Militias and messiahs

THE courthouse is protected by fleets of police cars, by steel fences and concrete barricades. The suspect is held in a cell under the court building, so that he need not be driven through the streets of Denver, where he might be sprung from captivity by his allies—or killed by them lest he reveal too much. Everything about the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the man accused of blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City two years ago, suggests a siege mentality. And, especially in America, this seems entirely prudent. Ever since Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy's probable assassin, was himself assassinated in a jail-house corridor, unsolved mysteries have cursed America. They have fuelled wild, paranoid theories. They have even made it easier for 39 cult members to believe that mass suicide would bring salvation, via a UFO.