?

HALE: I don't believe he did make a five-thousand dollar purchase of literature.

G21: The receipts were recovered in his apartment.

HALE: That might be what the law-enforcement people say, but the law-enforcement people are liars. I hate to be antagonistic, but these people will lie left and right.

The problem we have in this whole thing, and which is indeed irritating, is that I keep hearing things the FBI says through the media. The FBI doesn't say anything to me, it's always through the media, and ninety percent of what they say is false. For example, they say that Ben and I leased the storage locker. That's false. I can prove that. We have a lease that clearly has my name on it and "World Church of the Creator." It doesn't say anything about Ben. In fact, I hadn't even met him at the time. The FBI says that Ben purchased the last "Facts" order with his own money. That's a bald-faced lie. They have to know about it because they have undoubtedly looked at the check and saw it was a church check with my signature. They initially said that we were linked to the arsons in Sacramento. Another bald-faced lie. They're making a big habit of this. I think about some of these shenanigans going on, it's irritating.

G21: You told the FBI that Smith was a friend. You also told them that you were unaware of Smith's plot. Yet, you met with him ten days before the shootings, at a restaurant, weeks after he'd withdrawn seventeen thousand dollars from his bank accounts. There was no mention of his plan?

HALE: He never mentioned [his plans] to me at all. Obviously, it would not be in my interests, either as a citizen of this country or as a person trying to get a law license, to encourage anybody to commit a crime. Certainly, if he'd told me anything about this, if he'd said, "Pontifex"--that's what he always called me, out of respect--"Pontifex, I'm thinking about killing people," I'd have said, "Brother, don't do it." He obviously didn't tell me about this because he wanted to protect me.

G21: Yet, when the FBI questioned you, you said that on the evening of 3 July, when news reports revealed the model and color of the shooter's car, you suspected that it was Smith.

HALE: Not really. I didn't really suspect it. I just thought that it could be him because he had a car like that. But as I also said to the FBI, the sketch didn't look like him at all. The sketch being shown all over the television looked as much like him as I look like him.

G21: You told them, and the quote is from the [Chicago] Tribune reporters who were present, "When you haven't heard from a friend you heard was going to the Chicago suburbs and you usually talk to him every other day or so, and the suspect is driving a light blue Ford Taurus, my dad and I both kind of wondered."

HALE: That's accurate.

G21: So you had your suspicions, at least.

HALE: I hate to go into semantics, but what does "suspicion" or "suspect" mean? If you had a blue Taurus and somebody committed a crime two states away, I might think of you. That doesn't mean I suspect you.

G21: But specifically a hate-crime, in fitting with the ideology of the church and Benjamin Smith personally, did not strike you as odd or something that should be reported?

HALE: I didn't think it should be reported. I certainly did not think I had any evidence that it was him, so I didn't think it would be appropriate.

G21: You knew he was going to Chicago, yes?

HALE: I didn't know where he was going to pass out the literature. He said the Chicago suburbs. That's all I knew.

G21: But then it was two cities where he attended college.

HALE: Wait a minute. By Saturday, he hadn't even gone to Bloomington, Indiana, yet. The U of I thing, I don't even know if I knew about it at that point. It's not like I was riveted to the television while this was going on. I certainly wasn't. I had the newspaper, I turned on the Headline News, and I went about my business.

G21: He left the church in April.

HALE: He said April, I thought it was May.

G21: And you received his card on 7 July.

HALE: Yes, I think so.

G21: The card specifically absolved you of guilt. You specifically.

HALE: Sure. He was a friend of mine. He obviously wanted people to know the truth.

G21: At the point he was apprehended, shot himself--

HALE: I hope that's what happened. I'm going to be making a move to get a copy of the autopsy report to make sure. I have to say the media sure has jumped on this suicide business. Kind of strange to shoot one's self three times to commit suicide. I'd hoped the media would be a bit more primed than that.

G21: You suspect the police?

HALE: It's possible, sure.

G21: Let's return to something you alluded to earlier. The fire-bombings in ... Florida?

HALE: Actually, California.

