...The BLM’s message, repeated word for word by different agency representatives over the past month: “We will continue to pursue this matter administratively and judicially.”
The first hint of what that might mean came late last week, when Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie confirmed the launch of an FBI criminal investigation into threats made against law enforcement officers during the armed confrontation.
But how might the government solve its original problem of rogue cattle on federal ground?
Retired National Park Service official Alan O’Neill expects the next move to come from one of two places: the Justice Department or U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks, author of the October court order that gave Bundy 45 days to remove his cattle or risk losing them to the government. Hicks also ordered the rancher not to “physically interfere with any seizure or impoundment operation.”
“Obviously Bundy is in contempt of court,” O’Neill said. “In my opinion he ought to be held accountable.”
One way that might happen is for the government to target more Bundy family property — their land and even their home instead of just their cattle — as the government looks to recover roughly $1.1 million in unpaid fees and penalties it says the rancher owes. Former BLM Director Bob Abbey said he doesn’t know what the agency has planned — and he stressed that none of his former colleagues has asked for his input — but like O’Neill he thinks the next chapter is likely to unfold in a courtroom far from the open range. Abbey was at the helm of the BLM in 2012, the last time the agency mobilized to impound Bundy’s cattle only to call the operation off just before it began. Contrary to some reports, he said the 2012 operation was not canceled because of safety concerns or threats made against government employees.
The problem two years ago came down to poor planning and communication. Abbey said the operation was rushed and BLM leaders in Washington, D.C., were brought in too late. With less than 24 hours before the roundup was to start, those in charge had second thoughts about using a court order issued in 1998 to impound cattle 14 years later.
Abbey said they decided they could “bring more legitimacy” to the action if they went back to court to “refresh that court order.”
At the risk of playing “Monday morning quarterback,” he said there were a few things about the BLM’s most recent roundup he would have done differently.
“No doubt there’s lessons to be learned here,” he said. “My concern is that there was an appearance of an aggressive posture on the part of the Bureau of Land Management.”
Though the BLM needed to have additional law enforcement officers on call or even staged nearby given the potential for unrest, Abbey said allowing them to lead the way may have “encouraged confrontation rather than discouraged confrontation.”
He also questioned the decision to close off so much land and set up two small so-called “First Amendment areas” in an attempt to keep protesters away from the roundup. The pens went unused and were eventually taken down, but not before becoming a flash point for criticism of the government.
“I can see why you’d want to keep people from interfering with that kind of operation,” said Abbey, now a partner in a Las Vegas-based consulting firm, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to close off 600,000 acres of land.” Such stories are nothing new in Nevada, according to Paul Starrs, professor of geography at the University of Nevada, Reno. Battles over who should control vast stretches of public land across the West have boiled up once a generation or so since just before the Civil War.
“This is a return of a story that has had many faces through time,” Starrs said.
If history is any indication, Bundy shouldn’t count on the federal government to drop the matter.
“If you owed a million dollars to the Internal Revenue Service, do you think they would show you any mercy?” Starrs asked...
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