FBI puts Fear of God in Year-End Revellers
The Times, Nov 2, 1999
It might be better to stay quietly at home on New Years's Eve, if the FBI's latest warnings of millennial doomsday orchestrated by a hodgepodge of extremist groups are anything to rely on. The threat of violence is "very real", according to an alarming report the FBI will present to a closed-door meeting in North Carolina today of the International Association of Police Chiefs of Police. "The volatile mix of apocalyptic religious and New World Order conspiracy theories may produce violent acts aimed at precipitating the end of the world as prophesised in the Bible," the report, a copy of which was leaked to the Washington Post, grimly says.
FBI agents have spent months studying sinister ideologies to reach their conclusions of possible impending menace. They cast their eyes over white supremacists who seek to initiate a race war; "Black Hebrew Israelites" with the same intention; cults which anticipate a violent Armageddon; and radical elements of private militias who fear the United Nations will initiate an armed takeover of America and subsequently form a One World Government. Y2K power cuts could be enough to spark a millennial uprising. Jerusalem is definately a no go area for seeing in the millennium, according to the FBI's gloomy calculations. The report says: "Israeli officials are extremely concerned that the Temple Mount, an area seething with tension and distrust among Muslims and Jews, will be the stage for violent encounters between religious zealots. Additionally, serveral cults have already made inroads into Israel, apparently in preperation for what they believe to be the endtimes."
The report is named Project Megiddo, after a hill in northern Israel that has been the site of many battles. The Hebrew word Armageddon for the final clash at the end of the world between forces of good and evil means "Hill of Megiddo", the study says. Among fringe American groups identified as having members who pose a violent threat are Christian Identity, Odinists and Aryan Nations, all white-supremacy sects. But they may be far from all. The FBI report says: "Armed with the urgency of the millennium as a motivating factor, new clandestine groups may conceivably form to engage in violence towards the US Government and its citizens."