The longest armed law enforcement siege in modern U.S. history—the 81-day Freemen standoff in Garfield County, Montana—ended without violence.  The FBI had learned from Waco.

Unfortunately for the public, the mainstream media has not.

That night, when FBI Director Louis Freeh claimed credit for his bureau, the scribbling drones duly recorded his version unchallenged.  To his credit, Freeh did make a reference to the CAUSE Foundation.  Few reporters cared enough to ask for details.

The standoff began 25 March, when FBI agents lured LeRoy Schweitzer, the group’s self-taught legal strategist, and another Freeman away from the others and arrested them on federal charges that include mail and bank fraud, and passing millions of dollars worth of bogus checks (see Freeh’s Men vs. The Freemen,” July ’96).

News reports parroted the governments erroneous claims that no deals were made.  One would think the Freemen just gave up.

Had media darling Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center negotiated their peaceful surrender, the lilting, leftwing law-enforcement sycophant would have been the toast of the talk show circuit.  But the CAUSE Foundations is politically incorrect.  After all (tisk-tisk), the non-profit legal services group has represented members of the Ku Klux Klan—and 35 black Davidians—based on the odd notion that the Constitution is for everyone.

“I’m not really upset” about not getting due credit, said David M. Hollaway, who played a major role in resolving the standoff.  He is the associated director of CAUSE, based in Black Mountain, North Carolina.  “The fact that Freeh said …’CAUSE Foundation’ on television must have had Morris Dees rolling around on the floor having a stroke.  I think the FBI was amazed that we were able to do everything so quickly.”

A peaceful outcome was doubtful when CAUSE was called in for one last try.   The FBI had decided to end the stalemate within days—one way or the other.  After Hollaway and CAUSE Director Kirk Lyons got the Freemen to agree to move their battle with the feds to a courtroom, one member’s anger nearly turned violent.

That averted, Lyons and Hollaway got the Justice Department and the Freemen to agree on a deal in which the 16 hold-outs promised to come out.  The deal nearly fell apart at the last minute because of a reckless stunt by Garfield County Sheriff Charles Phipps, whose interference added another tense day.

After hearing of Schweitzer’s arrest on 25 March, near the 960-acre Clark homestead 30 miles west of Jordan, Lyons called U.S. Attorney Sherry S. Matteucci’s office in Montana, offering to help.  Lyons had earlier played a key role in obtaining legal counsel for Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and Koresh’s lieutenant, Steve Schneider, during the Waco siege. 

On 30 March, Lyons got a call from FBI Special Agent Gary Callahan.  Lyons emphasized that CAUSE was trusted by the Freemen and might be able to end the standoff peacefully.

“Our purpose for offering this assistance … is to save lives,” Lyons told Callahan in a follow-up letter.  “We do not intend to represent these people after resolution of the situation.  … We propose that a negotiation assistance team composed of myself, Lourie A. Salley III and Dave Hollaway come to the FBI command post.”

Days passed, and then weeks.  The Freemen refused to communicate directly with the FBI, referring to them as “foreign agents.”   Various negotiation intermediaries came and went without success; Montana state Senator Karl Ohs, Colorado state Senator Charles Duke and retired Green Beret officer James “Bo” Gritz, who had been instruments in convincing white separatist Randy Weaver to surrender in a disastrous standoff in which Weaver’s wife and son were slain by federal agents.

Through it all, the FBI negotiators “would call us from time to time,” Lyons said, and ask questions about sometimes archaic common law terminology used by the Freemen:  What’s a grand jury presentment:  What does quorum nobus mean?  Why are they so upset about fringe on the flag?

“We assumed by 30 or 40 days into the siege that we would not be called in,” Lyons told SOF.  As highly vocal critics of FBI conduct in the Weaver and Waco cases, CAUSE “were the last people the FBI would want.”

On 6 June, the FBI called and said the Freemen wanted to talk to the CAUSE attorneys.  On Sunday, 9 June, Lyons, Hollaway and Salley flew to Billings, rented a vehicle and drove to Jordan.  Salley, not a CAUSE staffer, was included because he is a former police chief, now an attorney in Lexington, South Carolina, and an ardent advocate of the U.S. Constitution.

Blessed Be The Peacemakers

On Monday, 10 June, the tree-man CAUSE team met the FBI negotiators, let by agent Gary Noessner, who was assisted by agent Dwayne Fusele.  They were briefed on the people holed up on the Clark ranch and the charges against them.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Sekora presented Lyons a written agreement in which CAUSE pledged not to talk to the press during the negotiation process, not to become engaged as legal counsel for the Freemen and to waive attorney-client privilege for discussions with them.

