Aryan Republican Army Aryan Republican Army The Aryan Republican Army (ARA), also dubbed "The Midwest Bank bandits" by the FBI and law-enforcement, robbed a series of 22 banks in the Midwest from 1994 to 1996 spearheaded by frontman Peter Kevin Langan. The gang who had links to neo-nazism and white supremacism, were alleged to have conspired with convicted terrorist Timothy McVeigh in the months before the Oklahoma City bombing terrorist attack. Although never legally acknowledged, many theorists believe the ARA funneled robbery money to help fund the bombing as a direct response to the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges. The ARA group, created
Timothy McVeigh FBI hostage-rescue team who shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff at a remote cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. He said he wanted Reno to accept "full responsibility in deed, not just words." Such an assassination seemed too difficult, and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, it was necessary to strike against them at their command centers. According to McVeigh's authorized biography, he ultimately decided that he would make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he was ambivalent about his act; as he expressed in letters to his hometown