by Dave Cook, photos by Jana Birchum
My whole life is
squeezed into this trigger. I can feel it there, my whole worrisome, tentativelife, all of the rage and uncertainty and weight of it balanced behind
my finger as I try to keep the barrel of the semi-automatic, Colt AR-15 assault
rifle level in front of me. The stock is jammed against my shoulder to absorb
the jolt, my head is pinned down over the sight, I can feel my heart pounding
against the gun and wait for my hands to steady.
Finally, I fire.
The gun jumps in my arms and the sound of the bullet rips through my temples
and across the field — and I have absolutely no idea where it went. “Do you
think you could ever defend yourself with one of these?” Pat Ball, owner of the
weapon, will ask me later. I’ve never thought about it before — I never
thought I’d have to — and the answer, I’ll have to admit, is probably no.
Because firing the Colt AR-15 — a weapon modeled after the military-issue M-16
that can shoot accurately from up to 600 yards as quickly as one can squeeze
the trigger — is a very serious thing. It’s also frightening and exhilarating,
the same drophammer whoosh surprising me each time I fire. Despite my
reluctance to say I’d turn this weapon on another human being, there are plenty
of people who would, and who are out there training to do so right now. They
are pissed off; they think something’s gone horribly wrong with this country,
that if they don’t have to use this weapon against the invading U.N. forces,
then they may have to use it against the treasonous elements in their own
government.
One can question the truth of their ideas and beliefs, but the numbers don’t
lie: Chip Berlet, an analyst with Political Research Associates in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, estimates that there are up to 40,000 militia members nationwide
training to use this weapon. Texas’ largest militia, the Texas Constitutional
Militia, claims 2,000-6,000 members — and it didn’t even exist two years ago.
Michigan, where I grew up, claims the largest militia in the country, estimated
at close to 10,000. Yet until the Oklahoma City bombing, I’d never heard of
them.
All right — you say you’re sick of hearing about Oklahoma City, sick of
hearing about militias, sick of this whole business about wackos with guns
roaming the hillside. Fine. Me, too. But consider this: Instead of thinning out
their ranks, the Oklahoma City bombing may have only strengthened the militias,
caused them to grow even more. And to get rid of them, the government may be
passing laws that do more to circumvent the Constitution than anything Joe
McCarthy ever dreamed of.
These were the among the first things I discovered when I began
investigating the militia movement in Texas last summer, and they surprised me
into wanting to find out more about the people involved. We have already heard
from the Bo Gritzes, seen the faces of old-time extremists like Montana’s John
Trochman and Michigan’s Norman Olson glaring at us from the covers of slick
magazines — but these men have always been involved in militias, in the
“patriot” movement, and listening to them alone does nothing to explain why the
movement has begun to appeal to so many other people. Indeed, at a national
meeting of militia leaders held earlier this month in Mountain Springs, Texas,
all of the men mentioned above were deliberately left off the guest list, as
the militias make new efforts to bring their image into the mainstream. It is
these people who have swelled the ranks of militias in recent years, and it is
only through talking with them, I believe, that we can find out what their
concerns really are, and how much of a threat they pose.
Militiaman
Pat Ball — who stands beside me grinning and flashing me a thumbs-up despitemy errant shooting — seems to be the very model of a modern militia member.
Ball has driven me out to the Austin Rifle Club shooting range on this warm
Saturday in June as my first primer on the militia movement. He’s young, big,
and burly, with a deep southern drawl. On the drive out here, he spouted many
of the beliefs that have come to be associated with militia members, including
a severe distrust of the FBI and ATF stemming from their misadventures in Waco
and Ruby Ridge. (The incident at Ruby Ridge involved the 1992 siege of Rudy
Weaver’s ranch in Idaho; Weaver was wanted for weapons violations. One federal
agent was shot and killed along with Weaver’s son in an exchange of fire; also
killed was Weaver’s wife, shot while standing in the doorway of her home
holding their infant daughter.) “All social movements need a spark to sort of
get them started, galvanize them,” Berlet has told me. “The Weaver and Waco
incidents did that.”
