Rise of the Freemen

(pensive music) (static hissing) - [News Reporter] Hundreds of federal peace officers and police are laying siege to a heavily armed compound in Montana.

- Good morning, sir.

- Will please cut the video.

- Okay.

- Shut off.

(pensive music) - [Narrator] More than 25 years ago, the nation was transfixed by the longest active armed standoff in US history.

- They call themselves quote, "The Freemen."

They say they do not obey the laws of the United States.

- [Narrator] The group was an amalgamation of anti-government farmers and ranchers and out-of-state fugitives, fueled by thousands of bad checks.

- They had everything they needed.

They all were armed to the teeth.

These guys are frontiersmen.

They're credible, they're intelligent, and dangerous.

- They've got all this firepower on the outside.

They had firepower on the inside.

If they used it, they were gonna use it.

And it wasn't going to end well.

- Every single ingredient of a bad result was there.

- [Julie] They really believed they were all going to die.

- [Narrator] It was the first time many Americans had ever heard of the Montana Freemen, but the dangerous standoff was actually the final chapter of their dramatic story, a story with a perfect storm of debt and desperation, coupled with an angry anti-government leader.

- Invading our land through deceptive trade practices.

- [Narrator] And an FBI tarnished by recent tragedies.

- [News Reporter] Begins outside Waco.

- [Narrator] A story that began unfolding years earlier.

- Over the past three years, the Freemen have made life in Garfield County, Montana seem like some kind of surreal return to the wild west.

They've declared their own laws, even offered bounties for the capture of local officials.

- [Bill] They planned to take some of these people, like the sheriff, to trial, and when they were found guilty, they were gonna hang 'em, period.

- Treason is punishable by death.

- [Nick] Just probably throw a rope around your neck and throw you over the bridge.

- [Phipps] These guys, it's all about hatred for them.

- Take your camera.

- [Allison] Okay, okay, we're leaving.

- And I pointed to the window and I says, "He's got a gun!"

- All I could see was the barrel of that Beretta, and then his hands on it.

- Everybody knew the threat.

This was not a game.

That last time going into the compound was the only time in my life that I can clearly say I wasn't sure if I was gonna be out.

(speakers speaking faintly) (brooding music) Enough of this **** (air whooshing) (soft ominous music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Rise of the Freemen" is made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and by the Friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(gentle acoustic guitar music) - [Narrator] It was early March of 1995, and the tiny Musselshell County Sheriff's office in Roundup, Montana had a big problem.

- We already got two guys that are arrested.

Then we got three more laying on the floor that were clearly armed.

So I got five armed guys.

And now we're walking out the door to grab two more, but we don't know what we're gonna get into.

- We always carried two pairs of handcuffs, and usually some flex cuffs in our car, but we had used all that up.

- [Narrator] The entrance and the exit to the parking lot were blocked by suspects in vehicles.

The County Attorney was hiding under the Sheriff's desk with a gun.

And a brand new deputy was locked in a jail cell for her own protection.

Deputy Buzz Jones and undersheriff Dutch Van Syckel had been in some jams before, but nothing like this.

- This is a real crisis.

This could go bad, really bad.

It already starting off that way, you know, and who knows where it's gonna end up?

- [Narrator] What they did know is they could trust each other when the chips were down.

Dutch was a former Marine, Buzz, a seasoned Billings police detective.

And they had been like brothers since the day they met.

- We really had more than a bond.

It was a deep love for each other that we had.

And that counts a lot when you gotta have someone have your back.

- Because I always knew if it ever came to that, you know, if the bullets start flying, are you gonna be standing here?

Well, that goes without question with Buzz and I, so either everybody else is gonna be dead or we're both gonna be dead.

- We both looked at each other and said, "Well, this might be the end of the deal for us," but we just went anyway.

We just said, "Okay, I don't care.

Let's go."

- Let's go.

I mean, it was without hesitation.

- [Narrator] The dangerous scene unfolding in Musselshell County was apparent retribution for something this man did.

- [Narrator] Where do you want me to look at?

- Nick Murnion was the prosecutor in neighboring Garfield County.

Murnion did something the Freemen would never forgive.

(wind gusting) (soft acoustic guitar music) Murnion grew up on the same unyielding landscape that eventually gave rise to the Freemen, a remote island of dirt roads and farm fields, where the closest neighbors are miles away.

It's a place where everybody knows everybody.

So everyone knew the Stanton and Clark families as good, salt of the earth farmers and ranchers who had lived here for generations.

- We all rode the bus together, so I'd known 'em for a long time.

- We were friends and neighbors all of our lives.

- [Narrator] Charlie Phipps was born and raised just 15 miles beyond the Clark ranch.

One neighbor in particular was there for Phipps anytime his family needed anything.

That was Bill Stanton.

- One time, when the bus was broke down, we stayed at their house for the evening while we waited for parents to come and get us.

And he was just a great neighbor, always there help people.

And although, you know, for years, we had known that they had struggled financially, as a lot of farmers did at that time, through the 80's and on.

You know, some of 'em never got over that.

- There was a number of these different people that were financially distressed.

When you look at the coming out of the 80's, is was a very difficult time for a lotta farmers.

- [News Reporter] The national tractorcades to Washington DC in 1979 and 1980.

- The government and the government agents were, during the early 80's, extraordinarily aggressive at putting money on the street.

They would send people out and say, "Hey, you can't live in this trailer house, you need a brand new house, and we're not gonna loan you money just to crop.

I mean, you should borrow some more money."

- [Narrator] Mark Parker is a long time Billings attorney, who defended one of the Freemen at trial.

Over the years, he had clients who argued the government was reckless when it encouraged them to take out massive loans only to be squeezed by skyrocketing interest rates, low commodity prices, and drought during the farm crisis of the 80's.

Parker says the government did offer to modify the loans for over-leveraged farmers, but the Freemen balked at those offers.

- People could put together plans and work through it.

Most of the ranchers and farmers in eastern Montana that got in a jam did that.

Some of the Freemen just refused to, just stubbornly refused.

A lotta people out there in eastern Montana expressed resentment to the Freemen because the Freemen refused to modify their behavior once they got into this jam.

- Well, they took the money and spent it, okay.

I mean, that's what everybody talked about in Garfield County.

If you're gonna borrow the money, you need to pay it back.

- [News Reporter] State and county law officers patrol the streets of Jordan.

- [Narrator] By the early '90s, the foreclosures were inevitable.

- In the case between Farm Credit Bank of Spokane, Ralph E. Clark and others.

- [Narrator] Charlie Phipps was now the Sheriff of Garfield County.

And he found himself serving foreclosure papers on his longtime neighbors and friends, the Stantons and the Clarks.

- We have foreclosures here on homes every day, and emotions just run high whenever you get yourself into financial problems.

- [Narrator] Not surprisingly, the Stantons and the Clarks were scared and angry.

Their heritage and their identities were planted in the land they were losing.

(soft acoustic guitar music) - I Leroy M. Schweitzer, in persona.

- [Narrator] Enter Leroy Schweitzer, a crop duster who had lost his business to unpaid taxes and unmet licensure requirements.

He was also a fugitive, with several warrants out for his arrest dating back to the early 90's.

He told the Stantons and the Clarks the money the government loaned them was worthless because it was not backed by gold or silver.

- They admit in 3-103 there is no money.

They also admit there are no documents of title.

- [Narrator] Schweitzer convinced them they didn't have to pay it back.

- The program puppet, Charles Phipps, by his own confession of not understanding the legal jargon has been diligently aiding and abetting in the theft of private property of Ralph Clark, Edwin Clark, Casey M. Clark.

- Well, they were convinced, you know, that was the part scam is they were down, they were financially distressed, and all of a sudden these outsiders come in and say, "You know, it's really not your fault that you're not able to pay your loans, it's because that wasn't real money."

- In the harsh life on Montana's plains, where a change in the weather or a drop in the price of beef can bring sudden financial hardship, the theories of the Freemen can have some appeal.

The Freemen argue that America's whole system of debt is illegal.

- [Narrator] Based on this ideology, the Stantons and the Clarks simply refused to leave their properties, even after they were sold at auction.

- When your land is at risk and you could lose everything, I can see in desperation, how a charismatic person moving in and telling these folks that there is hope and this is the way, you just dig in, I can see how some might kinda get romanticized by that whole theory.

- [Narrator] Former television journalist Julie Koerber had covered anti-government groups before, but she had never seen a leader like Schweitzer.

- It was almost like he was the shepherd and they were the students, because they were enraptured.

You could hear a pin drop.

They were waiting on every word, like, how do I improve my life?

How do I get outta this?

- You would never find this in the codes if you didn't know the root history of common law.

You have to go way, way back to study it.

- Would you describe Leroy Schweitzer as a natural leader?

Did he seem like somebody that people would follow?

- No, he didn't.

In fact exactly the opposite.

He spoke in gibberish, in my mind.

And one of the great mysteries is how this guy found any following at all, 'cause he would not have been picked out of the crowd as a natural leader, but he was.

- The enemy has declared the people the enemy by admitted acts of Congress, and further name-tagged the good and lawful men well-learned in law as insurgents.

- [Narrator] Soon, anti-government anger began boiling beneath the surface of seemingly friendly people.

- This is just another crime against the people of Montana State.

- It's real wonderful county we're living in but we're gonna straighten it out.

- I mean, if you asked a question of any one of them that kind of was counter to what they believed, the anger went like that.

(snaps fingers) They would get very, very angry and very in your face, like that.

(snaps fingers) - The theory of might makes right permeates the intellect of the common herd.

- I cannot answer this pervert criminal charge and I will not and I shall not.

- They just felt like the government was out to get 'em.

- [Narrator] Clair Johnson covered the Freemen for the "Billings Gazette."

- Let me see.

Yeah.

Many of these folks had financial problems of one kind or another, and so they were getting into, you know, maybe increasingly desperate financial situations and they didn't know what else to do.

(pensive music) - [Narrator] Once Schweitzer had convinced the Stantons and the Clarks to ignore their debts, he took it one step further and urged his followers to break all ties with the US government and declare themselves sovereign, and subject only to God's law.

- I Leroy M. Schweitzer did present to the defacto public officers my common law copyright of certificate of expatriation from the federal United States.

- They were sovereign, and so as a sovereign citizen, you didn't have to, you know, follow the the laws that everybody else did.

- They've rediscovered these rights somehow that make them above the law.

- To be a sovereign citizen, you get rid of all your contacts with the state.

You get rid of your driver's licenses.

You get rid of your social security cards.

You get rid of your birth certificates.

