Three of last four Oregon refuge occupiers appear to surrender, final occupant vows not to leave

Washington Post

By Carissa Wolf, Sarah Kaplan and Mark Berman 

February 11, 2016 

 

BURNS, Ore. — The armed occupation of a wildlife refuge seemed to dwindle to just one person on Thursday morning, a distraught-sounding man who was heard on a livestream saying that he would not surrender along with his compatriots.

Figures including a religious leader and a Nevada legislator had traveled to Oregon to try and coax the four remaining occupiers out of the refuge on Thursday, saying that the standoff was approaching a possible end after more than a month.

But on a telephone call from inside the refuge broadcast to more than 31,000 listeners on YouTube, a man identified as David Fry insisted that even as the other three had turned themselves in, he would not come out “unless my grievances are heard.”

An increasingly agitated Fry was heard shouting at the people speaking to him, mentioned having suicidal thoughts and insisted that he was standing up to the federal government and demanded unspecified protections. Fry also said he was telling the FBI that

“I don’t want to be put behind bars,” he said at one point. “I don’t want to take that risk….I didn’t kill anybody.”

His comments veered from abortion and drone strikes in Pakistan to references to Vietnam, the Cold War and the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager killed in Florida in 2012.

The fluid situation on Thursday added to a saga that had already taken an unexpected turn the night before, when law enforcement officers surrounded the remaining four occupants at the refuge while other officers arrested Cliven Bundy, father of the group’s leader and himself a veteran of armed standoffs with federal agents, as he arrived in Portland.

It was not clear if the arrest of Bundy had any impact on the stated plans of the four remaining occupiers to surrender to the FBI, an agreement reached after a phone call with the four that was also streamed online Wednesday before an audience of tens of thousands.

Mike Arnold, an attorney for Bundy’s son and one of the people who worked to negotiate an end to the standoff, called the arrest “a horrible strategic move” but said he did not think it would change the plans.

There had been reports that the occupiers would surrender at 8 a.m. here, but that time came and went with no sign of movement at the refuge. By 10 a.m., the livestream solely focused on an extended argument and negotiation involving Fry.

As the sun rose over the remote Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday, the situation in some ways was unchanged from the previous 40 days: An occupying group unhappy with the federal government was inside the facility, which has become an unlikely nexus of national attention since it was seized Jan. 2.

But the stalemate had shifted again late Tuesday and into Wednesday, just as it had two weeks earlier when the FBI and Oregon State Police suddenly made a round of arrests that included Ammon Bundy, the group’s leader, fatally shot another occupier who they said had reached for a gun, and then blockaded the facility.

The FBI said that its agents moved onto the refuge and surrounded the remaining occupiers Wednesday afternoon after one of them rode an all-terrain vehicle outside the group’s encampment.

“It has never been the FBI’s desire to engage these armed occupiers in any way other than through dialogue, and to that end, the FBI has negotiated with patience and restraint in an effort to resolve the situation peacefully,” Greg Bretzing, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Oregon division, said in a statement. “However, we reached a point where it became necessary to take action in a way that best ensured the safety of those on the refuge, the law enforcement officers who are on scene, and the people of Harney County who live and work in this area.”

The FBI has not released any additional statements on the negotiations or the standoff. However, the remaining occupiers gave their own accounts late Wednesday to a growing audience listening online over a period of several hours after the FBI surrounded the encampment.

The four had participated in a panicked phone conversation with supporters — including Nevada state assemblywoman Michele Fiore, an ally of the Bundy family — that was also broadcast over a livestream on YouTube.

This conversation’s audience ballooned to as many as 64,000 listeners at some point, an audience that discovered, through social media or news accounts, a surreal, frantic call with a Nevada lawmaker trying to calm the occupiers as they shouted about the Constitution, a shootout with the FBI, fears of prison and the movie “Braveheart.”

Fiore is an unusual peacemaker, an elected official from another state who has supported the Bundy family in the past and has a history of controversial comments that have continued through this occupation.

Last month, the Oregon State Police fatally shot LaVoy Finicum, one of the occupiers, after he tried to flee from officers during the stop that saw Ammon Bundy and others arrested. Finicum’s death prompted new protests and anger among anti-government protesters.

The FBI later released video footage showing Finicum almost running over one law enforcement official and then appearing to reach toward a loaded gun in his jacket. Before that footage was released, Fiore wrote on Twitter that Finicum “was just murdered with his hands up in Burns.” After the footage came out, Fiore told the Las Vegas Sun that the video “looks like an ambush of tactical guys,” adding: “It looks like it might have been hired out. We have questions.”

Fiore had arrived in Portland on Wednesday after declaring her intention to meet with lawmakers to advocate for Ammon Bundy and others. After arriving at the airport, she was urging the occupiers to give up peacefully and take their fight to court while also reaching out to the FBI and trying to communicate with evangelist Franklin Graham, hoping to get him to the occupation site to witness a surrender.

The remaining holdouts going into Thursday were Fry, 27, who had been running a YouTube livestream; Sean and Sandy Anderson, a married couple; and a man named Jeff Banta, according to the Oregonian.

The livestream offered an extended look at their mindset. One of them insisted that she would only give herself into custody if she could bring her gun. In the background, a voice could be heard on a bullhorn faintly telling the four to come out with their hands up.

Fiore tried to reassure the occupiers that “people are watching” and asked them to pray.

“A grand jury has issued an indictment outside the Constitution, and we can fight that,” she said. “But we can’t fight if you die. … You guys have to come out. You need to stand down.”

But the occupiers insisted that they could not trust the FBI’s promise of a peaceful resolution, and they seemed certain that the standoff would end in violence.

“They killed LaVoy,” one man could be heard yelling. Another person said: “We’re not giving them any reason” to fire, but added, “But my weapon is within reach.” Sandy Anderson said that giving up would be “giving myself into the hands of the enemy.”

The phone call was orchestrated by Gavin Seim, a failed Washington congressional candidate and self-proclaimed “liberty speaker.”

In the end, after more than four hours, one of occupiers said they planned to emerge from the refuge Thursday morning as long as Fiore was there to act as a witness and ensure that the occupation ended peacefully.

Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, wrote on Facebook that he has been talking with the four holdouts for a week at their request and at the request of the FBI.

“I am on my way there. … Please keep them, law enforcement officials, and all involved in your prayers, that everyone will be safe,” he wrote early Thursday morning.

There was no sign of Graham or anyone else arriving at the refuge as the morning wore on, with a group of journalists and one supporter of the occupiers the only visible sight other than law enforcement vehicles.

Another prominent figure had also hoped to travel to the refuge. Cliven Bundy, the rancher who faced off with federal agents in 2014 before the government backed down, traveled to Portland on Wednesday night, where he was promptly arrested by FBI agents.

Bundy, 74, was taken to a detention center in Multnomah County. The FBI has not released charges for him and no charging documents had been filed by Thursday morning, so it was unclear whether his arrested related to the ongoing standoff or the 2014 confrontation.

