Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

VIPER MILITIA • 693and five other Libyans for the bombing and issued arrest warrantsfor them. On 9 January 2004 the Libyan government agreed to paythe surviving family members of those killed on UTA Flight 772about $170 million. The families of the seven American victims haverefused this compensation and on 19 September 2005 initiated legalproceedings in U.S. federal court against the Libyan government andthe six identified Libyans for damages of more than $2 billion.– V –VIPER MILITIA. The Viper Militia was a nonstate revolutionarywhite supremacist “patriot militia” that sought to overthrow thegovernment of the United States through attacks on federal agentsand offices. Although most of the groups associated with the militiamovement seemed innocuous, the Viper Militia group was actuallya more activist right-wing extremist group, on the model of the ArizonaPatriots and The Order.On 1 July 1996 federal agents arrested 12 members of the ViperTeam of the Arizona State Militia for conspiracy to bomb the Phoenix,Arizona, offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms(ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Immigrationand Naturalization Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the Phoenixpolice department, and the Arizona National Guard Center, aswell as illegal possession of four automatic weapons, explosives, andother bomb-making materials. Searches of the home of the two leadersof the group, Randy L. Nelson and Dean C. Pleasant, producedgrenades, blasting caps, two pistols, two machine guns, six rifles, and56 boxes containing 11,463 rounds of ammunition.Following a complaint to the ATF office from a hunter that armedmen in camouflage suits had threatened and ordered him to leave aremote area of the Tonto National Forest, on 13 November 1995 ATFagents found a large crater similar to what would have been madeby a homemade ammonium nitrate bomb. An ATF agent, Steve Ott,easily infiltrated the group and secretly videotaped sessions of thegroup in which they planned to bomb the federal buildings mentionedearlier, as well as the police and National Guard offices. Ott latertestified that Viper member Ellen Belliveau had suggested that thegroup target the families of federal agents for possible retaliation