That done, they met Robin Montgomery, head of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG, created in the aftermath of Waco.  As CIRG’s Special Agent in Charge, Montgomery commanded negotiators and behavioral scientists on one had, and tactical teams on the other, Lyons and Hollaway described Montgomery as “a no-s**t guy.  We got along with him immediately.”

“If there’s anything I can do to make your plan happen, you tell me,” Lyons quoted Montgomery as saying.  “I will make sure you do not get impeded by bureaucracy, or anybody with an attitude.  You come straight to me.”

After lunch, Lyons’ group was escorted to Justus Township, where they were met by Edwin Clark, a Vietnam veteran whose grandfather homesteaded the tract in 1912.  Clark told the CAUSE team that he would not shoot anyone, that he wore a pistol because Freemen hard-liners criticized him for not doing so.    He reached to pull it out of its holster to show Hollaway and Lyons that it was unloaded.

“Don’t do that,” Hollaway cautioned.  “Snipers might get the wrong idea.”

The first meeting began with prayer.  One of the first questions by the freemen was whether any of the mediators had cigarettes.  Lyons, not a cigarette smoker, offered two large Churchill cigars.  The cigar tobacco was rolled into cigarettes.

Despite media reports to the contrary, the CAUSE intermediaries noted that the Freemen had an ample supply of toilet paper and food.  Daniel Peterson’s wife, Lyons said, “made a cake for everybody.  …  She had all the ingredients, but she said she used up the last of her walnuts.”

Negotiating For Peace

“We did a lot of talking,” Lyons said.  “Dave [Hollaway] was real good about cutting through bulls**t  We considered Edwin [Clark] the friendliest, and then we had the hard cases:  Former Canadian policeman Dale Jacobi, former Marine and White House guard Rodney Skurdahl” and Russell Dean Landers, a tax evader wanted on fraud charges in Colorado.

“We determined that a letter from Schweitzer telling them to come out would probably work,” Lyons said.  They said that if they saw something that they recognized as LeRoy Schweiter’s handwriting, saying it’s time to take this to court, then they’d come out.”

The CAUSE trio left the property to talk with FBI negotiators.  Agents Noesner and Fusele said they wanted something in writing.  They’d have to sell any deal to their bosses, and it would help to have a signed document from the Freemen to indicate good faith.

While the CAUSE team was being briefed about the proposal, CNN reported—incorrectly—that there was already a deal to end the standoff within 24 hours.  No deal yet existed.  Negotiators later learned that Freeman Russ Landers had a cell phone which, unknown to his colleagues, he would use to call CNN at Claude Saylor’s nearby ranch.

The intermediaries returned to the Freemen headquarters.  A signed pledge was no problem, the Freemen leaders said, but a big hitch developed:  The FBI would have to promise Edwin Clark safe passage to personally confer with Schweitzer, Lyons recounted, “so they could keep faith … and not do anything behind [his] back.

Central to this demand was the safekeeping of Schweitzer’s files and legal library, all considered crucial to defending their case.

The Freemen drafted a proposal with the new condition.  It stated that if Clark was allowed free passage to and from the Yellowstone County Jail in Billings to confer with Schweitzer, and Schweitzer agreed, the standoff would end.

The declaration further stipulated that within 24 hours of Clark’s safe return, the Freemen would either come out as “belligerent claimants,” or they would tell the FBI there was no deal and agents would have to act accordingly.

It was while drafting this document that the 81-day standoff came closest to bloodshed.  Jon Barry Nelson, a 20-something hothead who had sneaked on the property after the standoff began, walked in as the resolution terms were being discussed.  Unaware of the conversation thus far, Nelson “blew up,” Lyons said.  “He apparently thought we were … getting ready to sign the surrender.”

Under the impression that Hollaway was to blame, Nelson, wearing a holstered pistol, focused his rage on the wiry former Green Beret medic.  “I was really worried,” Hollaway said.  “He said let’s get it on right now.  I thought he might jerk that pistol and go to work.”

Edwin Clark, backed by Landers, stepped between Nelson and Hollaway and escorted Nelson from the room.  Calmed down, Nelson returned and also signed the document.  Now Lyons and his partners had to convince the FBI to sign off on the revised deal.  It was late in the day.

“We were told that we would go back in around 1 o’clock the next afternoon,” said Lyons, “that it would take that long to get approval from Washington.  We figured they would spend the rest of the night and half the next day lobbying for this.  We sold it to Gary [Noessner] and Dwayne [Fusele].  And Gary and Duane had to sell it to Robin Montgomery, who had the ultimate responsibility of getting the director’s approval.”