A defiant Bundy had insisted last month that the government — which had attempted to confront him over the $2 million he owes for grazing his cattle on U.S. property, only to stand down after guns were aimed at federal agents — has “no policing power” over his ranch.

Experts had said the outcome of the Bundy ranch standoff “invigorated” anti-government groups. Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, one of the country’s leading specialists on right wing radicals, said that a showdown like the one in Oregon “was inevitable … because the anti-government extremists have been itching for a confrontation with the federal government.”

The refuge standoff began Jan. 2 when Ammon Bundy, Cliven’s son, and others traveled there to support two local ranchers convicted of arson and sentenced to prison. This group, which adopted the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, also said they were protesting the federal government’s involvement in land ownership in the area, a long-standing issue for people in Western states frustrated with how this land is managed.

Ammon Bundy, his brother and others were arrested Jan. 26 when law enforcement officers moved quickly to take them into custody while they traveled on a highway outside the refuge. It was during this encounter that Finicum attempted to flee and was shot.

By the next morning, federal agents had blockaded the refuge and, as other occupiers fled or were arrested, the occupation shrunk to the four who still remained Thursday morning.

Ammon Bundy and the four still at the refuge are among the 16 people indicted over the Oregon standoff. The group “prevented federal officials from performing their official duties by force, threats and intimidation,” according to the indictment.

While Bundy had initially released statements after his arrest asking those at the refuge to “stand down” and give up peacefully, he changed his tone last week. In one statement last week, he made demands regarding how Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward should block off the refuge so the lands can be given “back to the people.” In a recorded message after the indictment was unsealed, Bundy told the Oregon State Police and FBI to go home, leaving out any suggestion that the occupiers should leave.

Mike Arnold, an attorney for Ammon Bundy who took part in Fiore’s phone negotiations and was heading to the refuge with her, told The Post that he was “extremely disappointed” by the news of Cliven Bundy’s arrest.

“That is not a symbol of good faith,” he said.

But he said he did not believe it would shake the agreement to have the four occupiers surrender.

“We can take comfort in the incompetent strategic move by the federal government,” he said, because it showed that “if Cliven Bundy can be arrested peacefully — the lightning rod of much of the discourse on these issues — then the folks at the refuge should rest assured that the FBI will honor their promise to peacefully end this.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/02/11/cliven-bundy-arrested-as-oregon-refuge-occupation-nears-possible-ending/

Oregon Standoff Ends as Last Militant Surrenders

DAVE SEMINARA and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
New York Times
February 11, 2016

PRINCETON, Ore. — The last four holdouts in the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon surrendered peacefully Thursday morning, 40 days after the standoff began.

Three of the four walked out to waiting F.B.I. agents over the course of a few minutes after 9:30 a.m., but the fourth, David Fry, at first said he would not.

In an extraordinary, hours long negotiation with supporters and F.B.I. agent, with thousands of people listening to the conversation on a live stream online, he aired a wide range of grievances, said he was suicidal, and said repeatedly that his choice was “liberty or death.” Ultimately he gave himself up without a fight.

The occupation by antigovernment militants appeared to be reaching its end in late January, when 11 of its most prominent members — including the leader, Ammon Bundy — were arrested while venturing out of the refuge. One protester was killed, and some of the remaining occupiers heeded calls by Mr. Bundy and others to go home.

But four refused to leave, and held out for another two weeks until three gave themselves up Thursday to the F.B.I. after lengthy negotiations by phone. The Rev. Franklin Graham and Michele Fiore, a Nevada state lawmaker and supporter of the Bundy family, helped smooth the surrender, first speaking by phone to the occupiers in a conversation that was streamed live online. They then accompanied the F.B.I. agents who drove to the refuge and arrested the holdouts.

The end of the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge came the day after the F.B.I. arrested Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon Bundy and an icon to antigovernment activists in the West, who was at the center of another armed standoff with government agents, in Nevada in 2014.

Speaking with the four holdouts, Ms. Fiore urged them to surrender peacefully to the F.B.I. so that they could continue to spread their message. “A dead man can’t talk, a dead man can’t write,” she told them. “We have to just stay together, stay alive.”

Reverend Graham said, “You all just do everything they told you to do, and it’s going to work out great.”

The occupiers replied that they would walk out to meet the F.B.I., stressing repeatedly that they would be unarmed, and that they were leaving their guns behind.

At 9:38 a.m., one of them, Sean Anderson, said he and his wife, Sandy, were walking out, and he could be heard yelling “coming out!” to the agents. Mr. Fry described the Andersons making their way out, hands raised, with Mr. Anderson holding an American flag in one hand, until they were taken into custody.

At 9:42, Mr. Fry said another of the occupiers, Jeff Banta, was going toward the agents, hands in the air.

Then Mr. Fry, t, who had seemed calm to that point, lit a cigarette and became agitated. “Unless my grievances are heard, I won’t come out,” he shouted. Supporters on the phone, and those at the refuge, urged him to remain calm and surrender.

“I’m actually feeling suicidal right now,” Mr. Fry said. He said he was sitting alone in a tent. “I have to stand my ground,” he said. “It’s liberty or death. I will not go another day as a slave to this system.”

“I declare war against the federal government,” he said a few minutes later. “I’ve peacefully voted and nothing is ever done.”

Mr. Fry said his grievances had not been addressed. He claimed his taxes were being used to pay for abortions. “Until you guys address my grievances, I will just sit in here by myself.”

“Sometimes it’s better just to die. Liberty or death,” he said. “I declare war against the federal government.”

In past interviews, Mr. Fry said he had come to the occupation after becoming friend with one of its leaders, LaVoy Finicum, over the Internet. Mr. Finicum died on Jan. 26 in a clash with the authorities.

The refuge, about six hours from Portland, was taken over by a small band of armed militants on Jan. 2. They demanded that two local ranchers, imprisoned on arson charges for a fire that spread to public lands, be released, and that federal lands that the occupiers said were improperly taken from local ranchers in decades past be returned to local or private control.

The remaining four occupiers had repeatedly invoked the killing of Mr. Finicum, by federal agents during a traffic stop as a sign of the government’s unwillingness to bring the standoff to a peaceful end.

Mr. Finicum was shot when he reached for a firearm, the F.B.I. said. Ammon Bundy, the leader of the occupation, was arrested during the stop along with several other members of the group, including his brother, Ryan.

About 50 or 60 cars were parked at the roadblock outside the sanctuary, most of them belonging to journalists and the rest belonging to protest sympathizers waving flags and signs. One woman held a sign saying, “I live in America, not Russia.”

Thomas Wagner of Christmas Valley, Ore., stood on top of his pickup truck at the roadblock, wearing full military fatigues — from boots to helmet — and waving an American flag. A 32-year-old unemployed security guard with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his truck, he said, “I came here to support these four patriots, to let them know that they are not being abandoned.”

