A NEST OF VIPERS

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Strange things were happening in the woods. Last November agent Jose Wall of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Phoenix got disturbing information from people who had been through nearby Tonto National Forest. A deer hunter said he had been stopped by a group of men dressed in camouflage and armed with guns. They warned him to turn back, saying they were "security" and hinting they were with the government. The hunter didn't believe them. But something about their eyes, not to mention their weapons, made him think arguing would be imprudent. He ran into other people forced to retreat by the armed men--a Boy Scout troop. After the hunter's call, agent Wall drove out to Tonto. Near an abandoned mine, he found a crater almost big enough to swallow a car. It was recent. Someone had been using powerful explosives.

Last week, after an 8 1/2-month undercover probe, federal prosecutors announced who they thought that someone was: a little-known Phoenix-based paramilitary group by the name of the Viper Militia. Last Monday ATF agents arrested 10 men and two women alleged to be members of the group. In a series of simultaneous raids, agents found an arsenal that included two machine guns, six rifles and 56 boxes stuffed with 11,463 rounds of ammunition, as well as hundreds of pounds of chemicals similar to those used in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Agents also discovered a videotape in which one of the Vipers gives a guided tour of nearby Federal Government buildings--the FBI, the IRS, the ATF, the Immigration and Naturalization Service--along with detailed instructions on how to blow each of them up.

Militia watchers were stunned that a group with so much weaponry and such big plans could have maintained so low a profile. Says Jack McLamb, a former police officer who publishes Aid & Abet, a Phoenix-based newsletter sympathetic to the militias: "We weren't aware of the Vipers, and that's what's surprising to us. We thought we were on top of things." What the Vipers may be is part of the shifting fringe of the disparate militia movement. These groups, says Richard Romley, chief prosecutor for Phoenix and Maricopa County, "pop up and go away sometimes overnight. They come into being and disperse. They don't want to be big because they worry about the focus that will be placed on them." Indeed, the Arizona Republic reports the Vipers may have broken away from the larger Alliance in Militias and then split into two factions--with the second group still on the loose.

The 12 Vipers, who face charges including illegal-weapons possession and conspiracy, are seemingly unobtrusive, working-class folk. Randy Lynne Nelson, 32, the alleged Viper leader, is a house painter; Dean Carl Pleasant, 27, another suspect, is a former doughnut maker; Henry Alfred Overturf, 37, is a bouncer for a local strip club; Ellen Adella Belliveau, 27, worked for AT&T. It was Belliveau who allegedly suggested during one meeting that the militia retaliate against the families of federal agents in case Vipers were arrested. None of the others apparently agreed with her.

How did they blend in so well? The state relaxed its gun-control laws two years ago, and Joel Breshin of the Arizona Anti-Defamation League points out that, "it's not unusual in Arizona to see people walking around in Army camouflage or walking to and from their car with a gun...What's so scary is that the [Vipers] were so successful at hiding their plan that other militia groups didn't even know this group had been plotting. That showed true dedication to their cause."

There were hints of trouble. Pleasant ran unsuccessfully for a state senate seat in 1994, and the man who beat him, John Kaites, says Pleasant pulled out a .45-cal. handgun during a meeting and put it on the table. "The guy had too many screws loose to have a sincere conversation," says Kaites.

"I thought it was kind of silly--all these grown men dressed up in Army fatigues and stuff," recalls Don Touvell Jr., a dental-office worker who was recruited by the Vipers but declined to join. "They did talk in front of me about how they felt about having their guns. [Nelson] carried on all the time that if the ATF came and tried to take his guns from his house, he would defend himself. But I thought it was all talk."

Law officials were concerned it was more than talk, so the ATF reportedly recruited an employee of the Arizona state game and fish department as an infiltrator (his name is secret for fear of reprisal). Knowing the area and possessed of extensive firearms training, he could talk the talk. According to the Arizona Republic, his beard and tattoos completed the picture.

The undercover operative's riskiest encounter with the militia was one of his first. When he asked to join, he was told his phone records had been checked (apparently by Belliveau, the AT&T worker) and the militia leaders had some concerns about the operative's phone traffic. The militia insisted on checking out his apartment. Fortunately, the feds had decorated it to fit the operative's cover story.

Soon the operative was accepted as a Viper member, taking a "militiaman's oath" in which he promised to kill anyone attempting to infiltrate the militia and seek retribution if any member was arrested. Even as he took the oath, he was wearing a body wire. Over the next few months he reported that Viper Gary Bauer allegedly boasted about a rocket he built that could "take out a police car." Finis Walker, a Viper "captain," said the group's heavy weapons were needed to deal with swat teams, and the explosives were necessary to destroy heavy armor. Soon after the group began to discuss "urban warfare" and "race riots and martial law," the ATF moved in.

The group's sophistication surprised officials, who hauled away computers and hard and floppy disks. "They were using the computers to track down anything they could on the government, especially any laws having to do with weapons," says Keith Howland, the maintenance supervisor of the apartment where accused vipers Belliveau and her husband David lived. "Dave had so many files and papers, you couldn't believe it. Sometimes he would spend a whole day on the computer downloading information on the government."

"Militias are not new, but the violence or potential for violence in a cell or two in each militia is increasing," says ATF director John Magaw. "The Internet clearly has allowed them to communicate back and forth, talk about the rhetoric and encourage each other to do things."

Even so, says FBI agent Bruce Gebhardt, who heads the bureau's Phoenix office, "a lot of these individuals are copycats and wannabes. They hear the rhetoric of one and repeat it to the other. Are they really violent, or are they expressing their First Amendment rights? There's a line here we have to watch very closely." And the Vipers' defenders say the ATF has got it all wrong. These were good ole boys out for some fun and games in the woods. How evil could they be if one Viper named his machine gun Shirley and the militia planned a rendezvous at Tiffany's Cabaret, where Overturf worked as a bouncer? But, prosecutors charge, eventually the fantasies became all too much like an explosive device, just a spark away from disaster.

--Reported by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles, Elaine Shannon/Washington and Kathy Shocket and Richard Woodbury/Phoenix

With reporting by PATRICK E. COLE/LOS ANGELES, ELAINE SHANNON/ WASHINGTON AND KATHY SHOCKET AND RICHARD WOODBURY/PHOENIX