US probes Sikh temple shooter's white power ties

US officials investigated Monday the white supremacist ties of a former psy-ops soldier who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before he himself was shot by police.

Wade Michael Page, 40, erupted into the temple carrying a 9mm handgun and several magazines of ammunition that had been purchased legally, then opened fire on worshippers attending a Sunday service, authorities said.

Special Agent Teresa Carlson, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Milwaukee field office, confirmed that the late suspect is now the subject of a "domestic terrorism" probe.

"We are looking at ties to white supremacist groups," she told reporters.

Carlson admitted that the FBI did not have an "active investigation" on Page before the incident, but insisted: "No law enforcement agency had any reason to believe he was plotting anything."

Page served as a "psychological operations specialist" between April 1992 and October 1998, ending his career at the base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home to the US Army's airborne forces and Special Operations Command.

He was a qualified parachutist who received several good conduct awards and a National Defense Service Medal, but never won significant promotion.

He had a general discharge and was ineligible for reenlistment, Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards told reporters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group branded Page a "frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band."

It said he had tried to purchase goods from the National Alliance, a major US hate group, in 2000. More lately he had been the leader of the three-man hardcore punk band "End Apathy."

Photographs of the band on its Myspace webpage (myspace.com/endapathyband) showed Page with a shaved head and Gothic tattoos all over his body.

Band members were shown performing in front of extremist flags, including one bearing the swastika emblem of the Nazi Party.

FBI agents and local police were investigating Page's supposed address in Cudahy, a suburb of Milwaukee just four kilometers (2.5 miles) north of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin. They said it was not booby-trapped.

Page's neighbor, 53-year-old retiree John Hoyt, told AFP that the suspect had a tattoo referring to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and "something about lost souls."

But Hoyt said he had been surprised to learn of the shootings, as Page had seemed a "pretty normal guy," despite having strong opinions about US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I was surprised. He was a real laid back kind of guy. The only negative things he said was about the war and his girlfriend and President (George W.) Bush Junior, because he started the war," Hoyt said.

Hoyt said Page had claimed he had twice been deployed to Iraq, but Pentagon records show that he had joined the army one year after the first Gulf War and left well before the 2003 US invasion, making this unlikely.

In addition to the dead in the attack, three middle-aged men including a member of a police unit called to the scene were reported to be in critical condition with gunshot wounds.

The killings were condemned by US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said he was "deeply shocked and saddened."

The attack was the second massacre to shock the United States in under three weeks and will doubtless boost pressure on Obama and his rival Mitt Romney to address gun control before the November 6 presidential election.

But White House spokesman Jay Carney said the massacre, while "horrific," would not on its own prompt a fresh administration drive for new gun control measures.

Witnesses described a bloody scene of confusion and terror as the gunman strode into the temple and opened fire as people gathered for Sunday services.

"Then he went down inside the temple and then went into the room where the holy scripture is kept and basically shot more people there, multiple people there," said Japal Singh, 29, a combat medic in the US Army Reserve.

Religious tradition demands that Sikh Indians wear turbans to cover their uncut hair and sport long beards.

Their appearance means they have often been mistaken for Muslims in the United States and have been targeted by anti-Muslim activists, particularly after the September 11 attacks.

The Washington-based Sikh Coalition said there had been "thousands" of incidents of hate crimes, discrimination and profiling against Sikhs since 9/11, which advocates blame on anti-Muslim sentiment.

Last month, a gunman burst into a movie theater showing the new Batman film in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding dozens more.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/7-killed-us-sikh-temple-shooting-police-185640479.html

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