The Freemen, fearing they would be injected with cancer cells and "no brains" drugs if they were jailed, were ready for a gunfight should federal agents try to storm the farm where the group was holed up, according to taped conversations.
Colorado state Sen. Charles Duke provided "Dateline NBC" with some of the tapes he made of conversations with the Freemen in May. Duke was invited by the Freemen to negotiate by phone and in person during the 81-day standoff.On the tapes, broadcast Sunday, Edwin Clark of the Freemen said he was told that jailed Freemen leader Leroy Schweitzer had been threatened with deadly injections.
"When he went to Missouri, a man, a doctor from New York City, come in and told Leroy: He says, `You'll never see the light of day.' And he says, `I'll guarantee you before you leave here I'm gonna inject you with a, with a deadly ah . . . dose of cancer.' "
Others suffered a different fate, he contended.
"I know of two of them, one of them at least, he was as healthy as a (expletive) horse when he went in there, and he came back . . . there was another one, I can't remember his name, they, they give him a lethal dose of `no brains' when he come back."
The Freemen defined "no brains" drugs as mind-numbing injections, Duke said.
Russell Landers said the Freemen were ready to fight if FBI agents tried to move in, according to the tapes.
Duke talked five times with the Freemen.