"We found also that they boasted or declared that they were setting up an invisible empire here in the United States. We found that their chief man had taken the title of emperor and that he issued imperial and secret decrees from an imperial palace. We found also, having secured a copy of their oath, that every man who joined this order pledged himself to obey without question all the instructions of the emperor, who had been elected for life. We found that severe penalties were threatened to him if he failed ever in obedience. We found that part of this oath was a pledge of impenetrable secrecy surrounding all the doings of the Klan. We found that each member promised to keep at all costs, even that of life, in the face of any coercion, persecution, or punishment, all secrets of the Klan and all knowledge of the Klan committed to him, with only four exceptions. He was not obliged to keep to himself a violation of the oath of the Klan, treason against the United States of America, malicious murder, and rape. Those four secrets, apparently, he could give up to other persons, three of them the crimes, supposedly, he was at liberty to reveal to peace officers and judicial officers of the United States Government. All others, as far as the phraseology of the oath can be read, he was to keep to himself. They belong to the Klan and to the invisible empire and not to the United States of America. "We found them boasting that they had succeeded in securing as members bound by this oath and made citizens in this invisible empire many men who are also officials of the visible, constituted Government of the United States. "'Emperor' Simmons more than once made statements that Members of the Congress of the United States--both Representatives and Senators--belonged to his invisible empire, and therefore were under his imperial orders. He boasted that governors, mayors, and other administrative officers, members of city councils, were citizens of this invisible government, and that sheriffs, policemen, police chiefs were citizens of the invisible empire and that judges on the bench were members of it. "The statement has been made publicly in print that it amused a Klansman when he read in the press that a judge had charged a grand jury to investigate the Klan, because all Klansmen knew that a substantial part of the membership of that grand jury would be Klansmen; that the judge was a joke in making such a suggestion of investigation."