White Supremacists: The Bayou of Pigs

It is a story that reads like a bad Hollywood screenplay. A group of white supremacists hailing from both the United States and Canada team up with the ousted prime minister of a small Caribbean nation to orchestrate a coup and set up lucrative (and illicit) business operations. This is the story of the failed overthrow which has become dubbed the "Bayou of Pigs."

The plot came to a head on April 27^th, 1981. This was the day that Don Black, Grand Wizard of the US Ku Klux Klan and Wolfgang Droege, his Canadian counterpart (who had also been the first to bring the Klan to Canada), were to head off in a boat along with numerous automatic weapons, shotguns and plastic explosives to sail to the tiny island of Dominica. On they way they would meet up with Patrick John, the former prime minister of Dominica, along with a makeshift army of fellow Dominicans to overthrow the government. However the Feds had been tipped off and agents arrested them as they were attempting to board the boat.

Plans to overthrow a tiny Caribbean nation had been in the works since 1979. This is the year that Wolfgang Droege first met Mike Purdue, a longtime Klansman whose brainchild it was to overthrow the nation of Grenada and use it for their own interests. They met through then Grand Wizard of the KKK, David Duke, who would also play a major role in orchestrating the failed "Bayou of Pigs" although he was never charged.

By 1980 the target had moved from Grenada to the island of Dominica, and former prime minister Patrick John had become involved. John had been defeated in 1979 by Eugenia Charles, primarily due to charges that he was planning to build an oil refinery which would be a boondoggle for South African economic interests.

David Duke arranged for a boat to take the would be revolutionaries to Dominica. In February of 1981, however, the captain and crew of the boat backed out. In desperation Purdue turned to Viet Nam war veteran Michael Howell, informing the boat captain that his vessel was need for a covert CIA operation.