G21: Sorry, I'm thinking of Jules Fettu, the Florida state director of the World Church.

HALE: He was. He stepped down several months ago. I'm not sure what month.

G21: Before he beat a black man and his son outside a theater?

HALE: Unless you know something I don't, he hasn't been convicted of that yet. He has told me all along that he did not do this act.

G21: However, World Church members Donald Hansard and Raymond Leone pled guilty to the crime.

HALE: They may have. Sure.

G21: Also, Guy Lombardi, the Southeast regional director, pled guilty to intimidating witnesses in that case.

HALE: That's my understanding.

G21: Why would there be any reason for him to do so if Fettu wasn't also responsible for the crime?

HALE: I don't think the connection fits. They may have pled guilty because they were involved, but it doesn't mean that he did anything.

G21: Nonetheless, World Church members were involved in the beating.

HALE: According to the information I've received, this person started it. This person pushed one of our members, one of our members hit him, and then a melee developed. I can't say who's completely to blame in all this. In any case, these people aren't members anymore. Certainly, we have a policy that people who commit crimes are expelled from the organization.

G21: Hanson and Leone were also charged and pled guilty to the pistol-whipping and robbing of a Jewish video store owner in Hollywood, Florida.

HALE: Okay.

G21: Doesn't there seem to be a pattern here?

HALE: No, there doesn't. If we want to take every church congregation and poll them for the crimes they've committed, they'd make our church look like saints. We are being scrutinized completely differently than the rest of the world. It is unfair, and simply not right.

G21: Very few other churches preach so specifically against certain segments of the population. To find them the victims of these crimes at the hands of church members would seem to provide a very distinct link.

HALE: I'll tell you why there isn't a link. Take myself as a good example. I haven't committed any crimes against people. I have strong views. Certainly, there are people that have strong views about abortion that don't kill people that partake in that. The fact of the matter is that we do have strong opinions about things, but in all our writing we tell our members not to commit crimes. That's all we can do. We cannot put a leash on people, we cannot quarantine people. We expect them to follow the creed and to follow the non-violent path. If they don't, then that's their own responsibility.

G21: You do require that each of your White Berets and White Rangers own a handgun and be well-trained in using it.

HALE: The White Berets is something that's never truly gotten off the ground. We had three or four of them down in Florida, and that was it. Now, whether they own handguns or not, I don't know. That's something we'll certainly require in the future. Everyone should own a handgun. Every citizen should own a handgun, as far as we're concerned. There's nothing wrong with that.

G21: Hansard and Leone were members of the White Berets?

HALE: That I don't know. Lombardi took care of that. That was something I never made myself privy to.

G21: Lombardi was dismissed from the church, and you went out of your way to state that it was not because he'd been arrested. What was the reason?

HALE: I did that because, as far as we're concerned, we're still innocent until proven guilty. I did not want to presume that he was guilty before the facts. The reason was attitude, he fostered poor morale, so there was need for a change.

G21: What was poor morale in Lombardi's case?

HALE: That's getting too specific for me. I don't show our whole church operations in the light of day, and nor does any church. I don't want to answer that.

G21: But if it's relevant to his actions? He was dismissed so soon after he was indicted.

HALE: It's funny that people are willing to take me at my word when I say I hate non-whites, but they won't take me at my word when I say I'm legal, they won't take me at my word when I say he was dismissed for certain reasons and not others. I think people can't have it both ways.

G21: In that case, let's discuss the church. What was the literature Smith was to distribute during the Fourth of July weekend?

HALE: I presume it was the "Facts". I didn't see his trunk. This is hard to remember. It was really so non-eventful. I meet so many people, I talk to so many people, and so many people get literature. I seem to recall he was going to pass out the "Facts".

G21: Can you elaborate on what the "Facts" is?

HALE: The "Facts" is basically an objective discussion of a number of items that people probably don't know about, including the Jewish Talmud. The teachings in there are very hostile to non-Jews. The facts about Jewish control of media, how they have a disproportionate amount of control. Facts about the kosher food tax, which are foods taxed to be blessed by a rabbi. Facts about our founding fathers and their statements about the Jews, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Facts about crime, the Black disproportionate amount of it being committed. Immigration facts. Things of that nature.

