Angry Planet - On the front lines during the last days of Standing Rock

Episode Date: April 19, 2017

After a year of protests, Standing Rock began to die down in late winter this year. But to one observer, the standoff stood out for how much it resembled a war zone. Marty Skovlund Jr. is a U.S. Army veteran who served in the 1st Ranger Battalion. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Since coming home he’s run a small business, written books and freelanced for several news outlets. In December, he chronicled the final days of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, where state and local police milled with private military contractors and some of the remaining protesters set structures on fire. This week on War College, Skovlund Jr. walks us through the end of one of the largest protracted protest in American history. According to Skovlund, the scene reminded him of forward operating bases in Iraq. In the end, he thinks the police changed the paradigm for how to deal with peaceful protests and, to this day, he can’t believe that no one died.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. Somebody with my background or anybody who served overseas couldn't help but be reminded of what it's like to go on to a base in the middle of a war zone. And, you know, the interesting aspect was this isn't a war zone. This is an hour south of Bismarck, North Dakota, in the United States.

Today on War College, a veteran gives us his dispatch from the front lines in the final days of the Standing Rock protests. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Galt. With us today is Marty Scoveland, Jr. Scoveland is a veteran of the First Ranger Battalion, the author of many fine books, and the producer of two documentaries.

He also had a front row seat for the fall of Standing Rock, the reservation in the Dakotas where protesters from across the United States gathered to block the Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil pipe that will soon crisscross Native American land. Marty, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be on. Thanks for having me, Matt. So how many times did you visit Standing Rock

during and after the protests. So I went up there a total of two times. Once at the height of the protest, that first week of December, right when the easement was denied, and it was basically a big celebration. A lot of the veterans from across the country had come in to support the movement, and the camp swelled up to, you know, some estimates were as high as 15, 20,000 people. You know, we left after that week and came back up what would end up being the last day that the protest was there as the eviction notice was served and law enforcement from across

the country came in and cleared out the camp. And that was the third week of February. So one thing I've kind of been curious about is what happened that we had, you know, these tens of thousands of people to stand in solidarity and protest this thing and then it dwindles down to a couple of hundred. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the big things to note is it wasn't really that they were standing in solidarity. I think there was a common enemy there, but from what I saw, there was a lot, especially towards the height of that protest in that first week of December, almost everybody there was for a different reason. You had some people that were against oil drilling in general. There were some people that were there against oil drilling near, you know,

the Native American sacred sites. There were some people that were there protesting because of what they saw as an infringement of the Treaty of 1851 that was done between the Sue and the U.S. government. And you had other people who don't care about oil, don't care about treaties, but they just saw this as another land grab by a big corporation backed by the government, and they were just generally against that. So it's not so much that they stood in solidarity, so much as there was a lot of people that were very passionate about their own, their own angles on this, I guess you could say, who all just kind of had a common enemy, which was the Dakota Access pipeline. And if you talk to some people there, also the law enforcement that were, you know,

providing security. So did their individual reasons just kind of dry up? Did the weather become too much for them? Why do you think that this kind of dwindled and ended? It seems like they scored a major victory and then the president changed and then everyone just went home. Yeah, you know, I think, you know, if you were trying to stop the pipeline, I think denying that easement was the worst thing that could have happened for the protest because it was

read as a victory for the protesters and everybody just kind of said, okay, well, our job here is done, even though the Dakota energy transfer partners who is building the Dakota Access Pipeline, even though they announced the same day that they're not going to quit building, that they're going to fight this in court, and they're going to continue with business as usual, that didn't really make it into the camp,

or did it in very small, you know, ways. But for the majority of the protesters that showed up, it was okay, time to go home. And weather's rolling in next week. I think weather absolutely played apart. And, you know, there was a lot of people that had come up, specifically, the guys from the veterans demographic, who

