Hearings to Open Into Fatal Ruby Ridge Siege : Probe: One issue is whether U.S. law enforcement’s ability to deal with people strongly opposed to government has been compromised.

A Senate subcommittee this morning will begin shining the spotlight on critical issues flowing from government agents’ 1992 siege of a white separatist at Ruby Ridge, Ida.

One of the biggest issues: Has the judgment and competence of U.S. law enforcement officials been compromised in cases involving people who hold strong anti-government views?

Coming on the heels of recent House hearings into the 1993 tragedy near Waco, Tex., the ill-fated standoff that followed Ruby Ridge by six months, the Senate hearings will explore several issues. Among them will be how separatist Randy Weaver was first confronted by federal agents, what led to efforts to arrest him and how mistakes and even a lack of professionalism by federal marshals and FBI agents preceded their fatal shooting of Weaver’s wife, Vicki, and 14-year-old son, Sammy, after a U.S. marshal was killed.

Three weeks of this scheduled examination of the shootout at Weaver’s small cabin on a remote northern Idaho mountainside may be troubling to federal officials on another score, too.

Top Justice Department officials have strenuously objected to the timing of the hearings, occurring in the midst of their own internal, criminal investigation. Prosecutors are seeking to determine whether some FBI executives destroyed or concealed records and lied about an illegal relaxation in their rules governing the use of deadly force. Five FBI officials have been suspended.

That relaxation in rules led to the shooting death of Weaver’s wife as tensions ran high after William Degan, a decorated member of the U.S. Marshals Service, was killed in the siege. Last month, in a tacit acknowledgment of mistakes, the government paid $3.1 million to Weaver and surviving family members to settle claims that agents had wrongfully killed his wife and son.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a GOP presidential hopeful who will chair the hearings, has rejected Justice Department requests that he postpone them until their criminal inquiry into cover-up allegations against the FBI is concluded. Specter’s pledge to tailor the sessions to avoid creating legal problems for department investigators has failed to satisfy Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick.

“It is quite unusual to have hearings in Congress at the same time that there is a pending criminal investigation, and that raises very difficult issues for us,” Gorelick said.

There were similar problems in hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal of the Ronald Reagan Administration. The issue of legal “taint” growing out of congressional hearings caused the U.S. Court of Appeals to throw out the convictions of former White House aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter.

The government first began investigating Weaver 10 years ago after some of his neighbors reported that he had threatened to kill Reagan, Idaho’s then-Gov. John V. Evans and unspecified law enforcement officials. Although Weaver denied the reports, Secret Service agents learned that he had been associating with members of the Aryan Nations, a fiercely anti-government, white supremacist group, and they opened a file on him.

Four years later, in 1989, after Weaver had sold two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover government informant, the informant’s superiors in the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to recruit Weaver to act as an informer against the Aryan Nations. Weaver refused, however--an act that led to his indictment in 1990 on federal firearms charges arising from his unregistered shotgun sale.

In January, 1991, fearing that it might be difficult to arrest Weaver at home on the firearms charges, ATF agents posed as stranded motorists not far from his cabin. When Weaver stopped to offer help, the agents grabbed him, leading Weaver to exclaim, “Nice trick. You’ll never do that again.”

Soon, he was out on $10,000 bond, but his hostility toward the government deepened as his Feb. 20, 1991, trial date approached, officials said. When he failed to appear, an angry federal judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest. U.S. marshals received a letter from the Weaver family, saying: “We will not obey your lawless government.”

Officials, however, were unaware then that Weaver had been told erroneously by letter that his trial was set for March 20, not Feb. 20.

A Justice Department task force report suggests that the government and Weaver had been on a collision course since the summer of 1991, when federal marshals attempted to arrest him on the firearms charges.

During the next 13 months, authorities made other overtures to Weaver, all without success. They conducted surveillance of his cabin, installed cameras on the ridges around it, reported on the movements of his family and plotted strategy on how to take him into custody.

The first blood was shed at Rudy Ridge on Aug. 21, 1992, when federal marshals exchanged fire with a family friend, Kevin Harris, who had left the cabin with Weaver and Weaver’s son, Sammy. All three were armed but which side fired first remains in dispute. In the shootout, Deputy Marshal Degan, Sammy and the family dog, Striker, were killed and Harris was wounded. Sammy was shot in the back.

In an atmosphere of rising tension, the FBI’s crack hostage rescue team was deployed to the scene.

The following day, one of the team’s most experienced marksmen, Lon Horiuchi, wounded Weaver as he and Harris briefly emerged from the cabin. As they ran for cover, a second shot missed Harris and penetrated the curtained window of the front door, striking Vicki Weaver in the face as she stood holding her infant daughter. Vicki Weaver died instantly.

The standoff lasted 10 more days before Weaver abruptly gave up.