Waco, Blast Anniversaries Pass Quietly at ‘Freemen’ Standoff

JORDAN, Mont. —  They are not on the list of the FBI’s 10 most wanted. But they remained, for the 26th consecutive day on Friday, the FBI’s most obvious: The holed-up, rebellious “freemen” of Montana, still thumbing their noses at authority.

For residents here in the eastern reach of the state, it was a tense day--the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing last year and the Branch Davidian conflagration near Waco, Texas, in 1993, two tragedies to remind America about the dangers of its divisions within.

Some in rural Jordan, population 440, kept their children out of school. Just in case. Others found a reason to be out of town. And the Sheriff’s Department--composed of one sheriff, one deputy and one part-timer--called in reinforcements from elsewhere in the state. Also just in case.

School officials wouldn’t say how many of the town’s students were absent. One secretary said it would be difficult to determine because many students were on trips with the chorus, band and junior high track team. Extra patrol cars were on duty near the schools just in case.

Friday’s worries here went beyond the lingering standoff at the freemen ranch 36 miles out of town. Blustery threats and rumors of threats had left residents to wonder if outsiders with grudges against the federal government would use the April 19 anniversaries as an excuse to rendezvous here and stir up trouble in support of the freemen.

By dusk, no significant trouble or demonstrations were reported.

Like other days, this one also showed little visible progress toward an end in the standoff between the government and about 20 holdouts professing an angry refusal to abide by government.

Among those believed inside the main ranch building and adjacent freemen cabins are five to six people wanted on an 11-month-old federal warrant charging conspiracy, financial fraud and threatening public officials.

State charges also are pending against another of the freemen. And law enforcement authorities have said they believe six others at the ranch are fugitives wanted in other states.

Jordan residents who know and are related to the renegades describe them as led by hotheads and deadbeats who fell behind in their bills and decided to blame their troubles on a faceless government. But they do not deny that the freemen now take themselves seriously and have amassed an arsenal.

FBI agents have maintained a loose encirclement of the ranch since March 25, when two freemen leaders were lured out and arrested. The remaining leaders have been in telephone contact with authorities and have engaged in face-to-face talks, first with state legislators and then on Wednesday with men believed to be FBI agents.

So far, four members of one family have walked out of the ranch, including a mother and son arrested on federal warrants.

There have been no signs that the other holdouts are softening in their demand for their own brand of justice: what they call a common-law grand jury impaneled from their own ranks.

Here and there across the country, the freemen have received widely publicized expressions of encouragement from self-described militiamen and other anti-government figures.

*

A couple of these individuals have warned of violent retaliation if the FBI loses patience and storms the freemen ranch. Also, there have been occasional calls from within the anti-government ranks for radically like-minded Americans to rally in Montana. But so far only a handful of people have answered.

“It’s awfully quiet,” Garfield County Atty. Nickolas C. Murnion said Friday afternoon. “It’s funny how few of these other people have shown up. I guess that’s about the best thing that’s happened so far.”

Murnion is among those the freemen have threatened with death.

The one outsider visible here this week has been Norman Olson, an outspoken figure from Michigan’s self-established militia. Wearing full camouflage regalia, Olson was rebuffed by authorities and allowed neither to approach the freemen ranch nor meet with the senior FBI officials on the scene.

On Wednesday, Olson took his complaints to the media, berating the government and the FBI. Reporters finally walked away, according to those at the scene.

At a roadblock six miles from the ranch, FBI agents and Montana highway patrolmen also turned away a few others, including one man who said he just “wanted to take a look” and another who said he was a journalist and former member of the Branch Davidians.

In the standoff, the FBI has adopted a distinctly different tactic than at Waco--where 86 cultists died as federal agents moved in on them in 1993. This time, they are relying on patience instead of firepower.

As a result, many Montanans outside of Jordan have turned their curiosity elsewhere.

Now rivaling the freemen as a source of Montana news are the travels of radio-collared wolves, recently reintroduced to roam free in Yellowstone National Park. One of the wolves died this week after being scalded in a hot spring near Old Faithful geyser.

And one of the state’s leading newspapers took to poking fun at the freemen.

In an editorial Wednesday, the Billings Gazette mocked the legalese favored by the freemen in their various writs and pronouncements.

One freemen member in particular, Daniel E. Petersen, caught the newspaper’s eye with a “writ” demanding that he be released from custody. Petersen was one of two men arrested by the FBI near Jordan last month.

*

The Gazette said the freemen ranch is “a place now under the control of the willy-nillies. . . .”

“Let it further be known that claimant Daniel E. Petersen is said to subscribe to a basic assumption that white men’s rights are granted by God while those of other creeds and skin colors have limited rights flowing legislatively from government that conspires to overthrow itself in order to assume one-worldness. . . . This precept of law has been described by those less willy-nilly enhanced as: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.”