FBI Figure to Talk in Ruby Ridge Probe

Federal authorities made a major advance in their investigation of five suspended FBI officials accused of covering up agency actions in the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as one of the five agreed to provide information about the actions of his superiors, sources close to the case said Tuesday.

Word of the agreement emerged shortly after prosecutors announced that E. Michael Kahoe, former head of the FBI’s violent crimes unit, had been formally charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly concealing facts from federal prosecutors. Kahoe, 55, is prepared to plead guilty and cooperate in a continuing investigation, the sources said.

The group’s ranking member, Larry A. Potts, was formerly the bureau’s deputy director under FBI Chief Louis J. Freeh.

Others suspended with pay last year by Freeh were Potts’ deputy, Danny O. Coulson; Gale Richard Evans, a crime unit chief at FBI headquarters; and George Michael Baird, a member of an inspection team that investigated the Ruby Ridge incident.

The long-running investigation, conducted here by Philadelphia prosecutor Michael R. Stiles, has focused on whether FBI officials lied and destroyed documents to cover up their heavily criticized actions during the siege.

The siege and shootout resulted in the deaths of a federal marshal and of the wife and teenage son of Randy Weaver, an anti-government fugitive who had holed up in his cabin on an Idaho mountaintop. Weaver’s wife, Vicki, the last to die, was shot inadvertently by an FBI sniper as she stood behind the curtain of the cabin’s partly opened front door.

Potts and Coulson have been accused of concealing that they approved more liberal “rules of engagement” to end the 12-day siege. Under those new rules, FBI snipers were allowed to shoot on sight if they saw armed members of Weaver’s family. Standard rules had required FBI snipers to fire only if they observed a threat to their safety or that of others.

In testimony last year before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, the two FBI officials denied they took any wrongful actions or made any meaningful changes in the rules.

Evans and Baird, whose lower positions were roughly equal to Kahoe, have declined any public statements pending a resolution of their cases.

The charges, as detailed in a criminal information, allege that Kahoe “and certain of his superiors at FBI headquarters” resisted a request for documents by prosecutors in Idaho who were preparing to put Weaver on trial after the shootout. Under federal law, prosecutors were required to turn over to defense attorneys any government documents that could help Weaver’s case.

Kahoe, who was in charge of writing an “after-action critique” of the siege with help from others, allegedly “withheld the critique from the documents to be delivered to the prosecution team [and] destroyed all of his copies . . . to make it appear as if the critique never existed,” the information charged.

The charges against Kahoe made no mention of whether Potts or Coulson had any knowledge of tampering with the detailed after-action report.

Weaver and an associate, Kevin Harris, subsequently were acquitted of charges that they had killed federal Marshal William Degan. The federal government later paid $3.1 million to Weaver’s family for the deaths of his wife and son.

Kahoe’s plea and further cooperation is expected to result in a recommendation for leniency, the sources said. His conviction would carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Kahoe could not be reached for comment, and attempts to reach his attorney, James G. Richmond of Chicago, were unsuccessful.

The disclosures and accusations have proved difficult for Freeh, who had promoted Potts as his deputy even after censuring him for management failures at Ruby Ridge. Last October, Freeh appeared before the Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and said he regretted his actions.

“It was a grave error on my part,” the FBI director said of his elevation of Potts, a longtime friend.

Freeh also testified that the Ruby Ridge siege, which preceded a similar standoff at Waco, Texas, by several months, was marked by “a series of terribly flawed law enforcement operations with tragic consequences.”

An interagency committee headed by Freeh has subsequently adopted new rules to handle standoffs like that involving the “freemen” in Montana earlier this year, and Specter and other senators have commended him for it.