CALGARY

When a small army of the heavily-armed FBI agents moved onto her family’s eastern Montana ranch, they barely made a sound, recalls Clara Saylor.

The stealthy federal officials weren’t taking any chances with the families holed up in a nearby compound, calling themselves Freemen and espousing a hostile anti-government creed.

Recalling the fiery end to the FBI’s siege of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas 3-1/2 years before, Saylor said her family had just one condition in return for the use of a cabin.

“The only thing is, the local sheriff knows the FBI is here,” recalls Saylor, now 83 of the events in November, 1995.

“It was hush-hush ... we had to supply them gas from our farm tanks.”

Some of the outcasts the agents had to come to monitor Saylor had known since childhood.

“I grew up with them, I went to school with them,” she said.

“For some of them, it wasn’t surprising. For others, I was astounded. They had been good neighbours.”

The Montana Freemen who’d christened their ranch Justus Township had proclaimed themselves “sovereign citizens” and taken to promoting the production and use of bad cheques and bogus liens.

They’d also threatened the local sheriff and a judge under the auspices of their own “common law” court.

The following March, the FBI arrested two of the men armed with illegal weapons and demanded the surrender of others barricaded inside the sprawling white bungalow at Justus Township capitulate.

It was an order quickly refused and the federal agents’ presence remained a daily fixture, said Saylor.

“They were running around the back roads ... they were on our land for six months,” she said of the feds.

Members of a kindred group, the Militia of Montana, threatened to lead a caravan to Jordan to support the besieged Freemen and armed local ranchers mobilized against any arrival.

The FBI was praised, even by some American militia groups, for their restraint at Justus Township.

Saylor said they could have easily moved in sooner.

“They could have gone in in December ... those Freemen made threats but I don’t think they would have followed through with them,” she said.

After issuing outlandish demands in the standoff that dragged on into June, authorities cut the power to the ranch and 10 days later, 16 of the defiant Freemen surrendered, including ex-Calgary police officer Dale Jacobi.

Only four of them agreed to have mugshots taken in the Billings jail and Jacobi suffered a sprained thumb while resisting fingerprinting.

None of that bravado or dissident spirit, said Saylor, made much of an impression.

“Most of us were brought up to pay our debts, so we didn’t have much sympathy for that,” she said.

“We thought they were crazy before the standoff.”

The Montana Freemen were convicted of a host of fraud, theft, uttering threats and firearms charges.

In 2006, accomplices of Freeman LeRoy Schweitzer attempted unsuccessfully to break him out of prison, posing as Montana marshals.

As if reading a series of small-town obituaries, Saylor lists off the names of others who’ve since died of natural causes.

Few around Jordan have been eager to see any of the surviving, since-freed conspirators return, she said.

“They’ve been basically told not to come into Garfield Country,” said Saylor.

But rumours persist, she added, that some related to the Justus Township group are mobilizing in a part of the state 160 km to the south.

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The name and spirit of the Montana Freemen was a predecessor — and possible inspiration — to those living out an anti-authority philosophy under a similar banner in Alberta,

An RCMP official said the force wouldn’t comment verbally on the Freemen-on-the-land but issued a statement vowing vigilance.

“Individuals associated with this movement are a concern because some of their followers advocate violence to promote their view and this may involve violence toward police officers,” wrote Sgt. Greg Cox.

In conjunction with other Canadian police forces, the RCMP is developing “awareness material” for front line officers to help them understand the movement’s ideology, he stated.

Even so, wrote Cox, “at this time, we have no indication they pose a specific threat to the general public.”

It’s an approach the Freemen seem to welcome, if not revel in.

A website of the World Freeman Society (WFS) proudly brandishes news articles reporting on the growing concern over the movement among Canadian police.

Requests for an interview with an WFS spokesman went unanswered.

But in an interview with Global TV, WFS Director Menard insists the movement shows more Canadians are waking up to their rights — and government abuses.

“What a lot of people don’t like is paying for bombs to drop on people on the other side of the world we never met,” he said.

“The mandate of the Freeman Society is we’re looking for less government, greater freedoms and the rights our forefathers fought and died for.”

Pointing to the fraudulent excesses of large banks that cratered the world economy five years ago, the WFS says it’s rejecting corporate and government corruption.

Somebody not buying into the ideology was Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Associate Chief Justice John Rooke, who tore a strip off Edmonton Freeman Dennis Meads, who insisted he was above the law in his divorce fight.

“The persons who advance these schemes, and particularly those who market and sell these concepts as commercial products are parasites and must be stopped,” he said in a searing 185-page ruling last year.

Rooke called Freemen “legal alchemists” and con men who craft approaches to skirt the law, or rewrite them.