All-American Osamas

We Americans have conjured so specific a vision of terrorists — swarthy, glowering Muslims mumbling fanatically about Allah — that we're missing the threat from home-grown nuts, people like David Burgert.

Mr. Burgert, a 38-year-old who last made a living renting out snowmobiles here in this spectacularly beautiful nook of northwestern Montana, had a terror plan that made Osama bin Laden's look rinky-dink. Not content merely to kill a few thousand people, Mr. Burgert's nine-member militia was planning a violent revolution and civil war to overthrow the entire United States government.

The plan, according to Sheriff James Dupont, was for the militia to use its machine guns, pipe bombs and 30,000 rounds of ammunition to assassinate 26 local officials (including Mr. Dupont), and then wipe out the National Guard when it arrived. After the panicked authorities sent in NATO troops, true American patriots would rise up, a ferocious war would ensue, and the U.S. would end up back in the hands of white Christians.

"The good thing is that most of the people who would do it are so stupid that they would kill themselves first," said Sheriff Dupont, who runs the law here in rugged Flathead County, which is bigger than all of Connecticut and has lots more grizzly bears.