Militia Leader Refuses Sheriff's Roadside Offer To End Standoff: "I Don't Need An Escort"
On Tuesday, Harney County Sheriff David Ward told reporters it was time for Ammon Bundy and the group of militiamen occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to “leave the community, go home, and end this peacefully.”
Bundy, we noted, had no such plans.
The handful of armed men holed up in a remote bird sanctuary say they are standing up for state’s rights in a kind of ad hoc, haphazard rekindling of the Sagebrush Rebellion.
The proximate cause for the occupation was the (re)sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, who a judge ruled should be sent back to jail in connection with fires the two lit in 2001 and 2006. Although the Hammonds aren’t protesting their sentence, Bundy wants to see them go free before the militiamen give Linda Beck (the biologist at whose desk Bundy now sits at Malheur) her office back.
(from left to right: Bundy, his bodyguard Wes, Dwight Hammond, and Linda Beck)
On Thursday, Sheriff Ward attempted to reason with the men.
In a scene right out of a (bad) movie, Bundy and his bodyguards drove to a “neutral location” that Reuters says was located “along a remote Oregon roadside,” for a meeting with the Sheriff.
In the meeting - which apparently lasted “about five minutes” - Ward offered the men safe passage out of the state if they agreed to cede control of the snowy federal outpost.
In short, Bundy said no.
As you can see from the video, the Sheriff seems to be at a loss when it comes to figuring out exactly what it is Bundy wants, but he is convinced that it's not safe to open local schools until the standoff is resolved. "We pose no threat whatsoever to the people," Bundy insists. "It only takes one unstable person and we know that," Ward counters.
“Ward told Bundy that he was seeking a peaceful resolution to the nearly week-long standoff and offered to escort the occupiers out of Oregon,” Reuters writes. “But Bundy, saying that the sheriff had not addressed the occupiers' grievances, declined.” "We're being ignored sir," he can be heard saying.
Bundy also seems to have been offended by the notion that he needed a police escort to leave Oregon. "I'm not afraid to go out of state. I don't need an escort,” he later told reporters. Here's a bit more from the Oregonian:
The parley between Bundy and the sheriff lasted between five and 10 minutes and took place in the open, at the intersection of a state highway and the back route to the refuge. It was another in a series of twists and turns the past week that have drawn national and international attention to this sparsely populated high desert country.
Ward was accompanied to the remote location by Sheriffs Brian Wolfe of Malheur County and Andy Long of Tillamook County as well three rigs carrying heavily armed law enforcement officers.
Ward met Bundy on the side of Lava Bed Road, a handful of media surrounding the men. Bundy was accompanied by Ryan Payne, a self-styled militiaman from Montana.
Ward explained he was there to resolve the standoff. He said he didn't want anyone to get hurt.
"We need to find a peaceful resolution and get you guys out of here," he said.
Bundy, wearing his trademark cowboy hat, told Ward, "We mean no harm to anybody."
Bundy went into his oft-repeated comments about why the militants had arrived to take over the refuge.
"We're here for the people of Harney County," he said. "We're here because people were being ignored." He said citizens have complained over and over about federal land-use issues.
"Yet, sheriff, you would not address those concerns," Bundy said. "We're getting ignored again."
Ward replied, "I didn't come here to argue."
The men shook hands, Bundy and Payne returning to the small convoy that brought them to the scene on a gravel road roughly 20 miles east of the refuge. It was apparent Bundy brought a security detail with him.
Ward climbed into a sheriff's rig and headed off over back roads to a town hall meeting in the small community of Diamond. He met about 50 citizens there to talk about the refuge occupation and hear their concerns.
And so, there was no common ground to be found on Lava Bed Road near Highway 78. Only a cold (both figuratively and literally) handshake.
The Sheriff would later say that he believes Bundy doesn't feel like the standoff is being taken seriously. "I don't feel like they think they're getting enough attention yet," he remarked.
