Port of Coos Bay contractor faces allegations of racism

A contractor with the Port of Coos Bay is facing allegations of racism after recordings revealed him praising Hitler and using other anti-Jewish and anti-Black rhetoric. Reporters have connected the recordings from an antifascist infiltrator to Michael Whitworth Gantenbein, owner of Whit Industries, which has received nearly $300,000 in contract work from the Port of Coos Bay over the last decade. A coalition of human rights and environmental groups are calling for the port to cut ties with Gantenbein, but port officials are struggling to find a path forward that doesn’t expose them to a free speech lawsuit.

Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism at InvestigateWest through Report for America. He recently reported on this issue and joins us with more details.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. A contractor with the Port of Coos Bay is facing allegations of racism after recordings seem to have revealed him praising Hitler, and using anti-Jewish and anti-Black rhetoric. Reporters have connected recordings made by an anti-fascist infiltrator to Michael Whitworth Gantenbein, owner of Whit Industries, which has received nearly $300,000 from the Port of Coos Bay over the last decade. A coalition of human rights and environmental groups is calling for the port to cut ties with Gantenbein, but port officials are struggling to find a path forward that does not expose them to a free speech lawsuit.

Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism at InvestigateWest through Report for America. He joins us now. Welcome back to the show.

Daniel Walters: Yeah, I appreciate it.

Miller: How did you first hear about Michael Whitworth Gantenbein?

Walters: Yeah, we were tipped off by the Western State Center a couple of months ago, just that this was an issue that there had been this gentleman who was involved with this group called White Lives Matter, which is a pretty racist, explicitly racist, kind of white supremacist group that he was one of the leaders of in Oregon. And that he was a contractor that was getting a lot of public funds. So they’re raising concerns about that, in particular because there was this possibility that he would end up taking a lot more of the port’s business because he would basically be buying this other Boatworks, a part of the shipyard. So there’s some real concern about that and there was a lot of community opposition there.

Miller: What kinds of audio or social media records did these anti-fascist infiltrators collect?

Walters: Basically, they ended up having all these different phone call conversations, these different meetings. There is this site called Telegram. There was this private channel on Telegram that ended up recording a lot of the different correspondences there. And they basically did all this, recorded it and then gave the raw documents to groups like Western State Center, the port and a journalist like myself. I could comb through these hours of recordings and see these raw conversations between these white supremacists, with everything from their wife’s health issues to their love of Hitler. So it’s a full gamut and really lended authenticity to the claims being made by these anonymous activists.

Miller: What exactly did they reveal that is most damning?

Walters: It was basically the idea that, not only was Michael Whitworth Gantenbein a racist, using racial slurs and things like that, but he was actually recruiting other members of this white supremacist group to come and work for him in Coos Bay at his hydraulic shop. Simultaneously, do that, and also with his vision of creating this kind of haven, this compound for these white nationalist people, and possibly even getting involved with politics and things like that. So it wasn’t just a matter of like, hey, we want to be left alone with our racist ideas. It was, we want to create more of a power center in Coos Bay as a part of this – which is particularly alarming.

Miller: How sure are you that the person in these recordings is Gantenbein?

Walters: I’m very, very sure. There’s a part where he … Not only does everyone refer to him as “Whit,” he says like, “Hey, you know me.” Then he says, “I live on … " And he names the street address that he lives on in Coos Bay. He says, “There’s a crane in front of my house.” And on Google Maps, you can see a crane in front of his house. Then, just to make sure, I ended up calling him, listening to Michael Whitworth Gantenbein’s voicemail message. It’s pretty clearly the same voice that’s a part of that.

Additionally, I listened to … The same guy had been called by a kind of prank show comedian. A prank phone call comedian had called the same guy earlier this year on his YouTube channel. The voices matched and the guy also praises Hitler on the YouTube conversation. So, it’s always hard. You always kind of want to leave yourself a little bit of hedging. But we were certain enough to name the guy like that and we’re not people who want to jump to conclusions very quickly.

Miller: How has Gantenbein responded to these allegations?

