Stalling for Time

by Gary Noesner

  Jess asked Paulson about the ROT chain of command. Paulson said that President Boyce Halbison and Major General Melvin Kriewald were the only people who could order him to come out. It appeared that Paulson didn’t know either of these individuals personally. He even had difficulty pronouncing their names as he shuffled through papers, reading from a list.

  Getting Paulson to come out would be a real breakthrough. He could give us much-needed information about McLaren’s intentions, accurately identify who was inside, and tell us what weapons they had and what defensive measures they had taken. It would also serve to loosen McLaren’s control over the others inside the compound.

  As soon as the exchange with Paulson ended, we immediately set about trying to locate Halbison and Kriewald. We hoped that their split from McLaren, and McLaren’s subsequent embarrassing behavior, would encourage them to help us before he did further damage to the ROT’s reputation.

  A few minutes later, we learned that while we had been on the phone with Paulson, Robert Scheidt had walked down from the property and surrendered. He carried documents from McLaren, including last wills and testaments from those inside. I saw these wills as little more than a stunt to dramatize their willingness to fight to the death.

  Shortly thereafter, Paulson called back and asked to speak to Scheidt. Paulson said that Scheidt had a code word that he was supposed to report back with, and tried to suggest that Scheidt had not surrendered but had been captured instead. Jess countered that Scheidt had walked out entirely on his own. Paulson’s response was to call Scheidt a traitor.

  We decided not to let Paulson speak directly with Scheidt, at least not until we knew more about why Scheidt had decided to come out. Had he been sent as a spy to report back on how many officers were surrounding them and where our command post was located? Was his surrender a test to see how well they would be treated? We simply didn’t know. We came to believe that he had been sent out merely to deliver the wills, and that surrendering had been his own improvisation. With Paulson and now Scheidt losing heart, McLaren’s control seemed to be waning.

  At around two that afternoon, a letter arrived from Halbison ordering McLaren and all inside to surrender immediately. Jess made several attempts to call in and speak with McLaren after this, but was told McLaren was busy. The letter had clearly taken them off guard.

  At 3:38, Paulson called Jess and said that the letter from Halbison was not the authorization he needed. He said that he needed a “proper” military order directly from Kriewald. We argued that Halbison, as the ROT president, was the commander in chief and therefore Kriewald’s superior, but Paulson remained steadfast. Was he playing games with us? More likely, McLaren had raised this technical issue of chain of command, desperately trying to keep Paulson from bailing out. Meanwhile, we continued our efforts to reach Kriewald.

  I felt it was time to inject a new element into our efforts, a nonaggressive yet highly visible tactical movement to create tension for those inside. We wanted to show McLaren and the others that we had the ability to bring this to an end whenever we wanted.

  Captain Caver agreed, and at around six that evening, the Rangers and DPS authorities deployed a military construction tank, two armored personnel carriers, and more than ninety officers in vehicles to within a quarter mile of McLaren’s position. With darkness coming on, this show of force would not be comforting. Obviously, if there had been hostages held by the ROT, such an initiative would not have been advisable. Trying to rattle an already unstable and cornered individual is too risky when hostages’ lives are at stake. In this case, the tactical action initiated by the Rangers was meant as a carefully calibrated warning, meant to demonstrate the benefits of a negotiated resolution. And it got results.

  McLaren immediately took to the ham radio asking for help from militia forces elsewhere. He also appeared to be broadcasting orders to his men on the perimeter, but we had no evidence that they even had ham receivers. That’s when I heard him say, “Ready the missiles,” and I knew he was running out of gas.

  At around ten that night, McLaren’s wife, Evelyn, placed a call to Jess. She said that she was afraid of our apparent intentions to escalate. “Can’t you just give him what he wants?” she pleaded. Jess patiently appealed for her to use her influence with McLaren and the others to come out peacefully and avoid bloodshed.

  Again, Jess was careful to avoid the term surrender. No one—least of all a rather pathetic individual with an inflated sense of self-importance—wants to be humiliated. I was always moved by General Grant’s gesture to General Lee in allowing the Confederate leader to keep his sword during the surrender at Appomattox that ended the Civil War. That small but symbolic act cost Grant nothing, yet gained so much by allowing the venerated Lee to maintain his dignity and positively influence his loyal followers. Many of the individuals we deal with are hardly venerated warriors, but they are repeat offenders. If we treat them poorly when they surrender, they may not be so willing to cooperate with us the next time they’re in a jam.

  The next morning we got up early and drove back to the command post. It was only seven forty-five when Evelyn called to tell Jess that she had decided to come out. She said it would be at eleven or so that morning. Immediately I met with Captain Caver and urged him to make sure that his men treated her with dignity and respect. He promised that he would. Not only was that simply the right way to do things, but I wanted her to be able to speak positively to McLaren and the others about her reception.

