To aid in the crackdown, Congress and the White House have nearly tripled the FBI's counterterrorism budget since 1994, allowing the bureau to add 350 new agents to domestic terrorism cases. Heading off violence. The crackdown appears to have headed off several well-planned acts of mass violence. In April this year, four Ku Klux Klan members were caught planning to blow up a natural-gas refinery outside Bridgeport, Texas. The explosion was to have been a diversion for their main act, the robbery of an armored car 9 miles away.
Police say the Klansmen intended to use the money to finance other terrorist acts.
Elsewhere in Texas this year, members of a radical militia splinter group planned to attack a July 4 celebration at Fort Hood with semiautomatic weapons. The group was convinced that United Nations troops from China were training there to take over the United States. While most federal prosecutions of extremists have been successful, heavy use of informants and conspiracy charges has met with skepticism from some juries. In February, a federal jury in Washington State found members of the antigovernment Freemen and Washington State Militia guilty of weapons charges. People should be prosecuted for what they do, not what they say or think.