James Ellison (polygamist)
James Ellison (c. 1937) was an American white supremacist leader from San Antonio, Texas. In 1971, he founded the radical organization The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). Ellison purchased a 250-acre (1.0 km2) strip of land near Elijah, Missouri to serve as his compound. He was also a close associate of both Richard Wayne Snell and Timothy McVeigh.
Ellison was a polygamist who spent time in federal prison with his 'high priest' Kerry Noble. Robert G. Millar, the founder of Elohim City, Oklahoma, became one of his spiritual advisers. He was also mentored by Richard Girnt Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations and Robert E. Miles, founder of The Mountain Church in Cohoctah, Michigan. Both extreme right leaders taught and practiced Christian Identity, a religion included on the FBI watchlist as an 'extremist religion'. Ellison had very close ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the Northern Idaho-based group Aryan Nations, led by Richard Butler. Miles had a very active prison ministry and newsletter, relating mostly to several violent white supremacist groups, most notably the Aryan Brotherhood. After Ellison was released from prison, he moved to Elohim City, where he married Millar's granddaughter.
The ATF set up what is thought to have been a group of around 300 federal agents in Elijah, having them pose as fishermen because the area was a common destination for anglers. On the morning of April 19, 1985, they moved in with a warrant for the arrest of Ellison and surrounded the CSA compound. Some agents stayed in fishing boats in order to seal off the lakeside area of the compound. There they waited, until a few hours later when two guards emerged from the compound. They appeared to be unaware of the presence of the officers, and they walked towards a sniper hold-out, until an officer yelled commands to return to the compound; the guards complied. Later, an unnamed individual emerged from the compound and talked with the federal agents, reporting to Ellison that the FBI agents were outside and willing to negotiate his surrender and the emptying of the compound. Ellison emerged later, and the FBI agents felt that he would not go down without a firefight. FBI negotiators convinced him that the CSA would certainly lose in a gun battle. They convinced him that they wanted peaceful cooperation, and he asked that his spiritual adviser, assumed to be Robert G. Millar, come to the compound to instruct him. The individual was flown to the area and seemed eager to convince Ellison to stand down, understanding that otherwise there would be certain bloodshed. They allowed the individual into the compound, and the FBI agents instructed him to call in every 30 minutes in order to report on how negotiations were going.
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