  At eleven-thirty she delivered on her promise, and Caver delivered on his. Evelyn came out, bringing with her a proposed agreement stating McLaren’s terms and conditions for “surrender” (his choice of words). It seemed that he was still trying to save face. His proposal was written as a formal international cease-fire agreement between the ROT and the state of Texas. The district attorney and the Rangers reviewed the letter and felt they could sign two of the three pages, but they balked at the third page because it gave McLaren international recognition. I reminded everyone that while the path of deception is indeed a slippery slope, any document signed under duress had no legal standing. This helped convince the district attorney that Texas authorities could safely sign the proposed agreement without fear of legal entanglements.

  We then sat down with Evelyn and made sure that she understood the gravity of the situation and the importance of convincing McLaren and the others to surrender. At around two in the afternoon she called and spoke with her husband. He asked for a code number, which she provided, apparently a confirmation that she had been well treated. She urged McLaren to come out, adding that she had learned that this would be the last chance for him to do so before the authorities launched an assault. She also told him that we had tanks and hundreds of officers assembled and were ready to come in with all necessary force.

  Then she told him that we had agreed to sign the letter, but that there would have to be some minor changes. The changes we had made were mostly window dressing—we felt that if we simply signed his document without revision, he might smell a rat.

  When Evelyn read the letter, McLaren seemed relieved. He asked her to reread several parts to him, then indicated that it was acceptable to him as amended. I was still convinced that he was eager to come out and that all this fine-tuning of the agreement was an effort to save face.

  When Jess picked up the conversation with McLaren, he quickly transitioned into the process for a peaceful surrender. In such a situation, it’s very important that both sides fully understand and agree to what, where, when, and how everything will happen. The two men agreed that McLaren and his bodyguard White Eagle would walk down from the property to the law enforcement perimeter and give themselves up. The remaining four individuals, fewer than we’d thought were there, would stack their weapons, stand by the ROT flag, and wait to be taken into custody.

  At five-thirty that afternoon, seven days after the standoff began, McLaren surrendered. We had promised that he would be allowed to see Evelyn briefly w
hen he was brought to the command post. This was a promise that we could stand behind.

  When the tactical team moved forward to secure the ROT property, they found only Paulson and his wife waiting for them as agreed. Richard Keyes and another ROT member we had later learned was inside, Mike Matson, aided by the rough terrain, had managed to sneak through the law enforcement perimeter and escape. So now dog teams, riders on horseback, and helicopters all gave chase.

  After three days, the officers with dogs began to get close. Matson told Keyes that he couldn’t run anymore and that Keyes should go on without him. Keyes continued on foot as the officers closed in. Then Matson shot and killed a tracking dog, which prompted officers to return fire, killing Matson. Keyes made his way to civilization, where he was assisted by a militia group that transported him away from the Fort Davis area. On September 19, 1997, he was located by FBI agents and arrested.

  While the ROT members may have appeared disorganized and incompetent, they had posed a very real risk to law enforcement officers as well as to their neighbors. A search of their property yielded a wide range of weapons. The ROT members also had set up explosive traps that might have harmed officers had they attempted to carry out the arrests by force. McLaren and most of the others were tried and convicted on charges ranging from engaging in organized criminal activity to burglary, failure to appear, civil contempt, aggravated kidnapping, and attempted capital murder.

  There was little more for me to do out west. Al and I said goodbye to Captain Caver, Jess, and the others we had worked with, and headed to our rental cars. We wanted no part of any press conference. This was not a time for the FBI to be seen; our whole strategy had been to make it a local matter. As I drove to the airport, I smiled, thinking about one of my favorite TV shows as a kid—The Lone Ranger. I chuckled at the thought of someone seeing us drive off and asking, “Who were those masked men?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NO SHORTAGE OF CHALLENGES

  The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery—not over nature but of ourselves.

  —RACHEL LOUISE CARSON

  The approach that worked so successfully in other standoff situations also was effective in a very different situation that took place in Puerto Rico in May 2000. Since 1941, the U.S. Navy had used the twenty-one-mile-long Vieques Island in Puerto Rico as a practice range for shelling and bombing, but over time the site had become more and more of a point of contention with the local population. According to the Navy, there was no alternative location that would allow them to carry out critical live-fire training. But when a security guard was accidentally killed during a bombing exercise in April 1999, protesters demanded that the Navy leave Vieques immediately. The cause had a great deal of political and public support in Puerto Rico and among some political figures on the U.S. mainland.

  Despite a permanent court injunction against their trespassing, several protesters affiliated with the Vieques Fishermen’s Association, the Puerto Rico Independence Party, and others occupied a portion of the island in the “live impact area,” where the ordnance would land. The trespassers, thought to be about fifty individuals, set up eight separate camps scattered throughout the nine-hundred-acre site on the eastern tip of the island.

  The Navy occupied 75 percent of Vieques’s thirty-three thousand acres. A presidential panel had recommended that the Navy resume live-fire training but leave within five years. Pedro Rosselló, the governor of Puerto Rico, insisted that there be no further live-fire training at all and that the range be returned to civilian use. The Navy insisted that use of Vieques was an important matter of national security, and with that in mind, requested FBI assistance in removing the trespassers from the live-impact area.

