Tired Of Training For The Apocalypse

By Terry McCarthy

Norman Olson cut a sorry figure as he announced the disbanding of his Northern Michigan Regional Militia group last week. The man who met with Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols in 1994 (but later condemned the bombing) and who predicted in 1995 that the Constitution would be suspended within two years ended up suspending himself. Nobody was turning up any-more for his war games in the woods. "The interest just dwindled," says Olson. "It was time for the members to go on and do something else--spend more time with their families or their hobbies."

When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, right-wing doomsayers saw him as a leading horseman of the apocalypse. After the 1992 shootout at Ruby Ridge and the 1993 siege at Waco, suspicion of federal agencies and gun-control initiatives reached paranoid levels. Within days of the bombing, conspiracy theorists claimed that the Federal Government had caused the explosions so that it could justify new antiterrorist legislation. The number of active militia groups quadrupled in the year after Oklahoma City. A TIME cover story on the militia movement just after the bombing estimated that upwards of 12 million Americans "respond to the patriot rhetoric about a sinister, out-of-control federal bureaucracy." The final reckoning was nigh.

But it never came. As McVeigh prepares for his execution on May 16, the militia movement that identified with his anti-government rage is dying off too. The last presidential election robbed the movement of two of its favorite villains: Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno. Now middle-aged men who used to tramp through forests in fatigues and war paint are back in front of their TVs sipping beer and watching the game. Nationwide, the number of active militia groups has plummeted, from a high of 858 in 1996 to 194 last year, according to figures from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama-based human-rights group. Dozens of websites that became infamous after the Oklahoma City bombing have gone blank. "Tens of thousands of people got bored waiting for the revolution that never came," says SPLC spokesman Mark Potok.

Coordinated law enforcement also sapped strength from the movement. Some 20 states tightened laws against so-called common-law courts, through which disaffected citizens' groups had attempted to bypass federal authority over property and tax issues. At the same time the FBI was authorized to hire 500 new agents to combat domestic terrorism, and a number of Oklahoma City copycat plans were defused. In the past two years militia leaders have been jailed for plans to bomb power lines in Florida, federal buildings in Michigan and the Army base at Fort Hood in Texas.

Lawsuits against the more extreme groups have also taken their toll. Last October, in a case brought by the SPLC, the Aryan Nations white-supremacist group in northern Idaho lost its 20-acre compound near Coeur d'Alene. The Aryans are planning a parade with armed guards through the town this July, but police expect antimilitia protesters to outnumber marchers 25 to 1.

Butch Razey, a cherry farmer in Washington State who commands the 419th Yakima County Militia, blames the slump on a lack of "Y2Ks or anything like that." The smooth turnover of the clocks on Jan. 1, 2000, was a blow to many conspiracy-minded groups, which had predicted global chaos. "After Y2K," says Potok, "there were a lot of angry letters in the extremist publications saying, 'You've made fools of us--we have a basement full of supplies and nothing to use them for.'" But if the militias are fading, some of their paranoid fervor lives on. Take John Trochmann, who still runs the Militia of Montana. "If they kill McVeigh, they'll be destroying more evidence that points to the government," he says. But fewer Americans are listening.

--By Terry McCarthy. With reporting by Patrick Dawson/Billings, Heidi Marotz/Idaho Falls, Mike Roarke/Spokane and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit

With reporting by Patrick Dawson/Billings, Heidi Marotz/Idaho Falls, Mike Roarke/Spokane and Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit