THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 26, 1995 TAG: 9506260049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: GREENSBORO LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Michael Chapman believes a federal police force spies on him from black helicopters. Albert Esposito thinks powerful forces monitor his every word on the telephone. And Nord Davis Jr. believes a battle for world control is coming within the year.
All three men are white, male and middle-aged. They also share an intense feeling that the federal government has alienated and oppressed them.
They belong to a far-right movement, generally known as the ``Patriot movement,'' that watchdog organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and Klanwatch describe as growing in North Carolina and throughout the nation.
Patriots believe that ongoing economic and political events are conspiring to enslave Americans by disarming the population and making the currency worthless. The eventual result, many Patriots believe, will be the New World Order - a one-world government administered by the United Nations.
Patriot groups are meeting or organizing in Union County, Waynesville, Fayetteville, Hendersonville, Greenville, Winston-Salem, Alamance County and Cherokee County, the News & Record of Greensboro reported. And as the Patriot Movement grows, so does a corresponding militia movement.
Suspects in the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City have militia ties. Many in the Patriot movement believe the government bombed its own building with its own people inside.
``It's not hard for me to believe that the government would do that to divert attention from Waco and discredit the militia,'' said Chapman, 39, of Union County, who belongs to a Patriot group in the Charlotte area called Citizens for the Reinstatement of Constitutional Government.
Paramilitary units have been reported as organized or as being organized in Haywood County, Alamance County, Union County, Pitt County and Cherokee County.
Jim Coman, director of the State Bureau of Investigation, said he is aware of about a half-dozen paramilitary organizations in the state in which members carry guns and hold military-like exercises.
``We know of their existence,'' Coman said. ``There has been no indication that they pose a threat to the citizens of this state.''
Ted Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, estimates that perhaps 2 percent of the population - roughly 100,000 people in North Carolina - either belong to or embrace Patriot views.
The great fear of the Anti-Defamation League, Klanwatch and other hate-group monitoring organizations is that the white supremacy movement will be drawn into the Patriot/militia movement. They're seeing that already, said J.T. Roy, chief investigator for Klanwatch, part of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
The Oklahoma City bombing was less than 2 weeks old when James ``Bo'' Gritz made his sixth visit to Andrews in Cherokee County, headquarters of Nord Davis and his paramilitary Northpoint Teams organization. Gritz - one of the most prominent militia leaders in the country - leads survivalist, paramilitary training sessions he calls S.P.I.K.E., for Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events.
Gritz, a former U.S. Army Green Beret officer, has expressed support for the white supremacist ``Christian Identity'' movement, which preaches that Jews are ``Satan's spawn,'' that non-whites belong to ``mud races,'' and that Caucasians who settled America are the Bible's covenant people. Davis, who circulates publications to a mailing list of 25,000, shares these views. Firearms training for Gritz's S.P.I.K.E. session was held on Davis' mountainside property where he is putting finishing touches on an underground house.
KEYWORDS: MILITIA by CNB