But while Bundy says he "doesn't need an escort" out of the state, he may get one anyway because as Ward cautiously warned the group on Thursday, "at some point, this is all going to have to be resolved."
(7 votes)
»
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Bundy does not seem to have gotten his key point past the msm. The issue of the sudden added on trumped up "terrorist" designation against the ranchers has not been emphasized to the public. If that is a key point Bundy actually wants made public.
All the photo's of them praying while holding guns is a curious choice. Makes them look like religious fanatics (radicals) as well.
And the offer to escort them to the state line safely. Why? So the feds can arrest them just across the state border? Bundy should agree if the feds sign an agreement that no charges will be brought. If the feds were to refuse to do so the sheriff should stand down and just document whatever the feds do.
But the feds (really TPTB using the feds) can keep them there and color the entire movement as dangerous radicals simular to ISIS that must be stamped out. And that availability of guns makes the "radicals" more likely to keep being a problem.
Was probably looking to get them for transporting firearms across state lines, maybe a convenient county along the way or something.
The liberty movement needs constant setbacks until the majority of them wise up on ecology and physics.
Denying climate change and peak oil proves their ignorance on both subjects.
Disagree. Bundy is already dead. He either dies in a firefight with the Feds or he dies in a federal prison having been convicted of terrorism. At this point, Bundy has nothing left to lose.
I don't trust any of this. I've become so cynical that I'm cynical of my cynicism.
I'm cynical of your cynical cynicism.
Can we package this as a derivative and sell to the sheep?
Collateralized Cynicism Obligation
Compounded, multiple-hypothecated cynicsim.
The greatest lesson of the 20th century was, if you want to have maximum impact on geopolitical events (and how they are resolved), control both sides. Finance both sides of a (world) war. Arm both sides. Share intelligence between both sides as needed. The war can then be steered to accomplish your goal, be it to break up the Ottoman + AustroHungarian Empires, establish a nation-state for Zionists, or divide the world in two, for a prolonged 'Cold War'.
The 2nd greatest lesson of the 20th century is that both the Bolsheviks and (billionaire) banksters were primarily of Jewish ethnic origin (their actual religious beliefs are not something I claim to know for certain).
Now if you know what a PINCER MOVEMENT is...
Cynical of cynics...
I know - right?
That's basically what I said back when the Boston Marathon bombing happened. They've got it so we have absolutely no idea what to believe, what the truth is, who we can trust anymore. This is exactly how they want it.
Yeah. It wasn't just the deluge of lies from the msm (& some posters) that made me question everything, even what I could see with my own eyes. It was also the behaviour of those fucking sheep who waved and cheered the very storm troopers who had locked them in their own homes hours before.
SO we do a trustless solution.
I don't need to trust anyone who is banging pots and pans at 9PM every night, setting of some firecrackers.
I don't need to coordinate with anyone to do that, and no one needs to guide or direct the folks who are willing to do a few risky things, like putting holes in airliners or other critical infrastructure.
We don't need to trust anyone to run an investigation if we on the net ask the questions and evaluate the answers and documents. This network is a tool to allow us to run things in the open. So all gov functions certainly should be out in the open on the internet.
This theater has drawn attention away from the fact that the Hammonds were prosecuted and re-sentenced under an unconscionable terrorism statute when they are anything but.
Which is why I think this is all a bunch of planned bullshit.
It seems to have been left out of the storyline...
Yeah, especially the part where the Hammonds tell Bundy and friends to butt out and go home.
The really sad thing is the Hammonds were planning an executive clemency play -- something that while remote, they might have had a chance to pull of if there was no attention -- and Asshole Bundy pretty much guaranteed that's no longer poltically possible. So he doomed the people he was allegedly trying to protect to another four years in prison.
No wonder they were telling him to FO.
The Hammonds were threatened by the Feds with cooperating with anybody. If the Hammonds had decided to stand up, the Feds told them, that they would've sent them to a far more undesirable prison, than the one they were going to.