So if there's no contractual relationship, then you're not subject to the laws that everybody else is subject to.

They've reclaimed their sovereignty.

- Where do they find a basis for this?

- Outta common law.

They refer to the original constitution for the United States, the original constitution of the state of Montana, the Magna Carta, the Bible.

- The Bible has the only true law.

Men make rules, God made the law.

- [News Reporter] Freemen believe the Bible forbids getting licenses, that taxes are voluntary, and that man is sovereign on his own property.

- That's what Jesus meant when he said, "You have the weight of the cross on your shoulder."

The cross was the government.

- [Narrator] Schweitzer's religious beliefs buttressed his anti-government ideology.

And his teachings turned desperate farmers and ranchers into adherents and followers.

It marked the Genesis of the Montana Freemen.

- This is the church.

This is the court.

We do not have separation of church and state.

We are the church and we are the state.

We are the titles of nobility in America.

We're the kings.

- It's just complete nonsense.

It all goes back to a book on the uniform commercial code, in an ancient volume on that sheriffs are the only civil authority that should be recognized, but it's just gibberish.

- [Narrator] None of the Freemen we reached out to would agree to an interview for this documentary, something that doesn't surprise Parker.

- The Freemen have cleaved themselves into two groups, the true believers, who will view you as an enemy and don't wanna talk to you, and those who have come around, cleansed themselves of this stain and do not want to be reminded of it.

I know of no one that is rational that would trust you with their message.

- Early on, I did interview a few people and wrote a few stories, but we got the ideology through their paperwork and the documents they filed.

- You can guarantee like anytime you meet with them for coffee or otherwise, you are gonna be papered to death, because you would leave the meeting with this much paper in your hands about, you know, code and banking regulations.

And they want you to learn this, and it was gobbledygook to me.

You know, there's no way to draw a straight line between anything that they were sharing.

- Yeah, Heather, first of all, everyone's gonna need a copy of the US Constitution before this is all over, because it's amazing to note how they can just recite portions of the constitution of Montana law and common law right off the top of their head.

- [Narrator] At first, Leroy Schweitzer and the Freemen were a mild nuisance for their neighbors and for law enforcement.

That all changed in January of 1994.

- 26 of them came into our courtroom in Garfield County and basically took it over.

They called me up there and they showed me some stuff about common law courts.

And I did didn't know what they were talking about, but I says, "We don't recognize your common law courts.

Our courtroom's only available for real courts, so it's not available for your fictitious courts."

Well, they went ahead and used it.

- At common law, you don't ask permission, you just do it.

It's your right, exclusive right.

- Some of the people that showed up, that was the first time I had seen, like, William Stanton show up at one of these things.

I'd heard rumor he was involved, but then he was there that day.

- They wanted, I think, the legitimacy of a real courtroom, and that's what it was.

- [Narrator] After breaking ties with the federal government, the Freemen were attempting to set up their own government.

They convened what they called a common law court that day.

They appointed judges and started making rulings.

- The minute you want your country back, all you have to do is do it.

Just start governing.

- They took this seriously.

I mean, this was serious business to them.

They felt like they, you know, were legitimate.

- And they filed these different kind of threatening documents, which they later served on these different people.

So that was the real start of the escalation.

- [Narrator] The threatening documents they filed were realistic-looking liens that their common law court put on the property of their enemies.

Sheriff Phipps had a lien.

- Because I was serving papers on them, then that made me a target.

Anybody who wasn't for them was against them.

- [Narrator] Murnion had a lien.

- I got my first first lien filing, which was for 500 million dollars.

- This is the lien I got from Leroy Schweitzer.

I think in a lot of ways it was a form of intimidation.

And so they would issue liens, UCC liens, against their enemies.

- It had as much vitality as if you and I today set up a court in this room and just started putting liens on people.

- [News Reporter] In small towns throughout Montana, groups of militant Freemen have set up their own courts, ignored debt collectors, and warned local lawmen not to intervene.

- These are people who say they have the right to make their own rules for other people.

- There was a line, and the Freemen crossed that line when they started making all of their threats and starting their own forms of government and superseding all of our laws.

They basically went against the rule of law.

I don't care what your beliefs are.

You can go out to your ranch, and you can have all these beliefs you want, but you don't get to come in and terrorize the rest of us.

And that's what I called this, at some point, was paper terrorism, because it was all of these different threatening documents that they sent out to try to intimidate people.

- These clerks of court or the clerk and recorders got hundreds and hundreds of these things.

And they'd clog up the court system.

- They sent a document to every treasurer of Garfield County regarding Sheriff Phipps on one day.

Two days later, they sent one to every clerk and recorder.

Just tons of documents that were coming in, and I would advise the clerk and recorder, 'cause they were trying to record 'em, I'd say, "Just put 'em in a box."

(brooding music) - [Narrator] The deluge of documents was coming from 120 miles away, in neighboring Musselshell County.

Down a dirt road and surrounded by trees, this rural cabin was the hub of operations for Freemen leaders.

(brooding music) It was home to Leroy Schweitzer, Daniel Petersen and Rodney Skurdal.

All three had warrants out for their arrest.

All three were already fugitives from the law.

The cabin had belonged to Rodney Skurdal, but he had lost it to foreclosure in the early 90's and refused to leave.

- Our liberties come from God.

It does not come from our public servants nor from any of our public officers.

- And I'm not a slave to government hirelings.

We're the master, they're the servant.

- [News Reporter] Inside, Leroy Schweitzer speaks for the Freemen.

Schweitzer, Skurdal and Dan Petersen are present, and Montana lawmen are after them all.

- It was just an unbelievable amount of arrest warrants issued for these guys, and we would've executed those warrants, but everybody wanted to just, "Let's not excite 'em, let's not make 'em mad."

Well, for cryin' out loud, we're cops.

- [Narrator] The cabin was just outside Roundup, in Deputy Buzz Jones and Undersheriff Dutch Van Syckel's territory.

They both believed that the apparent lack of any response from law enforcement had emboldened the Freemen.

- Dutch is just 100% like me, says, "Oh, Buzz and I'll take care of them.

Don't be worried about it."

We took this job knowing there were gonna be some times when you had to use force, maybe deadly force, and place yourself in harm's way.

(brooding music) - [Narrator] What they didn't know, and what the Freemen didn't know, is that the FBI was already watching them.

But it wasn't entirely because of the kangaroo courts and fake liens, the Freemen had started doing something else that got the FBI's attention.

- I was a Bureau instructor, and I was doing a lot of instructing.

I was SWAT instructor and SWAT team leader there.

And I mentioned to Cleaver, James Cleaver, my boss, I said, "If you've got a little case laying around or something," I said, "I can pick up a couple of little cases."

- And Tommy Canady was really, really close to retirement.

And his boss, his supervisor came to him and said, "You know what, I know you're on your way out, but I've got this white collar case, and I want you to look into it.

It's just two bogus checks."

- He dropped this check on my desk, and it was a poor Xerox of a check, a money order.

And I looked at it and my first thought is this is a joke.

- [Narrator] The checks FBI Special Agent Tom Canady had on his desk would turn into the largest bank fraud case the US government had ever seen.

They were the first attempts to write checks against the multimillion dollar bogus liens the Freemen had filed.

Here's how it worked.

First, the common law courts the Freemen created and presided over would issue a lien against someone's property for, let's say $10 million.

The Freemen would then file that false lien with an unsuspecting county clerk, who took it in, stamped it and filed it, and gave them a certified copy, making it look official.

The Freemen would then take that lien document to a bank, where they had an established account, and request a $10 million line of credit, with the lien as collateral.

Then they started writing checks and printing their own certified money orders, lots of them.

- Between August, when I took the case, and December, they tried to cash, negotiate, use 'em for buying things, close to $40 million.

- [Narrator] Over the course of a single six month time period, the Freemen wrote more than $180 million worth of bogus checks.

It wasn't just the Freemen in Montana writing these bad checks.

For a fee, Leroy Schweitzer held classes, where he taught hundreds of other people from all across the United States to do the same thing.

- This stuff works.

The main thing is to teach you how to become a creditor.

It's their book, it's their rules, and we just threw it in their face.

Once you get free and clear and you become a banker like I am, things change.

We made the rules.

I'm my own clearing house.

I make the rules.

- And as they figure, they got a right to print up these things.

- Sure, it's just credit.

- (chuckling) They got nothing to back it up with though.

- Right.

Well, they claim they do.

They claim they have an account at the Norwest Bank Anaconda Butte.

And what they did is they filed a lien there against one of the judges, US District judges, for like $77 million or some such thing, and now they're drawing on this account with these certified money orders.

- For the most part, the banking system of the United States is built on trust.

No one's gonna send you a phony or rubber check.

And they'd send these phony checks out to like LL Bean or to Computers Unlimited or someplace, and order something and get it for free, because the check was no good.

And they got bolder.

They would actually overpay for stuff.

And so they'd order a pair of pants for 20 bucks, and send a phony check for 100.

Then you get the pants back and a refund check.

But the refund check was American dollars.

At the time, no one had ever seen anything like it, and they were getting away with it.

- [Narrator] The FBI discovered some Freemen members had overwritten checks to pay their federal taxes, and actually received refunds from the IRS.

- I had no idea how big it was gonna get.

And as we went along, what's interesting, they stepped up.

I mean the quality of the fraudulent instruments, the rhetoric, the capability.

- [Narrator] Canady needed an undercover agent with white collar crimes expertise to help take the Freemen down, and he knew exactly who he wanted.

- When this case developed, and I saw that, that probably the way we needed to go was undercover, I called Tim and I said, "Here's what I've got," and I gave him a quick briefing on the case, and I said, "Can you help us?"

- [Narrator] Tim Healy, former Harrier pilot, an undercover agent who infiltrated a massive fraudulent telemarketing scheme and took down more than 400 telemarketers.

- And that's what prompted Tommy Canady, the case agent, to call me up and say, "Can you help us out on this Freemen case?"

And I said, "What?"

And he goes, "Dude, you look like the way you do, and you walked into these fraudulent rooms and you got them to tell you all about this stuff.

I just need to get the guys out of the compound to arrest them.

You can come up with something."

- [Narrator] Healy came up with a plan to lure Schweitzer out of the cabin with the promise of money.

He offered to help cash some of the bogus checks and split the proceeds with Schweitzer.

- The whole point was let's get 'em out so we can arrest them.

So that's what Tim was trying different avenues to see what we could do to get them in an arrest scenario, arrest situation, and take their checks away from 'em.

- [Narrator] Healy told the Freemen his name was Michael Manson, and his only contact with Leroy Schweitzer at this point was by phone, because the FBI was not allowing any agents inside the cabin.

