Weaver Spurred Idaho Siege, ATF Officials Say

The chain of events that led to the deaths of Randy Weaver’s wife and 14-year-old son during a confrontation with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Ida., was set in motion by Weaver himself, officials of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told a Senate subcommittee Thursday.

Weaver, a white separatist, drew the attention of federal firearms- law enforcers as far back as 1989 because he was suspected of being a major supplier of weapons used in violent crimes, according to three officials of the Treasury Department agency.

But members of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on terrorism, in their second day of hearings on the bloody siege of Weaver’s mountain cabin in August, 1992, reacted with skepticism to the officials’ testimony.

“It seems to me you were really looking at Mr. Weaver as an informant rather than a major supplier of guns,” said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the subcommittee chairman. He referred to a government offer made to Weaver to reduce or drop charges that he had sold two illegal shotguns if he agreed to become a confidential informant for the ATF on some members of the Aryan Nations, a violence-prone white supremacist group.

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Weaver told the panel Wednesday that he flatly refused that offer. He was indicted the following year on charges of having sold two unregistered sawed-off shotguns to an undercover ATF agent.

Weaver’s allegation that he was “set up” by ATF agents on a basically weak charge was the subject of sharp questioning of Thursday’s witnesses by Specter and other senators. Weaver’s refusal to surrender on the original charges and his later failure to appear in court led to the confrontation at his remote cabin. His son, Sammy, was fatally shot in the back there after a federal marshal was killed, and Weaver’s wife, Vicki, cradling their baby in her arms, was killed in the doorway by an FBI sniper who said that he was shooting at another armed person.

Five FBI officials have been suspended and a criminal investigation of their conduct has been launched on grounds that they lied or destroyed documents to cover up an illegal change in the agency’s deadly force rules that allowed armed adults to be shot on sight.

ATF Director John W. Magaw, stressing that his organization was involved only in bringing charges against Weaver and not in the shootout, declared that Weaver’s prosecution occurred “purely and simply because he chose to commit violations of federal firearms laws.”

Although a jury in 1993 cleared Weaver of the weapons charge, Magaw insisted Thursday that Weaver had not been entrapped. “He was not persuaded or coaxed by the government to sell illegal weapons,” Magaw said in a prepared statement given to the subcommittee.

“I am convinced that our agents’ conduct was lawful and proper in every respect,” he added.

Senators directed their sharpest remarks at ATF special agent Herb Byerly, who was in charge of Weaver’s case. Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) observed that “the total number of weapons here was two shotguns--that’s the bottom line. You had no evidence he had sold guns to any other persons.”

Byerly said that he considered Weaver a large supplier based on Weaver’s statements to Kenneth Fadely, the undercover agent, that he could supply Fadely with “five additional shotguns” in the future.

Byerly said that some but not all of the conversations with Weaver were tape-recorded.

Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), a former federal prosecutor and onetime Senate Watergate Committee staff lawyer, told Byerly that “the only source you’ve got for that conclusion is your paid informant.” Byerly said that the informant had a taped statement by Weaver supporting the conclusion.

Thompson, however, belittled any view of Weaver as a major supplier of dangerous weapons. Referring to the sale of two shotguns whose barrels Weaver had shortened himself, Thompson said: “What we’re talking about is a fellow sitting out under a shade tree with a hacksaw.”

Andrew L. Vita, the ATF’s enforcement chief, interjected that Weaver “fell into the net because he volunteered to violate firearms laws by selling the sawed-off shotguns, which are very dangerous and are used in crime. It was not something we could turn our backs on.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) questioned whether the ATF should have pursued so vigorously “a man without a criminal record who was perhaps having trouble feeding his family.”

Weaver had told the subcommittee Wednesday that Fadely had badgered him for the weapons and that he relented after three years because the agent offered to pay an inflated price of $450 for them and Weaver needed the money.

Under questioning, Byerly conceded that he had inadvertently misstated Weaver’s record to the federal prosecutor who decided to seek his indictment, telling the prosecutor by letter that Weaver had prior convictions.

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Meanwhile, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told reporters at the Justice Department that the FBI has taken steps to improve training and communication so that its crisis negotiators will work more closely with the bureau’s hostage- rescue team in future incidents. She noted that the Ruby Ridge siege occurred under a previous Administration.

Critics of the siege have said that FBI snipers had serious misperceptions about the threat posed by Weaver and his family and that the FBI should have given more leeway to trained negotiators to arrange his surrender.