(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Tom Metzger was one of the most prominent American white nationalists in the 20th century, founding a group called the White Aryan Resistance and battling with the Southern Poverty Law Center in high-profile court cases.
According to newly released FBI records, Metzger might also have been a member of The Order, a neo-Nazi bank robbery gang that stole over $2.5 million from 1983-84. The Order is receiving newfound media attention thanks to a new film about the group, featuring actors such as Jude Law, Marc Maron and Jurnee Smollett.
According to FBI records released last Tuesday, the bureau interviewed one of its confidential informants in December 1984, and stated that “Metzger has been identified in the Aryan Nations domestic terrorism case as a member of ‘The Order.’” It’s not clear who the FBI informant might have been—though by that time, one of The Order’s members, Tom Martinez, had already flipped and turned state’s witness.
Another FBI memo dated June 1985 stated that Metzger may have received some $200,000 from The Order’s bank heists. The June 1985 memo was about an investigation into allegations that Metzger’s group, WAR, plastered neo-Nazi posters on Jewish schools in San Francisco.
“WAR is described as an umbrella group in the San Francisco Bay Area which combined the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and other right-wing extremists,” the FBI memo stated. “The purported leader of WAR is Thomas Metzger, a known member of the ‘Order’ code-named Radio, who is believed to have received $200,000 in robbery loot from other ‘Order’ members.”
The final recently released FBI memo that talks about Metzger and The Order is from June 1986. It stated that The Order’s leader, Bob Matthews, gave Metzger “at least” $100,000. That memo also stated that Metzger provided radio equipment to The Order. That memo also indicates there were multiple informants spying on Metzger’s group.
🚨SCOOP: Newly released FBI records say that one of the most prominent white nationalists from the 20th century, Tom Metzger, received proceeds from the neo-Nazi bank robbery gang, The Order.
This corroborates what attorney Kirk Lyons told me last year: That Metzger used money… pic.twitter.com/rcPzP8ERyh— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) January 7, 2025
Metzger, who died in 2020, was never charged in relation to The Order’s robberies. Nevertheless, the allegations in the new FBI docs are supported by public sources, including the definitive book on The Order, The Silent Brotherhood. That book states that Matthews listed WAR as one of the intended recipients of his robberies, though it doesn’t say how much he gave. The book also contradicts FBI records by identifying Metzger’s code-name as “Bear”—not “Radio.”
The FBI records also add to a remarkable story that attorney Kirk Lyons, who represented one of The Order’s members, told this publication last year. According to Lyons, Metzger used some of The Order’s proceeds to help free the wife of his client, then-KKK leader Louis Beam, who had been imprisoned in Mexico.
The lawyer’s story comes from his friend and former colleague David Hollaway—a pilot who worked for a CIA front company in the 1980s, reportedly claimed inside knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s and, bizarrely, currently works as a contractor for NASA.
Lyons said he sent Hollaway to retrieve Beam’s wife, Sheila, from Mexican prison.
Lyons said Mexican law enforcement had raided Beam’s home because the FBI told them he was a drug lord. However, only Sheila was inside. She thought she was being robbed, and shot at one of the Mexican agents, Lyons said
“They sent their Mexican agent who spoke English to get her out. He just said, ‘Get down here.’ She found the pistol she was trained to use. He was coming upstairs with a shotgun. She wouldn’t comply because she didn’t know who this guy was, opened fire, and put two rounds in him and took out half of his liver.”
In response, the “Yaqui Indians with machine guns” outside opened fire, spraying some 500 rounds into the Beam residence, according to Lyons.
It was after the gunfire stopped that Sheila’s troubles began, the lawyer lamented.
“Many bad things happened to her. I think she was tortured and worse,” he said, declining to go into the gruesome details. “And that all happened with the FBI in the next room … The FBI didn’t lift a finger because if she’s in a Mexican prison, that’s pressure they can put on Louis, who is on a short trip to the U.S.”
Lyons said his initial understanding is that Mexican authorities were furious that the FBI misled them that Beam was a drug lord, apparently releasing Sheila because they didn’t want to deal with her. A Mexican judge ruled that she acted in self-defense.
However, Lyons said FBI Agent Norm Stephenson later told him that Metzger bribed Mexican authorities with proceeds of The Order’s multimillion dollar armored-car robbery.
“Take it with a grain of salt, but [Stephenson] told me that Tom Metzger put up the money to get her out … Money from The Order. That’s what Norm Stephenson said. I didn’t believe it, but that’s what he told me,” Lyons told Headline USA.
“I told him, ‘It’s still a miracle.’ We thought we’d never get her out of there. That’s what brought me back to the Lord.”
Headline USA shared the newly released FBI records with Lyons last week, and he said they confirmed what he was told.
“FBI Agent Norm Stephenson told me that after the Sedition Trial, when he was returning Beam’s seized property,” Lyons said last week in an email. “It made sense to me save that they never picked Metzger up on that, if they believed it.”
In any event, Metzger would be tied to an even deadlier domestic terrorist event a decade later: the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.
As Headline USA has reported, FBI whistleblowers and independent investigations have found that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had help from a group of white nationalists that lived in an Oklahoma compound called Elohim City. An undercover ATF informant warned her handlers in early 1995 that Elohim City residents were casing federal buildings and planning an attack—but she was ignored.
According to investigator Roger Charles’s book, Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed, and Why it Matters, Metzger may have also been at Elohim City during the plotting of the OKC bombing.
“When would McVeigh have been at Elohim City? He received a traffic ticket just over the Arkansas state line in the fall of 1993, and spent the night in a nearby motel on September 12, 1994. Those have to be strong possibilities,” Charles wrote, before turning to Metzger.
“Another intriguing date is November 1, 1994, when Tom Metzger, one of the godfathers of the radical right, paid a visit to Elohim City with Dennis Mahon,” he said.
“It is tempting to think that McVeigh would have been there to take lessons from the master, and it was not far out of his way—he was driving from Kansas to upstate New York at the time.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
