Land Of The Freemen -- `Republic Of Montana': Ranchers Issue Bounties On Lawmen, Storm Courthouse, Concoct Own Money -- Neighbors Turn Against Neighbors In Struggle For Soul Of Community

ROUNDUP, Montana - In the Bull Mountains outside this Eastern Montana town, three men in a log house play a defiant waiting game.

Wanted on felony charges for threatening public officials, they are occupying a house legally owned by the IRS. They are armed with guns, with a prominent no-trespassing sign that promises forceful resistance to any "unlawful arrest," and with an unshakeable belief that the government is at war with its people.

Down below, in the once sleepy little town of Roundup, Musselshell County sheriff's deputies have armed themselves with assault weapons, including a sniper rifle with long-range scope and high-velocity cartridges.

They, too, think they may be at war.

Long before the deadly bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, law-enforcement officials in rural communities were beginning to see a new threat. It wasn't coming just from men in Army fatigues conducting mock military exercises on weekends. It was coming from people others knew as neighbors, friends and relatives.

Three weeks before the April 19 explosion, Musselshell County Attorney John Bohlman wrote President Clinton, pleading for help. He and other officials were being threatened, he said, by men describing themselves as "Freemen," part of a national Patriot/Constitutionalist movement to "reclaim" government.

"Personally, I believe we will have a confrontation that ends in gunfire before the end of the year," Bohlman wrote the president.

But in Eastern Montana - where gun control is a bad word for people of nearly every political stripe - something deeper and more pervasive than the threat of a shootout is disturbing the peace.

Here and in adjacent Garfield County, drivers wave their hands reflexively to each other, and many people raise wheat and cattle on land their grandparents homesteaded. But lately, citizens in the two communities have taken to doing some odd things.

They've brought guns to the shower, locked the entrances at school and installed security systems at public buildings where doors have always been wide open. Relatives whose common ancestors have lived in the county for generations have stopped speaking. Longtime neighbors wonder if they're still friends, and people are more watchful of strangers.

In Garfield County, the sheriff formed a posse of more than 80 ranchers and townspeople to show the community is behind him.

On the other side, Freemen set up their own county government, declared the existing one illegal, and announced a $1 million bounty for the arrests of six law-enforcement and bank officials. Anyone who opposes them is hit with liens demanding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Ten Commandments

Obsessed with the federal siege on religious followers in Waco, Texas, and the shooting deaths of white separatist Randy Weaver's wife and child, Freemen believe government "thugs" have turned against citizens.

They see government becoming more corrupt and oppressing people with unnecessary laws and rules. The solution, they say, lies with the original U.S. Constitution and The Bible's Ten Commandments, which they say guarantee individual rights and put citizens on an equal footing with government.

And Freemen aren't just talking. Some are refusing to get driver's licenses and electrical permits. They won't use ZIP codes and refer to their state as the "Republic of Montana." They say the U.S. dollar is worthless because the government went off the gold standard, and that citizens are being driven into bankruptcy by relying on a valueless currency.

"I was born into slavery, and you was, too," says Daniel Petersen, one of the men holed up near Roundup.

A father of six and grandfather of 11, he believes he and others must act swiftly to ensure that future generations have their freedom. "If we don't take care of it now, they're not going to have anything."

Demand for $500 million in silver

It was spring 1993, and Garfield Sheriff Charles Phipps knew something was wrong.

He'd left his dusty, closet-like office in back of the courthouse in Jordan to serve foreclosure papers on a couple of ranchers he counted as family friends. Oddly, they didn't seem worried.

They'd just been to a meeting with "one of the smartest folks" they'd ever met, and now they had the answers, they told him.

His name was Roy Schwasinger. He was the head of the Colorado-based organization We the People, and he was traveling the country, telling people they didn't have to pay their debts, because money was worthless. For $300, he offered to help them out.

Later, he was convicted of fraud, but the two farmers knew nothing of that. Instead, what they got from him was the conviction that they could pay off farm-loan debt by printing certified money orders on their computers.

It sounded plenty strange to Phipps. "I made an excuse to get out of there right away. Something wasn't right."

As top lawman of the county, he was used to making small talk with neighbors and getting invited into their homes for a piece of pie. Nestled amid rolling wheat plains and cattle-grazing fields that are flush with deer, elk and pheasant, the farming community is a place where parents aren't afraid to let their children wander down the street.

