Activists gather to defend Lincoln mine

LINCOLN – Constitutional advocates conducted a meeting in a park Thursday evening to explain to this community of 1,000 why they are patrolling a gold mine east of here that’s the subject of a dispute between the mine owners and the U.S. Forest Service.

The White Hope Mine is in the Helena National Forest. The owner is George Kornec. The main operator is Phil Nappo of Great Falls, according to Forest Service records.

The Forest Service and mine owners are in a dispute over who controls the surface rights to the mine.

Last year, the Forest Service issued a letter of noncompliance for a structure that was built on the property, prompting the disagreement and now the involvement of groups concerned about government overreach.

Retired Army Sgt. Major Joseph Santoro of Oath Keepers said the mine owners asked the group for legal assistance in the dispute. Concern about the building being removed prompted the groups to provide security.

“We are on site at the mine,” Santoro said. “Our whole goal is to get Phil and George into the courts.”

Pacific Patriot Network, made up of groups who describe themselves as constitutional advocates, arrived in Lincoln earlier this week for the “security mission.”

It’s the most recent dispute between a federal agency and constitutional advocates over activities on federal land, prompting calls to the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office from residents concerned about the presence of armed people dressed in camouflage clothing, Sheriff Leo Dutton said.

“The situation is peaceful as I know it, and that is my interest, that it remains peaceful,” Dutton said Thursday morning.

The sheriff’s only concern is that the presence of the armed groups might upset residents, especially with the shootings that have occurred in the country in recent months, he said.

There has been no need to dispatch deputies to the area, he said.

Santoro said at the Thursday evening meeting in the park that group members have been told to remove their camouflage clothing and to stop carrying firearms because of concerns raised by some residents. The meeting drew a handful of residents who appeared to be nearly outnumbered by reporters.

“We are not thugs,” Santoro said. “We are not criminals.”

Two Lincoln residents questioned group members.

A longtime Lincoln resident named Frank, who declined to give his last name, said he understood if Kornec, the mine owner, sought legal assistance, but questioned why the mine site needed patrolling. He called the situation “scary.”

“Why would you need to guard that up there?” he asked.

Mary Emerick, an Oath Keeper spokeswoman from Oregon, said there is concern that the building in question will be removed.

Concerns also were raised about group members driving into the mine site east of town.

The mine is located near a large mining complex that the state Department of Environmental Quality is cleaning up. Large trucks are accessing the area from busy Montana Highway 200 all day. Additional traffic from group members and the media, if it caused the project shut down, could put 30 jobs in danger, one resident said.

“It’s a safety issue for everybody,” she said.

“We will not put your jobs in jeopardy,” Santoro said.

Todd Fisher, who works at a water treatment plant at the mining waste cleanup project, thanked the groups for showing up.

“These guys are here to defend our constitutional rights,” said Fisher, who raised concerns about the public, in general, being “kicked out of our backyard,” referring to lost access to federal land.

A simple resolution to the dispute would be the federal agency recognizing the miners own the surface rights and leaving them alone, said Joseph Rice, a coordinator with Oath Keepers.

“These are simple men pursuing their happiness and their constitutional rights to conduct their mining operations, and now you have the Forest Service trying to prevent that,” he said.

David Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula, said the agency wants to resolve the permit issue so mining can resume.

“It’s been a very amicable relationship,” he said. “And our goal is to continue working with them. They have a right to be up there. We want to make sure they do so in accordance with the law.”

Last year, the Forest Service issued a letter of noncompliance for a structure that was built on the property, Smith said. The mine’s operating plan also expired in 2014, he said.

If the mine owners can justify the use of the building in an approved operating plan, it probably will be approved, he said.

The miners aren’t required to file an operations plan because mining claims established before 1955 fall under the Mining Law of 1872, and those claims are public domain and treated as private property, Oath Keeper’s Rice said.

The mine has been in the Kornec family since 1924, he said.

The Forest Service’s Smith said the White Hope mine claim lapsed when the owners missed a 1986 filing deadline with the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM required them to reapply, which they did. The claim then fell under the 1955 law assigning surface rights to the Forest Service.

Bill Frisbee, a real estate broker in town who also owns a restaurant with his wife, said he doesn’t appreciate the negative attention the issue is bringing to the scenic outdoors destination of 1,000 full-time residents that swells to 1,700 during the summer months.

There have been no confrontations, Frisbee said, but he’s worried that misinformation, especially with how fast word travels on social media, will prompt people to cancel visits to the area near the Continental Divide.

“We got over, for the most part, Ted Kaczynski, and now we’ve got this coming up,” said Frisbee, referring to the infamous Unabomber who lived in a remote cabin near the town. “It’s a little unsettling this is happening. We make our homes here. This group does not.”

Group members have arrived from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Montana. Rice declined to say how many people have showed up in Lincoln to assist.

A security team made up of highly trained, well-disciplined professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement and military has “secured the mine,” Rice said.

A logistical team in Lincoln is supporting the security team, he said. Oath Keepers said the effort is not a standoff with the Forest Service, and that the groups are not promoting a confrontation, with security the only aim.

Notices of no trespass have been delivered to the Lincoln Ranger District of the Helena National Forest and the forest supervisor in Helena, Rice said.

Kornec is 83 and a Korean war veteran and Nappo, who served in Vietnam, is in his late 60s, said Rice, adding the mine is a mom-and-pop hard-rocking mining operation. Kornec lives at the mine.

Oath Keepers says the Forest Service is using strong-arm tactics to coax a generation of older miners to submit to unlawful authority, preventing them from working rightful claims.

Earlier this year, the group also responded to a permit dispute at the Sugar Pine Mine outside of Medford, Ore.

The Forest Service’s Smith said the agency will continue to work with the permit holders, and is “totally supportive of peaceful protests.”

“We want them to get back to mining in a legal way,” he said.

Oath Keepers says it is a nonpartisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

It’s calling its work at the mine site “Operation Big Sky.”