🚀 go-pugleaf

A grim reminder of unchecked government power. The shooting of Vicki Weaver
was outright murder.

Boelke



"bogeyman" <bogeyman@rr.com> wrote in message
news:vk1qet0rgrurlhah4gds18c755qo8c1107@4ax.com...
> Randy Weaver's Return From Ruby Ridge
>
> Back Home in Iowa, He's Got Memories -- and a Message
>
> By Anne Hull
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Monday, April 30, 2001; Page A01
>
> JEFFERSON, Iowa -- The small town where Randy Weaver now lives is as
> wide and open as Ruby Ridge was steep and hidden. The Union Pacific
> whistles past the cornfields hourly.
>
> It is not unusual to find Weaver in Iowa because he was born and
> raised here, the son of a grain salesman. People forget that part.
> What they remember is the 11-day standoff with federal agents in
> 1992 that left Weaver's wife and 14-year-old son dead on an Idaho
> mountainside in the debacle that came to be known as Ruby Ridge.
> What they remember is the survivalist who wanted to separate from a
> race-mixing nation and its oppressive government.
>
> Now, Weaver mows his neat little lawn here on Wilson Avenue. A
> Cadillac sits in his driveway. He is listed in the phone book. But
> to say that Weaver has come down off the mountain would be only
> half-right.
>
> At 53, he is still not ready to forgive. Not after the Justice
> Department settled a lawsuit brought by his family for $3.1 million.
> And not after a wayward soldier named Timothy McVeigh killed 168
> Americans to avenge what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the other
> disastrous federal siege.
>
> When McVeigh is executed next month for his role in the Oklahoma
> City bombing, a violent chapter in American history will close with
> one more death. Weaver says the real enemy will remain at large. The
> real enemy will continue to violate the Constitution and "eavesdrop
> on your house from a mile away with that super ear thing."
>
> Organizations that track the activities of racist and paramilitary
> groups dismiss Weaver as a fading figure in a waning movement. "In
> the scheme of things, he's milquetoasty," said Joe Roy, director of
> the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project.
>
> Yet Weaver continues to rise like a martyr above the wreckage. In
> his case, the black helicopters really did come. A robot with a gun
> in its claw really did move across his cabin porch.
>
> It's hard to say who Weaver is now. The industry of rage and
> resentment makes certain demands upon him. He is a folk hero of
> ultra-right-wing groups. When asked about McVeigh's impending
> execution, he says almost reflexively, "There should be a bunch of
> federal agents lying right beside him on the gurney."
>
> Although he lost his own wife and child, Weaver identifies with
> McVeigh more easily than with the victims of the Oklahoma City
> bombing.
>
> "He was a soldier's soldier," Weaver says. "He just switched sides.
> Tim McVeigh was trying to make a point. He was what you call pro
> bono. He was going to be judge, jury and executioner. No different
> from the federal government. One has a badge and one don't."
>
> But other times Weaver is not so gung-ho. What if McVeigh had come
> to him with his plans for Oklahoma City?
>
> "I would have told him to forget it."
>
> Telling His Story
>
> "Meet Randy Weaver," the blinking sign announces outside the
> fairgrounds in Lincoln, Neb. Inside a stale expo hall, the tables
> are laid out with rifles and scopes and munitions. Weaver is near
> the door, standing at a table piled with $20 copies of his 1998
> book, "The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge."
>
> No one here for this mid-April gun show really needs the book to
> tell what happened. In 1989, while living in Idaho, Weaver was
> caught selling two shotguns he had sawed off shorter than the legal
> limit to an informant working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
> Firearms. The ATF tried to enlist Weaver as an informant, promising
> to drop the gun charges, but he refused and was indicted by a grand
> jury.
>
> When Weaver failed to appear in court -- he had been given the wrong
> date -- an arrest warrant was issued.
>
> Seventeen months later, federal agents in camouflage and face paint
> were crawling around Weaver's 20 acres when they were detected by
> the family dog. Agents shot the dog and began a gun battle with
> Weaver's 14-year-old son, Sam, and a family friend, both armed. Sam
> was killed. So was U.S. Marshal William Degan. The siege began.
> Weaver holed up in the cabin with his wife and three daughters. The
> day after Sam was killed, Vicki Weaver was holding her 10-month-old
> daughter when an FBI sniper shot her in the head.
>
> Weaver surrendered after 11 days. He was charged with murder in the
> death of the marshal, but an Idaho jury acquitted him. He spent 16
> months in jail for the original gun offense.
>
> And here he is at a gun show, unable to own a firearm legally
> because of hisconviction. He stands at a table with only his story.
>
> The procession is steady. "My condolences," says one man, extending
> his hand. "I appreciate all your character. It must be a bitch."
>
> Weaver signs the book and takes the $20. "I appreciate that."
> They approach like mourners coming to pay their respects. He relaxes
> them, sometimes with humor, sometimes with anger. Some of them vent.
