Investigators Go To Ruby Ridge Randy Weaver Shows Federal Team Around Cabin, Surrounding Property

While top Justice Department officials were contending at Senate hearings last week that the FBI sniper who killed Vicki Weaver was acting lawfully, federal investigators 2,000 miles away on Ruby Ridge were pursuing an opposite tack.

They were marching about the Idaho mountainside, carefully reenacting the shooting to help determine whether anyone should be prosecuted for it.

Headed by U.S. Attorney Michael Stiles of Philadelphia, the investigating team spent three days around the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge last week, checking visibility and aiming from the sniper’s perch at the doorway where Vicki Weaver was killed on Aug. 22, 1992. Her white separatist husband, Randy Weaver, who survived the siege, took the group on a walk-through of the isolated cabin and surrounding property.

For several months, the Justice Department has been investigating an alleged high-ranking FBI coverup over who approved the unprecedented “shoot on sight” instructions given to the bureau’s snipers at Ruby Ridge.

Last week’s expedition was the first solid sign that the inquiry has been expanded to the shootings that took place there.

Vicki Weaver’s killing has become a rallying point for critics of federal law enforcement who believe she was murdered and who have called for criminal prosecution of the sniper who shot her, either under state law or federal criminal civil rights statutes. Stiles also has perjury and obstruction of justice laws at his disposal.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh insisted in Senate testimony last week that the shot was lawful, but he observed that “Ruby Ridge has become synonymous with tragedy (and) with the exaggerated application of federal law enforcement. Both conclusions seem justified.”

Among those re-enacting Vicki Weaver’s shooting were several U.S. postal inspectors, assigned in light of complaints from investigating senators and other critics that the FBI cannot be trusted to investigate itself in high-profile cases.

Boundary County, Idaho, Sheriff Greg Sprungl, who accompanied the group, said the investigators brought with them the rifle that FBI sniper Lon T. Horiuchi used when he shot Weaver, the 10-power scope he looked through, and the cabin door behind which Weaver was standing, holding her baby daughter, when she was killed.

“They’re looking to be real thorough,” Sprungl said in a telephone interview. “It’s what this county has been waiting for.”

Three people were killed at Ruby Ridge. The bloody standoff began on Aug. 21, 1992, with a gunfight in which a federal marshal and Randy Weaver’s 14-year-old son were killed. After the shootings, the FBI deployed its Hostage Rescue Team to the site.

The next day, Horiuchi shot Randy Weaver as he made an unexpected foray outside the cabin with his daughter Sara and family friend Kevin Harris. Vicki Weaver shouted for them to come back inside and held the door open as they ran for cover. Horiuchi fixed his cross hairs on a windowpane in the door and fired again as Harris crossed the threshold.

The bullet shot through the curtained window, blasted through Vicki Weaver’s face, severing her carotid artery, and then hit Harris, tearing a lung and lodging in his chest.

Randy Weaver, who was acquitted along with Harris of murdering deputy marshal William Degan, took investigators along the logging trails where Degan and Weaver’s 14-year-old son Sammy were killed. Weaver also showed them the area of the “birthing shed” where Horiuchi wounded him before he dashed into the cabin.

Sheriff Sprungl said the Stiles group “re-enacted everything, but it appeared to me they were primarily interested in Vicki’s death and, I imagine, any cover-up of what happened.”

Stiles was assigned to the cover-up investigation by Attorney General Janet Reno in August and given authority to expand it as he saw fit. He declined to discuss details of the re-enactment but confirmed that he assigned postal inspectors to the inquiry to work as a team with FBI agents.

Stiles “guesstimated” the investi gation would take six to eight months. “They’ve got a lot of reading to do,” Sprungl said, referring to all the hearings, trial testimony and internal investigations that have been conducted over the past three years.

A special Justice Department task force concluded last year that the “rules of engagement” at Ruby Ridge, telling snipers they “could and should” use deadly force against any armed adult male, were unconstitutional and that the shot Horiuchi fired was illegal and unnecessarily dangerous.

Justice Department higher-ups have rejected the task force’s conclusion and held that Horiuchi shot because he was trying to protect an FBI helicopter. Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern said, however, that Stiles is in charge of determining what actually happened at Ruby Ridge. “If the facts are different,” he said, “we will have to revisit them.”

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