August Kreis was midway through his defense of Michael Regan -- at the part where he explained that his old lawyer isn't a racist, but "more like a pan-Aryanist" -- when the reality of the moment landed with a thud.

"Hey -- why should I give you stuff to use against the guy?" he asked.

Fair enough.

August Kreis is, if nothing else, loyal to those who helped him -- and Michael Regan got him out of a jam eight years ago when neighbors in Potter County accused Mr. Kreis of terroristic threats, harassment and disorderly conduct.

Hot blood bubbled up after Mr. Kreis set up headquarters for the Posse-Comitatus, recruited his own militia and began dispensing white power literature.

Don Gilliland, the editor of the newspaper in Coudersport, where Mr. Kreis was tried and acquitted, remembered Mr. Regan.

"He sort of exuded weird," Mr. Gilliland said. Possibly, Mr. Gilliland is in error. Perhaps Mr. Regan was absorbing weird and took some with him to his next job.

August Kreis decamped from Potter County a few years back, bouncing from there to Sebring, Fla., to South Carolina where he now heads one of the two factions of Aryan Nations.

Mr. Regan went on to become one of four assistant district attorneys in Allegany County, New York, just over the state line from Potter in Central Pennsylvania. He attracted little notice until last week when he turned up at the biennial American Renaissance Conference in suburban Washington.

"I've heard of those. They dress up and all that," Mr. Kreis said.

No, I said. It wasn't a Renaissance Faire. It was a gathering at which assorted scholars and political activists discuss the differences among the races. This year's scholars included Philippe Rushton, a Canadian professor who says blacks are less intelligent than whites, and Nick Griffin, head of the British National Party. Mr. Griffin's speech was especially poignant, because he could touch on his recent split-verdict on charges of inciting race hatred in Yorkshire.

Mr. Regan did not speak except to a reporter from The Washington Post, but it was quite enough to get him noticed back home. He said immigration policies, trade and "demographics" have been hurtful to America.

"You can see European Christian Americans are an endangered species," he told the paper, taking care to add that the conference was really not a gathering of white supremacists but, rather, of "white preservationists."

At midweek, Mr. Regan was not inclined to expand on his theories and his boss, District Attorney Terrence M. Parker, was examining what, in employment law, is delicately referred to as Mr. Regan's "status."

After assuring me that he appreciated my call, which is more than I would tell me, Mr. Regan added: "I'm not in a position to comment."

In truth, Mr. Regan, by the end of business Thursday, was in no position of any sort. Mr. Parker fired him with a thoroughness that could well have wiped out entire departments of companies.

"Can you imagine any defense attorney who knows of this situation who would not make it an issue?" Mr. Parker asked me, shortly before the official beheading.

I noted that the Aryan Nations hires defense lawyers.

"OK. Any respectable defense attorney."

This raises, for the free speech absolutists among us, a trenchant question: in order to be respectable in a profession, must one be respectable in personal life? D.H. Lawrence was a towering literary talent who also beat his wife, abused animals and had opinions of Jews not altogether different from the ones Mr. Kreis holds.

To capture the gentility with which American Renaissance bestows its wisdom on the subject of race, consider the cover article from an edition one year ago, in which founder Jared Taylor told the story of how white colonization of browner climes was a cultural godsend to non-white races. Mr. Taylor, a Yale graduate, invokes old comments by the likes of Albert Schweitzer on the need for whites to beware undue mixing.

"Will whites wake up in time to save their civilization?" Mr. Taylor writes. "If they do, they will look back in gratitude to the men who knew the world best, who thought about it hardest. They will wonder why, during the 20th century, Europeans ignored the warnings of men like Albert Schweitzer, and did not listen to Rudyard Kipling when he wrote: 'A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. Let the white go to the white and the black to the black.' "

The intricacies of personal belief and public duty likely will be too delicate to navigate in this case. Mr. Kreis, an unabashed Aryan warrior, sees Mr. Regan as something of a moderate.

"He's definitely not a white supremacist," Mr. Kreis said. "He's already told me as much. He knows what's going on, he understands the plight of the white race, but he doesn't hate anybody."

Not officially hating somebody wasn't enough recommendation to spare Mr. Regan. His brief pass through the Hyatt Hotel in suburban Washington last week left a trail too clear to lose anything but his job. Once again, the trickiest of struggles proves to be that between constitutional right and common sense. It's a battle no one quite wins.