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Many who know the Nichols brothers, who grew up not far away in Lapeer, insist that they cannot be connected with the bombing. "I just can't believe they could have done something like this,'' says Mike Innes, 35, a dairy farmer who buys feed from Nichols and lives only a few miles away. Innes and others described James Nichols as a good, hardworking organic farmer in a ragged rural area where the work has got increasingly tough and the small crop and dairy farms are being gobbled up by larger owners. "Jim Nichols works as hard as anyone I know," says Dan Cooper, who lives one mile down the two-lane blacktop, adding that for the past few weeks Nichols has been busy preparing the farm for the spring planting.
These neighbors acknowledge that Nichols was no great fan of the government; he refused to participate in federal farm programs, for instance, and aired complaints frequently at local school board or township meetings. "They feel there's too much government intervention in every aspect of your life," Izydorek explains. The Washington Post, however, reported a more grisly version of Nichols' activities: neighbor Dan Stomber claimed the brothers, along with McVeigh, were amateur bombmakers who would call him over to watch them set off bombs made with "household chemicals and plastic jugs, mostly."
It was their antigovernment convictions that led at least McVeigh, and quite possibly Terry Nichols, to search for comrades among the young and growing Michigan Militia, a right-wing antigovernment brigade founded in April 1994 that now claims to have brigades in 66 of the state's 83 counties. Terry told Izydorek he was a member of that group, as well as another national confederation who call themselves "patriots." John Simpson, a militia member and skilled-trades worker at General Motors, denies the Nichols' involvement with the Michigan Militia, which claims some 12,000 members. "[Terry] came to one of our meetings and wanted to talk about a tax revolt, having to have a driver's license and eliminating the government," Simpson told Time. "We did not believe in his tactics-particularly the stuff about a revolt."