“Eventually, we’ll have to putan end to this, one way or another.”
SheriffKelly Janke of North Dakota’s Nelson County utteredthat ominous sentence in mid-September, during what the local media giddilydescribed as a stand-off with local farmer Rodney Brossart and his family. Bythat time, Sheriff Janke, with the help of the Department of Homeland Securityand the U.S. Air Force, had already run the table where “non-lethal”means of compelling the family to surrender were concerned. This included everything from the Taser used duringBrossart’s June 23 arrest to the precedent-setting use of a Predator-B droneto conduct surveillance of the home several days later to facilitate the arrestof the farmer’s three sons.
The most recent conflict betweenJanke’s department and Brossart began when a half-dozen stray cattle wanderedonto the family’s farm, which is located near the tiny village of Lakota(roughly 100 miles northwest of Fargo). Brossart, who reportedly believed thatthe cattle were unclaimed and thus belonged to him under a disputed interpretationof open-range law, refused to turn them over to the Sheriff.
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| Sheriff Janke. |
A team of deputies tasered the55-year-old farmer and took him into custody. His daughter Abby, frantic forthe safety of her father, tried to intervene; for “striking” the sanctifiedpersonage of a deputy, she was arrested and charged with assault. When Brossart’swife Susan refused to help the deputies locate what they described as “illegal”firearms, she, too, was arrested and charged with lying to law enforcementofficers (whoare trained to lie and cando so without legal consequence).
When deputies returned thefollowing day, they were reportedly confronted by Brossart’s three sons –Jacob, Alex, and Thomas -- who were allegedly carrying the rifles the policehad tried to confiscate the previous day.
This led Sheriff Janke to escalatethe confrontation to a full-spectrum military response – including, in the wordsof the Los Angeles Times, elements “from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWATteam, a bomb squad, ambulances, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. Healso called in a Predator B drone.” That unmanned aerial vehicle, identical tothose used in CIA-directed missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, was suppliedby the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP), an affiliate ofthe Department of Homeland Security.
“As the unmanned aircraftcircled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nosehelped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed,” continued theTimes. “Police rushed inand made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator,the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
That was the “one way” Janke hadalready tried. What, pray tell, would have been the “other” – short ofequipping the drone with Hellfire missiles and using it to annihilate theBrossart family as suspected terrorists?
If this had happened, theBrossarts would not be the first Americans to be killed by way of a drone-firedmissile. That unwanted distinction is owned by Anwar al-Awlaki and his son,Adbulrahman, who were killed inseparate drone strikes in Yemen about three weeks apart. Abdulrahman, a16-year-old boy who was born in Denver, wasmurdered while eating dinner with his 17-year-old cousin, who was alsokilled in the missile strike.
The originalstory was that Abdulrahman was a “suspected militant,” and thus a “legitimate”target. He was actually a teenage boy frantically trying to find his father,whose name was on a roster of terrorist suspects who had been sentenced to summaryexecution by a secretive executive branch committee that answers to nobody.
As a result of a dispute involving a half-dozen cows, the Brossart family found itself treatedas if they were terrorists. The CBP’s drone fleet is described by the agency as acounter-terrorism asset. For the act “brandishing” legally owned rifles in thepresence of armed sheriff’s deputies, the three Brossart sons have been chargedwith “terrorizing” law enforcement personnel -- fragile, timid creatures that they are. Most significantly, however,the family had been enrolled on a roster of domestic terrorists – one compiled not bythe Obama administration, but rather by the quasi-private Stasi calling itselfthe SouthernPoverty Law Center (SPLC).
According to the SPLC,Brossart’s family received special attention because Sheriff Janke “knew theBrossarts were followers of another Lakota resident, Roger Elvick, one of theoriginal gurus of the bizarre but remarkably resilient sovereign citizensmovement.”
For the past several years, theSPLC has been indoctrinating local law enforcement agencies in the belief thatthe sovereign citizens movement – and, for that matter, the entire “radicalRight,” a label the SPLC applies to anyone more conservative than Hugo Chavez –is an undifferentiated mass of menace and a particular threat to lawenforcement. This campaign is perfectly calibrated to play on the fears ofpolice, for whom there is no higher priority than “officer safety.”
Little of consequence wouldresult if the SPLC were simply a private pressure group. However, theorganization seamlessly interfaces with a number of government agencies,including the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training(SLATT) program, which is funded through the Justice Department’s Bureau ofJustice Assistance. National and regional law enforcement seminars havebeen used to cultivate alarm among police officers regarding the supposedlyall-encompassing terrorist threat posed by domestic “extremists.”
During the June confrontation, SheriffJanke actually took time to respond to an interview request from the SPLC’s Intelligence Report.
“We’re trying to reach out tothe family to get them to surrender,” Janke told the publication. “It’s notcommon for people to brandish weapons against law enforcement, and to have themall be family members is unique. [It tells me] they’re up to something, they’replanning something, they have some different beliefs…. We’re meeting with ateam of experts to find out the best possible way to resolve this.”
