White Supremacist Pleads Guilty to Gun Charges

BOISE, Ida. —  White supremacist Gary Lee Yarbrough, allegedly a key member of a militant neo-Nazi gang, pleaded guilty Friday to 11 counts of illegally possessing firearms and explosives at his northern Idaho home.

Yarbrough still faces trial in U.S. District Court beginning Wednesday on an additional charge of shooting at FBI agents as they approached his home in Sandpoint last October. He was arrested in November after a shoot-out with the FBI near Portland, Ore.

Yarbrough, 29, is believed to be a member of the White American Bastion and a former security officer for the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations Church of Hayden Lake, Ida.

Yarbrough, whose guilty pleas came as a surprise, faces a maximum sentence of 61 years in federal prison on the 11 counts.

Prosecutors say that his group is responsible for various robberies, including armored car holdups in California and Washington.

In addition, Yarbrough is a suspect in the 1984 slaying in Denver of a popular radio talk-show host, Alan Berg. The murder weapon was found in Yarbrough’s home, but he has denied any involvement in the death.

Yarbrough was moved to Boise in December under tight security after his arrest in Portland.

An associate, Robert J. Mathews, 31, of Metaline Falls, Wash., a founder of the White American Bastion, eluded authorities in Portland but died in a burning house during a shoot-out on Whidbey Island, Wash., in early December.

Mathews, in a last manifesto mailed to the Aryan Nations compound at Hayden Lake, Ida., just days before his death, called for a race revolution to overthrow the federal government and drive minorities out of the United States.