Militia Promoters Draw a Crowd : Activism: Mark Koernke warns against ‘New World Order’ at Palm Springs conference attended by 600. About 50 protesters appear.

Speaking to an overflow crowd of more than 400 in a posh downtown hotel, militia advocate Mark Koernke on Sunday urged Americans to prepare to take up armed resistance to a murky internationalist threat to their liberty and freedom.

“You better be armed,” warned Koernke, whose national visibility has soared since the Oklahoma City bombing. “The juggernaut we face is the New World Order,” which he defined as “internationalists” and “globalists.”

In apparent anticipation of armed conflict, Koernke urged the audience to stand side-by-side with local militias and to defend “yourself, your home, your community and your nation when the time comes.”

The University of Michigan janitor, whose short-wave radio broadcasts extolling underground militias were suspended after the blast because of negative publicity, said “the full story” of what happened in Oklahoma City last month remains unclear.

But as he neared the end of a 90-minute speech, Koernke, wearing a dark business suit and speaking in front of a large American flag duct-taped to the wall behind him, added that his training in the U.S. Army taught him to make no assumptions, but instead to ask who profits from any action.

And “who profited from (the bombing) action?” he asked the audience, which listened in rapt attention. “Bill Clinton did.”

No news media were allowed to photograph Koernke; only his own video crew recorded the remarks.

At the conclusion of Koernke’s remarks, spectators shouted in unison with him as he pumped his arm and proclaimed, “God bless the republic. Death to the New World Order. We shall prevail.”

Another speaker at the five-hour conference, former FBI Agent Ted L. Gunderson, went even further, placing the blame for the bombing on unnamed interests within the U.S. government. Its purpose, he said, was to “arouse the American public . . . to further erode our liberties and destroy constitutional rights.”

The vitriolic sentiments expressed inside the Horizon Ballroom of the Palm Springs Hilton Resort stood in stark juxtaposition to the resort scene outside.

While attendees of the “Taking Our Country Back” conference heard a series of angry attacks on the President, the FBI, the Federal Reserve Board, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and lawyers and judges of all stripes, sunbathers at the pool just outside caught some rays, sipped beer and expressed disbelief.

Seated at a bar beside the pool, D. D. Gerdin, here from Aspen, Colo., for a ski conference, lunched on spinach salad and said:

“I don’t agree with them. They should come outside and come into the real world.”

Bikini-clad Deena Prestegard, a Massachusetts resident also in town for the ski event, said: “This shows me a lot about our freedoms--for them to be able to come here and talk, they have their freedom and so do we.”

Approximately 50 demonstrators, including members of the National Organization for Women, peacefully protested Koernke’s appearance, which drew more than 600 people at $10 a ticket, organizers said. About 200 watched by closed-circuit TV in a nearby room because the ballroom was full.

Koernke, who has promoted underground militias on his shortwave radio broadcasts, was the big draw at the event. He was an initial target of FBI interest after the April 19 Oklahoma City bombing, according to news reports, because of a fax he sent about the blast to a congressman. He also attracted attention due to reports of his fleeting association with suspect Timothy McVeigh.

Koernke, 37, has not been linked to the deadly bombing. On Sunday, speaking nonstop except to allow time for several ovations, Koernke painted an apocalyptic vision of a nation in turmoil.

“Become militiamen now, because you have no more time,” he urged. “The Constitution is our property, not the government’s.

“This is the most crucial time in American history, going all the way back to the American Revolution.”

Speaking before Koernke was Gunderson, the former FBI agent and self-proclaimed Satanic expert, who told the crowd that the government is using last month’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City to its advantage.

Quoting mainly unnamed sources, Gunderson charged that the federal government has engaged in a “disinformation campaign” by saying that the Oklahoma City blast was caused by a fertilizer bomb. He showed seismic charts on an overhead projector which he said showed two separate blasts a few seconds apart.

Although some have said the readings could have been caused by an echo effect, or by floors of the building collapsing on one another, Gunderson questioned whether there were two bombs, or perhaps a blast caused by a type of government bomb that would register two explosions.

Afterward, Gunderson said he believes the bombing was perpetrated by “an element within the government, a demonic element from within the government, but I don’t know who it is. . . . Somebody in the government--Army, whatever--somebody in the system was responsible.”

Another speaker, Charlena Alden of the Del Mar-based Citizens Against Legal Loopholes, demanded that Congress authorize hearings into the Justice Department, the GATT and NAFTA treaties, and the Federal Reserve Board.

If not, she said, her group will file 2 million simultaneous lawsuits in September. “We’ll gun them down with paper,” she said of her plans to “shut down the system.”

One protest organizer, Rancho Mirage Councilman Alan Seman, called the protest turnout at the conference “relatively small.”

“There are 250,000 people in the (Coachella) Valley. I’m sure they have other obligations; there’s a basketball game this afternoon.”

Hilton general manager Aftab Dada told reporters Sunday that he had received about 200 calls from people angry or concerned about Koernke’s appearance. Dada said the ballroom was not booked in Koernke’s name and had been reserved long before the Oklahoma City bombing.

The hotel had no choice but to allow the appearance, said Dada, because “we do believe in the freedom of speech. We do not discriminate.”