The Ragged Edge Militia Is His Answer To Big Government
Profile: Don Griesel
Don Griesel’s log house on a tree-covered hill near St. Maries looks like the perfect place to escape society after 22 years in the Navy.
For Griesel, it’s the opposite. Serving on submarines, traveling the world underwater, he had little interest in politics. Now he’s making up for lost time.
He’s organizing a militia. He’s recruiting constitutionalists as county government candidates and helping lead a citizens’ group that wants a gun in every Benewah County home.
There’s Rush Limbaugh literature in his bathroom and a thick scrapbook of Griesel’s letters to the editor on the coffee table. One message on his answering machine touted G. Gordon Liddy and invited all but “liberal creeps” to leave a message.
“Some people view me as a radical and probably a kook, but others agree with me,” says Griesel, 53.
He took center stage at a patriots meeting this fall when someone suggested he run for sheriff. Griesel, a boiler operator at a Potlatch lumber mill, laughed at the idea. He’s busy enough in behind-the-scenes politics.
The Vietnam-era veteran ended his military career in San Diego 15 years ago. Soaring crime and population, plus a love of horses, convinced him and his wife, Joan, to move to Idaho.
Since then, he’s battled everything from a road paving project to property tax increases to the county’s garbage plan.
With the 1993 Brady Bill, he adopted the patriot movement as his own.
“It was really looking like they were going to ban all guns,” says Griesel, whose living room walls are decorated with game he killed. “Everyone was pretty scared and worried. I said, ‘Let’s have a meeting about forming guerrilla units.”’
About 100 people rallied and the Tenth Amendment Coalition was born. They delayed forming a militia and decided to tackle issues one at a time.
First, a gun in every home.
When that failed, they vowed to oust county commissioners who snubbed their proposal - an ongoing effort. Griesel, meanwhile, is planning to form a militia, now that black-powder season is over.
His ideal Benewah County government: constitutionalist commissioners and a sheriff who’d keep federal agencies - the ATF, the FBI, the EPA out of the county.
If someone in Benewah County became the next Randy Weaver, Griesel says, the sheriff would handle it himself.
And if federal agents insisted on crossing county lines?
“If this happens,” says Griesel, “deputies need to be backed up by a citizens’ militia. If you’ve got 200 citizens backing you up, they’re going to think twice before attacking a little town.
“All it would take is for one small town to stand up to them.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo