For years, law enforcement officials say, Brian Michael Knoff helped run a smuggling operation that brought tons of marijuana into the United States, grossed millions of dollars and, in the end, left at least one gang member dead.

But Knoff didn't buy yachts and entertain expensive women. He didn't own a house. To all appearances, he didn't live a lavish life.

Instead, officials say, Knoff was apparently sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into the extreme right antigovernment movement ù money believed to have been spent on deadly arsenals, movement defense funds and, possibly, terrorist plots.

Born in Grafton, N.D., 59 years ago, Knoff was raised as a Mormon but left the church after blacks were admitted, officials say. It's believed that in the late 1980s he became friendly with several members of the Posse Comitatus, a violent and anti-Semitic tax protest group. Three of those friends eventually went to prison for their part in a $4 million land swindle that was meant to raise money for the Posse.

In 1988, Knoff was himself convicted of tax evasion and was sent to a Texarkana prison. There, he met Clell Lagett Benton, a Mormon raised in Mexico. In 1992, officials say, ex-cons Benton and Knoff brought in Floridian Richard Allen Hammons to help launch a marijuana smuggling operation out of Palomas, in northern Mexico.

At first, the three bought small loads of poor quality pot from freelance Mexican dealers and moved it by truck to the New Mexico border, investigators say. But then Benton contacted Rene Saenz, who provided a link to the Sinaloa group, one of Mexico's biggest drug rings. After that, the Americans' operation took off.

They used a Cessna to fly tons of pot from a clandestine Mexican airstrip to North Dakota and Florida, officials say. From there, the drugs were distributed to Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania and South Dakota. By 1994, the gang included 20 people.

But that year, with the three partners netting more than $1 million a year, Saenz was murdered in Mexico. He'd neglected to pay the Sinaloans a $1 million debt.

Through much of this period, Knoff was active in extreme right-wing circles. In Deming, N.M., he conducted weekly seminars on so-called Patriot and common-law theory. In April 1994, he was invited to a major conference hosted by E. Tom Stetson, a leading adherent of the racist Christian Identity religion and co-founder of the Unorganized Militia of Idaho. When Knoff's New Mexico home was searched later in the year, authorities found a virtual who's who of the far right in his address books.

Included among 30 major Patriot and white supremacist leaders were Louis Beam, a former Klansman and ambassador -at-large for the racist Aryan Nations; David and Randy Trochmann, co-founders of the Militia of Montana; Earl Jones, a prominent Identity preacher in New Mexico; Linda Thompson, whose videos about the Waco, Texas, debacle galvanized rightists; Kirk Lyons, a leading attorney for racist groups; and Greg Dixon, an Indiana preacher who is a strident tax protester and militia supporter.

"It's war, a two-way war," Knoff was captured saying in a 1994 police surveillance video made in El Paso. "What (the government) did in Waco, what they did to that (Randy Weaver) family in Idaho ... My attitude is, it's war. This is war."

On June 18, 1994, Knoff, Hammons and Benton met on a luxury boat in the waters off Tampa, Fla. The three men and others allegedly discussed plans to restart their smuggling operation with a bold new twist: They hoped to base their operations in Cuba, moving drugs from Latin America to the island and then on to the United States. They spoke of buying and selling arms, drug prices, profits, Cuban politics, interrogations, flying through storms to avoid radar. And they discussed their politics.

Unknown to them, they were being secretly recorded.

"We've got the same problem they've got," Hammons says of the Cubans. "It's our f---in' government. It has nothing to do with communism or anything else. It's these power-hungry bastards that are f---in' going to impose their will on every kind of culture."

"We're more communist than they are," Knoff replies.

"I don't care what I got to do to fight æem back," Hammons says.

"I'm the same way," Knoff answers.

Later that year, the three men were indicted on federal drug charges by a grand jury in New Mexico. Benton and Hammons, now serving time on those charges, would tell authorities later that they'd had a falling-out with Knoff, who fled after his indictment, leaving $162,000 in cash. Knoff, they said, had ripped them off for $1 million. They also told officials Knoff had urged them to put money into the Patriot movement.

