Survivor Of Ruby Ridge Siege Takes Sympathetic View Of Mcveigh's Motives

In the News: After Ruby Ridge

St. Louis Post/May 1, 2001

The botched FBI siege at Ruby Ridge, Mont., in 1992 was one of the things Timothy McVeigh said he wanted to avenge with the Oklahoma City bombing. Randy Weaver, the racist survivalist whose son and wife were killed by the FBI at Ruby Ridge, now lives in Iowa and sells books about the incident at gun shows.

"Tim McVeigh was trying to make a point," says Randy Weaver. ". . . He was going to be judge, jury and executioner. No different from the federal government. One has a badge and one don't." The small town where Randy Weaver now lives, about 45 miles northwest of Des Moines, is as wide and open as Ruby Ridge was steep and hidden.

It's not surprising 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 1992 standoff with federal agents 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. But to say that Weaver has come down off the mountain would be only half right.

At 53, he still isn't 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 people to avenge what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the other disastrous federal siege.

McVeigh is scheduled to be executed May 16 for the Oklahoma City bombing. But 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 observe 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 Ce nter'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 porch.

It's hard to say who Weaver is now. The industry of rage and resentment makes certain demands upon him. He's a folk hero of ultra- right-wing groups. Asked about McVeigh's impending execution, he says, "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."

Other times, Weaver isn't so gung-ho. What if McVeigh had come to him with his plans for Oklahoma City? "I would have told him to forget it."

Selling his book

"Meet Randy Weaver," the blinking sign announces outside the fairgrounds in Lincoln, Neb. Inside, tables are laid with rifles and scopes and munitions. Weaver is standing at a table piled with copies of his 1998 book, "The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge."

No one here at this recent 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 informer working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The bureau tried to enlist Weaver as an informer, promising to drop the gun charges, but he refused and was indicted by a grand jury. When Weaver failed to appear in court - he'd been given the wrong date - an arrest warrant was issued.

Seventeen months later, camouflaged federal agents were crawling around Weaver's 20 acres when they were detected by the family dog. Agents shot the dog and began a gunbattle with Weaver's son, Sam, 14, 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 marshal's death, 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 his conviction. 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." The show doesn't end until 3:30, but Weaver starts breaking down his booth 40 minutes early. Two teen-age boys hover. "Need some help?" one asks. "Thanks, partner," Weaver says. The kid turns to his friend. "He called me partner!"

Religion and racism

When a pickup comes to a four-way stop in Jefferson, it is a lone red object against an endless curtain of green. There is an A&W stand next to the ball field, which is next to a cornfield.

This is the place the Weavers wanted to separate from when they sold their belongings and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1983. 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 Ruby Ridge cabin. She canned her own food and home-schooled the children.

The Weavers attended three or four Aryan Nations meetings at Hayden Lake, a compound for government resisters and white separatists and supremacists. Weaver says he'd drink beer and talk to the skinheads. He did nothing illegal, he says, until he sold the two sawed-off shotguns. The Weavers' racial views were obscured by the enormity of what happened to them during the siege. 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 she'd been shot. The sniper, Lon Horiuchi, testified that he'd 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 of obstruction of justice. The No. 2 FBI official, 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.

Daughters are in Montana

In the settlement of the civil suit Weaver brought against the government, each of his three daughters received $1 million, and Weaver received $100,000. Weaver, with his two youngest daughters, returned to Iowa, where relatives rented him a house in a small town next to Jefferson. Weaver met a married woman, Linda Gross. The town suddenly got too small. Weaver and his girls went to Montana for a few years.

In 1999, Weaver came back to Jefferson. He and Linda are now married and live with her two children from her first marriage. Linda is a legal secretary. 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. Sara, 24, is married to a corrections officer. Elisheba, 9, whom Vicki Weaver was cradling when she was shot, lives with her sister Rachel, 19. Weaver says his kids "live out there because they like it." He writes off much about his lifestyle at Ruby Ridge. "Punk idiots" is what he calls many of the people who were at Aryan Nation meetings.

He has offended Christian supporters who assumed he shared their views 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 changed much. 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."