Montana Senator Fears Another Jonestown Baucus Says Standoff Reminds Him Of Cult That Led To Suicides
As the bloodless standoff with anti-government Montana Freemen turns a week old today, a U.S. senator says the group reminds him of a notorious religious cult whose members died in a suicide pact.
“I’m not going to carry this analogy too far, but it reminds me a little bit of Jim Jones and Jonestown,” Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Sunday of the Justus Township where two dozen fugitives and their friends refuse to surrender.
The senator traveled to Jordan to appear live on the CBS show “Face the Nation.”
On the same broadcast, the self-described “commander” of the Northern Michigan Militia, Norman Olson, said he intended to mobilize his militia group and drive to Montana to support the freemen.
Olson later told a reporter that he will make the trip only if he can raise sufficient funds.
Elsewhere, Edward LeStage, leader of the Idaho Freemen Patriots of the Northwest, said he intends to travel to Lewistown, Mont., today to stage a demonstration supporting the freemen. He predicted 800 supporters will show up.
Lewistown is about 150 miles from the freemen’s Justus Township, which is surrounded by roving teams of FBI agents and Montana Highway Patrol officers. Unlike the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff in North Idaho, there is no permanent roadblock where protesters can gather.
Baucus went to a ranch about 20 miles from the Justus Township, but didn’t go to roadblocks that the freemen erected across a county road.
The senator said Montanans don’t need militia groups from other states or Randy Weaver to solve the freemen issue, which he said is being adequately addressed by the FBI and the Justice Department.
Garfield County Prosecutor Nick Murnion, who also appeared on the broadcast, later said Olson’s threat to bring militia to Jordan was “antagonistic and inflammatory.”
“I don’t think he’s very well-informed about what we’re dealing with here,” said Murnion, calling the freemen dangerous right-wing extremists.
U.S. Attorney Sherry Matteucci in Billings said Sunday that the FBI hasn’t closed the door on Weaver’s offer to travel from Iowa to mediate the freemen standoff. Weaver’s wife and son died during his own standoff with federal authorities near Naples, Idaho
The federal prosecutor said she also has received offers of assistance from attorneys and private individuals, whom she declined to identify, who previously have represented right-wing extremists or racists.
“We are evaluating each one and will consider any offer of assistance which will help us resolve this situation peacefully,” Matteucci said.
Reports circulated Sunday in Jordan that fugitive Agnes “Aggie” Stanton, wife of imprisoned freemen rancher William Stanton, was contemplating surrendering. She is among 12 people facing federal indictment for conspiring to devise and implement a scheme to defraud financial institutions. Relatives of the fugitives continue to be used to negotiate with the fugitives and others living in the township compound, patrolled by armed freemen guards.
On Sunday, the FBI permitted three young women who are related to the fugitives to go into the township. The trio included Sara Negaard, 17, a Jordan High School student who is the granddaughter of Emmett Clark, 67. He is the patriarch of at least a half-dozen members of the Clark family who are in the compound.
Meanwhile, Baucus visited Sunday with Jordan residents and Garfield County ranchers who generally support the FBI’s presence and attempts to arrest the freemen on various federal conspiracy and bank fraud charges.
Baucus said despite the cult-like aspects of the freemen’s compound and beliefs, he remains optimistic the standoff will be resolved peacefully.
Baucus said he doesn’t think the freemen standoff will become a political landmark event for the federal government.
“I think Ruby Ridge and Waco are incidents of the past,” the Montana senator said. “Federal law enforcement personnel know that they made some big mistakes in both of those situations. Here, they’re doing their darndest not to let mistakes repeat themselves.”
A federal indictment accuses the freemen, and their imprisoned leader LeRoy Schweitzer, formerly of Colfax, Wash., with operating a multi-million dollar nationwide check-writing scheme.
“It’s a way of turning good folks into folks who’ve kind of gotten off the beam,” said Baucus of the way Schweitzer, a tax protester, sold his common-law township concept to financially strapped ranchers Ralph and Emmett Clark, and their families.
Baucus stopped short of calling the freemen a cult, “but it obviously has incestuous overtones.”
“When you’re holed up in a location for a while and all you hear is conversation among yourselves, pretty soon you start believing it.
“Obviously, a lot of people are upset with state and federal government,” Baucus said.
“I’m upset with a lot of things the federal government does.”
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