♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MAN:
At the time, it was all shrouded
in secrecy. But there were meetings
at the highest of levels, clear back to Washington, D.C., like, "How can we effect
the arrest of this man?" Some people, I later found out, were actually advocating
a front-on tactical assault, to go up there
with armored personnel carriers and, you know, whatever kind
of armament they needed and just shoot it out with him. MAN:
I told Randy, I said,
"You don't really understand "what the full weight and power
of this government is, "and what it would really mean if you want a confrontation
with it." I think I used the term
that it's like a locomotive. Once you get it rolling down
the tracks, it's hard to stop. You're murderers! (protesters yelling) MAN:
You call yourself an American? These are Americans! These are God-fearing people! You don't even know
your Constitution. Go back and read
what your founding fathers said! (protesters shouting) WOMAN:
We were taught
from a very early age to never point a gun at anything
you don't plan on shooting. Dad was very, very strict
about that. Guns were tools in our family. They were there for protection
from wild animals, or to hunt game. Guns were there for a purpose. MAN:
This is north Idaho, 1992. 50 miles or so
from the Canadian border. Here's a man with his family,
armed to the teeth, who knew that a federal judge
wanted him to come to court, and he was refusing to do that. And he lived
with the consequences. WOMAN:
When Mom and Dad met,
Dad was in the Army. He was a Green Beret. It wasn't until he was home
on leave that they actually got together and really started to date
and fall in love. I have memories of hot Iowa
summers and cold Iowa winters, and Grandma and Grandpa's farm. I do remember my parents
discussing always wanting to move
to the mountains. So, you know, they learned about how to raise kids
without electricity and things like that. And then I remember
they started to sell things, and Mom and Dad, you know,
just prepared by buying stuff you might need living on top
of a mountain somewhere. (auctioneer counting bids) MAN:
Randy Weaver wanted to move
his family from Iowa to Idaho partly because
of the farm crisis. By the early 1980s,
the economy in Iowa had been deteriorating
for some time. Fuel and input costs
were rising, and farmers were going bankrupt. You don't need to sell it. You don't need to sell it. I'm going to sell it. It's part of my business,
part of my livelihood. You don't have to do away
with the farmers, sir. I'm not doing away
with the farmers. Give the farmer a break! MAN:
Farmers are losing
their family farms, interest rates
are 15, 16, 18 percent. Randy's working
at the John Deere factory, afraid that he was going
to get fired. And for the Weavers, who are starting to explore
the idea of Bible prophecy, they began to see things
that were occurring as... as being part
of the end times, the very thing that the Book of
Revelations was promising. (protesters chanting) And I think those connections were the ones Vicki especially
was making. WEAVER:
My mom interpreted some
of the things in the Bible very literally. There's a verse
in the Old Testament about not having graven images, and so there was a point
when the TV, you know, kind of left, and my parents started
to dig deeper into the Bible. They did believe
in an apocalyptic future. And I think that they started
to take that more seriously as they got ready to leave Iowa. Fear was a big part of it. As they leave Iowa, they're
telling their friends and family that a great conflagration
is coming and they must seek a place
to be safe. They must go to the West
and find a mountaintop. They were really imagining
this fortress, this place where they could
really separate themselves from a corrupt and dangerous
world. MAN:
It was incredibly remote. I mean, they had no electricity, no running water,
no indoor plumbing. We're talking about a cabin made
by Randy Weaver and his wife. On a mountaintop. They thought
that they were living on the edge of Armageddon, and this was the sort
of sanctuary that Randy and Vicki Weaver
wanted. WEAVER:
There was definitely work
involved in living that way. Dishes and firewood
and hauling water, and doing laundry with a washtub
and a washboard. I loved to garden,
so as I got older, I kind of took over
the gardening. Sam and I, we worked hard, but we enjoyed working
and helping Mom and Dad out. You depend on each other for
your survival, living that way, so we were very close. Growing up on the mountain, there was so many things
for Sam and I to explore and learn and do
every single day. I was best friends
with my brother, and I think it was good for us,
I really do. MAN:
I don't know
that Randy Weaver knew at the time that they moved
to Ruby Ridge that they would be so close
to the Aryan Nations compound, which was just 60 miles south. But they started showing up. At first, it was purely social. They attended family picnics
and those kinds of things. But as Randy began
to interact more with them, he started to buy
