Gingrich Just Ignores Militia Madness

Last September, police in Fowlerville, Mich., stopped a car for a routine traffic check.

The three men in the car, all in their 20s, were wearing camouflage fatigues and had blackened their faces. They said they were members of the Michigan Militia and bodyguards for the well-known militia nut Mark Koernke.

The police searched the car. They found six loaded semiautomatic weapons, three revolvers, 700 rounds of ammunition, night-vision goggles, gas masks, knives, bayonets, two-way radios and handwritten notes indicating the three men were conducting night surveillance of law enforcement officials.

The men were arrested on weapons charges but were no-shows at their scheduled arraignment.

Instead, 50 other militia members turned up at the Livingston County Courthouse to protest the arrests.

“They called cops ‘punks in badges,”’ said Fowlerville Police Chief Gary Krause, “and they said the next time one of them was stopped, they’d shoot the cop.”

Welcome to the world of militia madness, the latest variant of the deadly virus of hate that continues to surge through America.

Just last month, three members of the Militia of Montana, a grotesque anti-black, anti-Semitic outfit, were arrested on a variety of charges, including threatening to murder judges.

In March, two members of the Minnesota Patriots Council were convicted of conspiracy charges for planning to use a lethal biological poison called ricin to kill federal employees and law enforcement agents.

Last September, four members of a militia group in Virginia called the Blue Ridge Hunt Club were charged with stockpiling machine guns. Investigators later said the group had planned to obtain more weapons by raiding a National Guard armory in Pulaski, Va.

A computer disk seized by federal agents contained draft copy for the group’s newsletter. It said, in part:

“Hit-and-run tactics will be our method of fighting. … We will destroy targets such as telephone relay centers, bridges, fuel storage tanks, communications towers, radio stations, airports, etc. … Human targets will be engaged when it is beneficial to the cause to eliminate particular individuals who oppose us (troops, police, political figures, snitches, etc.)”

Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is calling for congressional hearings on these heavily armed paramilitary groups.

“I am not saying that all of the militias are breaking the law or are violent,” said Schumer. “Nevertheless, some clearly are prone to violence. We know very little about them, and we need to know more.”

But House Republicans, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, apparently disagree.

Six days of hearings will be held on the tragic fiasco involving the federal government and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, which will give delighted Republicans plenty of opportunities to embarrass the Clinton administration.

And Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a presidential candidate who is running against the right-wingers, is planning militia hearings geared to his interests.

But Gingrich is blocking the kind of congressional inquiry that would throw a badly needed spotlight on paramilitary activity in this country.

The danger posed by heavily armed hatemongers thrashing about in a fog of paranoia was evident even before the catastrophe of the terrorist bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors the militia movement, said in a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno last year that the “mixture of armed groups with those who hate is a recipe for disaster.”

And Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which also has been studying paramilitary groups, issued a public warning in October about “angry bands” of heavily armed right-wing militants.

“To be ‘fed up’ with government is one thing,” said Foxman. “To call for armed resistance is quite another.”

He added, “We are especially troubled, but not surprised, that they are attracting racists and antiSemites.”

But none of this has moved Gingrich, who has been openly contemptuous of Schumer’s request for hearings. Perhaps he will reconsider.

Threats to attack government officials should not be a partisan political issue.

And if we have learned anything from Oklahoma City, it should be to take such threats seriously.