Matthew Hale, the imprisoned white supremacist who the FBI believes may have had some role in ordering the murder of a federal judge's family, attempted to pass coded messages to his followers, according to his attorney:

An attorney for jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale said he was asked to give an encoded message to one of Hale's supporters, according to a published report. Hale has been a focus of the investigation into the shooting deaths of a federal judge's husband and mother.

Lawyer Glenn Greenwald said Hale's mother asked him a few months ago to pass the message to a Hale supporter.

"She said she didn't know what the message meant, but she was going to read it to me verbatim because Matt made her write it down when she visited him," Greenwald told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions. "It was two or three sentences that were very cryptic and impossible to understand in terms of what they were intended to convey."

Hale has been convicted of conspiracy to kill Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow after she ruled against him in a trademark case and enjoined him from using the name World Church of the Creator. He awaits sentencing without bail, which means that Hale would have to have communicated some way with his followers to encourage them to murder Lefkow's family. (Sources indicate that they are investigating several possibilities, including this one.) However, Hale had only been seen by family members until yesterday, when the FBI suddenly isolated him and refused anyone access to Hale. Now we know why.

Unlike Lynne Stewart, who passed coded messages to the followers of the Islamist terror leader Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, Greenwald didn't cooperate with the terrorists. The AP report on ABC makes it unclear whether Greenwald came forward himself or whether the FBI found out about the attempt and had to ask him about it, but in either case, Greenwald shows why Stewart got convicted for her efforts. Greenwald's actions show how an attorney can separate himself from defending unsavory clients and involving himself in their crimes.

I would guess that the Hale connection to the Lefkow murders looks somewhat stronger for the FBI after this revelation. The mother should be next for the FBI and the US District Attorney to charge with conspiracy.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is