- Suddenly, you went from this cattle issue
to you have somebody in overpass with a scoped,
high-powered rifle pointing it at a federal agent.
They think the federal government doesn't have
the right to own land.
- They just beat the U.S. government.
- We're not going to fall into the same trap
that happened in Bunkerville.
- The Hammonds were convicted of lighting
a fire that spread to federal land
in protest over cattle grazing rights.
- The Hammonds were supposed to report to prison.
The Bundys, they were going to go protect them.
- We need you to bring your arms
and we need you to come to the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge.
- We didn't exactly know who all is there,
how many are there, who do they represent?
- FBI, you can bring your freaking guns
and put a freaking bullet right here.
Put a bullet right here.
I'll take that first bullet, you disgusting, filthy--
- The folks at the refuge said if we can kidnap an FBI agent,
we can end this on our terms.
- They put armed men in a 100-foot
fire tower with sniper rifles.
They took fire practice, practiced with their firearms.
[gunfire]
- Who's going to show up?
And do tensions boil over into one bad moment?
- All you military that's been fighting
for your country overseas,
you can fight for your country right here in America.
Get here! Get some!
- Block that front. Guard the front.
[dramatic music]
- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
♪ ♪
Drug busts,
mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- Get down! Get down!
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it.
- Freeze! - FBI.
- FBI! - Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
[indistinct radio chatter]
What really goes down,
we save that for each other
when we're talking agent-to-agent.
♪ ♪
This is "FBI True."
[twangy guitar music]
♪ ♪
- Saturday morning, good college football weekend.
I was done with my coffee and everything.
I was ready to start watching football because out there,
it starts at 9:00 a.m.
The ASAC calls me and gives me a brief rundown.
Says the people that were in Burns, some of them
went to take over a federal refuge.
So go ahead and pack your bag and start heading that way.
Three hours later, I'm pulling into Bend.
- But while this is going on, while we're
mustering our resources, the Bundys are doing the same.
We have determined who the leadership is.
That is Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy,
Ryan Payne, and LaVoy Finicum.
- We need you to bring your arms
and we need you to come to the Malheur
National Wildlife Refuge.
- If you wait for legal means, you will wait forever.
- They're not allowed to own on the land that it's on.
They're not allowed to have those buildings there.
♪ ♪
That administrative agency shouldn't even exist.
They're unconstitutional.
- I think that you're sitting on seeing
the cusp of a major, a major dynamic shift in this country.
That's why you're seeing the uptick in the saber-rattling
from the feds, because they do not want to let go of this.
They do not intend on losing here.
And we do not intend giving it back to them.
♪ ♪
- They set up at the refuge with the intent
of holding it and expecting that at some time,
someone may try to dislodge them from there.
- And they are looking at a moment,
for a lot of these groups, where they can say,
this is the federal government we're fighting.
I mean, they're looking, they're spoiling for that.
- We didn't exactly know who all is there,
how many are there, who do they represent?
How many are ardent Bundy supporters?
How many are there for their own personal cause?
We're doing the best we can to generate this intelligence.
Our three goals were, one, resolve the standoff
peacefully, return it to the control
of the federal government, and to hold those accountable
who had taken these actions.
All of those were informed by what happened before,
but we had to hold those people accountable
because we couldn't have them walking around saying,
nobody touched me.
- Again-- - We did this and yeah.
- Yeah.
- When that social media call goes out
to the various militias,
you have five major militias show up.
[dramatic music]
And they formed a group called the Pacific
Patriot Network, PPN.
- And these aren't just, you know,
five and six guys that go out and shoot guns on the weekends.
- Mm-hmm. - Right?
These are organized. They have regular trainings.
They're paramilitary.
[guns clicking]
- I don't know any other way to describe what happened
to the Hammond family other than I
don't understand what country we live in
when it comes to that.
- They were playing soldier.
That's why when you see them walking around town, again,
with their bulletproof vests, their long arms,
their sidearms, their extra magazines,
that is intended to intimidate--
- Absolutely. - --and to coerce
and to influence.
- This is what U.S. military generally
are going to be trained in some type of format
with this type of weapon.
- I remember one of my first mornings,
at the Best Western in Burns, going down to breakfast.
Half the hotel was militia and half the hotel
was FBI or Oregon State Police,
all descending upon the breakfast room.
