Militias React to Bombing

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's "Inside the underground world of America's secret militias," in the May 1, 1995, Electronic Telegraph, reported some militia members' reactions to the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.

Some units are semi-clandestine; others are totally secret, adopting the cell structure of a proto-resistance force. ... I was given a glimpse of this hidden world last week in Arkansas when a source offered to take me "inside" the local underground. My guide -- a former police officer -- took elaborate precautions.

... A man in a grey business suit invited me into his office. He explained that he had once held top security clearance, working for the U.S. military in electronic countermeasures at NATO installations in Europe. ... Four members of his group are serving officers in the U.S. Air Force, he said, and another two are deputy sheriffs in county law enforcement. He claimed that his group has access to the secrets of the US government's security apparatus.

There are plenty of other militia units in the state ... The most visible group is the Central Arkansas Regional Militia, commanded by a retired Marine Corps major named Drew Raines.

... Ross Hullett, commander of the Oklahoma brigade, is part Cherokee Indian and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. In Oklahoma, he claims, there are 20 militia members underground for every one in the open.

"He's right," said a member of a clandestine unit that covers north Texas and southern Oklahoma. "There are four or five different groups in the shadows around here and we're talking about dangerous people. I mean savage, vicious people. I am one of them."

Behind it all, he says, is immense bitterness and pent-up anger over the Vietnam war: "Who are the people running this government? Aren't they the ones who dodged the draft and hid out in graduate school? Aren't they the ones who sent out the poor white trash to do their dirty work -- and then pissed on them?"

... "Our government has been lying to us for too long, and Waco was the last damned straw," said the Texan, a veteran of U.S. Special Forces. "Now we're telling them that they'd better straighten out this government and they had better straighten out Waco because, if they don't, it is going to get ugly ... You think you've seen terror? You haven't seen shit yet."