In 1971, Texas minister James Ellison founded The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord, a white supremacist gang.
Five years later, he bought a two hundred twenty acre farm near Bull Shoals Lake for a CSA compound where the rural terrain isolated them from law enforcement. It became a militia training ground where the one hundred or so CSA members could prepare for an anticipated race war. Complaints about the group from local citizens led federal, state and local lawmen to raid the site in 1985.
After a three-day standoff the agents seized weapons, explosives, gold and thirty gallons of potassium cyanide the CSA had planned to use to poison the water supplies of several large cities. Evidence from the site led to charges against several CSA members and Ellison was convicted of weapons and RICO act violations. He negotiated a reduced sentence by testifying against leaders of the Aryan Nations of Idaho. The CSA effectively disappeared after the raid.
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