- It's the Bureau's philosophy, you're not gonna put a person in there in harm's way unless you have damn good information on what the potential for violence is.

What is he to them that provides him the protection?

- No FBI agent, no FBI employee, no FBI undercover is gonna go into that place, because based on the assessment from behavioral scientists, these guys will not go easy.

And that if they know that they're dealing with a law enforcement officer, they're going to torture them and kill them.

And everything that I dealt with with these guys makes me believe that 100%.

- [News Reporter] Under siege with Branch Dividians outside Waco.

- [Narrator] There was something else that limited the options the FBI was willing to use on the Freemen.

(tense music) - The challenge back then, of course, was Waco and Ruby Ridge.

I don't think I can overemphasize the shadow that threw over the Bureau.

- [Narrator] In 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, a firefight and federal siege left a 14-year-old boy and a young mother dead, along with a US Marshall.

Then a year later at Waco, Texas, four ATF agents and six suspects were killed when agents tried to storm the compound.

The ensuing standoff ended in a fire that killed 76 men, women, and children.

(tense music) - Well, Tim and I were at Ruby Ridge.

At that time, I think that the Bureau was still managing its way around how to work with the technical, and the tactical, and the negotiation experience to handle a subject like this.

- Those weren't FBI original cases.

And they ended horribly.

The FBI got involved in those after it had already blown up.

- [Narrator] Canady and Healy forged a deep friendship in the tragedy at Ruby Ridge, where they both served on the SWAT team.

They were adamant this cabin was not going to turn into another black eye for the FBI.

- That could not happen.

Whatever else happened, we could not get ourselves into a situation like that.

- They were never, ever gonna be taken alive.

If we would've done any type of law enforcement approach, at a minimum, they would've been killed, at a worse minimum, FBI agents could have been killed.

So, you know, they wanted to die, and they wanted a law enforcement officer to either kill 'em and they were gonna go out with a blaze.

There was no doubt.

- Law enforcement had to take extra pains to make sure that we didn't have anybody get killed.

So they were trying to figure out a way to arrest people that had a lot of guns without anybody getting hurt.

And that's kinda hard to do.

- [Narrator] So the plan was for Healy to finesse the Freemen, to trick Schweitzer into coming out in the open.

While Healy was working his way into Schweitzer's good graces, the Freemen thought the FBI was ignoring them.

They knew the agency was under pressure after Waco and Ruby Ridge, and so far, no one had stormed the cabin, and no one was enforcing the stack of warrants against them.

- Because they weren't seeing any action by federal authorities, I think that gave them confidence, okay, because they didn't think we were anywhere around.

[Narrator] The emboldened Freemen leaders widened their rhetoric and tightened their grip on followers.

While they had started out quoting Bible passages to support their anti-government beliefs, now Freemen leaders were using scripture to attack people.

- When you get to studying their ideology, you figure out that these people are much more radical than you ever realized.

And the best description of these groups would be, when they go out recruiting, it's like a funnel going through space.

And so they recruit on these ideas, you know, on federal government doing bad things.

And so they kinda get you coming to the meetings.

If you stay with the funnel long enough, then you funnel down to these hate and white supremacist, one world government, to this kinda radical kinda ideology.

- Would you describe this as a hate group?

- Initially, it was not, it was simply government protestors, that sorta people.

- Do you consider them anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish?

- Oh, absolutely.

- [Dan] Anti-black?

- Oh, absolutely.

Anti-everything but northern European white.

- If you are a black, or a Hispanic, or a Mexican, or a Portuguese, or whatever you want, you can get into America without any trouble at all.

- They hate blacks and Latinos, and, oh gosh, they hate everything; women, police officers, deputies.

These guys, it's all about hatred for them.

- So it's men's duty to run the government to protect the family, the wife and so forth.

We don't want no women in any office, period.

- This statutes are positive law, which is the law of the Jew.

Anybody familiar with book of Jude in the Bible?

And in there it says certain men have crept in unnoticed amongst evil and wicked men.

God said they would dig a pit for us and fall in themselves, and I Leroy M. Schweitzer firmly believe we should no longer cast our pearls before the swine.

- Anybody that believes that, you know, that you've got the Bible behind you, that's a really strong force, you know, of, you know, potential good, or in their case, potential destruction.

So when you feel that you have that behind you, you know, there are bad things that occur.

- [News Reporter] Even though Freemen beliefs have set them on a collision course with Montana authorities, the Freemen quote the Bible and say they can take no other course, no matter what the cost.

- God said the path is narrow, and there wouldn't be too many that would stay on the path.

It's not costly at all if you gain the final reward.

- He was a spiritual leader.

If he would've said, we're gonna do this, I think all of them would've followed, without a doubt.

- We still can talk.

And it is going to be hot for you folks that are listening.

We're getting closer, Nick, if you think any one of them hits our court, that you said wasn't there.

Prove it.

See if you can back up what you say.

Your opinions remind me of a rear end of a donkey.

Every one of 'em got an (beep), but who cares?

- [Narrator] Against this backdrop of seething anger, hatred, and self righteous religious beliefs, in early 1994, the Freemen made their boldest, most threatening move yet.

- Oh yeah, wanted posters, bounties.

And you could go back and kinda go, oh, this is a joke, but no one was laughing.

- I came back from lunch one day and one was posted on my sheriff's office door.

- A person comes into my office with a bounty for one million dollars, which was against seven people, and I was the last on the list.

- So they were promising people money to bring you in?

- To bring me in, to bring seven of us before their court, basically.

And they posted these bounties every night.

The neighbors would bring 'em in.

They would rip 'em off the fence posts, and they would go back and put 'em back up.

- Gladys Stanton, the former Justice of the Peace, was among those targeted by the Freemen.

- What's it like around a little town like this, where you know everybody, to have people threatening your life?

- It hasn't been pleasant, I can tell you that.

For the first time in, I've lived here for 40-odd years, it's the first time I ever locked my doors.

- I don't remember any other national group actually coming up with a bounty.

That was kind of unique to the Freemen.

And we didn't know what to make of it.

About two or three days later, the sheriff and I were sitting in my office, and the constable was listed as Mister Bill Stanton.

- [Narrator] The so-called Freemen constable on the bounty posters was the same Bill Stanton that both Nick Murnion and Charlie Phipps had grown up knowing, the same great neighbor who was always there to help.

They still couldn't believe he was involved.

- Out of the blue, we called him on the phone.

- Why did you call Bill on the phone?

- Because we're still trying to figure out if they're serious or not.

- [Narrator] Sheriff Charlie Phipps had the keen foresight to record the phone call between himself and Bill Stanton.

- Hello, Bill?

- Yeah.

- [Charles] This is Charles Phipps.

- [Bill] Yeah.

- [Charlie] I was calling in this bounty deal that's circulating.

- [Bill] Oh, mm-hmm.

- [Charlie] I want some information on it.

- [Bill] Yeah, what do you wanna know?

- Sheriff Phipps says, "You know, I see there's a bounty for a million dollars, and you're listed as the constable, so we thought we'd turn ourselves in.

Could we get a million dollars?"

- I just said, well, can I turn myself in?

And you know, a million dollars or 5 million, or whatever that particular bounty was, would look good to a starved to death sheriff.

So in other words, if I turn myself over to you, I can come up with a million dollars?

- To which his response was very cold.

He says, "Well, you could, but you probably wouldn't live to enjoy it."

- [Bill] Yeah, you probably won't live to spend it.

- [Charlie] Why not?

- [Bill] 'Cause you'll probably found guilty and hung for treason and a few other things.

- That was when they let me know that I could do that, that would be fine, but I would never enjoy it, because they already had the noose made and they would hang me, so.

- This wasn't what we expected.

And so Sheriff Phipps does pretty well, he kinda ad-libs.

He says, "Well, what are you gonna do then?

Erect a gallows on the main street of Jordan, or how you gonna do this?

- [Charles] You'll set up gallows here in Jordan?

- [Bill] Oh no, it wouldn't go back to them.

They'd just probably just me throw a rope around your neck and throw over the bridge.

- [Charles] All right.

- [Bill] (laughing) Whatever it takes.

- "We'll just put a rope on the bridge and throw you over the bridge."

So, you know, that was kind of a turning point for us.

This person that we knew, was a neighbor, had gone so far into what this... And there's part cult too, these groups are.

I call it the glazed over eye look, and they were pretty committed.

This was a person too, that if he said he was gonna do something, he'd do it.

I mean, he was that kinda, you know, we knew that about him as well.

- Sheriff Phipps, even though they knew him, it was more important to them to be sovereign, a sovereign citizen, than to have a neighbor or maintain a relationship with, you know, someone that they'd known all their life.

It kinda was maybe a point they had to decide which way they were gonna go.

- [Charles] But why haven't I been arrested then, if somebody is so sure of that?

- [Bill] Well, somebody will.

These are going all over the world.

And there'll be somebody that's hungry enough that's gonna come and get you.

- Do you think that they were serious about it?

- Personally, I don't think Ralph or Edwin or Emmett, you know, Bill Stanton, I don't think any of the four of those, even the four of those together, would've ever followed through on that.

But when you have these other guys from outside that can get the mob mentality going, then it could've happened.

(tense music) - Nick Murnion and Charles Phipps, the sheriff there, took it seriously and also said, you know, "You're not gonna intimidate us.

We are going to press charges."

- [Narrator] Murnion charged Stanton with criminal syndicalism and threatening a public official.

- The US Marshalls arrested him in Billings, and so it brought him before my court on my two felony charges.

And we had a trial in November in which he was convicted.

Well, I think it sends an awful strong message that they're not gonna be tolerated, that they can run but they can't hide.

- Nick had it bravely, in some respects, prosecuted Bill Stanton, and so Nick was the face of the government for them.

- Now he isn't doing his job, but he's gonna take and drum up phony charges against us, and I have had enough of this (beep).

Thank you.

- [Narrator] The Freemen were livid.

And as Bill Stanton's sentencing drew near, the FBI gathered some disturbing intelligence.

- Literally, the week to two weeks before he was to be sentenced, we started getting these kinda weird tips.

and so the FBI agent would call me once, and he says, "Well, we have a tip that a group in Roundup is going to kidnap a judge, and try him and hang him and videotape it.

So I want you to be careful."

And then a week later they called me, asked me to get to a secure phone.

And they said, "Well, now we think, since you're sentencing Bill Stanton here, that it may include a prosecutor."

So they were warning me that I might be the target.

