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Shofar FTP Archive File: orgs/american/freemen/duke-on-freemen

From Thu Jun  6 07:52:52 PDT 1996
Article: 41336 of alt.revisionism
From: (Rich Graves)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.conspiracy,alt.politics.nationalism.white,alt.politics.white-power,,alt.revisionism,alt.skinheads
Subject: Michigan Militia, Bo Gritz, Charles Duke denouce Freemen as criminals and frauds (was Re: Warning to FBI)
Followup-To: misc.activism.militia
Date: 5 Jun 1996 14:27:03 -0700
Organization: Uncensored Internet,
Lines: 165
Sender: llurch@Networking.Stanford.EDU
Message-ID: <4p4u37$cfv@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
References:  <4p29q7$>
Xref: alt.activism:51585 alt.conspiracy:56011 alt.politics.nationalism.white:21662 alt.politics.white-power:31147 alt.revisionism:41336 alt.skinheads:26657

Followups set to misc.activism.militia, which these trollers are avoiding
because everyone with a clue knows that the Freemen are nothing but a
bunch of crooks.

>From  today's Los Angeles Times,, also carried in
the San Jose Mercury News, and "MERCURY" on
America Online:

FBI Lets 'Freemen' Talk Themselves Out of Allies
 Standoff: Sympathy sours among right-wing groups after negotiations fail.
 Federal agents reap the benefits. 
By KIM MURPHY, Times Staff Writer

                        When Colorado state Sen. Charles Duke
                  first entered the "freemen" compound, it was
                  with the hope of preserving the rights of free
                  Americans to oppose their government, and of
                  ending the FBI standoff without bloodshed. 
                        When he left five days later, Duke--a
                  longtime supporter of the patriot movement
                  with sympathies for right-wing groups across
                  the country--had had enough of this particular
                  brand of anti-government militancy. 
                        The legislator was so mad that he could
                  be seen waving his arms in fury from a mile
                  away. He was yelling, he said, at Rodney
                  Skurdal, who had--along with the rest of the
                  freemen--reneged on the second of two
                  carefully crafted deals, this one to release
                  two young girls held at the compound. 
                        "You aren't enough of a man to come face
                  me, get out of that car!" Duke shouted as
                  Skurdal climbed into an automobile. "I told
                  him, 'I'm going to go out of here and I'm
                  going to tell the American people what you're
                  doing here. You will not get support from the
                  patriot community, you will not get support
                  from the militia community and if you die,
                  nobody's going to avenge you.' " 
                        "People in contact with them understand
                  now that what they were doing was fraud," said
                  Randy Trochmann, spokesman for the Militia of
                  Montana. "With the public, a good percentage
                  of them want the FBI just to leave, put a berm
                  around the house and let the state police
                  patrol it. And another percentage just want
                  them [the FBI] to go in and finish them off."
                        It is a position that has not been lost
                  on the right-wing community, some of whose
                  leaders have joined a chorus demanding that
                  the FBI up the ante against the militants. 
                        Duke, who said he twice crafted deals
                  with the freemen for release of the girls,
                  ages 8 and 10, said he lost all confidence
                  when the FBI carefully agreed to the
                  conditions, only to see the freemen's demands
                        "Initially, we believed they were trying
                  to stand for constitutional principles and
                  were simply trying to do some of the same
                  techniques that are practiced on a daily basis
                  by the banks and the Federal Reserve system,"
                  said Duke, referring to the freemen's
                  declaration of the U.S. monetary system as
                  invalid and their subsequent issuance of their
                  own money orders, the subject of a federal
                  indictment against about a dozen of the 21
                  people still at the ranch. 
                        "But the overall group there has very
                  little to do with the
                  patriot/constitutionalist movement. They're
                  trying to hide behind that as a way of
                  avoiding arrest, in my opinion," Duke said.
                  "They're just scam artists. And the fact that
                  they're willing to hide behind those two
                  little girls, I realized we're not dealing
                  with honorable people here."
                        One by one, all of those initially most
                  prepared to be sympathetic to the freemen and
                  to help them meet their demands for a public
                  forum against the federal government have
                  thrown up their hands in exasperation and
                  denounced the group as unreasonable. 
                        Gritz, in obvious disgust, said he had
                  come close to working out a deal in which half
                  of those at the compound would have left
                  willingly. "But any time that happens, they
                  are immediately put down verbally by these
                  vitamin salesmen who would have to get a job
                  if this whole thing collapses," Gritz said of
                  the two to four most militant freemen leaders.
                        Brent McRae, who is heading the current
                  petition drive, said the new attitude comes in
                  part with a growing respect and sympathy in
                  Jordan for the FBI, which initially was
                  regarded with suspicion. For months, Jordan
                  residents have had the chance to shoot pool
                  and lift a beer with off-duty agents at the
                  Hell Creek Bar; they run into each other at
                  the hardware store and the supermarket. They
                  stop for a chat at the checkpoints on the way
                  out toward the freemen ranch, where bored but
                  cheerful agents are continually begging for
                  homemade cookies and coffee. 
                        "It's humanized a government agency. We
                  found out FBI agents aren't like they're
                  portrayed on TV," McRae said. "It's been a
                  shock to everybody, myself included. The
                  people have had the opportunity to meet them,
                  and found them to be very courteous. But
                  they're frustrated. This isn't what they're
                  trained to do, to sit and watch. These people
                  that are here have the ability and the
                  expertise to bring this thing to a conclusion,
                  and feel they could do it without bloodshed if
                  they were given the ability and the go-ahead
                  to do it." 
                        "At the beginning, it was all about,
                  'Here was this poor community in Montana that
                  was being descended on by the federal
                  government.' But it became very apparent very
                  quickly to the general public that this was
                  not a community rising up in opposition to the
                  federal government, that in fact some of them
                  had even asked the federal government for
                  help. To me, that's when the spin started to
                  unravel out of the right," Toole said. 
                        On radio talk shows across the country,
                  Toole in recent weeks has said that he had
                  expected hate calls from right-wing
                  sympathizers. But instead, "everywhere what I
                  was getting is: 'The government is
                  mollycoddling those guys.' " 
                        Toole said that people like Gritz, Duke
                  and the Militia of Montana's Trochmann
                  brothers found themselves facing a choice of
                  courting either mainstream political support
                  or the freemen. And it was an easy pick. "They
                  could come out and say, 'Those guys are
                  extremists, and we're the reasonable middle.'
                  They could say, 'Those guys don't want to pay
                  their bills, and they're acting like
                  2-year-olds.' " 
                        Duke said his talks broke down because
                  the freemen refused to live up to the bargains
                  they'd made.

Today's New York Times:

"Long-Running Freemen Standoff No Longer Rattles Locals"

...and so on.


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