Weekend warriors: is the militia movement a threat?

The militias claim to draw on venerable tradition, and they are fueled by anger about government abuses. Are they modern-day Minutemen? Harmless nuts? Or private armies spoiling for a fight?

Mr. Bock, senior columnist for the Orange County Register, is the author of Ambush at Ruby Ridge, forthcoming from Dickens Press.

BEFORE the bombing in Oklahoma City the "citizens' militias" that have cropped up throughout the country in recent years had a reputation as harmless nuts with a penchant for paranoia and kooky conspiracy theories. Now they are widely seen as a serious threat to public order and safety.

The transformation from wacky to dangerous was triggered by alleged links between the militia movement and suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing. The evidence of these links so far is fragmentary and uncertain. Early press accounts reported that Timothy McVeigh, the young Army veteran charged in the case, was affiliated with the Michigan Militia. James and Terry Nichols, two brothers who are friends of McVeigh and have been detained as material witnesses, were said to have attended militia meetings.

But leaders of the Michigan Militia, which was officially founded in April 1994 and claims a membership of 12,000 statewide, say neither Timothy McVeigh nor the Nichols brothers are members of their organization. They say James Nichols, perhaps with his brother, came to one of the organization's public meetings but was asked to leave after he urged those attending to tear up their driver's licenses and stop paying taxes. The Militia of Montana reports that none of the three men's names appears in the databases listing militia members and sympathizers around the country. So the preliminary evidence suggests that if McVeigh and the Nichols brothers had a connection with the militia movement, it was as troublesome sympathizers rather than actual members.

Still, many people who share some of the militia movement's dislike of an increasingly intrusive Federal Government are disturbed by the idea of private armed groups engaging in organized military training. They may remember references to the role of the militias in the War of Independence, and they know that the word appears in the Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, but in terms that do not make absolutely clear whether the right is individual or corporate. But to many Americans the militia seems an archaic concept, out of place in a world of nuclear weapons and cruise missiles. Why has this concept been revived in the last few years, and why has it resonated with so many people?

Coming to Get You?

THE short answer is: Weaver, Waco, and Brady. To many Americans, that list symbolizes a Federal Government intent on preparing us for a New World Order in which U.S. sovereignty will be subordinated to the United Nations (or some successor organization) and our constitutional rights will cease to exist. Federal officials argue (see "The Week") that the popular accounts of Weaver and Waco are grossly exaggerated. And it's certainly true that these sorts of violent raids mostly appear to result from ineptitude, headline seeking, individual abuse of authority, or bureaucratic competition. But if it is hard to justify the militias' claim that these actions are part of some New World Order conspiracy, it is equally hard to justify the government's actions as the proper execution of legitimate authority.

Randy Weaver, a white separatist who lived in a secluded cabin in northern Idaho, was entrapped on a sawed-off-shotgun charge by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which then asked him to become a BATF spy within the racist Aryan Nation. He refused and was indicted. After Weaver failed to appear in court on the firearms charge, the Federal Government set up an elaborate 18-month surveillance operation that culminated on August 21, 1992, in a gun battle in which Weaver's 14-year-old son and a federal marshal were killed. During the ensuing 11-day standoff, Weaver's wife, Vicki, was killed, and Randy Weaver and his friend Kevin Harris were wounded. In the federal trial that followed, Weaver was acquitted of all charges except the failure-to-appear count. No charges have been brought in the deaths of his wife and son, but the local prosecutor is still investigating, and Weaver himself has brought a civil suit.

On April 19, 1993, while the Weaver trial was taking place, the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, burned to the ground during an assault by federal agents. The assault followed an initial BATF raid based on defective search and arrest warrants stemming from firearms charges. It left more than eighty people dead, including more than two dozen children.

It is, however, the Clinton Administration's success in passing the Brady Bill, requiring a waiting period for handgun purchases, and the more recent ban on "assault weapons" that make these violent confrontations seem less like the actions of rogue elements within particular agencies and more like part of a general effort by the Federal Government to remove all firearms from private hands. Certainly there are plenty of gun-control advocates who would like to see universal gun registration as a way-station toward an ultimate ban on the private ownership of firearms. In 1991, at a B'nai B'rith meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Janet Reno, then chief state prosecutor in Dade County, declared that "the most effective means of fighting crime in the United States is to outlaw the possession of any type of firearm by the civilian populace." Many people in positions of power share that view.