- And Leroy Schweitzer practiced shooting his rifle at a milk jug, and then claimed that he did it because that's about the size of a federal judge's head.

You can't ignore people that say stuff like that.

We know what it's like to ignore people like that.

We know you do it at your peril.

(brooding music) - [Narrator] Over in Musselshell County, Deputy Buzz Jones knew about the threat to kidnap an unnamed Montana judge in retaliation for the sentencing, but initially he wasn't too concerned their target would be their judge, Judge Roy Rodigaro.

- We all said, "No, it's not gonna be here.

They're not gonna mess with Judge Rodigaro."

I said to Paul, my sheriff, I said, "Yeah, but what happens if it is him?

I mean, we could all be wrong."

And so I saw the concern in Paul's face.

- Well what Paul Smith did is he sent a couple of people up to the courthouse to keep an eye on the judge.

- [Narrator] William Stanton's sentencing took place on Thursday, and Stanton's son Ebert said something immediately after the sentencing that should have raised more red flags.

- [News Reporter] Ebert promised the movement would never die.

- We'll never go away.

- [Narrator] The very next day, trouble came to Musselshell County.

- My God, they came on that Friday.

- [Narrator] Buzz got an urgent call from his reserve deputies.

They told him two men had come in and demanded to see the judge, but the deputies refused to let them in.

- Those guys called, my deputies, they called them traitorous traitors.

And I knew in my heart, the minute I heard that type of language, I said, that's them.

- That's a term, you know, that kinda raised raise everybody's hairs a little bit.

- [Narrator] Buzz was on a domestic call 30 miles away.

As he raced in, the reserve deputies at the courthouse watched the two men get into a flatbed Ford truck, with no license plates, and drive away.

- You know, if you wanna slip around and do something really dangerous, nefarious things, you shouldn't drive a around in your car with your license plates missing, gone.

- He said, when he got down there, that he noticed the truck that didn't have plates on it and such, so he pulls it over like any other, like you're supposed to do.

I mean, that's his job.

- [Narrator] The driver, Freeman Dale Jacobi, immediately got out of the truck.

Buzz explained that he had pulled Jacobi over because he had no license plates.

- And he said, "Well, I don't need license plates.

You know, I'm a free man."

I said, "Well, could I see your driver's license then?"

And he said, "Oh, I haven't had a driver's license for 15 years or 20 years or something.

You know, I just don't need a driver's license.

I know how to drive a car."

I said, "Okay, well, I can just guess about your proof of insurance."

And he said, "Oh no, (scoffs) I don't have proof of insurance.

I mean, I'm self-insured.

I get in a wreck or something, I just cash 'em out right there."

- Buzz had called the sheriff to back him up, but he wasn't there yet.

He decided to stall.

- I said, "I wanna talk to your passenger."

So I went around the vehicle, and the passenger was a guy by the name of Frank Ellena.

He's a really, really, really big man.

I thought, of course, "Oh boy, this is a big one."

- [Narrator] Buzz asked Ellena for his ID, but he refused.

So Buzz went back to talk to Jacobi, who was starting to get antsy.

- So he said to me, "Well, what's the bottom line?"

And I said, "Well," and I look, no cover coming.

I said, "Well, the bottom line is I'm placing you under arrest."

And so I patted him down.

I'm right-handed, so I always go to the right side first.

But when I came down on the left side, I hit a gun with the fat of my hand here.

- [Narrator] Buzz would later discover the gun was loaded with armor piercing bullets.

- When I touched that gun, he became difficult to handle, trying to get away and push away and pull away and just resist.

And I was, you know, a pretty young man I'm pretty strong, so I kinda forced him down on the flatbed that was right there in front of us.

And I told him, "Don't fight with me, you're under arrest."

And I was able to get one handcuff on.

And I was just about to put the other one on and out came the passenger, Mister Frank Ellena.

And I gotta tell you, the sun went out.

I thought, oh, that's just the last thing I wanted to happen today, was have to deal with this monster, on top of this armed suspect.

And I'd keep looking and still haven't any backup yet.

- Frank Ellena gets out of the truck.

Now, Frank Ellena is a big man, big man.

He gets out and he's got this pistol.

- Mister Ellena came right around and pulled a Beretta 92F and pointed it at me across the back of my pickup, right at my face.

And, you know, a lotta things go through your head then.

I wasn't really afraid of dying, but I knew I was a dead man.

I just said, "Well, this is where you get it."

I had always thought I was immune to all the things that happen to a person when they're facing death at point blank with a weapon.

But oh my gosh, everything that they said would happen happened.

I lost all my audio.

My vision was totally tunnel vision.

All I could see was the barrel of that Beretta, and then his hands on it.

Then I went into this slow motion thing, it was just terrifying, but I couldn't get my hand to work.

It just wouldn't go there.

And I kept saying, "Pull your SIG and shoot this knucklehead," but I could not get it together because I realized now my mind was racing ahead and I'm in real time, but my mind's, you know, goin' way ahead of me.

I just was sure that he was gonna shoot me.

I just said, "Well, this where you get shot."

- [Narrator] But Ellena did not pull the trigger.

And Buzz finally managed to pull his own gun.

- As soon as I pointed it at him, Frank Ellena stepped back, kinda behind where the groceries were, threw his pistol into the front seat of the pickup and jumped in with it.

- [Narrator] Much to Buzz's relief, Sheriff Smith showed up right then, and they arrested Ellena without a problem.

Now they finally had a chance to see what was in the flatbed truck.

- And I could see barrels of rifles.

It turned out he had seven SKS rifles pointed out the backup, behind the back seat.

And then I saw over the floor, lots and lots and lots of ammunition.

There was 4,000 rounds.

(tense music) - They had bandoliers of ammunition, magazines, empty and full.

They had weapons, they had zip ties.

They had a video camera.

There was a video camera.

Of course, my understanding is they're gonna videotape this hanging.

- We ended up finding a lotta stuff that was consistent with a hanging; a rope already tied, a hangman's noose.

We found a lot of duct tape.

- And then there was a briefcase, and inside the briefcase was all these gold Krugerrands, these gold coins, so that's a lotta money.

- Almost $100,000 in gold and silver.

So they were planning to have some liquidity while they were on the lamb.

- Gold's easy to liquidate.

You can go anywhere in any country.

- They find all of these guns, and they find plastic constraints, and they find video cameras.

They find some money and groceries and everything consistent with that threat.

- Each piece in itself is only what it is, but the culmination of everything together, all of it, the totality of it, gives you some idea of what exactly was supposed to transpire here.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Buzz's adrenaline was already up, but seeing what was in the truck sent it higher.

He had to wonder, was this the abduction attempt the FBI had warned them about?

And more importantly, were more Freemen on the way?

- I told the dispatcher, I said, "Call Dutch, my partner, get him back here quick."

And she says, "How quick?"

I said, "Lights and siren.

I need him now."

- I get a call from Buzz and he says, "You need to get your ass in here right now."

I said, "What's goin' on?"

He said, "Just get here, now."

- He comes roaring into town and runs into the Sheriff's office, says, "What the hell's goin' on?"

And here were these guys on the floor.

And so we are kinda working with them, ID-ing 'em, talking to 'em.

- And as this is going on, and I look out the window and I see these two cars pull in the parking lot.

And I turned around, I said, "Oh Buzz, here they go."

I said, "We got some company here.

We got some company."

- Dutch says, "Hey, we got problems.

There's a car parked across the entrance way and a car parked down by the exit."

- So we're watching, and three guys get out.

And I said, hell, here comes three of 'em right now, Buzz.

- Oh, they're comin' in and they look like they're mad.

- So Buzz locks and closes the doors.

- We had a security door we could slam, so they couldn't just walk right into the Sheriff's office proper.

- [Narrator] Buzz and Dutch had more than their own safety to worry about.

The county attorney, John Bohlman, was in the office with them.

- John Bohlman says, "Don't go out there and leave us unarmed.

Because if you two get killed or get shot, who's gonna protect us?"

- What am I gonna to do if they kill you and Dutch?

I said, "John, they'll come in here and kill you.

You gotta shoot 'em."

- So Buzz tosses him his pistol.

And he goes into the Sheriff's office, and he's hiding under the Sheriff's desk, under the footwell of the Sheriff's desk with his pistol.

- [Narrator] They also had to protect deputy Wanda Spalding.

It was her third day on the job.

- She didn't know what to do, okay?

Because she's a new deputy.

- So we put her in a back cell and gave her her gun, of course, and the keys.

And we said, "If they get past Dutch and I, you have to start shooting."

I grabbed a shotgun off the rack and loaded it with shotgun shells to go out and deal with this problem.

- So these three guys walk in, and they come upstairs, and of course, here's the window.

And I'm standing there, and there's a counter.

To my left is Buzz at the door with a shotgun.

- They didn't know I was there.

I was kinda hiding between the door and the wall.

- [Narrator] The three men demanded the deputies return the evidence they found in the truck.

- I said, "No, you're not getting anything.

You all need to just get outta here, you just need to leave, but you need to leave now, 'cause this is this isn't good.

Just go, okay?

'Cause things aren't going well, you just need to go."

So he steps back from the counter, then he pulls his jacket and I see on his right hip is a holster.

And I know Buzz is standing right there, and I point to the window, I says, "He's gotta gun!"

I said, "Gun!"

- [Narrator] Then a second suspect made his move.

- He's against the wall.

And he turns to face me, like a quarter turn to face me.

And he pulls his jacket back.

I said, "Another gun!"

- This is BS.

You know what?

This is our jail.

You don't come up here and demand anything of us.

You don't bring weapons in here and try to intimidate us.

So I said to Dutch, I said, "Buddy, what do you wanna do?"

He says, "Let's go out and arrest these knuckleheads.

It's enough of this."

- Buzz grabs the door, the door flies open.

And as he goes, I'm right behind him.

And Buzz takes that shotgun like a battering ram, and runs down that hallway.

And Buzz, like I said, he's a big man, and that hallway's small, which makes him look even bigger.

And now he's got a shotgun.

That amps it up even more.

And he comes drilling into 'em.

- And so I pointed that shotgun at their faces.

I told 'em they'd be shot if they pulled guns out, you know, let me take the guns off of ya.

You don't be grabbing at those guns or you're gonna get shot.

And Dutch of course is right in there with me.

So both he and I are forcing these guys onto the ground.

- [Narrator] Buzz and Dutch use their last sets of handcuffs to secure the three men.

- That's when Buzz says, "I can't believe this, they actually came to our house.

They did this at our house."

I said, "Yeah, well there's two more outside, we might as well get them too."