Ball also subscribes to the belief, popular among militias, that “eventually
the country’s going to split off into four or five countries, every one of
those reflecting the will of the people who live in them.” He adds that “the
dumbest thing Texas did was join the Union. We started out as our own country
and we should have stayed that way.” And to solidify this extremist image, he
has shown me a photo of himself and three other men decked out in combat
fatigues and camouflage paint, gripping assault rifles and grinning from the
edge of some woods.
At the shooting range, after I have emptied my magazine, Ball takes the gun,
reloads it, and graciously tries to convince me I did all right for my first
time. He then proceeds to calmly squeeze off a tight bouquet of bullseyes onto
the distant black dot of the target.
There is much more to Ball, however, than some extreme views and deadly
accuracy with a rifle. As we drive the 200 yards across the range to check our
scores, we talk politics. Ball reveals that not only does he still believe in
the democratic process, he’s actually somewhat of a Democrat himself, having
voted for Clinton and former Governor Ann Richards in the last elections. He
argues passionately, convincingly even, in favor of drug legalization,
comparing the current “War on Drugs” to Twenties prohibition. “Look what that
did to our country,” he says. And while Ball is reluctant to talk about his own
involvement in militias — at one point hinting that he used to belong to a
quasi-militia group in West Texas — he seems wary of them now, saying that
“there’s more people in them than you might think” and adding that “for the
most part they’re a bunch of wannabes.” Most of all, there is an underlying
decency about Ball; he handles both himself and his weapon with the utmost
civility and care, as conscientious about flipping on the safety when he passes
me the gun as he is about saying “please” and “thank you.”
I initially contacted Ball through a mutual friend because I was concerned I
wouldn’t be able to get any of the notoriously paranoid, “real” militia members
to talk candidly with me. But I was wrong. They are out there, and they are
more than willing to talk; in fact, the home phone numbers of my next two
interview subjects were given to me by a fellow writer, who got them on the
Internet. The problem becomes, perhaps, that they are too willing to
talk, too eager to bend your perception of them away from the harsh picture
that’s been painted by the media and some elements of the government. Are they
really, as they would have you believe, not so different than Pat Ball, merely
concerned about freedoms and gun rights? My first conversation with an active
milita leader does not lead to this conclusion.
Never Again
“There’s nothing that’s going to happen like Waco in Texas again,” Steve Brownmatter-of-factly asserts the first time we speak. After weeks of trying to
reach Brown, he has finally called me at home over the Fourth of July weekend,
and he has this voice, growling sore-throated over the phone like Darth Vader
on Nyquil, quickly filling in any openings his words might leave for questions
— but before he gets rolling I manage to ask him just what he means. “In a
situation like [Waco], the militias will be activated; we will make sure those
people come out alive,” Brown says. “We’re not going to watch women and babies
get burned again.”
The “we” Brown is referring to is the Texas Constitutional Militia (TCM),
founded less than two years ago as an umbrella organization for other militias
that were forming. There are six regions of the TCM, together covering the
state of Texas. Brown, commander of the southern region, says he has
representatives from 14 counties. Even Brown doesn’t have accurate numbers on
the notoriously hard-to-pin-down militia membership, but “a good estimate would
be 2,000 active, 6,000 who support us but don’t come to all the meetings.” And
he claims that his region drew record crowds to these meetings in the months
following the bombing.
Brown is reasonable enough at first, taking me to task for media coverage
which has portrayed militia members as “psycho, wacko nuts,” and explaining
that the militia is only concerned with “preserving the laws” and “getting back
to what this country is supposed to be all about.” But soon enough, the
paranoia appears, as Brown begins to speak of “outside influences which are
trying to disrupt us and make us weak.” According to Brown, these encompass a
broad array of organizations, including the U.N., which he calls “an
abomination” and believes is planning to “break up the Union.” The
Anti-Defamation League, which has long been at the forefront of monitoring the
militia movement, is “a dirty group.” Then there are the “ATF, DEA, FBI, IRS,”
who have “become the Gestapos and KGBs of the American experiment.”
