Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century

13. Captain Barry Caver on the Republic of Texas Standoff

204 ★ 13 ★ Captain Barry Caver on the Republic of Texas Standoff Barry Caver with Robert Nieman I t all started in the early 1990s when Richard McLaren began to organize a group of anti-government extremists in an effort to overthrow the state government. In his twisted mind, he believed that Texas had been illegally annexed into the Union in 1845. Thus, Texas was not a state in the United States but an independent, sovereign nation. By 1995, McLaren was representing himself as the ambassador and general counsel of the provisional government of the Republic of Texas (ROT). By March 1996, he had become so brazen that he declared that the so-called independent nation was demanding control of all the original land owned by the Republic of Texas. This included half of New Mexico and parts of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. In an effort to carry out his warped plan, McLaren began a paper war in which he flooded local courthouses with self-styled legal documents, filing liens against the personal possessions of government officials and others. This was a scam he had learned from the Freemen in Montana. The West Texas desert around Fort Davis can be—and usually is—quiet. The quiet is one of the reasons so many people love the sparsely settled area. That calm was shattered in the early morning Captain Barry Caver on the Republic of Texas Standoff ★ 205 hours of Sunday, April 27, 1997, when two men and one woman suddenly attacked the home of Joe and Margaret Rowe. One of them fired several shots, striking Joe in the left arm; then all three stormed the house, taking them hostage. The ROT attackers called the Rowes “prisoners of war.” The state of Texas termed the action aggravated kidnapping and attempted capital murder. Jeff Davis County Sheriff Steve Bailey contacted Captain Barry Caver, commander of Company E in Midland, and requested that the Texas Rangers assume command of the incident. At the time, Captain Caver had been the commander of Company E for about six months. At thirty-nine years old, he was the youngest Texas Ranger captain in the history of the Department of Public Safety. Thus began a potential deadly standoff between the Republic of Texas and the state of Texas. On Sunday, June 27, 2004, I [Robert Nieman] had the privilege of sitting down with Captain Barry Caver. He was in Nacogdoches to address the annual convention of the East Texas Peace Officers Association. During our visit, Captain Caver shared with me his experience in dealing with the Republic of Texas standoff. He has graciously allowed me to share our interview. captain caver: I’m Barry Caver, Captain of Company E, Texas Ranger in Midland. robert nieman: When did you first become aware of the Republic of Texas? captain caver: Just of their existence, probably the latter part of 1996. We started hearing rumors of some of the things they were doing, some of their ideas and beliefs they had. We heard that there was a fairly large faction of them in Fort Davis and the Odessa area, and we started trying to monitor their activities and to figure out what they were doing, where they intended going with their beliefs, and so forth. robert nieman: What were some of those core beliefs? captain caver: They didn’t believe that Texas was legally annexed in 1845 when we entered the Union as a state. They wanted to 206 ★ Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century revert the state of Texas back to the Republic of Texas and to claim trillions of dollars for their own use to further their goals and objectives. robert nieman: Did they claim the Mexican Texas that goes all the way up to Wyoming? captain caver: They never did really stipulate as far as some of the other states, but they were basically making their claim within the state of Texas itself—at least within the confines of the state of Texas. To my knowledge, they never did talk about any other states. robert nieman: Coming on the heels of Waco and Oklahoma City, did you consider them a militant organization? captain caver: Early on, no. They were fairly new to us, and we weren’t real sure what their beliefs were or what kind of violent tendencies that they may have. We were obviously a little cautious about what to expect. We were...