- And I said to Dutch, "You know, we're probably gonna get killed doing this."

He says, "Yeah, I know, but let's do it anyway."

That's what the badge is about.

I can't imagine not arresting people, just hiding out of fear.

We just never thought of it.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Buzz and Dutch approached the car that was blocking the entrance to the parking lot.

John Trochmann, the founder of the Montana Militia was behind the wheel, and Mark Basque was the passenger.

- And I go to the driver's side, and Buzz goes to the passenger side, and he's ordering him out.

- I said, "You're under arrest.

Get out, step out."

And they just went like this with their arms, and locked the doors and started the car up.

- Basque locked the car door.

Trochmann did exactly the same thing.

- I said, "No, this isn't gonna happen.

This is not happening."

- Buzz took the shotgun back like this, like it was a baseball bat, and slammed it with the barrel, and the barrel smashed the window.

And then, so the window exploded.

- That frightened 'em, you know, it would've certainly frightened me.

- Buzz is a big man, he's strong.

So he reaches in, he grabs this guy, he just pulls him right outta the car like he was just nothin'.

- I just grabbed him, jerked him outta the window, threw him on the ground.

- [Narrator] While Buzz was securing his suspect, Dutch arrested Trochmann.

- And then he got down on the ground, I took the pistol off of 'em, and I reach back for some handcuffs.

Hell, I don't have any.

I already used them.

And then Buzz, I can't really see him, but I know he's on the other side of the car and he's got this guy.

Then he says, "Dutch."

I said, "What?"

- He says... - Hey, Dutch, throw me some handcuffs.

And he says... - What?

I don't have any goddamn handcuffs.

And if I did, I'd use them myself.

(laughing) Like, what, are you serious?

- (laughs) And I said, "Oh, that's right.

That's right."

Cops are funny.

You know, we laugh at the dumbest things and the craziest things, but it's kinda a way to get through it, you know?

'Cause, you know, we really had our lives on our hands there and we could very easily have been shot, very easily.

- [Narrator] After the arrests, they discovered a final piece of evidence in one of the suspect's pockets that revealed the situation was even more dangerous than they thought.

(tense music) - There was a hand drawn map, like go this, you know, like you would normally draw a map to show somebody how to get to your house.

And then it had Nick Murnion's, it had a little area right there, a little square thing, and it had Nick Murnion's name.

- I get a call from my friend in the attorney general's office and he says, "You know, we found a map on one of these guys, and I think it's a map of Jordan, and I think it has your house and your office on it."

And he sent it to me and it did.

- They were gonna go up there and do something.

We never knew exactly what, because they lawyered up and wouldn't talk to us.

- What was your immediate thought when he said, "This map, I think it's your house."

- It was chilling.

I always knew that if they wanted to kill you, they could probably shoot you at any time.

I mean, you just have to live with that.

But the map of my house bothered me because that's my family.

- [Narrator] But having a hand-drawn map, trying to visit a judge, and driving around with weapons, gold coins and zip ties is not a crime.

Montana's attorney general decided they didn't have enough to prove felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The group of suspects eventually filed a lawsuit against the county, claiming unlawful arrest and false imprisonment.

Right after the arrest, while he was still behind bars in Billings, John Trochmann told "CBS News" his version of the moment Buzz and Dutch approached his vehicle.

- [John] It's coming down, something awful is coming down.

We both sat there with our mouths open in disbelief as the tall, bald man screamed obscenities, "Get out of the effing car you effing bastards," et cetera, et cetera.

With his eyes back in his head, he kicked in the door where Mark was sitting.

Mark was trying to get the door open, not realizing it was locked.

The next thing I heard was a huge, deafening blast, as debris began to hit me.

I didn't dare look down for fear it would be Mark's brains in my lap.

- They really made Dutch and I out as monsters.

They said we looked like mad cow disease, our eyes were rolled back on our heads.

Well, (chuckling) I don't think that's true, but I know we were extremely aggressive, almost violent.

We didn't hit them, didn't hurt them, but we were extremely aggressive in the arrest.

I was concerned for my safety and for Dutch Van Syckel's safety.

I broke that window out to gain access to that knob and get that door open and get that man out on the ground.

And guess what?

Mark Basque had a loaded pistol underneath his jacket.

- [Narrator] Ultimately, the courts ruled Buzz and Dutch were justified in arresting the group.

"We conclude the information within their personal knowledge and relayed by a reliable source constituted sufficient facts and circumstances to lead a reasonable person to believe an offense, such as conspiracy to kidnap or kill a judge, was being committed."

- They had the capacity, they had the propensity for violence.

I think it would've happened.

You just cannot underestimate these guys.

- [Narrator] Judge Rodigaro himself believed the group had come to abduct him.

- Dutch and I, we were sitting in the front row at the trial and he say, "Those two deputies right there saved my life."

- The judge thought, and he really believed, that they were coming there to kidnap and murder him or hang him, and that Buzz and I just kinda stepped in the middle of it and prevented it from happening.

(brooding music) - [Narrator] While Buzz and Dutch had thwarted something, they certainly had not stopped the Freemen.

Back at the cabin, the bad checks, fraud classes, bounties and threats continued unabated.

Meanwhile, FBI Agent Healy was still working his plan to lure Schweitzer off the property.

- My understanding was the summer of '95, that at any given day, they were going to go in and arrest the ringleaders and put this thing, you know, prosecute these people and be done with it.

- [Narrator] In late September of 1995, the FBI had a breakthrough.

A civilian informant managed to plant a listening device inside the cabin.

Finally after months of hard work, they were a able to listen to what Freeman leader Schweitzer, Peterson and Skurdal were doing.

- We put that microphone in, and all you hear is scratching, moving.

And they call me and I go in and I listen.

And I thought, "My God, what is it?"

They were moving.

We had that damn Mizer in for one day, and they packed up in the middle of the night and moved.

- One or two agents got out of position and were seen by the Freemen, and realized that something wasn't right, and so they just packed up and left that night.

- When we heard it, I just remember my face.

I just thought, "Well, (beep), you know?

And of course it was what can we do to stop 'em?

- Well, Tommy called me and they were talking about, "What do you think, maybe we should do a take-down?"

- [Narrator] Over the listening device, the FBI heard Freemen leaders reveal their plans.

They would be joining forces with their followers, the Clarks and the Stantons, on their foreclosed properties in remote Garfield County, forming a single huge compound on thousands of acres.

They would call it Justus township.

- You're going to let them augment another bunch of people that are already armed up there, so now that you've got twice as many armed people in a bigger area.

Tactically, that's insane.

Why would you do that?

- My first instinct was that they're not coming here.

That we will stop them, we have the Musselshell bridge.

We can park a CAT across that and they can't cross the bridge, they can't come here.

- He was up there by himself with one deputy.

He begged us, "Please don't send 'em up here to me."

I heard him tell the sheriff, my sheriff, Paul Smith, "Please, Paul, don't do it to me."

We said, "Let us keep him in the cabin."

We had a plan and we were gonna use some highway patrolmen, some game wardens, deputies, whoever wanted in, and we were gonna secure the house.

- [Narrator] But the FBI was in charge, and they preferred a SWAT team approach.

- James Cleaver, my boss, came to me and he said, "Can you stop 'em?"

Well, for me to get my SWAT team together would take anywhere from four to six hours, because they're spread all over the state.

It's not a instant response.

And Billings had a real good SWAT team.

I went to them and I said, "You got your boys here?"

And they said, "no, they're outta town training."

So I went back to James Cleaver and said, "I can't do it.

I can't confront them, I can't stop 'em."

- [Narrator] It wasn't just the lack of a SWAT team that made law enforcement hesitant to try to stop the group, the FBI heard Freemen leader say something chilling before they left the cabin.

- We will not be stopped, and they had lots of ammunition and lots of guns, and they were desperate.

There's no way in hell there wouldn't have been a shootout.

It woulda been bloody.

- Everybody believed, and all the contact that I had with them, I absolutely firmly agree with this, and that what they weren't gonna go alive.

- [Narrator] The FBI advised all law enforcement to stand down.

Something that didn't sit right with Buzz.

He kept pressing the sheriff to do something.

- Was there a chance that somebody would die?

Well, yes, there is.

There is.

But I think it was preferable to letting them just drive off to another location and put a bunch of other people at risk.

We had 'em.

- Buzz got so livid that I thought it was gonna start to physical real fast.

It was.

Buzz, you need to back off, you need to do this.

I was gonna have to lock him up, I could've put him in a cell, 'cause he was that livid.

- It was a very bad evening because we got in a huge argument about it, and Dutch took me aside and said if you don't quit arguing at these guys, they're gonna lock you in jail.

(chuckles) So I said, "Yeah, I can see that's comin'."

So I went out 'cause I was angry that we let them drive right through our city.

- It was like two or three in the morning I think, something like that, and here they come, drivin' right through.

- And I just went out and stood on the sidewalk next to the street so I at least could stand there in uniform and glare at 'em as they went by.

And I did, and they did, we all glared back as they drove by.

- And I get a call.

I actually called in to my office and my secretary said, "You're not gonna like this."

I said, "Why?"

"Last night all the Freemen moved to Garfield County."

And I was livid about that.

- The timing was just terrible, with us finally getting where we were, and then Tim woulda moved in on 'em from then.

And back to square one, ladies and gentlemen.

(ominous ambient music) - [Narrator] In truth, it was arguably worse than going back to square one.

The problem was much, much bigger now.

- Yeah, it made it 10 times worse, tactically speaking.

- So it went from one building, five guys, five acres, to 20,000 acres, 20 or 30 buildings, 20 or 30 armed guys.

It went to a very, very difficult situation.

In addition to that, it also went to we could hear what was going on inside to we knew nothing.

- Day and night, we had nothing, as far as our ability to determine what they're doing, and to come up with some scenario that'll allow for an arrest situation, we had nothing.

- [Narrator] On top of everything, the friendship with Leroy Schweitzer that Healy had been carefully cultivating over the phone was starting to sour.

- We were trying to convince him to come off.

I was talking to him, talking to him, talking to him.

And initially he was polite, and then he started getting angrier and more frustrated.

And his issue, "Look, I've talked to you for months, why don't you just come on and take the class, come on and say hello?"

There's only so many excuses you could give.

So it got to the point where I just told Tommy, I said, "Tommy, this is not gonna work.

Look, here's the deal.

The only way it's gonna work, I gotta do some face to face.

He's gotta know who he is.

He's not gonna come off the compound unless he knows me."

- [Narrator] Canady agreed, but this challenged the FBI's rules against an agent going undercover.

