My Story

by Bill White



In 2008, I was arrested because a federal informant—Harold Turner—claimed, falsely, that I was planning to assassinate President Barack Obama by detonating a truck bomb at the Poff Federal Building in Roanoke, Va. I was never charged with this crime, however. Instead, I was charged with a series of free speech violations for publishing a website and magazine critical of the government. It took me 83 days to prove to the satisfaction of the feds that there was no assassination plot; it took them two and a half years to release me, acquitted. If they had a choice, I would still be in prison today.

When I was arrested for speech offenses, I assumed I would receive bond. No one had ever been hurt, and the organization I was involved in, the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, had never been involved in violence. But, two days after my arrest, when I attended a detention hearing, I was ruled dangerous, based solely on my dangerous political views.

After my detention, I was tortured by the Obama government. Initially, I was held in a small room under a bright light 24 long hours a day and subjected to sleep deprivation. I was denied showers, a shave, even a toothbrush, and it was in this condition—dirty and half dead from lack of sleep—that I was repeatedly taken to the courts and paraded before the news cameras.

I was held in a cell with no heat in the 20-below Chicago winter. At one point I was placed in a cell that was then flooded with human feces. The U.S. marshals wanted to know, “Where was the bomb?” I had no idea what they were talking about, and didn’t until almost a year later, when Turner was put on trial for, in part, lying about the “truck bomb plot.”

I later learned the government had been following me since 1996. When I was a teenager, someone—the police still don’t know who—firebombed the home of a police officer. There were no suspects, but a detective told the FBI that he couldn’t imagine anyone who would have a problem with the police except a little anarchist group I was involved in. Based upon this, and despite no evidence linking me to any crime, I was indexed by the FBI as a “domestic terrorist.”

In 2007, the American National Socialist Workers Party began publishing a magazine with a small distribution. Even so, big newspapers such as The New York Times began covering our efforts, and in February 2007, the FBI sought and obtained approval to open a “terrorism enterprise investigation” into our activities. A special prosecution team was set up within the Department of Justice for the sole purpose of prosecuting us, and, eventually, me, “at all costs.”

As an “act of violence,” necessary for opening a “terrorism enterprise investigation,” the 1996 statement that I was part of a group suspected in an arson was used.

Though the government determined there was no bomb, I was in and out of “supermax” for the next two-and-a-half years. The conditions were brutal. After one seven-month stretch, the ligaments in my knees atrophied until I couldn’t walk for two weeks.

The government knew I was innocent but didn’t want to admit they’d made a mistake. They pressured witnesses to lie to grand juries. Two were eventually convicted of that—Turner and another man, Timothy Bland, who used his FBI witness stipend to come to where I lived and try to find and murder my wife and daughter.

By April 2010, the Obama administration knew I was innocent, but they had other uses for me. They wanted me to testify to a “neo-nazi domestic terrorist conspiracy” and perjure myself before a grand jury and Congress, implicating their political enemies. I refused and was returned to supermax.

In January 2011, I was again approached and told that, if I would “cooperate,” I would be immediately released—all charges would be dropped and my record cleared. In April 2011, thankfully, I was acquitted of my fifth federal criminal case, and released regardless.

This is what communism looks like in the United States. I was innocent and eventually acquitted. I was not involved in any plot to bomb any federal building or assassinate Obama.

But, I was arrested, detained, tortured and held in solitary confinement because I refused to lie for the benefit of the federal government and falsely accuse myself and others of crimes.

[Bill White has returned to Virginia on his release and is attempting to pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Good luck, Bill. Stay strong and keep it real, man.]