  The director of the FBI went on record with the attorney general stating that this was not a law enforcement issue and that the FBI should not be forced to make a tactical response. Despite that position, the FBI, along with the United States Marshals Service and the Coast Guard, were sent down to resolve this matter.

  Everyone at CIRG viewed this as a no-win situation. The Vieques Island issue had galvanized the Puerto Rican people, and the island’s three political parties, the Catholic Church, and university students were unified in seeking the cessation of Navy bombing operations. If the FBI removal operation was met with resistance and resulted in harm to any of the protesters, there would be huge political and reputational damage to the organization.

  Despite those concerns, the CIRG deployed a large contingent of personnel, including negotiators and the HRT. We would use the Navy base at Roosevelt Roads, across the channel from Vieques, as a staging point. The action plan called for relying on the element of surprise to quickly gain control over the protesters and remove them from the live-impact area without incident. At least that had been the hope.

  I flew to Puerto Rico to lead the negotiation team, deployed in the event of a standoff, but being there provided an unexpected pleasure. Captain Keith Naumann, the chief of staff for Rear Admiral Kevin Green, the senior Navy officer at Roosevelt Roads, was my best friend since childhood and had been the best man at my wedding. Admiral Green was the Navy’s point man on the Vieques Island issue, so as his chief of staff, Keith was very familiar with the history and issues surrounding this problem. His background information and perspectives were very helpful to me. For the first time in our long respective government careers, his as a naval aviator and mine as an FBI special agent, these two boys from Atlantic Beach, Florida, were working together on a mission.

  Keith told me that the Navy had threatened to close the entire Roosevelt Roads naval base if they lost the use of the practice site. Such a move would have a major economic impact on Puerto Rico. But apparently none of the politicians or protesters took the Navy’s threat seriously.

  The day before we planned to initiate the removal operation, a helicopter flew over the protesters’ camps to help determine the number of individuals we would be confronting. This surveillance mission came back with some very troubling news: television camera crews were already set up at several locations. So much for the element of surprise.

  Roger Nisley, now the SAC in charge of the CIRG, brought Chris Whitcomb and me into a meeting to discuss the implications of this new information. Chris formerly had been an HRT operator but now served as the CIRG media coordinator. We were all concerned that the protesters, knowing they were being filmed, would tend to act out and provide greater resistance than they might otherwise. This could only serve to inflame the political aspects of this confrontation.

  I recommended that we revise the plan to have teams of negotiators lead, rather than follow each of the tactical teams as they approached the various camps. It would be the job of the Spanish-speaking negotiators to open up a peaceful and nonthreatening dialogue with the protesters, hoping to secure their cooperation in leaving, or at least in being taken into custody without any theatrics. We also agreed to have tactical personnel wear ordinary clothing and to advance toward the protesters “slow and easy” rather than “hard and fast.”

  Roger’s embrace of this new approach demonstrated a willingness to think outside the box. The operation was less than twenty-four hours away, yet we were suddenly changing the plans we had developed over many weeks.

  The next morning various FBI teams assembled and set off for Vieques. As planned, the teams arrived at each protest site simultaneously; stepping ahead of each team in a slow and confident manner were two Spanish-speaking negotiators, several of Puerto Rican ancestry. They projected genuine respect for the protesters and an understanding of their cause, but also inserted just the right degree of firmness.

  Treated this way, the protesters remained calm and fully complied with our directions. Many of them later commented that they were genuinely surprised by and greatly appreciative of the calm and professional way the FBI removed them from the island. Even better was the fact that the news media filmed this evidence of a “kindler and gentler” FBI removal op
eration. This no-win situation had suddenly become a big win for the FBI.

  At the front gate of the Vieques live-impact area, a large, angry group had assembled, along with several television news teams, to protest the removal operation. FBI negotiator Liane McCarthy, a fluent Spanish-speaker from the FBI Boston office, and Henry Nava, a fluent Spanish-speaking negotiator from the FBI San Antonio office, calmly stood in front of this crowd and patiently explained what the FBI was doing and how we were doing it.

  Back in Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno watched a live television broadcast as Liane and Henry expertly controlled the large crowd and calmed their anger. This was the type of news coverage the attorney general enjoyed seeing, and she conveyed her personal appreciation to Liane and Henry.

  The Navy was also extremely grateful. The entire operation was a huge success, and the verbal skills of the negotiators supporting each tactical team had been the key element. Predictably, because no one was killed and nothing was burned down, this news event quickly fell off the national radar screen. But I couldn’t have been more pleased and proud of my negotiation team.

  Despite the overwhelming success of this operation, the issue of Vieques never really went away. Under heavy political influence the Navy eventually was forced to give up their target range, and true to their word, they shut down the Roosevelt Roads naval base as well. Puerto Rican politicians were shocked and dismayed at the closing of the base and the significant loss of jobs and local revenue that resulted. Several said they had wanted the Navy out of Vieques only, not Roosevelt Roads. It seems they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. Perhaps they should have listened to the Navy sooner.