Jordan has one grocery store, two paved roads, and more bars than restaurants. Men walk around in cowboy hats and boots, and extended relatives live right "next door," linked by farming, family history and miles of dirt country roads.

But time has brought new pressures.

After years of relying on government loans and subsidies, ranchers started getting shoved against a wall when the price of their crops and cattle dropped and interest rates shot up in the late 1970s and '80s. Many were losing money and struggling to make loan payments.

The federal government seemed to be closing in on people.

Armed with a heightened sense of concern for land and animals, wildlife agents rode in on horseback to catch farmers shooting coyotes on federal land. There was talk of fencing off a chunk of Eastern Montana for the good of the buffalo. And local folks really got irate when a large team of federal agents swooped in with more than 15 trucks, a helicopter and an airplane to search the ranch of an elderly couple accused of poisoning eagles. They were convicted of one misdemeanor and are suing the government for damages.

Frightened by the sense that things were out of control, Freemen looked for a way to fight back.

In a complicated scheme, they began by filing liens against public officials and judges under the state's Uniform Commercial Code, a legal method of keeping track of loans and debts. Arguing that the officials had failed to meet their oath in office, the Freemen claimed they were owed money, since the original dollars they had borrowed from banks and the federal government were worthless.

Although the public officials refused to sign the documents specifying their "debt," the Freemen used them to create phony "certified money orders" that they attempted to deposit in local banks.

To Garfield County Attorney Nick Murnion, it was "paper terrorism." He was asked to pay $500 million in minted silver.

Storming the courthouse

Annoyance at the flood of writs and liens turned to shock and anger when, early last year, some 36 Freemen marched past Phipps and crowded into Garfield County's tiny courthouse, to create their own county government. They included Petersen and Rodney Skurdal, another of the men now holed up in Roundup.

Phipps, who runs a two-man department, stepped aside. "We didn't know if they were armed. We didn't see any weapons, but they did make the employees pretty nervous."

With Skurdal presiding, the Freemen elected one of their own as justice and constable.

Afterwards, the three-member Garfield County commission quickly passed a resolution banning them from using the courthouse to construct a parallel government.

But the Freemen responded by issuing a bounty on Phipps, the district judge, the prosecutor and three bank officials. Announced on local fliers faxed around the county, it offered $1 million for help in arresting and convicting "the suspects."

Murnion, the county attorney, decided the Freemen had finally crossed the line. He filed charges against 15 Freemen for impersonating public officials.

Like Phipps, Murnion's attachment to the area goes back generations. He takes the Freemen's actions personally.

"In a democracy, who's the government? We are, so when you attack the government, you're attacking the people," says Murnion.

"Nick Murnion - I guess he's our enemy," says Val Stanton.

Sitting at the kitchen table in a tidy farm home nearly an hour out of Jordan, she warms quickly to a discussion of Freemen principles.

Soon, her husband, Ebert, 22, arrives. He hangs his camouflage jacket, but keeps his Glock pistol in a hip holster. Fair-haired and muscular, he seems polite and idealistic.

The gun belonged to his father, Bill Stanton, a Freeman now serving 10 years in state prison for "criminal syndicalism," a Montana law against advocating crime, violence or property damage for political or industrial ends. He was the first to be sentenced under the old law, designed to deal with left-wing protesters in the Vietnam era.

The house and the farm still belong to Bill and his wife, Agnes. Val and Ebert have moved in from Billings to help Agnes farm the 2,000-acre spread while Bill is gone.

It is his family and other Freemen who have been attacked by the government, in Ebert and Val's view.

"They've got a total dictatorship over us," Ebert says.

Ebert talks about the need to return to a gold standard and a government that relies on common law. Freemen, he says, aren't trying to overthrow government, merely to scale it back to a local level. "There's a reason why we were set up with a state constitution. We're not trying to change a thing - we're trying to go back to the way it was."

Any connection with "corporative" government - using ZIP codes, paying taxes, using a Social Security card, even calling 911 - "links you in to be chattled to the federal government," he says.

He sees the government and bankers as conspiring to keep people in debt with loans backed by worthless dollars.

Bill Stanton filed for bankruptcy in 1988. He was getting himself out of debt until late 1993, when he missed a payment and was hit with a foreclosure. The foreclosure will take effect in September if the loan is not paid.

