ON THE MODERATE FRINGE

By David S. Jackson

James ("Bo") Gritz, ex-Special Forces commander and Vietnam War hero, is well known in the Patriot movement. But its extremist credo leaves him cold. Though mad at Washington, he helped win the 1992 surrender of separatist Randy Weaver. TIME San Francisco bureau chief David S. Jackson talked to Gritz in Bakersfield, California. Excerpts:

TIME: What is the difference between you and Patriot figures like Mark Koernke and Linda Thompson?

Gritz: Koernke and Thompson are figuratively yelling "Fire!" in a theater. Koernke may be a janitor, but this guy is a very clever, very well-read man. And Linda Thompson is an attorney. There's no excuse for her telling people to go to Washington and bring their guns. Maybe they use this type of explosive, irresponsible rhetoric to draw crowds.

TIME: What about all these conspiracy theories?

Gritz: When I was up at Weaver's cabin [in Idaho], people were saying there were 30,000 U.N. Cambodians swarming down on us. You know what they were? This was right after a big fire season, and after fires go through a forest area, sometimes mushrooms pop up. So all the Chinatowns from New York to San Francisco sent every cousin and nephew and niece out there to pluck mushrooms. There was an army out there all right, but it was an army of old men, women and children picking mushrooms for Oriental grocery stores all over America.

TIME: What about the reports of menacing black helicopters?

Gritz: That's due to Mark Koernke's crap. When I was a young flight officer, I don't know how many times I circled around water towers trying to figure out where the hell I was at 500 ft. I'm sure glad some idiot wasn't out there thinking I was the Russians and shooting at me.

TIME: Do you think the government was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing in April?

Gritz: As a former demolitions instructor and professional saboteur, I know there was a method involved in this bomb that no one has brought out. It's called reflective wave, and it's the difference between an incandescent bulb and a laser beam. That bomb was focused, using a method that only professionals know about. This methodology is within a limited number of minds within the military who train the cia, and this makes me think there is something besides Timothy McVeigh here.

TIME: You are developing a home site near Kamiah, Idaho, for fellow believers. What is its purpose?

Gritz: Both liberals and conservatives think the government is after them. But I don't feel this paranoia. I don't fear anybody, and I don't hate anybody. If people could feel as comfortable and confident as I do, maybe we wouldn't have all this "Henny-penny, the sky is falling!" There ought to be a place to go. So we're building a constitutional-covenant community near Kamiah. The only requirement for moving in there-it has nothing to do with race, color, creed, sexual persuasion or anything else -- is that you are willing to stand up for the constitutional rights of your neighbors. There are no walls. As far as I know, there are no guns.

TIME: Whom do you trust?

Gritz: I trust what I can see. As soon as Americans see the government being held accountable for what it does wrong, then the body politic will lose its lesions. The unorganized militias will go back to what they were 10 years ago: a guy with a service rifle in his closet, and that's that.