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Shot on Sight: The Rules That Made Vicki Weaver's Death Inevitable
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi fired his second shot, command had already written rules of engagement that made Vicki Weaver's death a foreseeable outcome. This episode examines the written policy that a Senate subcommittee would later call unconstitutional — and how an Idaho mountain became a killing ground.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
August twenty-second, nineteen ninety-two. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi is positioned in the tree line above a remote Idaho cabin.
If you've been following this series, you know the general shape of what led to Ruby Ridge. A BATF informant named Kenneth Fadley had befriended Randy Weaver in the late nineteen eighties.
On the morning of August twenty-first, a six-man marshal reconnaissance team moved through the woods below the Weaver cabin. Their mission was surveillance, not confrontation.
HRT commander Richard Rogers issued rules of engagement for the Ruby Ridge operation. Under normal law enforcement protocols, agents can use lethal force only when they face an imminent threat to life.
The morning after Sammy's death, Randy Weaver walked out of the cabin toward the outbuilding where his son's body had been taken. He wanted to be near him.
The standoff lasted eleven days total. It didn't end because of the FBI's tactical strategy.
Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris were tried in federal court in nineteen ninety-three. The charges against Weaver included the original firearms violation, failure to appear, assault, and conspiracy related to the deaths of the marshals.
After the trial, attention turned to what the FBI had done with its internal records. In nineteen ninety-seven, an FBI supervisor named E.
The aftershocks of Ruby Ridge didn't stay contained to Idaho or to the Weaver family. They spread outward in ways that are still visible today.
Ruby Ridge is sometimes described as the moment American anti-government sentiment went from fringe to organized. That's not quite right.
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