Facing the Fear of an Enemy From Within

Fearing a tragedy of the magnitude of the Oklahoma City bombing, federal law enforcement officials over the last 14 months had grown increasingly worried about--and had begun monitoring--a number of weapons-oriented extremist groups, including one in Michigan whose meetings a figure in the case had attended.

But the monitoring failed to prevent perhaps the worst terrorist disaster in American history. And as the fast-moving case developed Friday, America began to confront the likelihood that the horrific destruction in Oklahoma City came not from abroad, but from within the United States.

With the arrest Friday of one Midwesterner and the questioning of two others who have possible links to a self-styled militia, the spotlight swung away from international terrorist groups and was thrown on domestic hate groups--a fragmented network of people united in their love of guns and their loathing of taxes and big government.

Federal law enforcement officials confirmed that they were concerned in recent months that at least some members of the militia groups were growing increasingly radical in their statements and more likely to commit violent acts. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms stepped up its monitoring of militia groups last October, officials said. The sources also said that they were actively investigating possible links between the bombers and militia groups in Michigan and elsewhere.

The exact linkage, if any, between the bombing suspects and paramilitary groups remained unclear Friday night. In Oklahoma, authorities said that they had found strong ties linking Timothy McVeigh, the suspect arrested in the case Friday afternoon, with the Michigan Militia--one of the paramilitary groups.

Spokesmen for the militia, however, denied any link to McVeigh, and officials in Washington cautioned that the issue remained under investigation.

In the past, the militia has denounced the news media and the federal government, particularly the Internal Revenue Service and the ATF, both of which had offices in the now-destroyed Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

“The individual arrested by the Highway Patrol in Perry (Oklahoma) is tied into the Michigan Militia by family and other social relationships,” said Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who has been briefed by federal authorities on the case and is a former FBI agent.

“The relationships are strong, and that’s the way it all pieced together,” Keating said.

In Michigan, federal and local law enforcement officials raided a house in a rural section of the state belonging to James Nichols, apparently searching for evidence connected with the bombing. Nichols and his brother, Terry Lynn Nichols, who turned himself in to authorities in Kansas, were being questioned, officials said, but had not been arrested. The Nichols brothers had attended meetings of the Michigan Militia but spokesmen for the group insisted they were not members.

As investigators sought to sort out leads in the case and determine possible motivations for the bombing, experts on extremist groups said that the reality of domestic terrorism could have a profound impact.

“I think this is really going to cause a rethinking in terms of what terrorism really is,” said Jeffrey Simon, a Santa Monica author on terrorism in America. “If these are the home-grown groups and if the terrorists are right among us, brought up in our own civilization, where do we put the blame?”

Spokesmen for militia organizations, however, insisted that they were being unfairly targeted. “We don’t believe in violent means or violent acts,” said Samuel Sherwood, director of the U.S. Militia Assn., based in Blackfoot, Ida., with chapters in 10 states. He denounced more militant groups as “gangs of guys with guns.”

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Home-grown, right-wing political extremists, ranging from citizen “militias” to outright Aryan Nation hatemongers, are growing increasingly angry, dangerous and sophisticated, according to hate-crime experts. At the same time, they are spreading their message to wider audiences through the mass media and the Internet, the burgeoning web of computer networks.

“These groups have access to millions of people through the vehicle of talk radio and talk TV shows and that’s a method they’ve discovered to gain adherents,” said David A. Lehrer, Pacific Southwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “They also have easy access to weapons, explosives and the technology to use them.”

Hate-crime experts cautioned that far-right extremist groups encompass a wide gamut of causes and influences--some having tax resistance as their central focus, some ethnic hatred, others the right to bear arms. The tie that binds, observers said, is a common hatred of Washington.

“Many of them say they are not white supremacists at all but what joins them together is a severe mistrust of the government,” said Brian Levin, an Orange County hate-crime expert with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Klanswatch project.

Experts link the recent rise of the paramilitary groups to four events that can be combined into a dizzingly potent anti-government cocktail:

* The Waco disaster in which ATF agents raided the Waco, Tex., headquarters of the Branch Davidian religious sect because its residents allegedly were stockpiling weapons;

* The deadly siege of survivalist Randy Weaver’s Idaho mountain retreat in which federal agents killed his wife and son;

* Passage of the Brady bill, which establishes additional national guidelines for gun purchases;

* Enactment of the most recent federal anti-crime bill.

These elements have been further blended with computer bulletin boards and national distribution networks for videotape and audiotape lectures that claim to report nighttime sightings of “black helicopters” filled with foreign United Nations troops and the installation around the country of “black boxes” filled with surveillance equipment.

They also claim that stickers have been placed on the backs of highway signs marking the sites of future concentration camps for fundamentalist Christians, who refuse to surrender their guns in a coming federal crackdown.

“These groups are very fluid, with cells all over the place,” Levin continued. “The thing that holds them together is that they regard things like the Waco incident, the Weaver incident, as examples of why they have to take stands against the federal government.”

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Of growing concern, experts said, are citizen militias that have sprung up in rural areas of at least 16 states stretching from Florida to Idaho within the last 1 1/2 years. Adopting the rallying cry of “No More Wacos, No More Weavers,” they have attracted various followers ranging from those who believe that the government is conspiring to take away their guns to small businessmen fed up with regulations and taxes.

