Standoff A Lose-Lose Situation For Fbi Whether It Waits For, Or Confronts, Freemen, Agency Will Likely Come Under Fire

The FBI’s 48-day standoff with anti-government freemen is seen by experts outside the agency as a no-win proposition, likely to bring it condemnation no matter what course it takes.

Leaders in academia, law enforcement and private security don’t agree on whether the FBI should continue isolating the freemen and simply wait - possibly for months - for the group to surrender, or if agents should storm the 960-acre farm complex.

And if they move aggressively, will they risk killing people who are accused of nonviolent crimes, and some who are accused of no crimes at all?

That possibility raises memories of the deadly Branch Davidian siege at Waco, Texas, and the standoff with white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

“Unfortunately, I think whatever they did they would be soundly criticized,” said Fred Shenkman, professor of criminology at the University of Florida.

FBI agents have surrounded the rural freemen complex in eastern Montana since March 25, when they arrested two leaders of the group.

The freemen have kept armed lookouts on a hilltop a mile south of the main house since the standoff began. On Saturday, they apparently added a second sentry post by towing a small camper trailer to a field north of the house, then moving it onto a nearby hilltop.

The FBI believes 18 freemen are still in the compound, some of them wanted on state and federal charges ranging from writing millions of dollars in worthless checks to threatening to kidnap and kill a federal judge.

Neighbors say the group has been stockpiling food, weapons and other supplies for months.

The standoff probably is going to be a long one, said Ira A. Lipman, president of Guardsmark, a private security agency experienced in protecting clients from political extremists.

“Probably the most complicating factor in the entire situation is that you have political and religious” elements within the freemen, Lipman said. “People are going to be swayed to one more than the other, and as a result, negotiators … cannot get a clear majority. The two groups won’t come together because they have different positions.”

But Lipman expresses confidence in the FBI.

“The FBI knows what it’s doing,” he said. “They (the freemen) are not posing a threat except as it is extremely costly to the taxpayers, and I think the bureau is measuring the cost versus lives.”

TThe FBI refuses to discuss its expenses or any other aspect of the long siege. But the state’s expenses - which are to be repaid by the FBI have topped $500,000, and state law officers and support personnel make up perhaps only a third of those on the scene.

The confrontations at Waco and Ruby Ridge provided no blueprint for a satisfactory conclusion to this waiting game.

“These are really rare,” Shenkman said. “It’s not like you can have a computer analysis of what works best - you have so few.”

It used to be that in a barricade situation, the assumption was that time was on the side of the SWAT team,” he said. “But we were talking about hours. Waiting the people out could be a two-hour proposition.

“But now waiting has become days, weeks, months.”

James Fyfe, professor of criminology at Temple University and a former New York City police lieutenant, believes emphatically that the FBI must avoid armed confrontation and wait out the freemen, regardless of time and cost.

“If you look at the cost of rushing these things, well, people are going to be talking about the MOVE bombing for years,” Fyfe said.

Fyfe testified as an expert witness last week in Philadelphia about the police bombing of a house fortified by the group called MOVE; the bomb started a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed a city block and 61 homes. He testified earlier at the U.S. Senate hearings into the confrontation at Waco, where 81 Davidians and four federal agents were killed.

On the other side of the argument, police consultant Ron McCarthy of Dana Point, Calif., is equally emphatic that waiting is wrong.

But McCarthy says it is Washington politicians, not the FBI, who are making the decisions, and the politicians are setting a policy that law agencies must spend millions to avoid the risk of injury to people accused of crimes who refuse lawful orders to surrender.

“We have now established an extreme precedent,” McCarthy said. “How many law enforcement agencies and how many situations can the system stand before it breaks down?”