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10 years after Oklahoma City, the militia movement is dead
Ten years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the anti-government militia movement that spawned America's deadliest act of domestic terrorism apparently is a wisp of its former self.After a spike in interest after the April 19, 1995, bombing, militias fell into decline, according to those who monitor such groups. Today, anti-immigration vigilantes on the U.S.-Mexico border, environmental extremists, skinheads and neo-Nazis pose a greater threat of violence, former FBI officials and watchdog groups say. Since the mid-1990s, more than four-fifths of the so-called patriot groups have disbanded, according to the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. Those remaining bear little resemblance to the high-profile militants who inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up a Ryder truck packed with racing fuel and farm fertilizer next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 149 adults and 19 children. "It was a broad movement, much broader than the Klan or the neo-Nazis," said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. Potok and others who have studied the militias say they were spawned by resentments to new gun-control laws, the 1993 federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and global free-trade policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. They either retreated from government's reach or openly confronted government power. "What they had in common were conspiracy theories," Potok said. "Waco was very much seen as what the federal government was willing to do to crush the politically unorthodox, particularly people who were interested in guns." McVeigh, who with co-conspirator Terry Nichols attempted to join a militia in Michigan, chose the second anniversary of the fiery end of the Waco episode for his attack in Oklahoma City. Norm Olson, a founder of the Michigan Militia Corps who later disbanded the group, said that after the bombing, "about a third walked away from the militia altogether. They didn't want to be involved in it." Danny Defenbaugh, a retired FBI agent who headed the Oklahoma City investigation, agreed that McVeigh's act was seen as so repugnant that many people severed their militia ties. "I had discussions with a number of militia leaders who said McVeigh and Nichols did their cause a lot of harm," Defenbaugh said. "Because of the children being killed, they were being portrayed as baby killers." However, as a result of a raft of publicity, the militia movement grew in the immediate months following Oklahoma City. "It took a year for militia members to see through the haze of theories. Militia leaders immediately claimed the federal government set off the bomb to discredit them," said Daniel Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door. Numbers crested in 1996, when, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 858 groups attracting as many as 50,000 active members. But the spike didn't last long. Mark Pitcavage, director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League, said several factors led to the movement's decline, starting with law enforcement's response. "When hundreds of militia members started going to prison on weapons and conspiracy charges, a lot of members began backing away," he said. McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran, was convicted on federal murder, conspiracy and weapons charges and executed in 2001. Nichols is serving a life sentence. In Texas, Republic of Texas leader Richard McLaren was twice convicted and all but one of his five followers were also given prison time for their roles in a 1997 military-style raid that led to a seven-day siege in the Davis Mountains. The FBI hired 570 new agents within a year of the bombing, assigning many to regional counterterrorism task forces, and Justice Department guidelines restricting investigations of suspicious groups were relaxed. "We were allowed to range more widely," said Defenbaugh, who in the late 1990s headed the FBI's Dallas office, where the country's largest task force was based. Meanwhile, federal agents rethought their approach to negotiations and standoffs and defused several potentially deadly and incendiary incidents without resorting to violence. "Agents-in-charge went through management training in how to handle these situations and there was a considerable effort to meet with domestic groups," Defenbaugh said. "I talked with a lot of them. I'd tell them, 'You have a right to bear arms and join together. You have a right to discord with the U.S. government. But here is the line. Once you cross it, we'll investigate you and investigate you aggressively.' " At the same time, states and local prosecutors began cracking down on so-called paper terrorists and tax resisters aligned with the militias. In the late 1990s, more than 30 states, including Texas, passed laws outlawing the filing of unjustified property liens and simulating legal process. Today, there are about 152 "patriot" groups scattered through 30 states, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates. Ten are in Texas, including the Republic of Texas in Overton and the Constitution Society in Austin, the center says. The numbers have been fairly stable for the past four years. Levitas said militias have had a difficult time recruiting in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. "When Americans are being killed, it's difficult casting the federal government as the problem," he said. Still, last year in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Montana, militia members were arrested on weapons charges. In Tyler, anti-government extremist William J. Krar received an 11-year sentence for possessing an arsenal that included more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition, machine guns, pipe bombs and a sodium cyanide bomb. "Although they're small in size, there remain people who are hardcore and devoted and not averse to criminal action," Pitcavage said. "They're still causing crimes and causing problems." Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-04-24 |
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