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Typical More Washington Post slop below. Hard to believe they
attributed McVeigh's He first became disillusioned w/ the Gulf War fiasco. |
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Randy Weaver's
Return From Ruby Ridge By Anne Hull
JEFFERSON, Iowa -- The small town where
Randy Weaver now lives is as wide and open as Ruby Ridge was steep and
hidden. The Union Pacific whistles past the cornfields hourly. It is not unusual 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 11-day
standoff with federal agents in 1992 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. He is listed in
the phone book. But to say that Weaver has come down off the mountain
would be only half-right. At 53, he is still not 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 Americans to avenge what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the
other disastrous federal siege. When McVeigh is executed next month for
his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, a violent chapter in American
history will close with one more death. 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 track the activities
of 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 Center'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 cabin
porch. It's hard to say who Weaver is now. The
industry of rage and resentment makes certain demands upon him. He is a
folk hero of ultra-right-wing groups. When asked about McVeigh's impending
execution, he says almost reflexively, "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." But other times Weaver is not so
gung-ho. What if McVeigh had come to him with his plans for Oklahoma City? "I would have told him to forget
it." 'They Are Just Mad' "Meet Randy Weaver," the
blinking sign announces outside the fairgrounds in Lincoln, Neb. Inside a
stale expo hall, the tables are laid out with rifles and scopes and
munitions. Weaver is near the door, standing at a table piled with $20
copies of his 1998 book, "The Federal Siege at Ruby Ridge." No one here for this mid-April 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 informant working for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms. The ATF tried to enlist Weaver as an informant,
promising to drop the gun charges, but he refused and was indicted by a
grand jury. When Weaver failed to appear in court --
he had been given the wrong date -- an arrest warrant was issued. Seventeen months later, federal agents
in camouflage and face paint were crawling around Weaver's 20 acres when
they were detected by the family dog. Agents shot the dog and began a gun
battle with Weaver's 14-year-old son, Sam, 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 death of the marshal, 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." Weaver wears motorcycle boots and keeps
his wallet leashed to his blue jeans by a silver chain, Harley-style. His
silver hair is cut close on the sides and long in the back. A broad-shouldered man in a John Deere
jacket and an NRA cap extends his hand. "Fritz Oltjenbruns," he
says. "I'm part of America's largest not-for-profit organization --
farmers. I was just telling my son this morning how the ATF snookered you
down by an eighth-of-an-inch on that shotgun." Weaver rocks back on his heels. "I
ain't ashamed of it. I'll cut it right down to the stock, whatever." The farmer folds his arms. "It's a
darned shame what you went through with your wife," he says.
"It's hard to believe the government went that corrupt that
fast." Weaver signs a book and pockets the
twenty. "Keep your powder dry, buddy." A concessionaire trots up with a
present. "Here's something for you, Randy," he says, handing
over a napkin. Buffalo jerky. "Thanks," Weaver says, and sets it
aside forever. A grandpa type holding a pistol
approaches. "They haven't tried to run you out with your books, have
they?" When Weaver was appearing at a gun show at the Reno Hilton
once, the Northern Nevada B'nai B'rith pressured the promoter into banning
his appearance. An intense, red-cheeked man holding a
32-ounce Coke pounces with a great gale of rhetoric on religion and
politics that begins with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and ends with his
plea, "If you have the time, I'd really like an answer." "I don't have the answer,"
Weaver says. "Religion's all a bunch of crap." The speechmaker,
silenced, walks off into the sea of guns. The only person in the armory who isn't
white is a janitor at the fairgrounds, a Native American named Floyd
Pilcher. He approaches Weaver with a bag of sage, a faded bandanna and a
T-shirt that reads, "IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE." "These
are gifts from powerful people," Pilcher says. Weaver takes the gifts. "I guess
anybody who's ever gotten stomped on by the government knows what I'm
talkin' about," he says. Back inside, a strapping young man in a
T-shirt imprinted with a Fort Benning logo and the words "DEATH COMES
QUICK" solemnly shakes Weaver's hand. "I'm sorry your deal
happened," he says. A creamy-skinned woman extends her hand. "By
God, stand by your word," she tells Weaver. The show doesn't end until 3:30, but
Weaver starts breaking down his booth 40 minutes early. Two teenage boys
hover. "Need some help?" one asks. "Thanks, partner," Weaver
says. The kid turns to his friend. "He
called me partner!" At Ruby Ridge When a pickup truck comes to a four-way
stop in Jefferson, it is a lone red object against an endless curtain of
green. Only the grain elevators have altitude. There is an A and W stand
next to the ballfield, which is next to a cornfield. This is the place Randy and Vicki Weaver
wanted to separate from when they sold their belongings and moved to the
Pacific Northwest in 1983 with their three children. Separate from what,
he is asked. "From what we were trying to get
away from." 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 cabin on Ruby Ridge. She
canned her own food and home-schooled the children. On three or four occasions, the Weavers
attended Aryan Nation meetings up at Hayden Lake, a compound for
government resisters and for white separatists and supremacists. Weaver
says he'd drink beer and talk to the skinheads. He did nothing illegal, he
says, until he got desperate for money and sold the two sawed-off shotguns
to the informant. The Weavers' racial views were obscured
by the enormity of what happened to them during the siege at Ruby Ridge.
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 that Vicki Weaver had
been shot. The sniper, Lon Horiuchi, testified that he could hit a target
at 200 yards within one-quarter inch. He said he had 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 to obstruction of justice. The No. 2 official at the FBI, 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. Meanwhile, the world Weaver had tried to
separate from found in him a brother. He says he received more than 30,000
pieces of mail. "Hell, anyone who'd ever been picked on by the
government was writing me," he says. "Airmen who'd escaped Red
China, black guys from Detroit -- some friends of Leonard Peltier's mailed
me one of his drawings." In the settlement of the civil lawsuit
Weaver brought against the government, each of his three daughters
received $1 million, and Weaver received $100,000. Weaver returned to Iowa, where relatives
rented him a house in a small town next to Jefferson. He had his two
youngest daughters with him. Weaver met a woman, Linda Gross, who was
married and in farm-implement sales. The town suddenly got too small.
Weaver and his girls went out to Montana for a few years. Weaver came back to Jefferson in 1999.
He and Linda are now married and live with her two children from her first
marriage. Linda is a secretary for a lawyer in town. 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. The
oldest, Sara, 24, is married to a corrections officer. The youngest,
Elisheba, whom Vicki Weaver was cradling when she was shot, is 9 and lives
with her sister Rachel, who is 19. Weaver says his kids "live out
there because they like it." Before he left Iowa for the first time
to live in the Pacific Northwest, Weaver sold his Harley-Davidson because
he was starting a new kind of life. Now he owns a Harley Heritage Soft
Tail that gleams in his garage. He writes off much about his lifestyle
at Ruby Ridge. "Punk idiots" is what he calls many of the
attendees at Aryan Nation meetings. He has offended Christian supporters
who assume they are simpatico with him 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 evolved much.
When 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." A Place of His Own Weaver is having a White Russian at a
place called Wet Goods on the town square. Joe Cocker is singing
"Unchain My Heart" on the stereo. A tall man in a plaid shirt
walks through the door. "Nick!" says Weaver. Nick Friess has known Weaver since
elementary school. During the Vietnam War, they enlisted in the Army about
the same time. Weaver was a Green Beret who remained stateside. Friess
went to Vietnam, and two years later he stepped on an explosive in the
grass. He was awarded a Bronze Star. Part of his leg was amputated seven
years ago. He no longer farms. Now he is an educational director at an art
museum. Friess sits down with Weaver. The
conversation drifts from their childhood to the gypsum mine where Nick's
father worked to church, and Weaver makes a crack about phony ministers.
Friess says, in a very "Prairie Home Companion" way, "Oh,
well, now, you can't categorize everyone. Some preachers are just
fine." Weaver sits back, for once not
spring-loaded. He doesn't have to be from Ruby Ridge right now. He is the
boy from Jefferson who used to box with NickyFriess in the front yard
while both of them tried to impress a girl named Lana. Weaver got a D in government. They both
laugh. Later, Friess will say, "A lot of
his beliefs, I don't agree with." And yet: "After all he's been
through, jiminy, it's amazing he can be walking the streets." And finally: "Maybe with the tragic
playing out of events, there is a certain obligation for him to feel a
certain way." Weaver has a gun show in Las Vegas next
weekend. They will come for his book and his story. They may talk about
the missing shell casings and the shotgun robot sent in by the Freddies,
as they did at the show in Lincoln. But what he remembers about the
mountain: "There was no wind," he says. "The snowflakes
were so big you could hear them when they hit the ground. The kids had
three or four campgrounds around the land. They'd go out and build fires
at night. "And Vicki canned. She and the kids
would pick huckleberries. She got top dollar 'cause she picked clean. Or
she'd trade a gallon of huckleberries for four quarts of peaches. We sold
firewood -- me, Vick and the kids. Then we'd go into Bonner's Ferry and
have a hamburger or a pizza." Weaver says he'd like a place in the
Ozarks some day, with nothing but quiet and a clear creek running through. "That's weird, ain't it?" he
asks. "Now who the hell would want to live like that?" ©
2001 The Washington Post Company |
