Ruby Ridge shootout scars remain, but fade

The sun-bleached plywood floor outlines the mountain cabin that long ago collapsed under the strain of North Idaho winters.

Gone is the door through which FBI sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi fatally shot Vicki Weaver and injured family friend Kevin Harris.

Gone is the shed where 14-year-old Sammy Weaver was laid to rest after being shot in the back by a U.S. marshal.

Gone, too, are the signs of the foot-chase-turned-shootout between Sammy, Harris and federal agents that left Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan dead.

Instead, the Weaver cabin's foundation withers like a scar that hasn't healed after 10 years - a decade that saw the rise and fall of the militia movement in the United States.

The shootout 10 years ago last Wednesday sparked an 11-day standoff between Harris, Randy Weaver's family and hundreds of federal agents.

The incident, known simply as Ruby Ridge, became a rallying cry for those fearful of government oppression and suspicious of efforts by the "New World Order" to limit gun ownership.

It also became a black eye for the FBI, which has failed even to this day to explain exactly who gave Horiuchi written permission to kill at Ruby Ridge without first being threatened.

A year after Randy Weaver's premonition of a government attack came true - largely caused by his refusal to appear in court on a federal weapons charge - a second event propelled the anti-government movement into the public consciousness.

Nearly 90 people were killed in Waco, Texas, in the standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidians.

"Ruby Ridge gave birth to the militia movement," said Mark Potok, who tracks radical groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham, Ala. "But Waco lit this movement on fire."

In April 1995, USA Today conducted a poll in which 39 percent of Americans agreed with the idea that the government was so large and powerful that it posed an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

"Four out of 10 people saw the federal government as a direct enemy," Potok said. "I think that is just a remarkable number."

It was also in April 1995 that a Gulf War veteran decided to get some payback for what he later said was the government's playing dirty at Ruby Ridge and Waco.

Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb, killing 168 at a federal building in Oklahoma City. It was the single worst domestic terrorist act in U.S. history.

"McVeigh showed how bad it could go," said Jess Walter, a former Spokesman-Review reporter and author of the book "Every Knee Shall Bow," which detailed what happened at Ruby Ridge.

In 1996, the number of militias tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center jumped to 858 - almost four times the count from the previous year.

Militia faithful viewed McVeigh as a government pawn used to make them look bad.

That's how John Trochmann still describes McVeigh. Trochmann, of Noxon, Mont., founded the movement's first major organization, the Militia of Montana, in 1994.

"Many of us believe that he was a willing participant in a government program to promote terrorism in this country," Trochmann said of McVeigh. "He wasn't part of the militia movement.

"How would we gain, as the militia movement, trying to rally people around our cause by killing and maiming Americans?"

Yet the images of Oklahoma City started to turn the people against the anti-government movement.

"The people pretty much gave up on this so-called militia movement," Trochmann said. "When media and government brought the pressure on, they just disappeared."

Trochmann's influence is now reduced to a mail-order business. He also travels to gun shows to sell books and videos about how to prepare for disasters.

"The militia movement produced a great deal of violence," he said. "It had 31 or 32 major domestic terrorist conspiracies. The difference was that many were not successful."

After McVeigh, the militia movement began to decline until it suffered another blow - Y2K.

Some die-hard militia followers had been clinging to predictions of race wars, an electronic meltdown and fears that President Clinton would call for martial law.

"January 1 came and absolutely nothing changed," Potok said. "I think that hurt the militia movement badly because they had bought so wholly that this was going to be the apocalypse."

Hundreds of former followers also ended up in prison on weapons charges. More than half of the states passed laws aimed at anti-government activity.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed only 158 militia-type organizations. That's 700 fewer than 1996.

"In other words, we are looking at a movement that is one-sixth the size of its peak," Potok said. "The militia movement is a very pale shadow of its former self."

"You only have to watch Randy Weaver at any gun show to see that he still has followers and people who believe that his story is representative of the way government treats its citizens," Walter said.

Weaver served 16 months for the weapons charge that initiated the standoff. He was acquitted of all other charges.

Trochmann denounced claims that the militia movement is dying. "They've gone underground," he said, "but they are still there."

President Bush's homeland security initiative following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 will provide plenty of anti-government fodder.

Trochmann claims that he's seen a revival of calls from people worried about losing their civil rights.

The homeland defense force has the same shades of tyranny as seen by the Weaver family, Trochmann said. "It was seen, and still is seen, as a terrorist act by the federal government on we the people."

I have met Randy - and I could find no words. To think of what my government did to this quiet man (who just wanted to be left alone and was relentlessly pursued by a government stoolie to make an illegal shotgun) makes me sick.

The FBI should have been overhauled after Ruby Ridge. Maybe we would have had a better organization that wouldn't have let us down a year ago!

As far as Lon the Murderer goes I hope his sins at the Ridge and Waco (he drove one of the tanks during the fianl assualt)are finally dealt with by the God (hopefully she is female and will be po'ed at his killing women and chiuldren) so many of you believe in.

I am ashamed of how my government treated this man and his family.
Mr. Whoriuchi deserves to be shot just as he shot Mrs. Weaver.
This is just one of many many examples of U.S. Govt Agencies and employees gone berserk. Still no accountability? Get rid of the out of control b.a.t.f. and f.b.i. as well as others.

True, they should have been overhauled/disbanded after Ruby Ridge. Not doing at least an overhaul killed more than more American citizens, it killed our confidence and trust in them. That, too, is a sad circumstance.

I would suggest to everybody out there to be extra skeptical if you ever get a chance to sit on a jury, and the case being presented has evidence provided by the F.B.I.

Personally, I don't believe anything the F.B.I. says any longer. If they said water was wet I wouldn't believe them.

What my opinion of this obscenity is, is reflected in the title:

Return to Ruby Ridge-- SNAFU? Or Summary Execution?

In 1996, the number of militias tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center jumped to 858 - almost four times the count from the previous year.

This organization tracks harmless militia groups, but would scream racism if any organization tried to track Islamic terrorist cells that actually do pose a threat.

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