They'd only tended to come up there for a week anyways. They took a week off of work, wanted to come up and support this movement, and they never intended to stay for the long haul. But I definitely do, generally speaking, think that there was a very small section of the camp that were the, you know, quote-unquote true believers. And then there was everybody else that was more what I would call your fair weather protester. Let's talk a little bit more about those veterans groups. At the beginning of your article about this, you name check Wesley Clark Jr. as well, one of the leaders. And can you tell me who he is? And you had some negative things to say about him at the beginning, but didn't really go into it. And I'm wondering if you'll go into it now. Yeah, you know,

I think my thoughts on Wesley Clark Jr. were outside of the scope of that article. And that's why I didn't go too much in depth on him. But Wesley Clark Jr. is the son of former four-star general Wesley Clark. And he was also, Clark Jr. was, you know, served in the military himself during the mid-90s. I think he was a cavalry officer for a couple of years and got out. You know, I don't know what his exact reasons were. What he's said was that he's very much against oil drilling, saw the abuse that was happening up there, his words, not mine, and wanted to come in and rally the veteran community to fight against this. So basically what happened is here's a guy who didn't have a lot of notoriety himself. You know, not he's a co-host on one of the Young Turks podcast, I believe,

but it didn't have a large following, didn't really have the hooks to be able to really mobilize the entire veteran community in a way that ended up happening. What happened is one of my good friends, Adam Linahan, over at Task and Purpose, you know, caught wind of him doing this call to action where he expected to get maybe 200, 250 people together to go up there. Well, Adam interviewed him, did a big feature story on the movement, and that story ended up attracting a lot of people. It gave his movement the kind of wheels that he would have never been able to get on his own. So now all of a sudden you have three, four, five thousand veterans showing up this weekend. And he's completely ill prepared for it. He hasn't actually talked to any of the native leaders that are up there. And he went up to kind of broker a deal on behalf of them, you know, with the Morton County Sheriff.

They weren't happy about that. And so basically you have thousands of these veterans showing up without a place to stay, without any food, without any direction. without any leadership. And, you know, this was this was touted as a military operation. And there's a certain degree of planning that's inferred when you touted as such. And none of that was there. There was a couple of people on the ground that showed up. They just happened to be the first there.

And they just kind of fell back on their old military habits of making it happen despite the circumstances. And I think they honestly saved lives out there because that weather turned deadly. It was 30 below zero with 30 mile per hour wins by Tuesday. and you had, you know, senior citizens who served in Vietnam that were out there. Just a lot of people that are ill-prepared, Wesley Clark Jr. And his little troop of three or four guys that he traveled around with never really showed up in the camp. He was there once the day before everybody showed up.

And then for the majority of the time, they basically retreated to the casino, which was about 15 miles south and stayed in the casino the whole time. And that's where you kind of saw that apology ceremony that happened. And while that was going on, all the guys. guys that came out there were actually marching up in a in a in a in a blizzard uh to to support the protesters so i see him as a uh somebody who is who very much failed in his duties as a leader through all of that and he's very lucky that nobody died on behalf of his negligence in my opinion so that's kind of why i didn't have anything good to say about him in the article uh fair enough and i think those are some compelling reasons so let's talk about a little bit more

about the protesters in general. You said there was a bunch of different kind of factions and groups. I'm wondering, were they armed at all? Was there any kind of cohesion? What was the level of violence like? So from what I saw while I was there, there was no violence. All of the violent actions that happened were happened at times when I was not there. There were times that it did escalate. There's video that I've watched from the protests where vehicles were ramming the tea barriers, where Molotov cocktails were being thrown. And there's also a proportionate amount of response. from law enforcement where, you know, they were pointing water cannons at them and sub-freezing weather, you know, using CS Gannisters and other less lethal munitions. So there was quite a bit of

violence that had happened at certain points throughout the duration of this protest. I just was not there to witness it firsthand. The majority of the protesters that were there were there with peaceful intent, wanted to do peaceful civil disobedience, and that's all they wanted. As with any large group of people. You've always got that maybe five to 10 percent that are a little bit more extreme. And that's where you saw that. But yeah, there was not a lot of people armed there. There was not, you know, a large plan to do any sort of violent takeover of the drilling pad or anything like that. You know, the Native American tribal leaders were all very clear about their intent to go up to the protest line, pray, and come back down. And that's what they tried to keep it as for the

