DHS employee behind website promoting race war on paid leave

FILE: U.S. Department of Homeland Security emblem is pictured at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center in Arlington, Va. (REUTERS)

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that an employee who runs a racist website predicting and advocating a race war has been put on paid administrative leave.

Ayo Kimathi, an acquisitions officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who is in charge of buying weapons and ammunition for the government, operates the website named "War on the Horizon." It includes descriptions of an "unavoidable, inevitable clash with the white race." Kimathi is black.

Kimathi, who calls himself the "Irritated Genie," told his supervisors that the website was set up to sell concert and lecture videos.

Kimathi has been with the department since 2009. His website criticizes whites, gays, those of mixed race, and blacks who integrate with whites. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, earlier this week reported on Kimathi's role in running the site.

The report showed the site's content strayed far beyond concert promotion, warning about a coming race war. The website declares, “in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count,” the Alabama-based SPLC said in its report.

One of Kimathi’s former supervisors at DHS told SPLC’s Hatewatch that, "Everybody is the office is afraid of him,” and that his co-workers are “afraid he will come in with a gun and someday go postal."

The supervisor, who was not named, continued, "I am astounded he's employed by the federal government, let alone Homeland Security."

Kimathi reportedly got the go-ahead from the government to create and maintain his website. That’s because as a law enforcement agency employee, he is required to get permission in writing if he engages in outside activities which includes everything from working a second job to volunteering.

The SPLC says Kimathi obtained official permission but did it by misrepresenting the true nature of his site.

"He told management that it was an entertainment website selling videos of concerts and lectures," the report said. "He called it simply WOH, never saying that WOH stood for War on the Horizon."

ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a written statement this week that the agency "does not condone any type of hateful rhetoric or advocacy of violence of any kind against anyone."

Kimathi hasn't responded to email and phone calls requesting comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report