into the message. MAN:
We, the white race,
lost the war. A plague known as Jews
won the war, infiltrated our bloodstream
of our race in every country
in which we reside. LEVITAS:
The founding principle
of the Aryan Nations was something called
Christian Identity theology, which teaches that
white Anglo-Saxon Christians are the true descendants
of the lost tribes of Israel, and that those
who call themselves Jews are not merely imposters, but are actually
children of the Devil. It also teaches that African-Americans and other
people of color are subhuman. MAN:
Every major city in the United
States is now non-white, following the catastrophic
destruction of our race in the so-called Civil War,
or the War Between the States. America shall again become
white and Christian. There'll be a lot of blood
running one day. I don't advocate it,
I don't want it, but it's going to come, as sure as day follows night
and night follows day. WALTER:
The Weavers were on this journey
of religious discovery that had led them
to isolate themselves and to live in a style
they believed was Old Testament Christian. Christian Identity shared
some of those tenets, so I think the Weavers saw
some kinship in these people. But they also were really clear
that they didn't want to join, that there were things
they didn't believe, that they didn't agree with. Essentially, for the Weavers, the Aryan Nations was a chance
to meet people, and, you know,
and to make friends. WEAVER:
Being there as a kid, it was
just like a family vacation. I think my dad took us there
out of curiosity. He was always up for a debate,
always up for a discussion. Being the inquisitive person
that he is, he was, like,
"Sure, I'll go check it out." MORLIN:
Every summer, Richard Butler
would host a gathering called the Aryan World Congress, which would attract
fellow racists from all over the country. MAN:
What do we need? ALL:
White power! Some of these people
were Christian Identity. Some of them were Ku Klux Klan. There were outlaw bikers there,
and skinheads, and other neo-Nazis
that were atheists. But their common denominator
was their belief that the white race
was the supreme race, and many of them wanted
to basically declare war on the U.S. MAN:
Some people who had spent time
with Butler up at Hayden Lake would go off
in these splinter groups that became threats
in their own way. They were very violent,
very anti-government, were heavily armed, so the Aryan Nations
was a cause for concern for those of us
in law enforcement. MORLIN:
Starting in the mid-'80s,
the Feds wanted to know who's there,
and what are they doing, and what are they planning
on doing next? So by the time Randy Weaver started showing up
at the compound, the Feds were listening. LEVITAS:
They had lots of events there designed to potentially recruit
harder-core folks into the Aryan Nations, and it was at one
of those meetings that Randy Weaver was spotted by an undercover
federal informant. MORLIN:
This guy got next
to Randy Weaver and learned that he was,
you know, clearly a racist, that he wanted to live
his white separatist lifestyle in north Idaho, but that he was having trouble
putting two nickels together, and that he was interested
in some income. And one thing led to another, and pretty soon, Randy Weaver
agrees to saw off some shotguns. WALTER:
Everything shifts when Randy Weaver saws the
barrels off of those shotguns. He had now committed
a federal crime. But it's so clear that Randy Weaver
was not a guy up there sawing the barrels off shotguns
and selling them. He-he only committed this act after talking
to an ATF informant. But then the idea is,
we can turn this guy. There's nothing unusual
about that. It's the way the federal
criminal justice system works. If they can take the information from, you know,
suspect number one and lead them to suspects
number two through ten, that's what they're going to do. MAN:
Here's the government, and they
come to you and they say, "We've been watching you. "We know that you sold
a sawed-off shotgun. "Now, if you won't work for us, "if you won't help us
to get inside the Aryan Nations "and to get inside
the white separatist movement, "if you won't do those things
for us, "then we're going to arrest you, "and we're going to place you
in jail, and we're going to take away
your property." And Randy Weaver said, "No." WEAVER:
A couple posed with
a broken-down truck on the road, and as Mom and Dad stopped
to help them, they were thrown on their faces
in the snow and frisked, and Dad was, you know,
hauled off to jail. He had to post our home as bond and he told us, you know,
"If I lose my trial, we lose our home." And he's, like,
"How am I going to win this?" MORLIN:
These are people that want
to be left alone. And Randy's arrest
just galvanized the Weavers' hatred
of the federal government. They really thought
the government was evil. Vicki wrote two letters
to the U.S. Attorney for Idaho, which she addressed, "To the Servants
of the Queen of Babylon." WALTER:
"The Queen of Babylon." This is very much the language that was coming out