Desperate, Stanton jumped at an offer of a $3.8 million loan from LeRoy Schweitzer, one of the three men avoiding arrest in Roundup.

But the "money" was based on liens created by the UCC filings, and it evaporated nearly as soon as it hit the bank's computer. Meanwhile, Stanton had written a $25,000 bad check for his county taxes.

Not militia members

Freemen such as Lyle Chamberlin, 46, say they've been trying to reform government through the national Constitutionalist movement for years.

A rancher who lives about 85 miles northeast of Roundup, he used to raise cattle on 10,000 acres but had to sell off most of it 15 years ago. Now, with 160 acres, "it's just a place to hang his hat." His wife, Gerri, bartends in Winnett and keeps groceries on the table.

It was in 1974, Chamberlin says, when he saw "the big change - when the country went from a Christian identity to humanism . . . and people started worshipping the dollar instead of God."

Like others, he got drawn into the Freemen a couple of years ago when a Jordan rancher was looking for a way to protect his assets from a district judge during a divorce case.

"Attorneys and judges - they're the ones claiming titles and nobility. We're supposed to get down on our knees and beg mercy, but they're not the state. The people are the state," Chamberlin says.

Judges, he believes, are usurping power they never had by foreclosing on farmers. Force out the farmers, he says, and you'll drain the lifeblood of the country and a free society.

He ran as an independent for county commissioner in Petroleum County last November. Although he drew 60 votes, less than the winner's 157, he refers to the Bill of Rights to argue that he won, and faithfully attends commission meetings.

Both Chamberlin and the Stantons say they resent being portrayed as racist hatemongers. "The skinheads and Aryan Nations are violent - they do violent acts against other races and religions. We have no connections with them," says Val.

They do believe that the Bible teaches there should be no "mixing of the races," Ebert adds. "It's not that they're scum and we're great. It's just that God put us here for different reasons."

The Stantons and Chamberlin emphasize that Freemen have no connection to the Oklahoma bombing, and aren't synonymous with militia members, who don't seem to have a firm idea of how they want government to change.

But Freemen also say they will fight back if they feel they're being unlawfully attacked by government, or if they believe their land is being stolen through repossession.

Freemen "derive from Indian fighters," Chamberlin says. "Right or wrong, they took the land from Indians. Now they are the Indians."

A town divided

In Jordan, when the sheriff held a meeting last spring to form a posse, more than 150 turned out. Although many residents say they wholeheartedly agree with the effort to rein in government, the Freemen are going about it the wrong way.

"I don't know what the right way is, but this ain't gonna do it," says H.K. Riley, 81, whose father homesteaded the land near the spread he still owns. "They had some good ideas, but they went bad.

"It's too bad that bomb that went off down there in Oklahoma didn't hit Washington, D.C. It would have done a hell of a lot more good. But that's against the law," he says quickly, smiling from under his big black hat.

As a longtime cattle rancher, Commissioner Phil Hill can identify with the plight of these men. But he wonders why they haven't been able to rise above it like everyone else.

"A lot of us got into problems, but most of us just buckled down and dug ourselves out," Hill says.

Many are also saddened by divisions created in families.

Cecil Weeding, a former state senator and local rancher, says he has barely spoken with his wife's brothers for months. "They thought we should have joined up with them. They're basic, down-to-earth people, but they just got into this cult. You can't reason with them."

Beyond the guns and talk of violence, Jackie Currey, a clerk at Jordan High School, sees more of a threat in the Freemen's ideas.

The mother of four, she says she's working extra hard to teach her children how to think independently.

Teachers figured it was best to expose students to some of the Freemen's ideas by bringing into the classroom legal-looking documents and published legal notices. Last week, the county attorney came in and talked about the Freemen as one of several "hate groups" gaining ground in the Northwest.

"They're going to meet up with these people and they need to know how to react to them," Currey says.

The roundup in Roundup

Townspeople on Roundup's Main Street late one afternoon in March thought they were watching something from a big-city crime scene.

They heard breaking glass as Musselshell County Deputy Sheriff Orville "Buzz" Jones smashed the window of the car with the butt of his rifle. And they watched as Jones and Deputy Mitchell "Dutch" VanSyckel hauled out the occupants, including Militia of Montana leader John Trochmann.

