Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

700 • WHITE PATRIOT ARMYeventually turned into a right-wing death squad that targeted manyprominent citizens suspected of harboring leftist sympathies, includingtrade union officials and Roman Catholic priests and prelates.The word “Mano” in the group’s name originally stood for Movimientode Acción Nacionalista Organizada.On 17 March 1968 the White Hand abducted the Archbishop ofGuatemala, Monsignor Mario Casariego Acevedo, whom they heldfor a few days before releasing. The organization had hoped by thisaction to frame leftist groups to create an antileftist backlash amongchurch and army officials. In 1970 Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio, thecounterinsurgency military commander who had destroyed two of thelargest leftist guerrilla groups in the countryside, was elected president.During his presidency, the White Hand, along with other right-winggroups, was permitted to conduct a terror campaign against suspectedleftist elements in the cities. On 7 April 1970 the White Hand murderedCésar Montenegro Paniagua, a Guatemaulan Communist politician, apparentlyin reprisal for the assassination two days earlier of the WestGerman Ambassador Karl von Spreti by members of the left-wingRebel Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, FAR), the principalgroup of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union, the mainantigovernment leftist insurgent group. This group has become inactivesince the end of the Guatemalan insurgency in 1996.WHITE PATRIOT ARMY (WPA). The WPA was a nonstate paramilitarywhite supremacist organization that sought to undertake a revolutionary“war” against the “Zionist Occupation Government” of theUnited States. The main leader of this organization was Frazier GlennMiller, a former Green Beret Vietnam combat veteran, former memberof the American Nazi Party, and leader of the Carolina Knights ofthe Ku Klux Klan, from which the WPA drew most of its members.Miller and other members, who later formed the WPA, carried out the3 November 1979 massacre in Greensboro, North Carolina, in whichthey shot to death five anti-Klan demonstrators belonging to the CommunistWorkers Party, a Maoist organization. Two criminal trials ofWPA members followed, which ended in acquittals when the defenseattorneys were able to persuade the jurors that the Communist WorkersParty demonstration had not been peaceful but had been calculatedto incite violence. In 1985 a civil lawsuit by relatives and survivorsof the massacre against the city of Greensboro for failing to protect