The
ATF is looking to speed up its caseload with an automated database for
searching individuals — like these cadets during a 2010 civilian
training session — and discovering the relationships between them. Photo: ATF
The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about
you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know.
And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.
According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system”
for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The
system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to
process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points
between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and
unstructured data.”-[Full Article]
Guns illegally purchased under the ATF operation were found in April hidden in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, court records show.
This arsenal uncovered by police in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in April turned out to include weapons from the ATF's ill-fated Fast and Furious operation. (Associated Press)
Reporting from Washington—
High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars.
In all, 100 assault weapons acquired under Fast and Furious were transported 350 miles from Phoenix to El Paso, making that West Texas city a central hub for gun traffickers. Forty of the weapons made it across the border and into the arsenal of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a feared cartel leader in Ciudad Juarez, according to federal court records and trace documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The smugglers' tactics — quickly moving the weapons far from ATF agents in southern Arizona, where it had been assumed they would circulate — vividly demonstrate that what had been viewed as a local problem was much larger. Six other Fast and Furious guns destined for El Paso were recovered in Columbus, N.M.
"These Fast and Furious guns were going to Sinaloans, and they are killing everyone down there," said one knowledgeable U.S. government source, who asked for anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. "But that's only how many we know came through Texas. Hundreds more had to get through."...[Full Article]
AP This Jan. 25 picture shows part of a cache of seized weapons displayed at a news conference in Phoenix.
Not only did U.S. officials approve, allow and assist in the sale of more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa cartel -- the federal government used taxpayer money to buy semi-automatic weapons, sold them to criminals and then watched as the guns disappeared.
This disclosure, revealed in documents obtained by Fox News, could undermine the Department of Justice's previous defense that Operation Fast and Furious was a "botched" operation where agents simply "lost track" of weapons as they were transferred from one illegal buyer to another. Instead, it heightens the culpability of the federal government as Mexico, according to sources, has opened two criminal investigations into the operation that flooded their country with illegal weapons...[Full Article]
The three, who have been criticized for pushing on with the border weapons sting even as it came apart, receive new management jobs in Washington.
“I share responsibility for mistakes that were made,” said ATF supervisor William G. McMahon about Operation Fast and Furious. (U.S. Congress / August 14, 2011)
Reporting from Washington—
The ATF has promoted three key supervisors of a controversial sting operation that allowed firearms to be illegally trafficked across the U.S. border into Mexico.
All three have been heavily criticized for pushing the program forward even as it became apparent that it was out of control. At least 2,000 guns were lost and many turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and two at the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.
The three supervisors have been given new management positions at the agency's headquarters in Washington. They are William G. McMahon, who was the ATF's deputy director of operations in the West, where the illegal trafficking program was focused, and William D. Newell and David Voth, both field supervisors who oversaw the program out of the agency's Phoenix office.
Federal agency attempts to make firearms retailers spy on their customers under new illegal directive
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Friday, July 29, 2011
Even as it finds itself embroiled in a scandal that saw weapons being deliberately sent to criminal gangs in Mexico, the ATF has issued a letter ordering firearms dealers in border states to report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles, and is following it up by harassing gun owners with intimidating home visits as well as threatening gun dealers to spy on their customers.
As the Justice Department announced earlier this month, “All gun shops in four Southwest border states (Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico) will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles.”
The ATF letter also orders gun dealers to report to the feds sales of “two or more pistols or revolvers, or any combination of pistols or revolvers totaling two or more.”
The letter, which was subsequently sent out to gun dealers and has since entered the public domain, orders firearms retailers to “Submit to ATF reports of multiple sales or other dispositions whenever, at one time or during any five consecutive business days, you sell to an unlicensed person or otherwise dispose of two or more semi-automatic rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine and with a caliber greater than .22 (including .223/5.56 caliber).” The directive takes effect from August 14, 2011.
However, what the federal agency isn’t keen to make public is how its agents are using these reports to make threatening home visits to firearms owners, while ordering gun store owners to become de facto informants by telling them to spy on their customers.
