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Walker was appointed to head the group after then-leader Erich Gliebe Ìý— who was himself appointed to head the organization immediately after the 2002 death of founder William Pierce — resigned in the midst of continuing infighting and internal scandals. Walker's stint as the group's leader was cut short when he was convicted of orchestrating and participating in a series of brutal attacks on non-whites in bars in Salt Lake City in 2002 and 2003.

Criminal History
In 2006, Walker was indicted on federal civil rights charges for orchestrating attacks on non-whites in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002 and 2003. Walker was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 87 months in prison. He served time in Sandstone Federal Correctional Facility in Sandstone, Minn., until his release on November 27, 2009.

In His Own Words
"Adolf Hitler is without doubt the greatest leader and philosopher of the 1900s."
— 2005 speech

"I guarantee you there are more brilliant, intelligent white people on earth, with higher IQs, than all the Jews put together."
— "American Dissident Voices" radio broadcast, 2006

"The Jews have invested a great deal into the Holocaust story and it is now a powerful political tool that they often wield. ... [A]ll over the world, there is a historical mythos called the Jewish Holocaust of World War II."
— "American Dissident Voices," 2006

Background
Shaun Walker grew up in Hayward, Calif., where he became a neo-Nazi during his high school years, penning essays on genetics and racist skinhead culture for WAR magazine, which was published by White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a youth-focused white supremacist organization led by Tom Metzger.Ìý

Walker served in the Marine Corps from 1986 to 1990, training as a sniper. He later studied molecular biology at John Muir College at the University of California, San Diego, receiving a B.S. in molecular biology with a minor in history in 1997.Ìý

The following year, Walker joined the National Alliance Internet Response Unit, an online propaganda division that was overseen by Billy Roper. The Alliance was then at the height of its power, in terms of membership, revenues and influence. In 2000, Walker was appointed unit coordinator, or leader, of the Salt Lake City unit of the National Alliance by its founder and chairman, William Pierce. Two years later, not long before his death, Pierce hired Walker to a full-time salaried position as the National Alliance's chief of staff and membership coordinator.

Shortly after Pierce's death in July 2002, Pierce's handpicked successor, Erich Gliebe, appointed Walker as the Alliance's western states regional coordinator. Less than a year later, in July 2003, Gliebe promoted Walker to the position of chief operating officer, at which time Walker relocated from Salt Lake City to the National Alliance headquarters outside Hillsboro, W. Va., where he lived and worked for the next three years.

Together with Gliebe, Walker presided over the virtual disintegration of the Alliance, as the leaders of the largest and richest neo-Nazi organization in the country were increasingly beset by allegations of financial improprieties, moral lassitude and general incompetence. In August 2004, David Pringle, a former high-ranking Alliance official, wrote and distributed a protest essay titled "Demand an Audit." It detailed the wasteful spending and failed business ventures of Gliebe and Walker, by then derisively known in many neo-Nazi circles as "the Dues Brothers." "In the last year, 'our enemies' have not made disastrous decisions that have cost us most of our cash savings," Pringle wrote. "Our leaders have. Our enemies have not caused us to lose more than half of our rank-and-file membership and almost two thirds of our organizational revenue in the last year. Our leaders have."

The internal pressure on Gliebe and his leadership team only grew after that. Finally, on April 25, 2005, Walker abruptly announced that Gliebe had stepped down and that Walker was replacing him as CEO of the Alliance. Gliebe would stay on, but only as the head of Resistance Records, the group's hate rock music company.

The National Alliance limped on, but its ranks were rapidly dwindling from a high of about 1,400. Nevertheless, Walker managed to keep the Alliance in the mainstream media via interviews with major newspapers and cable news networks, and to continue to espouse the group's agenda via the Internet and its "American Dissident Voices" radio broadcasts. Regardless, by 2006 the group had no more than a few hundred members.

In June of 2006, however, Walker's past caught up with him. He was arrested on federal civil rights charges for allegedly leading a series of organized attacks on Mexicans and Native Americans in Salt Lake City bars in 2002 and 2003. The conditions of his pre-trial release prohibited Walker from having any contact with past or present members of the National Alliance, forcing him to resign as chairman and hand the reins back to Gliebe. Walker and two co-defendants, Travis Massey, the former Utah spokesman for the Alliance, and Eric Egbert, were convicted in April 2007 of conspiracy to interfere with the civil rights of individuals based on their race. On Aug. 13, 2007, Walker was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison. ÌýHe later won a sentence reduction and was released on Nov. 27, 2009.

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