Fort Peck Reservation's Twilight Zone
by Chip Tatum
October 21, 1997
Three weeks ago Blacks Ops Reporter ran a feature story which
mentioned Circle attorney Arnie Hove's attempt to get authorities to
look at official corruption in northern Montana. The result of
Hove's efforts is that the entrenched Montana criminal cartels are
now targeting Hove. Unfortunately for Hove, members of the
criminal enterprise include State and Federal officials.
Still a lot of positive news has occurred on the Fort Peck
Reservation around Hove and others working to stop the drug
corruption. News that points to the efforts of two courageous tribal
lay advocates who work with Hove, Melissa Buckles and Florence
Youpee, offers great optimism.
The drug cartels have good reasons to be after Arnie Hove. Hove
has caused them some big problems after his former client Clint
Mullen came forward and identified a Sidney lawyer as having
solicited him to haul drugs from Canada to the US in his trucking
operation. When Mullen refused, Mullen and his wife were brutally
beaten outside a nightspot near Sidney at the apparent instigation
of an another attorney associated with the Montana Supreme Court
Commission on Practice.
Hove and others began to realize that something was terribly wrong
in the investigation around the Mullen beating. Witnesses were
threatened and intimidated by law enforcement. But even more
surprisingly, Ray Tomalino's calls to the FBI office in Glasgow,
concerning the threats made on his daughter, a witness to the
Mullen beating, were ignored. A fact pattern is emerging on the
Fort Peck Reservation which may explain why other complaints of
felony witness intimidation were also ignored. The pattern may
clarify links to a series of as many as 56 drug related homicides in
Montana linked to official corruption. The deaths are known in
Montana as "The Hi-Line Murders." Nowhere are the awful effects
of the Hi-Line murders more apparent than the Fort Peck
Reservation.
The Fort Peck Reservation was established by executive order in
1851 for the peaceful Assiniboine Tribe who traditionally occupied
the Missouri valley lands in what is now western North Dakota and
eastern Montana. The majority Sioux population later merged with
the Assiniboine tribe after their spectacular victory over Custer at
Little Big Horn under Chief Sitting Bull. The Fort Peck
Reservation runs east of Porcupine Creek along the Missouri river,
and (along the Burlington Northern "Hi-Line" rail line) to the
western North Dakota border and also extends north toward the
Canadian border. The two largest reservation towns are county seat
Wolf Point and tiny Poplar both situated on the "Hi-Line" rail line
just north of the Missouri River in far eastern Montana.
Melissa Buckles and Florence Youpee were concerned about
strange things that were happening on the reservation. The two
tribal lay advocates--who work in the tribal courts- -began to ask
questions about repeated accounts that tribal police and FBI agents
were involved in drug dealing. Witnesses began to come forward
with stories of beatings and intimidations of people who were
speaking out against the drug ring. The drug ring was clearly linked
to the authorities.
Youpee and Buckles also began to hear from tribal members who
spoke of a series of clandestine landing strips on the northern edge
of the reservation on the Canadian border, and on the west of the
reservation to the east of Porcupine Creek near the abandoned
Glasgow Air Force Base. What the ladies did not know, as the
reports first came in, was that the landing strips and late night
sightings of planes being unloaded or parachute drops of duffel
bags was that the two lay advocates may have stumbled into one of
the largest smuggling operations in world history loriginating from
a group of corrupt FBI agents including Florida FBI agent Terry
Nelson, and a number of Colombian drug cartels.
What the ladies stumbled onto may also explain many of the 40+
homicides that have plagued the Fort Peck Reservation. Deaths
which are acknowledged, but for which the official explanation
sounds more like "twilight zone" rhetoric -- invariably the person
"just died."
The "twilight zone" explanations become even more astounding
when juxtaposed with the documentation of key evidence
disappearing during murder and drug trials and then reappearing in
the evidence locker afterwards. Or the "twilight zone" beating of
officer Bruce Bauer by five law enforcement personnel while Bauer
was being treated at Trinity hospital in Wolf Point. An investigator,
working under the supervision of FBI agents James Wixon and
Scott Cruise, later, according to sworn depositions, intimidated two
of the nurse witnesses and tried to get them to falsely change their
testimony. Or the "twilight zone" explanations as to why FBI agent
James Wixon had recently retired to his sizable cattle ranching
operation (acquired during his tenure as a full time agent in
Glasgow) and why FBI agent Scott Cruise had been transferred out
of the Glasgow office.
