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Apiil 27,1995 AUGUSTA FOCUS
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Common fertilizer
can become deadly bomb
By Christopher Wills
Associated Press Writer
PEORIA, il
Farmers use it on their wheat
and cotton. Homeowners useit on
their lawns. And terrorists use it
in their bombs.
Ammonium nitrate helps keep
America’s farms running, but the
cheap fertilizer also can be con
verted into an explosive. Officials
say the Oklahoma City bomb was
made with the fertilizer.
“I used to have a guy who blew
out stumps with that stuff,” Harold
Roberts, general manager of
Brandt Consolidated Inc., a Pleas
ant Plains, 111. fertilizer company,
said Friday. “He would take a
sack full of it and soak it in oil and
use a little dynamite with it.”
Officials say criminals did the
same thing on a much larger scale
to destroy the Oklahoma City fed
eral building, killing dozens.
‘Anyone can buy ammonium ni
trate for about 11 cents a pound
and, with some chemical know
how, mix it with fuel oil to produce
an explosive with something like
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60 percent of TNT’s destructive
power. The explosive component
in the fertilizer is nitrate, which is
also in gunpowder.
Such a bomb was used in the
1993 attack on the World Trade
Center.
“This is not a process that you
and I could go out and duplicate,”
said Ron Phillips, spokesman for
the Fertilizer Institute, a trade
group in Washington. “You have
to know what you’re doing.”
The United States produced
more than six million tons of am
monium nitrate for fertilizer in
1993, he said. An additional 2.1
million tons were produced spe
cifically for the explosives indus
try.
Farmers generally buy ammo
nium nitrate by the ton and have
it delivered to their farms, said
Steve Barwick, manager of the
crop-seed division of Growmark
Inc., a Midwestern farm-supply
cooperative in Bloomington, 111.
A non-farmer trying to buy large
quantities —the Oklahoma City
bomb weighed a ton or more —
probably would stick out, he said.
“It would be unusual ... unless
they went to six different stores,
and that would be tough because
not everybody handles ammoni
um nitrate,” Barwick said.
While ammonium nitrate can
be misused, itis animportant way
to add nitrogen to soil and help
produce a good crop, Phillips said.
Farmers couldn’t do without it, he
said.
But its use has declined as new
er, more convenient chemicals hit
themarket, Barwick said. Hesays
those fertilizers could replace it.
“I believe to stop the use of it in
the fertilizer industry would not
be a great damage,” he said.
“That would close one avenue of
availability ofexplosives, but there
are a lot of other explosives out
there,” Barwick added. “Are you
going to ban everything?”
Much of the nation’s ammoni
um nitrate is manufactured in the
Southeast, said William W.
Patterson, vice president for safe
ty and environmental issues at
IMC Global Inc., a fertilizer pro
ducer based in the Chicago sub
urb of Northbrook.
MILITIA
A
From page one
group’s mailing list, but those can be very loose
affiliations, said Laird Wilcox, who is the founder
of The Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political
Movements, the largest collection of extremist
literature in the United States.
Many such “groups” are actually two or three
people with similar views, he said.
“A lot of right-wing groups around the country
are basically two guys and a post office box,”
Wilcox said. “If you've got 16 guys and eight post
office boxes, you've got eight groups. That sounds
very scary but it’s not.”
Wilcox said most militia groups are fragment
ed and generally don’t get along very well.
“They’re always accusing each other of being
police spies or prosecutors or something like this.
... They invariably remain quite small,” Wilcox
said. “Speculation about their membership has
been absurd. My own guess is that nationwide you
probably have 2,000 to 3,000 hard core members
and maybe another 8,000 to 10,000 people on the
mailing list.”
The militia movement exists in at least 30
states.
Leaders of various militias are scrambling to
distance themselves from the explosion by telling
the media of their defensive, as opposed to offen
sive, strategies.
