What to Know
- A local Army veteran is on a life mission to track down and expose extremist groups around the country -- especially neo-Nazis.
- Kris Goldsmith says his is the face of the real Patriot movement — not the extremist groups now spreading their messages of hate on the internet.
- Goldsmith is featured prominently in a new documentary by filmmaker Ken Harbaugh called “Against all Enemies,” now on the festival circuit -- and which will also be screened at the NYPD’s Cyber intelligence and Counterterrorism conference that will be held in mid-August for experts from around the world.
A local Army veteran is on a life mission to track down and expose extremist groups around the country -- especially neo-Nazis.
Kris Goldsmith says his is the face of the real Patriot movement — not the extremist groups now spreading their messages of hate on the internet.
”We train veterans to infiltrate kind of the dark spaces on the internet where extremists are recruiting and radicalizing," Goldsmith, founder of Task Force Butler, told the I-Team in an exclusive interview.
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Goldsmith, a Westchester County resident and military combat veteran, heads up a non-profit called Task Force Butler. He and other veteran volunteers have set their sights on exposing neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
"I will turn on my video camera wearing a mask and I will answer questions pretending to be a neo-Nazi so that I can be brought into their private and protected spaces," Goldsmith said of the risky operations.
NBC News went along with Goldsmith and his team when they tracked what was billed as a White Unity Conference in Texas last fall organized by the Aryan Freedom Network.
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"We were in a RV," he said. "Our goal is to collect intelligence and do it safely.”
The non-profit used a drone to record license plates and images of participants.
"I just document and I hand it over to law enforcement, to journalists," Goldsmith said.
The group has compiled lengthy reports on Patriot Front and the New England based group, NSC131, which has had members criminally charged with various hate-related crimes.
For Goldsmith, this battle has become personal.
"This guy has been attacking me with anti-Semitic stuff. He’s been sharing my personal information like my home address with neo-Nazis, with the intent to have me killed," Goldsmith said. "He was actually compiling a dossier on me.”
Goldsmith accuses a neo-Nazi in North Carolina named Thomas Vance Pollock of targeting his mom with a gift bag and gluing a picture of Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, on the front.
Goldsmith says it got worse.
"After Pollack and his friends posted my address online, one of those neo-Nazis pretended to be me, called the local police and tried to have SWAT break down my door and kill me," he said.
Pollock was eventually charged with misdemeanor stalking in North Carolina. He has pleaded not guilty. The NBC 4 New York I-Team could not reach him for comment.
Goldsmith’s cause is generating worldwide attention. He is featured prominently in a new documentary by filmmaker Ken Harbaugh called “Against all Enemies,” now on the festival circuit.
And the spotlight may become more intense. The executive producer of “Against All Enemies” has been asked to screen his film for the NYPD’s Cyber intelligence and Counterterrorism conference that will be held in mid-August for experts from around the world.