majority of the time. All right. What about the other side? What about the police agencies? How many different agencies were there and how were they equipped? A lot. There were police agent, you know, sheriff's departments and police agencies from all over the country. I don't have a firm number and, you know, they rotated out throughout the duration. There were some guys that were local in North Dakota that had been there for the full six months. There were other departments from around the country that had kind of rotated in and out and rotated their personnel in and out. So it was hard to keep track of exactly how many different departments from around the country that were there. But there was a lot.

And they were, you know, they were loaded for bear, especially on the day of the eviction. They were in full right gear. When you saw when they actually moved through the camp, they had tactically equipped SWAT officers doing the clearing. You know, the National Guard was there. They had bear cats. They had MRAPs, all that sort of stuff. So this, you know, they did not take this lightly. I think that that was smart on their part because,

although like I said 90, 95% of the protesters were there with the best of intentions, you know, there were a couple people that I would not have, you know, that definitely made me uneasy. And especially when I walked through literally an hour before the clearing operation started before the eviction notes was served. I mean, there were some people that were very much in a hostile mindset. And, and I think the law enforcement were right to protect themselves and come loaded, not as if they were patrolling your neighborhood corner, but as if they were going into a complex. that the your use of words there I think is interesting I want to read just a little section from your article as I waited in the short line of vehicles going through I couldn't help but think how different it was entering the protest site from this side of the barricade it was akin to entering a forward operating base in a war zone complete with soldiers and body armor checking each vehicle's occupants so you think that they were just being they were just being safe yeah I think you have to plan for the worst not the best in those sorts of situations and it was very much like entering a bob. I mean, there were the T-barriers. There were, you know, concertina wire,

big lights sat up, you know, floodlights sat up. This was very similar to, you know, going on to a military base in Iraq when I was there. You know, the guys that were manning these gates and that sort of stuff. Yeah, sure, they were friendly. They were great. But, you know, somebody with my background or anybody who served overseas, you know, couldn't help but be reminded of what it's like to go on to a base in the middle of a war zone. And, you know, the interesting aspect was this isn't a war zone. This is, you know, this is an hour south of Bismarck, North Dakota, in the United States. So it was a very interesting contrast. I want to kind of dig into that a little bit, because you've, you've had a lot of personal experiences. You know, you've been to Afghanistan. You are a veteran.

What does it feel like to see this kind of thing in the middle of the United States? It was weird. And I wish I had a better adjective for it. But, you know, I've seen things on fire before. I've seen things explode. I've, you know, I've seen what the battlefield looks like. And to kind of transpose that onto the middle of the high plains where you've got TPs and people speaking English and, you know, American vehicles, it just, it was weird. You know, I've never seen anything like it before. It was like you, you mash the, you know, Custer's world and modern day America into one place, you know, and then threw in elements of, you know, of Iraq or Afghanistan in there, and it just, I don't know how else to describe it besides.

It was just weird. It was almost unsettling in those final days, you know. It was a lot different feeling when I had been there in that first week of December. It was like a large, you know, party for more or less. People were in a good mood. They were positive, that sort of thing. Those final days, though, you know, TPs being lit on fire, structures being lit on fire, the thick mud, some people that were acting somewhat hostile,

others who were just in a, you know, bad mood or poor mood. because, you know, what was going on. Helicopters flying over, planes flying over. It just was just so strange. Thank you, listeners. Thank you for rejoining us. We're here talking to Marty Scoveland, Jr. about the last days of Standing Rock.

He was there the last day, or maybe I should say the second to last day, before the final evacuation. And right before the break, you were talking about walking through the camp that final day and seeing the burning teepees. and it was interesting in your article to note that the protesters burned down many of the buildings that they had constructed in the TPs. That wasn't something that like the cops had done. That was something that the protesters did themselves.

