FBI arrests alleged leaders of San Diego racist cell

SAN DIEGO - The 25-year-old publisher of a racist Internet newsletter and another man were arrested for threats and vandalism targeted at a Jewish congressman, a Hispanic mayor and others in what federal authorities called a campaign of intimidation.

The arrests resulted from a two-year investigation into a white supremacist cell whose members had planned racially motivated violence, federal authorities said Friday.

Alex James Curtis, publisher of the Nationalist Observer newsletter, and Michael Brian DaSilva, 21, were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to commit civil rights violations and obstruction of justice, said Gregory Vega, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California.

Curtis, who has been labeled an emerging national white supremacist leader by the Southern Poverty Law Center, led a small cell that carried out a series of racially motivated crimes in and around San Diego, according to the 10-page indictment.

''We have absolutely zero tolerance for these types of cowardly acts,'' Vega said.

FBI agents and San Diego police arrested Curtis at his parents' home Thursday in the San Diego suburb of Lemon Grove. DaSilva was already in custody on an unrelated weapons charge.

Both men are to be arraigned next week.

No direct acts of violence are alleged in the indictment, but federal authorities said the two were responsible for a series of vandalism and threats over the last three years.

Curtis and DaSilva, along with two other men, had discussed more serious racially motivated attacks, said Bill Gore, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego office, who declined to specify the group's plans.

The indictment claims they left stickers and a sign advocating violence against Jews outside the office of Rep. Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista. On another occasion, they inserted a snake skin through the mail slot of the door as an intended threat, authorities said.

''It frightened a lot of people in my office,'' Filner said. ''I'm glad it was taken seriously. Sometimes these things aren't.''

The two also allegedly left written threats, stickers with anti-Hispanic slogans and a box containing an inactive hand grenade at the home of La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid.

Other incidents included spray painting swastikas and other graffiti on two Jewish synagogues in San Diego County and placing racist material at the home of Morris Casuto, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of San Diego.

''This type of crime is like a cancer that spreads throughout our community and traumatizes our community,'' Gore said.

Two other men admitted to authorities that they participated in the vandalism at the synagogues. Robert Nichol Morehouse and Kevin Christopher Holland have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit a civil rights violation and are awaiting sentencing.

Curtis long has been known to local law enforcement and national groups that track hate groups. In 1993, he was convicted of scrawling racist graffiti in a classroom at Helix High School in La Mesa, where his mother is a teacher. In 1997, he pleaded guilty to using police insignia on white supremacist pamphlets.

In a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., Curtis is listed as one of six men in their 20s and 30s who are ''emerging as new leaders on the radical right.'' It also said his Web site encourages other racists to commit individual acts of violence.

When police and the FBI arrested the unemployed Curtis at his parents' house Thursday, he had a 9 mm handgun and a large quantity of racist propaganda in his bedroom.

DaSilva, of Lakeside, is unemployed and recently was convicted of a felony for possessing a sawed-off shotgun hidden under the seat of his car, authorities said.

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On the Net:

Southern Poverty Law Center's Web site at http://www.splcenter.org