Jeff, if you are close to the story in any way, it would be very helpful to share whatever you find from time to time.
This really strikes me as totally unnecessary on the part of the feds.
A local sheriff in an adjoining country warned of this on Sunday or Monday. HE indicated that he feared that the Feds were ultimately going to kill people to force an end.
My question...and one I am attempting to get an answer to...is why the Bundy’s decided to drive to John Day for this meeting. They are not foolish or stupid, or ignorant. They know the types of surveillance the Feds have at their disposal. Driving all that way to John Day was bound to open them to extreme risk of exactly what happened.
If I can find out any info on that I will of course share it.
In my own opinion, after they had several national interviews and were able to get a very clear...and IMHO reasoned...message out, they should have sought to step back and use other means of online organizing to plan and then implement protests across the west, culminating in a large protest in Washington DC. but they chose to stand firm at the refuge, which is very remote, in the hopes of getting the Hammonds released and change in the land policy of these agencies as a result of that pressure.
With this administration, I felt it had little chance of working that way. But the message they delivered had reached a lot of people and could have generated a much larger movement for the Hammonds and the land issues.
Oh well...they had every right to protest and to do it in the way they felt was best.