According to several gun dealers in Austin as well as one of our own staff members, the ATF is visiting people’s homes, demanding to be allowed inside without a warrant, and implying that gun owners could be terrorists for purchasing two or more firearms at a time.
Illustrating how lawless this is, a central Texas gun dealer who provided Alex Jones with the ATF letter, contacted Daniel Jones, the head of the ATF in Austin two weeks before receiving the letter to ask about news reports that President Obama was going to order the investigation of citizens that bought two or more rifles. Agent Jones told him “no that law is not going to pass, and we can’t enforce something that isn’t law so don’t worry about it.” Of course, the law didn’t pass but the ATF later enforced it anyway.
This is all based on a directive from the federal government that is completely outside of the law and unconstitutional. The law that would have required gun dealers in border states to report sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles to the ATF was “stripped entirely from the text of the regulation” when it came up for a vote in Congress on April 15, but as part of the Obama administration’s dictatorial zeal to accomplish its agenda outside of the law, the program is going ahead anyway.
The federal government is enforcing a law that was never passed.
Read the letter the ATF is sending out to gun stores below (click to enlarge).
Americans who purchase guns are already forced to undergo checks against the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to prove they are not a criminal. The ATF’s new unconstitutional directive only adds an extra layer of bureaucracy, putting a further squeeze on second amendment rights while creating a logistical nightmare for firearms retailers.
The letter orders retailers to report each sale of two or more weapons before the end of the same business day, requiring them to fill in a form for each sale that takes over 10 minutes to complete. This extra burden will create hundreds of extra necessary man hours for every gun store per year, and could even put the smaller ones out of business.
The ATF’s intimidation campaign directed against firearms dealers and gun owners is all unfolding while the organization simultaneously comes under scrutiny for the infamous Operation Fast and Furious, a BATF program that. “Sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.” Some of the weapons were later used to kill US Border Patrol agents like Brian Terry.
After being caught sending weapons to Mexican criminals that were used to kill U.S. Border Patrol agents, police and citizens, the ATF is now treating American citizens like criminals simply for exercising their second amendment rights, all under the guise of a regulation that was rejected by Congress and never became law.
The Obama administration and the ATF claim that the Fast and Furious program was part of a sting operation to catch leading Mexican drug runners, and yet it’s admitted that the government stopped tracking the firearms as soon as they reached the border, defeating the entire object of the mission, unless the mission was about pushing through gun control in the US and had nothing to do with the drug war.
The ATF’s efforts to intimidate both gun sellers and purchasers also arrives months after President Obama told gun control advocate Sarah Brady that his administration was working “under the radar” to sneak attack the second amendment.
During a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama “dropped in,” the president reportedly told Brady, “I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
The name of the gun shop owner who provided us with the ATF letter is withheld because he doesn’t want to face recriminations from a notoriously vindictive agency.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Evidence indicates that the ATF not only provided weapons to Mexican drug cartels and gangs but also trafficked guns to criminal gangs in Honduras, including the murderous MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, known to work with the Sinaloa drug cartel.
Sinaloa, the largest drug trafficking organization operating in Mexico, has worked closely with Wacovia Bank. Last March, the bank revealed in court it had laundered nearly $400 million through a network of exchange houses, or casas de cambio, between 2004 and 2007.
MS-13 is known for it brutality, including the murder of 28 Hondurans when gang members sprayed a bus with automatic gunfire in 2004.
New revelations about the federal operation – dubbed Castaway – came to light after Republican Rep. Gus Bilirakis sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and acting ATF Director Ken Melson.
“In recent days, it has come to light that the ATF and DOJ have participated in the act of ‘gun walking’ beyond the acts conducted within the scope of ‘Operation Fast and Furious,’” Bilirakis wrote to Holder and Melson.
“Virginia O’Brien, Special Agent in Charge at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Tampa Field Division, ran a gun-running investigation that was walking guns to Honduras using the techniques and tactics identical to Fast and Furious, it was reported to these correspondents this evening via private correspondence from a proven credible source,” the journalists wrote.
The ATF did not respond to the story when it was posted on July 6. The information also found its way to Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee Member Charles Grassley.
The corporate media has yet to give Operation Castaway the coverage so far afforded to Operation Fast & