Freemen leader a man with a mission

Chicago Tribune/April 15, 1996
By Rogers Worthington

Of all the Freemen holed up on a foreclosed ranch near Jordan, Mont., no one's name appears more frequently on their righteous, densely worded legal and religious documents than that of Rodney Owen Skurdal.

When the FBI arrested LeRoy M. Schweitzer and Daniel E. Petersen Jr. near Jordan on march 25, by dint of experience Skurdal became the senior Freemen of the 20 or so still on the ranch.

"With Schweitzer and Petersen out of the picture, he is very likely the moral leader out there," said Christine Kaufmann, research director for the Montana Human Rights Network, which has been monitoring the group for several years.

Who is Ridney Skurdal, and how does he figure in the resolve of the others at "Justus Township" in the 22-day standoff? Such questions are confounded by lack of a formal Freemen hierarchy and rumored bickering over leadership.

Skurdal, 43, Schweitzer, Peterson and Dale Jacobi moved to the ranch in late September. They left behind "Redemption Township," Skurdal's two-story log cabin home on 20 acres near Roundup, Mont., where they had been holed up all of 1995. They issued a stream of their common law court writs, warrants, affidavits, "true bills" and, says the FBI, more than $1.8 million in worthless "certified bankers checks" and money orders. And they taught others how to do the same.

The log cabin home has since been auctioned off by the IRS - something Skurdal swore to a neighbor would never happen.

"He believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the IRS could never sell his house for back taxes" totaling $29,312, said Jane Bellows, who lived near Skurdal's cabin on Johnny's Coal Ranch. "He said, 'I will beat them; I have no fear of that.'"

They were prepared for a confrontation. Matthew Sisler, a lawyer who visited Skurdal and Schwietzer in the cabin early last fall after a client received one of their worthless money orders, recalls seeing guns such as AR-15s, shotguns and huntign rifles in every corner and gas masks hanging from the doors.

Evidently, they were planning on being more prepared. Sisler's client, Cajun James, an arms dealer in Eureka, Mont., had been given a bad check for an order, undelivered, for 200 .50-caliber rifles, which have an accurate range of 1,000 yards; and 200,000 rounds of ammunition.

Skurdal, said Sisler, seemed to be the spiritual leader, while Schweitzer, 57, a tax delinquent crop-duster, was the financial brain. Jacobi, who is a former Canadian police officer and propane dealer who has been holding Bible classes.

In a 1994 Freemen "edict" signed by "the honorable Justice Rodney O. Skurdal," he set out his religious beliefs, which Schweitzer shared. They are decidedly those of Christian Identity, with origins in the 19^th Century that claims white Anglo Saxons are the true Israelistes, that Jews are the offspring of Eve, and Satan - Cain - and that people of color were "beasts of the field" made by God before he perfected man in Adam and Eve.

Freemen reason they do not have to pay taxes because they see the U.S. government as a "corporate prostitute," and America as the biblical land of milk and honey, the New Zion, given to the white race by God, whose laws are the only ones they must obey.

"Their driving, life-shaping agenda is Christian Identity," said Rev. Jerry Walters of Zion Lutheran Church in Roundup. "Their beliefs about taxes and government are because the lens they are looking through is Christian Identity."

Skurdal, a stocky, red-haired man slightly under 6 feet tall, has no known history of violence. During one of his two hitches in the Marine Corps he served for 30 months at the marine Corps Barracks in Washington, D.C., where he was in a presidential security guard company. The unit provides the White House and Camp David uniformed guards. HE finished his eight-year Marine career as a recruiter in Trenton, Mich.

After his discharge he went to work in the Wyoming oil fields near Gillette. In 1983, a derrick he was on tipped over, leaving him with a concussion and several broken ribs. Skurdal received workman's compensation, which he demanded - unsuccessfully - be paid to him in gold and silver. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, he later won an out-of-court settlement with the oil company, Exeter Drilling Co., for an undisclosed amount.

By 1987, Skurdal was having brushes - peaceful ones - with the law in Gillette for driving without license plates and issuing his own checks.

Most of those who knew him in the Roundup area, where in 1992 he bought the log cabin, recall him as polite, quiet and reasonable.

"Rodney never yelled or got upset," said Matthew "Dutch" VanSyckel, a Musselshell County sheriff's deputy. "I think he could be reasoned with. But I don't know what's come over him in the past year."

June Britt, Skurdal's girlfriend in Roundup, described him as peaceful and religious, a man who "believes in the common law, 'that no American should ever lose their home for taxes."

"Rod doesn't have a mean streak in his body. He is big and could take care of himself. But he never had fights, doesn't hold grudges and never pushed it or was a bully because of his size."

"He doesn't want to anyone hurt," said Britt, who says she "loves Rod the man, not Rod the Freeman."

"But he does want their word out-unedited," she said.

Britt's perceptions are at odds with the image on officers of the courts in which Skurdal fought his legal battles. In Musselshell County, those battles had their origin in his failure - again - to get a driver's license and license plates for his car.

"He was like an obnoxious kid doing whatever he can to get his way," said one court officer. "The more times he went to court, and the more people who came to watch, the more aggressive and gruff he got." Skurdal, the officer said, challenged the right of women to be on the jury that was to judge him.

By the mid-1990s, Skurdal, incensed that an electrical inspector came on his property, posted a "Declaration of War" against local officials.

Most of Skurdal's actions, like Schweitzer's, Petersen's and Jacobi's, were paper terrorism, a flood of frivolous, computer produced liens, including the governor of Montana, state supreme court judges, and local sheriff and other officials.

The liens, sometimes for amounts in the millions, were deposited in the Freemen's bank account, on which they wrote their worthless checks.

Early last year, Skurdal, Schweitzer and Petersen published what law enforcement officers in Roundup interpreted as a threat: "We the Honorable justices, will not hesitate to use our Lawful force by whatever means necessary to fully support, protect, guarantee and defend our (common) Law…and…Right of self governing as a free sovereign and independent state."

But by late September, it became obvious that the heavily posted cabin near Roundup, with thick woods behind it and the road barely 50 feet from its front door, would be difficult to defend. They moved to the ranch on the high treeless plains near Jordan, leaving behind a horse trailer full of thousands of rounds of ammunition and reloading equipment.

Lawyer Sisler visited the ranch March 10. He and two assistants successfully served legal parpers on Schweitzer, who he said promplty turned around and handed the lawyer a $1 billion lien on his property.

While Sisler saw armed men, he said they did not inspire fear.

"What we saw," Sisler said, "was a bunch of sad, middle-aged men who had lost their homes, who had not paid loans back or taxes and wanted someone to blame."