>
> Some want to know about missing shell casings at Ruby Ridge after
> the siege. One man is curious about "that shotgun robot sent in by
> the Freddies."
>
> "They want to talk to me a little more than I want to talk to them,"
> Weaver says. "They've become so upset with the government that it's
> hard to trust anybody. They're not bad people. They are just mad."
> Weaver wears motorcycle boots and keeps his wallet leashed to his
> blue jeans by a silver chain, Harley-style. His silver hair is cut
> close on the sides and long in the back.
>
> A broad-shouldered man in a John Deere jacket and an NRA cap extends
> his hand. "Fritz Oltjenbruns," he says. "I'm part of America's
> largest not-for-profit organization -- farmers. I was just telling
> my son this morning how the ATF snookered you down by an
> eighth-of-an-inch on that shotgun."
>
> Weaver rocks back on his heels. "I ain't ashamed of it. I'll cut it
> right down to the stock, whatever."
>
> The farmer folds his arms. "It's a darned shame what you went
> through with your wife," he says. "It's hard to believe the
> government went that corrupt that fast."
>
> Weaver signs a book and pockets the twenty. "Keep your powder dry,
> buddy."
>
> A concessionaire trots up with a present. "Here's something for you,
> Randy," he says, handing over a napkin. Buffalo jerky. "Thanks,"
> Weaver says, and sets it aside forever.
>
> A grandpa type holding a pistol approaches. "They haven't tried to
> run you out with your books, have they?" When Weaver was appearing
> at a gun show at the Reno Hilton once, the Northern Nevada B'nai
> B'rith pressured the promoter into banning his appearance.
>
> An intense, red-cheeked man holding a 32-ounce Coke pounces with a
> great gale of rhetoric on religion and politics that begins with
> Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ends with his plea, "If you have the
> time, I'd really like an answer."
>
> "I don't have the answer," Weaver says. "Religion's all a bunch of
> crap." The speechmaker, silenced, walks off into the sea of guns.
> The only person in the armory who isn't white is a janitor at the
> fairgrounds, a Native American named Floyd Pilcher. He approaches
> Weaver with a bag of sage, a faded bandanna and a T-shirt that
> reads, "IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE." "These are gifts from
> powerful people," Pilcher says.
>
> Weaver takes the gifts. "I guess anybody who's ever gotten stomped
> on by the government knows what I'm talkin' about," he says.
> Back inside, a strapping young man in a T-shirt imprinted with a
> Fort Benning logo and the words "DEATH COMES QUICK" solemnly shakes
> Weaver's hand. "I'm sorry your deal happened," he says. A
> creamy-skinned woman extends her hand. "By God, stand by your word,"
> she tells Weaver.
>
> The show doesn't end until 3:30, but Weaver starts breaking down his
> booth 40 minutes early. Two teenage boys hover. "Need some help?"
> one asks.
>
> "Thanks, partner," Weaver says.
>
> The kid turns to his friend. "He called me partner!"
>
> At Ruby Ridge
>
> When a pickup truck comes to a four-way stop in Jefferson, it is a
> lone red object against an endless curtain of green. Only the grain
> elevators have altitude. There is an A&W stand next to the
> ballfield, which is next to a cornfield.
>
> This is the place Randy and Vicki Weaver wanted to separate from
> when they sold their belongings and moved to the Pacific Northwest
> in 1983 with their three children. Separate from what, he is asked.
> "From what we were trying to get away from."
>
> It was Vicki Weaver who drove her family's peculiar following of Old
> Covenant Laws, calling God "Yahweh" and believing themselves to be
> the true Israelites. Because a woman having a child was considered
> unclean, Vicki Weaver gave birth to her fourth child in a shed
> behind their cabin on Ruby Ridge. She canned her own food and
> home-schooled the children.
>
> On three or four occasions, the Weavers attended Aryan Nation
> meetings up at Hayden Lake, a compound for government resisters and
> for white separatists and supremacists. Weaver says he'd drink beer
> and talk to the skinheads. He did nothing illegal, he says, until he
> got desperate for money and sold the two sawed-off shotguns to the
> informant.
>
> The Weavers' racial views were obscured by the enormity of what
> happened to them during the siege at Ruby Ridge. After the sniper
> killed Vicki Weaver, negotiators used a bullhorn to greet her in the
> morning, saying they'd had pancakes for breakfast -- what did she
> have?
>
> FBI Special Agent Eugene Glenn later told a Senate inquiry that
> agents didn't realize that Vicki Weaver had been shot. The sniper,
> Lon Horiuchi, testified that he could hit a target at 200 yards
> within one-quarter inch. He said he had been aiming for one of the
> armed males, not Vicki Weaver.
>
> An investigation found that the FBI had altered its rules of
> engagement, directing agents to shoot any armed adults on sight.
