Introduction: The militias that are the most
well known are not necessarily the ones that are the most
dangerous. There is less chance that the Militia of Montana,
for instance, will commit a major criminal act than there is
that it might serve to introduce to each other individuals
who are more radical than the group as a whole, and who may
break off from the group in order to accomplish their ends.
This profile is an example of one such group, a collection of
radical misfits who spun off from a larger group to form an
unnamed yet extremely dangerous militia cell. Their goal?
Mayhem and destruction.
For the officers and men of the 178th
Military Police Detachment, the day was occasionally
difficult but not too eventful. Tasked with traffic control
for the 1997 "Freedom Fest" celebration at Fort
Hood, Texas, they had to insure that the 50,000 or so
expected visitors to the military installation came and went
in orderly fashion on that warm Fourth of July.
The "Freedom Fest" had become an annual
attraction for the people of the central Texas town of
Killeen. This year it featured marathons, concessions,
military bands, carnival rides and community activities. The
Military Police also took part in these activities--they
devised an "Identi-Kid" operation for parents.
Mothers and fathers could get packets that included Polaroid
snapshots, fingerprints and other descriptive information
about their children--in case something should ever happen to
their sons and daughters. Capping the day's events was a
massive fireworks display in the late evening, with more than
$28,000 worth of fireworks paid for by the Fort Hood Recycle
Program. After that, the Military Police had to help the
attendees leave the military base without more than the usual
delays. It was close to midnight before the long day was
over.
And yet the day could have been far longer if it had not
been for some undercover state police officers in faraway
Missouri. The Military Police could have been extracting
casualties rather than directing traffic. The fireworks could
have been eclipsed--or even preempted--by far more deadly
explosions.
It was that close.
At the Colorado Bend State Park that day, in nearby San
Saba County, FBI agents arrested two men for possession of
illegal weapons: Bradley Glover, 57, a resident of Kansas,
and Michael Dorsett, 41, who lived in the Dallas-Ft. Worth
area. Though arrested on weapons charges, the suspects appear
to have been involved in something far worse: a plot to
launch an attack on Fort Hood that Fourth of July. Glover and
Dorsett had become convinced that the military installation
was being used to train Communist Chinese troops in
connection with a New World Order conspiracy. The arrests did
not stop with Glover and Dorsett. Within days, a total of
seven individuals in three different states had been
arrested--all members of the same group.
The full extent of the conspiracy remains to be uncovered,
yet what is known already provides a tantalizing glimpse into
the shadowy world of militias and anti-government extremists.
While the members of many such groups are no more dangerous
than malcontents of other stripes, satisfied with meeting
occasionally to grumble and spin tales of black helicopters,
but not particularly inclined to commit violent acts, within
and on the periphery of the movement are individuals of a
different sort, possessed of an implacable anger and a
certainty of conviction that admits no alternatives to their
extreme beliefs. Bored with the inactivity of their
associates, convinced that imminent action is needed, they
drop in and out of groups, announce their views like
conspiratorial Cassandras, and look for other people of like
minds.
Occasionally they find them.
![rule](http://web.archive.org./web/20160518005037im_/http://archive.adl.org/mwd/milgraph/rule1.gif)
When will the hostilities begin? This was a question that
dogged the mind of Brad Glover. War of some sort was a
certainty; there was no doubt about that. Though there had
been years of government malfeasance--obviously to further
nefarious goals--the signs were pointing toward an imminent
collision. Nothing seemed to indicate that more than the
bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City,
obviously engineered by the federal government itself as an
excuse to crack down on the "patriot" movement.
When Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the credulous British reporter
for the Sunday Telegraph, interviewed Glover in April
1995 not long after the bombing, the militia activist stated
that "it's only a matter of time now before the shooting
war begins."
How would the war begin? Glover's vision was clear. The
bombing would lead to government-sponsored anti-terrorism
legislation that would impose a crackdown on militia groups.
In response, the militia would resist. Initially, it wouldn't
be that difficult. "If this thing goes down,"
Glover predicted in May 1995, "there's going to be an
extremely large number of U.S. military that's coming to our
side with their weapons. They'll turn like a dog on a
cat." The militia would easily defeat the government
forces: "We can whip those guys. We can take out the
so-called ninja wanna-bes. We'll beat 'em quick." More
problematic were the UN forces, for Bill Clinton would surely
appeal to that body for military forces to put down the
rebellion. "That's what worries us," Glover said.
"Then we're gonna be fighting big time."
