Bloody End To Freemen Standoff, Montana Official Tells House

Montana’s Garfield County Attorney Nick Murnion told a congressional panel Thursday he foresees a bloody end to the standoff with a band of “freemen” who have holed up on a ranch in his county.

Murnion was among a dozen witnesses who told the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime that anti-government militias and “freemen” are increasingly turning their hostility for the federal government toward state and local officials.

Two men wanted on felony warrants abandoned a house in the Bull Mountains between Roundup and Billings on Sept. 28 and moved in with others at the Ralph Clark ranch home northwest of Jordan. Days later members of the group fired a warning shot when a foreign journalist tried to interview them, and they seized $66,000 worth of video equipment at gunpoint from an ABC News crew that came onto the Clark property.

The two-man sheriff’s department has not moved against them for fear of an armed confrontation.

“At this time I believe that bloodshed is inevitable,” Murnion told the congressional crime panel.

He said the standoff “will have only one ending, and that ending will not be peaceful.”

Several witnesses gave academic appraisals of militias and similar anti-government groups, but some officials related personal experiences more like Murnion’s.

Karen Mathews, a Stanislaus County clerk-recorder from Modesto, Calif;, said she was threatened and knifed by tax protesters. The trouble began in 1993 when she refused their demands to remove a $416,000 IRS lien against one of them, then refused to file a batch of phony “common law” liens against IRS agents.