Can you explain why? Yes. So it definitely was not law enforcement that was doing that. Those actions were happening prior to law enforcement entering the camp. What we were told from outside sources that they were sacerimonious. burnings. You know, I've talked to other folks within the native community, specifically the Sioux communities, and that seems kind of like a new thing.

I don't know how long that ceremony has been around. And, you know, I saw some of these places lit on fire right next to me. I was not 20 feet away from one of the structures that was used to dry corn that was right outside the former sacred fire area. And if there was ever an area that you would do some sort of ceremony or have a moment of silence or something like that, it would have been in this area. And it was nothing of the sort was going on. So it's really hard for me to buy that these were ceremonious burnings or anything like that.

I don't know. I don't know what the exact intent there was. Again, it was just added to the strangeness of the entire. experience of just these, you know, young teens, you know, early 20s, you know, young men and young women walking around throwing incendiary devices into structures and you hear the pop and then and then all of a sudden the things engulfed in flames. It just, I don't know what the purpose was, but I feel fairly certain that it's not a longstanding Native American or Sue tradition. And also on that day, one of the protesters sprayed you in mud, correct?

Yeah. I laugh. about it now. At the time I was very upset, as was my cameraman that was there with me. And it was just after we'd entered the camp. And you know, the mud was probably a foot thick in some parts. I mean, you would sink down in some of the parts. So it was

next to impossible to drive vehicles through this thing. So, you know, a lot of the protesters were getting around on snowmobiles and probably, you know, a minute or two as we're walking down that main, what was called flag row. Obviously, the second time around all the flags in bed tanked now, but it was

the main road into the camp. And we had a one of these guys on a snowmobile come up, whip a U-turn around, and then just gun it and just covered me in my cameraman. And our cameras just in this really thick mud. And that was kind of our welcome to the, and right after he did that, he paused and looked back at us. And he didn't say anything,

but it was a very stern look as if to say, you know, you've been warned. You know, we know what you're doing here and, you know, we're not a fan of it. And yeah, it was a very clear sign that this was a lot different camp than what it was than the camp that we had visited that first week of December. There's an interesting contrast in your article between the way the protesters were treating the media that final day and the way the cops treated you guys. It seemed like they were very cordial. So there was a difference in media.

There was what I would call activist media that was there with the protesters who, and what I mean by activist media is, sure, They had cameras and cell phones, but they were there very much arm and arm with the protesters. I wouldn't call them third-party observers, like I considered my cameraman and I'd be. And so basically, unless you were ready to lock arms and, you know, see it through to the end with them, they kind of treated you as an outsider on those last days. And the thing was, is even up on the police line, they were very cordial with us, pretty friendly, you know, before the evacuation started, almost shockingly so compared to what we had experienced in that first week.

But as soon as that evacuation order, you know, that 2 o'clock deadline hit, it was kind of like, all right, everybody back behind the barricades. You can't be up on the road anymore. And they kind of, you know, went through the motions that first day and made it seem like, oh, this is going to be a long drawn-out process and we're not going to do anything big. And then, you know, as we saw the very next day, they came in with the barricats, the MRA. and, you know, a company-sized element worth of SWAT officers and law enforcement officers to clear that place out. After they gave the media the impression that, you know, this would be a couple arrests a day and this was going to drag on for a while.

So although law enforcement was not a lot more cordial and friendly to us that day, they definitely had something up their sleeve, which I can't say, you know, either then or now that I'm a big fan of the way they went about that. Right, it seems almost as if you were tricked or manipulated, just reading from the article. Yeah, and that's the impression I was trying to give. I do feel like we were tricked and that we were manipulated, that they didn't want a lot of press there for when they would actually go through and do the big operation. And, you know, I just, you know, I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment, you know, of all, you know, of our Bill of Rights in general. But, you know, freedom of the press is a very important thing. And, you know, I think as law enforcement officers, as agents of the government that were there, I think we should be embracing that amendment and embracing the press and the media. I get where they had to distinguish between kind of like I said, the activist media that was there.

