A Far-Right Militia's Far-Fetched Plot Draws Some Serious Attention
"The logic of their plan, if you can call it logic, was that by killing
local law enforcement people, the state of Montana would have no
choice but to send in the National Guard," Sheriff Dupont said.
"Then they hoped to wipe out the National Guard. And then they
hoped that NATO troops would be sent in and that would trigger an all-out revolution."
The New York Times
March 3, 2002
By BLAINE HARDEN
KALISPELL, Mont., March 2 - As
its secrets began to spill out here
this week, Project 7 sounded
suspiciously like a Monty Python
sketch.
A dogcatcher was on its list of 26 local
law enforcement officials who needed
killing. The chief intelligence gatherer
for the furtive far-right militia cell was a cleaning woman, according to Sheriff
James R. Dupont of Flathead County, who himself made the hit list of Project 7.
The militia's name comes from the Montana license plate numbering system,
which uses the numeral 7 to identify residents of Flathead.
The cleaning woman, Tracy Brockway, 32, was having an affair with the leader of
Project 7 in a house bristling with 35 guns and thousands of rounds of
ammunition, the sheriff said. He identified the militia's leader as David Earl
Burgert, 38, whose last known job was renting snowmobiles, who could often be
heard carping about judges on a local right-wing radio station and who has a long
history of being annoying. At Christmas, when his neighbors lined streets with
paper bags containing lighted candles, Mr. Burgert mounted his snowmobile and
snuffed them out.
"If you picture a schoolyard bully who has a big mouth, that would be Burgert,"
said Bruce Parish, a detective in the sheriff's office.
This far northwest corner of Montana, along with the
nearby northern neck of Idaho, has for decades been
incubating right-wing militias, conspiracy theorists and
white supremacists. Many of them have demonstrated an
outsize appetite for military hardware and survival gear.
Kalispell (population 17,000) might seem an unlikely
staging ground for militias bearing grudges. It is the
county seat of Flathead County, one of the fastest-growing
communities in Montana and a pristine outdoor
destination that includes half of Glacier National Park and
more than a million acres of mountain wilderness. The
town is near the northern end of Flathead Lake, the
largest freshwater lake in the West and one of the cleanest
lakes in the world.
Yet a decades-old decline in an economy based on logging and mining, combined
with the rise of a New West culture dominated by affluent professionals and
retirees who go outside not to work but to recreate, has left many local people
confused, resentful and looking for someone to blame. Project 7 appears to have set
a new standard, both for zany scapegoating and for industrial-strength firepower.
"This is the weirdest, most violence-prone thing we have seen in Montana for a long
time," said Ken Toole, a Democratic state senator who runs the Montana Human
Rights Network, which studies right- wing movements in Montana and Idaho.
"There is a comic element to these people," Mr. Toole said. "But it washes away
pretty quickly because of the guns."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms are taking it all seriously.
On Friday, after a long meeting with the county sheriff and the police chief in
Kalispell, the F.B.I. took charge of the conspiracy investigation into possible links
that Mr. Burgert may have had with other right- wing groups. The A.T.F. took
charge of tracking all the weapons.
After a tip early last month from a Project 7 defector, the sheriff's department
found two trailers packed with 30,000 rounds of ammunition, a broad array of
small arms, body armor, pipe bombs, exploding booby traps, bomb-making
chemicals and a vast inventory of survivalist gear and military rations.
"I think it would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy all that stuff
at once," Detective Parish said. "So it is very possible that it was built up over
several years."
What Project 7 was gearing up for, said the defector who tipped off the sheriff, was
a round of assassinations in early summer. The sheriff's department discovered a
list of what appeared to be targets that included local judges, the county
prosecutor, the Kalispell chief of police, members of a police swat team and the
dogcatcher.
Some of the targets worked at a police station in the nearby town of Whitefish,
where Mrs. Brockway was employed. The sheriff said she had apparently sifted
through trash baskets, gleaning information about where some officers filled their
prescriptions and how others struggled with their weight. The sheriff's department
found information sheets detailing her discoveries.
"The logic of their plan, if you can call it logic, was that by killing local law
enforcement people, the state of Montana would have no choice but to send in the
National Guard," Sheriff Dupont said. "Then they hoped to wipe out the National
Guard. And then they hoped that NATO troops would be sent in and that would
trigger an all-out revolution."
The sheriff and Detective Parish rolled their eyes incredulously as they explained
what Project 7 hoped to accomplish. They suggested that Mr. Burgert was a
blowhard who had bitten off more than he could chew.
Investigators from the sheriff's department say they have identified four or perhaps
five local people who were involved in the plot. Two of them, Mr. Burgert and Mrs.
Brockway, are in custody. Two of the others have told investigators that while they
knew about Project 7, they had no intention of killing anyone.
Sheriff Dupont learned of the plot in early February, after Mr. Burgert disappeared
for nearly a month. Mr. Burgert's wife reported him mysteriously absent on Jan. 9.
His pickup truck was found near a local river, with his fishing pole. His wife hinted
to the sheriff's department that maybe he had drowned.
The sheriff's department, though, smelled a rat. Mr. Burgert had no hook on his
fishing line and his tackle box, deputies said, was filled with lures that no
respectable Montana fisherman would ever use.
On Feb. 7, Mr. Burgert, who had become a fugitive after failing to show up for a
hearing on charges that he punched a sheriff's deputy in early 2001, was spotted
coming out of Mrs. Brockway's home.
Her husband, Alan Brockway, also a suspect in the militia plot, left Montana for
Israel several months ago. "The information we have is that he left because of the
affair between his wife and Mr. Burgert," Detective Parish said.
After Mr. Burgert was spotted, sheriff's deputies staked out the house. When he
and Mrs. Brockway drove off in a heavy snowstorm, deputies gave chase. Mr.
Burgert slid off the road, but fled into the woods, carrying a rifle. After trackers
found him and after an all-night standoff, during which Mr. Burgert held the gun
under is chin and threatened to shoot himself, he surrendered.
All this happened in early February, which was when local investigators first got
wind of Project 7 and the assassination plot. The sheriff's office kept the lid on its
investigation, as computer experts from the state police tried - and, so far, failed
- to crack encrypted information found on Mr. Burgert's home computer.
The lid came off on Tuesday, when Mrs. Brockway went to court for a bond hearing.
On the witness stand, she announced the existence of Project 7 and local reporters
began asking questions. Sheriff Dupont and other local law enforcement officials
quickly decided to reveal the inquiry.
"The real scary part of this whole deal is, what if we had not got onto Mr. Burgert?"
the sheriff asked in an interview on Friday evening in his office. "Could he have
recruited enough people to execute the plan?"
Answering his own question, the sheriff said he doubted Mr. Burgert's
conspiratorial skills. "It was always his mouth that got him in trouble," the sheriff
said.
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