MONTANA FAMILY VALUES

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

The FBI's cut-off of electrical power undoubtedly had something to do with Gloria Ward's decision to walk out of the Freemen's Montana compound last week with her husband Elwyn and her two daughters--the first people to leave the besieged ranch since April. So, probably, did the threat of violence implied by the bureau's moving three armored vehicles near the place. And so did the State of Utah's offer to drop felony charges against Ward for taking her children out of state in the midst of a custody battle. But the real credit, say federal officials, goes to Ward's sister, who had been visiting the compound, pleading with her to bring out Courtnie, 10, and Jaylynn, 8. Says U.S. Attorney Sherry Matteucci: "The love of family played a significant part in this result."

Family has played a darker part in the Freemen drama as well, in the form of the twisted dynamic of the Clark clan, in which land, pride, stubbornness, greed and altruism all figure. Four Clarks are in the "Justus Township" compound: Emmett, 67, his brother Ralph, 65, Ralph's son Edwin, 45, and Edwin's son Casey, 22. But they no longer have legal title to the 960-acre farm occupied by the Freemen--or to some 4,000 adjacent acres once owned by Ralph, Emmett and Edwin. Mortgages on that land were foreclosed after the Clarks stopped making payments. Emmett's grandson Dean, 30, then tried to save the family holdings by buying 3,000 acres back at auction--but stands to lose them again because the siege has prevented him from getting last year's wheat crop to market or this year's crop in the ground. Last fall, when Dean tried to retrieve stored wheat from the silos at his grandfather's [foreclosed] farm, his father Richard, 47--who later turned himself in and is now in jail awaiting trial on Freemen-related charges--chased him off at gunpoint.

Meanwhile, the FBI has blocked all access to the adjacent acreage. Unless Dean can plant a new crop of spring wheat by mid-June, he will have no revenue for meeting his mortgage payments. Still desperately trying to strike a deal with the FBI, Dean will not give interviews.

Everyone around Jordan agrees that Ralph was the original rebel in the Clark clan. His father, William ("Todd") Clark, arrived in Montana as a homesteader in 1914. When Ralph was growing up during the '30s, he saw many struggling neighbors foreclosed. Todd Clark often bought up their land, eventually amassing thousands of acres, which passed to his four sons.

Ralph was a daredevil who left school without learning to read or write, recalls his sister Ada Weeding, 62. He was also a drinker, and "when he was drinking, he could blame his wife or kids when things went wrong--it was never his fault," she says. Although Ralph swore off alcohol years ago, Ada thinks he's held on to his old way of thinking, except that now he blames the government and the New World Order. By the early '80s, Ralph was railing against high mortgage rates and unfair foreclosures, and in 1982 he appeared on a 20/20 segment with Geraldo Rivera.

Then, in 1992, Ralph bought into the theories of a scam artist named Roy Schwasinger. Schwasinger was founder of a group called We the People, which claimed that the Federal Government had lost a huge class-action lawsuit on behalf of America's landowners, and that a trillion dollars was sitting in a settlement account. For $300, We the People sold a kit with instructions for claiming part of the settlement--and for issuing one's own "checks" against this windfall in the interim. (Schwasinger is now in prison.)

Though barely literate, Ralph had managed to avail himself of many federal subsidies and loan programs, but by 1994 he had lost control of the debt load and faced foreclosure. Ralph's brother Emmett was on much sounder footing until his son Richard, enthralled by Ralph's antigovernment rhetoric, convinced Emmett he didn't have to make any more tax or mortgage payments. Ralph's and Emmett's farms were foreclosed in 1994. The renegade Clarks convened their own supreme court and began issuing subpoenas to and posting bounties on elected officials, lawyers and bankers connected to the foreclosures. They also started passing bogus checks, which are the basis for most of the federal charges pending against them.

The Clark men too have been bombarded by appeals to family. Edwin's wife Janet has been carrying in medication for their son Casey, and last week Edwin met with the FBI, perhaps to discuss his son's release. But at week's end was crying foul because temporary custody of her daughters was awarded to Courtnie's father rather than to her sister, as she says she was promised. This, she said, would end all hope of a peaceful settlement. "They see me get screwed, and they know they're going to get screwed." Unless blood is thicker than paranoia.

--Reported by Patrick Dawson/Jordan

With reporting by PATRICK DAWSON/JORDAN