Politech: Fed police arrest, imprison Oregon radio "microcaster"

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001461096_patriot10m.html [...] In February 2001 - before the Patriot Act was ever imagined - Alan was approached in downtown Oroville by two men who knocked on the window of his truck, asking him to roll it down. Fearing the men were carjackers, Alan hit the gas. Big mistake: The men were federal agents, in town to serve Alan with contempt-of-court papers. His crime: Running a nonlicensed radio station from an apple-picking shack on a hillside above Oroville, pop. 1,600. With a sister transmitter down the valley in Tonasket, Alan's faint, 5-watt FM signal reached only around the two towns, carrying news, high-school sports, advertising - and provocative, right-leaning political commentary pulled by satellite dish from "patriotic" national broadcasting networks. Alan insisted his North Valley Broadcasting "microcast" station didn't need a federal license because it didn't interfere with other station signals and didn't broadcast over state lines. The Federal Communications Commission - pressured, Alan says, by a radio competitor in Omak - disagreed. Moments after fleeing the undercover feds that day in Oroville, Alan, a former reserve police officer with nary a parking ticket on his record, was chased down and arrested at gunpoint. The father of six was tossed into the Spokane County Jail, where he sat for nearly two months, becoming something of a cause clbre in his community. After a series of legal maneuvers, and a dispute over the legal name under which he could be charged (he goes by Mark Alan, his "baptized" name, but the feds insist he is Mark Alan Rabenold, his "family" name), he pleaded to a minor offense and agreed to unplug Radio Free Oroville.