Gritz, Weaver May Show At Standoff Ex-Green Beret Says He’ll Tell Montana Group To Give Up

James “Bo” Gritz, who helped end Idaho’s bloody Ruby Ridge siege, said Wednesday that he and Randy Weaver are heading here, and that he will tell the encircled freemen to come out and take their chances in federal court.

“I want the law preserved and I think the way to do this is to bring them into federal court,” Gritz told The Associated Press in a telephone interview conducted on “Freedom Call,” a conservative radio talk show.

The former Green Beret colonel said providing a forum for the freemen’s grievances in federal court is better than having someone killed.

“The FBI is not going to go away. So it is only a matter of time when Janet Reno (the U.S. attorney general) has a bad hair day and someone gets hurt a la Waco,” Gritz said, referring to the death of 81 members of the Branch Davidian cult who died near Waco, Texas, in 1993 when federal agents moved to end a 51-day siege.

State officials, meanwhile, were doing their own talking with the freemen.

John Connor Jr., the state Justice Department’s top special prosecutor, and state Rep. Karl Ohs, R-Harrison, met with the freemen for almost three hours at their ranch compound Wednesday afternoon. The meeting followed a similar visit a week earlier.

Ohs, a rancher near Harrison, also was part of a delegation of four state legislators that met twice with the freemen earlier this month.

Ohs and Connor did not speak to reporters after Wednesday’s session.

Gritz said he was traveling with Weaver and Jack McLamb, a retired Phoenix police officer and founder of Police Against the New World Order.

Weaver’s wife and son were killed by federal agents at Ruby Ridge in August 1992. A U.S. marshal also died.

Gritz said they planned to arrive in Jordan late this morning. The FBI is headquartered here in its month-long standoff with the freemen, who are holed up on a 960-acre ranch about 30 miles away.

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