Tractor Man Goes On Trial

A tractor-driving North Carolina farmer whose one-man protest of federal farm policy last spring created enormous traffic jams around the capital is defending himself in court.

Dwight Watson, 50, who drove his tractor into a pond on the National Mall and sat there for two days while police sharpshooters kept him in their sights, is charged with making a false threat to use explosives and destroying government property. No explosives were found, although a practice grenade incapable of detonating was found inside the cab of Watson's tractor after he surrendered.

Jury selection for Watson's trial in U.S. District Court, scheduled to begin Tuesday, was delayed by a day. Watson still appeared in court and received a lecture from Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who walked him through the trial process, informed him of the obligations that go with acting as his own attorney and warned him against trying to use the trial as a platform for his grievances against the government

Jackson also rejected Watson's list of potential witnesses to be subpoenaed, including former President Clinton and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. Watson, dressed in a dark blue jail uniform, was attentive and polite, asking the judge a number of questions.

It was March 17 when Watson drove a John Deere pulling a flatbed trailer and Jeep into a small park located near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Monument. Watson said he was protesting changes in federal policy that he said vilified the tobacco industry and brought his family to financial ruin.

He stayed put until March 19. As he sat, authorities closed several major roads in the area, which resulted in massive rush-hour gridlock on both days, including on Washington's major feeder route into the northern Virginia suburbs.

The incident led many to wonder how the nation's capital would handle an evacuation after a terrorist attack if a man on a tractor tied up traffic for two days.

U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, whose agency has jurisdiction over the National Mall, has repeatedly defended her department's handling of the incident. Watson was allowed to sleep, use his cell phone to call news organizations and negotiate with police for 48 hours.

Chambers has said she would rather face those criticisms than talk about the loss of human life, and Watson had threatened to use explosives.

Police did use psychological tactics against Watson. At one point in the early morning of the second day of the standoff, police turned off all floodlights in the area and used flash explosives that produced loud bangs, Amy Morris of CBS Radio affiliate WTOP-AM reported at the time.

According to the indictment, Watson caused $27,000 worth of damage when he used his tractor to dig up part of an island in the pond and a retaining wall surrounding it.

Watson, of Whitakers, N.C., has been in prison awaiting trial since he was arrested peacefully at the end of the standoff. If convicted, he would face a maximum prison sentence of 10 years on each of the two counts.

Watson will act as his own lawyer but will have a real lawyer present to advise him, at the insistence of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office expected the trial to last up to one week.

The March standoff was not the first incident of its kind in the capital.

In December 1982, Norman D. Mayer, a 66-year-old nuclear arms protester from Miami Beach, threatened to blow up the Washington Monument. Police evacuated nearby buildings and closed all streets in a several-block area around the National Mall during a 10-hour siege.

Mayer abruptly started driving away from the monument and threatened to become "a moving time bomb in downtown Washington." He was killed by a barrage of police gunfire. The truck was later determined not to contain explosives.