The standoff has highlighted the anger of many Western ranchers and farmers over federal government ownership of vast tracts of land in Western states, which they believe should be turned over to the states or to private ownership.

Cliven Bundy, father of Ammon and Ryan, became a national figure in 2014, after federal officials tried to confiscate his cattle because he had refused for more than two decades to pay fees to the federal government for grazing his cattle on federal land. Heavily armed self-described militiamen flocked to his ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., to face down the authorities, and when the agents retreated rather than risk a shootout, Mr. Bundy hailed it as a victory for those angered by federal regulation. He has been seen as a hero by the Oregon occupiers and by people sympathetic to their cause.

Cliven Bundy’s lawyer, Michael Arnold, said his client had been arrested at the Portland airport and would face a felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties, in connection with the 2014 standoff.



Dave Seminara reported from Princeton, Ore., and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York. Reporting was contributed by Julie Turkewitz in Denver, Kirk Johnson in Seattle and Colin Miner in Portland, Ore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/us/oregon-standoff.html?_r=0

Here is what polygamous sect member Ross LeBaron Jr. wrote in support of the Bundy family

February 10, 2016

Salt Lake Tribune

Nate Carlisle

Ross Wesley LeBaron Jr. letter

The movement for the states to take control of federal lands has strong support along the Utah-Arizona line. So does polygamy.

LaVoy Finicum, the lone fatality in the conflict at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, lived along that line. While Finicum did not belong to a polygamous sect, some who knew him do.

One supporter of Fincum and rancher Cliven and Ammon Bundy, it seems, is Ross Wesley LeBaron Jr. His father held the title of patriarch in the polygamous Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. After a split within the church, one of the younger LeBaron's uncles, Ervil LeBaron led the Church of the Lamb of God.

Law enforcement believes that in the 1970s and 1980s Ervil LeBaron and his followers murdered more than 25 people in Utah, Texas and other states whom Evril LeBaron viewed as rivals or heretics.

Ross LeBaron Jr. has not been implicated in those murders. LeBaron has had addresses over the years in Cedar City, Utah, and Kane Beds, Ariz.

Salt Lake Tribune reporter Matt Piper ran into him in Kanab, Utah, the day after Finicum's funeral.

LeBaron, 73, offered Piper a sheet of paper explaining his views. The page was dated Feb. 5, 2015, but the references to Finicum suggest it was written this year.

"To love your neighbor as yourself is to stand for his rights and not undermined (sic) them by supporting corrupt government," the writing says, in part. "Anyone that undermines the Constitution and people's rights a not true Christians, true Israelites or good people."

Later, in bold type, LeBaron writes: "Lavoy, the Bundy's (sic) and others are my heroes. They stood for something bigger then (sic) themselves. They are not sellouts like many are today. I thank God for all those that are standing for the greater good."

The published phone for LeBaron has been disconnected. He did not respond to an email sent to an address published on ablog purported to have been written by him. The blog includes an open letter to commentator Glenn Beck and an essay on the key to prosperity and peace.

There's no indication LeBaron holds any formal posts with any of the political or militia groups supporting the Bundy family.

During the weekend, the Principle Tumblr posted a photo of a sign taped to a business door in Cane Beds saying it would be closed for the funeral of Finicum and another funeral that day — one for Warren Jeffs' first father-in-law, a man named Isaac W. Barlow. Jeffs is the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

http://www.sltrib.com/home/3518130-155/here-is-what-polygamous-sect-member

What is the link between the Oregon militants and Mormonism?

JASON WILSON
THE GUARDIAN
February 8, 2016
 

Joseph Smith receiving the Golden Plates

On the afternoon of Tuesday the 26th of January, LaVoy Fincum, a rancher from Mohave County, Arizona, was shot and killed by law enforcement officers. It happened on Highway 395 in Oregon after he and other members of an armed right-wing group were subject to a police stop. They were on their way to try to spread their mission of resistance to the U.S. government to neighbouring counties.

On the video released late on Thursday by the FBI, we can see the action as captured by a drone overhead. In the final moments of his life, Finicum attempts to avoid police by driving a car  — containing three other members of the group they called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom —  into a roadside snow drift.

He emerges from the suddenly stationary vehicle with his hands outstretched, and appears to talk to the two state police officers trying to apprehend him with their guns drawn. Then he reaches for his pocket, where he has a loaded pistol, according to law enforcement. He is immediately shot by one of the officers, and falls to the ground.

We see a 55-year-old family man, who has had ample time to think, make a conscious choice to throw his life away.

In many ways, Finicum was the philosopher of the group. He acted as a spokesman, and pushed their stark constitutional originalism in media appearances and press conferences.

The conspiracy theorists in the broader patriot movement are already working on the ambiguities that the footage – any footage – makes available to the paranoid. But Finicum’s choice to die is in keeping with what he repeatedly told me and other journalists during the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Time and again, he said that liberty was more important than life. That despite missing his ranch and his family, he would rather die than go to prison.

What is capable of turning a grievance over grazing rights into a matter of life and death? When do political beliefs become something one is prepared to both kill and die for?

The first clue is in what Finicum shared with the Bundys at the Refuge, and with their father Cliven at home in Nevada. They were all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and all from a corner of the country with a habit of departing from the respectable path the church’s hierarchy has been charting for more than a century.

The second are the pocket Constitutions the group ostentatiously carried around from the first morning of their stay. On the surface those were simply underscoring the occupiers’ claims that in their alleged persecution of Dwight and Steven Hammond – local ranchers sent back to prison for arson on federal property – and their general management of public land, the federal government was acting unconstitutionally.

Courtney Campbell, a professor of religion at Oregon State University, says that in part, “Why these protestors are carrying around the constitution is that they do feel their constitutional rights to freedom of religion and association, to due process and the law have been violated by the government.”

But these are not any old constitutions. They are editions published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, founded by W. Cleon Skousen, who like the Bundy family and Finicum, was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you order in bulk, you can get them for as little 35 cents apiece.

Skousen’s editions pair the text of the constitution – which many Mormons believe to be divinely inspired – with highly selective quotes from the founding fathers, with the intention of persuading readers that the republic was a Christian enterprise from the outset, and was part of a divine promise.

Skousen – who died in 2006 at the age of 92 – was a popular, prolific writer who had stints in the FBI and as Salt Lake City police chief. He was also one of the most prominent and influential ultraconservative political activists  in mid-century America, inspiring the John Birch Society’s febrile brand of anticommunist conspiracy thinking.

He insisted – at the height of the Cold War – that various government agencies were riddled with Communist infiltrators, and that this put America in existential danger. In books like The Naked Communist, first published in 1958, Skousen gave a lurid picture of the degree to which communists were embedded in public life, their tactics and what he saw as the godless nihilism of their world view. More conciliatory foreign policy, divorce law reform and campaigns against school prayer were just some of his examples of communists working toward the subversion of American life.

