Separatist movements took on an apocalyptic urgency in those years. Some in the militia movement were predicting that the Atlanta Olympics would serve as a jumping-off point for the 'New World Order,' a merging of the federal government and the United Nations, said Charles Stone, a former agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and co-author of 'Hunting Eric Rudolph.' All summer, authorities had been scrutinizing anti-government groups in the South, hoping to interdict an attack. Christian Identity holds that white Europeans represent God's chosen people and must fight 'Satan's forces' - including Jews, gays and the government - in an apocalyptic struggle. When Eric was a teenager, she took him to live at the Missouri compound of Dan Gayman, who was aligned with the Christian Identity movement.

His mother, Patricia, was raised Catholic but led her family on a spiritual quest that took them further and further from the mainstream.

Rudolph was a loner who grew up steeped in extreme ideology. That doesn't mean the time won't come again.' 'My guess is today we're at the low ebb of a movement that comes and goes, ' said Vincent Coppola, author of 'Dragons of God: A Journey Through Far-Right America.' Rudolph, he said, 'is sort of an artifact of another time. 11 attacks, have caused many groups to draw back from the extreme acts of Rudolph and Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

A combination of factors, including the Sept. The number of militia or 'patriot' groups in the United States has dwindled from a high of 858 in the mid-1990s to 152 now, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Today, when Eric Rudolph pleads guilty to four bombings - at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay bar and two abortion clinics - he will do so in a very different atmosphere.Īlthough experts warn that homegrown terrorism is still a serious danger, the threat has receded from the public view.

Dragons of God by Vincent Coppola