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Randy Weaver

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Randall Claude Weaver (born Jan. 3, 1948)[1] is a former Green Beret who was at the center of a deadly confrontation with U.S. federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992.

Early life

Randy Weaver was the only son of four children born to Clarence and Wilma Weaver, a farming couple from Villisca, Iowa. The Weavers were deeply religious and had difficulty finding a denomination that matched their views; hence, they often moved around among Evangelical, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. Weaver earned decent grades in school and enjoyed a variety of sports. He professed his faith in Jesus Christ at age 11, however he recently stated at a news conference for Edward and Elaine Brown: "I ain't afraid of dying no more. I'm curious about the afterlife. And I'm an atheist."[2]

Graduating from high school in 1966, Weaver enrolled in Iowa Central Community College, where he met fellow student Vicki Jordison. Following a school dance, the two started dating and grew very close. Jordison was a year younger than Weaver and was raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on a farm just 50 miles (80 km) north of Weaver's childhood home. Similar to Weaver, Jordison had also been raised with conflicting religious teachings. Her mother was a Congregationalist and her father a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Throughout her childhood, her father would often attempt to foretell current events as he compared the Bible’s prophecies with the newspaper. As she aged into a young woman, Jordison was considered highly intelligent by her peers. She excelled in school and eventually became vice-president of the Pleasant Valley Future Business Leaders of America, and an active member in the Pixies 4-H group. Her younger sister, Julie, later stated that she was the kind of person that everyone liked and envied. In 1967, Jordison graduated from Fort Dodge High School and enrolled in Iowa Central Community College.

Military training

When the Vietnam War began to escalate, Weaver dropped out of community college and joined the United States Army in October 1968. He excelled in the military and qualified for the Green Berets. Weaver was promoted to the rank of sergeant following his training.

Weaver's first assignment was at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, an assignment he resented. He could not understand the point of being trained as a Green Beret without being able to apply his skills in combat.[citation needed] Friends later said he became bitter that men who wanted nothing to do with the war were sent to Vietnam regularly, yet he, who had volunteered, sat at an Army base with non-combat duties.[citation needed] As Weaver waited for deployment to Vietnam, Vicki Jordison was finishing her college studies, earning a two-year degree in business and getting a job at the United Way.

In 1970, Weaver secured a temporary leave from Fort Bragg and returned to his hometown for a visit. He had already decided to finish his duties with the Army as soon as possible and wanted to inform his family of his plans. It did not take long for him to reunite with Jordison.

After the war

On Oct. 8, 1971, following three years of duty, Randy Weaver received an honorable discharge from the Army. That November, Weaver and Jordison were wed during a small ceremony at the First Congregationalist Church in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In an attempt to impress Vicki's family, two ministers conducted the ceremony, one from the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints and the other a Congregationalist pastor.

Following the wedding, Randy enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa to study criminal justice, with the goal of one day becoming an FBI agent. However, the young couple found the cost of tuition prohibitive and Randy eventually dropped out. He worked at a local John Deere plant and Vicki worked as an executive secretary and then as a homemaker.[3]

The couple began to harbor more fundamentalist beliefs, with Vicki believing the apocalypse was imminent.[4] To follow Vicki's vision of her family surviving the apocalypse in a remote area, the Weaver family moved to a 20-acre (81,000 m2) property in remote Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and built a cabin there in the 1980s.[3] They paid $5,000.00 USD cash and traded their moving truck for the land, valued at $500.00 an acre.[5]

At the time of the Ruby Ridge incident, the Weavers had four children: Sara, 16; Sammy, 14; Rachel, 10; and Elishiba, 10 months.[3] Vicki home-schooled the children and by all accounts was a devoted mother.[3]

Ruby Ridge incident

Main article: Ruby Ridge

Randy Weaver was considered part of the white supremacist movement by the Federal Government. Believing him to attend the Aryan Nations church and Aryan Nations World Congresses, the U.S. Secret Service and FBI interviewed Weaver and his wife in 1985. Weaver denied belonging to Aryan Nations, and the couple cited differences in religious beliefs between them and the group.