But Skousen was also a deeply involved Latter-Day Saint, serving for a time as a professor at Brigham Young University. Seth Payne, a former Mormon who began researching LDS conspiracy beliefs at Harvard Divinity School, explains that “when Skousen would talk to LDS audiences about these subjects he would bring in the religious element. He would describe these conspiracies as ‘secret combinations’. Secret combinations are not just criminal gangs or people looking for power. At the root of secret combinations is a Satanic influence.”

He was able to find support for these claims in the LDS church’s central text, the Book of Mormon.

When LDS founder and prophet Joseph Smith was assembling his prophetic book in the late 1820s – supposedly as a translation of golden plates left for the purpose by the angel Moroni – he incorporated elements of all the popular enthusiasms swirling around in upstate New York, where he was then living. His testament purported to tell the story of ancient inhabitants of the Americas who were descendents of the tribes of Israel, and who were visited by the risen Christ. But in a sense it was very much a book of its time.

It reflects Protestant revivalism, Israelism (the idea, popular in the 19th century that certain peoples, or groups were descended from the lost tribes of Israel), occultism and folk religion, and then-current anti-Masonic ideas.

Payne explains that while Smith did not specifically call out Masons, he used “secret combinations” as a familiar euphemism for Masonic activity. In the Book, “secret combinations” of satanic conspirators brought about the end of the Jeredites and the Nephites, two of the civilizations the book describes.

These were working in the interests of “Satan’s plan.” In Mormon theology, the conflict between this and God’s plan goes back to the beginning of time. While Lucifer wanted humans to be compelled to be obedient to God so they would be guaranteed a return to heaven, God wanted humans to be able to freely choose, so they would benefit from their time on earth.

In this way, Payne says, the Book of Mormon melds “classical Liberal thought with religious thought – the Protestant ethic and Protestant theology of the early 19th century – so tightly so that there really is no separation.” Liberal individual autonomy is a gift from God, and compelled behavior – even if it results in good deeds – is worthless for salvation, and even an artefact of the devil’s continuing effort to erode the power of human will.

Anti-Masonic enthusiasms are long-forgotten, but the idea of secret combinations carrying out Satan’s plan is very much alive. In a paper, Payne explains that “modern LDS conservatives tend to view any government action which compels behavior — even if that behavior is moral and productive — as being a version of Satan’s original plan to force God’s children to do good.”

That’s why many conservative Mormons, even those who would stop short at actions like those that the Bundys have taken, are bitterly opposed to welfare and other government programs that have a benevolent purpose.

In Skousen’s thought, this all mapped neatly onto his anticommunist zeal. He was faced, he thought, with “secret combinations” of communist infiltrators, and socialist schemes were not just politically disagreeable, but setbacks in “a cosmic battle going on where Satan is trying to infringe on individual liberty or state sovereignty.”

Except among conservative Mormons, Skousen’s influence faded long before the end of the cold war. Then Glenn Beck—another conspiratorially inclined, conservative Mormon—reintroduced it to a broader audience late last decade, managing to lift books like The 5000 Year Leap back onto the bestseller lists. Beck managed to recast Skousen’s thought to cast suspicion on the ambitions of President Obama, in particular, his plans to deliver universal health care.

Payne says, “Glenn Beck reintroduced Skousen’s ideas—his anticommunism and fears about sovereignty —to a broader community. That resonates with people who think that the president is a communist.”

Meanwhile, other Mormon conspiracists like Joel Skousen, nephew of Cleon, continue all the while to push the idea of secret combinations in the service of Satan’s plan, which was now identified less with communism than the institution of a single world government under the control of “globalists.” In one sense, this bears similarities to the conspiracy ideas of essentially secular figures like Alex Jones. There’s enough common ground for Joel Skousen—also an icon of the prepper movement—to have appeared several times on Jones’ radio program.

But the distinctive spiritual dimension of LDS-derived conspiracism raises the stakes for a segment of ulturaconservative Mormons. For some, like the Bundy group, such ideas are a stimulus to radical action.

Disaffection with federal government agencies is widespread throughout the western interior. Whether it is the festering issue of grazing rights, and perceptions that the BLM is antagonistic toward ranchers, or the feeling that conservation of native species like wolves or the spotted owl is taking precedence over ranchers’ interests, the emerging “sagebrush rebellion” takes in a lot of actors and sympathizers who are not Mormons.

But like the vast majority of conservative Mormons, very few ranchers have shown themselves willing to carry out armed occupations of federal buildings.

The resurgent militia and sovereign citizen movements have beliefs that overlap with the more religiously inclined conspiracists. They also fear world government and federal government tyranny, espouse an eccentric form of constitutional originalism, try to reassert local and state jurisdiction over federal land, and are prepared to use tactics of harrassment and intimidation, as they’ve shown in Harney County.

But even those who had been cooperating with the Bundys in organizing locals in opposition to the reimprisonment of Steven and Dwight Hammond were appalled in the early days of the occupation that the Bundy group had departed from a longer plan and involved the federal government. And in this circumstance, none have shown that they are willing to die.

In explaining Finicum’s actions, we need to take into account his particular form of radically ultraconservative Mormon belief. As Payne says, “for a believing Latter-Day Saint who takes these things seriously, they aren’t just looking at some political machinations for money and power, they’re looking at an eternal cosmic struggle that’s been going on since the beginning of time.”

The Bundys—and Finicum—see themselves as “soldiers in this resistance against not just political tyranny but also Satanic tyranny.”

This belief may be reflected even in the names they have been given and chosen. Ammon Bundy’s first name comes from an important personage in the book of Mormon—a warrior who spreads God’s word to unbelievers. The scriptural Ammon, Campbell says, “provides a model for the sort of person who stands up to oppression and unjust governments, resists and prevails.”

Campbell also points out that Finicum made veiled references to “the Title of Liberty,” a story from the Book of Mormon in which Captain Moroni of the Nephites “in the face of of a government that’s become tyrannical, individuals and their communities need to stand up for their liberty, their religion, and their land.” Another of the occupiers, Dylan Anderson, used Captain Moroni as his alias when talking to reporters.

Other references to Mormon lore came before the occupation, such as in a video where Bundy said that the constitution was “hanging by a thread,” an allusion to the so-called White Horse Prophecy, in which Joseph Smith reportedly predicted that a time would come when Mormons would have to restore constitutional government.

Payne points out that there are serious doubts as to whether Joseph Smith ever said such a thing, and that it comes from secondhand accounts of his remarks by followers. The LDS church itself felt bound to say that the prophecy “has not been substantiated by historical research” after Mormon politicians like Orrin Hatch and Rex Rammel referred to it in the early years of the Obama administration. “It’s an urban legend, a folk myth.” Nevertheless, over the years “it has taken hold in the LDS community; even in mainstream LDS you’ll hear that phrase used.”

People like the Bundys and Finicum, “take that phrase and see themselves as elders of Israel who are going to save the Constitution.”

