The Bureau of Land Management was under fire yet again when a Utah man decided he'd had enough with how the federal agency abused the public's interest. That's how he saw it, anyway, so he decided to break the law in a blatant act of civil disobedience.

Outraged BLM officials went to the U.S. attorney, who agreed to investigate. A grand jury issued subpoenas. The offender remained unapologetic and prepared to face the consequences. Supporters rallied 'round him and complained of the prosecutor's heavy-handedness.

Attorney Pat Shea, the BLM boss under President Bill Clinton, chided various officials. The Utah man, wavering between wanting to negotiate some sort of deal or have his day in court, retained famed Salt Lake City attorney Ron Yengich to defend him.

Tim DeChristopher, right? The University of Utah student who -- with Shea and Yengich as his lawyers -- will be arraigned Tuesday on two federal charges after he monkey-wrenched an oil and gas lease auction by placing bogus bids on drilling parcels?

Nope. It was Mark Habbeshaw, the Kane County commissioner who nearly six years ago ripped up closure signs the BLM had posted on roads and trails in southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Unlike DeChristopher, he got away with it.

Road warriors

The establishment of Grand Staircase in 1996 made a lot Utahns angry, and not just because President Bill Clinton made his announcement in Arizona. To many, the feds had scored not just a land grab that nullified plans for a huge coal-fired power plant, it limited access to roads and regions rural folks always had assumed were theirs to use as they wished.

Lawsuits started almost immediately, with wilderness activists on one side and counties that wanted control of roads on the other. Those fights continue, keyed to a Civil War-era law called Revised Statute 2477 and legal rulings asserting counties must make their road claims one by one in federal court.

Kane County officials decided to take the law into their own hands.

In August 2003, Habbeshaw -- with the help of Sheriff Lamont Smith and another Kane official -- tore down dozens of 4-foot-tall BLM markers prohibiting all-terrain vehicles and motorcycles from Grand Staircase routes.

They carted the signs to monument headquarters in Kanab, presented a letter defending their actions and ordering the agency to remove other signs, alleging they obstructed public access on county roads.

"We felt this was the only way to let them know we are serious," Smith said then.

The BLM took the latter-day highwaymen seriously. Removing or destroying federal signs on federal lands is a crime, the agency said, as it launched a criminal probe.

Shea accused Kane leaders of "taking the law into their own hands" and dubbed them "the village-idiot choir."

But Rep. Mike Noel of Kanab praised the trio for "protecting our rights of access on Kane County roads."

"When the federal sabers stop rattling and the truth be known," he wrote in a letter to The Salt Lake Tribune , "these honorable men will be fully vindicated."

A federal grand jury subpoenaed three Kane officials, including the sheriff. The county quietly paid a $1,500 retainer to Yengich to defend Habbeshaw.

Two years of stalemate later, Habbeshaw, who did not returns calls for this story, and others again defied federal law when they posted their own signs directing OHV riders into a wilderness-study area northeast of the Coral Pink Sand Dunes.

After the county ignored the agency's order to remove the signs, the BLM's then-director of Utah, Sally Wisely, sought legal help from Interior's regional solicitor.

Frustrated, and having already sued multiple times over the road-access claims, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and other groups in 2005 took Kane County to court.

"The Justice Department was dragging its feet," said SUWA conservation director Heidi McIntosh.

Even though federal property -- the signs and the monument itself -- had been damaged, McIntosh said, SUWA didn't bother with any alleged criminal activity related to the sign stunts because there was no point.

Prosecutors "knew what had been done. BLM was fully aware of what was going on," she said. "[Kane] County was trying to wave a red flag in front of them saying, 'Come on, come get us.' We wanted the law to be enforced, period. Whether it was through a criminal [action] or a civil suit, that was fine."

SUWA won its suit against Kane. The county appealed. The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear it in May. After U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell issued an injunction last spring, the county took down its signs.

SUWA has no comment on DeChristopher's actions or potential punishment. But McIntosh said Kane got more consideration.

"What they got was months of negotiations with the solicitor's office, [which] did quite a bit to try to resolve things. They did not prosecute," she said. "There is a difference in the way the cases have been handled."

Kane probe shelved

Through all this clamor, then-U.S. Attorney for Utah Paul Warner kept a studied silence. In January 2006, he announced he would leave to become a federal magistrate. President George W. Bush appointed Brett Tolman to take Warner's place.

It's possible the sign case hasn't outrun the federal statute of limitations, but Tolman isn't pursuing it. In two e-mails to The Tribune this past week, spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch explained that "absent unusual circumstances, the current U.S. attorney does not generally go back and revisit prosecution decisions of prior U.S. attorneys."

In 2003, when Habbeshaw and his allies took the signs, Rydalch said, the courts were trying to figure out how to address rights grandfathered into RS2477.

"The action in Kane County occurred against that backdrop and was claimed by those who did it to be an exercise of right of access to a public right of way," Rydalch said. "While we firmly disagreed with that interpretation, it was at least an arguable interpretation of the law."

Will similar reasoning help DeChristopher? After all, the 27-year-old U. economics major -- who is set to be arraigned Tuesday in Salt Lake City on two felonies after he won 14 parcels with no intention of paying the $1.8 million he bid for them -- also points to court action in justifying his sabotage of the lease auction.

Barely a month after the Dec. 19 sale, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled that the BLM failed to properly consider potential damage to air quality and ancient rock art before drawing up the list of oil and gas leases on sensitive public lands in Utah.

A few weeks later, new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar scolded the Bush administration for rushing in its final days to drill near treasured Utah national parks. He shelved the parcels indefinitely.

But Rydalch said Tolman does not see the two cases as comparable.

"If Tim DeChristopher did what he is charged with in the indictment returned a few weeks ago, we believe he violated federal law," she said. "At the time the signs were taken down in Kane County, it wasn't clear whether federal law was violated, given the status of the RS2477 law at that time."