The "twilight zone" riddles of the Fort Peck Reservation can be
answered from an outside perspective. I am a retired intelligence
officer and I have worked for a variety of government agencies
including the CIA. During the Reagan and Bush administrations I
worked on many projects directly for the White House and the
National Security Council. During the course of my involvement
with the ultra-secret OSG-3. In 1989, I was advised face-to-face by
FBI agent Terry Nelson that he was managing a smuggling
operation into the United States in conjunction with Fabio Ochoa,
a Colombian drug lord, and a Canadian national with intelligence
connections and a penchant for smuggling tons of cocaine named
Mike Huxtable.
According to Terry Nelson, the routes of the drug shipments were
from Colombia north to the Bahamas then out into the Atlantic,
doubling back west to Nova Scotia and Quebec. One airfield used
by the Huxtable smuggling operation was the Chapeau airstrip in
Quebec. From eastern Canada the drug shipments were flown to a
staging area on a property just south of Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
The drug shipments were then flown onto airstrips in or near
Sidney, Chinook, Havre and several other locations in Montana and
North Dakota.
The drug operation involved the smuggling of billions of dollars
worth of heroin and cocaine into the United States. Fabio Ochoa
used the Mike Huxtable scheme because it got around the southern
air radar which was beginning to intercept too many Cartel
shipments. FBI agent Terry Nelson recruited local law enforcement
and others in Montana and North Dakota to ignor the shipments of
cocaine as they came into the United States.
But trouble developed in Chinook. A local newsman, Mike Perry,
and four law enforcement officers made reports to the authorities
that they were observing drug shipments. Mike Perry took one
sheriff's deputy to meet with then US Attorney Pete Dunbar in
Billings. The official explanation was again "twilight zone" - no
evidence could be found, and in fact, the four Chinook law
enforcement officers who reported the drug flights were all fired.
Trouble also developed in Sidney. Dozens of witnesses reported
drug flights and drug dealing by a prosecuting attorney and police
detective. Again, after the investigation "nothing was there." It was
only "rumor" or "false reports." The same pattern existed in Havre.
In each of the three smuggling towns early unusual deaths haunted
people who tried to do something about the drug problems.
Surprisingly, FBI agents Scott Cruise and James Wixon were
continually tasked with investigating the drug and murder
allegations. Both agents operated in Glasgow where the smuggling
pilots would rest in condominiums (owned by the conspirators),
adjacent to the Glasgow Air Force Base - just eight miles west of a
series of off-the-map air strips near Porcupine Creek on Fort Peck
Reservation. The two agents couldn't find any credible evidence
about drug flights or corruption.
During the next few days and weeks further startling information
will surface. Promised bank transfer documentation may come to
light that should explain much of the frustration many individuals
have had in understanding the "twilight zone" in Montana along the
Canadian border. At the same time, Melissa Buckles and Florence
Youpee have gathered a dozen new affidavits and statements on the
Fort Peck Reservation. Arnie Hove advises that he has been
followed when he returns to Circle from the reservation. Buckles,
Youpee, and Hove all are concerned that law enforcement has
circulated a false rumor that Arnie Hove is bringing "all the crystal
meth onto the reservation."
The entire reservation is listening to the trio and something will be
done. But the three should be extremely cautious, because they are
snooping around the edges of one of the largest drug smuggling
operations in world history. A drug operation which has left many
witnesses dead. There is a very real danger in the "twilight zone" on
Fort Peck Reservation. These three individuals need your support.
Florence Youpee
Poplar, Montana
(406) 768-3992
Melissa G. Buckles
Wolf Point, Montana
(406) 653-1614
Arnie Hove
Hove and Associates
Circle, Montana
(406) 485-2952
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