It was a small, obscure militia called Project 7, and according to local investigators, its members were stockpiling weapons and plotting mass murder as part of a plan to make Flathead County, Mont., the flash point for world revolution.
First, they would murder local police, judges and prosecutors. When the National Guard came in, they would kill as many troops as they could. When the U.S. government turned to NATO for help, they would take up arms against the forces of the New World Order.
When the alleged plot was discovered and David Burgert, a 38-year-old ex-Marine who owns a sports rental business, was arrested as the mastermind in February, many Montanans were exasperated that their state was in the news yet again as a haven of violent extremists and far-right paranoia. But what set the Project 7 case apart was the angry response from others in the self-styled patriot movement.
"This guy Burgert in Kalispell, this guy is just a miscreant, a little weenie evildoer," says militia icon James "Bo" Gritz, a former Green Beret. "People who know him say that he's just a talker, but Tim McVeigh might have been a talker ... If they're gonna talk like they're gonna break the law, it's like the Montana Freemen were putting up reward posters for public officials, 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' By gosh, you can't do that."