Randy Weaver

Randy Weaver

Randall Claude Weaver (born January 3, 1947) is a former Green Beret who was at the center of a deadly confrontation with U.S. federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

Early life

Randy Weaver was the only boy of four children born to Clarence and Wilma Weaver, a farming couple from Villisca, Iowa. The Weavers were deeply religious and had a difficult time finding a denomination which matched their views; hence they often moved around among Evangelical, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches. As Weaver grew up he earned decent grades in school and enjoyed a variety of sports. He professed his faith in Jesus at age 11, but recently stated at a news conference for Ed and Elaine Brown: "I ain't afraid of dying no more. I'm curious about the afterlife. And I'm an atheist." [cite news |url=http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2007/06/18/browns_say_they_wont_surrender/?p1=MEWell_Pos4 |title=Ruby Ridge leader visits Browns, warns of increased provocation |publisher=Associated Press |date= June 18, 2007 |first= |last= |accessdate =2007-08-17]

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 had grown up in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on a farm just 50 miles 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 grew 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.

Vietnam

When the war in Vietnam started to escalate, Weaver dropped out of school and joined the United States Army in October 1968. He excelled in the military and quickly 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 which he resented. He could not understand the point of being trained as a Green Beret without being able to apply his skills in combat.Fact|date=February 2007 Friends later said that he became bitter over the fact that men who wanted nothing to do with the war were sent to Vietnam regularly, yet he, who had volunteered to go, sat at an Army base with non-combat duties.Fact|date=February 2007 As Weaver waited for deployment to Vietnam, Vicki Jordison was finishing her college studies, earning a two-year degree in business and obtained 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 up his duties with the Army as quickly as possible and wanted to inform his family of his plans. It did not take long for him to look up Jordison. Within weeks, they were engaged.

After the war

On October 8, 1971, following three years of duty, Randy Weaver received an honorable discharge from the Army. In November 1971, Weaver and Jordison were wed during a small ceremony at the First Congregationalist Church in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In an attempt to please 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 take criminal justice classes, with the goal of one day becoming an FBI agent. However, the young couple found the cost of school 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.cite news |title = A time to heal |first = Bill |last = Hewitt |work = "People Weekly" |date= 1995-09-25 |accessdate = 2007-06-26]

The couple began to take on more fundamentalist beliefs, with Vicki believing the apocalypse was imminent. To follow a vision of a remote area, experienced by Vicki, they moved to a 20-acre property in remote Idaho and built a cabin on it in the 1980s. They paid just $5000.00 USD for the land.

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

Ruby Ridge

Randy Weaver had been claimed by the Federal government to have attended the Aryan Nations church and to have been to a rally held by the same group. Weaver was approached and asked to inform, a request he declined. Weaver was then approached at an Aryan Nations rally by undercover ATF agent Kenneth Faderley (masquerading as a biker named Gus Magisono) wishing to buy some sawed-off shotguns. Weaver supplied the shotguns to Faderley, although he claims to have supplied full-length weapons, telling Faderley to shorten them himself. The ATF maintain that the weapons supplied by Weaver were illegally shortened when Faderley received them. Another account states that Weaver shortened them in front of the undercover ATF agent, to his requested length, and they were only slightly shorter than legally permitted. 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 was not a member of Aryan Nations, and he refused. He was initially arrested by ATF agents on minor charges 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; he was served with court papers that incorrectly identified the date for his appearance. A bench warrant was issued for Weaver's arrest, and the U.S. Marshals Service was directed to serve it; the assistance of the Marshals Special Operations Group was requested for this purpose. During this period, 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 drawn up by the Marshals Service during October 1991, but refused by the U.S. attorney involved in the case.

After long-term surveillance (costing more than $1 million) ["New York Times", Another Federal Fiasco; [Editorial] , July 12, 1993] of the Weaver property in preparation for an arrest, 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 not passed on, and on August 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,Fact|date=June 2007 the marshals were detected by the Weavers' dogs and began to retreat.cite news |title = The nightmare of Idaho's Ruby Ridge |first = Gordon |last = Witkin |work = "US News & World Report" |date= 1995-09-11 |accessdate = 2007-06-26] Randy Weaver's 14-year-old son Sammy and his house guest, 24-year-old family friend Kevin Harris, 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." The Weavers lived deep in the woods, where mountain lions and other potentially deadly animals roamed, and carried firearms with them frequently. 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 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. 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. Both died. After this, the FBI's Hostage Rescue team 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." [cite news |url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30A15F7395B0C758DDDA10894DF494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fF%2fFederal%20Bureau%20of%20Investigation%20 |title = U.S. Will Bring No More Criminal Charges Against F.B.I. Officials in Ruby Ridge Siege |first = Tim |last = Wiener|work = "The New York Times" |date= 1997-08-16 |accessdate = 2007-06-26] No request for surrender or announcement of officials' presence would be needed to shoot. The next day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Randy in the back while he, Harris, and Weaver's 16-year-old daughter Sara were outside, attempting to retrieve the body of Sammy Weaver, which was placed in a shed after being recovered the previous day.Fact|date=June 2007 As the three ran back to the house, Horiuchi fired again, but this time hit Weaver's wife Vicki in the head as she held their 10-month-old daughter Elishiba at the door. [cite news |url = 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 |title = F.B.I. Agent Can Be Charged In Idaho Siege, Court Rules |first = Evelyn |last = Nieves|work = "The New York Times" |date= 2001-06-06 |accessdate = 2007-06-26] Vicki Weaver collapsed on the floor, dying instantly with her bloody but uninjured daughter in her arms. A Justice Department review later found the 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, along with those who had decided on the special rules of engagement allowing shots to be fired with no previous request for surrender. 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.Fact|date=June 2007

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. During the stand-off, the military had named their temporary camp "Camp Vicki" and would yell through the plywood walls of the cabin taunts including, 'Vicki, we have blueberry pancakes.'cite book |title = THEM - Adventures With Extremists |first = Jon |last = Ronson |date= 2001] The area was surrounded 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, 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 jury acquitted Weaver of all charges except that of failure to appear, for which Weaver was fined $10,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was credited with time served plus an additional three months, and was then released. Subsequently, the government paid $308,000 to Kevin Harris (who was acquitted of all criminal charges), $100,000 to Randall Weaver, and $1 million to each of the surviving Weaver children to settle their lawsuits against the government.

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. [http://www.cnn.com/US/9603/montana_freemen/31/9pm/index.html]

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.

In 2001, 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 "".

upport 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. [ [http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3290003 ABC News: $1M in Unpaid Taxes: Couple Dares Feds ] ] [http://beta.cnn.com/2007/US/06/21/tax.evaders.ap/]

References

ee also

*Branch Davidians
*Montana Freemen
*Oklahoma City Bombing
*Ruby Ridge
*Waco siege

External links

* [http://www.ruby-ridge.com/gspence1.htm Chapter two of "From Freedom to Slavery"] by Gerry Spence
* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/randy_weaver/19.html "Idaho vs Randy Weaver"] from the CourtTV Crime Library
* [http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/web/newopinions.nsf/0/0a3eecf263a1d0c788256927007a742b?OpenDocument Summary of an Appeals Court ruling on Horiuchi] ; includes Special Rules of Engagement and a dissent by Judge Alex Kozinski
* [http://www.reason.com/news/show/29386.html "Ambush at Ruby Ridge"] by Alan W. Bock, "Reason", October 1993


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