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Captain
Barry Caver
on the Republic of Texas Standoff
Part 1of 2
by Captain Barry Caver
with Robert Nieman
It
all started in the early 1990s when Richard McLaren began to organize
a group of anti-government extremists in an effort to overthrow the
state government. In his twisted mind, he believed that Texas had been
illegally annexed into the Union in 1845. Thus, Texas was not a state
in the United States but an independent, sovereign nation.
By 1995, McLaren
was representing himself as the ambassador and general counsel of the
provisional government of the Republic of Texas (ROT).
By March 1996,
he had become so brazen that he declared that the so-called independent
nation was demanding control of all the original land owned by the Republic
of Texas. This included half of New Mexico and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado,
and Wyoming.
In an effort
to carry out his warped plan, McLaren began a paper war in which he
flooded local courthouses with self-styled legal documents, filing liens
against the personal possessions of government officials and others.
This was a scam he had learned from the Freemen in Montana.
Joe
and Margaret Rowe's Ranch
©2004 Capt. Barry Cave
The
West Texas desert around Fort Davis can be—and usually is—quiet.
The quiet is one of the reasons so many people love the sparsely settled
area. That calm was shattered in the early morning hours of Sunday,
April 27, 1997, when two men and one woman suddenly attacked the home
of Joe and Margaret Rowe. One of them fired several shots, striking
Joe in the left arm; then all three stormed the house, taking them hostage.
 Click
Recorder for 911 Call
made to report the attack on Rowe Ranch by
Republic of Texas separatists
MP3 Format Size: 489 Kb
Due to size, this audio recommended
for cable or DSL connections only
The ROT attackers
called the Rowes “prisoners of war.” The state of Texas
termed the action aggravated kidnapping and attempted capital murder.
Jeff Davis County Sheriff Steve Bailey contacted Captain Barry Caver,
commander of Company E in Midland, and requested that the Texas Rangers
assume command of the incident. At the time, Captain Caver had been
the commander of Company E for about six months. At thirty-nine years
old, he was the youngest Texas Ranger captain in the history of the
Department of Public Safety.
Thus began a potential deadly standoff between the Republic of Texas
and the state of Texas.
On
Sunday, June 27, 2004, I had the privilege of sitting down with Captain
Barry Caver. He was in Nacogdoches to address the annual convention
of the East Texas Peace Officers Association. During our visit, Captain
Caver shared with me his experience in dealing with the Republic of
Texas standoff. He has graciously allowed me to share our interview.
CAPTAIN CAVER: I’m Barry Caver, Captain of Company E, Texas Ranger
in Midland.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
When did you first become aware of the Republic of Texas?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Just of their existence, probably the latter part of 1996. We started
hearing rumors of some of the things they were doing, some of their
ideas and beliefs they had. We heard that there was a fairly large faction
of them in Fort Davis and the Odessa area, and we started trying to
monitor their activities and to figure out what they were doing, where
they intended going with their beliefs, and so forth.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
What were some of those core beliefs?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They didn’t believe that Texas was legally annexed in 1845 when
we entered the Union as a state. They wanted to revert the state of
Texas back to the Republic of Texas and to claim trillions of dollars
for their own use to further their goals and objectives.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did they claim the Mexican Texas that goes all the way up to Wyoming?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They never did really stipulate as far as some of the other states,
but they were basically making their claim within the state of Texas
itself—at least within the confines of the state of Texas. To
my knowledge, they never did talk about any other states.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Coming on the heels of Waco and Oklahoma City, did you consider them
a militant organization?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Early on, no. They were fairly new to us, and we weren’t real
sure what their beliefs were or what kind of violent tendencies that
they may have. We were obviously a little cautious about what to expect.
We were playing it by ear, really.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
During my reading on this and trying to do a little research, I see
that they [ROT—the Republic of Texas] talk about the Montana standoff
with the Freemen. These Freemen had held classes for possibly hundreds
of militants from states all over, and they were running a bogus money
scheme. Were you aware of this—that there were tie-ins? If not,
when did you become aware?