Perhaps they would, but in the meantime Glover was in the
spotlight. Initial reports that Oklahoma City bombing
suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were members of
the Michigan Militia had caused television stations and
newspapers everywhere to turn their attention to this new
manifestation of anti-government extremism. Glover was more
than happy to oblige reporters looking for a story. After
all, he was the self-styled commander of the Southern Kansas
Regional Militia, an important man. He could--or so he
claimed--mobilize 1,000 militiamen in southern Kansas alone.
Like many other militiamen--and like Timothy McVeigh--he had
been mesmerized in early 1994 by Indianapolis attorney Linda
Thompson's conspiratorial videotape "Waco: the Big
Lie." He had gone on to form small paramilitary groups
with names like the Southern Kansas Regional Militia and the
First Kansas Mechanized Infantry. This was rather more
glamorous than his real world job as a sometime computer
consultant.
"Brad Glover is ready for war," wrote
Knight-Ridder reporter Judy Thomas that spring, entranced by
his martial appearance. "Last week, the Towanda man got
his full head of hair cropped short. He made sure his
bulletproof vest and military laser night-vision goggles were
in good condition. He readjusted his combat helmet so it
would fit snugly. His pale yellow pickup, stocked with
bottled water, medical supplies, food and clothing for any
climate, is ready to move on a moment's notice. His rifles
and ammunition are close enough to get to in seconds. And he
doesn't hesitate to draw his handguns on strangers who come
onto his property."
Glover repaid her attention with fiery rhetoric.
"Realize one thing," he instructed her. "We're
not turning against the government, the true, approved
Constitution of the United States. We're turning against a
rogue element, a cancer against the body. And we're going to
cut that cancer out and restore the health of the
country."
Brad Glover was ready for war, yet the crackdown he
anticipated never came. Perhaps it was as Mark Koernke
suggested in his videos and speeches, that the actions of the
"patriot" movement were keeping the New World Order
forces at bay. Or perhaps that "rogue element" was
merely plotting behind the scenes. Whatever the case, Glover
was not about to cut down on his own activity. Long in touch
with militia leaders in other states, by the fall of 1995
Glover became a national council member of a group of
militias across the country led by South Dakota militia
figure John Parsons.
The confederation, called the Tri-States Militia, held an
organizing meeting in Texas in October 1995. "There is a
thunder rolling across this country," said Tri-States
leader Parsons at the meeting, "and what you're looking
at is the lightning bolt in that thunder." But at this
meeting Glover was somewhat less confrontational, at least
during that segment open to members of the press. "We
have two arms," he explained. "The political side
and the military side. We hope the political approach will
solve our country's problems, but if the situation
deteriorates to the point where they deny our political
efforts then we have the other side." Still, he
suggested, the militia was simply the "original
neighborhood watch." However, an attendee at the meeting
later characterized his impression of Glover as a "crazy
and dangerous" person, one who tried to push others into
overt action at the meeting.
What Glover did not know was that the situation which was
about to deteriorate was not the country's, but his own
position within the fractious militia movement. The first
fumble came as a result of the Tri-States Militia itself,
which collapsed amid recriminations and acrimony only six
months after its creation when it was revealed during the
bombing conspiracy trial of Oklahoma Constitutional Militia
leader Willie Ray Lampley in the spring of 1996 that John
Parsons had essentially been a paid FBI informant, accepting
some $1800 monthly to run the Tri-States "National
Information Center." As the organization disintegrated,
members were quick to blame Parsons and each other for a
variety of crimes. Not unscathed was Glover, whose
predictions of war and calls to action had already irritated
the relative moderates among the Tri-States members.
To Alabama militia figure Mike Vanderboegh, Brad Glover
was an "agent provocateur," paid by the government
to entice patriots to commit illegal actions. Glover, claimed
Vanderboegh, "was tossed out of the organization for
scaring little old ladies on patriot shortwave with tales of
millions of jabbering communists poised to invade from
Mexico...his mental health was the subject of intense and
frequent debate during his association with Tri-States, and
from personal observation I would say that he is either
looney tunes or crazy like a fox...It would be fair to say
that he is an unstable personality with paranoid ideations
[sic]. He started out with a pretty fair constitutional
militia unit in Kansas, but his inherent instability caused
most of his troops to vote with their feet to other, more
responsible commanders (ie, non-nutburgers that didn't
propose to START a war). Glover has a serious John
Brown-complex and has spoken of sparking the second American
Civil War. He just can't seem to figure out where Harper's
Ferry is at."
