A spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ Christian-Aryan Nations said he was thrown off the white-supremacist group's property for showing "friendliness" and "a sense of humor."
"My thoughts weren't exactly in line with theirs," Floyd Cochran, 35, of Coeur d'Alene, said last week.Cochran complained to Coeur d'Alene police that he was threatened by two Aryan Nations members after being thrown out of the group's Hayden Lake compound Monday.
But Carl Franklin, Aryan Nations chief of staff, said Cochran "chose to resign and leave for personal reasons."
The departure of Cochran, who has been a spokesman for the Aryan Nations on some occasions during the past two years, came about a week after the resignation of three top Aryan Nations officials in Washington state, including state leader Justin Dwyer of Colville, Wash.
The resignations also come before an annual conference scheduled this weekend at the Hayden Lake compound.
Franklin said the resignations were unrelated. He denied they signaled a rift in the white-supremacist group.
"He had other interests come up; he felt he had to do it," Franklin said of Cochran. "We have a turnover all the time, like a government job."
Cochran, a native of New York, said he quit because he realized the folly of racism and "living a lifestyle that makes you look like an imbecile."
"Paranoia and hatred will not only kill the individual, but it will kill society," Cochran said.
Cochran also told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that he had met with members of the Kootenai County (Idaho) Task Force on Human Rights and provided information on Aryan Nations' workings.
He also said he had worked for several months as an agent for the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that fights bigotry.
But Irwin Suall, the ADL's director of fact-finding, denied that.
"We have never received any information from Cochran," Suall said. "He's a fraud, a phony."
Cochran said he received threatening calls from two Aryan Nations officials after being driven to a Coeur d'Alene motel, telling him to leave the area.
"We are looking into the matter as a harassing telephone call complaint," Coeur d'Alene Police Capt. Carl Bergh said. "This will be followed up like any other call."
Dwyer said earlier that he quit the Aryan Nations over a disagreement with the group's recruitment methods. But he said he had not given up his white-separatist beliefs and plans to move to South Carolina.
Brad Williams, the Aryan Nation Washington security chief, and John Sheppard, the group's leader in Western Washington, reportedly quit the same time as Dwyer.