Shocking news from the Land of the Shock Jocks: “For more than five years, Hal Turner of North Bergen lived a double life…The public knew him as an ultra-right-wing radio talk show host and Internet blogger with an audience of neo-Nazis and white supremacists attracted to his scorched-earth racism and bare-knuckles bashing of public figures. But to the FBI, and its expanding domestic counter-terror intelligence operations in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Turner was ‘Valhalla” “his code name as an informant who spied on his own controversial followers.”
Turner, who was charged June 24 with posting Internet threats to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago who upheld handgun bans, was facing as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
Turner’s clandestine past had been confirmed this summer when he was jailed on charges of making threats against three federal judges in Chicago. In court after his arrest, federal prosecutors acknowledged his FBI ties but downplayed his importance and described him as “unproductive.”
But an investigation by New Jersey’s The Record – based on government documents, e-mails, court records and almost 20 hours of jailhouse interviews with Turner “shows that federal authorities made frequent use of Turner in its battle against domestic terrorism.
“As Turner took to his radio show and blog to say that those who opposed his extremist views deserve to die, he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band. Later, he was sent undercover to Brazil where he reported a plot to send non-military supplies to anti-American Iraqi resistance fighters. Sometimes he signed “Valhalla” on his FBI payment receipts instead of his own name.”
In interviews, Turner said the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and now he feels double-crossed by the bureau after his arrest. The documents reviewed by The Record, however, show repeated instances of federal agents admonishing Turner for his extremism.