What is one man’s life in the face of such a cause, and such a danger?

The LDS church was quick to disown the occupation and the Bundys’ actions. In 2012, sensing a growing wave of Skousenite Mormon activity, LDS Church Elder Apostle Dallin Oaks warned against “the influence of right-wing groups who mistakenly apply prophecies about the last days to promote efforts to form paramilitary or other organizations… The leaders of the church have always taught that we should observe the law and we should not try to substitute our own organizations for the political and military authorities put in place by constitutional government and processes. We counsel against joining or supporting paramilitary organizations.”

No doubt this reflects the sincere disapproval of the vast majority of Mormons, even conservatives. And the Bundys represent a significant departure from the teachings of the church, according to Campbell. “They really emphasize that there needs to be obedience to the laws of the land. Even if there’s some kind of injustice that’s occurred, you don’t take over property, you don’t take over land.”

Actions like these also imperil the respectability Mormons have worked so hard to maintain from the beginning of the 20th century. In the 19th century, they came into open conflict with the federal government. First, in the 1850s, over their own territorial ambitions and a perception that the Utah Territory under Prophet Brigham Young was in insurrection. And later, in the 1890s, as they were forced to give up the practice of polygamy.

Payne explains that rebellions such as the Malheur occupation are embarrassing to the church hierarchy and many ordinary Mormons, since they “harken back to a period that most Mormons are embarrassed about from time to time—those days of conflict with the federal government and the American society as a whole.”

The Utah/Arizona/Nevada tri-state area, where the Bundys and Finicum are from, has been a reliable source of such embarrassments. Northern Arizona was the long-time locale for the polygamist holdouts of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints under Warren Jeffs. Not far away in Nevada, the Bundy ranch standoff provided the immediate precursor for the occupation just ended.

People in such areas of the American West are culturally isolated, even from the moderating influences of contemporary Mormon practice.

“It’s certainly peculiar to areas in the western United States that are difficult to get to because they’re mountainous or arid,” Campbell says of these fundamentalist currents. “They’ve been historically bypassed by other people as they migrated to western Oregon or California. As a result there has been a tradition of anti-government anti-authoritarianism, where a person is accountable to God and not to civil authority.”

LaVoy Finicum clearly had a lot to lose: his ranch, his family, his life. But by melding his political beliefs with cosmic struggle, by embracing a tendentious reading of scripture and prophecy, by viewing those he disagreed with not just as political adversaries but as agents of the devil, Finicum turned a cause into a death wish.

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/what-is-the-link-between-the-oregon-militants-and-mormonism/

How Mormonism Influenced The Oregon Standoff

An Interview Sheds Light On The Religious Context Of The Militia's Actions
TTBOOK Staff
NPR
January 29, 2016

It makes sense that Scott Carrier would be among the reporters who converged on the small city of Burns, Ore. this month to report on the takeover of a wildlife refuge by an armed militia. Carrier, after all, is a Peabody award-winning radio producer who has made a career seeking out interviews with people "on the ground," from refugees to right-wingers.

However, the opportunity to collect some compelling new material wasn't the only reason Carrier made the trip. He wanted to confirm his suspicion that the takeover of the refuge wasn't just a political act, but a religious one as well.

In newspapers and radio reports, Carrier recognized something in what the men were saying that he was intimately familiar with: The rhetoric of Mormonism, or the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Carrier knows such rhetoric well thanks to living in Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the LDS church and the home of a large population of Mormons.

When Carrier arrived at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, he quickly found a member of the militia to speak with: Brand Thornton, who had driven up from Las Vegas to join Ammon Bundy and others in the standoff. Carrier asked Thornton whether the people involved in the takeover were Mormon.

The militia member confirmed: "We've got quite a few current LDS."

Thornton was quick to note that his views were solely his own. But those views present a fascinating — and at times, downright strange — portrait of the spiritual life of the compound.

According to Thornton, spirituality wasn't secondary to the group's mission — it was a central part of it.

"I have to call this a spiritual organization," he said. "Really, we don't have any leaders, per se."

He added: "The spirit of god is the leader. And Ammon (Bundy) received that spiritual message and he conveys it."

When Carrier asked about the justification for the occupation, Thornton referenced the Declaration of Independence, saying, "When government becomes corrupted, you actually have the sacred obligation and responsibility to replace that government." But when Carrier asked about the religious justification, Thornton cited Section 98 of the LDS "Doctine and Covenants," a sacred text that comprises revelations to the Mormon prophets, particularly Joseph Smith.

In Thornton's interpretation of this section, when the government commits egregious acts, the first step of the people is to petition the government. But if those petitions go unanswered, it's possible to do something called a "priestly curse" — a process that involves a person petitioning the Lord against their oppressors while washing their own feet. Thornton told Carrier that when he got to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it was the first thing he did.

Thornton also cited religious texts from the LDS church when describing what he believed to be federal overreach.

"We were promised in the Book of Mormon that there would never be a king on this land," Thornton said. "But you're seeing attempts to establish a king on this land."

When Carrier asked Thornton if this entire occupation was a mission from God, he didn't hesitate in his response: "Absolutely, God told us to do this," he said.

Reflecting on the interview a few weeks later, Carrier said that it was specifically these religious elements — and the lack of reporting on them — that he found troubling.

"They are kind of crazy, from my point of view, because they are getting directions from God," he said. "You can't be reasonable when it's not reason that's driving you on, it's the will of God."

According to an Associated Press report, Brand Thornton left the compound on Monday, before the subsequent series of events that dramatically changed the situation at the reserve. Law enforcement officers arrested Ammon Bundy and several other members of the group Tuesday after they'd been pulled over during a traffic stop. During the incident, gunfire resulted in the death of militia member LaVoy Finicum. On Thursday, officers arrested three more people, leaving estimates of the amount of occupiers left at the wildlife refuge down to five or less. Earlier this month, the LDS church issued an official statementdistancing themselves from the group's assertions.

Updated on Jan 29, 2016 at 01:01PM to include the statement from the Mormon church.

http://www.wpr.org/how-mormonism-influenced-oregon-standoff

Remaining Oregon protesters warn of 'Armageddon,' but Bundy urges holdouts to go home

Matt Pearce 
Los Angeles Times
January 27, 2016

As law enforcement officials surrounded the remaining protesters at an Oregon wildlife refuge Wednesday, an armed occupier urged supporters to join them and to kill any officer who tried to prevent their entry, according to a live stream that has been broadcast online from the site.

“There are no laws in this United States now! This is a free-for-all Armageddon!” a heavyset man holding a rifle yelled into a camera that was broadcast from the refuge Wednesday morning, adding that if “they stop you from getting here, kill them!”

A second man cooed to the camera in a singsong voice, “What you gonna do, what you gonna do when the militia comes after you, FBI?”

But on Wednesday afternoon, one of the group’s leaders arrested the day before, Ammon Bundy, urged the remaining occupiers to “stand down,” leave the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and “go home and hug your families.”