Federal law enforcement officials said that, as early as last spring, they believed the Michigan Militia had transformed itself from a political group advocating less government intervention on issues such as gun control into a paramilitary organization. At this point, they said, the group appears to have formed branches in more than three-fourths of Michigan’s 85 counties.

Gary Krause, chief of police in Fowlerville, Mich., 25 miles east of the capital city of Lansing, said that his department last year arrested three self-described militia associates after their car was found to contain 700 rounds of ammunition, loaded rifles, night-vision goggles and other military-type gear. The men were wearing camouflage clothing, he said.

They later failed to appear for their arraignment, Krause said, adding that “30 to 40” uniformed militia members did show up that day in court. Some taunted officers with threats of future violence, Krause said.

The owner of the Michigan farm searched by federal authorities Friday, according to one of his neighbors, may belong to a national militia group called the Patriots. A report by the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors the activities of hate groups, says the Patriots are philosophically linked to the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity Movement.

According to the ADL, the “Patriots’ propaganda promotes the view that the federal government has betrayed the people and the Constitution” through various laws, particularly gun control. “The Patriots publish a newsletter and sell tapes and videos through ‘The Patriot Library.’ Among the titles for sale are ‘The New World Order, Communist groups supported by Hillary Clinton,’ as well as tapes describing black helicopters said to be scrutinizing the actions of citizens in the Western states.

The difficulty for law enforcement, Krause said, is distinguishing the actions of violence-prone individuals from group activity, such as field maneuvers, that is not on its face illegal.

“Some factions are of a radical nature,” he said. “(But) I think you’d have to focus not on the group but on individuals.” Krause added that over the last two years he believes the groups have adopted a misleading strategy of disavowing associates who get arrested or attract attention for allegations of illegal acts.

Michael Redman, a township supervisor and veteran deputy sheriff in Sanilac County, about 80 miles north of Detroit, said he has noticed that the Michigan Militia has become an increasingly vocal group.

Within the last year, he said, militia members have come to attention by resisting attempts in neighboring townships to enforce zoning laws and require residents to clean their properties of old cars and other blight. In two cases, Redman said, those fingered by the townships have identified themselves as militia members and argued that the government does not have a right to dictate the use of their property.

“In the last couple of years, it has come about as a fairly large group of individuals,” said Redman. “They’ve been vocal about local township zoning ordinances.”

He said that law officers such as himself have been hesitant about having contact with militia members, hoping to avoid any confrontation, especially since the group is known to be armed. “I think the feeling that the potential for this group being involved in weapons is there,” he said.

In addition to the militias, extremist groups also include a volatile set of white supremacists, who experts said find a common bond with militia groups under the anti-government banner. In October, the Southern Poverty Law Center urged Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in a letter to investigate militias because the confluence of citizen armies and racial hatemongers are a “recipe for disaster.”

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The two movements came together at the 1990 Aryan World Congress in Idaho, according to Rick Eaton, researcher for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. A featured speaker at the conference was the co-founder of the Militia of Montana, recently arrested with a cache of illegal weapons and explosives, Eaton said.

Montana has been a major scene of militia activity with both local and national groups conducting maneuvers in the state. According to Flathead County Sheriff-Coroner Jim Dupont, groups that start out advocating merely strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution--particularly the 2nd Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms--have become radical.

“A bunch of hard-working people up here will form one of these things, then they’ll get infiltrated,” by more strident advocates who favor violence. “Basically, (the insurgents) start brainwashing ‘em. It’s happening.”

“We’ve got some militia groups in other parts of Montana,” Dupont said, pausing. “I wouldn’t put anything past them.”

Militias identified with ties to racist groups are active in Michigan, Idaho, Montana, Missouri, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Georgia, said Eaton. He added that the Wiesenthal Center has not detected any militia movement in California.

On Friday, however, Tom Metzger, the state’s best-known avowed racist, issued an alert on his telephone hot line about the significance of the Oklahoma City bombing to his followers in the White Aryan Resistance.

“Aryan activists are advised to take immediate precautions, an immediate federal backlash by iron-heeled federal agencies may be expected at any moment,” he warned in his phone message. “Raids and no-knock entries are to be expected.”

Metzger also cautioned his followers to videotape and audiotape any encounters with federal authorities and to immediately notify the White Aryan Resistance leadership of problems.

Some of the older organizations on the far right have become wary of the sudden rise of the more-confrontationally minded new recruits to their movement. For example, leaders of the John Birch Society recently became concerned that paramilitary activist Linda Thompson, an Indianapolis lawyer, had too much influence over their staff. They warned them to stay away from her.

Thompson, an influential figure in the national militia movement, as chairman of an organization called the American Justice Federation, which describes itself as “a group dedicated to stopping the New World Order and getting the truth out to the American public.” At one point, Thompson, who styles herself “acting adjutant general” of the “Unorganized Militia of the United States,” tried to organize a march on Washington by armed, uniformed supporters.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers John Goldman in New York, Tim Rutten and Josh Meyer in Los Angeles and Ronald J. Ostrow, Jack Nelson, Melissa Healy, Janet Hook and Robin Wright in Washington.