Quote of note:

"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. That doesn't mean the time won't come again."

It's the Wilderness Years for Militias
The movement was at its peak at the time of the Atlanta blast, for which Eric Rudolph is to plead guilty. What changed? Sept. 11, for starters.
By Ellen Barry
Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2005

ATLANTA   When a pipe bomb exploded at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, authorities immediately started looking for a right-wing extremist, a rural paramilitary group or a gang of skinheads.

It was a year after the Oklahoma City bombing, three years after the federal raid near Waco, Texas, and four years after the standoff at the Weaver home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The threat posed by antigovernment militants had never seemed more urgent.

Today, when Eric Robert Rudolph pleads guilty to four bombings   at the Atlanta Olympics, a gay bar and two abortion clinics   it will be in a very different atmosphere.

Although experts warn that homegrown terrorism is still a danger, the threat has receded from public view. The number of militia groups in the U.S. has dwindled from a high of 858 in the mid-1990s to 152 last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

A combination of factors, including the Sept. 11 attacks, have caused many groups to draw back from the extreme acts of Rudolph or Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.