And it was surreal because you would walk down the hallways
and you'd see somebody and they may be all Carhartted up,
long beard, and, you know, both giving each other
the north-south, kind of figuring
out which side you were on.
- They would follow us.
You would leave the command post, head back to the hotel,
and a car would follow you.
There were so many guns in town that the bosses put out
the edict that nobody that is not carrying a weapon
can be out by themselves.
So they have to be escorted by agents.
- Burns became sort of a civil war, a hearts-and-minds
campaign for that populace.
- And it divided a number of families.
- As it still does.
- Yeah. - Yeah, and it still does.
- One evening we're at the gym, the high school gym,
in walks Ammon Bundy.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
His bodyguard.
Several other members.
And they went to the four corners of the gym.
♪ ♪
And they, of course, left a group outside
of armed escorts as well.
And it's a whole community meeting,
and it's, again, the community there are telling the Bundys
and militia members, go home.
You know, we don't want you here anymore.
[cheers and applause]
- People are happy you've raised issues,
but they say it's time for you to leave,
what do you say to that?
- Well, I just barely met with three
ranchers that asked me not to.
And-- and that seems to be, at least
flowing through these doors, has been the message.
- We often would get comments, why don't you arrest them here?
People would be pointing, arrest them now.
Well, this tension would rise almost daily when we'd
see Ammon Bundy in one part of town,
or we'd his brother, Ryan, somewhere else.
And we knew we could arrest them.
But if we did that and left a-- you know, a core of leadership
back on the refuge, that would just
be an escalation point again.
We went through that calculus regularly.
- Daily.
If this, then this. - Right.
- If we do this, does it raise or lower
the temperature on the refuge?
- You take him now, he's got his
rallying cry for those left back at the refuge.
- Exactly. - So we didn't.
[dramatic music]
- So what are some of the fears we're
dealing with at this point?
- When they first got there, we knew
they put armed men in a 100-foot
fire tower with sniper rifles.
You can take a shot from anywhere in a 360-degree
circle and be effective.
They put heavy equipment on one road coming in and out.
On the back side, they put highway barriers
in a sawtooth formation to give them the opportunity to shoot
in multiple directions.
They had armed patrols that were
going around the perimeter.
♪ ♪
They took fire practice and practiced with their firearms.
[gunfire]
They were set up in a defensive perimeter,
in a defensive situation in order to, in their words,
repel any attack that might come.
♪ ♪
- We don't know who's up on those towers,
but we knew their capabilities.
We knew that weapons they had.
We knew that standoff ranges.
♪ ♪
One thing, too, that we heard often out there,
you would hear the phrase, "No free Wacos,"
meaning that they saw that events at Waco had transpired
and the horrific loss of life, but this time around,
they were going to exact as good as they got.
And so it was very much of a warning
of what they intended to do to the federal government
and the FBI.
[hawk screeching]
As the days went on, we wanted to wait them out
with no loss of life, but you realize the more and more
folks, especially from the other side, that could come in,
wild cards. - Right.
- And something-- the longer we went on in trying
to wait them out, it also introduced who's going
to show up and do tensions boil over into one bad moment?
And then you've got something entirely different.
- And it was a very deliberate decision on our part
to use Sheriff Ward
as the intermediary with the militia,
understanding them as we do,
where they recognize the sheriff
is the only recognized law enforcement officer.
Every time he went out to meet with the Bundys,
he would deliver the message.
And it's coming from someone that they
proclaim all the time as the recognized
law enforcement officer.
- And it would send that powerful message
that this isn't Bundy versus the federal government.
This is Bundy against the people of Burns,
against elected law enforcement, the sheriffs,
state and local law enforcement throughout the state.
- And they knew we were doing this, and it was bugging them.
And they were regularly making requests through negotiators
and others to speak with me, to speak with Eric,
to speak with someone in charge.
Well, we refused those requests.
We knew they were looking for a federal presence
to push up against.
- FBI, you can bring your freaking guns
and put a freaking bullet right here.
Put a bullet right here.
I'll take that first bullet, you disgusting,
filthy, freaking-- oh!
- And that was something we weren't going to give.
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- So they took the refuge over.
They had guards set up.
♪ ♪
They had a sniper in the tower.
♪ ♪
They had roadblocks set up.
But they were also encouraging people
from Burns to come visit them.
Come see.
And bring me food, you know?