Walters: Yeah, he didn’t respond to us at all when we called him. But he had told The Oregonian, he denied that he had been a part of White Lives Matter, said it was all false. He admitted that he had met with the alleged representative of White Lives Matter, that he was shown to have met with, via a picture that would have been leaked by these anti-fascists. He admitted the picture was true. He admitted he met with the guy, but claimed that he just walked away when he had heard about what the White Lives Matter activists was about. So he’s sort of denying it.

And for members of the fishing community, [the] more conservative members of the community, they might not be big fans of local media or just general like him a lot. They’ve just decided to believe him, kind of ignored it and brushed off the accusations as rumors on Facebook. But, like I said, we’ve looked through all this audio and Telegram footage, and the case is very strong against him.

Miller: Is it easier for members of the fishing community or other, I guess potential allies of Gantenbein, to dismiss these allegations because of where they originated, because they came from a relatively secretive operative?

Walters: I would say, yeah. I mean, that’s generally one of the reasons why journalists try to get people on the record. And it’s also, I think, the case … I mean, four years ago, Coos Bay people were afraid of Antifa coming in and causing riots. It was one of those communities where there were rumors during the George Floyd protests that Antifa was gonna travel to their community and cause problems. Anti-fascists aren’t necessarily beloved in the Coos Bay area.

So yeah, I would say that that’s probably a factor. And if you were able to sit down with members of the fishing community and play them the recordings, I think they would be persuaded. But, who knows, it’s always a case by case basis. The people that have been his supporters haven’t been necessarily eager to try to do that.

Miller: The sense I get from your reporting and from reporting from The Oregonian is that the port officials involved here, there’s no doubt in their minds that this is the man that they’ve, over the years, had contracts or given $300,000 to for various work. So what are port officials saying about that relationship now and that relationship going forward?

Walters: I would say the port officials are being cautious. They don’t wanna necessarily make the accusation directly, but I would say that they haven’t come up with a reason that it’s not him. They haven’t presented that, but I would say they’re trying to be cautious. But they’re in this really difficult kind of dynamic because they’re currently contracting with the person to finish up work. The question is, do you continue to give contracts to this person in the future? And if this person ends up purchasing Giddings Boatworks sometime in the future – this other piece that he’s been apparently eyeing, looking at purchasing at some point – does the port allow that lease to go through? They have the sort of ability to deny or accept grant leases for certain properties.

So they’re sort of in this very difficult situation, where there’s been this intense community opposition to Gantenbein, a lot of outside criticism, threats of “we don’t wanna have money spent here in this port if this guy’s gonna be a part of it.” But simultaneously, there’s this real challenge of the First Amendment, which says if it turns out that a member of the port supported Kamala Harris or was a Muslim, the First Amendment says that you can’t deny a person a contract just because of their speech or just because of their beliefs. So that’s a real, real challenge if you want to say, “Hey, this person has some really, really odious, awful beliefs.” The First Amendment generally prevents the government effectively from acting on, retaliating against those beliefs. That’s kind of the conundrum that the port finds itself in.

Miller: In the course of your reporting, though, you also learned about earlier criminal charges in Louisiana. This is stemming from being pulled over, and having hundreds and hundreds of pounds of marijuana – if I read this correctly – in a car that he and his father were towing. Is there still an active warrant for his arrest from Louisiana?

Walters: Yeah, I contacted the court in Louisiana, just to make sure. I called them up and a very nice lady on the phone explained, yeah, there is absolutely an active warrant. These warrants don’t go away. I mean, there’s a certain point, where if he was in Louisiana and pulled over, then the courts and the attorneys decide how to handle that – whether they would want to drop the case or keep it on. But it’s very much an active case.

And in fact, in the community, in the neighboring state where his dad used to be a planning director, it was kind of this ongoing mystery of this disappearance. The local papers there, in like 2010, were writing about the disappearance of this former planning director that was his father. But it turns out that they ended up showing up in Coos Bay, kind of remaking their life there and becoming an important part of the port industry there.

So yeah, there’s this kind of open question. There’s this active bench warrant, where he was accused of this thing and then just sort of ducked the court systems.

Miller: Daniel Walters, thanks very much.

Walters: Yeah, thank you so much.

Miller: Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism for InvestigateWest.

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