Mountain Standoff Rallies Idaho Cradle of the Fringe : Holdout: In a rugged land that harbors religious zealots, racists and outlaws, Randy Weaver is a hero.

In the dark and brooding mountains covering the long panhandle of northern Idaho, Randy Weaver--survivalist, racist and fugitive from the law--chose his fortress well.

For decades, a variety of radicals, survivalists, criminals, white supremacists and religious zealots on the furthest fringe of society have sought refuge in the isolated cabins deep in the Douglas fir forests.

What they have found here is not just a well-protected sanctuary but also a community of kindred spirits bound together by a desire for privacy and an abhorrence of government interference.

To many of these people of the mountains, who rail against the degeneracy of mankind and the very thought of property tax, Randy Weaver is a hero.

“Randy would rather die than have them take him out of there,” said Brandon Wright, a 20-year-old logger who moved to the mountains with his white separatist family two years ago. “He’s a hero defending his family and property.”

For the past week, Weaver has held out against more than 200 armed federal agents surrounding his secluded log cabin in a strange standoff that has become a powerful rallying point for some of the most extreme political and religious movements in the country.

The standoff near the town of Naples began last Friday after a confrontation in the woods with U.S. marshals who were keeping the cabin under surveillance because of a federal weapons charge against Weaver.

For still hazy reasons, a shootout began that resulted in the death of Deputy U.S. Marshal William F. Degan and Weaver’s 13-year-old son, Samuel.

Since the shooting, Weaver has holed up in his home with his wife, Vicki, three young daughters and a family friend, 24-year-old Kevin Harris, who is alleged to have shot Degan.

At a roadblock several miles below Weaver’s cabin on Ruby Creek Road, up to 100 neo-Nazis, skinheads, survivalists, tax protesters, constitutionalists and followers of the Christian Identity movement have gathered each day.

“Baby killers!” the crowd shouts each time an FBI car drives through the barricaded road.

“Go home! Leave us alone!” they yell at military trucks on their way up the mountain.

In front of a barricade, a bank of signs proclaim: “FBI Burn in Hell,” “30.06 Go Thru Your Vest Easy Fed Dogs,” “Zionist Murder.”

On Tuesday, five skinheads from the Northwest, with a collection of weapons and ammunition, were arrested in an apparent attempt to reach Weaver via a back road.

“I’m ready to get my gun and my clips and take off my safety and pull my trigger with my finger,” said John Bangerter, a neo-Nazi skinhead from Las Vegas who journeyed to the barricade to show his support for Weaver. “I don’t care anymore. This is the beginning of a revolution, a war.”

By some accounts, Weaver, a 44-year-old Army veteran from Iowa, is an unlikely target for such intense controversy.

While open in his disdain for government intrusions and his strong belief in racial separation, he is not a follower of the aggressively violent doctrines held by some in the area, friends say. They insist that he is not a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi, as authorities have alleged.

More than anything, they say, he craves to be isolated to raise his family under the strict guidance of the Scriptures as he interprets them. He is vehement in his beliefs about the right to bear arms and deadly serious about protecting himself from the oppression of the “new world order,” the evolving state in which, he believes, the world will be ruled by one government with one state god.

“He just wanted to be left alone,” said Carolyn Trochmann, a mountain resident from Montana who helped deliver Weaver’s third daughter eight months ago. “He’s willing to die for that.”

Weaver’s troubles began three years ago when he was arrested for illegally selling two sawed-off, 12-gauge shotguns to a federal informant.

His arrest was part of an undercover investigation by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms into underground gun operations by white supremacists in northern Idaho. Weaver was indicted by a federal grand jury in December, 1990.

Instead of appearing in court, he fled to his cabin on Ruby Ridge and vowed to die rather than give up. He refused to surrender unless the government admitted that he was set up and apologized.

“All they have against us is government-paid informants who can get on the stand and say anything they want,” Weaver said to the Coeur d’Alene Press in an interview last May. “I feel I have no choice but to stay here if I want to keep my family together.”

During Weaver’s retreat, federal agents watched the cabin in the hope of eventually arresting him.

FBI legal counsel in Salt Lake City, Lee Rasmussen, would not disclose how last Friday’s confrontation occurred, except to say it was unplanned. Weaver has been charged with assault on a federal officer and attempted murder. His friend, Harris, is charged with first-degree murder.