Healy took his case straight to the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh.

- The director and I had something in common.

We both had a lotta kids, and probably the same number.

And I told him, I said, "Sir, all due respect, I don't have a death wish.

You know, I'm not asking to go in for the thrill of it.

I'm saying this is what we need to do."

And a couple days later, I was driving in the compound.

(brooding music) - [Tom] When you send someone in, you're looking for two things.

You're looking for intelligence and you're looking for how do we solve this issue?

- [Narrator] One of the issues became immediately apparent as Healy drove up to the compound for the first time.

- You leave Jordan, Montana, and it's 27 miles from Jordan, Montana, to the compound.

And there's like five miles of hardball road, and like 22 miles of dirt road.

So when you talk about remote, it is gosh awful remote.

It is as remote as it could be.

And you've got people that don't wanna be taken alive, they're all carrying guns.

And, you know, the area was huge, huge.

- [Narrator] Healy knew if something went wrong, he was completely on his own.

- That was actually the rule of engagement.

(chuckling) The ROE was, if you're captured, we're not coming.

So talk your way out of it, evade and run away.

That was what it was, and I was okay with that.

I was seriously okay with that.

As long as I stood the rule, I was okay with that.

Because the reality is if they come, then people are gonna die.

- It was his wits.

It wasn't that we had a great backup plan to run in and pull him out if he got into trouble.

We didn't.

- Everybody knew the threat.

This was not a game.

- Tell me about that first visit to the compound.

What was that like?

What were you thinking when you were driving in?

- Survive and live.

Every single time I would get there, and just a few miles out, I'd stop and take a breath and say, "Okay, now you're Mike Manson, you're not Tim Healy, and you're a little disgruntled with the government, and, you know, you've gotta be on."

And so you're on.

And you're on the moment you're there until I pass that station again, then I turn off and I'm back.

It is exhausting because everything you say, everything you do, they're gonna look at you, they're gonna look at your reactions, they're gonna look at your nonverbal communication.

And so all of that has to be in tune to, you know, the role that you're playing.

So it's a challenge.

It's a challenge.

- [Narrator] Agent Healy played the role of Mike Manson in person so well that Leroy Schweitzer took an immediate liking to him.

- He was a pilot and we had some really interesting conversation.

He was a phenomenal pilot.

He taught himself how to fly a helicopter.

I flew helicopters because that was a Harrier pilot.

That's in amazing.

So we developed a pretty good relationship.

So I felt pretty comfortable that I was gonna be okay, 'cause I was just gonna walk in.

I wasn't wired, so literally they could strip me naked and there was nothing that I had that would indicate that I was doing anything.

- [Narrator] Healy went in wearing a suit and tie, and acted like a nerd to set Schweitzer at ease.

He didn't want the Freemen to see him as a threat.

- So it finally got to the point where Leroy basically sat me down and started the indoctrination process.

You know, their religion, the Freemen doctrine, you know, all of that.

And that was probably a two or three-hour thing.

- [Narrator] Then Schweitzer asked Healy if he wanted to go for a drive.

Leroy was armed, and so was Freeman Edwin Clark, who joined them.

- So if you can picture this, Edwin is directly behind me, and I'm in the front seat, and Leroy's driving.

And it's my car, you know, and it's a four-wheel drive car and he's driving it around.

And so we're going into, all over the place.

And we probably drove 10 miles, and we turned this remote corner and Edwin says, he said, "This would be a great place to kill an FBI agent and hide his body."

And I looked at him and I said, "Edwin, you could kill 100 FBI agents and hide their bodies here and no one would ever know."

And he started laughing and Leroy started laughing because that's Freemen humor.

- The whole time he's in there, everyone else is on the highest alert.

And you're worried, there's no other way about it.

You're scared to death that something's gonna happen.

His fault, no one's fault, by accident, it doesn't matter, something could happen.

And those are very stressful.

That's the most stressful part is when you have an agent in there.

- [Narrator] The stress went on for days because Healy did not just drop by for a couple of hours and drive away.

- No, no, I stayed, I stayed the nights.

You had to live with him, you had to kind of be there.

It wasn't fun, it wasn't meant to be fun.

It was to develop a relationship with them, and you're gonna have to live with them to do that.

- You know, he'd go in there and spend a couple of days in there, hobnobbing with those idiots.

And the whole time he's in there, you know, you just don't know what's gonna happen.

- [Narrator] The first visit was a success.

Agent Healy won the Freemen's trust and he cemented his friendship with Schweitzer.

Even so, each visit was fraught with danger.

Healy was slowly adding bugs to the compound each time he made a trip in.

- We disguised it in different electronic devices, and we gave it to him as, you know, hey, you could use this, you could use that.

And, you know, we had him set it up in different locations, so we actually were able to hear everything that was going on.

So when I was in there, I could stand by a certain piece of equipment and know that they could hear me, they could hear what was going on.

So at a minimum, if it was getting ugly, they could hear it.

- [Narrator] Healy had code words and phrases he could use to communicate with the FBI over the hidden listening devices.

- The code word was big sky.

Big sky was, you know, everything's okay.

And then, if I said something three times it was bad.

So if I said, hey, hey, hey, or I said yo, yo, yo, or bad, bad, bad, or Leroy, Leroy, Leroy, you know, don't shoot me, shoot me, shoot me, you know?

(laughing) If I said it three times, something was bad, it was not going good.

But big sky, it was good.

Everything was fine.

You know, and when you're in Montana and you're saying, ah, this big sky out here is great, you know, you could say that all the time, then it's good.

So those were the code words.

(slow-paced brooding music) - [Narrator] There was one incident where Healy almost said something three times.

It was after a long drive alone with Leroy Schweitzer.

- We got back to the school compound and his whole demeanor changed.

And yeah, I thought, this is odd.

What did I do and how did I do it?

And he gets on the radio.

He says, "All Montana, all male members of the Freemen compound, you know, come to the schoolhouse, Mike's here."

And they start showing up.

And these are guys that I'm like, you know, shuckin' and jivin' with and talkin' to.

And all of a sudden, they have this real formal approach.

And I'm thinking, "This can't go bad.

This is not gonna go bad now, this is crazy."

And they're coming in, and they're like filling up against the wall, and I'm thinking, "This is bad."

And I'm going over in my mind, okay, there's nothing that's wired up, I'm not wired up.

What did I say?

There's nothing that could do this.

I thought I was made.

So I had thought, okay, if this goes bad, I'm gonna get this gun and I'm gonna kill as many of them as I can before I get killed.

And he starts walking up to me, and I'm kind of blading myself to take a hit, because I'm expecting him to hit me, just because of the way he's acting is so weird.

And all of a sudden, he starts goin', "Do you swear," da-da-da, and he's swearing me in.

And I'm realizing he's swearing me in as a marshal.

And I immediately snap to attention and raise my right hand.

- [Narrator] Cleary, Healy had won them over.

They trusted him completely.

Healy created lengthy detailed reports after each of his visits to the compound.

He described the Freemen hierarchy as Schweitzer in command with Peterson as his right-hand man.

Women were at the bottom of the hierarchy.

This report from February of 1996 made a specific note of the servile role of women in the compound.

He wrote about the actions of Daniel Peterson's wife, Cherlyn.

"All the meals followed the same pattern.

The males ate first, while Cherlyn stood aside.

After the plates were put over by the sink, they were washed by Cherlyn Peterson.

After the table and kitchen were cleaned, she would eat."

- It's not I who said this, but my almighty God and creator.

God had stated that no woman will rule or judge over a man.

- Their doctrine was, you know, white supremacy, that's stupid.

And their other doctrine was women are stupid.

And, you know, I grew up in a large family.

I had six sisters, so I knew that was crazy.

And then I had six sons and a daughter, and so I definitely understood the power of females.

- [Narrator] The observation in Healy's report would prove eerily prescient.

The Freemen leaders would come to regret dismissing Cherlyn Peterson as stupid.

(gentle brooding music) Back in Jordan, residents had no idea the FBI was in town, and that Sheriff Charlie Phipps was working with them.

- The only ones that knew that we were involved was the Sheriff of Musselshell and Garfield counties.

- They're outfitting my two little jail cells.

They spent months in there, and had massive wire banks and phone banks and stuff in my jail cells back there.

And it was just amazing, nobody had a clue that anything was going on.

- [Narrator] Sheriff Phipps told anybody who asked that they were building a new 911 communication center.

As the FBI slowly and secretly infiltrated Garfield County, Phipps was critical to helping Canady understand who they could trust in this tiny community.

- Because we were renting houses, we were putting up surveillance, and so we had to know who wasn't going to leak that information out.

- The value of Sheriff Phipps and the other sheriffs in that while they were holding the confidential of what we were doing, was they knew the community.

Yeah, he's a Freemen associate or he's not, so that was invaluable.

- [Narrator] The FBI was everywhere; in hotels and cabins, even a birthing shed near the Freemen compound housed 50 agents doing regular reconnaissance.

But the Freemen were blissfully unaware of the gathering storm.

No one had intervened when they moved to the compound.

No one was enforcing the arrest warrants.

No one was stopping them from holding classes.

- You can't be questioned when you self govern.

It's why we haven't been raided, and we won't be raided.

- As long as they kept operating their schools, as long as it looked like they were succeeding, that's why people kept flocking to them because it looked like it was working, and they weren't being arrested.

- And then just before he hung, he said, "You wouldn't hang a duly elected sheriff, would you?

He did.

That's what it's gonna take here, you guys.

That's why we have this up here.

It's for real, I don't care who knows it.

Treason is punishable by death, by hanging, in Montana.

It's more severe than cattle rustling.

They think this is a big joke.

No, it's real, guys.

(brooding music) - [Narrator] The Freemen were bolder than ever, threatening anyone who tried to enter Justus township with arrest and jail time in an old schoolhouse on the compound.

- They talked about it, about building a jail down there.

And I don't know how far along they got with that, but they were serious, I mean it wasn't idle talk.

This group just keeps seething within themselves.

It was truly a dangerous situation.

- Trespassers will be shot.

Survivors will be shot again.

- They were waving guns around, they were stopping people, they were threatening people.

It was mostly the media that got too close.

So they were sort of accosting the media.

- No one quite knew how far they might be willing to go or not go.

And I think journalists from other, you know, markets, or where ever they came from, you know, other countries, they thought it was, you know, "Oh, let's go out and visit them."

I don't think they realized the potential for danger.

In one case, I think it was the ABC robbery, they were actually rolling and filming this incident.

- [Narrator] This video was seized by the FBI and used against the Freemen at trial.

- Oh boy, I do not like being here.

