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Whether the Michigan Militia's activities are quite this innocent is arguable. While dressing in camouflage gear and holding training retreats and rallies may be their main pursuits, it is clear that the members, along with those in similar groups throughout the country, nurture a profound paranoia about the Federal Government even as they express their deepest patriotism. Bureaucrats, militia members believe, are responsible for gun-control laws, like the 1994 Brady law and assault-weapons ban. The militias especially blame the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for the movement's twin tragedies: the deaths of white supremacist Randy Weaver's wife and son in a 1992 Idaho confrontation and the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians' compound in Waco, Texas, that resulted in the deaths of 82 cult members, including leader David Koresh. Mark Koernke, a prominent militia member who produces videos promoting patriot ideas and goes by the radio talk-show moniker of "Mark from Michigan," told assembled crowds at a Militia of Montana rally in Spokane, Washington, last December that Waco is a call to arms. "We don't have a choice," he said. "The next time this happens, we will be armed to the teeth . We are not going to be reading history; we are going to be making history, and that's exciting."
Although the Michigan Militia, along with members of other groups, has moved quickly to repudiate any connection with McVeigh or the bombing, the significance of the date on which it took place--April 19--was not lost on those familiar with the patriot movement. Says Ron Cole, a former leader of the Branch Davidian sect who describes himself as a patriot: "It's a date that has a significance like no other day of the year." On April 19, 1775, the Battle of Lexington--the opening salvos in America's Revolutionary War--began. On April 19, 1993, the siege at Waco ended in flames and despair. On April 19, 1995, Richard Wayne Snell, a member of the white supremacist group The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, was executed for the murder of a Jewish businessman and a black police officer. And when Timothy McVeigh rented the Ryder truck, he used a forged South Dakota driver's license on which the date of issue was listed as April 19, 1993. "He probably meant that he woke up on that day," says Cole. "I can see his perspective on that."
Though much is still not known about the men behind the deed, what is clear is that the very institutions they despise--the FBI, the ATF--were able to mobilize their forces with astonishing efficiency. The investigation depended, certainly, on serendipity, but it also proceeded with teamwork and precision When news of the blast came, disbelief turned rapidly into a blur of activity. Pentagon aides rushed to telephones to issue instructions. One of the first orders, State Department and Pentagon officials tell Time, was to begin immediately monitoring the passports presented by passengers wishing to travel overseas from airline terminals at Oklahoma City's airport. The FBI did not want a repeat of the Ramzi Yousef debacle, when the accused mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing managed to flee the U.S. just hours after that attack.