Gritz Says ‘Freemen’ May Be Low on Food

The anti-government “freemen” appear to be running low on food and may be persuaded to surrender peacefully in their 34-day standoff with the FBI, said a former Green Beret colonel who met with them for more than seven hours Saturday.

James “Bo” Gritz also said all of the adult men he saw at the ranch wore pistols and their farmhouse contained numerous rifles.

Two young girls in the house were as “thin as rails,” but otherwise appeared to be healthy, Gritz said at a news conference.

“We were there a long time, and all I asked for is a glass of water,” Gritz said. “I sensed that they are rationing out.”

Gritz, who helped end the bloody 1992 standoff between the FBI and white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, gave the first public report of life on the compound, where more than a dozen people have been holed up in a standoff with the FBI.

Gritz said he will return this morning for more talks and will insist that the FBI allow Weaver to accompany him.

Weaver accompanied Gritz to Montana on Thursday but said the FBI would not let him go to the freemen’s ranch.

Gritz said he saw 16 people in the main house on the freemen’s ranch but was told 22 people were on the property.

“I think their hope is that they [the FBI] will just go away, and I don’t think that will happen,” he said.

Gritz said the freemen seem especially interested in having lawyer Gerry Spence defend them if they come out. Spence was Weaver’s lawyer.

Gritz has publicly urged the freemen to surrender and face trial in federal court.

Since his arrival, Gritz has met with FBI officials each day to discuss his undisclosed plans to end the standoff.

After a nearly two-hour meeting Saturday morning, a car carrying Gritz and Jack McLamb, a retired Phoenix police officer, was escorted to the ranch by a state Highway Patrol car carrying an FBI agent. Gritz and McLamb got out and walked until the Freemen sent a car that took them to the main house on the ranch.

FBI agents have surrounded the freemen complex since March 25, when they arrested two leaders of the anti-government group in a sting operation. Some of the freemen are wanted on federal and state charges ranging from writing millions of dollars in worthless checks to threatening to murder a federal judge.

The only outside negotiators allowed to talk to the freemen before Gritz and McLamb were state officials, including four legislators, who have met with them several times. Relatives of the freemen have also been allowed to visit.

The freemen contend that they are not subject to federal or state laws but are sovereign citizens of their own country and are governed only by common law. Like Weaver, whose wife and son and a U.S. marshal were shot to death in the 1992 confrontation, the freemen ascribe to the Old Testament-based, white supremacist Christian Identity movement.