I think there was a difference between a guy there with a cell phone up, doing a Facebook live feed, calling himself media, and somebody that was there with a established legitimate organization like CBS, NBC, or in our case, task and purpose. I think there was a difference between those two. Not that I'm here to say what is or isn't media. That's not my decision to say. But if you're participating in the protest, then you're not just media. Whereas we were not participating. We were there as a independent third party observers to record history as it were. So I wish they would have embraced that a little bit more and not use kind of the trickery that they did.

Speaking of nuance to distinctions, tell me about the role of the private military. companies at Standing Rock, because they were there. Yes. So there was a variety of private military contractors that were hired by the Dakota Access pipeline to provide security for the drilling pad and the drill workers. Now, a lot of these guys are former special operations. I served in the same units as some of these guys that were over there on the contract, and they did a lot of collaboration with law enforcement.

they weren't supposed to be there to directly interact with the protesters the way that the law enforcement were, but they did have their own interactions with them. They were performing intelligence and counterintelligence operations. They were doing things that they saw within the scope of what they were hired to do, which was protect the pipeline and protect the people working on the pipeline. And what was their relationship like with local law enforcement? So from what I can tell in the interviews that I conducted, and this is one of the more interesting things that I uncovered, I think, was,

you know, I think their relationship started off really good because there's a lot of community between the law enforcement and military contractors because a lot of law enforcement comes from that military background and almost all of the military PMCs come from that background. So there's that shared bond that's there. Some of these guys went to war together. They, you know, served in the same units. They know the same guys, all that sort of stuff. So law enforcement and private military contractors naturally drift.

towards each other to work with each other. The problem was is by December, there were certain people with certain companies that had come in who decided to take a lot more of an aggressive approach with how things were being dealt with. And that didn't sit well with a lot of the law enforcement. And apparently there was some arguments that happened because of that. And as I uncovered in my research, some of the private military contracting company. aren't actually even licensed to provide security services services in the state of North Dakota, which is a misdemeanor. So, you know, I have to imagine that law enforcement knew about that. And, you know, as much as you may be buddies and have that shared background, there's also that, well, I'm also here to enforce the law.

So I think there was a little bit of a rub that started to occur in December and definitely into January between the contractors and law enforcement. What about the relationship between the contractors and the veterans protesting on the other side? Did they ever talk to each other? Was there any kind of interaction? What did they think of each other? The contractors that I talked to, I asked them that, I was like, you know, what did you think about all these veterans coming up there? And just about every one of them said, yeah, you know, it definitely got our attention. We, you know, if there was going to be a large influx of thousands of people, potentially who have military training,

that's something we obviously had to plan for and put contingencies in place for. they also had the idea in their head, and I think rightly so, that the majority of these guys probably weren't combat veterans or come from a combat arms background, that probably a lot of them came from more of the support aspect of the military. And I think that was probably an accurate assessment on their part. Just for the simple fact that the majority of the military is support. You know, the majority of the military, regardless of branch is not combat arms. That's just the way the manning works. So that demographic was represented out there where, the actual guys who've been in combat, who've been trained in combat arms and infantry tactics, they were very much in the minority out of the group of veterans that came up there. And I think they were kind of counting on that. And again, too, the overall lack of organization that happened in that protest camp, there was no clear leadership that was there,

either from West Clark Jr. or the tribal leadership, that it really did mitigate their efforts as far as what they could have accomplished. But they definitely got their attention. Earlier in the conversation, you had said that some of the PMCs were getting a little bit more aggressive. And I'm wondering if you could talk about that, specifically the axes and baseball bats. Yeah. So one of the companies was asked, you know, the Dakota Access Pipeline executives had asked one of the security companies there to arm themselves with baseball bats and axe handles. Not full axes with blades, but axe handles.

