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House With Swastikas, Anti-Bush Threat Draws Attention

Secret Service Looking Into Spray-Painted Threat Against President

POSTED: Monday, January 17, 2005
UPDATED: 6:33 pm EST January 17, 2005

The people who live in a Hialeah neighborhood say they are outraged by displays of hatred on a house there.

The home has six swastikas splashed across a fence and another one etched into the door. But it is a message apparently directed at President George W. Bush that has caught the attention of the Secret Service.

Yanis Leidy, who lives near the home that is located on the corner of East 52nd Street and 9th Court, is worried.

"It concerns me," Leidy said. "It worries me that this person might do something else."

Hialeah police records show code enforcement and animal control officers visited this home last September, following complaints. Police say they were looking for owner Billie Morgan.

Monday, despite three visits Local 10 made to the house and leaving telephone messages, neither Morgan nor his wife would give us a comment.

But the Anti-Defamation League did make a comment and they expressed alarm.

Art Teitelbaum, with the Anti-Defamation League, said, "People in almost any neighborhood will recognize that the swastika represents everything that America stands against: bigotry, hatred, war, and destruction -- and the Holocaust itself"

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Should swastikas and hate messages be allowed under freedom of speech, or should such signs be prevented?
The fence has other prominent signs and warnings, but most disturbing may be a spray-painted message the U.S. Secret Service will investigate as a possible threat against the president.

While displaying swastikas is not illegal, the message could be another matter.

Prominently painted on an awning are the words, "Die Bush."

Teitelbaum said, "… the message is to disturb and to shock people and to express a message, that in this case, appears to be against the president."

There's been much more scrutiny of public signs like that one by the department of homeland security 9-11. Local 10 has learned the Secret Service is sending an agent by the Hialeah house to check out that message to the president.

The Anti-Defamation League says it will also launch a probe if the agency gets complaints from the public.

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