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His three videotapes, adherents claim, are owned by millions. His shortwave-radio show, The Intelligence Report, was yanked after the Oklahoma City bombing, but he continues to broadcast via satellite. He has given speeches in 44 states. Says Michael Reynolds, an intelligence analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klanwatch program: "He was an early bird in this particular cycle of right-wing extremism, and he has a style people want to hear.'' Koernke's defenders, like those of other militia grandees, note that he does not urge supporters to make a first strike on the government agencies they hate. Reynolds demurs: "Sure," he says, "many of the people attracted to him are weekend warriors, but you are talking about weapons training here, and you are also attracting people who are sociopaths, some of the same sort of bozos who made up the terrorist left in the '60s and '70s. You're putting out a hate-filled message, a paranoiac message, and you go beyond that and say, 'Get your guns, because it is coming,' and you've just raised their temperature another 25ยก."
Some recent journalism has suggested that many members of the much broader Patriot movement trace their involvement to a key negative experience with the Federal Government. A close look at Koernke's background, however, suggests not a sharp turn but a straight line. From his teens, Koernke (who declined to be interviewed for this story) has exhibited a fascination with guns and guerrilla warfare, an intense dislike of authority, a grandiose vision of himself with an attraction to the idea of martyrdom, and, as one ally puts it, the ability to "talk until most people have turned to sand." If anything, Koernke appears to have become increasingly himself. That mix of characteristics did not make him popular early on. But eventually he located an America, or part of an America, that prized them and, within a few short years, turned him from a near outcast into a leader.
Koernke's former neighbor in Gallagher Lake Estates (about 15 miles north of the dilapidated farmhouse Koernke, his wife and four children occupy today outside the town of Dexter) recalls him as friendless. On the 20-minute walk home from the school-bus stop younger children would taunt the gangly, bespectacled high school student and slap his books from his hands. His former classmates and teachers at Dexter High School remember him as having one or two friends but also, as one puts it, "some exotic ideas." Several remember he wore fatigues to school, a peculiar fashion choice at that time. He also brought his fascination with secret places with him. History teacher Hank Flandysz remembers lecturing one day when a noise emanated from beneath the floorboards. "I walked over, and there was a trapdoor in the floor that led into some maintenance tunnels for access to the heating pipes," he says. "The trapdoor lifted up, and there looking up at me was Mark Koernke. He asked me, 'What room is this?'"