What particularly irritated Vanderboegh was Glover's
response to the "siege" of the Montana Freemen in
Jordan, Montana, in March 1996, when FBI agents arrested
Leroy Schweitzer and Dan Petersen and began a standoff with
other Freemen that lasted for 81 days. Although most militia
members stayed away from the standoff, some of the more
radical among them itched to support the Freemen in their
struggle against the government. Glover's friend Stewart
Waterhouse even went so far as to break into the Freemen's
perimeter and join them. Within days of the arrest of
Schweitzer, Glover issued via fax a pronouncement titled
"Operation Worst Nightmare," which called on
militia units to rise up and participate in a number of
activities--from destruction of federal facilities to
"confiscating" weapons from gun stores to seizing
jails--should the federal authorities use military force
against the Montana Freemen. "We must make every effort
to avoid open conflict at all costs, but let us be clear if
the federal [sic] step across this line [using military
force] the constitutional militia have no choice."
Vanderboegh's attacks on Glover were widely distributed
and were echoed by others in the movement. While Glover still
had contacts among the more radical members of the
"patriot" community in Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
Nebraska and Missouri, he had lost the support of the
"moderate" wing of the militia movement. Perhaps in
response, Glover began to associate with groups and
individuals who made some of the people in the militias look
like weekend warriors indeed. Although his movements and
activities for much of 1996 are still unclear, at some point
he began associating with common law court activists,
including Bill and Karen Hanzlicek (convicted in the spring
of 1997 for passing counterfeit checks made by the Montana
Freemen), and extremists in St. Marys, Kansas, associated
with the safe-sounding St. Pius X Society. This latter group
has included Barry Nelson (who traveled with Stewart
Waterhouse to Jordan, Montana), Richard Frank Keyes III (a
participant in the standoff near Ft. Davis, Texas, involving
the common law group calling itself the Republic of Texas),
and common law court activist Ronald Griesacker, among
others.
But the associations that ended up putting Brad Glover in
a jail cell stemmed from the Third Continental Congress. The
Congress was itself largely the product of extremists on the
outs with more restrained elements. In the summer of 1996
former Michigan Militia leaders Norm Olsen and Ray Southwell
came up with the idea of holding a third "continental
congress" to redress the problems that plagued the
nation. Not coincidentally, such a congress might also
restore the battered reputations of Olsen and Southwell,
ousted from the Michigan Militia after Olsen's claims that
the Oklahoma City bombing was perpetrated by the Japanese
government in retaliation for CIA involvement with the Tokyo
subway gas attack (actually conducted by a Japanese cult).
For organizer Ray Southwell, the Third Continental
Congress would operate as a directing body for all of the
militia groups in the nation. It could then "reestablish
Justice in America for all the people, whatever color they
may be, or whatever faith system they may observe."
This, Southwell believed, was "God's will." Norm
Olsen was similarly fatalistic. "My goal is not to plan
a revolution, for revolution will come," he prophesied.
"My goal is not to point fingers, lay blame or find
fault, for few doubt the crimes of the present de facto
government. My goal is not to cast support to politicians or
to shore up the broken machine that the federal government
has become. Rather, my goal is to establish the Republican
Provisional Government."
The Third Continental Congress held its first meeting in
Kansas City, Missouri, in late October. Only a dozen
delegates were on hand for opening ceremonies, due to bad
weather, but a few more straggled in over the next few days.
Attendees included a number of the more prominent
hand-wringers in the movement, including Sarah Lowe, whose
husband had recently been voted president of the Republic of
Texas (the previous president had been impeached after a week
in office) and conspiracy fan James Vallaster, also of Texas.
The meeting, held at a Holiday Inn, produced little but talk,
although subsequently Southwell issued a manifesto calling
for a Continental Defense Force, which was simply his
proposal for unifying the militias under Third Continental
Congress leadership all over again. A second meeting of the
Congress took place in Independence, Missouri, in January
1997, but nothing decisive emerged.
For a few delegates, however, the inaction itself produced
decision. If Southwell's Continental Congress would not take
action, perhaps they could form one that would. Ronald
Griesacker and several delegates to the Continental Congress,
Kevin and Terry Hobeck of Ohio and another couple, Dennis and
Ardith Fick, decided to form their own Continental Congress,
which reportedly met in Silver Lake, Indiana, in February
1997. Brad Glover was naturally a member. Thomas and Kimberly
Newman joined from Wichita, Kansas. Michael Dorsett joined up
from Texas. From Wisconsin came Merlon Lingenfelter, Jr.,
known to many as "Butch." And unbeknownst to
Griesacker, Glover and the others, undercover officers from
the Missouri State Highway Patrol also joined the group and
met with them in Towanda, Kansas, in April 1997 as they began
to plan. The officers had attended the Continental Congress
meeting in January and became concerned about the radical
statements that the splinter group was making. It was decided
to begin an investigation.
