Germany Deports 2 Neo-Nazi KFI-Radio Guests : Broadcasting: Host Bill Handel had scheduled the skinheads to speak at a Holocaust program in Munich.

By CLAUDIA PUIG

April 15, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A pair of American neo-Nazis accompanying KFI morning personality Bill Handel to Germany earlier this week were refused entry and deported upon arrival in Munich, where Handel broadcast his morning show about the Holocaust.

Handel and other station officials arrived in Munich Tuesday and went on to broadcast in Poland today from Auschwitz, where Handel’s grandparents were killed.

John Metzger and Tony McAleer, representatives of the Fallbrook-based White Aryan Resistance organization, were supposed to have been guests on Handel’s show in Munich Wednesday and at Auschwitz, but were detained and sent back to the United States just after the group landed Tuesday.

Metzger, 26, has been involved in many neo-Nazi activities--including white supremacist rallies and hate crimes--in the United States. In 1991, a Portland jury ruled that he and his father Tom Metzger had incited the beating death of an Ethiopian student. In a civil suit after the fatal beating, both Metzgers were ordered to pay $12.5 million to the student’s family.

After receiving word from the German government, officials at the German consulate in Los Angeles explained the deportation as being in the public interest of Germany.

“Mr. Metzger is a well-known figure all over the world and the entry of Mr. Metzger was against the public interest of Germany because he was known as a right-wing political activist and suspected of (conducting) undesirable political activity in Germany,” said Uwe Petry, German consul for press affairs.

“It is stipulated by our laws that whenever such a public interest can be specified, people can be denied entry. Mr. Metzger was known to German authorities and there are records of him on different levels, including secret agency information.”

Petry did not have any details on McAleer, a Vancouver resident. The two neo-Nazis were sent back to the U.S. on a plane to Chicago, after being detained in Munich for four hours.

This is not the first time Metzger has been refused entry into a foreign country. Both he and his father were deported upon entering Canada in 1992 where they planned to speak at a Canadian white supremacists rally. Canadian immigration officials called them “a danger to the public.”

KFI’s Handel had devoted the entire week to discussion of the Holocaust, with two planned European broadcasts, culminating in this morning’s emotional show from the memorial at Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

KFI program director David Hall said Thursday that he had no idea the two skinheads would be barred from entering Germany.

“This is like out of a spy novel,” Hall said. “(Metzger) never told us he didn’t think he’d get in, but I have the impression he was not surprised by this. We were surprised. We certainly didn’t expect this. We don’t know Mr. Metzger. Except for this one project we really don’t have anything to do with him. I guess there’s a lot about him that we really don’t know.”

Reached at his Fallbrook home Thursday, Metzger said he had alerted station officials to his problems getting into Canada, but was assured that he had received clearance to go to Germany. He also said the station lost about $5,000 for his and McAleer’s plane fare.

“I’m a little upset at some of the management at KFI insinuating that the blame has been shifted onto me and Mr. McAleer,” said Metzger who hosts a cable access show called “Race and Reason,” which is seen in 10 states.

Metzger denied that he had any political activities planned in Germany, but said that a current highly publicized German court case in which skinheads are charged with fire bombing foreign students made their entry “sensitive.”

“I can understand they wouldn’t want to inflame the political situation at the moment,” Metzger said. “But that’s not to let them off the hook. We were just going to broadcast. We weren’t going to go around and raise hell. I just wanted to do the radio show and go to Poland. If I wanted to go to Germany again I’m fairly confident that with our network I could be smuggled in through another country. I’m sure that’s still an option, but not at the moment.”

Meanwhile, the station was blasted Thursday by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League for “providing a platform to an avowed hater.”

“Los Angeles-based KFI radio’s attempt to facilitate a meeting between German racists and an American hatemonger is merely the latest effort by the station to exploit hate for ratings,” said David Lehrer, regional director of the ADL.

Lehrer urged KFI to “stop providing bigots with opportunities to magnify their significance.”