Heidi Beirich, a former senior director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been arrested in California on federal charges alleging she directly oversaw the diversion of donor funds to covert informants inside white supremacist organisations, including a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard.
The arrest forms part of a wider Justice Department case that claims SPLC staff used shell companies to channel contributor money to sources without donors' knowledge. Prosecutors say the arrangements sat at the centre of a long-running intelligence programme run from within the civil rights group.
