An allegation that undercover FBI agents were caught posing as militia members in southeast Oregon splashed around the Internet this week, but the story’s purported source says he made no such claim.

Chris Briels, who recently resigned his position as Harney County fire chief, says Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, whose Wednesday press release sparked concern about a throwback to FBI infiltration and dirty tricks against activists, must have misunderstood him.

Fiore’s release said Briels had determined “men posing as ‘militia’ were the FBI.” Briels tells U.S. News he did indeed catch undercover FBI agents in small-town Burns, near where armed protesters are occupying a federal wildlife refuge, but that they were not posing as militia.



“They weren’t posing as anything other than dishonest people,” he says. “They were perceived as militia by the locals, but they weren’t posing out there with a shirt that said ‘I’m militia.’”

The refuge takeover that began Jan. 2 has strained Briels’ friendships in small-town Burns, prompting him to keep an eye out for trouble. He serves on a committee set up by activists, and a friend suggested he investigate strangers assumed to be militiamen near a vacant National Guard armory.



The people he found at the armory drove off in three vehicles, one of which he followed to a nearby McDonald’s. Two men in the black SUV identified themselves as businessmen named “Chuck” and “Mike” who were looking to open shop in the town, an explanation Briels refused to accept.

Briels called local authorities, who he says arrived later to the scene. A sheriff’s deputy, he says, took a phone call and then explained the men were undercover FBI agents.

Though Briels has poured cold water on the tale attributed to him, the FBI’s Portland field office would not address whether or not undercover agents are being used to address the refuge occupiers, who have invited ranchers’ rights supporters from across the country to join them.

“Due to the ongoing investigation we cannot provide any comments at this time,” said a statement from the Harney County Joint Information Center, in response to an inquiry emailed to an FBI spokeswoman.

Harney County Judge Steven Grasty, who serves as the county’s elected executive, says he doesn’t know what exactly the FBI is doing in the area.



“I just don’t know what they’re doing,” he says. “And to be honest, I’ve worked hard not to.”

Grasty says he considers Briels a longtime friend and "an incredible resource," but accepted his resignation after the two had a disagreement about use of public buildings to host a meeting where Ammon Bundy, leader of the refuge protest, could address rancher grievances.

The refuge protesters broadly object to the encroachment of federal landholdings on ranchers, but their protest specifically was inspired by the five-year mandatory minimum prison sentences given to Dwight Hammond, 73, and Steven Hammond, 46, for fires they set that burned federal land.



The Hammonds’ supporters say they did nothing wrong. Briels, who worked as Burns fire chief from 1984 to 2010 and until this month as county fire chief, agrees and says many ranchers in the area could find themselves in the Hammonds’ shoes.