ALSO SEE: Cliven Bundy
Arrested by FBI After Flying Into PDX

ALSO SEE: Michele Fiore, the Gun-Toting, Calendar-Posing
Politician Who Negotiated the Oregon Occupiers' Surrender

Final Oregon Occupier Surrenders to Authorities, Ending the Refuge Siege

By Carissa Wolf, Sarah Kaplan and Mark Berman, The Washington Post

11 February 16

 

he armed occupation of a rural Oregon wildlife refuge ended peacefully here Thursday after 41 days as the last four anti-government activists surrendered to FBI agents, following an dramatic and emotional hour-long negotiation with the final holdout broadcast live on YouTube.

After repeatedly threatening to shoot himself, complaining that he couldn’t get marijuana, and ranting about UFOs, drone strikes in Pakistan, leaking nuclear plants and the government “chemically mutating people,” the last occupier, David Fry, 27, lit a cigarette, shouted “Hallelujah” and walked out of his barricaded encampment into FBI custody.

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

The FBI said they arrested David Fry at about 11 a.m. without incident. Before he was taken into custody, agents arrested Sandy Anderson, 48, of Idaho; her husband, Sean Anderson, 47; and Jeff Banta, 46, of Elko, Nev. They were taken to Portland to face federal charges.

Fry’s surrender, which had an audience of more than 30,000 people listening live, capped an extraordinary 18 hours in which America’s growing and extreme anti-government movement morphed into something that move closely resembled a strange and nerve-wracking reality TV show.

And it brought an end to a bitter, five-week stand-off at the snowy Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, in the remote high desert of eastern Oregon, that drew international attention to the nation’s growing anti-government extremist movement and long-simmering anger over federal land-management policies in the American West.

That movement, which believes the federal government operates largely outside the powers granted it in the Constitution, was energized by the sight of a handful of “patriots” and “Constitutionalists” holding out against federal and state authorities in a drama that was fanned like a brushfire across life-minded social media accounts and YouTube.

Fry and the three others were all that remained of the siege since shortly after the Jan. 26 arrests of most of the occupation’s top leaders. For most of that time, they had stayed in communication with the outside world via videos and phone calls in which they likened themselves to the revolutionaries who founded the nation.

The final four spent about five hours Wednesday evening on a phone call, also carried live on YouTube to more than 60,000 listeners, and engaged in emotional and sometimes hysterical negotiations involving evangelist Franklin Graham and Michelle Fiore, a fiery Nevada state legislator with a history of controversial statements.

During the phone call, the four alternatively expressed their willingness to die for their cause and their openness to surrender. They likened themselves to Mel Gibson’s character in the movie “Braveheart.” The occupiers had asked for Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, to negotiate on their behalf.

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

Fiore, an early and vocal supporter of the occupation, spoke for hours with the occupiers trying to keep them calm and urging them to turn themselves in.

“If we go to jail, that’s admitting that we did not follow the Constitution. And we did follow the Constitution,” Sandy Anderson told Fiore on the phone call. “…That’s why we’re here. We were standing up for the Constitution. Expressing our our First Amendment right to peacefully assemble. And they are crucifying us for that.”

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

Another person apparently hoping to head to the refuge was stopped before he could make it very far. Federal agents on Wednesday night arrested Cliven Bundy, father of the group’s leader and himself a veteran of armed standoffs with federal agents, as he arrived in Portland.

These phone calls and Bundy’s arrest marked the latest strange twists in a saga that began Jan. 2 when a small group seized the refuge in what they said was a show of support for two local ranchers convicted of arson and sentenced to prison.

That group, led by Ammon Bundy, Cliven’s son, adopted the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom and said they were protesting the federal government’s involvement in land ownership in the area.

The occupation stretched on without much incident until Jan. 26, when Bundy, his brother and other members of the group were arrested while traveling outside the refuge.

During this stop, the Oregon State Police fatally shot LaVoy Finicum, one of the occupiers, after he tried to flee. The FBI released video showing that he appeared to be reaching toward a loaded gun he was carrying, but Finicum’s death prompted new protests and anger among anti-government protesters.

Fiore told the Las Vegas Sun that the FBI footage “looks like an ambush of tactical guys,” adding: “It looks like it might have been hired out. We have questions.”

After Ammon Bundy was arrested and Finicum killed, federal agents quickly blockaded the refuge and, as other occupiers fled or were arrested, the group dwindled to the four who were arrested Thursday.

So relieved this ordeal is over. Many thanks to law enforcement who brought the Harney County occupation to a close. 1/2

— Kate Brown (@OregonGovBrown) February 11, 2016

Billy J. Williams, the U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, praised the end of “a long and traumatic episode.”

“It is a time for healing, reconciliation amongst neighbors and friends, and allowing for life to get back to normal,” Williams said in a statement.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement that “there is still much that needs to be done so that the community and the larger public can be welcomed back to their refuge.”

No one was injured, and no shots were fired. Today marks day 41 of the occupation of the refuge. #OregonStandoff

— FBI Portland (@FBIPortland) February 11, 2016

These final four occupiers were among the 16 people indicted by a federal grand jury over the Oregon standoff. The group “prevented federal officials from performing their official duties by force, threats and intimidation,” according to the indictment.

Law enforcement officials also said that additional charges were possible against people who were involved in the 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in 2014.

The complaint against Cliven Bundy, filed Thursday, states that officers responding to his ranch faced a threat from armed people on bridges who “took sniper positions behind concrete barriers, their assault rifles aimed directly at the officers below.”

Bundy was charged Thursday with assaulting a federal officer, using or carrying a firearm during a crime of violence, interfering with commerce by extortion and obstructing the administration of justice.

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

Experts had said the outcome of this standoff “invigorated” anti-government groups.

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

This is what I'm seeing at the roadblock outside the refuge #Oregonstandoff pic.twitter.com/9REqwBfN8N

— Conrad Wilson (@conradjwilson) February 11, 2016

Ammon Bundy, meanwhile, who had led the occupation charge, had initially released statements after his arrest asking those at the refuge to “stand down” and give up peacefully.

He changed his tone last week. In one statement, he made demands regarding how Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward should block off the refuge so the lands can be given “back to the people.” And in a recorded message after the indictment was unsealed, Bundy told the Oregon State Police and FBI to go home, leaving out any suggestion that the occupiers should leave.