Weaver was approached at a 1986 Aryan Nations rally by undercover ATF agent Kenneth Faderley (masquerading as a biker named Gus Magisono) who was investigating Weaver's friend Frank Kumnick. Faderley presented himself as a New Jersey illegal firearms dealer. Faderley met Weaver again at the 1987 World Congress. Weaver skipped the 1988 Aryan meeting and ran as candidate for county sheriff (and lost). In 1989, Weaver supplied two modified shotguns to Faderley. The ATF maintained that the weapons supplied by Weaver were illegally shortened when Faderley received them, Weaver has claimed otherwise. The DOJ Ruby Ridge Task Force Report (1994) records that Faderley stated Weaver showed him an unaltered shotgun and Faderley pointed out where he wanted Weaver to cut the gun. The ATF wanted to use Weaver to introduce Faderley to Charles Howarth who was starting a group in Montana, after which the ATF intended to drop the Kumnick and Weaver investigations. Weaver refused to take Faderley to Montana in November 1989 and Faderley was told by his superiors to have no further contact with Weaver.

By June 1990, Faderley had been outed to Aryan Nations security. Weaver was then approached by ATF agents and told that they had evidence of his possession and sale of illegal weapons, and offered to drop the charges in return for his co-operation in infiltrating the Aryan Nations. Weaver refused. He was initially arrested by ATF agents on charges[3] relating to transfer of a short-barreled shotgun without a license in January 1991. This was compounded by Weaver's failure to appear in court to answer these charges. Weaver's original court date was Feb. 19 1991; it was changed to the following day, but Pretrial Services sent Weaver a notice citing the date as March 20. As a result, Weaver missed the hearing and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, with the U.S. Marshals Service directed to serve it. By Feb. 27, it was widely known Weaver had been given the wrong date. The U.S. Marshals Service wanted to allow Weaver the opportunity to show in court on March 20, but the U.S. Attorneys Office sought a grand jury indictment on March 14 for Weaver's failure to appear. This convinced Randy and Vicki Weaver that he had no chance of a fair hearing.[6] During the March 1991 to August 1992 standoff, Weaver isolated himself on his property and became increasingly suspicious of the Federal Government, vowing to fight rather than surrender peacefully. A plan for voluntary surrender was negotiated by the Marshals Service with the Weavers during October 1991, but was refused by the U.S. Attorney involved in the case.

After long-term surveillance, the Deputy Director of the Special Operations Group of the Marshals Service recommended against a tactical assault on the Weaver residence. He recommended that the indictment be dismissed and then refiled later under seal, so Weaver would be unaware of the new indictment, in hope of causing Weaver to drop his guard. An undercover operation could then be executed to arrest Weaver without incident. His recommendation was rejected.

On Aug. 21, 1992, several well-armed U.S. Marshals went to the Weaver property to clandestinely survey it; they hoped to update their information about the property, as it had last been surveyed in May 1992. The group had strict orders that they were to avoid all contact with the Weaver family. According to a Department of Justice report on the incident,[7] the marshals were detected by the Weavers' dogs and began to retreat.[8] Randy Weaver's 14-year-old son Sammy and his house guest, 24-year-old family friend Kevin Harris,[3] left the house to investigate, both carrying firearms. The DOJ report corroborates this with a statement dictated by Randy Weaver to his daughter, in which he says that "Approximately 11:30 Friday morning....the dogs started barking like they always do when strangers walk up the driveway. Kevin, and Sam ran out to the rock with their weapons." Eventually the Marshals stopped retreating and took up defensive positions in the woods.

