Violence-Minded Militias: A Generation of Vipers

Indictments made public in Phoenix this week allege that 12 members of a paramilitary group calling itself the Viper militia spent two years on plans to blow up a number of federal buildings. That places the beginning of the alleged scheme well before the April 1995 attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168. No connection between the Arizona group and the two men arrested in the Oklahoma City bombing has been established. But one link, coincidental or not, does exist. The Oklahoma City bomb used ammonium nitrate, a common compound in fertilizer. This week’s indictment says the Arizona suspects tested their own ammonium nitrate bombs. That chemical seems to have become the weapon of choice for home-grown terrorists.

Early information suggests that members of the Viper militia hold the same hostility toward government as other extremist paramilitary groups that recently have gained public attention and that they are gripped by the same paranoid fantasies involving a takeover of the United States by U.N. troops, international bankers and exponents of the new world order, whatever that may be. Special animus is directed at the FBI and the Treasury’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whose job includes going after owners of illegal weapons.

The Arizona group appears to have progressed well beyond the stage of energizing itself with wild imaginings. A videotape seized as evidence identifies a number of federal facilities as potential targets for bombing and contains instructions on where bombs should be placed in them for maximum damage. The oath taken by members of this militia calls for “mortal combat” against enemies of the Constitution. That seems to have involved drawing up a blueprint for mass murder.

The militia was penetrated about six months ago by an undercover agent. But it appears to have been only by chance that its existence was discovered, thanks to a hunter who came across one of the militia’s field exercises last November in a national forest. His report to the police got an investigation going.

Clearly, though, the threat to civil order presented by far-out groups is too great to rely on chance encounters in the woods for information about what they are up to. Monitoring of extremists was stepped up after the Oklahoma City attack, but screwball plots continue to be nurtured. The feds and local police did good work in Arizona. Given the peril that may exist, a lot more incisive work is needed.