(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In February 2020, Las Vegas man Conor Climo, a member of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, pled guilty to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm — specifically, the component parts of a destructive device.
Court records revealed that the case involved at least one FBI informant and an undercover agent, who would talk online with Climo about setting fire to a Las Vegas synagogue, and making Molotov cocktails and improvised explosive devices.
Now, the Southern Poverty Law Center has revealed that it, too, had an informant spying on Climo. The SPLC disclosed this in a letter responding to the Justice Department, which recently charged the group for improperly raising millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.
In response to the DOJ, the SPLC’s letter says that its informants were working closely with federal law enforcement to disrupt extremist groups. The letter cites the Climo case as one such example.
The charging papers show there were at least 1 FBI informant (Sutter?) and an undercover agent in this case.
And now we learn the SPLC had a source, too. https://t.co/5ZYEyznWUI pic.twitter.com/17wlVIo8jA
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) April 28, 2026
“The SPLC’s provision of information from [its informant program] to law enforcement also includes the reporting of information related to [Climo], a member of the white supremacist extremist group Atomwaffen Division charged in the District of Nevada in August 2019,” the SPLC said, referring to the Climo case.
The SPLC asked the presiding judge to force the DOJ to correct its previous statements about how the SPLC’s informant program didn’t pass its information to law enforcement. The SPLC also cited a case of how it provided info about a member of the now-defunct Vanguard America—which later splintered and became the Patriot Front—as well as the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.
“I write to demand that the United States correct a false and unfairly prejudicial public statement made by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche last evening,” SPLC’s attorney, Bill Athanas, said in his letter to the judge.
The judge ordered the DOJ to respond by May 5.
The FBI’s penetration of the Atomwaffen Division is well publicized.
In August 2021, Atomwaffen member Kaleb Cole, who was charged with mailing threatening posters or gluing the posters to the homes of journalists, filed a motion that revealed that a member of an online Atomwaffen chat group was longtime FBI informant Joshua Caleb Sutter.
Cole revealed that Sutter, who also runs a Satanic publishing company, received more than $144,000 over roughly 16 years as an informant—meaning that the FBI was essentially bankrolling a publisher of Satanic literature.
Cole’s revelations were a part of his unsuccessful to have evidence suppressed that was gathered with the help of Sutter, and he was found guilty several months later.
In addition, undercover agent Scott Payne was an Atomwaffen member. Payne wrote about his experience in a book titled, Code Name: Pale Horse.
However, the information about the SPLC also being involved with the group was not public until now.
The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants. However, critics have noted that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have used the SPLC’s informant network to skirt constitutional restrictions on domestic surveillance.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
