ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604290134
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES M. SENNOTT THE BOSTON GLOBE
note: below
THE RHETORIC IS STRONGER, you're apt to hear it more often, and there have been large-scale thefts of materials such as fertilizer and blasting caps that can be used to make explosives.
After federal agents infiltrated a bomb-building militia network in Georgia, the militia members' precise plan of action remained unclear.
But federal agents and experts on hate groups said Friday that the arrests come amid an intensification of the militia movement nationwide - and specifically a new, concentrated underground in Georgia, where the militia traditionally has not had a strong presence.
Robert Starr, one of the suspects arrested Friday, is the self-proclaimed commander of the ``112th Battalion of the Militia At-Large of the Republic of Georgia.'' He has appeared in media accounts bragging about increasing the militia's ranks in rural Georgia.
``The connections and the collective intentions of the militia movement are stronger, a lot stronger in the last year,'' said an investigator for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Mike Reynolds, a lead investigator for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked hate groups since 1980 and works with federal law enforcement agencies to trace the militia movement, said: ``The movement is not growing, but it is definitely intensifying. That is the issue.''
Federal agents arrested two men and raided homes in central Georgia on Friday, saying the suspects had planned to share pipe bombs with members of a militia group. Despite early reports that the group had targeted this summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta, a top federal law enforcement official said there was no evidence that was the case.
Investigators for the Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta-based organization that investigates hate crimes and extremist groups, said they have tracked a rising tide of militia presence in Georgia over the past year.
The groups' rhetoric and messages have appeared more frequently on local radio stations and on the Internet, they said. There have been at least four arrests of militia members in Georgia in the past 12 months - one in a ring selling machine guns and flame-throwers, and another of a couple carrying several pipe bombs.
In addition, there have been large-scale thefts of materials, ranging from fertilizer to blasting caps, which can be used to construct crude but deadly explosives such as the one used in the bombing of the federal building last year in Oklahoma City. A quarter-ton of ammonium nitrate was stolen in October, according to the group.
Noah Chandler, an investigator for the group, said one of the suspects, Starr, is a known figure in this emerging militia network in Georgia.In a June 12, 1995, New York Times article about the Preparedness Expo in Orlando, Fla., a man identified as ``Bob Starr'' bragged that membership in his 112th Battalion had quadrupled, but he declined to give specific figures.
He was quoted as saying the militia movement ``has done nothing but wake people up. They're beginning to see that government will do anything to restrict our freedoms.''
Chip Berlet, director of Political Research Associates in Somerville, Mass., and co-author of ``Too Close for Comfort,'' a new book about the national resentment captured by the militia movement, said: ``Nobody knows at this point what this story is, but there is a larger militia movement that is taking off.
``It is divided into two parts. One is ... very wound up in conspiracy theories and fearful of the government. Then there is a more extremist, more bigoted wing that is against the New World Order and `race mixing, multiculturalism.'''
One federal agent said that, as the movement intensifies, it poses a more serious problem for the ATF and the FBI: ``They [militia members] are not all fruitcakes now. That's the problem. It is taking on a more established presence in some communities. I don't think we have figured out how to deal with that just yet.''
LENGTH: Medium: 76 linesby CNB