The sequence of events during the ensuing shootout is disputed, with Weaver and Harris saying that the camouflaged marshals fired first[3] and did not identify themselves. The marshals' version of events is when they were rising to identify themselves, they were fired on first by Sammy and Harris.[3][8] Whatever version is correct, Sammy Weaver was shot in the back and arm by federal agents while U.S. Marshal William Degan was shot in the chest.[3] Both died. After this, the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was called in to assist with the situation. Much controversy was later generated by the fact that, after the first day's events, the FBI had changed its usual rules of engagement; specifically, "deadly force can and should be used against any armed adult male if the shot could be taken without a child being injured."[9] No request for surrender or announcement of officials' presence would be needed to shoot.[8]

The next day, August 22, 1992, HRT sniper/observer teams were deployed on the north ridge overlooking the cabin. Randy Weaver, Harris, and Weaver's 16-year-old daughter Sara were seen outside the cabin. Weaver went to view the body of Sammy Weaver,[8] which had been placed in a shed after being recovered the previous day. Weaver's back was to FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi. Horiuchi aimed to sever Weaver's spine for an instant kill. Weaver moved in the last split second as Horiuchi fired and the bullet entered Weaver's right shoulder and exited the armpit.[10] As the three ran back to the house, Horiuchi fired again at Kevin Harris as he ran away, but this time hit Weaver's wife Vicki in the head as she held their 10-month-old daughter Elishiba at the door.[11] Vicki Weaver collapsed on the floor, dying instantly with her bloody but uninjured daughter in her arms. Harris was hit in the chest by the same bullet. A Justice Department review later found this second shot was unconstitutional and the lack of a request to surrender was "inexcusable", since Harris and the two Weavers were running for cover and could not pose an imminent threat. The task force also specifically blamed Horiuchi for firing at the door, not knowing whether someone was on the other side of it, and criticized those who had decided on the special rules of engagement allowing shots to be fired with no previous request for surrender.[8] Much later, a robot vehicle approached the cabin and announced the presence of law enforcement. According to the Weavers, this was the first announcement of the source of the violence.[citation needed]

A stand-off ensued for 10 days as several hundred federal agents surrounded the house, in which Weaver and his three surviving children remained with Harris and the body of Vicki Weaver, under a blood-soaked blanket.[3] During the stand-off, the government force, which numbered 350 to 400 men, had named their temporary camp "Camp Vicki".[12] The negotiators who later claimed they did not know Vicki was dead would call out in the morning 'Vicki, we have blueberry pancakes.' To Sara Weaver inside with her dead mother's body, they were deliberately taunting the survivors.[13][14][15] A vigil was maintained at the Ruby Creek Bridge by protesters who believed the government actions were heavy-handed. James "Bo" Gritz, then a third-party presidential candidate who had formerly been Weaver's commanding officer during the Vietnam War, served as a mediator between Weaver and the government. Eventually, Weaver elected to abandon the stand-off and surrender.

Aftermath of the Ruby Ridge incident

Weaver was charged with multiple crimes relating to the Ruby Ridge incident, a total of ten counts including the original firearms charges and murder. Attorney Gerry Spence handled Weaver's defense, and argued successfully that Weaver's actions were justifiable as self-defense. The judge dismissed two counts after hearing prosecution witness testimony. The jury acquitted Weaver of all remaining charges except two, one of which the judge set aside. Weaver was found guilty of one count, failure to appear, for which Weaver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. The reason he failed to appear was due to the fact that he was officially told the court case was on the 20th March when in fact it was on the 20th February. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Kevin Harris was acquitted of all criminal charges.[16]

In August 1995, the federal government avoided trial on a civil lawsuit filed by the Weavers, by awarding the three surviving daughters $1,000,000 each and Randy Weaver $100,000 over the deaths of Sammy and Vicki Weaver. The attorney for Kevin Harris pressed Harris' civil suit for damages, although federal officials vowed they would never pay someone who had killed a U.S. Marshal (Harris had been acquitted by a jury trial on grounds of self-defense). In September 2000 after persistent appeals, Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement from the government.[17]

Controversy over the Ruby Ridge Rules of Engagement lead to a standardization of deadly force policy among federal law enforcement agencies, implemented in October 1995 after the Ruby Ridge hearings by the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Senate Committee on the Judiciary.[18][19]

In 1996, Weaver showed up with Gritz to "help end the standoff between" the Montana Freemen and the FBI, but their offers to help were declined.[20]

In 1997, the District Attorney for Boundary County, Idaho charged Horiuchi with involuntary manslaughter, but the indictment was removed to federal jurisdiction based on the Supremacy Clause and eventually dismissed at the federal prosecutor's request. Kevin Harris was also charged with the murder of Bill Degan in spite of the fact he had been acquitted on that charge in federal court; that charge was dismissed also.

