THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504300049
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS AND DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long : 219 lines
William Waters - preacher, gun dealer and leader of the so-called 1st Virginia Freeborn Civilian Militia - is emphatic that he does not condone the Oklahoma City bombing that left 121 people dead and 90 people missing.
But Waters understands the frustration and rage that apparently led a self-fashioned freedom patriot named Timothy McVeigh to blow up a federal building.
``If you didn't have the government oppression,'' Waters said, ``he wouldn't have had the violent reaction.''
McVeigh and Waters are at different points on a continuum of far right political activists. Some on that scale are essentially fierce conservatives worried about losing gun rights. Others are conspiracists who believe evil forces are trying to take over the world. The most extreme are neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anarchists.
In Virginia, individuals from within that spectrum showed up on the fringes of Oliver L. North's U.S. Senate campaign last year. Others have spurred a fledgling militia movement, in which perhaps hundreds of citizens are stockpiling guns and practicing maneuvers to defend themselves against enemies - including, in a worst-case scenario, the federal government.
Some are motivated by fear of the sort of one-world rule decried by televangelist Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach in his best-selling 1991 book, ``The New World Order.''
The Oklahoma bombing is forcing a re-examination of those movements and the extent to which they overlap and diverge. Are they innocuous or important, laughable or dangerous?
If there is a single unifying thread, it is in a view shared ironically by many mainstream conservatives and some liberals: that the constitutional rights of average Americans are eroding. But, even on the far right, theories differ wildly about the degree to which the government is eclipsing freedoms, why that is happening, and what should be done about it.
Last fall, the undermining of the Constitution was a major theme in North's unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate. In a stock stump speech, the Republican nominee went through the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, articulating how he thought freedoms were being jeopardized.
``We have a chance to start a second revolution that says, `We the people want our government back.' They took it; we want it back,'' North told a crowd in Martinsville last fall.
His rhetoric struck a chord with some already dismayed by the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in April 1993. That event has become a rallying point for various individuals on the far right, including McVeigh.
Some North appearances attracted a few people with T-shirts and buttons reading: ``Remember the Waco Massacre'' and ``Branch Davidians for North.''
But on his radio talk show last week, North made it clear that the ballot box - not violence - was his solution to a misguided or oppressive government.
``I never, ever, ever said anything to encourage hatred,'' North said. ``You want to change the way things are being done, you don't have to blow something up.''
Others turn to right-wing theories and tactics to make sense of a complex world that they fear is teetering on the brink of social and economic collapse.
Douglas Jeffreys, a 24-year-old Hanover County resident and state highway department worker, has traveled the state in recent months, trying to drum up business for a Virginia Citizen's Militia.
His nightmare, said Jeffreys, is that a staggering national debt will lead to financial collapse and political anarchy. For that reason, he has equipped his home with handguns and other weapons and is recruiting like-minded citizens of all races and creeds to join in military-style training.
``I believe if it got to the point where our government was going bankrupt, they would go to many extremes to hold power,'' he said.
But Jeffreys, a former student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and a father of two, said he is more optimistic than some he talks with at shooting ranges, sportsmen's clubs and elsewhere.
``We are preparing for the worst, but we are working toward and hoping for the best,'' he said.
Some others are convinced that a secret, multigenerational, worldwide conspiracy is masterminding a takeover of the federal government. That view, linked in various forms to the 18th-century Illuminati secret society, the Trilateral Commission on worldwide cooperation, the Freemasons, international banks or multinational corporations, has been part of a sort of underground dialogue for years.
The ideas reached a more mainstream audience through Robertson's 1991 book.
``It may well be that men of goodwill like Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush . . . are in reality unknowingly and unwittingly carrying out the mission and mouthing the phrases of a tightly knit cabal whose goal is nothing less than a new order for the human race under the domination of Lucifer and his followers,'' the television evangelist wrote.
He questioned whether an array of historical events culminating with the Persian Gulf War were outgrowths of that movement.
``There is no hard evidence to prove it, but it is my belief that John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln, was in the employ of the European bankers who wanted to nip this American populist experiment in the bud,'' Robertson wrote.
While such ideas are not new, when voiced ``by people who are in the mainstream like Pat Robertson, it spreads the theory a little further out into the political spectrum,'' said John Nutter, a Michigan State University expert in national and international terrorism.
Larry Pratt, director of the Springfield-based Gun Owners of America, said he tries to dissuade the group's 125,000 members from a conspiratorial world view.
But Pratt, whose group is sometimes described as the hard-line alternative to the National Rifle Association, also sees international trade pacts such as GATT and NAFTA as part of a move to worldwide government. He claims to have seen a federal government planning map in which half of the state of Washington is designated as ``a United Nations biosphere.'' And he regards the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with unbridled disgust.
``From its very early days, BATF agents were leaving people maimed and wounded,'' Pratt said, citing several cases in which he said property was destroyed, individuals tormented and animals killed during unwarranted BATF raids.