of the Aryan Nations, this language of a coming war, with the Anglo-Saxon armies
defeating the tyrant that was the federal government. She believed not only that we
were living in the end times, but that she was
being given signs, and she was defiant. WEAVER:
I think she was at the end
of her rope, I really do. And I think for Mom and Dad, it was, "We're not going
to take any more." You know, getting thrown
in the snow and sent to jail, and if you lose your case,
you lose your house. They had to have been
an emotional mess. WALTER:
And then Randy doesn't show up
for trial. What happened next was
the brutality of bureaucracy. One agency leads
to another agency. So the case becomes
the responsibility of the U.S. Marshals Service. MAN:
Our job was to bring him before
the court to answer charges, and that's all it is. It doesn't even necessarily mean
he's guilty of anything. Our first step was to do
a threat assessment. He didn't appear like he was
going to run or abscond in some way. He had roots in the community. He had a family there. And I thought that time was
on our side. But that threat assessment
also showed that he was extremely committed
to his cause. And that's what made
that situation a little more dangerous. WALTER:
The threat assessment portrayed
Randy Weaver as a former Special Forces
Green Beret who may have booby-trapped
his house, living with a woman
who would kill her own children rather than surrender. It was either worst-case
scenario or fanciful, but the assessment
of the Weavers made them look
more like criminals and less like a family. WEAVER:
My parents decided they would just stay up
on the mountain until the legal aspect got
figured out. And so, all through that summer
and winter, we didn't go anywhere anymore. We stayed up there. And the winters could get long. You know, sometimes we'd read
two books in a day. We would play card games and Monopoly and Yahtzee
and Scrabble, you know, all of those sorts of things
in the long evenings. We had friends
who would come see us who were concerned
about the situation, who were concerned about us,
you know. They'd bring us food
and supplies and things. And my mom had my little sister
up there during that time. And I think about that, I'm just, like, "Wow, that took
a lot of courage on both their parts." HUNT:
Winters are tough up there. And during that time,
I learned a lot about Randy. I must have interviewed
several dozen people, neighbors, friends, and family, and I'd asked the question: "Why don't I just go up there
and talk to him and tell him he's under arrest?" And everyone said,
"That would be the worst thing you could do," that he is committed and that
Vicki is as committed as he is. WALTER:
During this time,
the media caught wind of the fact that this family
of white separatists was hiding out and had vowed
not to be taken alive. MORLIN:
We published a story
in early March of 1992 saying, "Feds have fugitive
under our nose." In that story, I quoted
officials as saying that, "We don't want to go up there and get in a gun battle
with kids." But the marshals are stuck
with a federal judge's order saying, "Go get this man. "We're a country of laws. Bring him to justice." WEAVER:
It was probably an embarrassing
thing for the government, because here's this guy
on a mountain who they think
is flipping the bird to them, and, you know, they need
to deal with it because it's making them
look bad. MORLIN:
And so the marshals
intensified it and decided to have
motion-activated cameras placed near the Weaver cabin, so they could figure out
how many people are there, who's carrying guns,
and what are our options in terms of effecting an arrest. The tapes showed
that Randy Weaver was there with his wife and his children
and a man named Kevin Harris and that they frequently
were armed. They have to have been
shaking their heads: "What are we going to do?" And then, in May of 1992,
Randy did an interview, and he said, "I don't care
what you do, I'm not coming off
my mountaintop." BOTTING:
The longer a situation goes on,
the more frustrating it becomes. So the marshals brought in
their special surveillance team, and they skunked
around the area, trying to find a location to take Randy Weaver
into custody without a problem. We've got a guy heavily armed,
reportedly heavily armed. He's barricaded in a cabin. He's got his family in there
with him. I mean, they just didn't know
what to do with this guy. MARSHAL:
Well, this is the approach
from the east. How far do you figure? MARSHAL 2:
100 meters. MARSHAL 1:
100 meters? WEAVER:
At times I had the feeling
we were being watched. It was really hard to trust
anybody at that point, even our friends
that came to see us. I mean, there was always that, "Ooh, is this person maybe
working for the government?" Or "Is this person maybe..." You know what I mean? It was... It was just, it was
all pretty unsettling. HUNT:
On the morning of the 21st
of August, 1992, we approached the mountain
with two teams, six people. We followed the south trail. It was a logging trail
