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KevinTheOmnivore KevinTheOmnivore is offline
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Old Mar 18th, 2003, 11:48 PM        A lunatic on a tractor is fighting for the smokers
At least he's against the war.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
washingtonpost.com
Tractor Standoff Continues


By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; 8:13 PM


Dwight Ware Watson, the man engaged in a marathon standoff with law enforcement on the Mall, said today that he has explosives but does not intend to harm anyone. He said he came to Washington on a "mission" to get a message to the American public that he and other tobacco farmers are being forced out of business by unfair government policies.

"I'm going to get my message out or die trying," he said in a telephone call to The Washington Post from Constitution Gardens, where he drove a tractor into a shallow pond at 12:30 p.m. Monday.

"I don't give a damn no more," Watson said. "If this is the way America will be run, the hell with it. I'm out of here. I will not surrender. They can blow my ass out of the water. I'm ready to go to heaven."

Asked when he might end the standoff, Watson said: "I've got the rest of my life to stay right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Watson, 50, from Whitakers, N.C., drove a jeep towing the tractor on a trailer off a curb on Constitution Avenue NW. Then he drove the jeep into the small pond around noon yesterday. Since then, more than 100 Park Police and agents from the FBI and ATF have been negotiating to try to end the episode peacefully. Police said that if Watson remains on his tractor through the evening, they would keep traffic restrictions in place.

Early in the standoff, authorities said, Watson claimed to have explosives. Law enforcement sources said they do not yet know whether he does. Some nearby government buildings were kept closed today. Several nearby streets have been closed, including a stretch on Constitution, creating massive traffic tie-ups. Streets remained closed this afternoon.

Watson, a former military policeman in the 82nd Airborne in the mid-1970s, said the explosives are in the tractor or jeep. He said he has plenty of food and water. He has remained in the tractor for much of the ordeal. At one point this morning, he started the tractor and drove it a few yards. But then he stopped, remaining in the rig.

Watson, whose family has run a farm for several generations, said he could no longer remain economically solvent and this weekend decided to give up farming. "I'm broke. I'm busted," he said.

But Watson added that he wanted to stand up to the government over its policies of cutting subsidies to farmers and making it difficult for American tobacco growers to compete internationally. He said he wants the government's landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies thrown "in the garbage can, where it belongs."

He also said he is against the America's pending war with Iraq.

Watson said he is acting alone. Asked why he decided to protest this week, Watson said: "I just played it by ear. The Lord told me to do it. He said, 'Time is running out, Jack.'"


© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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El Blanco El Blanco is offline
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Old Mar 18th, 2003, 11:58 PM       
Quote:
The Lord told me to do it.
A million punchlines just flowed into my brain, but I can't get a single one out. Its sad really.

this is one of the funniest true stories I have ever read. I just have no words to build on the funny. I am really depresed now. I think I'll go slit my wrists and listen to some Kelly Clarkson.
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KevinTheOmnivore KevinTheOmnivore is offline
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Old Mar 19th, 2003, 12:00 AM       
The way they inserted his opposition to the war into the article almost made me fall out of my chair.
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Old Mar 19th, 2003, 08:09 AM       
The Lord works in Mysterious ways.
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Old Mar 19th, 2003, 09:10 PM       
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

washingtonpost.com
N.C. Farmer Ends Standoff With Police


By David A. Fahrenthold and Arthur Santana
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 19, 2003; 1:51 PM


A North Carolina tobacco farmer, who had kept several hundred police officers at bay for 48 hours while threatening to detonate explosives on the Mall, peacefully walked away from his John Deere tractor and into police custody shortly before noon today.

Dwight W. Watson was not injured and it wasn't immediately known what convinced him to give up his siege in a pool in Constitution Gardens. Park Police Chief Teresa C. Chambers praised the "successful conclusion" of the protest, which had restricted a key section of the city. She thanked "motorists and commuters who had to be very patient" throughout the crisis when police closed part of Constitution Avenue and other roads in the area creating massive traffic jams.

Constitution Avenue was reopened shortly after 1 p.m.

Chambers reported that "for the past day, Mr. Watson has helped work out the details of his surrender and he followed those to the letter."

Chambers said officers would inspect Watson's tractor and equipment to make sure there are no explosives. The D.C. police bomb squad is on the scene.

The end of the siege began at about 11:35 a.m. when the agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms brought a large white truck on the north side of Constitution Avenue. About two minutes later, Watson began driving the tractor to the south side of the pond.

About five minutes later, about a half dozen agents lined up and began walking slowly in the direction of Watson, who then got out of the tractor with his arms raised. He began walking toward a white van that had driven onto the site. At that point, officers emerged from the van and apprehended him.

After two days and an intense night of negotiations, the protest was ended in about five minutes. Van Harp, head of the FBI's Washington field office, said that law enforcement authorities were in control of the siege from the start. He said that Watson followed instructions given him by negotiators. He said it was an "extraordinary accomplishment" that no one was hurt in the ordeal, adding, "The threat level was exceptional but it was de-escalated and controlled from the outset."

In a telephone interview yesterday Watson said that his goal was to deliver a message to the American public about the plight of farmers or "die trying." In a second interview last evening, Watson said that he did not want to hurt anyone and that he told police negotiators he would surrender peacefully today if they "treat me with respect."

Watson, 50, of Whitakers, N.C., was protesting the government's tobacco farming policies and initially rebuffed pleas from relatives and neighbors yesterday.

In the hours before the surrender, Watson sometimes gave conflicting signals to authorities on the scene.

For example, Watson continued to ignore police commands through the early morning hours to get out of the tractor. Sgt. Scott Fear, a spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, said communication with Watson was "off and on" and that by 10 a.m., they were talking with him either by cellular phone or bullhorn.

"You've got our attention, now come on out," an officer said about 6 a.m. "Dwight c'mon.... You're not keeping your word. You said you were coming out. Now come out."

The negotiator seemed at times to be adamant about her commands. "Open your door and come out!" At other times, she called out to Watson more subdued. "Please answer your phone."

Watson ignored the commands and continued to stay in the tractor's cab, occasionally rocking back and forth, snacking and waving his arms around at no one in particular.

At one point about 9 a.m., Watson stepped halfway out of the cab onto the running board to relieve himself into the pond. Later, Watson could be seen resting his head in his arms on the tractor's steering wheel and later shaving.

But that stalemate followed the most dramatic action thus far by authorities when, after seeing Watson put his tractor in gear and begin to move to the edge of the pond -- beginning to dig into the ground with his tractor's front-end spade -- they fired three cannon bursts, cracking the morning's stillness.

Ground floodlights, which had been directed at Watson in the darkness, immediately cut off after the blasts, and the tractor's perpetually blinking orange light could be seen moving. Watson stopped a few seconds later, began to gently rock back and forth in the tractor's cab as a U.S. Park Police helicopter immediately took flight, hovering, at times, very close to Watson's tractor, keeping their own floodlight trained on him.

"He started moving and getting a little anxious," Fear said. "And we were moving right along with him." Fear stressed to reporters camped out near the site that Watson did not fire the devices causing the flashes and loud bangs. Fear declined to describe the device used or to say if an actual weapon was deployed.

Staff writers David Nakamura and Allen Lengel contributed to this story.


© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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