Ex-Blm Head: ‘Wise Use,’ Militia Linked Baca Urges Federal Agents To Step Up Probe Of Connections

The former head of the Bureau of Land Management joined environmentalists Tuesday urging federal agents to step up an investigation into possible links between militias and militant activists for private property rights in the West.

“I think there are threads that lead between them. The rhetoric is the same,” former BLM Director Jim Baca said at the National Press Club.

Leaders in the property rights and “Wise Use” movements denied any links with citizen militias and disavowed violent tactics.

“You can see how desperate they are to stoop to copying the tactics of Joseph McCarthy,” said Chuck Cushman, head of American Land Rights and the National Inholders Association in Battle Ground, Wash.

“We have nothing to do with the militia movement in this country,” he said in a telephone interview.

David Almasi, spokesman for Defenders of Property Rights based in Washington, said members of his group “have links to radicals like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who wrote the Constitution.”

“They support our group because we are trying to find a legal means. If they were to suggest violent means we would throw them out of the organization,” he said.

A Justice Department official said the FBI is investigating possible connections between the two, but has found no evidence so far.

“They are right now completely speculating on any links that may or may not exist,” said Peter Coppelman, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

“There is just no evidence of a connection among all of these groups,” he said.

Baca, a former state lands commissioner from New Mexico who resigned the BLM’s top job last year in a dispute with the Clinton administration over environmental protections, said the Justice Department should intensify its probe.

“I think they will find links,” Baca said. “Government workers are scared. There are threats being made on a daily basis. … I got pretty worried when they threw a bomb on the roof of a BLM office in Reno, Nev.

“I would like to see an investigation of the office bombing in Reno made a priority. Threats against federal employees cannot be tolerated,” he said.

That bombing at a BLM office in October 1993 caused no injuries. In March of this year, a bomb also exploded but caused no injuries at a Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev.

The FBI is investigating both bombings and has no suspects, Coppelman said.

“If we don’t know who did it, it is impossible to link whoever did it with any other group,” he said.