
By: David Rice
Re: Bomb #2

OKLAHOMA CITY (ITN) * Experts who track hate groups and
paramilitary organizations suspected from the first that
these might be linked to the bombing of the federal building.
Now these authorities are repeating calls for a crackdown.

"Americans are dying, and it's time to seriously investigate
these movements," said Rick Eaton, a researcher at the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Another monitoring group, the Southern Poverty Law Center,
urged Attorney General Janet Reno in a letter last October to
investigate unauthorized "militias," contending some of these
paramilitary organizations were mixing with white
supremacists in a "recipe for disaster."

Reno on Friday announced the arrest of one of two known
suspects but refused to answer questions about any possible
hate, separatist or militia group connection. "We would not
speculate with respect to the motivation," she said in
Washington.

The organizations monitored by the Southern Poverty Law
Center's Klanwatch network vary widely in philosophy -- from
Ku Klux Klan-style white supremacy to simply advocating
staunchly the right to bear arms and be free of government
interference.

Direct evidence of the suspects' involvement in any such
groups was sketchy Friday. Still, militia and other groups
rushed to distance themselves from the Oklahoma bombing.

"We don't believe in violent means or violent acts," said
Samuel Sherwood, director of the U.S. Militia Association,
based in Blackfoot, Idaho, with chapters in 10 states. He
denounced more militant groups as "gangs of guys with guns."

A neo-Nazi group, the American National Socialist Workers'
Party, denied that it knew about or participated in the
Oklahoma bombing and urged any members with information to
help investigators. The group's official statement added it
believed "members of the Movement" were involved.

FBI agents entered a Decker, Mich., home Friday in search of
evidence that might help the Oklahoma investigation, the
sheriff said. Suspect Timothy McVeigh was at a Michigan
Militia meeting in Jackson in mid-January, an unnamed militia
member told WXYZ-TV in Southfield, Mich. Speakers talked of
the need to take action against the federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the station said.

But Michigan Militia officials denied any part in the
bombing. "Our stand in the militia is defenive," Chief of
Staff Ray Southwell said. "This obviously had nothing to do
with defense." Militia members pledge their allegiance to the
original Constitution and Bill of Rights and contend the
government wants to usurp those rights. The Militia of
Montana expressed grief for those, especially children, who
died in Oklahoma, "just as the innocent who perished at Mount
Carmel," a reference to the name of the Waco, Texas, compound
of the Branch Davidian sect led by David Koresh.

The groups monitored by Klanwatch mainly operate locally,
sometimes with loose links via newsletters or electronic
bulletin boards. Some of these, too, mixed sympathy with
defiance in the wake of the bombing.

From a group called the Collective Action Network: "The loss
of life, particularly the children, is a tragedy. ... But I
don't hold the party or parties responsible for the bomb to
blame. I indict and hold to blame the filthy federal
government of the United States."

Many of the groups' literature refers to government raids
such as the Waco siege two years ago on the Branch Davidian
sect and federal marshals' assault on the compound of Randy
Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 that left one marshal
and Weaver's wife and son dead. Both cases began with weapons
charges. Klanwatch director Danny Welch said "No More Wacos,
No More Weavers" is a kind of motto for some of the groups.

The Waco confrontation ended in fiery death on April 19,
1993, exactly two years before the Oklahoma bombing. That is
also the anniversary of the 1775 battles of Lexington and
Concord, which began the American Revolution.

This year, April 19 loomed as the execution date for an
Oklahoma white supremacist, Richard Wayne Snell. He received
a lethal injection in Arkansas hours after the bombing, after
threatening the governor in a final statement: "Look over
your shoulder, justice is on the way."

"They think all this is significant," Welch said. "They see
themselves as patriots just like in the 1700s, taking a stand
against an oppressive government."

Eaton of the Wiesenthal center agreed. Subscribers to
extremist group literature "get sucked in by the propaganda.
... They know if they keep harping on these things enough
somebody's going to go out and do something."

A general resistance to the federal government is especially
pointed at such agencies as the Internal Revenue Service and
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, both of which
had offices in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Other factors, too, lead to suspicion, Welch said. Some see a
foreshadowing of the Oklahoma City attack in a novel that has
circulated for years in violent hate group circles, Welch
added. The book, "The Turner Diaries," by West Virginia white
supremacist William Pierce, describes a fictional truck
bombing of FBI headquarters in Washington. The explosive
device in the story used ammonium nitrate fertilizer and
detonated at 9:15 a.m.

The story's details roughly approximate the bombing in
Oklahoma City.

Pierce, reached at his compound in Hillsboro, W.Va., on
Friday, scoffed at any connection with his book, written 18
years ago: "It's really, really grasping," he said, noting
many adventure and spy novels include bomb plots.

Welch disagreed. The book's characters had one main purpose,
he said: "to create paranoia and fear in America."


... Pray for Jim Staal (see Psalm 137:9)
 * DaveRice@EdenBBS.com