Janke’sbelief that the Brossarts were “planning” something sinister proved to be entirelyunfounded. In November, months after the family had refused to attend an August26 preliminary hearing, RodneyBrossart and his son Jacob – both of whom were unarmed – were arrested while finishingthe fall harvest. Alex and Thomas, along with their sister Abby, were arrested“without incident” at the family’s home.
During what the local media –which dutifully regurgitated a porridge of alarmist sound-bites it had been fedby the SPLC – called the “stand-off,” Brossart gave one brief interview inwhich he insisted that his family were not “violent people.” Janke, on theother hand, did his best to depict the family as a menace to the public.
“We have been able to associatethem with an individual that has served time in the State Pen that is givingthem advice,” the Sheriffclaimed in a September 13 interview, referring to Elvick. By that time, Elvick– who had briefly lived in an apartment in Lakota – had apparentlydeparted for California. But his geographic proximity to the Brossarts wasapparently enough for the latter to be “associated” with the ex-convict, andthus tainted as potential domestic terrorists.
This concept of being “associated”with a suspected terrorist is impressively elastic and immensely dangerous.Section 1031 of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act (NADA), whichprovides for indefinite military detention of suspectedterrorists, permits the military to target anyone the Federal governmentdecides is “associated” with an identified terrorist threat.
“Is a terrorist under this lawnecessarily a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban?” asksthe estimable Matt Taibbi of RollingStone in his analysis of the NADA. “Or is it merely someone who is `engagedin hostilities against the United States’? Here’s where I think we’re in verydangerous territory. We have two very different but similarly large protestmovements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What ifone of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes off in a police stationin Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those actsto Occupy or the Tea Party?”
Where Sheriff Janke wasconcerned, a potential terrorist was anyone he could “associate” with anex-convict described by the SPLC as a guru of the “sovereign citizens”movement. He also alluded to the “history we’ve had with the family over time” asa cause for concern.
In 1996, Rodney Brossart was chargedwith violating a state land use ordinance by plowing and seeding a section lineon his own property. Although he was found guilty on that charge, the verdict wasoverturned by the state Supreme Court. This episode was one of severalinstances in which the Brossarts have come into conflict with the CountySheriff’s Office.
Five years ago, Brossart wascharged with disorderly conduct and “Preventing Arrest” after shouting atsheriff’s deputies and “tensing his arm” when one of them laid hands on him totake him into custody. He was acquitted on the first charge, and found guiltyof the second. That case was likewise appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Citing facts that were uncontested at trial, a brief filed onBrossart’s behalf notes that he “did not at any time threaten the officers,or become physically aggressive toward them. At worst, he simply did not complywith their unlawful orders when they attempted to arrest him.”
“Brossart did not take anyaggressive stance, did not swing, or attempt to strike the officers in any way,”continues the brief. “He was simply verbally combative, and uncooperative.” Thedeputies, on the other hand, employed what can reasonably be described as excessiveforce by throwing him to the ground and employing “the mandibular anglepressure point technique upon him” – a pain compliance technique in which the thumb is placed at thehinge of the jaw below the right ear.
North Dakota law (Section12.1-05-07 of the Century Code) recognizes the right of an individual to resistunlawful arrest and excessive force, observes the brief:
“When faced with a man who wasnot physically aggressive, and was simply verbally loud and angry, anduncooperative, it was unnecessary for both officers to slam him to into theground, and use the mandibular angle pressure point upon him to effectuate anillegal arrest. Brossart was then within his rights to resist the unlawful andexcessive force used in the arrest by the officers.”
Thus the troubled “history” towhich Janke refers is one in which a family living on a small farm in ruralNorth Dakota has been repeatedly abused under color of official “authority,”and have chosen to pursue their grievances through the courts, rather thanthrough armed violence. They have endured years of what they regard asharassment and surveillance by law enforcement personnel: During the “standoff”this fall, one Lakota resident told a local television station that “when RodneyBrossart used to attend school board meetings there was always a police officerpresent.” As a result, the family decided to home-school the younger children.
The Brossarts may well beeccentric or even misguided. They might be regarded by some as poor neighbors. Butonly those with a unique gift for dishonesty – and a large measure of cravenness– could depict them as a Predator-worthy menace. The SPLC is amply endowed withthe former, and Sheriff Janke’s department apparently boasts a large measure ofthe latter.
As a result, we’ve seen thefirst test run of the vertically integrated Homeland Security State, in which yourfriendly local sheriff or police chief, using hit lists compiled by the SPLC,can call in the drones to help round up anybody he considers to be potentiallytroublesome.
Thank you so much!
I am deeply grateful to everyone who has responded so generously to the appeal at the end of my last installment. Over the next few days I will extend personal thanks to each of you. This means more to me and my family than I can adequately express. God bless you.
Be sure to check out Republic magazine
Dum spiro, pugno!
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