> Several high-ranking FBI officials were disciplined after a Justice
> Department inquiry found evidence of a cover-up. One pleaded guilty
> to obstruction of justice. The No. 2 official at the FBI, Deputy
> Director Larry Potts, was demoted after an investigation found
> evidence of misconduct. He retired two years later.
>
> The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is still reviewing whether
> Horiuchi should be subject to manslaughter charges.
>
> Meanwhile, the world Weaver had tried to separate from found in him
> a brother. He says he received more than 30,000 pieces of mail.
> "Hell, anyone who'd ever been picked on by the government was
> writing me," he says. "Airmen who'd escaped Red China, black guys
> from Detroit -- some friends of Leonard Peltier's mailed me one of
> his drawings."
>
> In the settlement of the civil lawsuit Weaver brought against the
> government, each of his three daughters received $1 million, and
> Weaver received $100,000.
>
> Weaver returned to Iowa, where relatives rented him a house in a
> small town next to Jefferson. He had his two youngest daughters with
> him. Weaver met a woman, Linda Gross, who was married and in
> farm-implement sales. The town suddenly got too small. Weaver and
> his girls went out to Montana for a few years.
>
> Weaver came back to Jefferson in 1999. He and Linda are now married
> and live with her two children from her first marriage. Linda is a
> secretary for a lawyer in town. Except for the gun shows, Weaver
> doesn't have a job. He's working on his next book, "The Rise and
> Fall of the USSA."
>
> His daughters live in Montana. The oldest, Sara, 24, is married to a
> corrections officer. The youngest, Elisheba, whom Vicki Weaver was
> cradling when she was shot, is 9 and lives with her sister Rachel,
> who is 19. Weaver says his kids "live out there because they like
> it."
>
> Before he left Iowa for the first time to live in the Pacific
> Northwest, Weaver sold his Harley-Davidson because he was starting a
> new kind of life. Now he owns a Harley Heritage Soft Tail that
> gleams in his garage.
>
> He writes off much about his lifestyle at Ruby Ridge. "Punk idiots"
> is what he calls many of the attendees at Aryan Nation meetings. He
> has offended Christian supporters who assume they are simpatico with
> him on matters of faith. "I've studied religions and pretty much
> decided they are all the same: [expletive]," he says. "And you
> shouldn't have to pay a tax-exempt preacher to hear it."
>
> He says people should live by the Golden Rule and not "whore after
> false deities."
>
> His views on race haven't evolved much. When asked whether white
> separatism isn't a losing battle in light of the new census figures
> that show a browning America, he shakes his head in pity. "I feel
> sorry for the next generation."
>
> A Place of His Own
>
> Weaver is having a White Russian at a place called Wet Goods on the
> town square. Joe Cocker is singing "Unchain My Heart" on the stereo.
> A tall man in a plaid shirt walks through the door. "Nick!" says
> Weaver.
>
> Nick Friess has known Weaver since elementary school. During the
> Vietnam War, they enlisted in the Army about the same time. Weaver
> was a Green Beret who remained stateside. Friess went to Vietnam,
> and two years later he stepped on an explosive in the grass. He was
> awarded a Bronze Star. Part of his leg was amputated seven years
> ago. He no longer farms. Now he is an educational director at an art
> museum.
>
> Friess sits down with Weaver. The conversation drifts from their
> childhood to the gypsum mine where Nick's father worked to church,
> and Weaver makes a crack about phony ministers. Friess says, in a
> very "Prairie Home Companion" way, "Oh, well, now, you can't
> categorize everyone. Some preachers are just fine."
>
> Weaver sits back, for once not spring-loaded. He doesn't have to be
> from Ruby Ridge right now. He is the boy from Jefferson who used to
> box with NickyFriess in the front yard while both of them tried to
> impress a girl named Lana.
>
> Weaver got a D in government. They both laugh.
> Later, Friess will say, "A lot of his beliefs, I don't agree with."
> And yet: "After all he's been through, jiminy, it's amazing he can
> be walking the streets."
>
> And finally: "Maybe with the tragic playing out of events, there is
> a certain obligation for him to feel a certain way."
>
> Weaver has a gun show in Las Vegas next weekend. They will come for
> his book and his story. They may talk about the missing shell
> casings and the shotgun robot sent in by the Freddies, as they did
> at the show in Lincoln.
>
> But what he remembers about the mountain: "There was no wind," he
> says. "The snowflakes were so big you could hear them when they hit
> the ground. The kids had three or four campgrounds around the land.
> They'd go out and build fires at night.
>
> "And Vicki canned. She and the kids would pick huckleberries. She
> got top dollar 'cause she picked clean. Or she'd trade a gallon of
> huckleberries for four quarts of peaches. We sold firewood -- me,
> Vick and the kids. Then we'd go into Bonner's Ferry and have a
> hamburger or a pizza."
>
> Weaver says he'd like a place in the Ozarks some day, with nothing
> but quiet and a clear creek running through.
>
> "That's weird, ain't it?" he asks. "Now who the hell would want to
> live like that?"