By Matthew Brown ASSOCIATED PRESS
BILLINGS – Federal
employees overseeing U.S. public lands were assaulted or threatened at least
360 times over a five-year period marked by heightened tensions with
anti-government groups and dwindling ranks of law enforcement officers, a
congressional watchdog agency said Oct. 21.
The
Government Accountability Office in a new report highlights anti-government
tensions that at times have boiled over, including a six-week armed occupation
of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon in 2016 and other standoffs with armed
protesters in Montana and Nevada.
The clashes
have been rooted in a deep distrust of government on the part of the
protesters, who view the federal bureaucracy as unlawfully impeding people from
using public land for grazing, mining and other economic purposes.
The
incidents investigators cataloged during interviews with federal workers ranged
from threatening phone calls and gunshots fired over the heads of employees, to
the stabbing of a Bureau of Land Management worker outside a federal building.