It had been a tense few days, beginning when police received a tip from a federal source that Freemen, in retaliation for Bill Stanton's sentencing, were planning to kidnap a judge, try him in their court, sentence him to hanging, carry out the sentence - and film it on video.

For the next few days, they tightened security, and escorted the judge to and from home.

At the beginning of the third day, everything seemed calm. By the end, though, seven men - Freemen and militia members - had been arrested, and a cache of weapons seized, along with armor-defeating ammunition, more than $80,000 in cash, plastic strips police use for handcuffs, a sophisticated radio and a video camera.

"If this isn't evidence that some type of evil intent was afoot, then I'm not a very good policeman," Jones says.

After the arrests, angry and threatening phone calls flooded the police and prosecutor's lines.

In the end, the only charges that stuck were two concealed-weapons-permit violations.

Now, things have settled down some. Feelings in Roundup about the Freemen seem to range from denial to agreement to disgust.

Some say they don't understand why some people have to pay their taxes while others - those with guns and a fervent belief that the government doesn't exist - don't.

"That really chaps a lot of people's hides," says Roundup resident Yvonne Pettit.

"This deal at the courthouse scared the heck out of everybody," says Larry Bouse, an electrical worker. "But there's a lot of honest people who are just as armed as they are."

But in a region where people are accustomed to letting people live and let live, many feel that the Freemen activities don't touch them directly.

"They're good neighbors," says Loretta Bellows, who lives right next door to Skurdal. "I don't think they're after any individual - they're just after the government."

And even some of the law-enforcement people voice understanding for the Freemen.

"My Grandpa lost his ranch during the Depression - a beautiful ranch near Bozeman," says Deputy Jones. "I go by that ranch every day, and I see the trees my Grandma planted, and I see where my dad was born. And it just tears at my heart," he says. "God, I understand them almost to the point that it scares me. But I do not tolerate crimes of violence."

Bill Mertens, owner of Enjoy Sports, a hardware store, says gun sales increased dramatically for a week or two after the arrests.

Like the Freemen, Mertens believes the country is sliding toward a "New World Order" and U.N. control, and thinks the government has a lot to answer for at Waco.

"I'm not a radical," insists Mertens, who has built up his store in the past four years. "You don't do what I've done and be a radical. What I'm saying is mainstream America. There's a tremendous distrust and fear of our government."

A volatile situation

People who watch rural America say things are likely to get worse before they get better.

While the Montana Freemen have become more visible, their philosophy is spreading to California, Nevada, Arizona and parts of Washington. Some believe it's gaining ground because of economic uncertainty, particularly in agriculture.

Ken O'Toole, president of the Montana Human Rights Network, says the movement is also fed by strong leaders, new residents trying to escape regulations and the fact that public debate has become so shrill and conservative.

While Freemen insist they're not racist, O'Toole and law officials have found evidence of a link with white supremacists and ideologies.

"We're talking about an extremist movement that's based in racism," O'Toole says. The Freemen's "activity tends to be more political rather than military like the militias, but all of them are brought together by the same world view."

Federal officials, still smarting from bad reviews of their conduct in Waco and Weaver's cabin in Idaho, say they're reluctant to rush in to arrest fugitives like Skurdal, Petersen and Schweitzer.

"We do not want people to be put in danger or situations to escalate into violence over petty violations, over infractions that can be addressed in another forum," says Sherry Scheel Matteucci, U.S. attorney for the district of Montana. "But . . . we have not backed away from our job, and we won't."

"Right now I feel somewhat disgusted that I'm not going out there and making an arrest," Musselshell County Sheriff Paul Smith says. "But I've got to consider what the charges are and what the costs of serving those warrants might be."

Casey Clark, 20, a Freeman in Garfield County who's been up to Skurdal's house for meetings, figures somebody's going to make a mistake that's likely to be deadly.

"Something's going to happen one of these days, and it's probably not going to be good," he says. "But they'll fire the first shot, not us."

-------------- MILITIAS ON TV --------------

-- The Militia of Montana will be the "Town Meeting" topic at 6 p.m. today, KOMO-TV (Channel 4).

---------------------- TOMORROW IN THE TIMES: ----------------------

-- The Oklahoma bombing created an image of the far right as gun-toting militias. But the spectrum is far broader - including ordinary citizens who gather at Pierce County library to talk about "Redeeming Our Land." Their weapons are byzantine constitutional theories, liens on public officials, endless paperwork and the Bible.