- [indistinct]. - Yeah.
- There was some kind of like-- - Oh, they--
- They were eating like kings.
- Barbecued pork, man.
And chicken enchiladas.
- Yes!
- They were sending out requests for food and underwear
and you name it.
- So the building out there is not-- it's not a shed.
- No. - They have living quarters.
They have washers and dryers, showers, full kitchens.
- These buildings are very symbolic.
They're a bunch of rock buildings
35 miles away from nowhere, but they're symbolic.
We're holding this.
It's been the federal government's fortress,
their-- their castle.
And we're holding it.
We shall not give it up to them, ever.
- And, you know, the governor is telling me,
we've got to do something.
♪ ♪
The town's nerves are fraying.
- They're not from here.
We don't want them here. We want them to go home.
all: Go home! Go home!
- Militia, go home!
- There's no end in sight to this occupation.
- How long will you stay?
- As long as it's necessary.
- This contest is just beginning.
But we will not stop.
We will not back down.
- We've got to do something.
Time was running out.
- All you military that's been fighting for your country
overseas, you can fight for your country
right here in America.
Get here, get some!
- The folks at the refuge said if we can kidnap an FBI agent,
we can end this on our terms.
- ♪ What are you going to do when the militia ♪
♪ Comes after you, FBI? ♪
♪ ♪
[tense music]
- You can feel the pressure building on both sides.
We're still getting intelligence
from inside the refuge.
♪ ♪
- Pressure was building.
There's an action imperative.
We even start feeling like, we've got to do something.
♪ ♪
- Here we have this video of an interview with Finicum.
- Better dead than in a cell.
- Absolutely.
Dude, would you like to be in the cell?
Nobody wants to live their--
live their life in a cell.
Absolutely I'm not going to live my life in a cell.
- Yeah.
I remember when the--
the team in the command post that was watching social media,
the news, et cetera, brought that to our attention.
And it's a bit chilling, right?
- Absolutely.
- It makes you understand the kind of people
we are dealing with and their ideology
and their motivation.
- Through our negotiations, picked up information
that the leadership was going to head to a nearby town,
a different county, and a county run
by a constitutional sheriff that was
sympathetic to their cause.
♪ ♪
So our fear was that they-- he would allow them to take
over another federal property in his county,
thus dividing us.
We set out on a mission of negotiations
to determine when and who's going to be in the car.
And there's only one way to get there.
You've got to go through a mountain pass.
- Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Ryan Payne, and LaVoy Finicum
all were going to travel to this meeting in John Day.
♪ ♪
And we knew when they were going to leave,
we knew that cars they were going to drive,
and we knew the time that the rally was scheduled.
And with that information, we came up with an operations plan
that would allow us to effect an arrest
of the entire leadership of the occupation in one fell swoop.
We had a team of OSP, the Oregon State Police,
and HRT operators that had specifically
selected the location where this would happen.
And it was in an area in the mountain pass
where there was no cell coverage.
Because you got to remember, these guys
are heading to John Day to meet with sympathetic people.
There's a whole group of sympathetic people
back in Burns.
So we don't want them calling for help
and having both sides of the road
filled with militia members coming to their support.
- And now it's on.
I can remember standing in the command post
as we're watching these cars live
drive down the road.
♪ ♪
And when the car that Ammon Bundy was in
passed the spot where OSP and FBI HRT had staged--
--you can see them pulling out,
and we were able to arrest Ammon Bundy
and the occupants of his car without incident.
♪ ♪
As the second team approached a car that was driven by LaVoy
Finicum, a standoff occurred.
- Who are you? - Who are you?
Who are you?
- And then he engages in a drawn-out conversation with
the officers and agents, basically saying, "You're going
"to have to shoot me.
I'm going to John Day."
- You shoot me.
I'm going to meet the sheriff.
The sheriff is waiting for us.
So you do as you damn well please,
but I'm not going anywhere.
Here I am right there, right there, put a bullet through it.
You understand?
I'm going to go meet the sheriff.
You back down or you kill me now.
- There was a video in the vehicle
that LaVoy Finicum was driving,
so we know exactly what he was saying
at the exact time that our officers
were engaging with him.
They're giving him lawful orders to get out of the car,
to show his hands, and he says, "Nope, I'm not going.
You can go to John Day with me, but I'm not getting out."
- It's going to get real.
