A Rifle Behind Every Blade of Grass (1987-1988)
A Rifle Behind Every Blade of Grass (1987-1988)
At least initially, the Grangeland CSR’s central government was determined to supress any information leaking out to the wider world that any kind of organised insurgency was underway in any part of their territories; accordingly, the first few months of killings were treated as simple criminal investigations to be handled at the lowest level possible. In practise, this meant that a squad of insurgents operating across three counties were unlikely to face any co-ordinated effort to bring them to heel.
Additionally, the insurgency itself was at first a nebulous collection of individuals driven by various grievances with authority. There was no guiding hand driving the separate militias who might potentially be captured by the People’s Militia: instead, Grangeland’s always robust rumour machine gradually spread (largely fictitious) stories of successful uprisings against PM officers or particularly unpopular collective managers, driving more and more people to take up arms alongside the initial insurgents as the insurgency gathered momentum.
Furthermore, it is impossible to overstate just how demoralised the People’s Militia squads in charge of containing the insurgency had become by 1987. The cold, unhospitable and impoverished border with Idaho had long been regarded as a punishment posting, and as the CSA’s “police action” within the Centroamerican Workers’ State wound on, a position in the People’s Militia became increasingly seen as a means for high school graduates not qualifying for a university or technical school to evade the draft (imposed for the first time in over forty years in 1984). In addition, the freeze on PM infantryman salaries during the inflation of the early Eighties meant that pay in real terms was about a third lower in 1987 than in 1980. Unsurprisingly, confronted with a shortfall of money and an abundance of surplus military gear and time, many PM units turned either to extracting bribes and kickbacks from civilians or to running drugs and military supplies across the increasingly porous border with the Pacific States of America. Internal People’s Militia records suggest that twenty-one thousand rounds of ammunition and one hundred and fifty motorcycles were recorded as defective and “disposed of” in 1986 alone.
Under these conditions, it is unsurprising that the initiative remained with the insurgents through 1988 and the first half of 1989. Although the Grangeland CSR’s central government, belatedly recognising the threat that the insurgents posed, called in every national agency and organization that could be of conceivable assistance – primarily the Bureau of Internal Security, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Narcotics and the People’s Militia Internal Investigation Department – this largely just added to the chaos. While things seldom got as bad as they did, notoriously, in the “Whitefish Northwest Front Cadre” (an ostensible insurgent cell which, by early 1989, was comprised of two regular People’s Militia agents, one BIS undercover operative, two ATN officers, and one IID officer, and which collapsed when everyone tried to arrest everyone else), the unclear chain of responsibility ensured that these agencies’ operations barely made a dent in the insurgency.
Even with the almost wilful blindness to the rapid deteriorating situation displayed by central government, it had become clear by the time a “sensitive area” was decreed in early 1989 covering most of west Montana that insurgent activity in the area, previously uncoordinated, had coalesced into three distinct groups.
In the areas which had been most visited by fundamentalist Mormon missionaries in the 1970s, hitherto hidden communities were making their presence known. In collectives across Beaverhead and Ravall Counties, non-Mormon workers were told to seek unemployment elsewhere. Any refusal or attempt to notify authorities on the part of the non-Mormons generally proved fatal. Bar owners and general stores which sold spirits were subject to a campaign of harassment, culminating in petrol-bombing, unless they fled the area. Truckers delivering goods to and from the area were routinely subject to roadblocks and searches by armed fundamentalist Mormons, by now referring to themselves as the New Nauvoo Legion, with any alcohol being confiscated and destroyed. By the end of 1988, basic governance in these areas had largely passed into the hands of the NNL, whose wide base of support amongst the large Mormon community in Idaho was setting off alarm bells for the government of the Pacific States of America as well.
As the insurgency wound on, control of the main roads running from the Idaho border to Missoula and Butte became increasingly contested: it was clear that whichever faction ended up able to levy tolls and protection money from the traffic on these would benefit immensely. Multiple biker gangs, operating primarily from Idaho in the 70s but using the increasingly porous border with the CSA from the mid-80s onwards as a secure base to manufacture meth and lie low when necessary, were in an excellent position to exploit this opportunity. John Hale, a middle-aged Idaho chapter leader for a Sacramento-based biker gang, came out on top of the initial struggles between rival gangs in the middle of 1988, negotiating a truce with the remnants of the other gangs. By early 1989, any civilian vehicle driving from Missoula to Butte or to the border only did so at the express permission of “Hale’s Army”, a loose confederation of Idaho bikers whose ranks had been swelled by insurgents on People’s Militia surplus motorcycles.
It was those insurgents operating from the north-west tip of the Grangeland CSR who ultimately amalgamated into the Northwest Front; allowed by the geography of the region to organize in relative peace, they had transformed by late 1988 from an assortment of barely related insurgent cells into a grouping able to pose a genuine threat to the continuance of government in the region. The first car bombing in Kalispell (a vehicle was detonated outside the People’s Militia regional headquarters on 7 September 1988, killing fourteen and wounding forty-eight) marked a new and bloody phase in the NWF’s urban warfare against the authorities. Within six months, the CSR’s de facto control of Kalispell barely extended beyond the concrete barriers surrounding any official building in the area, from which heavily armored PM vehicles (very occasionally) set out on pro forma peace-keeping patrols.
Further out in the countryside, the NWF’s control was less contested. As 1988 wound on, virtually every farming or mining collective manager received a visit from two or three non-descript men requesting positions at the collective in question. The consequences of a refusal rapidly became clear to these managers. The positions were primarily no-show jobs, intended to provide a measure of semi-legitimate income to the insurgent in question. However, even at this early stage, several NWF operatives requested a particular position within a collective which would in later years become essential to communication across the NWF as a whole. Ironically, the CSA’s central government had provided the tools to do so.
