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52———Aryan Republican Army

Walters, Jerome. One Aryan Nation Under God: Exposing federal authorities information about other groups
the New Racial Extremists. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, seeking to overthrow the government. Guthrie impli-
2000. cated Langan, who was arrested in 1996 and con-
victed in two separate federal trials in 1997 and
sentenced to life in prison without possibility of
ARYAN REPUBLICAN ARMY parole. Scott Stedeford, a white-power rock musician,
was convicted on three bank robbery charges and six
During the mid-1990s, the Aryan Republican Army conspiracy charges in November 1996, and sentenced
(ARA), a six-member paramilitary cell, robbed 22 to 20 years in prison. McCarthy turned state’s evi-
banks in the Midwest, intending to use the money dence and led authorities to Michael Brescia, who
to fund a white supremacist overthrow of the U.S. spent two years in jail for his role in the robberies. In
government. March 1998, Mark Thomas, a prominent neo-Nazi
During the ARA’s short life, authorities were leader from Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to plotting
unaware that the thieves who had committed a slew of seven bank robberies. Within two years, the ARA was
small-scale bank robberies in Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, finished.
and other midwestern states had any motive higher The ARA flourished in the antigovernment climate
than stealing money, nor had they ever heard of the following Ruby Ridge (in which a stakeout by federal
small white supremacist cell called the Aryan marshals of white separatist Randy Weaver ended
Republican Army. The press referred to the robbers at with the deaths of Weaver’s son, wife, and a federal
the “Midwest Bank Bandits.” officer) and Waco (the FBI’s 1993 siege of the Branch
The ARA’s robberies were elaborately orches- Davidian compound in Waco, Texas) in the early
trated; the group used the 1991 surf film Point Break 1990s; some believe that Timothy McVeigh, the
as a template. Each heist was planned to take less than Oklahoma City bomber, had connections to the ARA.
90 seconds. One member guarded the lobby, calling In addition, at one time Brescia was thought to be the
out the elapsed time, while the others rifled money missing “John Doe 2” suspect in the Oklahoma City
from the tellers’ drawers. As in the movie, the robbers bombing. Authorities have since discarded both
often wore Nixon or Reagan masks. They were noto- suppositions.
rious for these antics, and for their taunting of federal See also ARYAN NATIONS; TIMOTHY MCVEIGH; OKLAHOMA
agents; for example, getaway cars were registered to CITY BOMBING; THE ORDER
FBI agents. For a Christmas 1994 robbery in Ohio,
one member wore a Santa Claus suit. In an April 1995 Further Reading
robbery in Iowa, the ARA left investigators an Easter
Hamm, Mark S. In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist
basket holding a gold-painted pipe bomb.
Underground. Boston: Northeastern University Press,
The ARA focused its attacks on small-town banks,
2002.
and rarely stole more than $10,000 at a time, but the
six were industrious—almost reaching the record, of
25 banks robbed, of Jesse James. Many of their tactics ASAHARA, SHOKO (1955– )
were similar to those of the Order, an infamous white
supremacist group of the 1980s.
-
The ARA had two main members, Richard “Wild Shoko Asahara is the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo
Bill” Guthrie, Jr., and Peter Kevin Langan. On cult and mastermind of the sarin gas attack on the
January 19, 1996, Guthrie and Langan were charged Japanese subway.
with nearly two dozen bank robberies. The two men, Asahara was born Chizuo Matsumoto, the son of a
with the help of a handful of ARA “soldiers,” stole poor tatami mat-maker, on March 2, 1955. Afflicted
more than $250,000 in just over two years. with glaucoma at birth, the disease left Asahara with
Guthrie, who was arrested in late 1996 after a high- only very limited vision in one eye, and his parents sent
speed chase outside of Cincinnati, entered an early him to a school for the blind. There, his partial sight
guilty plea; he committed suicide in his Kentucky jail was an advantage, and Asahara used it to bully and
cell in July 1997, a week after promising to provide extort money from his fellow students. An unpopular