FBI Agents Weren't Posing as Militia, Ex-Fire Chief Clarifies
An allegation that undercover FBI agents were caught posing as militia members in southeast Oregon splashed around the Internet this week, but the story’s purported source says he made no such claim.
Chris Briels, who recently resigned his position as Harney County fire chief, says Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, whose Wednesday
press release sparked
concern about a throwback to FBI infiltration and dirty tricks against activists, must have misunderstood him.
Fiore’s release said Briels had determined “men posing as ‘militia’ were the FBI.” Briels tells U.S. News he did indeed catch undercover FBI agents in small-town Burns, near where armed protesters are occupying a federal wildlife refuge, but that they were not posing as militia.
“They weren’t posing as anything other than dishonest people,” he says. “They were perceived as militia by the locals, but they weren’t posing out there with a shirt that said ‘I’m militia.’”
The refuge takeover that began Jan. 2 has strained Briels’ friendships in small-town Burns, prompting him to keep an eye out for trouble. He serves on a committee set up by activists, and a friend suggested he investigate strangers assumed to be militiamen near a vacant National Guard armory.
The people he found at the armory drove off in three vehicles, one of which he followed to a nearby McDonald’s. Two men in the black SUV identified themselves as businessmen named “Chuck” and “Mike” who were looking to open shop in the town, an explanation Briels refused to accept.
Briels called local authorities, who he says arrived later to the scene. A sheriff’s deputy, he says, took a phone call and then explained the men were undercover FBI agents.
Though Briels has poured cold water on the tale attributed to him, the FBI’s Portland field office would not address whether or not undercover agents are being used to address the refuge occupiers, who have invited ranchers’ rights supporters from across the country to join them.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...ent-posing-as-militia-ex-fire-chief-clarifies