And they were more than happy to oblige with that. don't think there was any significant altercations that happened from them having that, but the impression was given to them that we would like you to use these and we would like to send a clear message because they had a lot of their equipment being damaged by protesters and things like that, and they wanted to put a stop to that. Now, of course, that is not a legal thing for them to do to go out there with baseball bats and axe handles. As far as I could tell, there was only one altercation that potentially happened, but nobody

was actually hurt. So it ended up not being a huge deal, but just the fact that Dakota Access pipeline was asking them to escalate in such a way is very worrisome. And again, I think that probably led to some of the concern that we saw on the law enforcement side because, hey, it doesn't matter whether you're hired to provide security or not. If you're going out there with a baseball bat or axe handle, that is, you know, that's assault. That's aggravated assault. So that's assault with a deadly weapon depending on how you look at it in which jurisdiction you're abiding by. So it was a very worrisome thing. And again, it was, you know, the fact that the company was asking them to do this.

That was pretty shocking. All right. I've got kind of two final questions for you. And it starts with, again, a quote from your article, this time from one of the officers that was on the scene. We're ready for this to be over. It's been a long couple months. We're proud of what we accomplished here, though. The FBI informed us that we literally rewrote the book on dealing with civil disobedience.

The fact that no one has been killed is a miracle. Um, two, you know, A, do you think that they actually rewrote the book here and B, this seemed like such a recipe for disaster? It felt like something bad was going to happen and there would be a huge pop off of violence. Why don't you think that happened? I wish I had a good answer for that because I was convinced of the same thing. They were at multiple points. I thought, how has somebody not been killed yet? How is this not turned into an all-out, you know, literally a battle in the literal sense? You know, I don't know if it was the grace of God or what, but it really is a miracle. I think that nobody was killed on either side.

There was some injuries sustained on either side. side on both sides. But the fact that nobody was killed is honestly shocking to me. Even to this day, I can't believe that over six months and as much as things escalated at times that nobody was killed. I think that's pretty significant. Now, as far as, you know, rewriting the book on civil disobedience, do I think that they literally were asked to walk in there and rewrite the guidelines on stuff? No, I don't think so. But I think what the officer in the intent of what he was talking about, was this was a case study on how to properly deal with civil disobedience from their perspective. Of course, if you talk to the protesters, they probably would not agree with that statement.

But, you know, they were, you know, the fact that nobody was killed, the fact that there were, you know, tens of thousands of people that were out there that they had to deal with and were severely outnumbered and that they kept things from escalating to a point where, you know, you couldn't recover from it. I think that is, that's pretty admirable. You know, there's a lot of other times in U.S. history where that was not the case under less severe circumstances. So, you know, I think that they're probably right that the FBI and future law enforcement agencies will always look at Standing Rock as kind of the gold standard of how to deal with mass civil disobedience. What was it they did that was different this time? How did they handle things differently here?

You know, I think, and this, I don't have a law enforcement background. My background is in the military, and that's a drastically. different set of rules than being in law enforcement. So I want to make that very clear. But I have thought about this a little bit, and I think it did help. They had multiple departments from across the country coming in to where there was that shared knowledge, where there was that, you know, there wasn't an inbreeding of ideas going on.

They had people with different experiences coming together and pooling their knowledge to effectively deal with this thing. And I think if it was put completely on the Morton County Sheriff's or Bismarck Police or the tribal police or the FBI, you know, if they had to deal with this on their own, I don't think it would have turned out the same way. I think that because of the fact that there were so many different departments in such a large pooling of brain power that they were able to keep this thing under control. And were their mistakes made?

I think so, absolutely. I don't think that they were perfect by any stretch of the imagination in the way they executed this. But I can't say that they, you know, failed in their mission. And they ultimately de-escalated a, you know, large civil disobedience, a large protest, possibly one of the largest in our country's history, without a single life being lost. And I think that's pretty admirable. And I think that was in large part due to the shared brain power and experience of hundreds, if not thousands of officers from across the country over the course of six months. Marty Scovlin, Jr. Thank you so much for joining us on War College.

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this week's show. More College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Heedick. It's hosted by Matthew Galt, who also wrangles our guests. It's produced by me, Bethel-Hobday. If you like our show and want to support us, please leave us a rating and review in iTunes. It helps other people find the show.

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