Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504250022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
They are self-styled patriots whose common bond is fear that the U.S. government will undo American democracy and a belief that well-armed grass-roots paramilitary organizations offer the only protection against the tyranny to come.
They have arrived at this view by many avenues. Some are tax protesters. Others resent restrictions on their property rights. Some believe that the United Nations is bent on world domination.
This angry mix also includes white supremacists and antisemites, survivalists and skinheads. And they all seem convinced that the government wants to leave them defenseless by taking away what they regard as their constitutional right to bear arms.
``A lot of Americans are angry, and they will not stop being that way until the government gets honest with us,'' said Robert Pummer, a leader of a Florida-based militia, as the paramilitary groups are known.
Federal officials say that kind of milieu greatly influenced Timothy James McVeigh, the key suspect in last Wednesday's murderous car bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, and two brothers, Terry Lynn Nichols and James Douglas Nichols, who are being held as material witnesses in the terrorist attack. If anything, they apparently found the groups too tame.
Norman Olson, commander of the Michigan Militia, one of the largest and best known of the paramilitary groups, told reporters Saturday that two of the three men - it was unclear which two - had been ejected from his group's meetings because of their extreme rhetoric.
``Our internal probe has revealed these people had attempted to come to meetings and speak out, but they were silenced. In fact, they were told to leave,'' he said. He described their comments as ``anarchist rhetoric'' and ``talk of terrorism'' directed at individuals or institutions.
Olson warned, however, that violence by such extremists is understandable. ``There is no justification for brutality meeting brutality,'' he said. ``But when a tyrant's brutality is not reined in by justice, you will have somebody out there who takes it upon himself, deranged though he may be, to balance the scales of justice.''
Advocates of the militias say that their views are no more radical than that of well-established organizations such as the National Rifle Association that oppose gun control and that their organizations are legal entities, formed in accordance with the Constitution.
Their weapons they say are for self-defense, against the government.
``If and when the federal government decides to confiscate weapons, people will band together to stop them. They are not going to give up their guns,'' said Randy Trochmann, a member of the family that founded and leads the Militia of Montana.
But there is an even darker side to the militia movement, one that has attracted many people of known extremist views, in some cases with links to older racist and antisemetic groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation and the Posse Comitatus. In a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno last October, Morris Dees, chief counsel for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said there is ``substantial evidence that white supremacists are infiltrating the leadership of these organizations.'' He warned that the mix of well-armed organizations ``and those who hate is a recipe for disaster.''
The militias' argument that they must be able to resist oppression by amassing firepower equal to that of the federal government has led to an explosive growth in several states. They stockpile weapons, wear uniforms, give themselves titles like ``commander'' or ``captain,'' engage in training maneuvers and, in some cases, swear oaths to fight to the death against government encroachment on their rights.
Albert Esposito, North Carolina leader of Citizens for the Reinstatement of Constitutional Government, urged his members to amass caches of ``the Four Bs: Bibles, bullets, beans and bandages.''
There probably are about 22 such militias, although the exact number and the size of their memberships is unclear. In some places, they probably number no more than a dozen or so like-minded people. But elsewhere - in such Mountain states as Idaho and Montana, and in Michigan, Indiana, Texas and Florida - they are thought to have attracted a sizable following.
Civil rights organizations say that the militias' ability to recruit or win sympathy from conspiracy-minded people was fueled greatly by the government's role in two events: the 1993 siege that resulted in more than 80 deaths at the Branch Davidian religious cult headquarters in Waco, Texas, and the killing by federal agents a year earlier of Idaho white supremacist Randy Weaver's wife and child during a gun battle at their remote mountain cabin.
Both incidents caused considerable controversy about whether the government had done everything possible to avoid bloodshed.
by CNB