According to several FBI sources, both in Montana and at headquarters, Montgomery jumped the entire chain of command and called Freeh at home that night.

Blessed Be The Flexible

According to these sources, the conversation between Montgomery and Director Freeh went something like this:

FREEH:          Let me get this straight.  You want to take a guy we’ve had under siege for 70-some days and spend a ton of money trying to arrest; put him in a bureau plane and fly him to the jail we want to put him in; have him talk to his cohort; put him back in the plane and take him back under a guarantee of safe conduct by the Justice Department and put him back under siege again.  Am I getting this straight?

MONTGOMERY:   That’s the plan.

FREEH:          I’ll get the plane.  It’ll be there in the morning.

That scotched plans for a leisurely Tuesday morning, Lyons told SOF.  “We had approval by 7 o’clock.  We had to rush. … Some of the Freemen were sure that Edwin was never coming back.  So we promised that we would not leave his side.”

The CAUSE team and Clark drove past the location formerly occupied by the press, forced back by the FBI, to a one-room church at the end of the road that had been occupied as a forward command post.  The four then transferred to an FBI vehicle that included FBI negotiator Dwayne Fusele.   They drove to the dirt airstrip in Jordan.

When they landed in Billings 30 minutes later and pulled into a closed hangar, it was quickly surrounded by a mob of photographers, who peered through windows and shouted questions.  FBI agents covered the windows with sheets.  Two vans were waiting, one a decoy.  The vans roared out of the hangar, headed in different directions.  After a circuitous drive around Billings, the negotiation party arrived at the jail.  The group was searched and led to the gym, where they soon met Schweitzer.

“He was very emaciated” from a hunger strike, Lyons said.  “He was thin as a rail. … He had a white beard.  He was wearing” jail clothing.  “He looked unhealthy.”

At first, Schweitzer was adamant that the standoff continue.  Hollaway waited outside while Lyons and Salley talked to the former crop duster.  After 30 minutes, Salley came out, frustrated, declaring Schweitzer “a nut.”

Hollaway went in, he said, and Schweitzer “would spout out all this gibberish about the right side and the left side of the courtroom, and the fringe on the flag.  Essentially, we painted him into a corner, from a psychological standpoint.  I asked him if his evidence and his law books and papers proved … that what they were doing … was legal.  He said ‘absolutely.’

“Now, I said, the problem we had after Waco was that … Koresh … complicated things by getting himself killed and all of the evidence burned up. … Your concern is that this evidence be preserved.  But if the … FBI has to assault the ranch, then your evidence may not survive.

“But if you can prove your case, then we have to preserve the evidence,” Hollaway argued.  “He’s a real smart guy.  But … he’s crazy.  He realized that if he said no, then it would have been a tacit admission that his theory of law was wrong … that there was no way to win.”

It worked.  Schweitzer tape recorded a statement urging his followers to come out.  Only one hurdle remained, to get the FBI to agree to written terms of resolution.  A key part was a guarantee that state Senator Ohs take custody of the Freemen evidence, in the same manner that the Texas Rangers cared for Waco evidence.

The group flew back to Jordan.  It looked as if the standoff would over in another 24 hours.

Very Bad Timing

On Wednesday, though, the resolution nearly fell apart because of a stupid stunt by Garfield County Sheriff Charlie Phipps.  Dean Clark, 29, was the son and grandson of two Freemen.  His dad, Richard Clark was already imprisoned on state charges related to the Freemen.  Deans’ grandfather, Emmett, was still on the ranch.

When Emmett Clark, and his brother, Ralph, lost title to the property at a foreclosure auction 18 months earlier, Dean Clark bought a portion.  Eager to begin plowing 2,000 acres of wheat, Dean prevailed upon Sheriff Phipps to get a state court order allowing him on to the property.  Phillips led a convoy of farm machinery to a roadblock where he knew there were no FBI agents – only members of the Montana Highway Patrol.  Seeing the state court order, the troopers stepped aside.  Soon, Dean Clark was plowing wheat.

“It was just like kicking a beehive over,” Lyons said.  “The [Freemen] guns came back out.  Emmett Clark just went nuclear.”

The CAUSE team arrived at the ranch to find their work nearly ruined.  FBI agents rushed around, trying to salvage a deal on the verge of collapse.  Agents Noesner and Fusele were talking to Edwin Clark, trying to convince him that the feds had nothing to do with the confrontation.  Hollaway asked the FBI boss, Robin Montgomery, what had happened.

Montgomery explained, Hollaway said, then told him, “This is f**ked.  Unf**k it.”

