Homegrown

"Though violent extremist groups have been around in America for decades, they surged in the 1990s, a decade of spectacular domestic mayhem--at a cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho; on a compound outside Waco, Texas; in downtown Oklahoma City. Their heroes were men like Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph.
"Today the groups are shadows of themselves, with many of their leaders dead, imprisoned, disillusioned or just inept.
"Many observers attribute that to Sept. 11, for diverting the rage of disaffected Americans away from the U.S. government and toward foreigners, and for fueling the subsequent Patriot Act-driven crackdown. Others say the movement began to crumble earlier, when the Y2K disaster, a favorite prediction of conspiracy theorists, failed to materialize.
"And part of the collapse may have just been human nature. 'Many of the people had such huge egos that they didn't know how to work together and keep the movement going,' said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at the liberal Political Research Associates think tank who specializes in the study of right-wing networks. 'So it basically unraveled.'"

Richard A. Serrano in the Los Angeles Times reports on the state of domestic anti-government terrorism.