12 at FBI Disciplined Over ’92 Shooting : Law enforcement: The crackdown stems from a fatal standoff with white separatists in Idaho. But two who were wounded call it a ‘hand-slapping.’

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh disciplined 12 agency personnel Friday, including the bureau’s No. 2 official, over an FBI sharpshooter’s 1992 slaying of a white separatist’s wife.

While concluding that the shooting of Vicki Weaver in a standoff at Ruby Ridge, Ida., involved “no intentional misconduct” by FBI employees, Freeh said that those disciplined “demonstrated inadequate performance, improper judgment, neglect of duty and failure to exert proper managerial oversight.”

“These are serious shortcomings, unacceptable in life-or-death situations like Ruby Ridge,” Freeh said at a news conference.

Freeh made clear, however, that despite the letter of censure he proposed giving Acting Deputy Director Larry A. Potts for failing to oversee the “rules of engagement” properly at Ruby Ridge, he has “complete confidence” in Potts and wants Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to name him deputy director.

The discipline included censure and suspension without pay for two special agents in charge of FBI field offices in Salt Lake City and Jacksonville, Fla. One of them also was reassigned to FBI headquarters here. Two other FBI personnel, including the former commander of the FBI’s hostage rescue team, were censured and suspended. The suspensions ranged from five to 15 days.

While the actions marked the most sweeping crackdown that Freeh has made in 17 months as director, lawyers for two men wounded in the shootout, who have brought a damage suit against the bureau, denounced the steps as outrageous and nothing more than a “hand-slapping.”

The incident began when U.S. Deputy Marshal William Degan was killed as authorities tried to arrest Randall C. Weaver on a charge of selling an illegal sawed-off shotgun. The FBI hostage rescue team was called to the scene and Weaver’s wife and 14-year-old son were shot to death during an exchange of gunfire.

Freeh took no action against the FBI sharpshooter, Lon T. Horiuchi, whose two shots allegedly wounded Weaver and killed his wife, Vicki, because they “were fired in the defense of other law enforcement officers present” and were “consistent with the FBI’s law and policy.”

According to the FBI internal review of the incident, the sharpshooter observed armed suspects emerge from the Weaver cabin and saw one of them raise a weapon in the direction of a helicopter carrying other FBI personnel in a surveillance flight.

“The sniper fired one round to protect the lives of the fellow agents in the helicopter and struck, but did not disable the suspect,” Freeh said. The suspect and two others ran back toward the cabin, and just as he reached the front door, the sniper fired a second round “at the person he believed had only seconds before threatened to fire on the helicopter.”

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“That round, fired at a distance of approximately 600 feet, struck the suspect and also accidentally struck and killed Vicki Weaver who, unknown to the sniper, was standing out of sight on the porch immediately behind the open door,” Freeh said.

The FBI director stressed that the second shot was fired not at or into the cabin, but to prevent the armed suspect from “gaining the tactical advantage of the cabin from which he could have fired on other law enforcement officers on the scene.”

That distinction is important because a review of the incident by a team of FBI inspectors and Justice Department lawyers concluded that the sharpshooter may have violated the law with his second shot and recommended that the department consider the “prosecutive merit” of the case.

However, the department’s internal watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility, later disagreed, and the department’s civil rights division found insufficient grounds to charge the sharpshooter or any other official with criminal wrongdoing.

While absolving the sharpshooter of any wrongdoing, the FBI review found the “rules of engagement” governing the use of deadly force at Ruby Ridge were “poorly drafted, confusing and can be read to direct agents to act contrary to law and FBI policy,” Freeh said. They reportedly permitted agents to fire at any adult who emerged from the cabin with a firearm.

“Nobody, thank God, was following (those) rules of engagement,” Freeh said. “The FBI sniper’s decision to shoot was guided by the FBI’s standard deadly force policy that permits the use of deadly force in self-defense or the defense of others,” Freeh said.

It was Potts’ failure to provide proper oversight of the rules of engagement that led to his proposed censure. Potts then was assistant director of the criminal investigative division and had overall responsibility for the incident and the FBI’s participation in the later prosecution of Weaver and his associate, Kevin Harris.