“This fight is ours for now -- in the courts,” Bundy said in a statement read by his attorney outside the federal courthouse in Portland, where Bundy and several other defendants made their initial court appearances Wednesday afternoon. “Please go home.”

The FBI declined to release any details about how a spokesman for the protest group was killed during a confrontation with federal and state agencies Tuesday, citing a policy of not commenting on shooting incidents while they are under review.



Read the criminal complaint against the Oregon protesters

The sudden move by the FBI and the Oregon State Police to arrest ranking protest leaders on a rural stretch of highway Tuesday afternoon was “a very deliberate and measured response” to the armed occupation that had lasted since Jan. 2 with no end in sight, Gregory T. Bretzing, special agent in charge of Portland’s FBI division, said at a Wednesday morning news conference.

“We’ve worked diligently to bring the situation” at the refuge near Burns, Ore., to “a peaceful end,” Bretzing said.

He said that the surprise arrests were deliberately carried out far from residents and that agents were cognizant of "removing the threat of danger from anybody who might be present.”

But he said he could not release details about how protest spokesman and Arizona rancher Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was killed, citing an ongoing investigation. A pair of unverified videos from a man and a woman who said they were traveling with the protesters when they were arrested said that Finicum was shot after he sped away from law enforcement during a traffic stop.

Several of those arrested, including Bundy, made their initial appearance in federal court Wednesday to face charges of government intimidation.

Meanwhile, the standoff continues.

On Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials blocked the roads around the refuge, where armed protesters were still operating heavy machinery and refusing to leave, according to a live stream from the site.

The FBI and Oregon State Police's "containment procedure" is probably aimed at preventing more armed activists from bolstering the holdouts and keeping track of anyone who decides to leave the refuge. A group in contact with the occupiers, the Pacific Patriots Network, urged supporters to “stand by” as it urged peace and gathered more information about what was happening. Activist Jason Patrick told Oregon Public Radio that about seven to 12 occupiers remained at the refuge.

“This has been tearing our community apart,” Harney County Sheriff David Ward said of the armed occupation during a Wednesday news conference in Burns, where he urged “everybody in this illegal occupation to move on.”

“There doesn’t have to be bloodshed in our community,” Ward said. “We have issues with the way things are going in our government; we have a responsibility as citizens to act on those in an appropriate manner.

"We don’t arm up — we don’t arm up and rebel. We work through the appropriate channels. This can’t happen anymore. This can’t happen in America, and this can’t happen in Harney County.”

On Tuesday, law enforcement authorities stopped a group of occupiers who had temporarily left the occupied refuge, apparently to attend a community meeting.

“Multiple agencies, law enforcement agencies, put a lot of work into doing the best tactical plan they could to take these guys down peacefully and find some resolution to these issues in our community,” Ward said.

As to what occurred next, he said: “It didn’t have to happen. We all make choices in life. Sometimes our choices go bad.”

Gunfire broke out when the FBI and the Oregon State Police intercepted Ammon Bundy and several of his supporters on a rural stretch of U.S. Highway 395 about halfway between the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the town of John Day.

“It was planned in an area that would minimize injury to others and to law enforcement,” said a law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss an incident that was under investigation. “Authorities all along had hoped this would be resolved peacefully, and the arrestees and the decedent were all given ample opportunities to allow this to end peacefully.”

The protesters had been en route to a meeting with hundreds of Oregon residents, many of them supporters of the occupation, about 100 miles north of the refuge in the town of John Day.

Details of what happened on the highway were scant. Officials would only say that shots were fired.

Ammon's brother, Ryan Bundy, 43, of Bunkerville, Nev., was shot in the arm, and the 55-year-old Finicum was killed, said Finicum's daughter and Nevada state Assemblywoman Michele Fiore.

The void of official information about the incident has been filled by unverified videos circulating widely on social media among militia supporters.

A man named Mark McConnell – who is in contact with one of the refuge’s remaining occupiers, Jason Patrick – posted a video on Facebook early Wednesday that said he was driving one of the group’s vehicles and that Finicum had been driving the other.

McConnell said that after officials detained him and the others in his vehicle – which included Ammon Bundy -- Finicum sped away, with Ryan Bundy, Shawna Cox, 59, and “an 18-year-old girl" in his vehicle.

“LaVoy is very passionate about this, about the movement, about what we’re doing here … I loved the dude. … But he took off,” McConnell said in the Facebook video.

McConnell said he was released after two hours of interrogation. He said he was not among the original occupiers.

“Don’t put speculation, don’t put nonsense out there,” McConnell said, scolding Facebook commenters who were not at the scene. “Get to business, we have work to do here, alright. Let’s not let LaVoy’s death be in vain.”

Maureen Peltier, who spent a week and a half at the compound and who stayed in contact with the occupiers and their supporters, said she didn’t personally know McConnell, though she said McConnell was relatively well known by other camp supporters.

“Everybody has turned their phones off or is just not answering them. There’s a lot of people down there I don’t know where they are and if they are OK,” Peltier said. “I have never been this in the dark. I would love for America to have eyes on [what’s happening] there and help them, but I don’t know how to at this point. I can’t get their story out if they’re not talking.”

Finicum's daughter, Arianna Finicum Brown, confirmed her father's death to the Oregonian newspaper. “He would never, ever want to hurt somebody, but he does believe in defending freedom, and he knew the risks involved,” said Brown, one of 11 children.

Ammon Bundy, 40, told his wife in a phone call that the group had been cooperative when law enforcement agents confronted them, according to Fiore, a Bundy family supporter who spoke with Bundy's wife on Tuesday.

"It's very unfortunate. The only saving grace is there's six witnesses to it," Fiore said in an interview.

Ryan Bundy was treated and released into FBI custody.

The Bundy brothers are the sons of Cliven Bundy, a southern Nevada rancher who was at the center of a tense armed standoff of his own with federal Bureau of Land Management officials in 2014.

"Isn't this a wonderful country we live in?" the elder Bundy said sarcastically Tuesday night when The Times informed him about the arrests and the death.

In addition to the Bundy brothers, those arrested on the highway were Brian Cavalier, 44, also of Bunkerville; Cox of Kanab, Utah; and Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont.

Police said they arrested another man, Joseph O'Shaughnessy of Cottonwood, Ariz., in Burns, near the occupied wildlife refuge.

About two hours after the initial confrontation, authorities also arrested Internet radio host Pete Santilli, a supporter of the occupation who has documented the case on his program and via live stream since it began.

Another occupier, Jon Eric Ritzheimer, 32, an antigovernment activist who has organized armed anti-Muslim rallies in Phoenix, turned himself in to police in Peoria, Ariz., without incident, officials said.

In a video posted on Facebook before he surrendered, Ritzheimer said goodbye to his two daughters. “Daddy’s gotta go bye-bye,” said Ritzheimer, who said he had returned to Arizona from Oregon to visit his family. “I gotta go again, OK?”

