The next day, she was shot "accidentally."
Vicki Weaver was standing near the open door of the cabin, holding her infant son in her arms. A sniper's shot hit her artery and she died almost immediately. The FBI has claimed the sniper was actually aiming for Kevin Harris, who they say was standing behind Vicki Weaver with a gun in his hands. However, diagrams of the cabin shown to the Senate committee make that story improbable.
Even if it is true that the killing of Vicki Weaver was accidental, for director of the FBI William Sessions admitted the sniper should never have fired in the first place. A Justice Department task force also found that the shot was unjustified.
Not surprisingly, following the killings of his wife and son, Randy Weaver was afraid that the rest of his family would be shot as well if they surrendered.
Harris, Weaver, Weaver's two teenage daughters and his infant son huddled in the cabin for three days with Vicki Weaver's body.
When describing this time to the Senate, Weaver never mentioned that it was the middle of July, temperatures were approaching 100* F, and his home is not air-conditioned. He didn't mention that the cabin didn't have running water.
He didn't have to. It was a horrible enough story already.
Everyone who has listened to even a portion of the hearings should be appalled and frightened. One message is coming through loud and clear; these were not the actions of any reasonable government. There was an utter lack of judgment on the part of those who call themselves professionals from the very beginning to the very end of the siege.
The conclusion I have drawn from listening to the hearings is very simple: our federal law enforcement agencies are out of control and need to be contained.
First of all, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) should no longer exist. These were the "professionals" who decided to surround the cabin with armed agents for nothing more than a failure to appear in court. These are also the people who showed little restraint in Waco.
This is the agency that regularly forces the Justice Department officials to utter their least-favorite line: "Mistakes were made."
Why isn't this agency just another branch of the FBI? Why do we need a separate law enforcement agency for alcohol, tobacco and firearms in the first place? Who oversees this group and why do they consistently make horrendous mistakes?
Does the ATF just act as another agency to confuse communications at crucial times, withhold information from those who need it, and blur the issues of accountability?
Of course, these were the questions to ask before Vicki and Sam Weaver died. Those deaths are not forgivable mistakes. Those deaths are not the kind of mistakes from which any agency can recover. The ATF should be disbanded.
The FBI has not come out of this untarnished either. However, at least the bureau has sensible rules, when they choose to follow them. If they had abided by their own guidelines, Ruby Ridge would never have become the disaster it did.
In order to regain its legitimacy, the FBI needs to flush out those who have shown they have no common sense and even less good judgment. The member of the bureau who changed the orders into a direct violation of policy should be fired, if that name will ever come to light. Any other agents who approved the violation should likewise be dismissed.
Unfortunately, the FBI has not gotten the message. After Ruby Ridge, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh promoted Larry Potts, one of those most responsible for the debacle, to the number two spot in the bureau. Only recently, with the threat of Congressional hearings looming large, was he first demoted and then suspended. If the FBI does not act quickly to sharply discipline those who acted without discipline, it forfeits its already fading reputation for professionalism.
The Senate hearings have been a time for questions about what happened in Washington and in Ruby Ridge. Idaho in July of 1992. While we are getting some answers, the omissions are as worrisome as the admissions.
Why was a mother holding an infant in her arms killed? Why was a fourteen-year-old weighing less than 80 pounds shot in the back?
Randy Weaver deserves more from the government that destroyed his life than a refusal to admit its guilt. He deserves to have these questions answered. We all do.