On this day in 1992, Federal Marshals in the Idaho panhandle attempted to serve a warrant on Randy Weaver, touching off a deadly confrontation and standoff that soon involved the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.
The InfluenceWatch profile of the Federal Bureau of Investigation provides this description of the violent controversy:
Ruby Ridge
Agents of the FBI and its Hostage Rescue Team were confronted with internal rebukes, professional reprimands, criminal prosecutions, and extensive external criticism for conduct during and after an August 1992 armed siege at a remote property in northern Idaho colloquially identified as “Ruby Ridge.”
Origins
In October 1989, Kenneth Fadeley, an informant working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) on a case targeting the white-supremacist group Aryan Nations, persuaded an Idaho man named Randy Weaver to sell him two shotguns with barrels cut one-quarter inch shorter than the legal limit. A jury later acquitted Weaver of the weapons charge after the defense argued at trial that the defendant had been entrapped by the BATF.
Fadelely later testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that an FBI informer also working within the Aryan Nations deliberately blew Fadeley’s cover and ruined his position within the racist group. Asked by one senator if this had been done so the FBI infiltrator could “get the full glory” in the case, Fadeley replied: “Unfortunately, yes, sir.”
With Fadeley’s cover blown, the BATF decided to pursue Weaver as a new informant within the group. Weaver was not a member of the Aryan Nations, but held racial separatist views and had socialized with some of Aryan Nations members. When Weaver refused to become an informant, he was arrested for the illegal shotgun charge.
Recounting the story in September 1995, the Seattle Spokesman-Review reported the arrest of Weaver “set into motion a chain of events that resulted in three deaths on Ruby Ridge in 1992.”
Shootout with U.S. Marshals
Weaver made bail after his arrest. A 1994 review by the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility found that Weaver’s federal probation officer mistakenly sent a message telling Weaver he was required to return for his trial on March 20, 1991. The actual trial date was February 20.
Weaver did not report for his trial on February 20. On March 14, still almost a week before the parole officer had told Weaver to appear for trial, a grand jury indicted Weaver for failing to appear. The U.S. Marshal Service was called to bring him into custody.
In response, according to the Department of Justice review of the case:
Weaver sent a letter to the local sheriff, stating that he would not leave his cabin and that law enforcement officers would have to take him out. The Weavers “felt as though the end [was] near.”
Knowing that Weaver possessed firearms and had made apocalyptic anti-government statements, the Marshals Service concluded he would violently resist capture. Federal agents spent the next 18 months developing strategies to apprehend him. The 1994 Department of Justice review later faulted the United States Attorney’s Office for “incorrectly” terminating “efforts by the Marshals Service to negotiate with Weaver through intermediaries.”
During August 1992, a surveillance mission by the marshals at Weaver’s heavily wooded mountain property drew the attention of the family dog. One of the marshals shot the dog and received return fire from Samuel, the Weaver’s 14-year-old son. Samuel turned to run and was fatally shot in the back by one of the marshals. Kevin Harris, a guest of the Weaver family, also fired shots during the exchange, including one that killed Marshal William Degan.
FBI Hostage Rescue Team
The day after the fatal exchange of gunfire on the Weaver property, the U.S. Marshals Service relinquished the situation to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). FBI sniper teams were given what the Department of Justice inquiry stated were “specially formulated” rules of engagement that “instructed the HRT snipers that before a surrender announcement was made they could and should shoot all armed adult males appearing outside the cabin.”
According to the Department of Justice report, the following occurred on August 22, 1992, the day after the HRT arrived:
Operating under these Rules on August 22, an FBI sniper/observer fired two shots in quick succession. The first shot was at an armed adult male whom he believed was about to fire at a HRT helicopter on an observation mission. The first shot wounded Randy Weaver while in front of a building at the Weaver compound known as the birthing shed. The second shot was fired at Harris while Harris was retreating into the Weaver cabin. The second shot seriously wounded Harris and killed Vicki Weaver who was behind the cabin door.
When she received the shot to the head from HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi, Vicki Weaver, Randy Weaver’s wife, was holding their ten-month old daughter.
FBI Misconduct
The siege ended nine days later with the surrender of Weaver and Harris. Both men were put on trial for federal murder and conspiracy charges. Weaver faced additional charges for the federal firearms offense involving the illegal shotguns and for failing to appear for trial on that offense.
