Nasty New Wrinkle in Bundy Gang Oregon Stand-off. Death Threats Come to Light...

[99th_Monkey]

Death threats to Federal employees and their families.

Oregon ranchers who sparked standoff threatened to wrap official’s son in barbed wire and drown him
by Arun Gupta * 21 JAN 2016 * Raw Story

With the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge almost three weeks old and tempers fraying at a community meeting in the nearby town of Burns, Oregon, one voice has been absent from the drama: the Fish and Wildlife Service employees whose work has been disrupted and offices turned into an armed camp by anti-government militants. ~snip~

Leading up to the 1994 incident were the death threats. Cameron says, “My wife would take these phone calls, it was terribly vulgar language. They said they were going to wrap my son in barbed wire and throw him down a well. They said they knew exactly which rooms my kids slept in, in Burns. There were death threats to my wife and two other staff members and their wives. My family went to Bend rather than be in the community because it was so volatile at the time. The families of my biologist and my deputy manager family had to relocate as well for a short time.”

“At the refuge headquarters, one of the Hammonds said they would tear my head off and shit down the hole. One of the Hammonds told my Deputy Manager, Dan Walsworth, they were going to ‘put a chain around his neck and drag him behind a pickup.’” Cameron says it became practice “never to meet with the Hammonds alone and usually to have a law enforcement officer present.” ~snip~

One current employee at Malheur refuge, who asked to be identified as “Steven,” says, “It is a really frightening time for workers on the refuge. They are demoralized and afraid. Workers have asked to be transferred out of Harney County.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/oregon-ranchers-who-sparked-standoff-threatened-to-wrap-officials-son-in-barbed-wire-and-drown-him/#.VqHGS40IDi4.facebook

[csziggy]

1. Much of that seems to be from a CounterPunch article

Most of which was written in 1995:

January 5, 2016
Showdown in the Malheur Marshes: the Origins of Rancher Terrorism in Burns, Oregon

by Jeffrey St. Clair - James Ridgeway

During the spring of 1995, shortly after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, James Ridgeway and I spent a couple of weeks traveling across the West for a series of stories in the Village Voice that chronicled the rise of militant new rightwing movements of militias, white supremacists, Christian Identity sects and anti-government groups, including a profile of central Oregon rancher Dwight Hammond, now at the center of the armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters near Burns.

In the early 1990s, Hammond repeatedly transgressed federal environmental laws, trespassed on federal lands and hurled death threats at federal wildlife officials. Little action was taken against Hammond by a timid Clinton administration. Emboldened, Hammond and some of his fellow ranchers continued over the next two decades to flagrantly flout environmental laws and harass federal officials. These activities finally culminated in an act of poaching on Steens Mountain and two arson fires. Hammond and his son were convicted in federal court and sentenced to five years in prison. That conviction sparked the armed takeover of federal buildings now unfolding in Burns. Here is our report from 1995.

<SNIP>

In an affidavit, Earl M. Kisler, a Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement officer, said that rancher Dwight Hammond had repeatedly threatened refuge officials with violence over an eight year period. On one occasion Hammond told the manager of the federal refuge that “he was going to tear his head off and shit down his neck.”

<SNIP>

It was after that fateful gathering, while Cameron himself was 300 miles away in Portland completing the paperwork on Hammond’s arrest, that his family began receiving more threats, including one call threatening to wrap the Camerons’ 12-year-old boy in a shroud of barbed wire and stuff him down a well. Other callers warned Mrs. Cameron that if she couldn’t get along in the cow town, she ought to move out before something “bad” happened to her family. The families of three other refuge employees also received telephone threats after the meeting. Terrified, Mrs. Cameron packed up her four children, one of them confined to a wheelchair, and fled to Bend, more than 100 miles to the west.

Much more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/05/showdown-in-the-malheur-marshes-the-origins-of-the-armed-occupation-in-burns-oregon/

The Hammonds and their friends should have been locked up a long time before they were finally put in jail. And these terrorists who are using them as an excuse to take public land for their private purposes should be locked up for a very long time, too.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Your point being?

It's still relevant. It's these assholes that the Bundys are 'demanding' be released from prison, and it's
very telling to know the Hammonds' nasty habit of making death threats to Federal employees.

Don't you agree?

[csziggy]

6. Of course it's relevant - that is why CounterPunch reprinted the article a few weeks ago

But in the article linked in the OP the claim is made that it is a "Raw Story exclusive:

In a Raw Story exclusive, former and current employees of the Malheur Refuge have provided new revelations on the conflict between Dwight and Steve Hammond, two local ranchers who have clashed with federal government agencies for decades.

It is NOT a RS exclusive and some of it was taken nearly verbatim from the CounterPunch reprint of their twenty year old story.

The RS story does add some information on the types of damage done by unrestricted grazing and why the BLM insisted that the cattle be removed from parts of the refuge, but the parts about the threats is just a rehash of the CP article.

That is my point - no argument that the information is important, that the Hammonds and those supporting them are assholes and that all these terrorists should be arrested and tried for the damage they do to our public lands.

[99th_Monkey]

7. Cool. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

12. To be totally on point, the story first appeared in the Village Voice in the 90's one of the two

authors, Jeffrey St. Clair, is now editor of CounterPunch where the article has been republished and now cited by Raw Story. The other author is James Ridgeway, for the record.

[Doctor_J]

3. But don't call them terrorists!

[99th_Monkey]

4. What would you call it? Seizing Federal buildings & land at the point of a gun.

What would you call them then? "Patriots"?

[Doctor_J]

5. Oops. Edited to include what I thought was obvious

[99th_Monkey]

9. OK then.

Sometimes those smilies do come in handy, cuz sometimes you never know around here.

Thanks for clarifying

[flamingdem]

8. They need to put these guys in prison precisely because

they are dangerous and they'll just do this again elsewhere if there's no punishment.

[Aerows]

10. And worse

when other nutjobs see them getting away with it, they will follow suit at other refuges.

You can bet there is another group of idiots already planning their own heist of federal land and buildings.

[Initech]

11. So is that why they have that "Superior Court Judge"?