WASHINGTON -- Before walking into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, police said James von Brunn left behind a notebook in his car denouncing the Holocaust as a lie, and denouncing President Barack Obama.

Mr. von Brunn was charged today with first-degree murder for shooting down a museum security guard who held the door open for him as he walked in with a .22 caliber rifle.

When police search Mr. von Brunn's automobile, parked nearby, they discovered a note declaring:

"You want my weapons -- this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media."

The note, recounted in an affidavit filed by federal authorities, reflected an increasingly violent rhetoric one associate, a self-described "white separatist" from Butler County, said was becoming evident in blast e-mails Mr. von Brunn sent to friends.

"I became concerned because his e-mails were getting more and more violent in tone. We whites, or we white separatists, we're going to be rounded up and killed by Jews in the federal government. This is a widespread feeling in the white separatist community," said John de Nugent, a Rhode Island native who moved to Sarver in February 2008 where he hopes to lead a movement to create a "white safety zone" in a four-state area including Pittsburgh.

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Post-Gazette staff writer Dennis Roddy interviews John de Nugent, who corresponded with James von Brunn in the days leading up to the shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. A Rhode Island native with Western Pennsylvania family roots, Mr. de Nugent describes himself as a white separatist and, like Mr. von Brunn, believes that Jews control much of the power structure in America. He was interviewed during a visit Downtown where he made satellite appearances on the major networks.

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"Jews seek to destroy White America. They created Obama to read their 'multicultural' death-message to ignorant Christian sheep. America now teeters on the brink of extinction," Mr. von Brunn wrote May 27.

In earlier e-mails he attacked Jews, called President Barack Obama "a mongrel," and claimed the Catholic Church was "founded by Israelis" and promoted illegal immigration.

Writings dating to 1999 and progressing to the weeks before yesterday's fatal shooting at the Holocaust Museum paint a tableau of conspiracy theory, race hatred and deepening despair.

"Your tactics should be: destroy the enemy before the enemy kills you. Act now!" Mr. von Brunn wrote in one e-mail.

Mr. de Nugent said he corresponded and talked by telephone with the 88-year-old Mr. von Brunn two weeks ago. Speaking from his home today, Mr. de Nugent condemned the armed attack on the museum and said in retrospect he now saw the warning signs that Mr. von Brunn was approaching a critical stage in his life.

"He told me he was very bitter -- that his Social Security had been slashed just about in half," Mr. de Nugent said. "He believed somebody had read his Web site and was retaliating against him for his politically incorrect opinions."

Living in Annapolis, Md., with his son, Erik and his son's fiancee, Brandy Teel, Mr. von Brunn had been divorced for at least a decade from his wife, Alyce, and recently told Mr. de Nugent that he had given away his computer.

"When you start giving away things, I guess a should have realized it was a troubling sign," Mr. de Nugent said. "My theory is he wanted to do a sort of John Brown incident."

John Brown, a famous pre-Civil War abolitionist, led an armed seizure of the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Va., and was later hanged after a famous trial.

"I think he was planning that this would be some sort of catalyst event, leading to something more," Mr. de Nugent said.

A longtime anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, Mr. von Brunn is accused of storming into the museum with a .22 caliber rifle and shooting dead a guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns. Mr. von Brunn was wounded when guards returned fire and was listed in critical condition at a Washington hospital.

Today, Mr. de Nugent, who ran a symbolic write-in campaign for president in 2008 and is planning to launch his own white separatist movement in the coming weeks, said yesterday's attack could be a harbinger of deepening anger among a subset of whites convinced the United States is being taken over by a Jewish-led cabal and a black president they believe wants to seize their weapons and end their rights of free expression.

"James von Brunn is significant because he is somebody who simply acted on his belief," Mr. de Nugent said. "But I think there are millions of white people who are trending in this direction. If I were to advocate the violent overthrow of the country I think hundreds of people would join me right now. I am not advocating that."

Mr. von Brunn was a Navy veteran, and on his Web site, said he had been a PT boat captain in World War II.

He has been described as a former employee of Noontide Press, a leading publishing house for Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, although its founder, Willis Carto, yesterday told the Post-Gazette he did not know Mr. von Brunn.

While he had a readership on the Web, Mr. de Nugent said Mr. von Brunn did not appear to belong to any group.

"As far as I know he belonged to no organization and he had no organization," Mr. de Nugent said. "He was totally a lone wolf. Just like the Unabomber."

FBI agents who searched Mr. von Brunn's automobile and apartment found some evidence to contradict that assertion.

He held subscription and mail-order memberships in an assortment of far-right and anti-Semitic organizations, including the California-based Institute for Historic Review, the Adelaide Institute, a far-right Australian group, and, at one point, was nominated as a "white racialist treasure" by a visitor to Stormfront, a neo-Nazi Web site based in Florida.

In 2004, Mr. von Brunn spent several months in Hayden, Idaho, home base of the now-defunct Aryan Nations, a longtime breeding ground for white supremacists and domestic terrorists that included The Order, a supremacist group that carried out murders and armed robberies in the 1980s.

One intelligence document shows that when they arrested racist leader Mo Gulett on charges of conspiracy to commit bank robbery in 2005, FBI agents discovered an application form for Mr. von Brunn for an Aryan Nations splinter group known as Church of the Sons of Yaweh.

FBI agents searched Mr. von Brunn's apartment in Annapolis last night, evacuating the building for fear he might have booby-trapped the room he sublet from his son for $400 per month.

Harold Olynnger, 82, lives next door to von Brunn at Harbour Gates, an upscale apartment complex in Annapolis, about 30 miles from the Holocaust Museum.

He said Mr. von Brunn wasn't particularly friendly, but that he accepted an invitation a few months ago to have a vodka tonic with Mr. Olynnger and his wife Martha in their apartment and that the Holocaust came up in conversation.

"He said the Holocaust, the media was covering it too much. They were at the time and I agreed with him and he sat there and had a drink and that was about it," Mr. Olynnger said. "He talked about the Navy. ... He was in the Navy and I was in the Army and we compared notes. He ran a PT boat or something like that. I guess he was a lieutenant in the Navy, and that's about all we talked about."

Mr. Olynnger said Mr. von Brunn lived with his son and his son's girlfriend and that he had a dog, a mutt, that he would sometimes walk on a dog path near the apartment complex.

He said he never knew about Mr. von Brunn's criminal history, his hatred of Jews, his Web site or his gun.

After he learned what happened at the museum, he says he thought, "I'm living next door to this guy, my God."