In addition to "five or six rifles and a handgun," one agent said, they also found documents relating to the Michigan Militia, a paramilitary group that said it ejected the brothers from a meeting this year for "hyperbolic language." Leaders of the group have said the brothers were not members.

Today the authorities appeared to be wrapping up their search of asmall house in Herington, Kan., where Terry Nichols lived most recently. Mr. Nichols turned himself in on Friday in Herington.

Cable television workers in Herington were quoted by The Associated Press as saying that Mr. Nichols went to their office on Thursday, the day after the bombing, trying to have CNN installed as soon possible. "He said he didn't know anything about the bomb and he wanted to know where he could watch" the coverage, said a worker, Chad Albin.

James and Terry Nichols grew up with their parents on a farm in Lapeer, Mich., and then moved 40 miles northeast, to Decker, a town that has fewer than 200 people and no traffic lights and where the main street consists of a post office and a turquoise-painted bar.

James and Terry Nichols, who were both divorced, made their anti-authority views clear before Judge Donald Teeple of Circuit Court in nearby Sandusky in cases involving loan foreclosures and child-support payments.

In July 1992, according to documents obtained by The Sanilac County News, Terry Nichols petitioned the court to "revoke, cancel, annul, repeal" all signatures and powers of attorney" over a bank loan. Judge Teeple said that when Mr. Nichols appeared for a hearing he refused to approach the bench. "He said he did not recognize the authority of the court," the judge recounted. "He was hollering in a loud voice from the back of the courtroom. I informed him that if he didn't keep quiet I'd send him to jail. Then he decided to come around the rail."

The judge said James Nichols appeared before him in the last few years for failing to pay child support for his son, Chase, who lives with Mr. Nichols's former wife just north of Decker. "I asked him why he hadn't paid," Judge Teeple said. "He said he didn't have to pay, that the court didn't have any jurisdiction, that he wasn't a citizen."