His rhetoric soon swells into hate, which he disguises beneath a veneer of
Christian fervor: “We represent a threat to people that know no God, that look
to the state as God,” says Brown. “We’ve tolerated the butchering of millions
of babies a year. We’ve allowed homosexuality to be paraded up and down the
street as if it’s normal… We’re a country bent on destruction.
“My hope is solely in the body and blood of Jesus Christ,” he continues. “I
don’t have any hope for this nation as it stands — until we return to a
Constitutional republic.” Brown is on edge. When I press him about what this
means, if this is only to be accomplished through some violent confrontation,
he says, “We’ve got to change our nature as a people. The only way to do that
is to humble ourselves before God.”
He invites me to attend the next TCM meeting, to be held, as always, on the
third Sunday of the month. “Now quote me accurately and within context,” Brown
admonishes me before hanging up — “I know where you live.” He laughs, and I
try to — and then I carefully go over my notes to make sure I’ve got
everything straight. Brown spoke in such torrents that there are many stray
fragments I must cross out — but at least he was straightforward with his
extremism — unlike the next militia member I speak with.
The Texas Light Infantry
While Brown’s militia is the biggest, most of his members don’t have militaryexperience or training, and may be unprepared for a defense against government
attack. That’s where the Texas Light Infantry (TLI) — one of the oldest
paramilitary groups in Texas — comes in. The morning I meet TLI founding
member Neal Watt at an Owens Family Restaurant in North Austin, a television
crew has flown down from Washington, D.C., to interview him about the militia
movement. They haven’t arrived yet — but it’s easy to see how Watt’s
grandfatherly good looks would be more appealing to a television audience than
the rowdy-looking Ball, how his soft, easy accent would be more soothing than
Brown’s harsh growl. Still, he seems uncomfortable, uncommunicative, and after
a while it occurs to me that he might feel more at ease in well-worn combat
fatigues than the stiff suit he’s wearing, since, as he says, he has been “in
and out of the military for the last 34 years.” Watt was enlisted in the Army
and Navy Reserves, as well as the State and National Guards.
The TLI, which Watt says has about 250 members across the State of Texas, is
“kind of a veterans’ group — guys that miss the military. We’ve got Navy
Seals, Army Rangers, Green Berets…” The whole militia only meets once or
twice a year, while the rest of the time they gather in groups of about 60-70.
“We get together about once a month,” says Watt, “and crosstrain each other.”
But this is not the kind of crosstraining they make Nikes for: Watt’s group has
been working on reconnaissance missions, or guerrilla-style tactics on some
land in San Saba County; a group near Dallas focuses on standard infantry
maneuvers; and one outside Bryan-College Station has been training for urban
combat. When I ask Watt what the purpose of all this training is, he says it’s
just “an exchange of knowledge.”
While he never breaks into the kind of unreasonable rant which dominated my
interview with Brown, Watt demonstrates a sense of paranoia and betrayal that
goes beyond distrust of the government and clear into Oliver Stone-conspiracy
territory. Eventually, he takes out a copy of the Gunderson Report, an
unofficial analysis of the Oklahoma City bombing which purports to prove that
there must have been a second explosion — a second bomb — to cause all that
damage. Watt takes these allegations a step further, hinting that the building
was laced with charges — and thus it must have been an inside job. “There were
something like six DEA agents killed in Oklahoma City,” he says, “but there
were no ATF agents.” Is he saying that the ATF was responsible? He grins,
shrugs. “If I were the DEA,” he says, “I’d be having my own investigation.”
Watt works this into a broad mosaic of conspiracy, touching on everything from
the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War to the notion of foreign troops
being trained in the U.S. to attack its citizens.
Watt carries a cellular phone with him, and finally the camera crew calls to
say they might not be able to make it. Watt has a thirst for attention — and
not just from the media. Earlier, he laughed sheepishly as he told me about an
incident that occurred “about five years ago. It was outside Cedar Park.