Bogus
Republic of Texas Currency Warrant
Courtesy Texas DPS ©2004
CAPTAIN CAVER:
I was not aware of it at that particular point in time. Later on, after
this incident happened and we finally resolved it, I found out after
interviewing some of the people involved that, yes, they did receive
some training up there as to some of the schemes that they had and scams.
To get something for nothing is what it amounted to.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
What were their [ROT] common courts and what did they hope to accomplish
with them?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
I believe to scare or intimidate people into thinking or complying with
some of the things that they were trying, some of the scams they were
trying to pull. You know, they may get stopped on the side of the road
by Highway Patrol and may not have a driver’s license or registration
on their car. The officer would take enforcement action against them.
Afterward, the officers would get letters in the mail saying they were
being sued in this common law court. If they didn’t appear, then
they were going to be held in contempt and fined hundreds or even thousands
of dollars. They [ROT] would file liens against that particular officer’s
personal property. So it was just a way to further their scam and scheme
of getting what they were trying to get.
Click Recorder for McLaren's Warning About
Law Enforcement Traffic Stops
MP3 Format Size: 44 Kb
ROBERT NIEMAN:
They were filing all these bogus liens and whatnot against not only
officers but civilians and any one else, were they not?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Anybody that got in their way or tried to prevent them from furthering
what they were trying to do. Then they would put this fear and intimidation
into them and file these bogus lawsuits.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did they get involved with counterfeiting?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Yes, they did. About the time we were getting involved with them, they
started. [They got] a computer and a color printer and created their
own treasury warrants on the state of Texas, but it would say “Republic
of Texas” at the top. They actually tried to cash some of these,
and they would even pay some of their bills with them. And, of course,
people receiving them. . . . They looked authentic: they looked like
the real thing. If you read it, you’d know that it wasn’t
a good document. But they tried every way they could to use this. Again,
to further their whole organization.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
And people working in, say, a convenience store wouldn’t necessarily
pay as close attention as they could.
CAPTAIN CAVER:
That’s right.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did they counterfeit anything else such as warranty deeds, quit-claim
deeds, contracts, or anything like that?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Not that I’m aware of.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Representative Will Harnett of Dallas sponsored a bill making it illegal
to file bogus liens. Were you familiar with this when it happened?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
I could be wrong, but I’m thinking that most all the laws that
we deal with now as a result of this came after this particular standoff
ended. There were several laws passed in the month of May after this
ended.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
McLaren was impeached as an ambassador of the Republic of Texas by another
unit. Of course he ignored this impeachment, but I understand that the
Republic of Texas was not one central organization: that there were
several splinters of it. Could you describe the different splinters
and different philosophies?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
At that particular point in time, I knew of about three splinters: the
one that McLaren ran, there was another one out of Odessa, and then
there was one around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Basically, what you
have are different groups that don’t like the other groups telling
them what to do. It may have all started as one central group, but because
of the organizational chart or the structure or who was president and
who wasn’t type of thing, they decided to split off on their own
so they could be the king of their own little kingdom. To my knowledge,
they all had basically the same beliefs as far as anti-government sentiment
and that sort of thing. As far as I know, that’s the only reason
that they had the different splinter groups.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Were they all militant?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They were all anti-government. I’m not sure you would call them
militant at that point.
Republic
of Texas Brochure, License Plate
and Fake "Texas Rangers" Badge
ROBERT
NIEMAN: And of course I’m assuming you were watching all three
groups—or the two in your area—and I’m assuming Company
B was in Dallas.