Hollaway, Lyons and Salley hurried to the Freemen house and tried to calm everyone.  Gradually, tensions began to ease as the tractor convoy was escorted away.  Lyons told them he’d been able to contact Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence, who had successfully defended Randy Weaver.  While Spence would not agree to defend the Freemen, he promised to visit Edwin Clark in jail.  It was something.

Lyons also had brought a carton of Marlboros.  FBI negotiators told the CAUSE team not to take cigarettes to the Freemen, but said they could have cigarettes “for personal use.”  So agents “looked the other way,” Lyons said, when he took in the carton.  Lighting up, the smokes visibly eased Freemen agitation.

Grateful, several Freemen dug in their pockets for money to pay for the cigarettes.  Lyons politely declined.  “Will you take a check?”  Rodney Skurdal asked, grinning.  Everyone laughed.  The intermediaries left to calm the FBI:  Hollaway walked up to Montgomery, saluted smartly and, with a smirk, said, Beg to report, sir, the situation is un……”

Such candor played a big part in the ultimate success of the team effort by CAUSE and the FBI, Lyons and Hollaway said.

“The FBI people … were first-rate,” Lyons said.  “They dealt in good faith.  We caught some heat from some of the SWAT guys who … were pissed-off about some of the stuff that we had said about … Waco.  They were obviously touchy about … having been called jack-booted thugs.”

On the other hand, Lyons said, the FBI “learned the lessons from Waco … I think that a gentleman should … be willing to compliment an antagonist when he does the right thing, because you want to encourage it.  They told us very frankly that they had screwed up at Waco.”

The Fruits Of Good Faith

Thursday, the final day, “was pretty intense emotionally,” said Lyons.  State Senator Ohs had agreed to take custody of the evidence.  It was to be loaded into a large Ryder rental truck, which prompted “some not-so-very-funny jokes,” Lyons said.  They got to the ranch at 0715 – 15 minutes late.

The whole day was spent cataloguing and loading Freemen evidence.  “We did not quibble with them,” Lyons said.  “Whatever they thought was evidence was evidence … Because they were working, and … they couldn’t sit there and think about ‘What the hell am I doing?  Why am I going to jail?’  There did seem to be some sense of relief.”

Attorney Salley went to see if the FBI would restore electric power to speed up the packing process.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Seydora refused.

The  Freemen “couldn’t turn on the generators,” Lyons explained, “because we were never told that the power was not going to be turned on.  We didn’t want to over amp the system, if the generators were running and the power suddenly came on.  We did not want to start any fire.”

Lyons had talked by phone with Dr. Neill Payne, his brother-in-law, back in North Carolina.  He told Payne that if the standoff was bout to end, he would signal so by raising the Confederate flag hanging in the Freemen classroom.  By 1100 hours Thursday, Lyons decided it would be safe to signal success.

Besides, Lyons said, “I knew it would drive the press nuts.  I knew they’d be micro-analyzing what was going on. … Generally, the mainstream press always gets it wrong.  As a matter of fact, they broke into ENN programming to say, ‘They’re putting a Confederate flag up” What does it mean?’  Well, it meant that I was telling Neill Payne that they’re coming out.”

The arrest process was supposed to begin by 1500 hours, but it was 1700 before the 16 remaining hold-outs loaded into a caravan of about seven vehicles.  They stopped about 50 yards from the front gate and gathered for prayer.  Then Edwin Clark and the CAUSE team filed down to the gate.

The End Of A Siege - And An Era

Walking up to the closest FBI agent, Clark grasped the agent’s hand, shook it and said, “It’s been one hell of a siege.”  Lyons said one of the FBI negotiators spoke up: “Edwin, you deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Edwin Clark escorted the Freemen up in pairs.  By agreement, no one was handcuffed, but each person thoroughly searched.  As each person was arrested, he or she “served” common law warrants on the agents for being “out of your jurisdiction.”

“The agents,” Lyons said, “were very polite, very soft-spoken.”  Most Freemen shook hands with their captors.  Some did not.  “It went very orderly,” he said.

“It was very difficult for Edwin when he escorted his son [Casey] up to go into FBI custody,” Lyons said.  “That’s when the tears started.  Everybody – the FBI, Edwin, me – there wasn’t a dry eye there.”

It was particularly hard for Ralph and Emmett Clark.  Both in their late 60s, and both sick with cancer, they had been born and raised on the ranch, without phones or electricity.  Ralph had delivered mail on horseback.  They knew they were never coming back.

“The Clark story is the story of the American Dream turned into a nightmare, Lyons said.  When the two elder Clarks were arrested, “it was like watching the Old West pass before my eyes.”