Radical Reputation Bedevils Montana
By Tom Kenworthy, USA Today
April 8, 2002

"Some wacko with a gun who has a Spanky and Our Gang list is hardly a threat to anybody."John Stokes owner KGEZ

The "wacko with a gun" was actually a convicted felon with a room full of guns, including illegal, large-caliber machine guns and 30,000 rounds ammunition. -aboutfacts

KALISPELL, Mont. -- Five days a week from 8 to 11 a.m., John Stokes does his best to live up to his surname.

Whether it's railing against environmentalists as ''Green Nazis,'' taunting his critics as ''nitwits'' or hosting a promotion that features listeners shooting up the United Nations flag, the radio talk-show host in this northwest Montana community has stoked the fires of controversy.

Now, with the arrest of one of his occasional callers for allegedly stockpiling an arsenal of weaponry and plotting the assassination of local policemen and public officials, Stokes is being accused of helping foster an atmosphere conducive to threats and violence.

To some in the outside world, news of the arrest and outlandish alleged conspiracy here has renewed the stereotype of Montana as an incubator for weird zealots and anti-government movements. ''Citizens back East either think we're burning up or being invaded,'' says Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont, recalling the state's notoriety for producing wildfires and extremists such as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski -- captured in a cabin in Lincoln -- and the Freemen -- a group that rejected government authority and engaged in a nearly three-month standoff with the FBI.

Stokes, 50, and his main antagonist, Montana Human Rights Network executive director Ken Toole, rarely agree on anything. But they do see eye to eye on whether Montana is being unfairly tarred as a haven for political nuts.

Montana, Stokes says, "is being smeared."

"We have had the misfortune of having some of the more high-profile cases,' concedes Toole, whose group monitors right-wing activity. But he argues that other states with a similar level of militia-type activity don't attract as much media attention because they have no organized monitoring groups such as his own. "The irony is, part of the reason we have a reputation for it is we have very aggressive groups that respond," says Toole, a Democratic state senator from Helena.

David Burgert, the sometime caller to Stokes' show on KGEZ-AM radio, was arrested by Flathead County sheriff's deputies Feb. 8 after a tipster alerted them to his role in a shadowy group called Project 7.

Law enforcement authorities described the small group -- apparently named for the license plate digit assigned to Flathead County drivers -- as a right-wing militia.

Burgert was arrested after an armed standoff with police, who found two trailers packed with guns, 30,000 rounds of ammunition, bombmaking material, body armor and survivalist gear. He is being held on a bail-jumping charge stemming from an earlier arrest. Meanwhile, federal authorities are investigating a possible plot to kill local officials.

Reportedly, organizers hoped to draw in the Montana National Guard and NATO troops and spark a revolution by militia groups against the federal government.

As far-fetched as the alleged conspiracy seems, authorities took it seriously. 'Had we not discovered what they were doing, I guess it could have been a serious thing," Dupont says.

Burgert, in a telephone interview from jail last month with the Daily Inter Lake of Kalispell, insisted, "There's no plot to overthrow the government or murder anybody."

Still, the disagreements between Toole and Stokes reflect competing visions of Montana and the West during a time of economic and social change.

As is true in much of the West, Flathead County and western Montana are shifting from an economy based on natural resources to one dominated by services and tourism. Kalispell, in one of the fastest-growing counties in Montana, is a recreation mecca thanks to its proximity to Glacier National Park and Flathead Lake.

The mountain West ''has been in the thrall of sweeping economic, political and social change,'' say University of Montana economics professors Thomas Power and Richard Barrett in their book Post-Cowboy Economics.

As a percentage of all employment, natural resources jobs in the mountain West fell from more than 10% in 1969 to less than 4% in 1998. From 1978 to 1998, wood products employment in Montana and Idaho declined by 30%.

Because mining, logging and agriculture ''are widely believed still to be the economic lifeblood of the region's rural areas and small cities, their decline has provoked deep economic anxiety'' and a tendency to blame the federal government, Power and Barrett say.

Toole says Stokes exploits those tensions to the point of encouraging intimidation of environmentalists and others with whom he disagrees. Spurred on by Stokes, he says, people angered by the transition to a tourism economy have subjected conservation leaders to harassment and vandalism.

"It's illegal activity, it's threatening activity, it's intimidating activity,'' Toole says. ''It feeds out of this environment of blaming and scapegoating.''

"What political intimidation?'' asks Stokes, who says that his station's advertisers have been harassed by environmentalists. ''We encourage people to go to public meetings, to get off your knees, straighten your spine and speak out. I don't believe in violence. I've never encouraged it.''

Environmentalists, Stokes adds, ''whip their people into a frenzy. . . . They're the ones destroying property and jobs and livelihoods and recreational opportunities and the economics of this state. . . . Some wacko with a gun who has a Spanky and Our Gang list is hardly a threat to anybody.''

Rhetorical nuance is not in Stokes' playbook.

He says it was his duty to give the FBI and the Israeli Embassy in Washington an e-mail from an unidentified correspondent that accused Toole, then touring Israel, of being simultaneously ''pro-Hitler,'' ''Marxist'' and associated with ''domestic terrorist groups.''

And the ''Green Nazis''? Consider the ''many parallels'' between the environmental movement and the early days of the Third Reich, Stokes says. ''My point is if you would have stood up to the Third Reich in the '20s, we wouldn't have had to fight them in the '40s.''

And so it goes in a state that has earned an unfortunate reputation as a political loony bin.

Not that it bothers many Montanans, who cherish their state as the ''last, best place.''

''It just goes to prove,'' Gov. Judy Martz says, ''that people love Montana.''

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