1992 standoff and shootout in Idaho
The Ruby Ridge standoff was the siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Idaho, in August 1992. On August 21, deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant for his failure to appear on federal firearms charges after he was given the wrong court date. The charges stemmed from Weaver's sale of a sawed-off shotgun to an undercover federal informant, who had induced him to modify the firearm below the legal barrel length.
During a surveillance operation, officer Art Roderick shot Weaver's dog when it ran at them and then pointed his rifle at Weaver's 14-year-old son, Samuel, who was armed. Samuel fired back at the marshals, and was shot in the back and killed by the team. In the ensuing exchange of fire, Weaver's friend Kevin Harris shot and killed Deputy Marshal William Francis Degan Jr. Weaver, Harris, and members of Weaver's immediate family refused to surrender. The Hostage Rescue Team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI HRT) became involved as the siege was mounted. In the standoff, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Weaver, then shot Harris, but the second shot also hit and killed Weaver's wife Vicki. The conflict was ultimately resolved by civilian negotiators, including veteran activist Bo Gritz, who eventually convinced them to surrender. Harris surrendered and was arrested on August 30; Weaver and his three daughters surrendered the next day.
Extensive litigation followed. Initially, Randy Weaver and Harris were tried on a variety of federal criminal charges, including first-degree murder for the death of Degan. In the successful defense, Weaver's attorney Gerry Spence accused the agencies that were involved of criminal wrongdoing, in particular the FBI, the USMS, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for Idaho. Harris and Weaver were acquitted of all the siege-related charges, and Weaver was only found guilty of violating his bail terms and of failing to appear for a court hearing, both related to the original federal firearms charges. The Weaver family and Harris both filed civil suits against the federal government in response to the firefight and the siege. In August 1995, the Weavers won a combined out-of-court settlement of $3.1 million; Harris was awarded a $380,000 settlement in September 2000. In 1997, a Boundary County prosecutor indicted Horiuchi for the manslaughter of Vicki, but the county's new prosecutor controversially closed the case, judging that he would be unlikely to secure a conviction.
The behavior of federal agents during these events drew intense scrutiny. At the end of Weaver's trial, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility formed the Ruby Ridge Task Force (RRTF) in an attempt to investigate Spence's charges; their report raised questions about all of the participating agencies' conduct and policies. Another inquiry was led by the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Government Information, which held hearings between September 6 and October 19, 1995. It issued a report in which it called for reforms in federal law enforcement in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the losses of life at Ruby Ridge and to restore the public's confidence. Several documentaries and books were produced on the siege. The law enforcement's response at Ruby Ridge and during the Waco siege roughly six months later were both cited by Timothy McVeigh as his motivation to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing with Terry Nichols.
Geography.
Ruby Ridge is the southernmost of four ridges that extend east from the Bottleneck/Roman Nose mountain range toward the Kootenai River. Caribou Ridge lies north of it, and the area between them drains into the Ruby Creek. Weaver insisted that his cabin, located north of the creek, was on Caribou Ridge, and that "Ruby Ridge" was a press invention. Both ridge names predate the Weavers' arrival, as noted in a Forest Service report on the 1967 Sundance Fire. The standoff occurred approximately from the nearest incorporated city of Bonners Ferry and approximately south of the border with Canada (British Columbia).
Development.
Randy Weaver, a former Iowa factory worker and U.S. Army soldier, moved with his wife and four children to northern Idaho during the 1980s so they could "home-school his children and escape what he and his wife Vicki saw as a corrupted world." In 1978, Vicki, the religious leader of the family, began to have recurrent dreams of living on a mountaintop and believed that the apocalypse was imminent. After the birth of their son, Samuel, the Weavers began selling their belongings and visited the Amish to learn how to live without electricity. They bought of land on Ruby Ridge in 1983 and began building a cabin; the property was in Boundary County on a hillside on Ruby Creek opposite Caribou Ridge, northwest of nearby Naples.
In 1984, Randy Weaver and his neighbor Terry Kinnison had a dispute over a $3,000 land deal. Kinnison lost the ensuing lawsuit and was ordered to pay Weaver an additional $2,100 in court costs and damages. Kinnison wrote letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secret Service, and the county sheriff in which he alleged that Weaver had threatened to kill Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and Idaho Governor John V. Evans.
In January 1985, the FBI and the Secret Service launched an investigation into allegations that Weaver had made threats against Reagan and other government and law enforcement officials. On February 12, Weaver and his wife were interviewed by two FBI agents, two Secret Service agents, and the Boundary County sheriff and his chief investigator. The Secret Service had been told that Weaver was a member of Aryan Nations (an antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white supremacist terrorist organization) and that he had a large weapons cache at his residence. Weaver denied these allegations, and the government filed no charges. On three or four occasions, the Weavers had attended Aryan Nations meetings at Hayden Lake, where there was a compound for government resisters and white supremacists/separatists.
