The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge came to an end with more than two dozen people rounded up on federal charges from more than 10 states.
One of the surprise arrests came when Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, father of occupation leader Ammon Bundy, stepped off a plane in Portland, apparently on his way to bolster support for the Oregon protesters.
Until then, the figurehead of the anti-government movement had faced no criminal fallout from his own armed standoff in 2014 with federal agents.
For critics of his particular brand of gun-toting populism, Bundy's jailing was two years late. The reasoning goes that the inaction allowed his sons to spread the family's gospel against federal government dominion.
Why the wait? they ask.
Bringing in the Bundy patriarch was probably part strategy and part serendipity, say politicians, academics and police experts.
His arrest in the Nevada siege and the arrest of so many tied to the refuge occupation signaled a federal crackdown on the militant cause.
"Illegal acts such as occupying federal property in a violent manner – armed -- to deprive employees or citizens access to those facilities will not be tolerated in the United States," Greg Bretzing, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, said at a news conference Thursday just hours after the final Malheur protesters surrendered.
"I hope that message has gotten out clearly," he said, "that kind of activity has consequences and those consequences will be visited upon those people who carry out those activities."
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Academics in Nevada say they've been waiting awhile to hear such strong words.
They couldn't understand how Cliven Bundy and others could escape repercussions for pointing guns and exhibiting other aggressive behavior toward federal rangers who had come to seize cattle that the rancher had grazed for decades on public land without paying fees.
While many could accept that the rangers had to back down when faced with 400 armed militants from across the West, they couldn't fathom why arrests didn't come swiftly afterward.
"Many Nevadans would say, 'It's about time,'" said Eric Herzik, professor and chair of the University of Nevada-Reno's political science department.
"But why has Bundy been treated as above the law?" he said. "The feds have shown incredible restraint -- perhaps to the point of consternation by folks who don't see eye to eye with the Bundy gang."
In a report four months after the ranch confrontation, the U.S. Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis warned that many militants viewed the standoff as "a defining victory over government oppression."
The analysts said it could galvanize some people to act. The report linked several crimes -- including the shooting deaths of two Las Vegas police officers -- to those who helped at Cliven Bundy's ranch and predicted future violence was likely, especially against government officials and law enforcement.
The federal complaint filed as part of Bundy's arrest at Portland International Airport provides more details about what went down in 2014 and why federal rangers backed off.
"Some of these gunmen took tactically superior positions on high ground, while others moved in and out of the crowd, masking their movements behind other unarmed Followers," Joe Willis, an FBI agent out of the agency's Las Vegas office, wrote in the complaint. "The most immediate threat to the officers came from the bridges where gunmen took sniper positions behind concrete barriers, their assault rifles aimed directly at the officers below."
Bundy's supporters had a tactical advantage, he wrote, and they also outnumbered officers 4-to-1.
"Officers withdrew rather than risk the firefight that was sure to follow if they engaged the snipers," Willis said.
The complaint, filed in federal court the day after Cliven Bundy's Wednesday night arrest, charges him with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, assault on a federal law enforcement officer, carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, obstruction of justice and interference with commerce by extortion.
If convicted, Bundy, 69, could face up to five years in prison on the conspiracy charge, up to 10 years on the obstruction charge, up to 20 years in prison on the assault interference charges and a mandatory minimum consecutive seven years on the firearm charge. He could also face fines of $250,000 per count.
The complaint also mentions four alleged co-conspirators in the 2014 standoff who aren't named but based on the allegations, they appear to be Bundy's sons, Ammon and Ryan, as well as self-styled Montana militiaman Ryan Payne and Pete Santilli, an online talk show host from Ohio.
All four of those men have been indicted in the 41-day takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County that began Jan. 2 over the imprisonment of two local ranchers and federal land management policy.
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Former law enforcement officials say just as federal rangers didn't want to get in the middle of a firefight at the 2014 standoff, they likely wanted to avoid launching what could become a gun battle if they tried to arrest Cliven Bundy at his 160-acre ranch.
"If there's a conflict, you don't want to resolve it with a confrontation," said Danny Coulson, who served as special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon from 1988 to 1991 before becoming the agency's deputy assistant director in charge of terrorism operations. He now runs a security consulting business in Texas.
