Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns From: [c--w--r] at [ssd.intel.com] (Rich Cower) Subject: Weaver update - this is incredible Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 16:32:54 GMT 12/08:U.S. DECIDES NOT TO PROSECUTE FBI SHARPSHOOTER IN IDAHO SIEGE(sw) By DAVID JOHNSTON c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - Rejecting the findings of a highly critical internal review, the Justice Department has decided not to bring criminal charges against a government sharpshooter who killed an unarmed woman in a bloody standoff on an Idaho mountain in 1992. The review of the incident, which involved the elite Hostage Rescue Team of the FBI, has hung over the agency for a year and a half, threatening members of its paramilitary crisis response team and top officials with criminal prosecution and career-ending disciplinary action. The review examined the 10-day siege that began when a federal marshal was killed as the authorities prepared to arrest a white separatist, Randall C. Weaver, on a charge of selling an illegal sawed-off shotgun. A day after the standoff began, agents surrounded Weaver's cabin and a sharpshooter, Lon T. Horiuchi, killed Weaver's wife, Vicki, as she stood in the cabin doorway holding the couple's 10-month-old daughter. The review was done by a 24-member team of bureau inspectors and Justice Department lawyers from the summer of 1993 through spring of this year. The team produced a report that is still secret, but that people who have followed the inquiry say is harshly critical of the crisis response team and the bureau officials supervising the operation. The report concludes that the sharpshooter may have violated the law, and it recommended that department lawyers evaluate the "prosecutive merit" of the case. People who are familiar with the internal inquiry said investigators concluded that the sharpshooter was justified in taking his first shot, which slightly wounded Weaver. But the investigation concluded that the agent may have violated the law when he fired a second bullet, which killed Mrs. Weaver and then slightly woundeded Kevin Harris, a Weaver friend. But this fall, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates misconduct complaints against department employees, disagreed with that recommendation. And the department's civil rights division, which prosecutes cases of excessive force by law-enforcement officers, has found insufficient grounds to charge the sharpshooter, or anybody else, with criminal wrongdoing. In an Oct. 15 memorandum, Deval Patrick, the assistant attorney general in charge of the civil rights division, said that when the sharpshooter fired the fatal shot, the agents had a reasonable belief that their lives were in danger. Agents had not intentionally used excessive force, the memorandum said. The paramilitary team was dispatched to Idaho from its base in Quantico, Va., after a confrontation between Weaver and marshals led to an exchange of gunfire on Aug. 21, 1992, in which a marshal and Weaver's 14-year-old son were shot to death. The next afternoon, a sniper from the paramilitary team wounded Weaver when he and Harris emerged from the cabin. The sniper fired again as the men retreated to the cabin, but his bullet struck and killed Ms. Weaver. She was never considered a threat and FBI agents later admitted that she was shot by mistake. Her husband surrendered after a 10-day siege. Weaver and Harris were tried in Federal District Court in Boise, Idaho, on charges of conspiring to kill the federal marshal, and were acquitted by a jury that heard testimony highly critical of the federal agents' actions. The trial led to the internal inquiry. Federal officials who have seen the investigative report said it provided powerful grounds to justify disciplining agents and supervisors. But some officials have expressed doubt about whether anyone will be sanctioned after the FBI director, Louis J. Freeh, announced on Tuesday that he would promote Larry A. Potts, who had overall responsibility for the Idaho operation, to be his second-in-command. Freeh has not said how he plans to respond to the report. The FBI has formed an internal committee to review the findings, and the agency has already made changes in how the paramilitary team responds to crises. The changes came in response not only to the Idaho incident but also to the tear-gas assault by the same team on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas in April 1993, which resulted in the death of more than 70 people. Neither the internal investigative report, completed in April, nor the civil rights division's formal memorandum of Oct. 15, declining prosecution, have been made public, but in recent days, the Justice Department has distributed the report to the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies. Officials who have seen the report said it found that the siege was ill-conceived, mismanaged and disorganized. Specifically, the report said FBI officials relaxed the agency's rules regarding the use of lethal force, a change that authorized agents to shoot adults who emerged from the Weaver cabin with a firearm, even if the adults did not represent an immediate threat. Investigators had difficulty reconstructing events leading to the rule change because FBI documents about it disappeared. Justice Department officials have said Attorney General Janet Reno has repeatedly urged subordinates to move more quickly to make the report public. Carl Stern, the department spokesman, said on Wednesday that officials were waiting to show the report to local prosecutor in Idaho, who has said he is considering whether to bring a state charge of murder against the sharpshooter. After the prosecutor had seen the report, Stern said, copies would be furnished to the officials whom it criticizes. He said it was not likely to be made public before next year. Lawmakers like Sen. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, have complained that the department has dragged its feet, and lawyers who have brought a civil suit against bureau officials on behalf of the Weaver family and Harris said the department has, in effect, dodged the issue by refusing to hold anyone legally accountable and covered it up by refusing to release the report. "We were promised a thorough investigation and a honest one," said Gerry Spence, the lawyer who defended Weaver in the criminal trial, "and what we got was a recommendation of prosecution for those who murdered Vicki Weaver and a refusal of the Justice Department to follow its own recommendations. It's like the right hand pulling the trigger on the murder weapon and the left hand patting the murderer on the head with blind approval." David Nevin, a lawyer who defended Harris and is suing federal officials, said, "They must have bent over backwards and twisted the facts into almost unrecognizable form for the prosecutors to conclude that there is no reasonable basis for a criminal intent."