that led to the Y area, and there we split,
our two teams split. MARSHAL:
At the first fork in the road,
we took a left, up a steep hill. HUNT:
I took my surveillance team further up the mountain,
above Weaver's place, to a vantage point where we
could observe what was going on. That particular day was nothing
but to gain updated intelligence and see if they're
still performing and doing their normal routines. Has anything changed? And to familiarize
the other deputies with the mountain. I briefed them on various trails
on the mountain and where we were going to go
to set up an outpost. The other three deputies were
down below, closer to the house, when the dog starts barking. (dog barks in distance) (dog barking) HUNT:
I was hoping
he would stop barking, but the dog gets more intense
in its barking, and at that time I realized,
"Oh, crap. He's on their trail." (dog barking) WEAVER:
Sam and Dad and Kevin,
they're, like, "Well, let's go check it out." I felt slightly torn
at that moment. "Do I follow them,
do I go home?" And I was, like, "Oh, they'll be
fine, I'll just go home." HUNT:
It wasn't within a minute
or two that I hear the first shot. (shot echoes) HUNT:
And a second or two later,
I heard a second shot. And then, in quicker succession,
more shots, and probably as many as... I don't know, 20 rounds
being fired at that point. WEAVER (voice breaking):
I heard gunshots. And then I heard more gunshots, and so I started to get worried. HUNT:
I get a radio call that says,
"Dave, Billy's been hit." Billy Degan. I grabbed my guys,
I said, "Let's go." We headed in down a trail that would take us
towards the Y, and we find Billy down there. Frank goes to work on him
to try and help him, and he just looks up, and we
know when we look in his eye that Billy's gone. How'd it happen, you know? What happened there? WALTER:
The family's version is that they're chasing deer
into the woods, and there's a place
where the trails come together in a sort of Y. Kevin Harris and Sammy Weaver
are coming down this way, Randy Weaver's coming down
this way. And according to the family,
at that moment, they see some men dressed in...
in fatigues with dark paint, and, you know, very much
like a strike team, and that possibly
to silence this dog, which has found their location, one of the marshals shoots
and kills the dog. 14-year-old Samuel Weaver
at that moment erupts and says, "You killed my dog,
you son of a bitch," and opens fire. Again, according to the family, the marshals then fire back,
killing Samuel Weaver. Of course, the marshals tell
a different story. In their version of the telling, as these groups come together
on this Y, the marshals
identify themselves and call out a surrender order, and it's at that moment that Kevin Harris dives
for cover, fires on the marshals, and shoots and kills
William Degan, a highly decorated U.S. marshal
in the Special Operations Group. And so you have these two
incredibly different narratives, the marshals believing
they've come under attack by white separatists, and the family believing they've
been attacked by federal agents. I saw Dad come walking
up the road, and... He was visibly upset,
and he was by himself. And I knew something was wrong. And then, I don't know how long
it was after that. It seemed like a long time. Kevin came walking up the road,
and he said, "Sam's dead." (crying):
And then I think Mom's... I think her mother side
kicked in, and she's like,
"I'm going to get him. "We got to go get him. I'm not going
to leave him there." (sniffs) And so they... They started heading
down the mountain. It seemed like forever before
they came walking back, and I saw them carrying him. He'd been shot once in the elbow
and once square in the back. My mom was a mess. I remember her just saying, "I'm
going upstairs for a while," and Dad following her up, and... We were just a grieving family. Like, "What the heck
just happened?" HUNT:
Right after the shooting,
I came down off the mountain, got to a telephone, and contacted the U.S. Marshals
Headquarters. I briefed them on exactly what's
happened, and that Billy's dead. <i> This is Dave Hunt,
U.S. Marshals Office.</i> <i> I have one officer dead.</i> <i> I need help quick.</i> <i> We've had an incident
with Randall Weaver.</i> <i> I want the State Police, I want
all the help here I can get.</i> MORLIN:
When a cop gets shot,
cops get pissed off. In this case,
it was a federal cop, killed on the property
of a white separatist. And of course, the word reaches
Washington, D.C., and it's now, you know,
in the front drawer. WALTER:
At this point, we have
another bureaucratic shift. What started as a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms investigation, and then became a Marshals
Service fugitive hunt, had now become an FBI case. The FBI begins to scramble
its Hostage Rescue Team. (explosion) BOTTING:
The HRT was the super-SWAT
of the FBI. They were designed
to handle incidents that went beyond
the capabilities of a local SWAT team. And Randy Weaver was reported to be a anti-government, racist,