“The Feds know I am here and are asking me to turn myself in. I need an attorney so I can get back to my girls,” Ritzheimer wrote, asking for donations. “I just want the country to live by the Constitution and I just want the government to abide by it.”

Times staff writers Nigel Duara in Phoenix and William Yardley in Burns contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-oregon-refuge-roadblocks-20160127-story.html

Oregon standoff spokesman Robert 'LaVoy' Finicum killed, Bundys in custody after shooting near Burns

Les Zaitz 

The Oregonian/ OregonLive
January 26, 2016


BURNS – Oregon standoff spokesman Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was killed and other leaders of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation were arrested Tuesday after the FBI and state police stopped vehicles about 20 miles north of Burns.

Authorities did not release the name of the person who died at the highway stop, but Finicum's daughter confirmed it was Finicum, 55, of Cane Beds, Arizona, one of the cowboy-hat wearing faces of the takeover.

"My dad was such a good good man, through and through," said Arianna Finicum Brown, 26, one of Finicum's 11 children. "He would never ever want to hurt somebody, but he does believe in defending freedom and he knew the risks involved."

Ryan Bundy, 43, of Bunkerville, Nev., suffered a minor gunshot wound in the confrontation about 4:30 p.m. along U.S. 395. He was treated and released from a local hospital and was in FBI custody, authorities said.

Also arrested during the stop were his brother, Ammon Bundy, 40, of Emmett, Idaho, Ryan W. Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont., Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nevada, and Shawna J. Cox, 59, of Kanab, Utah. They were charged with conspiracy to impede federal officers, a felony.

Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore said that Ammon Bundy called his wife, Lisa Bundy, from the back of a police car on Tuesday night.

Fiore, a vocal supporter of the Bundy family, said that Ammon Bundy told his wife that Finicum was cooperating with police when he was shot.

But sources told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Finicum and Ryan Bundy disobeyed orders to surrender and resisted arrest. No other details were available.

Finicum on Monday said an interview that "the tenor has changed" between the occupiers and federal authorities.

"They're doing all the things that shows that they want to take some kinetic action against us," he said.

At the refuge Tuesday evening, occupier Jason Patrick reported no unusual activity. "It's pretty quiet here," Patrick said. He said no one was leaving as of 6 p.m.

Hours later, Patrick said the refuge remained quiet but "we're all standing here ready to defend our peaceful resolution." He wouldn't elaborate.

In the meantime, Operation Mutual Defense, a network of militias and patriot sympathizers, issued a call on its website for help at the refuge. The post was written by Gary Hunt, a board member from California who has expressed support for Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City and had ties to the patriot movement.

"You have an obligation to proceed to the Harney County Resource Center (the wildlife refuge) immediately," Hunt wrote. "If you fail to arrive, you will demonstrate by your own actions that your previous statements to defend life, liberty, and property were false."

In Burns, Oregon State Police also arrested Joseph D. O'Shaughnessy, 45, Cottonwood, Arizona, known in militia circles as "Captain," and Pete Santilli, 50, of Cincinnati, an independent broadcaster known for his aggressive manner and live streaming refuge events. They face conspiracy charges of impeding federal officers.

Jon Ritzheimer, 32, a key militant leader, surrendered to police in Arizona on the conspiracy charge. He gained national fame for complaining on a video about the delivery of sex toys to the refuge in response to the occupiers' plea for supplies.

Gov. Kate Brown called for calm late Tuesday night.

"The situation in Harney County continues to be the subject of a federal investigation that is in progress," she said in a statement. "My highest priority is the safety of all Oregonians and their communities. I ask for patience as officials continue pursuit of a swift and peaceful resolution."

Little detail was available about the dramatic finish to the free-roaming ways of the militant leaders. State police said troopers were involved in the shooting and that one person died, another suffered non-life-threatening injuries and no police were hurt.

The militants seized the wildlife refuge on Jan. 2, insisting they wouldn't leave until their demands were met, including the freeing of two Harney County ranchers jailed on federal arson charges.

One militant on Tuesday afternoon posted a video of Ammon Bundy talking earlier in the day with an FBI negotiator identified only as "Chris." The two have been negotiating since last week, with Bundy dictating the circumstances under which he would talk and what the group wanted.

The leaders were on the highway bound for John Day, where they were scheduled to participate in an evening community meeting set up by local residents. A crowd of several hundred had gathered at the John Day Senior Center and were subsequently told the the "guest speakers" would not be appearing.

The highway was blocked for a 40-mile stretch between Burns and John Day. Police were stationed near Seneca, a small city of 200 south of John Day, with long guns. They said they didn't know how long the roadblock would be place. Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer was there.

Palmer two weeks ago had met with Payne and Ritzheimer. He later publicly declared that Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, should be freed from federal prison to help end the standoff. Palmer also has recommended that the FBI leave the Harney County scene and turn the matter to local police.

The armed militants took over the vacant headquarters compound at the refuge. They have been using refuge buildings for meetings and lodging, posting armed security guards.

The occupiers have been moving without police interference between the refuge and Burns, even attending a county-sponsored community meeting at the Burns High School a week ago. Police estimated at least 50 militants scattered through the crowd of about 400 people.

The dramatic event came days after local and state officials had publicly complained about the apparent inaction by federal law enforcement. The governor had complained directly to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey as well as the White House. On Monday, Harney County Judge Steve Grasty, who chairs the county commission, also publicly urged police to resolve the occupation.

Payne and Bundy have been in and out of Harney County since November, aroused by the sentencing of the Hammonds. In October, they were ordered back to federal prison to finish five-year terms for deliberating starting fires that burned federal land in 2001 and 2006. Bundy and his followers had demanded that Harney County Sheriff David Ward protect the ranchers from having to surrender, a demand Ward rejected.

Payne and other militia met local residents in an informal meeting on New Year's Day in Burns, vowing they had peaceful intentions. The next day, about 300 people - a mix of militia and local residents - paraded in protest through downtown Burns, stopping at the sheriff's office and then stopping at the home of Dwight Hammond and his wife Susan.

That afternoon, a splinter group of militants drove out to the refuge, left vacant after federal authorities warned employees to stay away over safety concerns. Later, Payne confirmed in interviews with The Oregonian/OregonLive that the group had long planned to seize the refuge.

Besides demanding freedom for the Hammonds, the Bundy group wanted the refuge turned over to prior private owners and to the county. They insist that the federal government has no constitutional authority to control land in Harney County, a county that measures 10,000 square miles. The federal government controls 76 percent. The Bundy group also has encouraged ranchers to renounced their federal grazing permits, showcasing a New Mexico rancher Saturday at the refuge who did just that.

-- Laura Gunderson, Carli Brosseau, Denis Theriault, Luke Hammill, Elliot Njus, Anna Marum, and Ian Kullgren of The Oregonian contributed to this post.