Miss Reno and others have defended the Weaver and Waco raids as instances of the government protecting other citizens from armed and dangerous extremists. But there have been a disturbing number of assaults by federal agents in recent years -- resulting in lost property, damaged reputations, and occasional deaths -- in which there was not even that justification. On October 2, 1992, Donald Scott, a reclusive millionaire in Malibu, California, was killed in an early-morning police raid apparently perpetrated with the intent of seizing his property under federal forfeiture law. The police had received a tip that Scott was growing marijuana; no plants were found. On May 6, 1992, a health clinic in Washington State was raided by armed agents of the Food and Drug Administration, who confiscated contraband vitamin B-12. Agents of the most unlikely federal agencies -- the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Forest Service -- have taken to enforcing regulations with armed officers, sometimes in full combat regalia, often through surprise raids conducted in cooperation with local law-enforcement agencies. No federal agents have been tried or even indicted for any of the civilian deaths resulting from these paramilitary excursions.

The Original Militia

THIS isn't supposed to happen in America. Indeed, it was fear of such abuses that led the Founders to prefer a citizen militia to a standing army. Most of the early American patriots had served in organized militias during the War of Independence and knew how important those forces were to the colonists' victory. They also shared a conviction that standing armies in times of peace were dangerous to a free republic. They decided that the country should be protected by a militia composed of all able-bodied men, bringing their own weapons. The militia would be organized and trained at the local level and called up in times of need. In addition to guarding against invasion, the militia would serve as a check on the central government's power.

In Federalist Number 46, James Madison dealt with the fear of federal military domination: "Extravagant as the supposition is, let it, however, be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government: still it would not be going too far to say that the State governments with the people on their side would be able to repel the danger." After going through a "correlation of forces" calculation to demonstrate his case, Madison concluded: "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of." (Emphasis added.) Similar sentiments were expressed by, among others, Noah Webster, Justice Joseph Story (in his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution), and even the centralizing Federalist Alexander Hamilton.

The Constitution provided for the militia to be called up, when necessary, to the service of the United States. The Militia Act of 1792 required "every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of 18 years and under the age of 45 years," to be enrolled in the militia and to be equipped with "a good musket," a bayonet, and 24 rounds of ammunition. That was the law until 1903, when Congress created the National Guard. The new law recognized both the "organized militia" (i.e., the National Guard) and the "unorganized militia, which consists of members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia" (i.e., all other able-bodied males). The Constitution, however, did not authorize the use of the militia outside the United States. In World War I, President Wilson was given the power to draft members of the organized militia into the regular army. In 1933, the National Guard was explicitly made a part of the regular army. A 1990 Supreme Court decision made it clear that states can do little to resist a call by the President to send National Guard units overseas. But it noted that the states can have their own militias, separate from the National Guard, so long as they do not receive federal funds. Some two dozen states have residual militia organizations, sometimes used in natural disasters and the like, but few could be called well organized or well regulated.

The New Militias

IN THE early 1990s numerous groups calling themselves citizens' militias sprang up. They range from what are essentially civic organizations that do a little organized target practice on weekends to paramilitary groups led by people worried about the possibility that a master plan exists to subvert U.S. sovereignty, snatch the people's guns, and impose a UN-directed dictatorship. Some militia organizations hold their meetings openly, advertising in newspapers and welcoming all comers, while others are secretive. A few militia leaders associate or sympathize with racist groups, and racist and anti-Semitic organizers certainly see the militia movement as a recruiting opportunity. Many militia leaders, in turn, have gone out of their way to expel or otherwise dissociate themselves from people who seem to be animated by racist sentiments.

