Police in Michigan on Sept. 16 arrested Andrew Osantowski, a 17-year-old student, after one of his Instant Messaging buddies tipped authorities that Ostankowski was planning a Columbine-style massacre at his high school. The teenager is now facing 10 felony charges, including threatening an act of terrorism and concealing stolen firearms, after a search of his home turned up numerous weapons and explosives. Police also found a picture of Hitler, Nazi books and a swastika flag. In transcripts of Instant Message conversations released by police, the boy discussed his Nazi views and dislike for black people, Jews and white people he considered to be "non-white." The teenager's arrest highlights the threat posed by white hate groups and their sympathizers within the United States — which though historically more prevalent and deadly than other types of terrorism in the country, have been relegated to the back burner of public attention since the Sept. 11 attacks. Violence from actors espousing white hate viewpoints has been prevalent, however: Timothy McVeigh, perhaps the best known among this group, associated with right-wing extremists. Buford Furrow Jr., a self-proclaimed white supremacist, claimed that hatred of Jews was behind his 1999 shooting spree of a Los Angeles day care center, which killed a Filipino-American man and injured five other people. Furrow had surveilled several locations prior to the attack and chose the target with the least security. Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a member of the white supremacist group World Church of the Creator, killed two men — one of them Korean — and injured several Orthodox Jews and Asians during a two-day shooting spree in July 1999. The threat from domestic hate crimes is significant. Unlike international jihadist groups, white hate groups are homegrown organizations whose members — or sympathizers — blend seamlessly into their surroundings. Members of these groups, whether in the United States or Europe (where they also make their presence felt, as with a recent spate of attacks against synagogues in France) can come from any part of the socio-economic strata — rich or poor, educated or uneducated. Now, the emergence of the Internet and e-mail as means of communication is adding a new dimension to white hate groups. Web sites help to disperse propaganda — including music and literature — while affording visitors complete anonymity. The Internet has served as an effective recruiting and communication tool that can be difficult for law enforcement to penetrate. Though many known organizations are operating within the United States and Britain, among other countries, the greatest security threat comes from "lone wolves" — attackers who act alone or in tandem with a very few other conspirators, as in the Oklahoma City case. By definition, such plots are extremely difficult to detect and pre-empt: The fewer people involved in planning or carrying out an operation, the less risk to members of a wider group — and the more smoothly the actual plan is likely to go, in many cases. If only one person or a few people are arrested before an attack can be carried out, the larger movement can dismiss them as rogues who are not supported by the group. In carrying out their crimes, white hate groups or individuals often have used materials that are not necessarily illegal — such as fertilizer, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, and guns that are permissible for private citizens to carry. This — along with the fact that hate itself is not a criminal offense — mean that police and other authorities can find it extremely difficult to distinguish between ideologues and ideologues with criminal intentions.