CAPTAIN CAVER:
We had a lot of intelligence from the Dallas area. They [ROT] were being
monitored whether they knew it or not.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
When was first time that you were aware of their threatened use of violence
and force to get what they wanted?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They made several threats against Dan Morales (at that time Texas attorney
general), and they made several threats against Governor George W. Bush,
but they never really followed through with any of the things. So I
guess the first actual violence that occurred was the Fort Davis standoff
where they kidnapped Mr. And Mrs. Rowe. Up to that point, it was just
verbal threats. They never carried out any of them.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
What was their reasoning for kidnapping and attacking the Rowes?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They accused the Rowes of being spies for the sheriff, which in essence
I guess they were. They [the Rowes] were feeding the sheriff information
because they lived out there amongst them [ROT]. They all lived there
in the Davis Mountain resort area. If they saw any suspicious activity,
they reported it to the sheriff.
McLaren was inundated
with supporters. They would come out there on the weekends to train,
do some shooting, and that sort of thing. And they did a lot of trespassing
on other people’s land to do their shooting. The Rowes would feed
the sheriff this information. I think that was the main reason they
[ROT] decided to kidnap them.
The other reason:
there’s only one road leading into this resort area, and the first
residence on this road off the highway belonged to a border patrol agent.
The second residence was the Rowes, and from a military logistics standpoint,
it was up on a hill. Again, there’s only one road in and one road
out. You could see forever: it [the Rowe home] was a two-story house.
Logistically, from that standpoint, it was a just a good place to take
over to control everything that occurred within that resort. So to me,
those were the two main reasons that they decided to do that.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
This is Jeff Davis County and Steve Bailey was the sheriff. Did he call
you immediately?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
About February of 1997, Steve came to see me in my office in Midland.
He had been receiving a lot of these threatening documents. He actually
had some meetings with McLaren face to face. They [ROT] didn’t
like Bailey, for whatever reason. Steve knew they were drumming up support.
It seemed like, as time went on, their threats got a little bit more
escalated. Steve was getting concerned that if something did happen—if
they did try to do some of the things that they were talking about doing—he
knew that he and his department could not handle it.
Jeff Davis County
is the second largest county in the state of Texas [2,258 square miles]
and there’s the sheriff and a chief deputy. That’s it: a
two-man department. They had a couple of non-paid reserve deputies that
helped. He [Steve] knew right away that he couldn’t handle it.
So he came to me and asked that, if something happened, would I be willing
to assume control or take command of the situation? And I said sure.
I called my boss
in Austin—at the time, Chief Bruce Casteel—and visited with
him about it. He agreed as well: we’d take control of it.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
The assistant chief was Gene Powell. He was your predecessor, I believe,
in Midland? Had Gene had any dealings with this group?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
No. I think they had been there during Gene’s tenure, but it hadn’t
escalated to the point that it did until after I got there.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
What day did this kidnapping happen?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
April 27, 1997.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did you put anything special—not necessarily just for them but
for anybody—with the April 19th date, the anniversary of Waco
and Oklahoma City? Were law enforcement in general and the Rangers in
particular taking any special note of that date?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Not with this group, no. We had no idea that they were going to revert
to this type of violence. It was just all of a sudden. Again, other
than the verbal and the paper threats that they had made, we had no
indication that they would actually follow through with anything like
that.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did you take it very seriously when they were making their threats?
They had all kinds of clichés like: “If you’re not
willing to die for your freedom, you don’t deserve it,”
“We will fire upon them; a civil war will erupt,” and all
that kind of stuff before the kidnapping.
CAPTAIN CAVER:
We didn’t put a whole lot of faith in what they were claiming.
I mean, it was what we call a paper war. It was just an obvious threat
on paper to try to get what they wanted to accomplish without actually
having to follow through with any of it. We took it with a grain of
salt, considered the source, and didn’t really take it too seriously
at that time.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Around this April 19 date—it’s not the exact date, but in
that area—I read where (and it all turned out to be innocent)
but a truckload of heavy weapons—.50-caliber machine guns, 81-millimeter
mortar and ammunition, and a truckload of four unarmed U.S. Air Force
missiles—disappeared. Were you alerted to that?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
We definitely were made aware of that. We were putting our feelers out.