G21: That these statements don't stand up to the facts of history doesn't seem to deter your publication of them in your literature.

HALE: Throughout history, history has changed. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica used to talk about Blacks having smaller and less developed brains. Just because it doesn't say that anymore doesn't mean it's not still true.

G21: But it isn't true.

HALE: It is true.

G21: According to what study?

HALE: Let's just do this. Let's get a couple cadavers and let's examine them. I'd be more than happy to do that. As much as I'm not a guy for blood and guts, I'd be more than happy to demonstrate this.

G21: Most studies show that the difference was based on subjective selection.

HALE: That's just propaganda. I know this is hard for you to understand. I've been researching this and studying this since I was twelve years old. Most people, I don't blame them for coming into this and saying, gee whiz, there's a conspiracy around every corner, you guys are just trying to justify your beliefs with faulty science and history. I don't blame people for thinking that. You probably think that as well. But the fact of the matter is that when you have something that walks like a duck, talks like a duck, swims like a duck, it probably is a duck. And when you have a situation where the Jews have been hated throughout history, there must be a reason. It just doesn't make any sense to say that it was just scapegoating or anything like that. Our ancestors hated them and hated them for a reason. They hated them because they are manipulators, they are controllers of economies and governments. People get fed up with that.

G21: Other than existing prejudice, what evidence is there to justify this?

HALE: I can give you a very good example. Throughout the centuries, Jews were accused and convicted of ritual murder. They did this throughout Europe, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Austria, probably other countries. They would kidnap white kids and sacrifice them to Yahweh. Now, these were recorded events. This isn't something that was cast about out of thin air.

As far as other historical events, there's Communism. Comminism was founded by Karl Marx. What was his real name? Mortecai Levy. Who was Trotsky? Lev Bronstein. Who was Friedrich Engels? A half Jew. Three hundred eleven out of the first three hundred eighty-four members of the Politburo of the Soviet Union were Jews.

G21: And Mao Tse-tung? Stalin?

HALE: Stalin was said to be one-quarter, but there's dispute about that. He did marry a Jew. Certainly there have been non-Jewish communists, but I'm saying that the whole idea originated from the Jews. They have come up with everything bad in the world. Hitler was right about that. Hitler said in Mein Kampf, "Is there any filth or duplicity without at least one Jew involved?"

G21: You can't deny that white people throughout history have been responsible for many atrocities.

HALE: Certainly. But they're white people, and that's the thing. We look at it this way. There are plenty of bad apples on the white racial tree. Of course. But it's still our tree. Let the Jews take care of their tree and the Blacks take care of theirs, the Orientals take care of theirs, Arabs take of theirs. We'll take care of our own.

G21: You're saying, then, that the white race is no better than any other.

HALE: As far as good and bad, right. I mean, there are plenty of bad whites, but we're trying to create an all-white society because that's the only way our race can ultimately survive. The streets are telling us that. You see white women with blacks--white men with blacks, now--and other races mixing. We cannot survive as a distinct biological entity unless we are separate.

G21: But what is the importance of surviving as a "distinct biological entity"? How can you even grant that whites are a distinct biological entity?

HALE: How? Our eyes. There's a tremendous physical difference between whites and non-whites. There are two hundred genetic differences between whites and blacks. Everything from hair to sweat glands to eyes to mucous membranes to brain differences to running ability, jumping ability, fingerprints, blood types. All kinds of differences.

G21: The studies say that only 6% of genes contribute to racial differences, but even if the case is as extreme as you make it sound, why is that an insidious threat?

HALE: In nature, all creatures breed only with their own kind. Only when domesticated do creatures breed outside their own kind. So if which to remain true to the laws of nature, as we believe we should as human beings, we have to recognize this. And of course, we submit that whites mixing with other races destroys the quality of our people. If you take a white person and breed them with blacks, you'll have a medium grade as far as intelligence, and you'll also have a very confused individual without any solid racial background. I've even talked to people of mixed blood before, and they've admitted to me, "I don't have any real identity, I don't know what I am. I sometimes side with the black side, sometimes with the whites." It's really unfortunate.

