ONLY ON 7 11/15/2002 Elizabeth Homan Idaho's NewsChannel 7
There are new revelations from a special report into the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff.
The Department of Justice found that the FBI senior managers who were involved got special treatment.
The standoff began back in 1992 at a remote cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It was the home of Randy Weaver.
When he failed to show up in court on federal weapons charges, law enforcement tried to arrest him.
Instead, on august 21st, a hail of bullets rang out and a U.S. Marshal and Weaver's teenage son died.
Later, the FBI was called in. One of its sharpshooters fired a shot that killed Weaver's wife and wounded another. The standoff ended 10 days later.
Friday, more than 10 years later, the Inspector General says, “almost nothing about Ruby Ridge worked well.” The incident “had poor performance, poor judgment, misconduct and acts of ... obstruction to cover up the problems.”
The report also says that the FBI's first investigation “was at best grossly deficient and… intentionally slanted to protect the FBI and senior FBI officials.”
While there were more investigations, the Inspector General says “the discipline process took so long and was so flawed that in the end, it was hard to say that a fair result was reached.”
He goes on to say flaws made it look like senior management got off easy. The other problem - senior FBI managers were awarded bonuses and promotions even while under investigation.
But, the Inspector General says he expects improvement. From now on, the Inspector General will investigate most allegations of misconduct at the upper levels of the FBI.
While the Inspector General looked at several other cases in his report, he said he could not find sufficient evidence of overall favoritism towards senior management in the FBI.
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Uh, the reason Weaver failed to show up in court was because he received specific instructions from the court to show up on a different day than the day he was cited for not being present. No attempt was made to arrest Weaver. His family was subjected to an ambush in which LEOs shot first without warning.
Not true -- no one tried to arrest Weaver.
The shots fired by the FBI were from ambush -- the FBI did not announce their presence or ask anyone to surrender [all in court case noted above].