When I was just beginning to do the research and writing on this subject matter, in 1981, reporter Dean Calbreath wrote an article for the Columbia Journalism Review describing how he and other reporters had inadvertently become the dupes of white supremacists who regularly and purposefully lied to the press. The moral of that story was simple to me: if you don't trust your source, don't believe anything that you can not independently confirm. During that same period of time, Nashville Tennessean reporter Jerry Thompson infiltrated the Klan and uncovered some startling new information that otherwise would never have come to light. Those messages were not lost on me while writing Blood and Politics: find out as much as you can either first hand or from completely reliable sources.

Several events took place which enabled me to do just that, and write a better book in the process.

Take, for example, the career of one of my main characters, a man who had routinely avoided telling the complete truth about himself and his various white nationalist enterprises for almost four decades, Willis Carto. Principal among the hard facts he tried to hide, was his role at the Institute for Historical Review (which focused on denying the Holocaust) and its relationship with Liberty Lobby (which gave testimony in Congress and otherwise tried to "mainstream" its ideas). In a number of lawsuits in the 1980s Carto routinely covered up the facts. After 1993 and a fractious split between Carto and the staff at IHR, all of the missing facts and more came spilling out in a serious of lawsuits, affidavits, and depositions; including bankruptcy hearings where the convoluted financial shenanigans at Liberty Lobby were well revealed. The reader will find these lawsuits, as well as articles Carto wrote under a pseudonym, heavily cited in my book. The facts speak for themselves, and a reader of any political persuasion will find them interesting.

Another lucky turn was the ability to read FBI files on the second of my main characters, William Pierce. Reporters and writers often request the FBI's files on a subject or a person through a process governed by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While that person is alive, however, the files released by the FBI are usually almost completely redacted, and the value of the information provided is usually slim to none. Once that person or subject of interest dies, however, the files are not as heavily censored and can provide solid information about an individual's employment history, income levels, and personality quirks--as seen through the eyes of an FBI agent or an informer. Even after discounting the files for FBI bias, a writer can find good use for this material.

And so it was for me with Pierce, the author of the Turner Diaries, another racist novel (Hunter), and dozens of other articles expressing his views. I had read most of this archive, but was missing crucial material about aspects of his early life as a national socialist. Once he died in 2002, I was able to draw from material that had been previously unavailable. As a result, the reader will find in the Endnotes, citations from both Pierce's written works as well as for particular FBI files.

Indeed, the Endnotes are built on first-hand reporting, either by me or a completely reliable source, or from primary documents. In these facts and details I found the story for this book. Read the text of Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream for yourself when addressing the topics which have animated this discussion on Talking Points Memo. But read the Endnotes as well.