Somehow or another, the FBI started asking the neighbors about us — so I
called [the FBI agent] and told him if he wanted to, we could all get together
and talk about it, so we did. He told us at that time that as long as we
weren’t breaking the law, `Have a good time.'”
Francisca Perot, an ATF official based in Houston, confirms that this is
pretty much her agency’s stance on militias, that “as long as they’re not doing
anything illegal, they don’t have anything to worry about from us.” San
Antonio-based FBI agent Mike Appleby echoes this statement, saying, “We don’t
target groups, and we definitely wouldn’t investigate a militia that hasn’t
done anything illegal.”
Changing Winds
President Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would change all that, however. Afterlistening to federal law officials describe the increasing threat of armed
militias and complain about the cumbersome procedures required to investigate
them during the Domestic Terrorism Hearings held in the wake of the Oklahoma
City bombing last spring, the president introduced this legislation. It would
give sweeping new powers to the executive to declare organizations “terrorist,”
and to ban even their lawful activities. It would also enable organizations
like the ATF and FBI to begin investigating them, allowing both electronic
surveillance and background checks of anyone who supports a terrorist
organization — even if such support only constitutes monetary donations. The
act even provides funding for the retro-fitting of phone lines — all phone
lines — so that agents can tap them from anywhere by remote. While the act
hits immigrants the hardest — suspending many due-process rights and allowing
“secret evidence” to which the accused is not given access, to speed
deportation of suspected terrorists — it is clearly also aimed at radical
elements at home. The legislation easily cleared the Senate last summer on a
91-8 vote, and two weeks later cruised out of the House Judiciary Committee on
a vote of 23-12.
In the fervor to appear “tough on terrorism” after Oklahoma City, the act
appeared to be headed for certain ratification once introduced on the House
floor. But it still hasn’t arrived there. Facing an odd coalition of opponents
— including the ACLU and NRA, as well as many of the more extreme liberals and
conservatives in Congress, the legislation stalled. What may keep it from ever
getting started again are, ironically, the same two incidents to which many
attribute the rise of the militia movement: Waco and Ruby Ridge —
specifically, the Congressional hearings on these incidents which have opened
many legislators’ eyes to the depth of problems within the ATF and FBI (see
box). One of the sponsors of the bill, Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Illinois), admits
that the Waco and Ruby Ridge hearings have “given substance to a lot of the
negative feelings about law enforcement.”
This has brought a sigh of relief from the ACLU, although officials there
remain wary. Gregory Nojiem, legislative counsel for the national office of the
ACLU, calls the bill “blatantly unconstitutional. Most of the crimes that [the
bill] classifies terrorist, there are already laws against that, so we don’t
need this legislation.” Political Research Associates analyst Chip Berlet, who
has a book on the militia movement due out next spring, goes even further,
calling the act “a lot of hot air. I don’t think it’s going to be effective
because the people who do those bombings are on the margins of social
movements, not the core. It won’t stop the terrorism, it won’t stop the
movement — all it does is erode our civil liberties.
“I think that these [militia members] are average people who are angry about
the economy and the direction the country’s going in,” adds Berlet. “I don’t
think allowing the FBI to run around and spy on them is going to convince them
[to stop].”
Taking a Meeting
But after Steve Brown’s bitter words when we first spoke, I’m half-expectingan army (or at least a battalion) of skinheads in combat fatigues to show up at
his TCM meeting on Sunday, July 17. The meeting is held in the conference room
of a La Quinta Inn off Loop I-10 in San Antonio, and I pass one lean and
hungry-looking man in a white uniform-style shirt on my way up the stairs. Once
inside the conference room, however, I find… kids. Lots of them (all Brown’s,
it turns out), goofing up and down the aisles between neatly arranged folding
chairs. And while there are a few angry-looking young men here, almost everyone
else is fairly unimposing: an elderly couple; a young, well-dressed,
middle-class couple; a woman in nurse’s whites sitting by herself. Nor are
their numbers imposing; until a few people come in late, Brown’s 11 children
outnumber the crowd.
