ARREST OF MILITIA MEMBERS AIDED BY INFORMANT.

Byline: David Sharp Associated Press 

Leaders of the West Virginia Mountaineer Militia were suspicious that federal authorities knew of their plans to blow up three federal buildings.

They even ordered one member to remove his shirt one day to prove that he wasn't wearing a wire.

They asked on the wrong day, according to court documents.

The member was an informant who had been secretly recording members conspiring to destroy the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division complex in Clarksburg, about 80 miles south of Pittsburgh, and two other government buildings in West Virginia, the documents say.

The information he provided led to the arrest Friday of seven men linked to the militia on conspiracy charges. They were being held Saturday pending detention hearings this week.

The informant had gone to the FBI 16 months ago after becoming disenchanted with the group's activities, which included making and testing home-made explosives, U.S. Attorney William D. Wilmoth said Saturday.

At least one militia member, according to the informant, believed the FBI complex contained a clandestine operation that might be a command center when the government turned against the people under the ``new world order,'' according to court documents.

Prosecutors do not believe the alleged conspiracy was linked to anti-government groups in other states.

``I don't want it to appear to be some nationwide conspiracy or anything more grave than the charging documents show. As far as we could tell, it was localized,'' Wilmoth said.

The Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which opened last year, houses fingerprint records the FBI has collected from police departments nationwide.

The $200 million center eventually will use computer programs to convert fingerprints into electronic images, enabling the FBI to perform fingerprint checks in a matter of hours instead of weeks.

Wilmoth said the disenchanted militia member approached federal authorities last year and offered his assistance.

He then provided crucial information about Fred Moore, 52, who was familiar with producing bombs from ammonium nitrate, and chemical engineer Jack Arland Phillips, 57, who said he could produce plastic explosives, court documents said.

Moore boasted that he was working on a fuel-air bomb that could devastate an area the size of two football fields and also indicated he had successfully produced a grenade-like device, the documents said. He demonstrated how to make bombs once during militia training exercises on a 600-acre farm, with one mixture he concocted leaving a 2-foot-wide crater, according to an FBI affidavit.

Moore's closest neighbor said he had become accustomed to hearing explosions. ``The first time I was worried. But out here, if one man wants to shoot, that's his business. It was pretty regular on Saturdays. I didn't know what he was doing,'' Ronald Fry said.

Militia commanding general Floyd ``Ray'' Looker had agreed to sell for $50,000 blueprints of the FBI complex to an undercover agent posing as a broker for a fictitious Middle East terrorist group, authorities said.

About 100 federal agents moved in Friday after Looker attempted to deliver the blueprints, which he had obtained from a Clarksburg firefighter, according to investigators.

Arrested along with Looker, Moore and Phillips were Firefighter James Rogers; Terrell P. Coon, 46, of Waynesburg, Pa.; James M. Johnson, 48, of Maple Heights, Ohio; and Imam A. Lewis, 26, of Cleveland.