(brooding music) Hello?

Anybody home?

Mr. Schweitzer?

My name is Allison Senson, I'm with "Prime Time Live."

I spoke with you on the telephone a few weeks ago.

Look, there's a truck over there, you guys.

There's a bunch of them over there.

- [Crew Member] Okay.

Well, this is it.

- [Allison] This is our standoff, guys.

Let's just get out of the truck.

Yeah.

Look, they stopped.

- Here they come.

- Oh, (beep) you guys, I feel like they just kinda got us where they want us.

Holy cow.

I'm sorry.

The gentleman over there told us to come over here.

- I'll take your camera.

- [Allison] Okay, okay, we're leaving.

We're leaving, we're leaving.

Okay, we're leaving.

- Well, you're under arrest.

This is private property.

- They actually had their camera equipment stolen, taken right out their hands.

- [Schweitzer] Next time you come here, you show out here, you're gonna get sit your butts in jail.

- [Allison] Okay, but we're on our way out.

- In the background, you could hear this shotgun being racked.

And so, you know, they had their guns out and they racked a shotgun and stole their camera.

It happened so fast, I think that it would kinda caught them off guard a little bit and they weren't quite sure kinda what was happening, and then suddenly, you know, they realized their equipment is gone.

- This isn't something their doing because they wanna look good, they were pissed off that this camera crew would come to their properties.

So I think it was a very dangerous situation, and that coulda turned.

If one of the media people had acted off key or somethin', there's no telling what woulda happened.

- They were proud of it, and there was discussion with them about they should have killed her.

And that was a discussion that I participated in.

It was very disturbing.

- That's why when Tim would go in, he's walkin' on eggshells.

He could say, yeah, he's good, he's gonna go in, he's gonna song and dance them and everything.

Bull****,that's tough to focus.

Put all your focus on that for two days, three days.

And that news crew goin' in and being that flippant, they're lucky.

They're lucky.

- I think the fact that she was female may have saved her life.

I don't think she understood how much at risk she was.

They were livid.

- The order is shoot to kill.

And only three people have trespass out here, and there's the camera.

We let 'em off easy.

- If we continue to do nothing, somebody was gonna get hurt and killed.

- [Narrator] The FBI decided it was time to make its move, and the robbery, as dangerous as it was, played into the agency's hands.

Acting as Michael Manson, Healy had been encouraging Schweitzer to install a video surveillance system at Justus township.

The breach by the ABC News crew was the opening Healy needed to convince Schweitzer the system was necessary.

Of course, the surveillance system he was proposing was fake, and the installation crew would be expert FBI Hostage Rescue Team members, also known as HRT.

- We're gonna microwave, you know, the signal over to the schoolhouse so you could actually see it.

And it was all make-believe.

And when I was selling it to him, he's on the phone telling other people about this, and they're saying it doesn't exist.

And I was telling him, "Leroy, this is cutting-edge technology.

And he's telling other bad guys, when they're saying, "No, this guy's scamming you," and he goes, "No it's not, it's cutting-edge technology."

So he really bought into it.

- [Narrator] Healy had already managed to plant listening devices all over Justus township.

So once Schweitzer agreed to the fake surveillance system, the FBI was ready to cast its net.

The targets were Freemen leaders Leroy Schweitzer and Daniel Peterson.

The arrest plan became known as Hill 32.

(ominous ambient music) - I called it Hill 32 because it was 3,200 feet, and it was a prominent terrain feature in the Freeman compound.

You could stand on Hill 32 and look north and you could see all the buildings with the exception of one.

You could go south of Hill 32 and come off the hill and take like 15 steps off the hill, and now you're invisible.

So Hill 32 was perfect from that standpoint.

And then, literally, it's like a mile, and then you're on your way out.

- [Narrator] Healy convinced Schweitzer that Hill 32 was the perfect place to install the fake video surveillance system.

The plan was this: Get Leroy Schweitzer and Daniel Peterson to Hill 32, ostensibly to supervise the installation of the system.

Then, the Hostage Rescue Team, HRT, could make a surprise arrest while the remaining Freemen couldn't see what was going on.

- All of the operations that we had conceived of, they all had the good and the bad.

So much could go wrong.

- There was tons of no-gos and gos, right?

If Jacobi showed up, no go.

If more than Leroy and Peterson showed up, no go.

- [Narrator] There were two major drawbacks to the plan.

Canady and Healy knew the arrest of Schweitzer and Peterson would lead to a lengthy standoff with the remaining Freemen.

The other drawback was more operational.

Hill 32 would hide Schweitzer and Peterson from the Freemen, but it also would prevent the command center from listening to or communicating with Healy and the Hostage Rescue Team during the dangerous arrest.

Canady and the other FBI leaders would be in the dark.

There was no room for error, and every detail had to be planned and executed perfectly.

- Long rehearsals, long hours with HRT.

You know, let's assume we have these two people, and you gotta get them here, and here, here, in order to do this effectively without anybody getting hurt.

- [Narrator] As Healy and the HRT agents prepared and practiced every last detail, Canady started putting the final pieces in place for the standoff they knew was coming after the arrest.

He methodically brought in hundreds of agents, and transformed the fairgrounds into a secret command center.

- They were coming in from all the field offices, see, and we would tell them, "Rent a four-wheel drive and come on up."

And it was surreptitiously bringing these agents in until we got enough there.

- We moved 200 FBI agents into Garfield County overnight without people knowing it.

- When I went by the fairgrounds that night, there was no indication that anything was going on in the fairgrounds, because they got these buildings, everything was shut.

- [Narrator] It was the last time Healy would ever go to Justus township.

(brooding music) - That last time going into the compound was the only time in my life that I can clearly say I wasn't sure if I was gonna be out.

I thought maybe 65, 70% chance that we're gonna be okay.

So there was probably a 30% chance that I was not gonna make it out.

'Cause there was so many things that coulda gone wrong.

- There's 100 things that coulda gone wrong.

- And, you know, everything had to go right, you know, with all of it.

- That speaks for itself on the danger that he was facing.

- When I drove the last time, a couple miles out, I got out, I pulled the car over, and it was dark and it was beautiful.

And left the engine run, it was cold as hell.

And I hopped up on the hood, you know, waited for it to get warm, 'cause it wasn't movin'.

And I just looked at the stars and I thought, "This is beautiful.

God, this is a beautiful day.

This is a beautiful night.

This is a great life."

And I thought, you know, "This has been fun, this is great."

And I just really sat back and enjoyed it and thought, "Okay, now, 24 hours from now, I could be home.

Let's focus on that.

Let's be home."

(brooding music) I wanted to go in there later than I normally did and keep them all up, keep them all up so they're tired.

- [Narrator] Agent Healy didn't sleep at all that night.

He knew many lives were at stake, including his own.

- The talk, the rhetoric, the discussions, the violence, it was really kind of cranking up, and I was relieved that it's gonna be over with.

One way or another, it's gonna be over with.

Either Dan and Leroy are gonna be out or there's gonna be a standoff, and I may or may not be alive, but, you know, we're doing this to make the best decisions to try to get everybody out safe, to include the bad guys.

(brooding music) - [Narrator] The next morning, everything was in place for the arrest attempt.

The Hostage Rescue Team, posing as the installation crew, arrived early and went straight to Hill 32.

- The FBI HRT is as good as it gets.

It does not get any better.

These guys are, you know, like Captain America times 10.

I mean, they're amazing.

We had rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed days before, and I mean, we felt like a pretty good team.

- [Narrator] The head of the Hostage Rescue Team, Chuck, had a quick meeting with Healy to confirm they were still a go.

- Chuck shows up and, you know, we give kinda the high sign and we said, "Okay, I'll be there in a couple minutes.

Let's go."

- [Narrator] Leroy Schweitzer was the only one planning to drive to Hill 32 with Healy, so Healy had to somehow convince Daniel Peterson to come along too.

- "Dan, I need you to come with me, okay?

So it's just gonna be you and Leroy and me, all right?

I'm gonna call Leroy, you know, Justice Schweitzer.

That's all I'm gonna call him.

And I'm gonna expect, you know, Chuck's team to address him as Supreme Court Justice Schweitzer.

And you I'm gonna call Treasurer, you know, Treasurer Peterson, because we have an opportunity because they're gonna put this thing in here, this device that's gonna give us security, but it's also gonna be good for them because they're gonna test vet it.

And so let's charge them for the property that it's taking up."

And he's like, "You can do that?"

I said, "Heck, we're gonna ask, we'll push it."

He's like, "Okay."

"So let's charge the 3000 a month, you know, to do this.

So you need to come with me," and he goes, "Okay."

So those were the only two that were gonna go, and they didn't want anybody else to go.

So Jacobi's there kinda hanging around, and so I'm coming up with this.

I say, "Okay Dale, I need you to be at this mic, because I need to talk."

And he's, "Okay, okay."

"So you stay there, right?"

So anybody that's coming in, I'm giving them assignments to stay at the schoolhouse, and so it's a challenge, right?

- [Narrator] While Healy is coming up with ideas to keep the other Freemen busy, Peterson heads inside to grab warm clothes so he can accompany Healy and Schweitzer.

That's when the plan nearly goes off the rails.

- What I don't know, I find out later.

And what I find out is Dan is getting dressed, and literally Cheryl is standing by the mic and his wife is saying to him, "Don't go alone, bring more people."

That would've been an automatic no go, right?

Anybody else goes, it's a no go.

- You can imagine what could've gone wrong there.

My God, if anyone knew who Tim was, it was Cheryl Peterson.

- Well, she obviously, there's something about me that she just doesn't, she's not buying my vibe, right?

(chuckling) She's not buying it.

And he's going, "Ah, let it go, let it go."

And she's going, "No no, don't, Dan, Dan."

And he finally just says, he talks very disparaging towards her and just tells her to shut up.

So his wife gives him great advice and he doesn't follow it, and he tells her to shut up.

- She's the only one that got a bad vibe from him, and she tried to tell her husband and he wouldn't listen.

- So he comes out, and we start walking up to the car, and we get in the car, and Leroy is in the passenger seat, I'm drivin', and Dan's in the back.

- [Narrator] Healy knew Schweitzer and Peterson were going to be uneasy when they approached Hill 32 and saw so many people there, but Healy had a plan to butter them up and fast-talk his way through it.

- So we make the turn, and sure as I knew what's gonna happen, Dan starts going, "Oh, how many people?"

I go, "Okay, Treasurer Peterson, I'm gonna call you Treasurer Peterson from now on.

Justice Schweitzer, let's go over the plan.

