Ties that blind.

Mr. Bock is a senior columnist at the Orange County Register and author of Ambush at Ruby Ridge, forthcoming from Dickens Press. His full report on the militia movement will appear in the next issue of NR.

Noxon, Montana 

THE high-school gymnasium in this tiny town in the far northwestern corner of the state is almost filled on a snowy Sunday in December for a meeting of the dread Militia of Montana (affectionately known as MOM). Down the hall is a babysitting room for some of the many small children who find it difficult to sit still through hours of lectures from Mark Koernke (a/k/a "Mark from Michigan"), a popular speaker on the growing "militia" and "patriot" circuit, and John Trochmann, who founded the Militia of Montana after the deadly 1992 standoff between federal agents and the Randy Weaver family near Naples, Idaho, just across the state line.

In the hallway outside the gym, vendors offer T-shirts celebrating the Second Amendment, The Clinton Chronicles (a video assault on the First Family), and books on emergency food storage, caching weapons, guerrilla tactics, the siege of the Weaver family, and the "truth" about Waco. The material tends to echo what is heard inside:

The leaders of the government have sold out to the New World Order. They know they can establish a true dictatorship -- and pave the way for Soviet and/or UN troops with their omnipresent black helicopters, who may be massing on the Canadian border at any time -- only if they seize the guns of decent, law-abiding Americans. The Brady Law was the first step toward gun confiscation. The Weaver and Waco incidents were rehearsals for the final takeover.

If you're not ready to join a citizens' militia to protect your rights, you should at least get ready by obtaining a stock of ammunition and an emergency food supply. You might not have to confront the tyrants; the knowledge that free Americans are organizing and arming might be enough to stave off the imminent imposition of dictatorship. But prudent Americans know that the Federal Government means them no good.

That, in a nutshell, is what militia organizers and leaders of "patriot groups" are telling an increasing number of followers. Do such groups, especially insofar as they are armed and engaging in paramilitary exercises, constitute a danger to the Federal Government or to other Americans? Did their conspiracy theories and militant rhetoric help inspire Timothy McVeigh, now in custody for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Was the bombing a militia operation, or was it perhaps carried out by renegades from one of the organizations?

Such questions have been raised by allegations that McVeigh was associated with the Michigan Militia. Friends and associates say he was outraged to the point of obsession by the federal siege of the Branch Davidian complex at Waco, which culminated in fiery destruction exactly two years before the Oklahoma City bombing. News coverage, especially in the New York Times and on ABC's Nightline, has stressed the extremist, possibly violence-prone, sometimes bigoted character of the militia movement.

This depiction is a caricature of a movement that is far more complex than is commonly assumed. The caricature is easy because the very concept of a citizen militia seems alien and archaic to most Americans. Never mind that George Mason, co-author of the Bill of Rights, said the militia "consist now of the whole people, except for a few public officers." Never mind that most of the Founders preferred the militia, composed of all able-bodied males available to defend the country from invasion or insurrection, to a standing army. This is the twentieth century, after all.

Yet a growing number of Americans believe it is time to revive the Founders' vision. The American Jewish Committee, which perceives anti-Semitism in the militia movement, estimates that as many as ten thousand people are involved in "citizens' militias" in 35 states. Late last year the Michigan Militia said it was organized in 66 of the state's 83 counties; it offered a (possibly exaggerated) estimate of 12,000 members in that state alone.

The militia movement includes well- organized groups such as the Michigan Militia, which holds regular maneuvers; organizations that have long existed under state law as a supplement to law enforcement in the event of natural disasters or riots; and groups of a dozen or so people who meet on Saturday nights, talk tough, and have a few beers. Timothy McVeigh's connection to this movement may be tenuous. According to federal investigators, he has been a close friend of Terry Nichols, whom he met in the Army and who turned himself in to law-enforcement officials in Kansas after the bombing, and of Nichols's brother, James, who owns a farm in Decker, Michigan. The Nichols brothers are said to be "former members of the Michigan Militia."