neo-Nazi sort of personality, with some connection
to Richard Butler, some connection to
the Christian Identity movement. In other words, very dangerous. WALTER:
The Hostage Rescue Team believe that they are deploying
into an ongoing firefight with a white separatist
and his armed family. Because they believe
they're going into a firefight, the rationale is given
that a surrender warning doesn't need to be called out, that that warning
has already been given by the U.S. Marshals,
deputy marshals on the ground, so agents can open fire as soon
as they see any armed adult. Well, the Weavers
are always armed. PETERSON:
They adopt a military rule
of engagement. This is the enemy. You may kill them
if they're armed. If they have a gun, you can
and<i> should</i> use deadly force. That was actually the wording, "You can and<i> should</i>
use deadly force." WALTER:
The very next day, a team of ten FBI agents
in the Hostage Rescue Team surround the cabin. These are snipers. These are the FBI agents who've been trained
to, you know, to hit a dime from 200 meters. WEAVER:
That morning, we all were
just trying to grasp what had happened
the night before, and at some point, Dad said, "I'm going to go see Sam
one last time." His body was in the shed. And before I knew it,
Dad and Kevin had headed out. So I went after them, and
that's when I heard a gunshot. (shot echoes) WEAVER:
I ran over to where Dad was, and he was holding himself. And I said,
"Dad, what happened?" And he said, "I've been shot." My mom came out
on the front porch and was holding the door open, and she was, like,
"What happened?" and Dad's, like,
"I've been shot!" And she started screaming,
"Get in the house, get in the house,
get in the house!" So we get to the front porch, and I'm pushing Dad
through the door, and Mom is right next to me,
holding baby Elisheba, and screaming, "Get in
the house, get in the house!" At this point, Kevin was
coming in behind us, and I hear this giant,
just, boom! (gunshot explodes) WEAVER:
And I felt things hit my face,
and Mom dropped next to me. It took me a second
to comprehend that... Mom had just died (voice breaking):
and that it was parts of her that had hit my face. That's when Dad, he went
and picked up Elisheba and handed her to Rachel and pulled Mom in the house
so we could close the door. Because at that point,
we were... (sighs) We were being hunted,
that's how it felt. MORLIN:
Where we were based,
at the roadblock, it was out of view
of where this was occurring. We were down probably
a good two miles or so from where the actual cabin was. Neighbors,
friends of Randy Weaver, and reporters
from all over the country started gathering there,
trying to get information. If we can tell you something,
we will, but most of it will all
come out of Washington, D.C. You know, I'm just trying
to tell you, the weather's bad,
and, you know, that we're not going to come out
and make some big statement. They didn't let us see firsthand
what was going on, but clearly, it was a big deal. WALTER:
One of the things as a reporter
that I reflect upon is the way we began reporting
this story. Federal law enforcement only had
one version of what was happening, and that was the way
we covered the story. "These are white supremacists,
they are causing some trouble, there's a shootout
with federal law enforcement..." And the way information
came out, you know, especially
in the beginning, that was the narrative. And then the FBI discovers
Samuel Weaver's body in the shed where Samuel had
been taken by the family. And the story begins to shift
a little bit. You (no audio) bastards! Are you proud of yourself? Are you proud of yourself? You're going to kill
all the children to get one man if it takes 800 of you. You're going to have nightmares
about this! You're going to burn in Hell... Huh? Come on! Baby killers, baby killers! Baby killers! Smile! Smile! BOTTING:
When we arrived
on Sunday evening, we went through a group
of demonstrators right at the bridge that were yelling and screaming, and we drove off that
and then in about a mile, and then they had
a big open field with tents and trucks
and helicopters. It looked like
a real military base. I was working with the FBI's
Crisis Negotiation Team. We were called in because
the Hostage Rescue Team had not been successful
in communicating with Randy. They had been bull-horning Randy
in the cabin, but Randy had not responded
to them. And they hadn't been able
to get in a hostage phone. He had no phone
in the cabin itself, so HRT had just simply been
yelling at the cabin. (faint voice shouting
over bullhorn) MORLIN:
This was all going on
behind a cloak of secrecy. I mean, the FBI
is a secret agency and the public doesn't need
to know everything they do, but this was government
in the dark. If we can have your attention
for a few moments, we can... give you an update. Once a day or so,
the special agent in charge would come down and hold
a, you know, a, you know, a pretty feeble
press conference. REPORTER:
Do you consider this
overkill? To get two people?
