When I learned that the man accused of shooting innocent bystanders Sunday at a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement home in Kansas City was a former Klansman named Glenn Miller, I shuddered.
Thirty-three years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Duke University, I read a small item in the Raleigh News & Observer that mentioned Miller, then the grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Miller, it turns out, ran a paramilitary training camp in rural North Carolina.
I couldn't understand how, in late-20th-century America, the KKK could operate in the open less than an hour from our elite, ivory-tower campus. I was an editor of Duke's daily newspaper, the Chronicle, so I did what any reporter would do: I called Miller and asked for an interview. Always looking for publicity, Miller readily said yes, but he had one condition. "We ain't no equal-opportunity employer, you know," he said. "So don't bring down no blacks and no Jews."
I am Jewish. But buoyed by the bravado of youth, I decided to lie and agreed to Miller's condition. To be safe, I got a crew cut, put a cross around my neck, arranged for a fake press pass in the name of Robert Statler Jr. and asked our crack photographer-reporter Shep Moyle — a tall, blond, good-looking guy — to go with me.
The following Saturday morning, Shep and I drove past the town of Angier and down dusty Route 1312 near the intersection of Johnston and Harnett counties, arriving at Miller's 27-acre farm. A bunch of guys, mostly in combat gear, were milling about, many holding guns. I also saw a pregnant blond woman with two little kids, playing with a toy rifle.
When I met Miller, his first words were, "Are you a Jew?" No, I said. He went on: "I don't let Jews on my land, so you'd better not be lying to me." I held my ground and we started the interview. For about 10 minutes, I asked typical background questions: hometown, education, military experience. I thought we had pulled it off.
Suddenly, a man with a medium build wearing a Nazi uniform motioned to Miller. They went off for a discussion in the kitchen. When Miller returned, he began to sniff. "I smell a Jew," he said. Again, I denied it. But his mind was made up.
For the next 2½ hours, I was kept under armed guard, locked in a steaming car in the blazing sun, as Shep continued the interview. Three men, sometimes four, vigilantly watched me, led by the uniformed Nazi. Every half-hour one of them would come near the car to wave a pistol at me and check on whether I was taking pictures.
