Duke Calls it a Day

JORDAN, Montana: Colorado state Senator Charles Duke has packed his bags and headed home. After six days of negotiations with leaders of the Freemen group hunkered down on a ranch outside Jordan, Duke declared the group to be "paper-hanging frauds hiding behind the Constitution," and said it was time they "felt some pain." On several occasions over the last week, negotiators felt they were close to reaching a settlement, only to see the Freemen upped the ante. Such tactics infuriated Duke, who was seen several times engaged in heated discussion with Freemen representatives before breaking off talks Tuesday. "They broke their word to us," Duke said, referring to the Freemen's arguments as "legal gobbledy-gook." Duke's rejection of the Freemen lessens the chance that their confrontation with federal agents will have the same impact on the militia movement as the sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge, says TIME's Patrick Dawson. Duke, who is held in high esteem by most members of the Patriot movement, engineered the meetings after other intermediaries, including right-wing activist James "Bo" Gritz, had failed to end a standoff that has stretched in to its eighth week. Dawson says that neither Gritz nor Duke were persuaded that the Freemen were negotiating in earnest. For the Freemen, there may be no incentive to give up peacefully, Dawson notes. Most members of the group are under indictment for fraud and for threatening law enforcement officials. "I think they want to make history; to come out in a blaze of glory," says Dawson. "They have everything to lose by coming out and nothing to lose now by staying in there." -->