FBI, ‘Freemen’ Reached Accord on Key Issue, Official Says

A Colorado legislator said Saturday that a “verbal agreement on a major issue” has been reached between the FBI and the anti-government “freemen” and that a peaceful end to their 7-week-old standoff may be in sight.

The announcement by Republican state Sen. Charles Duke followed three days of tense face-to-face meetings between federal agents and members of the freemen at the eastern Montana farm where armed members of the anti-government group have been holed up for 55 days.

Duke has been acting as a mediator in the talks. He is a leader in his state’s “patriot” movement, a loose confederation of groups that feel established government has gone beyond its legal or constitutional boundaries.

The agreement, which still needs the approval of Justice Department officials in Washington, does not mean the standoff will end soon, Duke told reporters near the isolated wheat farm 36 miles northwest of Jordan, Mont.

“We are not there yet, but we’re closer,” Duke said. He estimated that the proposal, which he said came from the freemen, has a 50-50 chance of being approved.

Duke declined to specify the point on which the tentative agreement was reached, except to say that unspecified visible signs of a change would become apparent today.

“We have reached many items of agreement, but this one is a major issue,” he said.

The two sides are scheduled to meet again this morning, but Duke held out little hope that the standoff would end soon.

“If it is approved, it would be a major breakthrough,” he said, adding that it may take a few days to get approval and that the final approval was “likely” to come from as high as Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

Reno has repeatedly vowed that the standoff would be resolved peacefully.

Nonetheless, the recent talks have been conducted under the scrutiny of FBI cameras and a SWAT team in a nearby van.

Duke said he canceled his plans to return to Colorado today, but would not say how long he was willing to stay. He said that if the proposal is rejected by federal authorities, he will release its details.

The proposal came during the second of two rounds of talks Saturday, a 45-minute afternoon session under a canopy erected to protect negotiators from a cold, light rain. The morning meeting lasted two hours and 15 minutes.

Duke said the talks reached a “very low point yesterday [Friday],” before freemen negotiators returned Saturday with what he termed “creative” proposals.

The FBI appeared to step up its security Saturday, positioning an armed truck with rifles and scopes closer to the compound than it had been before.

A spokeswoman with the FBI in Billings, Mont., said she had no comment on any security issues.

The standoff with the freemen, who are heavily armed and wanted on an assortment of federal check-kiting, securities and conspiracy charges, began March 25 when FBI agents surrounded their 960-acre “Justus Township” and arrested two of their leaders.

Those who remain barricaded in four modest houses scattered across the farm--including two young girls--claim they are not subject to federal laws and have insisted on having their cases heard by a common law grand jury of peers.

The freemen requested that Duke facilitate talks with federal agents after a series of other mediators, including state legislator Karl Ohs and former Green Beret Col. James “Bo” Gritz, failed to persuade them to leave the farm.

A frustrated Gritz recently suggested that only a nonviolent raid by FBI agents using night-vision goggles, so-called flash-bang bombs and stun devices would pry the freemen out of the farm.