BURNS - Protesters holding the bird sanctuary southeast of here want every county in the U.S. to start a process giving back federal land to the previous owners.

They expect that process to start in Harney County with a citizens group processing deeds, according to Ryan Payne, a self-styled militiaman and a key leader of the refuge occupation that started two weeks ago.

In an interview, Payne provided the most clear statement yet about what the occupiers want to achieve. They now call themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.

Besides stripping land from federal control, Ryan said the group wants ranchers Dwight Hammond Jr. and his son, Steven, released from federal prison immediately. He said the group wants to see a citizen inquest investigate the Hammonds' prosecution and report to the public on allegations of abuses by the government.

The Hammond case is what drew Payne and his fellow protesters to the high desert of southeast Oregon. The Hammonds, longtime Harney County ranchers, were convicted in 2012 on federal arson charges for burning public land. They served prison terms after their trial, but had to return to prison Jan. 4 to serve their full five-year sentences when an appellate court declared the original shorter sentences illegal.

The protesters hoped to spare the Hammonds prison by arranging sanctuary in Harney County. The Hammonds rejected that idea, voluntarily surrendering to a federal prison in California. The protesters haven't let up on their support of the Hammonds and subsequently expanded their objectives to a much larger ambition to change public land ownership.

The group has been less than clear about what it wants. Ammon Bundy, the Arizona businessman who is the public face of the occupation, has said all week that his group would announce its exit strategy Friday at a public meeting in Burns, but the meeting got canceled in a dispute about where to hold it.

Payne said the group believes the federal government has no constitutional authority to hold vast land tracts. He said any deed transferring land to the federal government should be considered void.

That means, he said, all federal land in Harney County would be subject to the new process.

It would apply to the 187,000 acres of the refuge, U.S. Forest Service holdings and more than 3 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The federal government holds title to 76 percent of Harney County, which measures about 10,000 square miles with a population of about 7,000.

"There needs to be an unraveling process through the county recorder," Payne said. "Previously, the federal government acquired this land by extorting the people out of it."

He said even in circumstances where the government bought the land, the transaction stands as illegal under the Constitution.

He said the land would return to the last owner of record before the government took title. He said, however, that those making "beneficial use" of the land would have their rights to grazing or water preserved. Settling who gets the property - the previous owner or the current user - would be part of the process, he said.

Payne said county government should undertake the task.

"The people have faith and trust in county government, so county government is charged with that," he said. "They really should be the ones doing that."

He said his group doesn't expect the county to act on the deed issue. Instead, he said, the Harney County Committee of Safety would have the job. The committee, formed shortly before the occupation, includes six Harney County residents. It's not affiliated with local government.

Payne said the fate of the refuge headquarters would be decided by Harney County residents.

"We've made ourselves stewards of this place," he said. The occupiers are restoring the buildings at the compound and at a nearby field station, he said. He described the station as in "horrible repair."

He said the federal government's expenditures at the refuge resulted in "some very nice buildings and some very nice equipment."

The government didn't have authority to buy any of it, and unwinding the transactions won't be easy, Payne said.

"You don't tear down buildings and get your money back," he said. He noted that citizens across the country paid for the complex.

The Committee of Safety also should instigate an inquest jury to examine the Hammond case. County officials have so far ignored the occupiers' demand that they start such an investigation, he said.

Payne said the occupiers have no plan to hold any particular government official accountable.

"If the people desire to pursue individual accountability, they have every right to do so," Payne said.

Meantime, he said, the protesters want the Hammonds released from prison and exonerated. He said the federal government had no authority to prosecute the men, but they shouldn't have been tried even in state court.

The group also wants the record of the Hammond prosecution used as a teaching tool.

"Any record should be preserved only for the education of our children, that they don't allow the federal government to overstep and oppress the people in such a manner again."

-- Les Zaitz