Northeast of Gainesville, Fla., sheriff's deputies on a marijuana-eradication exercise came across a large patch of the drug. Executing a search warrant on a house rented by Danny Ray Simmons and girlfriend Angela Louise Cooke two days later, they found more drugs -- and they stumbled onto an extensive arsenal.

There were numerous assault rifles, a 12-gauge "street sweeper" shotgun, cases of ammunition, even a .50-caliber sniper's rifle. More frightening, they discovered potassium cyanide and a shopping list for other chemicals -- chemicals that when put together form deadly cyanide gas. Ingredients for pipe bombs and the explosive compound RDX, along with gas masks, were also found. And, officials say, there were 811 marijuana plants, indoor growing equipment and $47,000 in cash.

Officials say Simmons is dedicated to white supremacy, common-law theory and the militia movement. Evidence backing up that contention was found in the house, including a trove of far-right literature, paramilitary training and militia propaganda videos, and the addresses of several Klan and militia leaders, including private numbers for Michigan militia figures Norm Olson and Ray Southwell. There was also a Patriot publication that Simmons appeared to be in the process of editing.

Simmons pulled up to the house during the search, but immediately fled into the woods when he spotted the deputies. Deputies arrested Cooke, but she was bailed out a short time later. Both Simmons and Cooke are now fugitives.

Deputies estimate the marijuana operation was grossing a minimum $500,000 a year. Local, state and federal authorities say they believe that Simmons was funneling his profits in the far-right underground.

In a third case, Edwin Dale McClain was convicted earlier this year of operating what officials say was the biggest methamphetamine lab in Oregon history. Officials say that McClain and the two other men convicted in the ring, which apparently operated for several years, were linked to antigovernment groups in Arizona and Montana.

When police searched McClain's home near Yakima, Wash., they seized a $1 million fake cashier's check signed by imprisoned Montana Freemen leader LeRoy Schweizer . They believe McClain had attended a Schweizer seminar.

After the arrests, federal prosecutors said they believed that the drug rings's profits ù conceivably, as much as $6 million ù went into militias.

Other cases continue to pop up. In Locust Grove, Ga., for instance, police found marijuana, methamphetamine, 30 weapons and pipe bomb components in the mobile home of Stephen Harper and Shelby Reynolds. The couple, who police suspect may also have been selling guns, were charged with drug trafficking after the July bust.

Police also found white supremacist literature, bumper stickers and cartoons, along with paper silhouettes of ATF agents for target practice.

"Harper has all the signs of someone involved in the militia movement," said police Lt. Michael Tate, who defused explosives at Harper's home. "One of the things these [extremists] do to raise money for their deeds is narcotics trafficking."

Traditionally, American right-wing extremists have shied away from drugs, seeing them as part of a corrupt society they loathe. But that appears to have changed, at least among some factions. Revell, the retired FBI official, says many extremists "don't believe in the use of drugs, but they will sell drugs in much the way Islamic terrorists do. They sell drugs because it is going to the infidel, the non-believer."

The extremist right has always had big plans. In the 1960s, the Minutemen worked for a revolution. In the 1970s, the Posse Comitatus wanted to destroy the power of the federal government. The Order planned for race war during in the 1980s. Now, militant racists strive for an all-white nation in the Pacific Northwest.

But the problem has always been money.

The Minutemen stole heavy weapons but were caught. Posse financial scams landed key activists in jail. The Order robbed $3.8 million from armored cars, but their dramatic attacks ended with the capture of most members. Today, those who would make revolution are discovering what the once drug-shy Mafia found out long ago.

"Drugs," as Lt. Tate explains, "are a high cash-flow operation."

Hammons: If I can do anything for Cuba I'm striking a blow against this f---in' (American) government. Any way I can help them survive and keep the politics the way it is in Cuba, I

I'll do it. I, you know, I'm just tired of the bullshit. I've f---in', I don't care what I got to do to fight æem back.