Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9505010066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TRAVERSE CITY, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
Norman Olson and Ray Southwell stepped aside one year to the day after they founded the organization, part of an extremist web that opposes gun control and accuses the federal government of conspiring to destroy individual liberty.
``Against the majority vote of the staff, I and [Southwell] went forth with information concerning the true identity of the villains behind the Oklahoma City bombing,'' Olson said in a statement.
The Michigan Militia is governed by a five-man staff that included Olson and Southwell. Olson took the title of commander and Southwell chief of staff, but the two said all five ran the organization equally.
In a statement faxed to news organizations Friday, Olson spun an elaborate theory claiming Japan bombed the Oklahoma City federal building because the United States was supposedly responsible for the deadly nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways. Olson said Japan had paid CIA agents to bug President Clinton's offices.
Southwell told The Associated Press the theory came from a California woman who claims to be a computer analyst and have U.S. intelligence contacts. Southwell said he and Olson interviewed the woman by phone Wednesday night, then proposed calling a news conference to announce the allegations. But the three other commanders balked, he said.
Ken Adams, one of the five in command, said he considered the woman's claims ``fiction.'' He voted against taking them public, as did operations officer Mark Price and chaplain Douglas Hall.
``If anybody buys the story, the Michigan Militia is going to offer the Brooklyn Bridge for sale,'' Price said Friday.
by CNB