The group's members were a strange combination of the
banal and the bizarre. The Hobecks owned a trucking firm in
Ohio. Others were not so mundane. Corrections officer Ronald
Griesacker, for instance, was a peripatetic figure in the
patriot movement, involved with the Republic of Texas, the
Washitaw Nation, the common law court movement, the militias,
and other odd groups. When the Republic of Texas kicked him
out in late 1996, he and Glover tried the following spring to
form a group called "The Preamble People," which
seemed to promote some of the same check scams popularized by
the Montana Freemen. This attempt was apparently abandoned as
other plans took more definite shape.
Perhaps one of the most interesting of the conspirators
was Merlon "Butch" Lingenfelter, Jr., a 37-year-old
dairy farmer and house painter who believed in a vast Jewish
conspiracy that controlled the federal government, the
banking industry, the media, and the entertainment industry.
Lingenfelter felt he had a commitment to expose the
"International Zionist Jew bankers who run everything
else." In this, as in other things, he was guided by his
father, Merlon Lingenfelter, Sr., now deceased. Together they
filed court papers demanding that government officials
respond to their charges about Jewish influences.
The Lingenfelters had a family history of such activity.
In the 1980s they became influenced by the ideology of the
anti-government group Posse Comitatus; this eventually
provoked a confrontation in the tiny town of Weslaco in
southern Texas. The Lingenfelters joined a UFO cult called
the "Outer Dimensional Forces," nominally led by a
man who called himself "Nodrog" who built a base
for UFOs to land. The ODF's prize possession was a
fifth-dimensional Armageddon Time Ark which would be used to
rescue a chosen few from Armageddon (Nodrog sold spaces
aboard the craft). Though Nodrog was long thought harmless,
Posse adherents like the Lingenfelters gave it a more
sinister bent. After ODF members clashed with local
authorities, Lingenfelter, Sr.'s other son, Mark Alan, used a
pipe bomb to blow up a car in front of the paint store where
the mayor of Weslaco worked.
At first, Lingenfelter, Sr., represented Mark Alan, which
under the circumstances was probably unfortunate, because at
times the father's connection to reality seemed tenuous.
"Your President, all supporting Bloodsuckers of the
United States, plus all Bloodsuckers of Canada and Mexico,
have been duly served and convicted in the Outer Dimensional
Forces Foursquare Court at Alternate Base, of Triple High
Treason," he informed a Brownsville newspaper. Later,
Mark Alan represented himself, but with no better results. In
1986 a federal jury convicted Mark Alan Lingenfelter for the
pipe-bombing incident. It was not surprising that his
brother, Merlon Jr., might be disposed toward radical actions
a decade later.
Another conspirator with dubious family ties was Michael
Dorsett. Dorsett was the son of Leonard Raymond Dorsett, a
Fort Worth police officer fired in 1962 for conducting
"subversive activities" which included collecting
police files and monitoring radio calls. His son Michael
spent a few years in the Navy, then worked variously as an
insurance adjustor and a roofer. However, by the mid-1980s
Dorsett seemed to have exhibited considerable instability,
losing a suit for defrauding a subcontractor as well as two
wives. By the end of the 1980s Dorsett owed nearly $10,000 in
federal taxes. In the 1990s he tried to establish a second
identity, as "Michael Anthony Tomlin," and became
increasingly involved with the "common law"
ideology. As late as June 1997 Dorsett tried to file common
law documents to get rid of his federal tax liens. He was
indicted in September 1996 by a federal grand jury for
attempting to get a passport in Tomlin's name. However, no
arrest was made by the time Dorsett became involved with the
other conspirators.
The plotters met at Brad Glover's residence in Towanda,
Kansas in April. Glover made it clear that his long-sought
shooting war was going to happen. The fiery statements of
Glover and Dorsett seemed to egg each other on. A few members
of the splinter group became cautious and dropped out, but
most stayed on. As they talked, one focus of conversation was
the presence of United Nations troops in the United States.
Allegations of such troops had been made so often and with
such confidence in the patriot community that their presence
was taken for granted by many patriots. Radio broadcaster
Mark Koernke regularly spoke of hundreds of thousands of UN
soldiers hiding in the United States, at military
installations, in the national parks, and elsewhere. Indeed,
the New World Order hardly seemed to bother with the effort
of hiding them any longer--had not Bill Clinton himself
openly turned over Holloman Air Force Base to the Germans?
As members of the group talked among themselves that
spring, they committed themselves to action. They would
develop an arsenal of weapons and military equipment, with
which they could launch a series of attacks against
government installations housing foreign troops. In-between
raids. They would hide out in a safe location.