Obviously, all the Highway Patrol was looking for the vehicles involved.
We were putting that into context with the Oklahoma City bombing, obviously,
but we never really linked it with ROT, to speak of, at that particular
point in time.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
And of course it all turned out innocently. One driver’s satellite
system went out, and the other one I don’t remember, but it was
all innocent.
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Right.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
McLaren was still making these wacky statements, like to the Houston
Chronicle, that he had ordered all federal judges, legislators,
IRS agents, etc. around the state to be arrested. But once the kidnapping
happens, they are locked in. You’ve been brought in to head it,
but do you remember offhand when the sheriff notified you of the kidnapping?
Click
Recorder for McLaren's Statement About
Attorney General and Warrants
MP3 Format Size: 86Kb
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Actually, my Ranger, David Duncan, in Alpine called me at my house to
tell me what had taken place. I immediately called my lieutenant and
all the Company E Rangers, asked them to pack their equipment and clothing
and head toward Fort Davis. I then called Chief Casteel to tell him
what had taken place. I then contacted Highway Patrol Captain David
Baker in Midland. We made arrangements to get with our helicopter pilot,
and we flew down there to get a jump on everybody else. We wanted to
figure out what we had as quick as we could; to determine what other
manpower, equipment, and anything else we were going to need to handle
the situation.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did you ever consider these religious zealots or just militants? The
reason I’m asking this question is, like at Waco and as far back
as Masada and the Jews and the Romans, religious zealots don’t
mean to come out alive. History has proven over and over [that] they
mean to die. Did you ever look at these people as religious-zealot types?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
No, religion was never mentioned that I can recall. You hear of all
kinds of fanatics—anti-government-type fanatics—that you
know. After this thing happened, I was very concerned of the fact that
they may want to die as martyrs to further their cause. So yeah, that
was in the back of my mind later on.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
You’ve got all of Company E there. Eventually, there are going
to be Rangers from just about all over the state there at one time or
another.
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Right.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Who made the first contact with McLaren?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
I guess you could say I did. I made first contact with two of the hostage-takers
initially: Richard Keyes and Greg Paulson. I eventually talked to McLaren
that same day. He denied any knowledge of what happened. He would only
agree that the kidnappers were some of his people, ROT members, but
he wouldn’t take credit for actually ordering the kidnapping to
take place.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Did the FBI and ATF get involved?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
The FBI was there. I don’t think we had any ATF agents there.
The FBI knew of ROT before this particular incident happened because
McLaren had been filed on in federal court in Pecos with Judge Lucious
Bunton. Because of some of the bogus lawsuits that he [McLaren] had
filed, he was prosecuted in federal court. Judge Bunton told him to
cease and desist filing any more of these types of things. He [McLaren]
disregarded Judge Bunton’s order and, as a result, the feds actually
had a contempt of court order against McLaren when this thing happened.
They [FBI] were very hesitant and didn’t want to take any enforcement
action at that time because of the ghost of Ruby Ridge and Waco. They
did not want to see another type of incident happen like that again.
They were going to wait until there was some clear-cut, substantial
violation of the law before they took any action.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
So they didn’t come in and try to take over?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
They did not. As a matter of fact, it was just the opposite. They were
there willing and able to assist me in any way that they could. But
what was ironic about it later on, Janet Reno, the U.S. Attorney General,
found out about it, and she basically ordered all the federal agents
to leave, even though they did not. I’m glad that they did not.
There was a small
contingent of FBI agents that stayed there. A lot of Border Patrol agents
were there to help us. It was obvious to us that Janet Reno didn’t
want any part of that, either. Knowing that the federal government had
already received two black eyes for Waco and Ruby Ridge, she couldn’t
stand another hit like that.
There were some
reservists. I’m not sure if they were National Guard or State
Guard. There were some folks out of Fort Bliss. The U.S. Army supplied
us with Black Hawk helicopters. They served us basically as a support
role to provide us equipment and that sort of thing.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Describe the Texas Republic’s “embassy.”