Add the incentive to keep the ranch in the family, under threat of duress and what do you think a 73 year old man, facing five years in prison is going to say?
Especially after him and his family suffered a taxpayer supported, multi-year beat down by a tyranny that has nearly unlimited resources and aggressive assholes in every corner.
Easy to judge, but when you're a rancher, like Ammon, who's witnessed, nearly his whole life, what the Government can do to you, maybe one day, you just say 'fuck it'.
This theater has drawn attention away..
+100. I wouldn't have just "taken over" some ramshack in the middle of FED country, I would have burnt it down, along with a few dozen other FED structures until they got the point.
No, it has brought attention to the wrong doing towards the Hammonds by an out of control gov ? but it was a loser from the get go for many reasons. see my other links and comments on the other article yesterday.
The corporate MSM and its social network comments and commentary has made this into a story of scary white men with guns, not the rule of law, bureaucratic overreach nor the punitive sentencing.
Crybaby be crying.
At least they're alive.
Apparently Ryan Bundy (WTF is wrong with his face? Does anyone know?) talked with the Hammonds and this is what transpired: (From www.shtfplan.com)
"I had a direct conversation with Dwight Hammond just two days ago and I asked Dwight: is this really what you want? Do you really want to go to prison? Is that what you really feel you want to do?And well he got angry at me. He said, of course not, of course not. But he said they will put a bullet in my head. He goes they will kill me without hesitation. And he goes, and they will throw me in the back of the truck. And he goes, I will not be the only body there. […] They—meant anyone else supporting them."
If the Hammonds were threatened with murder by the Feds, then this is a heinous crime and should be aired. There's A LOT of dirt on the Bundy brothers and their supporters being dug up by the msm, mostly about past criminal convictions, government loans they received and even one member caught lying about his military service.
They all seem the exact type the public would hate - mormons, inarticulate, tatooed criminals with guns - designed to be reviled and then made an example of, to act out the final scene of "good guy Feds" -v- "bad guy white supremacists with assault rifles ranting about the constitution". That seems to be the angle of the narrative.
I don't think this is going to end well and there's bound to be a provocateur in the mix who kicked the whole thing off in the first place. It's a pity because this might kill off any reasonable discussions on dissent in America.
His head was run over by a car when he was a child. It cracked his skull, and a bone fragment severed a nerve responsible for motor control on that side of his face.
Shit, I feel so bad about cracking that joke about him getting kicked in the face by a 1400lb Hereford bull now. Going to hell for sure now.
Exactly
Everyone is ignoring the underlying issue here.
But I am surprise to see so many ZeroHedger who don't give a damn about it.
The sheriff should have cuffed him right there.
I'm down with the cause, but Bundy is making the cause look foolish
After there was a promise on both sides to just meet and talk? That would have been a huge mistake.
It's my understanding that negotiators had pizza and beer with Koresh and were discussing his surrender not long before they tore into the building and burned everybody alive with some type of incendiaries. There is no telling what these clowns will do.
Ms No, today is the friday (weekend) news cycle so IMHO nothing will happen until late Sunday night/ Monday when television viewership is up. Koresh was raided on a Monday.
Monday, April 19 1993.
Define: holocaust (small h)
a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar
"...Bundy is making the cause look foolish"
These attention whores have inserted themselves into a situation that isn't theirs and even the aggrieved whom they claim to be doing it for want them to leave. And, this is just ONE reason this whole militia malarkey will just end up looking foolish in the long run. These guys are outclassed at every level, believing solely in their guns, sticking out their chest and having a tantrum as the means of accomplishing their ends. Forget smarter tactics, communication, and a whole host of other skills that likely would work better. Nope it's all about playing the role of misunderstood, wanna-be saviors/martyrs like some bad Hollywood movie. Theirs is a typical hot-headed move: wrong fight, wrong place, wrong time. They don't get it, and neither do their small group of armchair supporters.
Sorry for all of you supporters here, but the most likely outcome of this standoff is some wanna-be heroes in jail and charged as felons. As such their likelihood of toting around guns to make their point in the future will approach zero.