You want my blood on your hands?
Get it done because we got people to see and places to go.
- And they did it because there's no service here.
- No, they got it--
- --there's no service here at all.
- We should never have stopped.
We should never have stopped.
- I'm going to keep going.
- Then we're going to have to duck.
- OK. - If we take off--
- And we can get right in back.
- --shoot your tires out?
- Most likely.
- OK, are you ready?
- Well, where's those-- where's the guns?
- They got us stopped.
We can't get around him.
I'm going to go.
You guys ready? - OK. Get down.
- Then you duck down.
Give me that camera.
OK, give me this camera.
Go.
- And I can remember the pit in my stomach
when after about four minutes,
I see the white truck that Finicum's driving dash off.
♪ ♪
- Keep going.
- What about Ammon and those guys?
- We can't get around him.
I'm going to go get help.
- And now you know the chase is on.
♪ ♪
We had set up a roadblock ahead.
The intent was to put spikes on the road
to disable the vehicle, but it happened so fast.
You could just see the white truck
winding through the mountain roads on this video.
And as all of a sudden, the roadblock
comes into view of the camera,
and he's still speeding, high speed toward him.
- Coming up fast.
- Yeah, they are.
- At the last second, you can see him swerve off to the left,
and there is an HRT operator swerving around him,
you know, to try to get out of the way of the speeding car.
And LaVoy Finicum's truck hits a snow bank
at a high rate of speed.
And it looks like, from what we could see,
that he's just plowed right over it.
- Hang on!
- OK, they're shooting.
- Hang on!
- OK, we're here.
- Well, I thought for sure that we had
an agent underneath that car.
♪ ♪
That car came to a hard stop.
In fact, so much so that the camera goes way back and has
to come back again because the car came
to such a dramatic stop.
I see the driver of the car get out.
- Go ahead and shoot me.
[gunfire]
- [shouting] - Go ahead and shoot me.
- And start waving his hands.
You can see him reach for a weapon.
- Stay down, stay down, stay down.
- The third time you see a reach,
then you just see him fall over.
[gunfire]
- Damn it. Are they shooting him?
Did they shoot him?
You assholes.
[gunfire]
Keep your head down.
Stay down.
- Did they kill him?
♪ ♪
- Nobody wants to see a loss of life, but in that instance,
he controlled his destiny.
- Yep, he had a choice to make, and he made his choice.
- Did they kill him?
- I think they did, and they're shooting
over here on this door.
- What's even more disturbing is once LaVoy Finicum made
his decision to not give up,
there's still more people in that car.
- OK.
- And over a period of time, we have
to get them out and ensure we get them safely
and appropriately arrested.
We later found out the officer
we thought had been hit by the white truck was unharmed.
As soon as we affected the arrests, that the negotiators
contacted every telephone number
we had, and I don't know how many
hundred calls you guys made.
- Yeah.
Well over 100 calls in the next couple of hours.
- To anybody that we knew was on the refuge to leave now.
I want to make it very clear, that we'll continue to enforce
federal law here in Harney County,
and anybody who travels to Oregon with the intent
of breaking the law will be held accountable
and will be arrested.
Illegal acts such as occupying federal property
in a violent manner, armed, to deprive employees' or citizens'
access to those facilities will not be tolerated
in the United States.
I've often been asked afterwards,
when we went through this entire 40-plus-day ordeal,
were you successful?
Do you think the way that the refuge occupation was handled
was a success for the FBI?
And I'd have to say yes.
I would say that, did we resolve it peacefully?
We did the best that we could.
We took every effort to resolve this
in a peaceful, bloodless way.
Unfortunately, the bad guys get a choice, too.
- Exactly.
- I wish Mr. Finicum hadn't made the decisions he did.
- Go ahead and shoot me. [gunfire]
- But he's solely responsible for what happened.
♪ ♪
[gunfire]
- And the fact that that was the only death in a situation
that was very tense, no shortage of guns,
no shortage of very strong feelings, was a success.
- It was the first major drawn-out negotiation
barricade with social media.
We learned a lot from that.
And we've been teaching those techniques to state and local
police officers since then.
- But I still believe that Ammon
and Ryan and those at trial with him were held accountable.
They will forever be associated with the occupation at Malheur.
They will always be known as those who actions led
to the death of their friend.
That could have been avoided had they not done these things.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