At least initially, the Grangeland CSR’s central government was determined to supress any information leaking out to the wider world that any kind of organised insurgency was underway in any part of their territories; accordingly, the first few months of killings were treated as simple criminal investigations to be handled at the lowest level possible. In practise, this meant that a squad of insurgents operating across three counties were unlikely to face any co-ordinated effort to bring them to heel.
Additionally, the insurgency itself was at first a nebulous collection of individuals driven by various grievances with authority. There was no guiding hand driving the separate militias who might potentially be captured by the People’s Militia: instead, Grangeland’s always robust rumour machine gradually spread (largely fictitious) stories of successful uprisings against PM officers or particularly unpopular collective managers, driving more and more people to take up arms alongside the initial insurgents as the insurgency gathered momentum.
Furthermore, it is impossible to overstate just how demoralised the People’s Militia squads in charge of containing the insurgency had become by 1987. The cold, unhospitable and impoverished border with Idaho had long been regarded as a punishment posting, and as the CSA’s “police action” within the Centroamerican Workers’ State wound on, a position in the People’s Militia became increasingly seen as a means for high school graduates not qualifying for a university or technical school to evade the draft (imposed for the first time in over forty years in 1984). In addition, the freeze on PM infantryman salaries during the inflation of the early Eighties meant that pay in real terms was about a third lower in 1987 than in 1980. Unsurprisingly, confronted with a shortfall of money and an abundance of surplus military gear and time, many PM units turned either to extracting bribes and kickbacks from civilians or to running drugs and military supplies across the increasingly porous border with the Pacific States of America. Internal People’s Militia records suggest that twenty-one thousand rounds of ammunition and one hundred and fifty motorcycles were recorded as defective and “disposed of” in 1986 alone.
Under these conditions, it is unsurprising that the initiative remained with the insurgents through 1988 and the first half of 1989. Although the Grangeland CSR’s central government, belatedly recognising the threat that the insurgents posed, called in every national agency and organization that could be of conceivable assistance – primarily the Bureau of Internal Security, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Narcotics and the People’s Militia Internal Investigation Department – this largely just added to the chaos. While things seldom got as bad as they did, notoriously, in the “Whitefish Northwest Front Cadre” (an ostensible insurgent cell which, by early 1989, was comprised of two regular People’s Militia agents, one BIS undercover operative, two ATN officers, and one IID officer, and which collapsed when everyone tried to arrest everyone else), the unclear chain of responsibility ensured that these agencies’ operations barely made a dent in the insurgency.
Even with the almost wilful blindness to the rapid deteriorating situation displayed by central government, it had become clear by the time a “sensitive area” was decreed in early 1989 covering most of west Montana that insurgent activity in the area, previously uncoordinated, had coalesced into three distinct groups.
In the areas which had been most visited by fundamentalist Mormon missionaries in the 1970s, hitherto hidden communities were making their presence known. In collectives across Beaverhead and Ravall Counties, non-Mormon workers were told to seek unemployment elsewhere. Any refusal or attempt to notify authorities on the part of the non-Mormons generally proved fatal. Bar owners and general stores which sold spirits were subject to a campaign of harassment, culminating in petrol-bombing, unless they fled the area. Truckers delivering goods to and from the area were routinely subject to roadblocks and searches by armed fundamentalist Mormons, by now referring to themselves as the New Nauvoo Legion, with any alcohol being confiscated and destroyed. By the end of 1988, basic governance in these areas had largely passed into the hands of the NNL, whose wide base of support amongst the large Mormon community in Idaho was setting off alarm bells for the government of the Pacific States of America as well.
As the insurgency wound on, control of the main roads running from the Idaho border to Missoula and Butte became increasingly contested: it was clear that whichever faction ended up able to levy tolls and protection money from the traffic on these would benefit immensely. Multiple biker gangs, operating primarily from Idaho in the 70s but using the increasingly porous border with the CSA from the mid-80s onwards as a secure base to manufacture meth and lie low when necessary, were in an excellent position to exploit this opportunity. John Hale, a middle-aged Idaho chapter leader for a Sacramento-based biker gang, came out on top of the initial struggles between rival gangs in the middle of 1988, negotiating a truce with the remnants of the other gangs. By early 1989, any civilian vehicle driving from Missoula to Butte or to the border only did so at the express permission of “Hale’s Army”, a loose confederation of Idaho bikers whose ranks had been swelled by insurgents on People’s Militia surplus motorcycles.
It was those insurgents operating from the north-west tip of the Grangeland CSR who ultimately amalgamated into the Northwest Front; allowed by the geography of the region to organize in relative peace, they had transformed by late 1988 from an assortment of barely related insurgent cells into a grouping able to pose a genuine threat to the continuance of government in the region. The first car bombing in Kalispell (a vehicle was detonated outside the People’s Militia regional headquarters on 7 September 1988, killing fourteen and wounding forty-eight) marked a new and bloody phase in the NWF’s urban warfare against the authorities. Within six months, the CSR’s de facto control of Kalispell barely extended beyond the concrete barriers surrounding any official building in the area, from which heavily armored PM vehicles (very occasionally) set out on pro forma peace-keeping patrols.
Further out in the countryside, the NWF’s control was less contested. As 1988 wound on, virtually every farming or mining collective manager received a visit from two or three non-descript men requesting positions at the collective in question. The consequences of a refusal rapidly became clear to these managers. The positions were primarily no-show jobs, intended to provide a measure of semi-legitimate income to the insurgent in question. However, even at this early stage, several NWF operatives requested a particular position within a collective which would in later years become essential to communication across the NWF as a whole. Ironically, the CSA’s central government had provided the tools to do so.