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/bundys_in_custody_one_militant.html#incart_maj-story-1

LaVoy Finicum — the Oregon militant beneath the blue tarp — killed in police shootout: reports

Travis Gettys
Raw Story
January 26, 2016

LaVoy Finicum — the Oregon militant whogained fame for conducting a television interview from beneath a blue tarp — has reportedly been shot and killed by law enforcement officers.

The Arizona rancher, who was caring for 11 foster children with his wife, vowed at the start of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve that he was willing to die for his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

“I have been raised in the country all my life,” Finicum said in a widely viewed television interview with a rifle on his lap. “I love dearly to feel the wind on my face. To see the sun rise, to see the moon. I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box.”

He was reportedly shot Tuesday evening during a shootout when law enforcement officers stopped a group of militants on their way to establish a shadow government in nearby Grant County.

State Rep. Michele Fiore (R), who is close to the Bundy family and other militants, has identified Finicum as the militant who has been reportedly killed.

Six others — including Ammon and Ryan Bundy — were arrested following the shootout.

Reports indicate that one other person might have been wounded in the gunfire.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/lavoy-finicum-the-oregon-militant-beaneath-the-blue-tarp-killed-in-police-shootout-reports/

Oregon armed protesters invoke Constitution -- with commentary from W. Cleon Skousen

January 21, 2016

Los Angeles Times

Nigel Duara Contact Reporter

Search most photos of the armed occupiers who took over a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, and you’re liable to see a few common features. Beards, sure. Stiff-brimmed cowboy hats, too. And, in many shirt pockets, a tiny bound volume.

It’s the Constitution. But not the way most people read it.

It includes all 4,543 words inscribed by the Founding Fathers, with 18th century spelling and punctuation preserved, but the pocket Constitution held aloft by Ammon Bundy at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge contains some additional notations courtesy of an anti-communist conspiracy theorist named W. Cleon Skousen.

Skousen, who once accused President Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a Soviet agent and whom Time magazine once labeled an “exemplar of the right-wing ultras,” pairs the original Constitutional text with quotes from Founding Fathers about the necessity of religion in governance.

Its message: The Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a Christian nation, beholden to a Christian god, and never intended the federal government to have any power over its people.

No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare- W. Cleon Skousen

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” it quotes John Adams in an addendum. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Constitutional scholars say some quotations are either deliberate alterations or taken out of context. The Adams quote, taken in its entirety from a 1798 letter to the Militia of Massachusetts, is an instruction to abide by morality, and seems to use “religion” in place of good deeds and words.

Other quotations center on the need for people to take power for themselves, and not let government lay too heavy a hand on their affairs.

It’s a message that rings clear to Cliven Bundy, who had a copy of the booklet during his 2014 standoff with federal agents on his Nevada ranch over unpaid grazing fees. His sons Ammon and Ryan brought it to the Oregon wildlife refuge.

“It’s something I’ve always shared with everybody and I carry it with me all the time,” Cliven Bundy told The Times on Thursday. “That’s where I get most of my information from. What we’re trying to do is teach the true principles of the proper form of government.”

Bundy gets his pocket Constitutions from a friend in Utah named Bert Smith, who buys 1 million at a time, storing them in a warehouse between distributions to Mormon groups, schools and soldiers overseas.

Smith said that he was a longtime friend of Skousen, a Canadian-born onetime FBI agent who died in 2006, and that the booklet was Skousen’s life work. Skousen founded the organization that prints and distributes the pocket Constitution, the Idaho-based National Center for Constitutional Studies.

Zeldon Nelson, the National Center on Constitutional Studies president, said the group has 15 million pocket Constitutions in circulation and just translated it to Spanish. The center believes God accords all equality, and reiterates Skousen’s view that government should not play a role in efforts to ensure equal rights to all people.

The Bundys and their supporters refer to the Constitution constantly: during speeches, of course, but also over bowls of soup at lunch or at campfires at night.

They have invoked its privileges to justify their occupation, especially Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, called the Enclave Clause, which they argue means the federal government shall own no land.

Mainstream constitutional scholars dismiss such an analysis, but it has reemerged as a favored tool of the American lands movement, which seeks to transfer federal land to states, counties and private entities.

The booklet, which features George Washington on its cover, sells for 35 cents each. Those looking for low-cost Constitutions include school districts in Florida, which were forced to apologize in 2013 after they included the pocket Constitution among their civics materials without reviewing the added material.

In death, Skousen became a favorite of conservative Glenn Beck, who helped elevate Skousen’s profile on his CNN show and later his website. Beck wrote the foreword to Skousen’s book, “The 5,000 Year Leap,” another effort to recast American history as that of a Christian nation.

Specifically, his work espouses a brand of anti-communist Mormonism which perceives a threat to the U.S. by forces outside the government and within. With Beck’s foreword and publicity, a 2009 edition of “The 5,000 Year Leap” topped the list of Amazon best sellers in its first week.

“No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare,” he once wrote.

Despite its age — Skousen began researching the first volume of the booklet in the 1960s — the document is finding its footing in the constellation of anti-government, pro-religion conservatives who support states rights and “original intent,” the idea that the Constitution, like the manual of a car, is a set of explicit instructions that detail how to operate a republic without need for interpretation or modernization.

His thoughts on original intent were among his more mainstream views, but it was his views on communism and fears of a New World Order that drew attention and, sometimes, ridicule.

Skousen lived in controversy from his beginnings in public life. Leaving the FBI after 15 years in 1951, Skousen took a post at Brigham Young University, then was appointed chief of the scandal-ridden Salt Lake City Police Department. He was fired after four years, in 1960, contemporary accounts claim, because he was too zealous in eradicating card games in private clubs.

After the police department, Skousen turned to what would be his calling: Writing books and founding nonprofit organizations. His first book, “The Naked Communist,” was published in 1958 and claimed a geopolitical plot was underfoot to transform the U.S. into an arm of the Soviet Union. GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson has spoken glowingly of the book.

“It’s really quite amazing,” Carson told Bloomberg. “You would think it was written last year.”

Skousen became a favorite of the ultra-right John Birch Society, which added him to its speakers list, even as some members of mainstream conservatism during the height of the U.S. Rep. Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare thought Skousen’s views were too extreme.

The popularity of Skousen’s views, and his prominence in American public life, have waxed and waned with the political tides. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and fears of nuclear war with the USSR were on the rise, Skousen became a charter member of the Council for National Policy, a conservative think tank that paired wealthy donors with the idea men of the Reagan Revolution.

His views were increasingly viewed as out-of-touch with mainstream American values, particularly when the Cold War ended, and he was fated to die in relative obscurity. A Stanford law professor assessing his legal writings compared them unfavorably to “a warm pitcher of spit.”

Now, a decade after his death, Skousen’s life’s work is getting its moment in the lights.

nigel.duara@latimes.com                                                                         

Twitter: @nigelduara

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-oregon-standoff-constitution-20160121-story.html