Spotlight Casts Sobering Glare on U.S. Militias : OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Backlash in Montana

The spring thaw had brought a swagger to the steps of militia members and their supporters in this gritty northwestern Montana town nestled below the walls of Bad Rock Canyon.

Emboldened by wide local acceptance of their anti-federal government views and successful standoffs with local authorities over taxes, gun issues and property rights, militia members wore their insignia hats and camouflage clothing like badges of honor.

Then came April 19 and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

At first, there was defiance. The Flathead County Sheriff’s Department received calls that day about a man who sauntered into a local cafe and grumbled: “I don’t see why people are so concerned about the kids in the Oklahoma federal building. What about the kids who died at Waco?”

Other militiamen braced for an onslaught from outside: “The minute the explosion happened, we thought, ‘Oh boy, here it comes. They’ll be coming after us soon,’ ” said Gary Purdy, owner of an Army surplus store a few miles south of town. “We’re afraid of a United Nations invasion,” he added. “Most people think they have to start somewhere and they’ll come here first to make an example of us.”

What Purdy and others did not anticipate was the reaction of their friends and neighbors.

Before the Oklahoma blast, many people here and in nearby working-class communities--Columbia Falls, Martin City and Coram--shrugged the militia off as just another “anti-federal government club to belong to” in a region in which friction with the federal government had existed for years. Others tolerated the militia, much as they do the aging hippies who descend from the surrounding mountains each spring to camp along the Flathead River and pick huckleberries.

Not anymore. Now, a growing number of people here and across the state see militia members as pariahs. Some residents are shunning neighbors they believe might come under investigation. Others have begun reporting militia activities to the authorities. The wives of some militiamen are urging their husbands to quit before they become targets of federal investigations, or worse.

In retreat, once-proud militiamen and militia wanna-bes have stopped wearing their hats and military fatigues and quit making public proclamations. A few have dropped out of sight entirely.

Seated at the kitchen table of his modest home in Martin City, David Lietz, 49, a militia sympathizer who owns a Coram weekly newsletter called the Canyon Enquirer, said there are good reasons for militiamen to lay low or quit.

“People are being a lot more cautious about what they are saying . . . because they don’t want to be branded as radicals,” he said.

Lietz, who said he is not a militia member but shares their hatred of the federal government and its role in creating a new world order, said that he believes he is one of those being avoided by residents who fear that they might be implicated in some future federal investigation.

“It pisses me off--hurts my feelings,” Lietz said, shaking his head in anger, “that because of my political conservatism they feel endangered by me.”

Twenty miles to the south in the Flathead County seat of Kalispell, Frank Egan and his wife, Martha, both of whom belong to a local Militia of Montana unit called PALS (People Against Liberalism and Socialism), are trying hard to preserve sympathy and support for their cause.

It has been an uphill battle.

“We’ve had wives tell their husbands if they don’t quit the militia they’ll leave them,” Martha Egan said. “Some members have become less active, or dropped out completely. Others have become more adamant.”

Joe Lee, 58, was angry over taxes, gun-control laws and governmental restrictions on individual rights when he joined a local Minutemen unit in February. But now “I just can’t go along with some of their thinking,” he said at a local diner. “They said the feds were launching rockets from a nearby wildlife preserve but I sat out there night after night and didn’t see anything.”

The final straw came last week.

“I was supposed to find a safehouse for them in case the pressure is put on and they need a place to hide or do emergency medical work,” he said. “I’m not going to do it. I will not. I’m out of it.”