Appearance In D.C. A Success, Militiamen Say

Leaders of the Militia of Montana believe they successfully showcased the movement before the nation during last month’s congressional hearing.

“Our message was delivered to the American people and the Senate got it too,” co-founder John Trochmann said. “The Senate got their comeuppance.”

Trochmann, Bob Fletcher and Michigan Militia leader Norm Olson were among those testifying before a the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism about the rise of the militia movement in the wake of the deadly Oklahoma City bombing.

But Ken Toole of the Montana Human Rights Network contended the only thing they showcased was their paranoia.

“Anytime they have a sustained presence in front of a camera they reveal themselves,” Toole said. “Ordinary people looked at them and said, ‘Norm Olson is nuts. Bob Fletcher is certainly nuts, and John Trochmann is a nut.”’

The militia leaders were not happy with the coverage of the movement in two national magazines.

Esquire writer Dan Voll, who spent two weeks in Montana, wrote that Trochmann’s views “are being sanitized for the press.” He cited Trochmann’s open espousal last winter of Christian Identity beliefs that blacks and Jews should “go back where they came from.” Voll also wrote that Trochmann said the militia had a weapons cache near Noxon.

And New Yorker writer Michael Kelly described Fletcher as “a man of no obvious consequence at all. … Fletcher is a conspiracist. He is alive with conspiracies. They whir in his mind and welter in his heart, and they fill him so full of outrage and nervousness that he cannot ever stay still.”

Fletcher and Trochmann accused the media of not doing their job of exposing what they called the “New World Order” plot to take over the country.