Justice Schweitzer, could you look at me please?"

So we're driving and I'm just thinking to myself, "Just shut up.

Just buy this stuff and just keep going."

- What was going through your mind, especially as it concerns Tim?

- Well, I was just scared to death.

You know, it can turn anytime.

- I'm just trying to get them there as quick as I can, but not go crazy.

So we go through the whole thing.

We pull up to the top of the hill.

We pull down, I park it, I'm in great shape, we're in the perfect position for the takedown.

- [Narrator] As expected, Hill 32 is effectively hiding the group from view of the other Freemen, but communications with FBI leaders at the fairgrounds have also gone dark as the arrest attempt progresses.

- I'm looking at Leroy, and I said, "You know, Leroy, you got a gun.

Dan's got a gun.

I don't have a gun.

Why don't I have a gun?"

And he goes, "Take mine."

So he gives me the AR-15.

So take the AR-15 and I'm going, "Good."

And the plan is Chuck is gonna get Leroy, and they're gonna take him over to the back of the pickup truck.

And ideally he'd love his hands down, and he's gonna explain the plan with Leroy.

I'm gonna introduce Dan to Mike, and he's gonna come up and, you know, Leroy's gonna be in place.

And then after Leroy's in place, I'm gonna do the introductions.

And then the go no go is gonna be, when the guy takes off his glove, it's gonna be a go.

- The best plans carried out by the best undercover agents can go wrong.

(tense music) - Leroy gets out, and I'm focused on Leroy.

So I go around to him and I start whispering to him.

"Well, here's what we're gonna do Leroy.

Justice Schweitzer, here's what we're gonna do."

We start walking down the hill, right?

And Dan is just outta my vision.

So we're walking down the hill, walking down the hill.

"Chuck, Supreme Court Justice Schweitzer."

He snaps to attention, "Justice Schweitzer, pleasure to see you again, sir."

And he's all impressed, and he takes him over there and I'm watching it go down, and it's beautiful, and Leroy literally puts his hands down on the tailgate and I'm thinking to myself, "It couldn't be better than that, it's perfect."

And I'm thinking, "This is great, perfect."

And then I look and I see my other two partners, and we've been doing this for a long time, and they're walking funny.

And I'm thinking to myself, "Why are you guys walking so funny?"

It's just weird, right?

And it's not like a normal gait.

And I'm thinking, "Something is wrong, something is really seriously wrong."

And, you know, I'm looking at their gait and he's in place and I'm expecting to turn my head and see Dan right here, a foot away from me.

And when I turn my head, I realize exactly what's going on.

I turn and I don't see Dan, and I turn again, I don't see Dan, and I turn all the way up to the car, like, literally 10 yards away, and Dan Peterson is sitting there.

And I'll never forget it.

He's looking.

And now that I realize that what his wife had warned him about, his right hand is on his gun and he's got this look.

And now I know exactly what he was thinking.

He's thinking, "Why in the hell didn't I listen to my wife and brought a whole bunch more people?"

And he is looking around and he has got this look on his face like this is really, really bad.

And I'm thinking to myself, "This is really, really bad."

And, you know, that son of a bitch is gonna screw this whole thing up.

- [Narrator] By this point, it had been 10 minutes since the FBI had heard anything from Healy and the Hostage Rescue Team.

- They're up on Hill 32, we're in the command post just sweating in the middle of winter.

And we had no idea how it's going.

- And all of a sudden, it hit me.

And I hit my hand on my head and I go, "My gun."

And he is down, you know, beyond the gun.

And so I jog back up to the car and I grab the AR-15.

So I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna push you.

If you need to be pushed, I'm gonna push you."

And I literally, you know, start pushing him and I'm whispering to him, "Treasurer Peterson, let's go.

Dan, we gotta get the money, we gotta do this.

Come on, Dan, we gotta do this," and just coaxing 'em down.

And then as we're starting to head down, their gait is starting to get normal, right?

And they're kinda getting themself in position, so I'm thinkin', "Okay, this thing could actually possibly happen."

"Mike, I'd like to introduce you to Treasurer Peterson."

And Dan starts, you know, putting out his hand, I'm watching Mike, and the glove starts coming off, and I'm thinking, "Okay, this is actually going to occur."

And I'd been in a number of arrests, but I swear, those guys, those HRT guys, the FBI HRT are so good.

I describe it that like when they touched his hand, it was as if all his bones dissolved.

I never saw a guy go so fast to the ground.

But it wasn't a hard landing, it was fast, and both of them were down, both of them were cuffed.

And as I was turning, Leroy looks at me.

The last thing he said to me was, "You son of a bitch."

(gentle pensive music) - Jim Claver bounced out of the command post and he said, "They got 'em."

Tim got them, by golly.

- As we're driving out, you know, when I got past that point of okay, I can't get shot, I was like dancing, "Okay, we got him, okay, he's done, and he didn't get killed, I didn't get killed.

I'm gonna go home.

It's gonna be good.

Life is gonna be good, it's gonna be great.

And everything's gonna be fine.

And they're gonna shut this down and, you know, it's gonna be good."

I was in heaven.

It was the greatest day we ever had.

It was a win-win.

It was a great case.

It had been done extremely well.

The two main guys that were gonna cause the biggest problem, the two main guys that were the leaders, the two main guys that were gonna make sure, you know, it turned into a Waco are now out of the compound.

(gentle pensive music) - [Anna] What did you say to him when he came back?

- Oh, I know exactly.

I hugged him and I said, "I love you, Bubba."

What else do you say?

- I said, "I love you too, bro.

Now I wanna get the hell home."

(laughing) - "Yeah, you're finished, get outta here.

I don't need you anymore."

Oh wow, that was one of those things that you work in the bureau your whole career for, to see a combination of undercover operation go that good.

I mean, it was like a TV show or a movie.

Tim carried it out just like it was written.

(gentle pensive music) - [Narrator] While the FBI celebrated, Schweitzer and Peterson sat in icy silence together.

- I saw a picture after we arrested them, and you have Leroy and Dan Peterson in the car, and their faces are straight.

And there's a whole bunch of activity around, and they're not looking because they can't submit to authority.

- They were pale, they were looking straight ahead.

I think they were in shock.

They could not believe that Manson could do this to them, after he had given them all that damn money, brought them all those supplies, introduced other people in.

He couldn't do that.

And I think they were in shock.

They'd been had.

- Good evening, in the Big Sky country of Montana, federal agents today arrested the leaders of an armed group that denies the legitimacy of the US government.

- [Reporter] Leroy Schweitzer, who has told followers they don't have to pay their mortgages or taxes because American currency is worthless, was captured without incident.

The arrest took place outside Jordan, Montana, near a farm Schweitzer and his followers had declared a separate government.

- [Reporter] Many say the FBI's move against the Freeman is long overdue.

- I just said, "All right, let's get 'em all."

- I can't tell you how many people had smiles on their face.

It was like being liberated.

- Sheriff and Tom Canady came in to tell me that they had arrested Leroy Schweitzer and Dan Peterson.

And my immediate reaction was great, that's good, that's great.

What about the rest?

What are your plans?

- I went around to every hotel in town and said, "I want every room you got and every room you're gonna have until I tell you different."

There's an old saying, "We want this to end as soon as possible, no matter how long that might take."

- [Narrator] It took nearly three months, hundreds of FBI agents, and endless hours of hard work by FBI negotiators.

- [Reporter] FBI agents met with the anti-government Freemen while sitting around a card table set up on a muddy farm road.

(soft pensive music) - [Narrator] On day 81, the Freemen finally walked out of the compound and peacefully surrendered to the FBI.

- [Tom] They would come out one at a time, turn themselves over to an agent, be cuffed and led off, then another went to come out and, you know, just right on through.

- I am pleased to announce to you that while we were here at dinner, the long standoff with the Freemen in Montana ended peacefully tonight.

(audience applauding) - Very happy, June 13th, '96, as I recall, yes.

Yeah, it kinda ended with a whimper in way.

- How did you feel when they walked out that day?

(gentle pensive music) - Deflated.

We'd been going so hard, so fast for so long, it was almost anti-climatic.

- The long siege may be over, the story is merely entering a new phase.

If the self-named Freemen of Montana are allowed to write the script, and if past experience is any guide, some agent is probably even now trying to negotiate the rights for a feature-length movie, they will emerge as modern versions of Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

Law enforcement officials will be lucky if they are portrayed as even slightly more sympathetic than the Sheriff of Nottingham.

We seem determined in this country to turn everyone from Billy the Kid to Randy Weaver and David Koresh into heroic freedom fighters.

They were not, neither are the Freemen of Montana.

- [Narrator] Prosecutors charged the Freemen with bank fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy.

Schweitzer was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison and died behind bars in 2011.

Peterson had served 16 years when he was released in 2015.

He declined to interview, but did say he still holds the same beliefs, despite his time in jail.

The remaining Freemen received prison sentences ranging from time served to 15 years.

All told, the Freemen wrote more than 3000 bad checks, totaling over $15 billion.

(wind gusting) More than 25 years later, much of the community seems frozen in time.

(slow-paced pensive music) None of the Freemen or family members Montana PBS reached out to wanted to participate in this documentary.

None of them talk about it.

They want to forget it ever happened.

Because for many here, it was a modern-day tragedy, where neighbors, friends, and loved ones were swallowed by desperation, mistrust, and hatred.

- When I took the class, I talked to farmers that had nothing left, they had other choice, and they were just normal people.

And they were looking for a solution to I don't lose my farm.

- They're down, there's nowhere else to go but put your clothes in your baggy and go, get off the farm.

There's nothing for them, so I empathize with that.

If you've lost everything you own and Schweitzer stands up there and tells you I'm gonna help you get it back, my God, of course you're gonna jump at it.

- I just think people need to be wary of scams.

And it was a big part of this was a scam.

And they took advantage of some people in my county that were good people.

- [Anna] Still are?

- Still are, yep.

- The people that were involved in that compound, five years before would've been described as salt of the earth.

And what made them vulnerable to this, I don't know.

- I hesitate to call them crazy, because when you've got 18 individuals that are being charged with this crime, how can all 18 be crazy?

Leroy Schweitzer, I do think he was crazy.

How he got all those people to buy into his plan, it's beyond comprehension at times, but he did.

And the thing is, is that there are so many more Leroy Schweitzers out there that we don't even know about.

And, you know, in today's government unrest that we have today, you just wonder.

(slow-paced pensive music) (gentle pensive music) (gentle pensive music continues) - [Announcer] Funding for "Rise of the Freemen" is made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and by the Friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(accomplished music) (bright music)