All these people? No, I don't. I don't at all. This is a complicated situation, because in the residence, there are juveniles. That's a critical factor that sometimes
in our busy society we tend to overlook. That's a critical factor. And... In our society, we place
a high value on a human life. WALTER:
At this point, they don't know
Vicki Weaver's dead. The hostage negotiators would
begin every morning by saying, "Vicki, send the children out,
we're having pancakes." "Vicki," you know, "We,
why won't you come talk to us? You know, "We won't harm you." Inside the cabin,
where Vicki's lying dead, the family believes
they're taunting them. (faint voice shouting
over bullhorn, dog barking) WEAVER:
My dad, he lost it. And he started to yell at them,
and I wanted him to stay quiet. I was scared to death that they
would find out his location and just open up on him. But he's, like, "You shot
my wife, you cowardly S.O.Bs." BOTTING:
The negotiations were addressed
to Vicki because we thought she was
very influential towards Randy, and we thought that she was
very strong as a personality and that she would be
very helpful. Little did we know
that she had been killed, and that she was incredibly, I mean,
he was incredibly offended by any mention of his wife,
who's laying in the kitchen. It was, it was awful. I mean, it was awful! In his mind,
we had proven everything that he felt and believed
and been taught to believe about the federal government was true, and that it was coming true
piece by piece. Hey, Pastor. Hey, Doug, nice place
to see you. MORLIN:
Ruby Ridge became
a huge propaganda opportunity for people like Richard Butler, who wanted to galvanize
anti-government hatred. You're a disgrace
to the white race! MAN:
Disgrace to the race! MORLIN:
But they all had
their own agendas. Some of them
were religious-based. Some of them were neo-Nazi. At one point,
a group of skinheads, and I was in the front row
to see this, attempted to smuggle in a bunch of weapons and guns
in to Weaver, hoping they could somehow
assist him. WALTER:
It felt very much like there
might be more violence. The FBI is trying desperately
to find a peaceful solution. We are taking every step
we possibly can to, through the use of a phone,
effect a surrender. I remember listening
to Paul Harvey and hearing him appeal to Randy
on his radio program. HARVEY:<i>
A telephone has been left</i> <i> right outside your door,
on the porch.</i> <i> Reach out and pick it up.</i> <i> Nobody will shoot.</i> <i> Your family wants to know
what to do with Samuel's body</i> <i> and also, I will arrange
for an attorney in Spokane</i> <i> to represent you in the death
of Deputy Degan</i> <i> with a plea of self-defense.</i> <i> Consider your options--
I'm offering you a chance</i> <i> to resume the isolation
you prefer with your family,</i> <i> if you will just reach out
and pull in,</i> <i> and talk into,
that portable telephone.</i> WEAVER:
We heard it on the radio when Paul Harvey had a message
for my dad. HARVEY:<i>
I am talking to you personally.</i> WEAVER:
But we didn't trust anybody for
any kind of help, for anything. I think it made me angry,
more than anything, at the misinformation
that we heard. I would cringe every time
the media portrayed my dad as this wild man in the woods that the Feds needed
to take out. REPORTER:
His one-man stand
against the law is suddenly taking on the
appearance of a full-blown war. We didn't feel at that point
very confident that we were going to be allowed
to share our side of the story. We weren't even confident we
were going to make it out alive. REPORTER:
...from Weaver's home-built
fortress. By this time, I had contacted Randy and Vicki's families
in Iowa-- I'd tracked them down-- and they were telling
another story, not of white separatists
bent on a race war, but on a family
that took to the woods because they believed the end
of the world was going to come. And that, I think, was
the first time that the media started to shift
the narrative a little bit. And, at the same time,
the FBI is realizing that this is not the situation that they thought
they were coming into. REPORTER:
Is there any progress? We can't comment on anything
of that nature. REPORTER 2:
Have you talked to him,
though? I didn't say that. REPORTER 3:
He has been in contact
with you, then? I didn't say that. REPORTER 4:
How many men do you have
up here? I won't comment. We have sufficient resources
to accomplish the task. MORLIN:
The FBI didn't have
many options. They were at wit's end. I don't think they knew
what to do. They'd reached out
