Orange County Focus is dedicated on Monday to analysis of community news, a look atwhat’s ahead and the voices of local people. : IN PERSON : Survivalist Magazine Faces Glare of Public Eye : Owner to Unload Politically Touchy Placentia Periodical

Five minutes into the interview, Jim Benson’s eyes locked onto the tape recorder. Perhaps the whirl of the machine’s gently spinning wheels reminded the editor of American Survival Guide that it is a touchy time to be a spokesman for survivalists and their strident brethren in militias.

“You got that thing rolling, by the way? I don’t have any problem with it if . . . uh, is it running right now? That’s no problem . . . uh, I’m not the best person at being, uh, real diplomatic. . . . I don’t want to get myself in trouble . . . but on the other hand I’m willing to speak . . . so, OK, it’s on now.”

Benson, 44, is a jumpy man these days, and with good reason. Advertising and circulation are growing for his Placentia-based magazine, but the heat of public attention has been turned up too. American Survival Guide, described in a May issue of The New Yorker as “the consumer magazine of the militia movement,” has been in a critical spotlight since the Alfred P. Murrah federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City.

“Everything that happens is our fault,” moaned Benson, a small, sturdy man with a ruddy complexion. The media phone calls have been a nuisance, but even more worrisome is the attitude of the guide’s new owner, K-III Communications Corp. The New York firm last month bought American Survival Guide’s parent company and immediately announced its intention to unload the politically touchy publication.

“I think they’re concerned possibly with image. They say it doesn’t fit their editorial mix,” Benson said, chuckling. “I guess Survival Guide might not go well with Soy Bean Digest, Dog World or Farm Industry News.”

Indeed. American Survival Guide unabashedly caters to survivalist and militia subcultures that much of America associates with the worst terrorist act in the nation’s history. It features firearms on its glossy covers and ads hawking recipes for homemade explosives, militia start-up kits, blow-guns and books such as “How to Make a Silencer for a .22.”

Amid outdoor articles that explain the medicinal uses of leeches or how to make moose sausage, Benson and others rail against government and the left in columns such as “The Clintons and Communitarianism.” The most controversial item, by Benson’s account, is a reader networking feature called the “Survivalist Directory.” The July issue included a Kansas group “requesting information regarding the acquisition of a decommissioned missile silo.”

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The listings are another reason Benson is apprehensive. He worries that the magazine may run into trouble should any of the contributors use the forum to promote illegal activities. Benson said he and his two-member staff don’t want to be seen as supporters of violence and organized anti-government activities.

“I think the great majority of our readers are very good people, good, law-abiding, upstanding American citizens . . . rock-ribbed, God-fearing people from all walks of life,” he said. “We’ve gotten some letters and, occasionally, some calls from some people who might be considered on the fringe. There’s people that consider me on the fringe, or anybody who looks at the magazine a fringe element. . . . That’s overly simplistic, I think, a stupid way to look at it.”

Benson, who graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1974 with a communications degree, blames the “leftist” media for the vilification of militias. Journalists have presented “as accepted fact” that a militia was tied to the bombing, Benson contends. The media also mask the government’s steady encroachment into personal freedoms and its “shadow plan” to create a world government, he says.

“I learned exactly how corrupt the media is,” he said of his own years as a newspaperman.

Fresh out of school in the ‘70s, Benson aspired to work for the New York Times, but his tenure as editor of his college paper, the Daily Titan, and a stint at the Fullerton News Tribune only earned him bruising job rejections from big-city newspapers. He eventually landed a spot at the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey. He says he left the paper bitterly six years later, in 1984, when he was fired following a dispute with an editor.

The 1980s also saw Benson turn his back on the politics he embraced in his younger days. The onetime supporter of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern would vote years later for Ronald Reagan. “I had a transformation. I saw the light,” he joked.

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The true transformation may have happened earlier, on a summer afternoon in Central Park in the late ‘70s. Benson, already becoming disillusioned by his career, was held up by three muggers, one brandishing a butcher knife. He calls the harrowing moment a “turning point,” a wake-up call that told him he would have to fend for himself in an unkind world.

Returning to Orange County in 1984, he became a gun collector and took a job with Shooter’s Journal, a magazine that evolved into the survivalist-minded American Survival Guide, which has a paid circulation of about 45,000. Benson hopes the magazine will be sold to someone who will allow it to continue as is, and he is even entertaining thoughts of somehow buying the operation himself.

The future holds big things for the magazine, Benson says. The Northridge earthquake, Hurricane Andrew, the Los Angeles riots--every year seems to bring a calamity that shows people that their link to society and security is a tenuous one.

“People that live soft, easy lives, they’re lucky,” Benson said, staring at the hazy industrial area outside his office window. “We are not anarchists, but we realize there are times when government is not, or cannot be, there to protect us.”