One last conspiracy

Last week Olson folded up his militia's tent, announcing that there were fewer than 100 members and they were not the most motivated lot. His Michigan Militia, he had once bragged, numbered in the thousands.

But Friday, he sounded a little giddy at the prospect of returning to some of his favorite lines. "This kind of miraculous discovery is the sort that might give rise to an increased public sentiment that the government is not concerned with justice. That our government is dangerous."

It's nothing that could revive a movement, he says, guessing that the "trigger mechanism" to truly rebuild the militias would require "another standoff, this time with 20 or 30 dead on both sides."

"We emerged spontaneously, a movement whose time was right. People were frightened for their freedom, and they gathered together to protect themselves against the threat of the government," he says. "I think we did what we set out to do, which was to prevent another Waco."

The militia faithful still cling to the idea that McVeigh didn't act alone, though there are several different versions of what the real story might be. Olson once posited that the Japanese government had bombed the Murrah Federal Building out of retaliation for the terrorist sarin-gas attack in a Tokyo subway a month earlier. Trochmann believes the federal government itself played a role. "When they execute McVeigh," he says, "they will be destroying more evidence of the federal government's involvement."

Their logic, even in the face of this most embarrassing of FBI screw-ups, now seems somewhat quaint in the way it updates moldy conspiracy theories. But one thing Trochmann says can't possibly be argued with: "There wouldn't be a militia movement if the government were honest about these things."

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