In 2000, Randy Weaver visited the site of the former Branch Davidian church in Waco, Texas. On April 19, 1993, the complex burned to the ground, killing a number of men, women and children. A new church was being built at the time of Weaver's visit. He let it be known that he supported the assertion that government agents deliberately set the complex on fire. This visit was documented by British journalist Jon Ronson in an episode of his five-part documentary, Secret Rulers of the World entitled "The Legend of Ruby Ridge" and his book Them: Adventures with Extremists.

Documentaries

Randy Weaver and the Siege at Ruby Ridge have been the focus of several documentaries.

RUBY RIDGE: ANATOMY OF A TRAGEDY - originally aired on TLC - is the definitive television documentary on the subject

Support for New Hampshire tax protesters

On June 18, 2007 Weaver participated in a press conference with tax protesters Edward and Elaine Brown at their home in Plainfield, New Hampshire.[21][22]

See also

References

  1. ^ Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Three volumes. Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2007.
  2. ^ "Ruby Ridge leader visits Browns, warns of increased provocation". Associated Press. June 18, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-17. [dead link]
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hewitt, Bill (1995-09-25). "A time to heal". People Weekly. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  4. ^ Jess Walter, Ruby Ridge, ReganBooks, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, pp.30, 34, 38.
  5. ^ Jess Walter, Ruby Ridge, ReganBooks, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, pp.54.
  6. ^ Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, Ruby Ridge Task Force Report, 1994.
  7. ^ Ruby Ridge Task Force, Department of Justice Report on Internal Review Regarding the Ruby Ridge Hostage Situation and Shootings by Law Enforcement Personnel, US Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, June 10, 1994. Made publicly available by Lexis Counsel Connect.
  8. ^ a b c d e Witkin, Gordon (1995-09-11). "The nightmare of Idaho's Ruby Ridge". US News & World Report. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  9. ^ Wiener, Tim (1997-08-16). "U.S. Will Bring No More Criminal Charges Against F.B.I. Officials in Ruby Ridge Siege". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  10. ^ Jess Walter, Every Knee Shall Bow, (Harper Collins, 1995), p. 196.
  11. ^ Nieves, Evelyn (2001-06-06). [Vicki was holding her infant child in her arms when she was deliberately shot in the face by a federal agent. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F7081EF83B5B0C758CDDAF0894D9404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fF%2fFederal%20Bureau%20of%20Investigation%20 "F.B.I. Agent Can Be Charged In Idaho Siege, Court Rules"]. The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-06-26. {{cite news}}: Check |url= value (help); line feed character in |url= at position 110 (help)
  12. ^ Alan W. Bock, Ambush at Ruby Ridge, Diane Books, 1998.
  13. ^ Randy and Sara Weaver, The Federal Siege At Ruby Ridge: In Our Own Words, Ruby Ridge Inc., 1998.
  14. ^ Jess Walter, Ruby Ridge, Regan Books, 2002.
  15. ^ Ronson, Jon (2001). THEM - Adventures With Extremists.
  16. ^ Jess Walter, Ruby Ridge, ReganBooks, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
  17. ^ Jess Walter, Ruby Ridge, ReganBooks, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, pp.392-393.
  18. ^ Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Ruby Ridge, 1995.
  19. ^ General Accounting Office, Use of Force, March 1996.
  20. ^ "On day seven of Freemen standoff, outsiders offer help - March 31, 1996". CNN. 1996-03-31. Retrieved 2010-08-02.
  21. ^ ABC News: $1M in Unpaid Taxes: Couple Dares Feds
  22. ^ CNN http://beta.cnn.com/2007/US/06/21/tax.evaders.ap/. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
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