"Police say a militant anti-abortion group called Army of God is behind letters to Planned Parenthood clinics this week that claimed to contain anthrax, although none have tested positive so far for the bacillus."
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20011018_457.html
WIRE: 10/18/2001 3:46 pm ET
By Marcus Kabel
DALLAS (Reuters) - America's anti-government militias, on the wane since the Oklahoma City bombing and the Y2K scare, are trying to drum up new interest and members after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks, experts and militias say.
While people who track militias are skeptical of a sustained revival, militia leaders say the suicide attacks in New York and Washington and the ensuing anthrax scare have been a "wake-up call" to the public that has left their phones ringing off the hook.
"There's a general fear now that we may be attacked again or the lights may go out, so people think they should go to the people who know how to handle survival and weapons," said Rick Hawkins, commander of the Missouri 51st Militia in Kansas City, Missouri.
"This is a good a time as any to recruit," he told Reuters, adding his most recent monthly meeting drew about 35 people, around twice the normal number.
Jim Strode, commander of the New Mexico Militia, said his group is offering to teach people about self-defense, weapons and surviving anthrax.
"I think people are starting to realize that their government can't protect them," Strode said.
At the same time, the Sept. 11 events and the government's response have revived many of the conspiracy theories harbored by militias about the federal government.
"At the very least, the government had knowledge of the attacks beforehand," said John Trochmann, co-founder of the Militia of Montana.
Trochmann, who claims the U.S. government had a hand in the Oklahoma City bombing, argues that it also had an interest here because the hijack attacks could help win passage of stricter security laws that he sees as totalitarian.
"The Homelands Bill has provisions that will take all military-style equipment away from the citizens, including weapons," he said.
Toting military rifles and camouflage garb, militia groups flourished in the early 1990s, preaching various mixes of survivalism, gun rights, distrust of the federal government and United Nations and a White supremacism that adherents often call "Christian Patriotism."
But the movement went into decline after the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bombing by Timothy McVeigh, widely considered a loner who believed in much of the militia philosophy, discredited the movement and scared away members revolted by the violent deaths of 168 people.
They hit another low when Y2K, the computer date rollover on Jan. 1, 200, failed to unleash the kind of apocalyptic economic and social collapse that many survivalists had warned about.
"Y2K was really the last straw. They pushed all this stuff about how martial law was coming, but nothing happened and a lot of people were left with a basement full of canned stew," said John Corcoran, co-author of the 1997 book "Gathering Storm" America's Militia Threat" and a professor at Boston's Simmons College.
Like Rick Hawkin's Missouri group, which says it has about 50 active members, most militias are small, experts said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, puts the total of militias at 194 in 2000 compared to 858 in 1996. The Anti-Defamation League estimates there may be as few as 5,000 militia members currently, down from 30,000 in the mid-1990s.
Corcoran and others who follow militias say they doubt there is much chance of a revival to the level of the mid-1990s, when the movement was driven by anger over gun control efforts and what they saw as FBI excesses in deadly sieges at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
"Militia leaders would like the public to think there is a revival. But we're not seeing any signs of people flooding into the militias," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Militias reject allegations that some members may be responsible for the anthrax scare prompted by letters to TV networks, the U.S. Senate and a Florida publishing house.
Police say a militant anti-abortion group called Army of God is behind letters to Planned Parenthood clinics this week that claimed to contain anthrax, although none have tested positive so far for the bacillus.
But the Militia of Montana put the blame on the opposite side of the political spectrum, claiming it had inside intelligence that the government was investigating university labs capable of producing anthrax.
"If anybody wants to send out anthrax, I would say it's the liberal or left-wing universities that want to change America anyway," Trochmann said.