How many people are connected with some form of militia? Estimates range from ten thousand to millions. The true figure for members actively engaged in training is probably in the tens of thousands. In October 1994, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith issued a report titled "Armed and Dangerous: Militias Take Aim at the Federal Government," outlining recent militia activity in 13 states. More recent estimates indicate that militia groups are active in at least 35 states and perhaps in all 50 by now; California alone has a dozen local groups. The militia groups have used fax networks and the Internet to get information to a large number of interested people in a short time, but the movement is decentralized. Some groups are strictly local, while others stay in contact with likeminded organizations elsewhere.

Most organizers stress the militias' essentially defensive character. John Trochmann is co-organizer of the Militia of Montana, which regularly attracts hundreds of people to informational meetings and is considered one of the most radical organized militias. Trochmann claims that the purpose of organizing the militia was not to provoke but rather to defuse confrontations like the Randy Weaver standoff. He says MOM is in regular contact with FBI and BATF agents as well as with local sheriffs and elected officials. And although Trochmann, along with several other MOM members, was recently arrested in Roundup, Montana, on charges of threatening government officials, it turned out to be a misunderstanding, and the charges were dropped.

The apparently well-organized Michigan Militia, which claims 12,000 members, has condemned the Oklahoma City bombing and stressed that neither McVeigh nor the Nichols brothers are members. Leaders of the militia say they do not countenance illegal activity. An incident last August illustrates some of the tensions. Three men in camouflage uniforms and with numerous weapons in their car were arrested at a late-night traffic stop in Fowlerville, Michigan, and released on bail. They didn't show up for their arraignment, but some thirty people claiming to be militia members did, taunting, insulting, and threatening the police. Michigan Militia Commander Norman Olson disavowed these people, saying they were part of an "underground group" and not militia members.

"We are a 'well-regulated' militia and will not let our people break the laws," Olson says. "Members are under strict orders not to carry weapons. We use the same procedures and regulations as the military."

That may be true of some organized militias, but is it true of all? And could the rhetoric and tactics used to recruit militia members inspire breakaway groups or loose cannons to initiate violence? On videotapes and in speeches around the country, militia leader Mark Koernke, a/k/a "Mark from Michigan," sounds calm and measured. But he also sounds quite certain that Multi-Jurisdictional Task Forces, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the black helicopters seen near military bases, and foreign troops training in the U.S. -- as well as the Weaver and Waco killings and new gun-control laws -- are part of a well-orchestrated plan to steal American freedom and place the U.S. under UN control. He seems sure that new outrages are imminent and that action is needed now to avert the threat. It's not hard to imagine unstable people listening, absorbing, and deciding to do something crazy.

Legal Questions

THERE are also questions about the legal status of militias that resemble private armies. Most states have laws against organized armed groups operating without state sanction, and most citizens' militias, even those that have sought communication and cooperation with law-enforcement agencies, have steered clear of affiliation with state governments. Some advocates say the right to form a militia is based on the constitutional rights to peaceably assemble and to keep and bear arms. But the constitutional provisions and laws concerning militias refer to the whole of the people, subject to call-up by duly constituted authorities. They do not license private armies. And there is a certain tension between the militia's role as a check on the government and its role as a force for the government to direct in emergencies.

Furthermore, a militia that claims to represent the whole people should theoretically be open to membership for anyone who chooses to volunteer. Yet most militia groups reserve the right to exclude people who sound too radical or who are suspected of being undercover agents. Does that make them simply private organizations with no real right to call themselves militias and to partake in the tradition the word implies?

The militia movement has the potential to provoke violent confrontations. But it has arisen, at least in part, in response to violent confrontations in which federal law-enforcement agencies seem to have abused their powers. The best way to defuse the movement would surely be a serious congressional investigation of Waco, Weaver, and other incidents, followed by appropriate action -- i.e., curbing federal agencies that overstep constitutional and statutory boundaries.

Before the Oklahoma City bombing, it seemed possible that Congress would do so. Hearings were scheduled to investigate abuses by the BATF and other agencies, and it seemed possible that Congress would vote to repeal the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. In the wake of the bombing, the hearings and the gun-control votes have been put on hold. Republicans and Democrats have fallen all over one another in their eagerness to beef up the jurisdiction, power, numbers, and funding of the FBI and BATF. Yet giving the agencies that frighten so many Americans even more power hardly seems like a rational response -- even to a sometimes irrational movement.