Domestic terrorism remains a real threat, experts say

Thursday, April 14th 2005, 12:50 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Ten years after a homemade bomb ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, experts say the threat of another large-scale act of domestic terrorism remains real.

``There are extremist plots and crimes that go on every year,'' said Mark Pitcavage, who heads the Anti-Defamation League's efforts to track extremist groups and movements. ``Luckily, most of the major acts are prevented, but there are still people trying. There still are these angry homegrown groups and movements out there. There's no doubt about it.''

The biggest threat, Pitcavage said, comes from radical right-wing groups.

Although Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh wasn't officially a member of any extremist group, he shared their hostility toward the government, especially after federal agents stormed the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, in 1993, said Brian Houghton, director of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.

The siege in Waco ended on April 19, 2003, when fire swept through the Branch Davidian compound and more than 80 men, women and children were killed.

``He was outraged when that came to a fiery end,'' Houghton said. ``That was really what motivated him to do the bombing.''

Indoctrinated with the anti-government beliefs common in the militia movement that flourished in the mid-1990s, McVeigh committed the nation's worst act of domestic terrorism. His bomb, made of fertilizer and fuel oil, killed 168 people two years to the day after the deaths in Waco.

Now 10 years later, the militia movement is quietly experiencing a growth in activity with more paramilitary operations and smaller groups attempting to operate just below the radar of law enforcement and the media, Pitcavage said.

``What we've seen in the last couple of years is a new growth of the militia movement from that low point in the early 2000s,'' Pitcavage said. ``It's nothing like it was in its heyday, but we have seen new groups form and we have seen much more paramilitary activity taking place.''

Pitcavage said the ability of these groups or the race-based hate movement to spawn a domestic terrorist capable of mass killings is very real.

Membership in radical anti-government groups continued to increase for about a year after the bombing, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The project, which tracks extremist activity and monitors hate groups across the United States, estimated the militia movement peaked in 1996 with a total of 858 groups before membership started to dwindle in the latter half of the 1990s.

``It's a movement that is opposed to the government and believes the government is connected to conspiracy and murder,'' Potok said. ``Without question, Waco was the single most dominating factor of the militia movement.''

After the Oklahoma City bombing, law enforcement agencies increased their efforts to combat domestic terrorism, resulting in numerous arrests and convictions of extremist group members on charges ranging from weapons violations to conspiracy.

While some of these high-profile arrests scared away timid or fringe members, Potok said the downward spiral of the militia movement accelerated after the change in the millennium, when the doom-and-gloom predictions of right-wing leaders never came to fruition.

``The movement was obsessed with the millennial date change. They were predicting Armageddon and that computers and the banking system would collapse ... there were a million variations of that theme,'' Potok said. ``This drum was beaten so hard, that when Jan. 1, 2000, dawned sunny and bright with a nary a computer failing, the movement really fell flat on its face.''

Law enforcement's focus on terrorism also shifted dramatically from domestic groups after Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when the emphasis was placed on foreign terrorists, Potok said.

``Obviously after 9-11, there was a huge shift in the attention of the federal agencies, and I think it's obviously been overdone a little bit,'' Potok said. ``There's been an underemphasis on the domestic scene, which continues to produce some very dangerous people.''

Scott Chafin, supervisor of the FBI's joint terrorism task force in Oklahoma, said international terrorism is the agency's top priority, but that domestic groups also are being carefully scrutinized by the agency.

``Either one, domestic or international, is just as serious a threat to the public,'' Chafin said. ``We have resources devoted to both programs, and we're going to address whatever the threat is.''