Since the death of the marshal and Weaver’s son, federal authorities have tried to wait Weaver out. They consider his wife and children hostages, although friends say the family members are committed to dying together.

Gene Glenn, FBI special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City division, said the government is hoping for a resolution without further harm to anyone. On Wednesday, he announced that agents had gotten their first response from the Weaver cabin.

“I wouldn’t say it is a positive response, but it’s a response,” he said. “We’re optimistic . . . this might be the first step toward a dialogue.”

Weaver’s sister talked to him through a loudspeaker Thursday after Weaver asked for her, Glenn said.

Federal agents brought Marnis Joy of Jefferson, Iowa, close enough to the cabin to communicate through a bullhorn. Glenn said she talked about a variety of subjects, but he wouldn’t disclose details. He said Weaver shouted mostly one-word responses, such as “yes” or “no.”

Federal agents have been using loudspeakers to bombard his cabin with tape-recorded messages from friends and family urging him to end the standoff.

Radio personality Paul Harvey joined the chorus Thursday, issuing a plea during his daily broadcast from Chicago.

If a different group of people lived in these mountains, the standoff might have ended sooner or attracted less attention. But the government’s move into the area has forcibly reminded some why they fled to this frontier in the first place: to follow their own visions of life away from the corruption and interference of society.

“Most of us are willing to die to protect that,” Trochmann said.

Weaver’s cabin lies about five or six miles up a side road from the tiny town of Naples, itself just a blip in the woods 35 miles south of the Canadian border.

About 25 miles to the south of Naples is the placid resort town of Sandpoint, population 5,203. Ten miles to the north of Naples is Bonners Ferry, another resort town that could just as well be on a different planet as far as some mountain people are concerned.

In between the two vacation spots is a place unto itself.

“They’re in a different world there,” said Shirley Ross, a clerk in a Sandpoint fabric store. “It’s completely foreign to me.”

Once a bustling logging area, the mountains of northern Idaho, Montana and Washington have become better known in recent years for an odd collection of religious devotees, white separatists and outlaws.

Spy Christopher J. Boyce, a former code room clerk who sold CIA satellite secrets to the Soviets, lived near Bonners Ferry after he escaped from prison in 1980. Boyce was recaptured a year later in Washington state.

One of the largest extremist groups in the mountains is made up of the disparate followers of the Christian Identity movement, a highly personalized ideology that believes white Anglo Saxons are the true chosen people of God.

Trochmann, 38, said that most followers are separatists who believe in maintaining the purity of the white race. The mountains have been an ideal home. Out of 8,332 people in the county, just three are black and 26 Asian.

“Here, we don’t roll over,” Trochmann said. “Biblically, it’s wrong whenever we allow the government to take another law from God.”

Trochmann said that Weaver was not a formal follower of the Christian Identity movement, although many of his beliefs are similar.

In the mountains, many others like Weaver have found the freedom and isolation to pursue a personal vision of life. Lee, a 44-year-old logger who did not want his full name used for fear of government retaliation, lives in nearby Rapid Lightning Creek. He gave up a job as an engineer in Florida several years ago, after growing disgusted with the “intrusion of civil law, higher taxes and people moving in with very little traditional values.”

Land here is cheap, about $1,000 an acre. Living is even cheaper if you grow your own food and hunt in the woods, but Lee said that the life is hard and unforgiving. There are few modern conveniences. In the winter, three feet of snow can fall in a few hours, trapping his family in the cabin for weeks. An injury in the woods can mean death.

But for all the difficulties, he said the struggle has been worthwhile to protect his family from outside corruptions.

“It’s a constant struggle. All of us are sacrificing to come here,” he said. “Those who aren’t devoutly Christian will leave.”

Trochmann, one of the minority who grew up in the area, said that perhaps the most important aspect of the mountains is not their isolation, but the hardships they pose.

Only the strong and pure will stay, she said, and if the land breeds a certain harsh defiance, that’s the way it should be.

“I’d say 50 to 75% end up leaving. I call them ‘the whining bitches,’ ” Trochmann said. “Those who stay are hard, tough people. I want only the strong on my land.”