“It is not about going out and taking innocent
lives,” said Sean Conover, the Ohio Unorganized
Militia’s commander. “This is not what we're
about. Vengeance is not what we’re about. We're
a defensive organization.”
The Ohio militia plans defensive actions, but is
opposed to an overt attack like the bombing of the
Alfred P. Murrah Building, Conover said.
He is worried that because of the bombing, the
government will crack down on all militia advo
cates. “What you've got is a big witch hunt,” he
TURNER’S DIARY
From page one
enemies; it contends that through the use of com
puters and other means the federal government is
trying to turn America into a “police state.” When
the organization bombs FBI headquartersin Wash
ington, several hundred people are killed. Then
they escalate the warfare by bombing the U.S.
Capitol building.
The organization has a particular hatred for the
American news media, which the group believes is
manipulated by liberal Jews. In the novel The
CONSPIRACY
AP ’
From page one
with the United Nations which would ultimately
lead to total domination of the United States by
foreign interests along with foreign tanks rum-
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said.
Ben Swank, chief of personnel operations for
the Ohio group, acknowledged that other similar
organizations are more radical and violent.
“It goes without saying there are extremists in
any organization,” he said. “I don't know why
people would think we’d be different.”
Authorities think the Michigan Militia may
have ties to violent extremists.
Leaders of the right-wing Michigan Militia
Corps admitted that brothers James Douglas
Nichols and Terry Lynn Nichols, who are being
held as material witnesses, had attended their
militia gatherings. ‘
Timothy McVeigh, charged with the bombing,
sometimes lived at one of the brothers’ farm
house.
Swank continued, “It could be an effort of the
federal government to blow up their own build
ing to demonize the militias.” He cited the 1993
federal raid on the Branch Davidian complex in
Waco, Texas, as past demonstration.
Wisconsin militia leaders offer similar de
fenses. “We are not out to murder children,” said
William Holzli of La Farge, commander of the
Wisconsin Militia Company. “The militia in no
way, shape or form supports the people who did
this cowardly deed.”
Members of the Kansas Militia, who train
monthly in the woods as they prepare to resist a
government they say has overstepped its bounds,
say it’s unlikely for militias to have been in
volved.
“No way — that’s not militia style,” one mem
ber said. “We are not a terrorist organization,
but this makes us look like one.”
Although some militias advocate the over
throw of the government, they won’t necessarily
be forcibly disbanded.
“Until they violate the law, they are as legal as
the Boy Scouts or the flower farmers,” said
Indiana State Police Lt. Chuck Coffin.
Organization goes on to terrorize the offices of
the Washington Post in preparation for the “Day
of the Rope,” when white women who have slept
with black men are hanged, along with politi
cians, lawyers, teachers, judges, newscasters,
newspaper reporters and editors, bureaucrats,
and preachers.
Inthe end the white supremacists defeat their;
foes: all blacks, Jews, and other minorities are
obliterated and a Caucasian government is put
into power not onlyin America but worldwide, as
the earth is set on course again. The vision of
Adolf Hitler, whom Pierce calls The Great One,’
has triumphed at last. 3
bling across the heartland. .
To most extreme right-wing militants, the.
Branch Davidian fiery stand was a call to revolu
tion. Waco has emerged as a symbol of unaccount- ,
ability of the federal government. It was, in their_
eyes one of the boldest moves yet, by the federal
government, to clamp down on the rights to bear
arms.
OFFICE OF . FINANCIAL ;\ll)l
For prospective Augusta College
students, the Office of Financial Aid at
Augusta College will host a free
Financial Aid Seminar. Find out if you
may qualify for Federal Pell Grants,
Federal Stafford Loans, Federal Work-
Study, HQPE Scholarships. If you are
planning to begin Augusta College in
1995, or if you are the parent, spouse
or counselor of someone who is, you
should attend this free seminar.
Seating is limited, so plan to arrive
early. For more information, contact
the Augusta College Office of
Admissions at (706) 737-1632 or
1.8 89+.-8341.431738.
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