to Vicki Weaver's sister and other family members, and he wouldn't respond. But clearly, they weren't going
to pack up and go home. I mean, they've got 400 federal
agents on the payroll up there. And they've got the national
media watching this. A standoff between a man
who is wanted by the FBI and a large number
of federal agents. It's entered its sixth day. The man has been holed up
in a cabin in a remote section of Idaho with his wife, three daughters,
and a friend. WEAVER:
My mom was on the floor, dead. It was torture. But I didn't want to come out. I was scared to death
of the door opening. I mean, they had proven that
they were there to shoot at us. So them begging us to come out was like begging us to walk
to our death, in my mind. And I think Dad felt that way,
too. BOTTING:
When a suspect doesn't talk
to you, that's a very negative
situation. We were government negotiators, and Randy Weaver hated
the government. That was going to be very
difficult for us to overcome. And so we realized
that Randy was going to need a third-party negotiator. It was, like, "We got
to find somebody that he trusts that can speak on our behalf
and represent us," but we just didn't know
who that was going to be, until Bo arrived. MAN:
What's the word, Bo? The word is very encouraging,
I think. I was assured this, that they have every intention
to treat Randy and Kevin with utmost human dignity. Now, that is encouraging, because normally you get
this one-digit IQ federal government mindset... Amen. And I was very, very encouraged
by it. I think we're going to get
a chance. WALTER:
Bo Gritz was a hero
to the radical right. Some people said he was
the model for Rambo. He was a third-party candidate
for president that year and made his way to Ruby Ridge, hoping that he could negotiate
an end to the standoff. I think the FBI was desperate
at this point. I have been maybe-ly overly
optimistic. Not about Randy,
but about Agent-in-Charge Glenn. He has been so cooperative, it's
as if Washington was on holiday. He's affiliated with this
Christian Identity movement, he's a former Green Beret, he's a big personality,
and he said, "I can help because Randy and I
are both Green Berets." So on Friday afternoon, and this
thing now is in the eighth day, HRT brings Bo Gritz up
in a jeep. GRITZ:
So I was maybe 20 steps
from the cabin. And I said, "Randy, this is
Bo Gritz, and I'm right here." And then I saw his face
in the window, and he said, "Is that you, Bo?" I said, "Yes, I'm standing
on this rock." And then he said,
"They have killed Vicki." BOTTING:
So they're up there
about an hour, and he comes back, and he says, "Boy, you guys really
screwed that one up." I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Randy's been shot,
Harris has been shot, and Vicki's dead." We just couldn't believe it. It was devastating,
just absolutely devastating. The three children are in good health. Kevin is all right, but he did suffer a wound. Randy is in good health. Unfortunately, Vicki is dead. (crowd gasps) The reaction was
a physical gasp. For the people
that had gathered, it was like a thunderclap. Never will you take
another woman! Down! Never! MAN:
We're going to war! MAN 2:
You're nothing! Don't (no audio) touch me! It was horrifying. I mean, it was the first time
and we're a week into this, and now we're finding out that Randy Weaver's wife
has been shot. So we now have
three people dead, and the thing's still not over. WEAVER:
Kevin was critically wounded. The bullet that killed my mother went through his arm,
into his chest, and barely missed his heart,
tore his arm open. I remember him begging
to be just shot, put out of his misery. And I was like,
"No, this can't be happening. This cannot be happening." GRITZ:
The next day came, and I went
right up to the cabin. And I said, "Weaver, if you
don't let me take Kevin Harris, get him out of here
and to a hospital in Spokane," I said, "I am going to testify
against you in court, "because it'll be your fault
that he is dead. "You make the decision. Now, I'm telling you,
give him up." GLENN:
At 1:47 today, Kevin Harris
came out of the house. He was given emergency medical
treatment near the residence, then transported by air
to the hospital. I can't overemphasize
how pleased we all are, and I want to give
a lot of credit to the efforts of Bo Gritz, and we're optimistic that we'll be able to,
in the near future, report further progress. WEAVER:
After Kevin left the cabin, Bo Gritz came with a body bag
to take Mom. I remember Dad
being really, really upset. Everyone just started crying. GRITZ:
