A day after federal and state officers swarmed near the hilltop home of tax protesters Ed and Elaine Brown, the couple thanked a supporter from upstate New York, Danny Riley, for saving their lives.

Riley, who posted a video account of his experience on the internet, said he was walking the Browns' dog early Thursday when he discovered a large group of U.S marshals hiding in the woods near the Brown's Plainfield house. The marshals, he said, shot at him and shocked him with a Taser. If not for that encounter, Ed Brown said yesterday, he and his wife might be dead.

"If it wasn't for Danny Riley taking that walk yesterday morning with the dog the way he did," Brown said yesterday on his daily radio show, Ed Brown Under Siege. "The fact that he did probably saved our lives."

A law enforcement source confirmed yesterday that Riley was the man marshals detained Thursday after encountering him with a dog near the Brown property.

U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said that the officers were near the fortified concrete home Thursday to watch the Browns and their supporters while marshals and IRS agents acted on a warrant to seize a commercial property owned by the couple in West Lebanon. He said his officers had never intended to arrest the Browns but wanted to monitor them in case they retaliated in response to the seizure.

On Thursday, Monier described how officers performing surveillance near the Brown home encountered a supporter leaving the property. Marshals detained and questioned the man, but they released him without charges on Thursday afternoon.

Riley's internet video has fueled speculation on various pro-Brown websites and radio shows that marshals had intended to arrest or kill the Browns on Thursday, and were stopped only when Riley accidentally blew their cover.

"Astounding testimony from Danny Riley, the man who was arrested by U.S. Marshals after walking Ed Brown's dog near his property yesterday morning, proves that Thursday's events in Plainfield New Hampshire represent a planned siege that was only aborted after Riley's disappearance gave the Browns early warning that militarized police and SWAT teams were descending on their home," says an article on prisonplanet.com.

Ed Brown told his radio audience that the marshals' actions suggested that they intended to kill him and his wife.

"If they were willing to shoot an unarmed guest of ours," Brown said, "then their intention was to come down and kill us."

Though there had been calls Thursday for supporters to visit the Brown property, Brown said yesterday that he would prefer supporters stay put. He did request the hand delivery of a high powered ham radio and a "third-generation, good" thermal imaging scope for a rife.

"They're very expensive, but so what guys," he said. "We're going to give our lives to you if we have to."

In the video, Riley, shirtless and sitting in front of a bulletin board, gives a detailed description of his experience. After walking down the Browns' long, wooded driveway, he came face to face with a man in camouflage. When Riley asked the man if he was a turkey hunter, he initially got no reaction.

"Then all of the sudden, the guy stood right up in front of me," Riley said. "And with a full camouflage suit on and yelled, 'Freeze.' At that point I turned around and ran, ran for my life."

On the video, Riley describes hearing bullets whiz by him as he yelled to the marshals that he was unarmed. Brown said on the radio yesterday that he also heard gunfire Thursday morning from his house. But Monier said that marshals never shot at the dog walker.

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