Jack Killorin, ATF's Washington spokesman, called the charges ``a heinous lie,'' and noted that none of the 230 lawsuits brought against the agency in the course of arresting 80,000 federal offenders and issuing 10,000 search warrants in recent years has ever been sustained.
In Pratt's view, that is only proof of complicity in the courts.
Another Virginian, 72-year-old Staunton author Eustace Mullins, has lectured to militia groups all over the country about a vast conspiracy in which the federal government has become a pawn of private banks and the Federal Reserve.
The banks, Mullins believes, want control to ensure they can collect their loans on favorable terms. The government has created various crises - such as the communist menace and the war on drugs - in order to justify its creeping control over people, he said.
``Now that the Cold War is over and those menaces are gone, people realize that the only thing they have to fear is the federal government,'' he said.
Mullins - whose 1952 book, ``The History of the Federal Reserve,'' is a seminal work in the far right community - addressed a militia conference in Idaho April 18, one day before the Oklahoma City bombing. He puts the national militia membership at 500,000, which is more than 10 times the estimate of watchdog groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.
``Militias are growing because the average person on the street realizes he will have to defend his home from the government,'' Mullins said. He said the Waco raid - which he calls the ``Waco Holocaust'' - is proof that government agents are out of control.
``These people are kill-crazy,'' he said.
The size of the militia movement in Virginia is uncertain.
Last week, a member of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club in Pulaski County was scheduled to go on trial for alleged firearms violations. The trial was postponed because of the public focus on Oklahoma City. Five members of the fledgling militia were indicted on charges of violating federal firearms laws after meeting three times last summer. Two entered guilty pleas; three others are slated for trial.
Douglas Jeffreys of the Virginia Citizen's Militia complains that militias are being unfairly branded. ``We're not terrorists. We're not white supremacists. . . . We're your neighbors, and we're concerned about our government,'' he said.
Jeffreys estimates that 10 groups and other individuals totaling about 500 have joined the umbrella militia he is promoting. Not all Virginia militias are part of his group, he said.
Jeffreys has a four-page compact that all members are required to sign, as well as an organizational structure listing nine members of a ``Commonwealth Leadership'' staff. He is information officer. The commander's slot is currently unfilled.
The contract requires that members ``shall not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, sex, religion, or national origin,'' and Jeffreys said a required three-fourths vote on new members should weed out racists and other dangerous elements.
The goal, Jeffreys said, is to be a trained force helpful to law enforcement in times of natural disaster or civil unrest. Jeffreys said he would not fight U.S. forces ``unless there was a group of people who were not operating under the constitutional government.''
Jeffreys, who moved to Virginia from North Carolina about two years ago, speaks alone about the militia. He acknowledges that the failure of others to come forward could breed skepticism about what he's saying. But others are too fearful, in light of Oklahoma City, he said.
In Bedford County, William Waters confirmed that Jeffreys had been authorized to speak on behalf of a local militia known as The 1st Virginia Freeborn Civilian Militia.
Waters, a Church of Christ pastor who supplements his income by selling guns, declined to provide membership figures or to identify other members of the militia. But he did show a reporter a camouflage jacket with patches identifying the unit and his rank of chaplain.
A man who stopped by Waters' log home identified himself as a sergeant in the unit, but he declined to reveal his name. The man's pickup truck bore two bumper stickers: ``Is your church ATF approved?'' and ``Sportsmen for North.''
Waters said few members were willing to speak out, because the media have tarred civilian militias with responsibility for the Oklahoma bombing.
``If you're a white male and you own a gun and you think government is oppressive and taxes are too high and you wear camouflage some of the time, people think you want to blow up buildings,'' Waters said.
Waters and the sergeant both volunteered to hang McVeigh from the highest tree in Oklahoma City, if he were found guilty.
``There ain't one of us who hasn't gone to bed at night praying they wouldn't find more people alive in that building,'' the sergeant said. ``And there ain't one of us who doesn't want to see the perpetrator punished.''
McVeigh went astray, Waters said, because he took the offensive against the federal government. Waters and his civilian militia are holding their fire until the federal government comes after them.
Waters sketched out a scenario in which the day for defensive action is drawing near:
There will be more Timothy McVeighs, fringe types who lash out against oppression. After each incident, the government will take away more freedoms - as President Clinton is doing now with an anti-terrorism bill. Things eventually will get to the point where honest, law-abiding, Christian men will have to take up arms to take back the country.
``It's not a revolt; it's not a revolution,'' Waters said. ``It's a restoration.''
Waters is influenced by publications and videos produced by the Militia of Montana, a group that subscribes to a host of conspiracy theories. One of the group's videos, called ``Invasion and Betrayal,'' warns that a one-world cabal, aided by the federal government, is stockpiling Soviet military hardware around the country and building Nazi-style concentration camps for men, women and children.
Waters said the federal government, given what he described as frequent ATF assaults on innocent gun-owners, should not be surprised that a fringe type would seek retribution.
``Somebody should have thought of that before they break the law over and over,'' he said.
``If you kick me often enough,'' the sergeant added, ``soon enough I'll kick back.''
KEYWORDS: BOMBS EXPLOSIONS FATALITIES TERRORISM
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