I came in. I think he was probably
just holding the girls, because I came in and went
right straight to Vicki's body. Randy came over and he got her
centered in the body bag, and then I got it zipped up and
carried her out of the cabin. Randy was just... he was grieved
beyond imagination. MORLIN:
Randy Weaver had seen
his dead wife lying on the cabin floor
for a week. He had a dead son. He probably knew there was
a dead marshal. He knew there were
400 other agents down in the field below him. It's, like, "How much longer are
you going to do this, Randy?" And maybe common sense finally
started to set in. GRITZ:
That last morning,
as soon as I got to the cabin, Weaver said, "Bo, the girls
and I have prayed all night, "and the girls have told me,
'We are not coming out. 'They're going to have
to kill us, 'just like they did
our little brother and just like they did
our mama.'" I went right up to the door,
and I said, "Weaver, damn you! "Don't you tell me
that we're not going to continue "when I have carried your bride
out of this cabin, and we've got Kevin Harris,
who's still alive." I said, "Don't you tell me
you're going to quit now." All of a sudden,
the door came open. And Randy was looking at me,
and he said, without turning around, he said, "Girls, get your things
together. We're going to follow Colonel Bo
down the hill." WEAVER:
When we finally left the cabin and stepped out
into the sunshine, I still expected
to hear gunshots, and... I pretty much expected
to die. But my dad made the decision
for the family and we just held hands, and, you know,
that was the end of it, and I had peace with it
at that point. They put my sisters and I
in a car, and we drove down to the meadow, and it looked like a scene
out of an army movie. I mean, it was just surreal. There were a lot of guys
walking around in their shorts, like they had just been on
a camping trip or something. And all for us. You know, it made no sense. RANDY WEAVER:
You guys wouldn't believe
how pretty my wife was. Jesus Christ, the first time
I saw her, if I ever thought this was going
to happen, I'd have never... I broke in on a friend of mine
dancing with her. I'd let Nick had her. MAN:
What this is, is force to try to scare
the average American so he won't open his mouth
against the New World Order. That's all this is. Western people
are independent. More than East Coast people,
who have already been pacified. So they got to pacify the West,
where people are true Americans. That's all this is. HUNT:
I remember standing
at the bridge afterwards, listening to some of the guys. They were joking and they...
commenting and saying, "Boy, the government has really
screwed up now." And it was, like, you know,
they wanted this to happen. I just turned around
and walked off. I said, "Yeah, you know,
this is what they wanted." WALTER:
People focused so much
on who was to blame. But if you look at what happened and how many times it could have
been averted and avoided, how many mistakes had
to be made, and how many times both sides
would multiply those mistakes, the question
of who was more to blame is less interesting to me than the question of, how did
an all-American Iowa family end up with these beliefs? And how did the government
end up treating them like a group
of armed terrorists? WEAVER:
I do know there's a lot
of remorse, and I know the FBI uses
what happened to my family as a training tool
as to what not to do, and that is hugely gratifying
to me. But the same way
they stereotyped my dad and blew him up into this thing
that he wasn't, I think a lot of people do that
with our government, as well. And when you operate
out of misinformation and fear, things can go wrong. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ "American Experience:
Ruby Ridge" is available on DVD. To order, visit ShopPBS
or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. "American Experience"
is also available with PBS Passport
and on Amazon Prime Video. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Everyone up to and including Janet Reno should have been put on trial for what happened to Randy Weaver and his family. Some people love the taste of leather so much that they will cling to any reason to vilify a victim of the Hobbesian Leviathan thrashing about.
I got into an argument about this more than once untill people actually learned the truth, and im far from some radical. But its crazy how most people who know in passing the term "ruby ridge" imagine a complete nutjob/gun runner/terrorist as the suspect/victim.