Midwest extremists arrests evoke memories of OKC bombing

The arrests of nine people last week in the upper Midwest no doubt sent shivers through many Oklahomans. If any state is sensitive to the threat of domestic terrorism, it should be Oklahoma. The bombing of Oklahoma City’s Murrah Building on 19 April 1995 killed 168 people. It remains the U.S.’s deadliest home-grown attack.

Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel writes that whether the Apocalyptic Hutarees’ alleged plan to attack police in April was meant to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing may never be known, the possibility is inescapable. “It’s certainly suggestive,” said David Cid, the executive director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, formed in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing to train law enforcement officers in counterterrorism measures.

Cid, a former FBI counterterrorism specialist, said signs of potential violence had been evident for some time. “In March 2009 we felt something would happen within a year,” he said. “We missed it by about a month.”

Cid noted a slight increase in militia-type activity around Oklahoma in recent months, but he said it is important to draw a distinction between “those who enthusiastically oppose something and those willing to kill people.” “We haven’t seen anything that constitutes a threat,” he said.

Some of Oklahoma’s better-known extremists and paramilitary organizations have left the state or faded from the public consciousness. Dennis Mahon, the former Catoosa resident whose White Aryan Resistance — W.A.R.— gained notoriety after the Oklahoma City bombing, was arrested last year in connection with an Arizona bombing.

Elohim City, a white separatist compound in Adair County reputed to have had connections with several violent groups in the 1980s and 1990s, has kept a low profile for the past decade.

“The tone of attacks on the Obama administration and the health care reform package, coupled with the arrest of the Hutarees and a reported attempt to blow up the home of a Virginia representative’s brother, have turned attention to right-wing extremists,” Krehbiel notes. One group, Guardians of the Free Republic, sent messages last week to at least thirty governors, including Oklahoma’s Brad Henry, warning them to resign or be removed.

Cid, however, said authorities should not become too preoccupied with the left or the right. “If we focus exclusively on the right wing, we’ll miss something else,” he said. Cid warned of continued threats from al Qaeda and predicted increasing danger from environmental organizations such as the Earth Liberation Front, which the FBI classified as the top domestic terror threat a decade ago.

Those who go from activism to violence, Cid said, tend to become so narrowly focused that they lose contact with the people around them. “When I talk to people about this, I use the metaphor of looking through the Hubble telescope backward. Instead of seeing the broad picture, they are zeroed in on a very small detail. They become fixated on one issue and do not have much balance in their lives,” he said.

Someone “crawling around in the woods and shooting at targets of politicians they don’t like” is not necessarily ready to shoot at the real thing, Cid said. “There are a very small number of people willing to engage in violence,” he said. “The challenge is to find them.”