And Brown himself is not what I expected after his growling diatribe over the
phone. In contrast to his voice, he’s a diminutive, bespectacled redhead. And
in contrast to his threatening tone earlier, he’s brought a message of
tolerance and inclusiveness to this meeting which — given the hyperpatriotic
rhetoric I’ve heard is standard for such meetings — sounds downright wimpy.
Brown opens the meeting with a scripture reading and prayer, but goes out of
his way to note that “this is not to the exclusion of those who are not of the
Christian faith, but we don’t feel that it’s offensive to those of other
faiths, either… We would ask if you are, please join with us anyway.” And
during the prayer, Brown asks that God “cause us each to be truly lawful, not
rebellious… We are not hating anybody because of what they are or who they
are…”.
I find myself peeking around during the prayer for signs that Brown is
exaggerating for my benefit, but his message when he begins speaking indicates
that he may not be. Brown has just returned from a meeting of statewide militia
leaders held, appropriately enough, in Waco. They’ve decided, he says, on a
“change of orientation.”
“We’re going to try to focus, to bring more people in, and then find out what
are [their] interests. People are going to gunshows and they’re buying quote
`assault’ rifles — they’re buying them for a reason, but they’re not showing
up here, they’re not showing up at other militias,” he says. “Why? Because they
don’t want to be identified with a bunch of people who are waiting for the
aliens to land on the White House lawn. We really want to focus on our right to
keep and bear arms,” Brown adds. “We are not Aryan Nation, we are not Christian
Identity [a fundamentalist, white-supremacist religious movement popular with
militias].”
The extent to which TCM — and militias everywhere, for that matter — have
been successful in portraying themselves as moving away from the more
disturbing views of extremism and closer to the increasingly popular gun rights
issues, goes a long way towards explaining their current popularity. This shift
in emphasis was confirmed at a national militia leaders’ meeting held this
month in Mountain Springs, Texas. “Most of us are good folks,” Raymond Smith,
colonel of a militia based in Fairfield, Texas, was quoted as saying in the
Dallas Morning News. “But if we have some that are a little far out, a
unified national command can put a guiding hand to them and level them out.”
This is a militia that Pat Ball could join.
If he were here at Brown’s meeting, he would certainly smile approvingly when
a young woman interrupts Brown’s speech to point out, “I wish we’d start
calling these weapons `defense weapons.'” And he would heartily join in the
ensuing conversation, which centers not around monthly TCM field training or
conspiracy theories, but on gunshow protocol (FYI: no Nazi memorabilia allowed
on the TCM table) and legislation the group is concerned about. “Has anyone
taken a look at the Anti-Terrorism Act?” Brown says. They also discuss the
“appropriately named” — according to Brown — HB 666. The bill has since
failed, but would have suspended search warrant protocol if police officers can
prove they acted in “good faith.” The bill’s counterpart in the U.S. Senate —
SB 3 — also failed, but to Brown and many other militia members, both bills
indicate increased government attacks on citizens’ rights.
There are other elements of the meeting, however, which indicate there is
still room for the Neal Watts, the more fringe beliefs, the extreme views. “I
don’t think most militia members even realize that the origins of the patriot
movement lie with white supremacy and those paranoid notions that the country
is run by secret societies of Jews,” Berlet has told me. Nonetheless, those
origins remain.
There is the literature spread on folding tables at the rear of the conference
room for members to peruse after the meeting. This literature is a veritable
menagerie of conspiracy theories, including an article detailing project
“Vampire-Killer 2000,” the U.N.’s supposed plan for world domination. Another
article alleges that Clinton purposely sent certain ATF agents in at the
initial raid at Waco to “get rid of them.” There are also Spotlight newspapers, published by the notoriously anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. The issue
I pick up includes articles on Watt’s Gunderson Report, as well as updates on a
Jewish group’s plans for world domination.