Participants--those who remained--realized that they were
crossing the Rubicon, but they were willing to make the
sacrifice. The Hobecks sold their trucking firm in Ohio,
liquidated their assets, to provide cash for the group. Other
members also chipped in. The group would be flush and mobile,
able to hit and run, able to stay ahead of the authorities.
Unlike many other militia members or sympathizers who
routinely use fiery rhetoric and fantasize about fighting the
government, Glover's group crossed the line from speech to
action. The Hobecks went to Colorado to establish a refuge at
the Thirty Mile Resort in the Rio Grande National Forest.
Others conducted reconnaissance missions on military bases,
including Holloman Air Force Base at Alamagordo, New Mexico.
The normal paranoia of Glover's group now became
justifiable: if authorities became aware of their actions,
they would be put behind bars. They stationed guards during
the April and May meetings at Towanda, including their
children, who carried weapons as they patrolled Glover's
farm. In June, Glover moved into Dorsett's home in Arlington,
Texas. But thanks to the vigilance of the Missouri State
Highway Patrol, law enforcement officers were by now aware of
all of their actions. When Dorsett and Glover announced their
intention to head south, the FBI was prepared. They watched
as the two men drove to San Saba County.
When authorities decided to act, they moved quickly. On
the Fourth of July, as families and troops prepared to
celebrate at Fort Hood, the FBI moved to arrest the plotters.
They nabbed Glover and Dorsett at 6:15 a.m. in their tents in
the Colorado Bend State Park before the festivities even
began. The two militiamen had an arsenal with them: two
rifles, five pistols, 1600 rounds of ammunition, bulletproof
vests, a smoke grenade, a homemade silencer, explosive
material, a night vision scope and other items. "Their
explosives would have been more damaging to the personnel at
Fort Hood than to the physical installation," explained
Missouri State Highway Patrol Lieutenant Richard Coffey to a
Texas newspaper reporter. "They did not have the same
philosophy as the people in Oklahoma City. They were not
looking for a huge explosion to make their point."
Instead, they planned small, repeated explosions.
Unfortunately, possibly because the charges were weapons
charges and not conspiracy charges, Bradley Glover was able
to post bail on the very day of his arrest. He took the
opportunity to flee to Wisconsin, but was once more taken
into custody in Mondovi, Wisconsin, on July 10, after
possession of an illegal firearm silencer was added to the
charges against him. He was returned to Texas. Dorsett was
held on an outstanding federal passport violation.
In Wisconsin, authorities arrested Merlon Lingenfelter in
Mondovi on July 10, while looking for Glover. Lingenfelter
surrendered his two machine guns and two pipe bombs, but he
was still defiant. "I'm not trying to be a noble knight
in this, but it's time somebody somewhere does
something," Lingenfelter told a reporter after his
arrest. However, he claimed that the meetings held by
Glover's group were just social outings.
The others had to be nudged into revealing their arsenals.
The Hobecks, under surveillance since July 4, were contacted
by the undercover Missouri patrol officers and told they
needed supplies and a place to stay. On July 5, the Hobecks
and Newmans gave two illegal automatic weapons to the
officers from a storage locker at a self-storage site. Later,
Thomas Newman handed them a bag full of pipe bombs. This was
enough to trigger their arrest, which came on July 10 for the
Hobecks in Colorado and July 11 for the Newmans in Kansas.
The investigation is not yet over; others involved with
Glover, Dorsett and the rest may eventually be charged,
possibly on conspiracy charges. The seven initially arrested
were all arrested on weapons and explosives charges. But
presumably the threat to Fort Hood and other military
installations from Glover's private army is over. Glover's
war did not turn out exactly the way he wished it to; he
became the "victim" of a preemptive strike.
The credit for stopping Glover belongs to the astute
police work exhibited at all levels, but particularly by the
Missouri State Highway Patrol, whose undercover officers not
only managed a difficult situation well, but were alert
enough to catch wind of the conspiracy in the first place. If
the nation was taken by surprise at Oklahoma City in 1995, it
was the extremists who were caught short two years later.
One must admit that even had not state and federal law
enforcement officials displayed such outstanding work, it is
difficult to imagine how Glover's band of misfits could have
eluded capture. "I think you have to have a warped sense
of reality to think you can pull of a mission like
that," Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain James
Keathley told the Rocky Mountain News. "It sounds like a
suicide mission to me. I don't know if they could have pulled
this off." The question remains, though, what damage
they might have caused while trying to pull it off. Even one
such act of terrorism would have been horrible enough.
Bradley Glover and his associates fantasized about being
warriors; now they will have to content themselves with
daydreaming about being prisoners-of-war.