Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 26, 1995 TAG: 9505260084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SCOTT PARKS DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: MULDROW, OKLA. LENGTH: Medium
Millar, 69, blamed ``government bureaucracies'' and ``rogue government agencies'' for attempting to connect the bombing to Elohim City, a 400-acre commune that Millar founded near the Arkansas River in 1973.
``There may be government bureaucracies who think they have necessities for their own egos to get us,'' Millar told reporters gathered at the commune Wednesday. ``I will state unequivocally that no one in this community knows Mr. McVeigh or has ever knowingly talked to him.''
News organizations reported Tuesday that federal officials are investigating a phone call from McVeigh to Elohim City on April 5. The phone call, federal officials said, came four minutes after McVeigh reserved the truck that transported the bomb to Oklahoma City.
For more than a decade, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have suspected that Millar and others at Elohim City harbor fugitives associated with right-wing militia groups and white supremacist organizations.
Millar's sect is part of a loose array of groups that believe whites of Northern European extraction are God's chosen people. Known as Christian Identity, the movement includes in its theology beliefs that Jews and blacks are inferior to whites and should live separately from Christian whites.
``I do not believe people are equal or nations are equal or races are equal,'' Millar said.
Elohim City - ``Elohim'' is a Hebrew word for God - would be a good place to seek sanctuary.
The community sits at the end of a narrow dirt road, 7 miles from the nearest paved road. Perched in the middle of a hardwood forest, it is home to an estimated 90 people. Millar and four of his sons and their families live at Elohim City.
Young men, pistols strapped to their hip or hanging from shoulder holsters, greet visitors to Elohim City. Residents say they've been on edge since the bombing and fear media attention will bring on ``a Waco-type'' confrontation with federal agents.
In 1985, Millar helped federal agents negotiate the surrender of James Ellison, leader of a now-defunct militia group called The Covenant, The Sword and The Arm of the Lord.
Members of Ellison's group took part in the firebombing of an Indiana synagogue, the arson of a Missouri church and an attempted bombing of a Missouri pipeline, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
In 1985, 10 years to the day before the Oklahoma City bombing, 200 FBI agents raided the group's training compound on the Missouri-Arkansas border. Ellison and three other group leaders were arrested and convicted of federal weapon charges and racketeering.
Millar also was spiritual adviser to Richard Wayne Snell, a white supremacist who was executed for the murders of a black Arkansas highway patrolman and a pawnshop owner whom Snell wrongly believed to be Jewish.
Snell was executed April 19, only hours after the Oklahoma City bombing. Millar, who was present at the execution, took his body to Elohim City for burial.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram contributed information to this story.
by CNB