Saturday,
May 3, 1997

Feud over new county

Request for U.N. role horrifies some backers

ARLINGTON -- Spring is creeping across the countryside here.

Fields are being plowed. Farmers are sending their Holsteins out to pasture.

And Thom Satterlee of Arlington is asking the United Nations to step in and help form a new county.

The bucolic scenery in rural north Snohomish County gives little hint of the long-simmering debate over attempts to create a new Freedom County here.

But recent calls to get the United Nations involved in what so far has been a local controversy is hitting hot buttons, including among some of Freedom County's most ardent supporters.

Dale R. Smith of Stanwood is a member of the Freedom County Charter Association, a registered political action committee established to push the county secession efforts.

He said there is no support for the U.N. gambit launched last month by Satterlee and John Stokes, a former area resident now living in Montana.

"For the record, neither myself nor any of the people who have done the majority of the work to form Freedom County would ever stand behind a plan that permitted the United Nations' interference in any way in the operation of any branch of the United States' government," Smith said in a prepared statement. "I would be the first in line to take up arms against any United Nations takeover of the United States government or its lands."

State Sen. Val Stevens tried and failed this year to get the Legislature to act on the Freedom County plan. She said she's upset that some want to invite the United Nations in to settle a domestic issue.

"They have no business coming into our country and telling us what to do," Stevens said. "We had a Boston Tea Party over that kind of situation."

Stokes and Satterlee are circulating copies of complaints they say they sent to the United Nations in late April. The complaints allege that they and other Freedom County supporters have had their rights trampled by state and federal officials who refuse to assist them in creating their secessionist county.

They contend the conduct is a violation of international treaties, and Stokes and Satterlee want the United Nations to impose sanctions, including a possible economic boycott.

"The citizens have exhausted all political and peaceful means of resolution," Stokes wrote the United Nations.

The United Nations needs to become involved, because people who have supported Freedom County "fear reprisal from corrupt officials and powerful special interests," Satterlee said in his 13-page "communiquŽ" to the United Nations.

"Washington State Citizens expressing views on the advisability of local control through representative self-government have endured slanderous ridicule, been set up as marks for mockery and braved ridicule by local and state officials," Satterlee wrote. "Anyone articulating ideas, or thoughts, about constitutionally guaranteed rights are derided as constitutionalist militia types out to destroy democracy and impose theocracy on the general populace."

United Nations officials in New York City said any such complaints would be forwarded to Geneva, Switzerland, where the odds against getting aid may be longer than the mileage separating Arlington from Geneva.

According to the U.N. Center for Human Rights in New York City, the international agency doesn't step in until the member country has exhausted all available remedies.

In this case, that means arguing the Freedom County case through the court system, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, if need be, center staff said.

The only pending legal action relating to Freedom County is the Cedar County petition before the state Supreme Court in May. Satterlee said he figures the court will wash its hands of the debate by saying the Legislature is responsible for handling requests for new counties.

When asked why he doesn't simply file a civil suit, Satterlee responded, "Why would we file a civil suit in a corrupt judiciary when the decision has already been made?"

But Satterlee has shown no reluctance to become involved in lawsuits in other cases.

He took Snohomish County to court in 1995, and argued the case himself, as part of an unsuccessful attempt to force a public vote on changes to the county's ethics code for public officials. Later that year, he was part of a group of county government critics who brought a lawsuit alleging that local election results may have been manipulated through computer fraud.

Late last year, Satterlee represented himself in a federal civil suit. More recently, he affixed his personal seal to Snohomish County Superior Court documents filed by a Lake Stevens man who wanted a grand jury to investigate Sheriff Rick Bart and others for not taking his side in a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service.

Satterlee's seal features his name under the words "Bishop of the Way" and "Yoshua's Talmadin." Satterlee declined to explain the seal, except to say that he is a bishop in a Judeo-Christian religion, which he wouldn't identify.

He affixed the seal to the court papers after the man who filed them swore before God that they contained the truth, he said.

In his "communiquŽ" to the United Nations, Satterlee said local government critics have had their property "improperly and unlawfully seized, depriving them of their ability to provide for themselves and their family."

He said those seizures are being conducted by the IRS, which he called a "corporation."

Satterlee said he saw no relationship between his religious court activism and his U.N. complaint. A local judge declined to act on the Lake Stevens man's grand jury demand, shipping the case off to federal court at the request of local prosecutors, who argued the man's complaint raised federal, not local, questions.

"It seems to me that the more interesting story is why is Snohomish County afraid to have a grand jury?" Satterlee asked. "Why is Snohomish County afraid to have lawful government?"

County Executive Bob Drewel said the U.N. gambit is a "publicity- seeking attempt" that misrepresents the facts about the county and state in its dealings with would-be secessionists.

"This one seems to have gone completely off the track," he said. "In the final analysis, it will cause us to do things we otherwise wouldn't have had to do, and at a cost of providing services to Snohomish County."

Satterlee is as unapologetic as he is insistent that most in Snohomish County don't recognize the government corruption he sees.

"The 90 million people who lived under Nazi Germany believed they were under lawful government as well," he said.