Congress Should Confront the Rise of Violent Extremism on America’s Public Lands
By Matt Lee-Ashley | Thursday, March 24, 2016
... Since 2014, when Cliven Bundy led hundreds of anti-government militants in an armed standoff with federal law enforcement officials near Bunkerville, Nevada, anti-government activists have organized and led at least four other armed confrontations on public lands ...
... at least 20 of the individuals involved in the armed occupation of the Malheur NWR in Oregon also participated in the Recapture Canyon, Bunkerville, Sugar Pine Mine, or White Hope Mine actions. Two of the participants in the Bunkerville standoff, Jerad and Amanda Miller, shot and killed two police officers, a bystander in a Wal-Mart, and themselves shortly after leaving the Bundy ranch.
During these armed standoffs and in separate individual incidents, public servants working for the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, and other land management agencies have been the targets of violence. An independent review of BLM records found 14 incidents of violence against BLM employees in 2014 alone, ranging from attempted murder to threats of physical assault. During the armed takeover of the Malheur NWR, militants reportedly harassed, intimidated, and threatened federal employees, prompting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to relocate the refuge’s entire staff out of the area for the duration of the standoff ...
Congressional leaders have failed to conduct any meaningful oversight or investigation of anti-government extremism on public lands. Neither the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), nor the chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. Bishop, have held a single hearing on the topic. Chairman Bishop has instead held three hearings on “threats, intimidation, and bullying by federal land management agencies.” Eight separate committees held more than 20 hearings on the 2012 Benghazi attack, but since the Bundy standoff in 2014, the House Committee on Homeland Security has held only one hearing that included a discussion of the threat of domestic right-wing extremism; that hearing was prompted by the June 2015 shooting massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, allegedly committed by white supremacist Dylann Roof. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has held no such hearings in the past two years ...
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/03/24/133730/congress-should-confront-the-rise-of-violent-extremism-on-americas-public-lands/
