17 January 1999. Thanks to Anonymous.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et/99/1/17/ndom17.html The Electronic Telegraph, Issue 1332, Sunday 17 January 1999 Millennium death wish cults put the Dome under siege By David Bamber and James Langton in New York Scotland Yard and the FBI are mounting a major security operation to guard against cults staging mass suicides or terrorist attacks to mark the Millennium. There has been an upsurge in interest in millennial death pact bids in this country and the USA, and Monte Kim Miller, the dangerous American Millennium cult leader, is in hiding in Britain. Police on both sides of the Atlantic fear extreme religious groups will use the festival for their own ends. Key target for any cult suicide bid or terrorist attack is believed to be the Millennium Dome in Greenwich. The Telegraph has been told that Scotland Yard will launch a round-the-clock operation to protect the site in Greenwich from cults and terrorists next month. Chief Supt Brian Younger, who is in charge of the Millennium Team based in Greenwich, said: "We have to be aware that New Year's Eve and the whole Millennium year could be the focus of some terrorist or other type of attack. "There is the possibility that terrorist Islamic fundamentalists could use what is a Christian celebration to try to hit the headlines. We don't even know if the ceasefire in Northern Ireland will still be in place, so we need to be aware of all eventualities." The security operation is expected to cost £7 million over the next year. The police are also taking seriously the possibility of an attack on the Dome from the river. A water-borne unit will provide a 24-hour patrol and high-speed boats from the 16-strong Thames Police fleet will be on permanent stand-by, including a new £150,000 Finnish-built boat capable of 41mph. Mr Younger has confirmed that the police suspect Monte Kim Miller is in Britain trying to organise and that the Millennium Dome could be the target. His organisation, the Denver-based Concerned Christians group, has predicted they will die on the streets of Jerusalem in December l999. But he and his followers were told to leave Israel and he is now believed to be in Britain. Many millennial organisations believe that Christ will return to Earth on January 1 next year, and are preparing to kill themselves so that their souls are ready. The Internet is offering more than 100 millennial sites, including one called End Times. One cult, the First Temple of the House of David, say they want to "secure a seat in the front row for the Second Coming". Some cults have links with the Branch Davidians, of Waco, Texas, 79 of whose members died in a fire at their Mount Carmel site in 1993 after a 51-day stand-off with federal authorities. In America, FBI agents fear a major outbreak of domestic terrorism linked to the Millennium from fringe groups storing explosives. They are concentrating on a group of states in the north-west of the country and sometimes known as "kooks' corner". The wilderness of Montana, Idaho, Utah and parts of Washington State has become a favourite retreat for American's new breed of outlaws. Among the most famous are the Montana Freemen, who fought government agents in an armed stand-off two years ago, and the Una bomber Ted Kaczynsky, who mailed his deadly packages from a cabin deep in the woods of the same state. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors such groups, said in a recent report: "The Pacific northwest has produced some of this nation's leading domestic terrorists." They regard the US government with outright hostility and believe that the United Nations is a front for a vast conspiracy backed by international financiers to take over the USA with an army of UN troops massing across its borders. In the last year, many have begun preparing for what they believe will be Armageddon on the Millennium eve. Others are preparing for the collapse of the world's computers caused by the Y2K bug. They expect the American national grid to collapse, bringing down bank systems, transport and most means of communication. The grandfather of the movement is 80-year-old Richard Butler, the leader of the Aryan Nation, which espouses the so-called "10 per cent" solution in which the north-western corner of the United States would be set aside for whites. Butler, known as "the elder statesman American hate", lives with his followers in a barbed wire compound in a remote corner of Idaho. He has always denied any links with terrorist activities. In recent months, however, the Aryan Nation is known to have received a huge increase in funding, much of it gathered through the Internet. Butler leads Sunday prayers at the compound with a Nazi salute and decorates his living room with framed photographs of Hitler. And the FBI warned recently that attacks by "lone wolf" terrorists posed a new threat to America's security, calling them in a classified report: "Individuals who are inspired by, but not affiliated with, terrorist groups, thus making them harder to identify and stop." Copyright 1999 Telegraph Group Limited.