G21: I'd submit that it's unfortunate that he'd have to choose between siding with a black side or a white side, but regardless, aren't we talking about humans?

HALE: Using that word is a value judgement, of sorts. Once again, I go back to nature. That's what we base our teachings on. In nature, you don't find black ants and red ants hitting it off. In fact, you find bitter enemies among them. You don't find black bears and grizzly bears co-mingling or interbreeding. That's why the non-whites are our enemies. They are rivals. Certainly, if they were rabbits or something, it wouldn't be much of a problem.

G21: But we're not talking about animals.

HALE: But we are animals. That's the thing. We don't accept this idea that just because we can think and speak and walk on two legs that we are not bound by nature's laws. We are.

G21: Why should a relatively insignificant difference within a species influence politics?

HALE: This isn't about politics. That's why we have a church, why I have forsaken politics. At one time, I used to consider myself a politician of sorts. I ran for city council, got fourteen percent of the vote four years ago. But this isn't about politics. This is about deciding what are our supreme values. We believe that everything that we appreciate in this world, whether it's technology, whether it's culture, whether it's civilization itself, is dependent on keeping the white race intact, and keeping it white. The other races have not created worthwhile cultures and technology and civilizations. They have only copied from us, at best, and destroyed us.

G21: Doesn't this contradict your statement that the Jewish race is in control?

HALE: The problem is that white people, as intelligent as they are, as creative as they are, are misdirecting their intelligence and creativity toward the betterment of the non-white races. That's the problem. Heck, the Jews are the most racist people on earth. What one Jew believes, they all believe. In fact, we look to the Jews, in some ways, for influence, as far as how a people that small, that insignificant in numbers, can become masters of the earth. They did it by having a racial religion, by being intolerant of others, by having a creed that was very exclusive.

G21: The same thing could be said of many religions.

HALE: I don't think so. If you read the New Testament, you don't read about white people smiling and killing other races. If you read our religion--which most people haven't. Once again, the problem is that they don't actually read our books. They like to talk about them, but they won't read them. You won't find any passages about us celebrating the non-whites being destroyed or anything else. One thing I'd really challenge you to do is read our first book. I'm trying to give the nutshell version of it, but it really doesn't do it complete justice. Ben Klassan spent five hundred pages detailing everything that I've said about nature and how we are bound by her laws, and that's why we have to do what we're doing here. I'd really encourage you to read it if you have the time.

G21: I've read the sections on your website, in research for this interview, and I have to say that what I see there is no different from what you are accusing other races of doing.

HALE: It's like this. We have to have a racially-exclusive religion if we're going to survive. That's the bottom line. We look at everything toward the end result. The end does justify the means, unquestionably. If the end is white survival, then the means are justified.

G21: But you'll agree that the majority of whites don't support your views.

HALE: I think they do in a lot of ways. For example, and this is a hypothetical I've used many a time, if white people could snap their fingers and the non-whites would disappear, I guarantee you ninety percent of the white race would snap their fingers. The problem is not that they disagree so much, it's just that they're lazy, and they won't do anything about it. The people sit in their easy chair--and I happen to be sitting in one right now, but I think have good reason--they sit in their easy chair, and they nod their heads when they see us on television or get our flyer, etc., but they don't do anything. That's the problem.

G21: As for Ben Smith's actions, you have spoken out against the acts but not the ideology behind them. He did specifically target ethnic minorities.

HALE: It's true that if he'd shot white people, I'd denounce him.

G21: But you don't denounce him.

HALE: I don't denounce him.

G21: Is he considered a martyr of the church?

HALE: He is considered a martyr for free speech, because I think the reason that he did this is because of the persecution that he faced--and I faced--for simply exercising religious freedoms.

G21: The incident has gone a long way toward publicizing not only the church but you specifically. In that respect, this would be a boon for you.

HALE: And maybe that's what he wanted. Maybe he lost his life to make us a household name. As I've said on some of the stations, I have nothing but good things to say about Ben Smith. I have nothing bad to say about the man.