Kingdom Identity Ministries

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

Records relating to or mentioning Kingdom Identity Ministries, which is the largest supplier in existence of materials related to Christian Identity, a radical-right theology that generally identifies people of color as soulless sub-humans and Jews as satanic or cursed by God. It functions primarily as a publishing house, churning out Identity Bible study courses, tracts and books, including foundational texts by early Identity leaders like Wesley Swift. The ministry teaches that Judgment Day will arrive in the form of a sanctified race war, a theory widely popular with prison-based racist gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood.

Kingdom Identity Ministries has played a key role in advancing the Christian Identity movement since the early 1980s. The group's founder and leader, Mike Hallimore, calls his operation a "politically incorrect Christian Identity outreach ministry to God's chosen race, true Israel, the White, European peoples." Hallimore supports the death penalty for idolatry, homosexuality, blasphemy and abortion.

In 1983, just one year after it was formed, Kingdom Identity received a huge boost in stature and profitability when it inherited the copyrights to the written works of Bertrand Comparet, one of the principal early thinkers of the Christian Identity, after Comparet died and willed the copyrights to Hallimore's fledgling ministry. (Comparet was an ideologue of what has become known as "two-seed" Identity, the hard-line version that describes Jews as literally Satanic.) In 2002, Kingdom Identity also inherited the exclusive rights to publish the works of another hard-line Identity ideologue, Wesley Swift, after Swift's widow died and passed on the copyrights to all of her late husband's works, dating back to the 1950s.

Hallimore leads a solitary existence on his 62 acres outside of Jasper, Ark. Most nights he stays up into the wee hours, working on sermons and writing to members of prison gangs. Hallimore corresponded with David Lane, an imprisoned member of the terrorist group The Order, from the mid-1980s until Lane's death in 2007. (Lane was serving a 190-year prison term for his part in the 1984 machine-gun assassination of a Jewish talk show in Denver, one of a series of spectacular attacks carried out by The Order before law enforcement officials smashed the group.)

Hallmore's fondness for Lane was no aberration. In 2001, he told British journalist Nick Ryan, "Why, in the Bible, it's permitted to slay race mixers." In this vein, Hallimore, once again drawing on and distorting the Old Testament to support violent racism, tells the story, taken from the Book of Numbers, of an Israelite called Phineas who kills a fellow Israelite for taking a woman from another tribe as his lover. The lesson that Hallimore (and many other Identity adherents) draws from this is that a "race warrior" can be divinely sanctioned to slay race mixers. (In fact, in Hallimore's racy version of the story, Phineas slew the couple in the midst of their coupling by impaling their genitals on his spear. It's a curious detail that doesn't often appear in Christian Identity accounts.) This story is also the basis for the idea of a "Phineas Priesthood," a fraternity that is joined by carrying out acts of racial violence on one's own initiative. The idea originated in the 1990s book by Identity pastor Richard Kelley Hoskins, Vigilantes of Christendom.

Although it's for the most part a publisher and promoter of Christian Identity doctrine, Kingdom Identity has in recent years periodically ventured into the distribution of more generalized white supremacist propaganda. This began in the winter of 2006, when Kingdom Identity printed and mailed just over 4,000 white supremacist pamphlets to residents of small communities in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. A letter from Hallimore arrived with each pamphlet. "In your area, it's my understanding that there are a number of white Christian people and there is a racial problem in terms of integrating of the races," Hallimore wrote. The towns that he targeted were 97% white.

The following year, 2007, Kingdom Identity funded the distribution of a white-power rock CD that was handed out by skinheads in public schools across the country. "I hate heavy metal as a form of music, but I realize those bands attract a lot of youth and so it works as a great outreach tool," Hallimore said at the time. "Kids can listen to this music, get the message and grow spiritually. I'd rather see these CDs being passed out in schools than condoms."

Early in 2008, Hallimore posted an advertisement on his website seeking a "white Christian lady" to join him at his Arkansas compound as both his wife and as Kingdom Identity's secretary. The ad, which also ran in several small newspapers, expressed Hallimore's desire for a woman who is "racially pure, honest and of high moral character." "Genuine sweet genteel feminine mannerisms (not a pretense) is required," he continued. "Government, Jewish, or other agents DO NOT qualify."

Please conduct a search of the Central Records System, including but not limited to the Electronic Surveillance (ELSUR) Indices, the Microphone Surveillance (MISUR) Indices, the Physical Surveillance (FISUR) Indices, and the Technical Surveillance (TESUR) Indices, for both main-file records and cross-reference records of both HQ and all field offices for all relevant names, agencies, organizations, companies and events including but not limited to those cited in the previous paragraphs and/or links as well as a cross-reference with the Southern Poverty Law Center to include any information provided by the SPLC. My request includes but is not limited to 137, 157, 176, 177, 183, 184, 188, 214 and 266 files. If previously released records are available, then I request a rolling release consisting of those records while additional records are located and processed for release.

I am a member of the news media and request classification as such. I have previously written about the government and its activities for AND Magazine, MuckRock and Glomar Disclosure and have an open arrangement with each. My articles have been widely read, with some reaching over 100,000 readers. As such, as I have a reasonable expectation of publication and my editorial and writing skills are well established. In addition, I discuss and comment on the files online and make them available through the non-profit Internet Archive, disseminating them to a large audience. While my research is not limited to this, a great deal of it, including this, focuses on the activities and attitudes of the government itself. As such, it is not necessary for me to demonstrate the relevance of this particular subject in advance. Additionally, case law states that “proof of the ability to disseminate the released information to a broad cross-section of the public is not required.” Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 365 F.3d 1108, 1126 (D.C. Cir. 2004); see Carney v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 19 F.3d 807, 814-15 (2d Cir. 1994). Further, courts have held that "qualified because it also had “firm” plans to “publish a number of . . . ‘document sets’” concerning United States foreign and national security policy." Under this criteria, as well, I qualify as a member of the news media. Additionally, courts have held that the news media status "focuses on the nature of the requester, not its request. The provision requires that the request be “made by” a representative of the news media. Id. § 552(a)(4)(A)(ii)(II). A newspaper reporter, for example, is a representative of the news media regardless of how much interest there is in the story for which he or she is requesting information." As such, the details of the request itself are moot for the purposes of determining the appropriate fee category. As such, my primary purpose is to inform about government activities by reporting on it and making the raw data available and I therefore request that fees be waived.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Michael Best

I am appealing the decision to not perform the cross-reference searches and field office searches explicitly requested.

What page count are we looking at if we remove cross-references?

Sorry for the delay! Could you tell me the file types, the captions, or the classification codes?

Any suggestions on how to reduce the scope of this one? Any obvious duplications, etc.?

Let's just process the whole thing. Thanks!