Fbi Too Easy On Freemen, Petition Claims Residents Urge Use Of ‘Reasonable Force’ To End Standoff

The FBI is squeezing the Montana freemen ever tighter since surrender talks broke down, but residents of this ranching and farming county are doing some squeezing of their own - on the FBI.

A community petition urging the use of “reasonable force” to end the 73-day-old standoff has collected some 200 signatures, rancher Brent McRae, who initiated it, said Wednesday. The county has fewer than 1,500 residents, and Jordan has fewer than 500.

McRae said he would deliver the petition to Garfield County Sheriff Charles Phipps today and hold a news conference to comment on attitudes he found in circulating the document. He wants Phipps to deliver it to the FBI.

“The people of Garfield County have been victims of these people for 2-1/2 or three years,” McRae said after he placed the petitions in Jordan businesses two weeks ago.

Many area residents feel the FBI has been overly considerate of the antigovernment extremists holed up in the remote farm complex they occupy.

The FBI did not cut off electricity to the place until Monday, has kept its SWAT teams at checkpoints several miles from the farm, and until recently allowed family members to visit the complex.

One exception has been Janet Clark, whose husband Edwin and son Casey are in the compound.

She has been allowed to bring medicine to her son, who suffers from an undisclosed medical condition.

After her brief visit to the compound Wednesday afternoon, she spent more than an hour talking with the FBI before returning to the ranch. The agency declined comment on the development.

The agency moved three armored cars and two helicopters to the area last Friday, but kept the vehicles about four miles away and emphasized that it still hopes to end the standoff without violence.

Talks broke down June 3, when Colorado state Sen. Charles Duke gave up in frustration, saying that the freemen were not negotiating in good faith and that some were merely criminals trying to avoid prosecution.

At least 21 people, including three children, are at the ranch.

More than a dozen of the adults are wanted on charges that include circulating millions of dollars in bogus checks and threatening to kill a federal judge.

The FBI said it has used 42 third-party intermediaries in efforts to persuade the freemen to surrender.

Casey Emerson, a conservative Republican state senator from Bozeman, which has an active militia movement and several vocal freeman sympathizers, told reporters Wednesday he has told the FBI he is willing to act as an intermediary.

Four other members of the Montana Legislature have met with the freemen several times, to no avail.

When FBI agents shut off electricity to the freemen, they switched on truck-mounted portable generators to serve 41 neighboring homes that are wired into the same circuit as the ranch the freemen call Justus Township.

Some neighbors have said they are sure the freemen, like most farms in the area, have their own generators, but there has been no sign any were in use.