"I have done a lot of tactical operations and the best option is to be patient and to get them isolated," he said.
It's not unusual to take time to build a strong case, as well as build the confidence among targets that they can move around without fear of arrest and speak freely on social media, experts said.
The FBI seems to have drawn from the same page of the playbook on both Cliven and Ammon Bundy's arrests, Coulson and others said.
Police had allowed occupiers to come and go from the refuge in the first 25 days of the standoff. On Jan. 26, after announcing on social media that they planned to go to Grant County to the north for a community meeting, Ammon Bundy and other takeover leaders left in two cars for the 100-mile drive.
About 20 miles outside of Burns, on an empty and forested stretch of U.S. 395 in a canyon filled with deep snow, state police and FBI agents set up roadblocks.
Ammon Bundy and Ryan Payne, both planners of the occupation, were arrested. State police shot Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, a spokesman for the occupiers, when he ran from them and reached into his jacket where he had a loaded handgun, the FBI said.
In a news conference after the arrests, the FBI's Bretzing addressed why authorities had chosen that moment for the arrests.
"In any operation there's a group of leadership that's running the show, so to speak, and at this juncture it appeared those in a leadership position would be off the refuge and traveling elsewhere," he said. "We took the opportunity to effect the arrest at that time."
After those arrests, Cliven Bundy grew increasing vocal in support of the remaining occupiers and called on others to join the movement. He, too, "traveled elsewhere" as he made the flight to Portland from Nevada – a move he'd announced on social media.
A Facebook post on the Bundy Ranch page earlier that day read: "WAKE UP AMERICA! WAKE UP WE THE PEOPLE! WAKE UP PATRIOTS! WAKE UP MILITIA! IT'S TIME!!!!! CLIVEN BUNDY IS HEADING TO THE HARNEY COUNTY RESOURCE CENTER IN BURNS OREGON" That's what the occupiers called the wildlife refuge.
A certified letter sent the week before to the sheriff in Harney County under Cliven Bundy's name had demanded: "Remove all state and federal policing agents out of Harney County." It declared that "We the People" would retain possession of the refuge.
He was arrested at the airport -- a location that provided protection for agents because he couldn't carry weapons on the flight.
"This was an opportunistic approach," said Tung Yin, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who specializes in criminal justice.
"If you put yourself in the shoes of government and the FBI, in terms of what they knew back in 2014 and what they thought might happen if they rushed in," he said, "the likelihood of another Ruby Ridge or Waco is possible."
They had to balance that, he said, against the potential for copycats or that the anti-government movement would build steam.
"It's hard to fault the government either way in a situation like that," he said. "There's no clear-cut right answer and a lot of ways one move could backfire and the other move could backfire in different ways."
Yin and law enforcement officials pointed out that one of the risks in waiting on charges out of Nevada was a loss of evidence or witnesses – but neither of those were likely to happen considering the potential case involved dozens of federal agents who would be eager to take the stand.
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Still, critics of the Bundy family and its anti-authoritarian message said they're not sure whether the arrests will stall the movement that brings together self-styled militia and patriot groups with varied philosophies and backgrounds from across the United States – though predominately in the West.
"For the last two years we have monitored and seen the aftermath of Bunkerville, Nevada, turn into a swift moving fire across the West," said Ryan Lenz, senior writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And while the radical right often struggles to regroup when leadership is lost, he said, the time these groups have had to organize may make it easier for an heir apparent to step in.
Lenz and others can already tick off the names of supporters who they think might fill that role and they continue to monitor their rhetoric on social media.
Yet they also acknowledge that the elder Bundy's shoes will be hard to fill.
The father of 14 presented a dichotomy of grandfatherly folk hero and outlaw cowboy who appealed to disparate groups -- from the disillusioned and distrustful paramilitary types to the ranching families frustrated for generations by perceived government overreach.
"The FBI is clearly hoping to put a cap on this and shut it down for good," Lenz said. "Yet the Bundys are not the only ones critical to the growth of this rampant ideolology. I wouldn't be surprised if these arrests – Ammon, Ryan and now, Cliven -- don't send the movement into a fury."
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