BUT Michigan Militia spokesmen say James Nichols attended one meeting and was asked to leave after he got up to speak and advocated that people tear up their driver's licenses and stop paying taxes. Says Randy Trochmann, nephew of MOM founder John Trochmann, "We searched every database, every list we could find of militia members or sympathizers, and we could not find those three names."

For the mainstream press, actual membership is not necessary to draw a connection with the militia movement. Indeed, to judge by some of the stories, anti-government opinions are enough. Most journalists seem astounded that so many Americans dislike the Federal Government. In an April 25 story on the front page of the New York Times, Timothy Egan put it this way: "The hatred directed at federal officials, according to those who have been threatened, has been fanned by a handful of rural talk-radio hosts and by people writing in newsletters and computer bulletin boards who equate the government with an occupying army. Initially, many public employees dismissed such talk as rabble from isolated cranks. But in recent months, some say they have found it increasingly hard to do their jobs, as opponents of the government have become emboldened."

Although threats of violence against federal employees may be excessive, there is another side of the story that deserves attention. Hostility to the government does not occur in a vacuum. For example, the Times article refers to a group of people, some armed, who recently confronted officials in Hamilton, Montana, claiming to be associated with the militia movement. One of them, Cal Greenup, is quoted as saying, "There cannot be a cleansing without a shedding of blood." He is now a federal fugitive.

Greenup has been locked in struggles with federal and state officials for several years. After he leased some of his land to the city, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered him to clean it up at a cost of $100,000. In the course of lengthy legal maneuvers, it was discovered that the city was responsible for the cleanup -- but at a cost of only $3,000. Another dispute involved elk that Greenup kept at his home as pets, a practice that state and federal game officials told him was illegal. Even as a bill was pending in the state legislature to legalize keeping elk as pets, officials confiscated the animals, killing two of them.

Another confrontation cited by the Times involved Nye County Commissioner Richard Carver. Last July 4, he mounted a bulldozer and reopened an old road traversing what is now federal land. The county argues that the Bureau of Land Management closed that road (and others) illegally. It claims Congress "grandfathered" roads that existed before the Federal Government took possession of certain lands, leaving them under local control. In addition to challenging that assertion, the Justice Department is seeking an injunction against county government resolutions -- passed as expressions of opinion, not as statutes. Its brief does not even acknowledge the First Amendment issues raised by this action.

Press coverage in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing has suggested that criticism of the Federal Government's actions at Waco is itself suspect, if not prima facie evidence of terrorist intentions. Yet the government has never offered an adequate explanation of the events that led to the deaths of some eighty Branch Davidians, and the evidence of government misconduct is strong, to say the least. The same can be said of the confrontation in Idaho that led to the deaths of Randy Weaver's son and wife as well as a U.S. marshal. After the siege, Weaver and family friend Kevin Harris were acquitted of all serious charges by a federal jury. Most jurors expressed shock at the government's bumbling and misconduct, now the subject of a civil suit.

If militia members were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And if militia propaganda is shown to have inspired acts of violence, militia members should at least accept some moral responsibility and consider toning down their rhetoric. But proving that connection may be difficult. After the bombing, Norman Olson, commander of the Michigan Militia, said: "We have denounced the entire incident as an act of barbarity. It's totally alien to everything we believe. We are totally defensive. We do not engage in terrorism. We do not believe in answering the tyrant brutality with more brutality."

Based on my encounters with militia members prior to the bombing, this is more than an after-the-fact pose. Last December in Noxon, John Trochmann, who categorically and vehemently denies charges of racism and anti-Semitism, told me: "We formed MOM specifically to avoid situations like the Weaver killings. We are in touch with local law-enforcement officials and with local ATF and FBI officials constantly, trying to defuse potential confrontations. We haven't always succeeded, but that's our goal."

Maybe it's not that simple, and no doubt there are loose cannons in the militia movement. Forming militias might not be a smart way to respond to the growth of the Federal Government or to government outrages. But it would be wise to learn more about the members of the militia movement before painting them all as right-wing nuts spoiling for a fight.