Further, I'd place the likelihood of a massacre at very low too as the Feds know what they're dealing with and that scenario just plays into the hands of more hand-wringing wanna-be martyrs. Hell, they might just build a berm around them, and carry on with life while totally ignoring the protesters.
If I were placing a bet I'd double down on this whole fiasco ending with a whimper and nothing changing in favor of the demands of these dudes. You never know, I might be wrong and I am quite sure many of you will now tell me how far wrong and exactly why with much contempt. Enjoy.
I guess the idea is for the feds to get trigger happy and shoot these liberty movers. Then more liberty movers step up and back-and forth shooting begins. Pretty soon the U.S. is just like Libya.
Maybe it's just chaos planned from the top. A sort of false flag formula for chaos.
I don't expect the feds to go in guns blazing as, I'm sure many of you suspect as well, some of the "occupiers" are undercover agents or FBI assets.
Totally.
Yea,,, Same with Timmy McVeigh, the supposed Oklahoma City bomber, just about everyone around him was a Fed Informer. Probably half of this "militia" group are Fed,,, wouldn't doubt two thirds of the Oathkeepers and the other private militia's are likey Fed Informers.
"We don't need no Stinking escort."
~ Y'all Queaida
The only thing I give Bundy any creedit for is recognizing that (because of massive moral hazard by the federal government) they are now weak. China and Russia have noticed too.
Just like the Federal Reseve the department of "just-us" has no credibility whatsoever. Tried, convicted, sentenced, and did time (which crushed their income) and then the Hammonds can be re-sentenced for the same crime and sent back to prison? WTF? I hope they stay there until the Hammonds are released again.
Fuck Ward. He has simply made it clear that he stands firmly on the side of the status quo and FRAUD/TYRANNY.
Duely noted, now move on everyone.
All sheriffs have been federalized since they accepted 1031 weapons exchange with the pentagram.
They are the people supposedly elected to protect the people.
Instead, shit heads like this sheriff bend over for the feds with his commie deputies working as protection. He should have kicked that judge out of the state!
Fucking spineless.
All cops are fedcoats now.
I saw a fedcoat wannabe walking around with some huge deputized marshall badge the other day thinking he was some kind of fat, out of shape version of beuford t justice.
Fuck the fedcoats.
So the fedcoats are using their old corrupt budies with their public resource confiscation programs.
I am not far at all from your sentiment and analysis. But this was illconceived for many reasons. I wish it were as simple as you seem to think, It isn't ?
Wish I lived closer to them. Me thinks there will be a bunch of thse pockets around me soon :)
I'm waiting for Kelly Bundy to show up ;)
What they need is Al Bundy -- someone who can score 4 touchdowns in a single game.
Conservatives never stick up for our own. These guys are basically doing what occupy wallstreet did but in a more serious fashion. The left never demonized occupy wallstreet, as stupid, ignorant, and worthless as it was they still gave it a positive review, in their minds those were their people.
Spot on! I've seen unarmed Syrian Refugees with more balls than that. As have German, Finnish and Swedish beavers.
Unless and until I see them organize any of the LAWFUL things I've listed above, my regard for them will keep dropping. Gun range and weekend warriors. They should worry less about the 'bad image' that the Bundy give them, and more about the bad image their total inaction and impotence does.
Phoney is as phoney does.
It would be smart for them to do nothing but I wouldn't be surprised if they raid the place. We had a big drill in AZ not long ago where blacked out military helicopters buzzed everybodies houses and then repelled onto a federal building.
http://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/black-helicopters-spotted-around-downtown-phoenix-over-federal-building
If it has no federal regsitry with the faa, it is in violation of federal law.
So that makes it a terrorist organization and a threat to nation security.
Given drones now patrol, I wouldn't doubt if that is method chosen to vanquish this whole mess.
On a scale of fear like the 9/11 trauma.
Obedience follows.