Freeh, Fbi Praised For Moving Slowly
The FBI is doing the right thing by being patient in the standoff with the Montana freemen, a leading expert on anti-government groups said Tuesday.
FBI Director Louis Freeh “is doing a wonderful job. He has all the tools, and he will be the victor here,” Morris Dees, chief trial counsel with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a speech to the National Press Club.
“The only haste I see is media-generated,” Dees said. “I don’t know how long the media want to camp out on the flatlands of Eastern Montana.”
The freemen are holed up in Justus Township, a group of buildings on a wheat farm near Jordan, Mont. The FBI has been trying to negotiate an end to the standoff since it arrested two freemen leaders on March 25.
“It’s important that we don’t put a deadline or target date on when we need to resolve this,” said an FBI spokesman in Washington, D.C. “The bottom line is that we execute this in a very peaceful manner.”
LeRoy Schweitzer, 57, and Daniel Petersen Jr., 53, face state and federal charges of threatening public officials and conspiring to write fraudulent checks. The freemen say their checks are backed by judgments and common-law liens filed against state and local governments and public officials.
They also are accused of threatening to kidnap and murder U.S. District Court Judge Jack Shanstrom of Billings, Mont.
“These aren’t just white-collar criminals,” Dees said. “The men in there will kill FBI agents.”
Dees said the freemen hold the Christian Identity beliefs that Aryans are the true children of God and Jews are the children of the devil. To them, the FBI is an agent of “ZOG,” or Zionist-Occupied Government.
In a report issued last week, the center called for a federal law that would ban private militias not authorized by states.
The report identified an anti-government “patriot movement” of more than 800 groups, including 20 in Idaho and 17 in Washington state. These include militia organizations, common law courts, Christian Identity churches and others who identify themselves as “patriots” opposed to government conspiracy.
, DataTimes