On a decaying former Air Force base, antigovernment ‘sovereign citizens’ are battling the few remaining locals for control BY RYAN LENZ | ILLUSTRATION BY SUNNY PAULK 14 splc intelligence report
AP IMAGES/THE BILL<strong>IN</strong>GS GAZETTE/LARRY MAYER ST. MARIE, Mont. — Howling winds sweep across the high plains. Weeds spring up in gravel streets that bend through the empty neighborhoods that once housed a vibrant community of airmen at the forefront of the Cold War. Only the sight of an occasional human dispels the atmosphere of total abandonment. In the early 1960s, what would later be dubbed St. Marie grew up around the Glasgow Air Force Base, one of dozens of launch points for Strategic Air Command bombers. But when the Defense Department shuttered the base for a final time in 1976, after an earlier closing between 1968 and 1971, its military residents were shipped elsewhere. A population that once numbered over 7,000 people dwindled to a few hundred, infrastructure crumbled, vacant houses began to fall apart, and the settlement 50 miles from the Canadian border became a near ghost town. There were efforts to repurpose the once-thriving community — by the military at first, then a private developer who sought to create a military retirement village, then another developer who ended in bankruptcy — but they each failed for reasons that remain hotly disputed among today’s population of just 264 people. And then came the attempt that is still roiling St. Marie. Three years ago, much to the consternation and bewilderment of those who lived there, odd signs began to appear around the bleak remains of the community, posted on homes, the dilapidated officers club, the former school and more. “NO TRESPASS,” the posters warned. “YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED, THAT THE OWNER OR TENANT OF THIS PROPERTY REQUIRES ALL PUBLIC OFFICIALS, AGENTS, OR PERSON(S) TO ABIDE BY ‘THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND,’ THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE RATIFIED AMENDMENTS THERETO. … ALLEGED ZON<strong>IN</strong>G OR CODE NON- COMPLIANCES DO NOT ESTABLISH CONSTITUTIONAL REASONS FOR ENTER<strong>IN</strong>G THIS PROPERTY. “VIOLATORS WILL BE TREATED AS <strong>IN</strong>TRUDERS.” The language, with its insistent references to the Constitution, didn’t sound like a normal no-trespassing notice. Some attributed the posters to the recent appearance of the Montana Aviation Research Company, a subsidiary of Boeing that maintains one of only a handful of runways long enough to land the now-discontinued space shuttle. The firm was engaged in top-secret research, and residents who lived among some 1,000 empty buildings thought that might explain the forbidding signs. But then they remembered how three mysterious men had recently appeared in a green pickup truck, driving up and down St. Marie’s semi-abandoned streets for unknown reasons. They initially had been taken for just another odd set of visitors, maybe wildcatters or venture capitalists hoping to capitalize on the extraordinary oil boom happening just to the east in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation. They were, it turns out, something more than that. Enter the Sovereigns Nick Murnion, the Valley County attorney, remembers it well. “They showed up and paid the back taxes on 400 condo units,” Murnion told the Intelligence Report in November. “We had no dealings until they showed up, speculating on these properties and trying to make a quick buck.” Those units were just part of the town’s enormous inventory of empty and blighted buildings, which include a church, a high school, the officers club, a Strange signage: No-trespass notices citing the Constitution were one of the early signs that something odd was happening in St. Marie, Mont. Residents soon learned that two “sovereign citizens” were behind the warnings. bowling alley and more. Huge numbers of the properties have been abandoned or are in bankruptcy proceedings, and many were years delinquent in their taxes. Under Montana law, similar to that of many states, when a property’s taxes are delinquent, the county can impose a tax lien on it to prevent its sale without the tax bill being settled. Third parties are allowed to buy the tax lien by paying back taxes — a process known as “tax assignment” — and then, if the original owners can’t reimburse them within a set period, they are given clear title to the property. It all took Pat Kelly by surprise. spring 2016 15
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