Closer to home is another item Brown has brought back from his leadership
meeting in Waco — the “Civil Mutual Defense Compact,” a document basically
stating that “if another militia is attacked [in Texas], we will render aid,”
according to Brown. The compact, which essentially puts in writing Brown’s
brash “no more Waco” promise from the first time we spoke, has been circulated
to all the regional commanders, who will take them to their members for
“ratification.” But just what constitutes aggression on the part of the
government? Brown insists that only a raid similar to Waco would prompt an
armed response, but members ought to read the fine print. “Anybody that’s
making laws that violate the Constitution… cannot be saying they’re serving
this country,” Brown has said early on at the meeting, “They’re undermining
it.” Some militias have gone so far as to “indict” lawmakers they perceive as
going against the Constitution and have attempted to arrest them for special
“trials.”
I ask a member after the meeting if he’s prepared to go fight in Brown’s
militia. Dressed in Dockers, a button-down shirt, and standing next to his
wife, this man looks like even more of a “regular Joe” than Pat Ball. “As far
as being physically able and equipped? No,” he says. “I’m interested in keeping
everything on a lawful level. If the government were interested in dissolving
militias,” he adds, “they’d quit messing with the Constitution.”
Is the ATF concerned about the prospect of militias banding together to oppose
raids or arrests? “I haven’t heard about that personally, but again I’m not
concerned,” says the ATF’s Francisca Perot. “I’ve heard about that happening in
other states, where law officers were kept from carrying out search warrants…
We haven’t had that problem in Texas yet.”
Aftermath
A week after the meeting, I visit the site of the former Branch Davidiancompound in Waco. Everything’s gone now — all the structures left standing
after the blaze have been bulldozed, the underground tunnels buried. Still,
just like the militia movement for which this has become the spiritual center,
people have been visiting in increasing numbers since the Oklahoma City
bombing. “We’ve been getting twice as many people since Oklahoma City,” says
Amo Bishop Roden, widow of former Davidian leader George Roden and de facto
caretaker of the property, which is still being held in escrow. The visitors —
coming from as far away as Nevada, Indiana, and Florida — mill around me as I
stand before a modest pile of dirt and garbage which lies 20 paces from where
the compound used to stand. The mound, no more than six feet high, is perhaps
the most distinctive feature remaining on the property.
“That’s where the government kind of swept everything together after [the
compound] was destroyed,” says a space-eyed woman from a new branch of the
Davidian sect, camping out here near the mound. This hill seems like a good
metaphor for the militia movement itself — a diverse bunch of extremists swept
together by the aggressive actions (both real and perceived) of the government.
In the garbage pile are snarls of rebar and razorwire, tattered streamers of
yellow caution tape, planks of rotten wood. And there is a lot of garbage in
the militia movement — the racist, separatist message of Christian Identity,
the acute sense of paranoia, the penchant for violent confrontation. The
mainstream media, as well as some elements of the government, have been quick
to dig up these elements as proof that we need tougher laws to stop these
maniacs. Judging from the meeting I went to and the people I spoke with,
however, I wonder if these militias are the threat that’s been sold to us. I’m
not going to say they’re not dangerous. Anyone holding an AR-15 — whether it’s
Neal Watt, Pat Ball, or Steve Brown’s 13-year-old son, Kyle — is potentially
dangerous. But there are other elements to the militia movement as well. There
are people who have legitimate fears and concerns about the path the country’s
taking, people who haven’t felt the economic upswing in their pocketbook —
people like Pat Ball. They are disenfranchised but not disconnected, pissed off
but still part of the Democratic process, frightened but not yet ready to
fight.
And there is more to this hill in Waco than garbage. Bishop Roden has
unearthed children’s bicycles from the mess — so badly warped and melted they
resemble clocks undraped from the branches in a Dali painting — and added them
to her tiny museum. There are the shoots of grass and sunflowers which are
growing again over all this land. And at the foot of the hill, poking out from
the rubbish and soil, there is a small, dirty replica of an American flag. n
This article appears in October 27 • 1995 and October 27 • 1995 (Cover).