Radical Church Holds Gulf War Forum Christian Identity Church Accused Of Promoting Baseless Conspiracy Theories At Veterans’ Expense

A Christian Identity church here is masking a message of hate and misleading hundreds of residents by sponsoring a forum on Persian Gulf War illnesses, human rights activists say.

America’s Promise Ministries, a group with militia ties, spent more than $20,000 promoting a two-night forum that purports to expose a government cover-up of sick gulf war veterans.

Mysterious private donors forked out enough cash to mail 110,000 fliers and to advertise on television and radio. They also paid for the church to rent a Sandpoint community theater and fly in Air Force Reserve Capt. Joyce Riley - the featured speaker - from Texas. They even hung a banner over the main street through town.

The program horrified activists from the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment.

“They will further confuse the gulf war illness issue with baseless conspiracies and unsubstantiated assertions,” said Bill Wassmuth, the coalition’s executive director.

Regardless, the event offers insight into the way money, planning and a controversial issue can help fringe groups gain legitimacy.

Five years ago, the church’s theology proclaiming that whites are the only true Israelites and Jews are children of Satan kept the sect out of the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce. This week, the ostracized church is host of the biggest show in town.

About 350 people attended Tuesday’s forum, with a similar crowd expected tonight.

“We decided if we were going to do it, we’d do it right,” said the Rev. Dave Barley, ministry leader. “It’s our gift, our baby, to the community.”

It’s the first time the church, which has about 35 people attending weekly sermons, has sponsored a large public event.

Earlier this year, the Idaho Citizens Awareness Network - a tight-knit band of constitutionalists, tax protesters and militia members co-founded by Barley - held candidate forums, put a float in the city’s Fourth of July parade and had a booth at the Bonner County Fair.

Barley claims to have heard about Riley through a Michigan pastor, who shipped him a videotaped copy of one of her speeches. He said her message was too important too ignore.

“This, to me, is an issue of substance,” Barley said.

Barley got financial backing from a group of unidentified men calling themselves “Eleventh-hour Remnant Messengers.” The men were with Barley when he was making arrangements.

Extensive advertising and recent news reports that more gulf war veterans may have been exposed to nerve gas drew dozens of one-time soldiers to the forum.

“Lots of people were talking about going,” said Ben Keeley, Kootenai County’s veterans affairs administrator. “I’m sure they didn’t care who was putting it on.”

One Persian Gulf veteran whose friends were suffering symptoms he linked to nerve gas exposure is convinced the Pentagon has misled the public since the war.

“I remember waking up over there once with black soot all over me,” he said. “To my knowledge I was not affected, but I want to know what’s going on.”

The former sergeant, who asked to remain anonymous, said the church’s reputation did not concern him.

“I think it’s a coup that they’re going to get so many people to come,” he said. “But I don’t plan on giving them my name or any donations or letting them recruit me.”

That’s what some human rights activists fear.

“The concern is that this group, whose agenda is very radical, is bold enough to seek mainstream support,” said Brenda Hammond, president of Bonner County’s Human Rights Task Force.

Riley is said to have lectured at other white supremacist and anti-Semitic events, but she denied being involved with hate groups. She claimed to know nothing about America’s Promise and said she’d speak to any group that’d listen.

She chided human rights groups for speaking out against the forum.

“Where were they when I was saying people are dying? Where were they?” Riley asked.

The Sandpoint community struggled with the idea of America’s Promise using the Panida Theater - a community-owned auditorium saved from demolition and restored with donations. Its board of directors agonized about whether to rent to the church.

“It wasn’t the subject matter (the gulf war illness) that bothered us; it was because of their beliefs and what they stand for,” said theater director Karen Bowers. “If it had been a discriminatory issue in any way we would have drawn the line.”

The board refused to let the church display its own literature and made them remove “sponsored by America’s Promise Ministries” from a banner stretched across downtown’s main street.

But James Aho, an Idaho State University sociologist who has written two books about Christian Identity, said such gatherings shouldn’t necessarily be feared. Anytime extremist groups try to increase in size or effect, their message gets watered down.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “The larger a group becomes, the more compromised it becomes. As it conquers the world, the world conquers it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: About the church America’s Promise Ministries is a Christian Identity group that preaches whites are the true lost tribes of Israel. The church’s Internet home page offers essays from fellow Christian Identity minister Pete Peters, who preaches about the evils of race mixing. America’s Promise has hosted forums that included white supremacist speakers, such as former Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations leader Louis Beam. The Rev. Dave Barley moved the church from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Sandpoint in 1991. Two men who attended the church have been charged with the April and July bombings of a Spokane Valley bank, a Spokesman-Review bureau and a Planned Parenthood office.