The investigation noted that Weaver associated with Frank Kumnick, who was known to associate with members of Aryan Nations. Weaver told the investigators that neither he nor Kumnick was a member of Aryan Nations but he stated that Kumnick was "associated with The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord." On February 28, Randy and Vicki Weaver filed an affidavit with the county courthouse alleging that their personal enemies were plotting to provoke the FBI into attacking and killing the Weaver family. On May 6, the Weavers sent President Reagan a letter claiming that their enemies may have sent Reagan a threatening letter under a forged signature. In 1992, the prosecutor cited the 1985 letter as an overt act of the Weaver family conspiracy against the federal government.
ATF involvement.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) first became aware of Weaver in July 1986, when he was introduced to a confidential ATF informant at a meeting at the World Aryan Congress. The informant portrayed himself as a weapons dealer working with motorcycle gangs. Weaver had been invited to the meeting by Kumnick, the original target of the ATF investigation. It was Weaver's first time at this Congress. Over the next three years, Weaver and the informant met several times. In July 1989, Weaver invited the informant to his home to discuss forming a group to fight the "Zionist Organized Government", referring to the U.S. government.
In October 1989, the ATF claimed that Weaver sold the informant two sawed-off shotguns, with the overall length of the guns shorter than the limit set by federal law. In November 1989, Weaver accused the ATF informant of being a spy for the police; Weaver later wrote he had been warned by "Rico V." The informant's handler, Herb Byerly, ordered him to have no further contact with Weaver. Eventually, FBI informant Rico Valentino outed the ATF informant to Aryan Nations security.112
In June 1990, Byerly attempted to use the sawed-off shotgun charge as leverage to get Weaver to act as an informant for his investigation into Aryan Nations. Weaver refused to become a "snitch", and the ATF filed the gun charges in June 1990. The ATF alleged that Weaver was a bank robber with criminal convictions. (Those claims were false: at that time Weaver had no criminal record. The 1995 Senate investigation found: "Weaver was not a suspect in any bank robberies.") A federal grand jury indicted Weaver in December 1990 for making and possessing, but not for selling, illegal weapons in October 1989.34
The ATF concluded it would be too dangerous for agents to arrest Weaver at his property. In January 1991, ATF agents posed as broken-down motorists and arrested Weaver when he and Vicki stopped to assist. Weaver was told of the charges against him, released on bail, and told that his trial would begin on February 19, 1991. On January 22, the judge in the case appointed attorney Everett Hofmeister as Weaver's legal representative. The same day, Weaver called probation officer Karl Richins and told him that he had been instructed to contact Richins on that date. Richins did not have the case file at that time, so he asked Weaver to leave his contact information and said he would contact him when he received the paperwork. According to Richins, Weaver did not give him a telephone number. Hofmeister sent Weaver letters on January 19, January 31, and February 5, asking Weaver to contact him to work on his defense within the federal court system.38
On February 5, the trial date was changed from February 19 to 20 to give participants more travel time following a federal holiday. The court clerk sent the parties a letter informing them of the date change, but the notice was not sent directly to Weaver, only to Hofmeister. On February 7, Richins sent Weaver a letter indicating that he had the case file and needed to talk with Weaver. This letter erroneously said that Weaver's trial date was March 20.38 On February 8, Hofmeister again attempted to contact Weaver by letter informing him that the trial was to begin on February 20 and that Weaver needed to contact him immediately. Hofmeister also made several calls to individuals who knew Weaver, asking them to have Weaver call him. Hofmeister told U.S. District Court Judge Harold Lyman Ryan that he had been unable to reach Weaver before the scheduled court date.
When Weaver did not appear in court on February 20, Ryan issued a bench warrant for failure to appear in court.2 On February 26, Ken Keller, a reporter for the "Kootenai Valley Times", telephoned the U.S. Probation Office and asked whether Weaver did not show in court on February 20 because the letter Richins sent him had an incorrect date. Upon finding a copy of the letter, the Chief Probation Officer, Terrence Hummel, contacted Ryan's clerk and informed them of the incorrect date in the letter. Hummel also contacted the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and Weaver's attorney, informing them both of the error. Judge Ryan, however, refused to withdraw the bench warrant.
The USMS agreed to put off executing the warrant until after March 20 in order to see whether Weaver would show up in court on that day. If he were to show up on March 20, the Department of Justice claimed that all indications are that the warrant would have been dropped. But instead, the U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) called a grand jury on March 14. The USAO did not inform the grand jury of Richins's letter and the grand jury issued an indictment for failure to appear.
U.S. Marshals Service involvement.
When the Weaver case passed from the ATF to the USMS, no one informed the marshals that the ATF had attempted to solicit Weaver as an informant.
As the law enforcement arm of the federal court, the USMS were responsible to arrest and bring in Weaver, now considered a fugitive. Weaver simply stayed in his remote home, threatening to resist any attempt to take him by force.
Weaver was known to have an intense distrust of government. The erroneous Richins letter is believed to have compounded this sentiment and may have contributed to Weaver's reluctance to appear for trial. He was suspicious of what he thought were inconsistent messages from the government and his lawyer; he began to think there was a conspiracy against him.