Harris and Weaver were acquitted of all serious offenses in July 1993. The jury convicted Weaver on a minor charge of failing to appear at his original trial, but acquitted him of selling illegal shotguns, the charge that originally set in motion the deadly series of events. The Associated Press reported Weaver was given credit for time served since his surrender and was released in December 1993, approximately six months after his trial ended.
In August 1995, the U.S. government agreed to pay a $3.1 million settlement to the Weaver family to settle all civil claims arising from the incident.
The 1994 Department of Justice review found “numerous problems with the conduct of the FBI” and “serious problems with the terms of the Rules of Engagement in force at Ruby Ridge.”
The report concluded the “could and should shoot all armed adult males” language from the rules of engagement “not only departed from the FBI’s standard deadly force policy but also contravened the Constitution of the United States.” Addressing specifically the shot to the head that killed the unarmed Vicki Weaver, the Department of Justice ruled that although she was not the intended target, the fatal shooting did not satisfy the “reasonableness” standard “the Constitution requires for the legal use of deadly force.”
The report also concluded that “the Constitution requires that surrender announcements be given, where feasible, before deadly force may be employed” and that the “FBI should have given a higher priority to making a surrender announcement at the earliest possible opportunity.” Instead, the report stated the FBI didn’t seem concerned with surrender until after violence had occurred: “In our view, the factor that caused the FBI to make the surrender announcement at that time was Horiuchi’s shots.”
FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi was later charged with manslaughter in Boundary County, Idaho, for the shooting of Vicki Weaver. The case was taken over by a federal district court, with a federal judge dismissing the charges on the basis that the agent was operating within his capacity as an officer of the federal government.
An internal FBI after-action report analyzing and criticizing the conduct of the Hostage Rescue Team was written immediately after the siege by E. Michael Kahoe, the head of the Bureau’s Violent Crimes and Major Offenders Section. Kahoe later destroyed the report in an apparent effort to prevent lawyers for Weaver and Harris from obtaining the damaging information. Kahoe also pressured a subordinate to destroy all evidence of the report. In October 1997, Kahoe pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and received an 18-month federal prison sentence.
Following the Weaver/Harris verdicts, the federal trial-court judge rebuked and fined the Bureau for several instances of misconduct during the case. The Department of Justice report stated: “The court issued an Order fining the FBI and criticizing it for its failure to produce discovery materials, its failure to obey orders and admonitions of the court, and its indifference to the rights of the defendant and to the administration of justice.”
FBI Disciplinary Actions
In January 1995, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh penalized 12 FBI officials for professional offenses in the Randy Weaver case. The official criticisms ranged from “inadequate performance, blunders and incompetence” to the more-serious “major failings.” At the time, Freeh claimed “no crimes or intentional misconduct” had occurred; this was almost two years before agent E. Michael Kahoe pled guilty to obstruction of justice over his destruction of documents.
Some of the more-serious punishments were given to Richard Rogers, commander of the Hostage Rescue Team, and Eugene Glenn, an FBI Special Agent in Charge, who were cited for writing the “could and should shoot all armed adult males” rules of engagement. They were censured, suspended, and transferred.
Larry Potts, who was acting deputy director of the FBI, second in command to Freeh, was also censured for approving without reading the aggressive rules of engagement. Potts’s deputy, Danny Coulson, received a similar reprimand. As he handed down the punishments, Freeh defended his top deputies: “Had they read those rules, I’m confident both Coulson and Potts would have fixed them.”
Eugene Glenn later told a U.S. Senate panel that he had become the “scapegoat” for the outcome at Ruby Ridge and accused Potts of knowing about and approving the rules of engagement.
Freeh also implied the FBI snipers had collectively decided to disobey the “could and should shoot all armed adult males” order they had been given by their superiors, saying “Nobody, thank God, was following those rules of engagement.” Sniper Lon Horiuchi did not receive a reprimand.
The FBI director also expressed his full confidence in Potts and “enthusiastically” recommended that he become the permanent, rather than “acting,” deputy director. In May 1995, then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno gave Potts the promotion.
The following year a tragically similar, and far more lethal encounter occurred involving the same federal agencies at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. This and many other controversial moments in FBI history are covered in the extensive InfluenceWatch profile of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Additional Capital Research Center reports regarding the FBI include the following:
- The FBI’s Bad Apples: The Bureau’s Worst Days Are Worth Remembering
This series is broken into six parts:
Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax | The Dirty Dossier | More Jewells
Mueller and Mistakes | Hoover’s Return | Bad Apples
This was written after the FBI raid on then-former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Ken Braun
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://capitalresearch.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