CAPTAIN CAVER:
It was about a 1950s model travel trailer that had been added onto with
a little lean-to shack. I guess that’s what made this whole thing
so absurd. It didn’t help their legitimacy any when you’ve
got an ambassador to the Republic of Texas and this is the embassy in
some rundown shack. I mean, I’ve been in deer camps in East Texas
that were a lot better and nicer than this place.
Republic
of Texas "Embassy"
©2004 Capt. Barry Caver
ROBERT NIEMAN:
They were demanding the release of two prisoners that had been charged
with a misdemeanor. Who were the two prisoners, and what were the charges?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
The only one I can think of offhand is a lady called JoAnn Turner, who
was also held somewhere around Austin for the same type of violation
that McLaren had done. She had also filed some bogus liens against some
folks, and she to was held in contempt of court for not honoring the
judges’ orders.
[Oh,] the other
guy was Robert Scheidt. He was the person that was arrested by Sheriff
Bailey on the morning that this thing happened. He had left the Davis
Mountain resort area. Sheriff Bailey had made a traffic stop on him
and arrested him for some minor traffic violations: no insurance, unlawfully
carrying a pistol and some illegal knives. And they were demanding his
release as well.
Click Recorder for Statement About
ROT Lieutenant as "POW"
MP3 Format Size: 55Kb
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Before we proceed with this: You had a headquarters set up, and later
you moved it. Can you describe the first one, why you moved it, and
the second headquarters?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
The first command post was set up at that first residence I mentioned
earlier that belonged to a U.S. Border Patrol agent by the name of Johnny
Wofford. Johnny agreed to let us use his little bunkhouse area and anything
else that he had there that we could use. We set up there because, again,
this was the first residence within the resort, and the next residence
was the Rowe residence, which was about a half a mile away. So this
was the closest place we could get to without putting ourselves in harm’s
way and also had telephone, electricity, and that sort of thing.
 Texas
Ranger Command Post
©2004 Capt. Barry Caver
The ROT members
retreated back some eight or ten miles back into the resort. We decided
we needed to move closer because we didn’t want to take the chance
of them kidnapping some other innocent person along the way to where
they were going back into the resort. We also didn’t want to get
too close: that would endanger our personnel as well. So we moved on
up to the Davis Mountain Volunteer Fire Department and took over a second
command post there. We moved everything from the first one to the second
one. This happened on Monday. The SWAT team arrived with equipment,
and we were able to determine it was safe to move our personnel without
endangering anybody, so we moved the next day.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
Since the Rangers don’t have a SWAT team, what division would
they have come from?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Yes, this was DPS SWAT team out of Austin.
ROBERT NIEMAN:
In your first interview [with ROT members], you talked to McLaren briefly.
What demands did he make in that first negotiation?
CAPTAIN CAVER:
Really, they didn’t have many demands, which was awfully strange,
because when I got there, I talked with Sheriff Bailey and Ranger Duncan
and said, “Well has anybody made contact with them to see what’s
going on, what they want?” And the answer was no. So I took it
upon myself, at that point in time, to use Mr. Wofford’s spare
bedroom, which had a telephone in it, and called into the Rowe residence.
And one of the hostage takers, Greg Paulson, answered the phone, and
I identified myself. He was always extremely polite, courteous, and
respectful to me. I told him why I was calling, but he never would really
go into any detail as to what they wanted.
Paulson said he
would only take orders and instructions from Robert Scheidt, who they
considered to be the commander of their security forces at the embassy.
And again, Robert Scheidt was the person that Sheriff Bailey had arrested
earlier that day. Since Jeff Davis County doesn’t have a jail,
we made arrangements to carry all their prisoners to Marfa, which is
in Presidio County about fifty miles away. So we had to make arrangements
with a couple of my Rangers to go to Marfa, get Mr. Scheidt out of jail,
bring him back to where we were, and try to figure out again how to
resolve this thing.
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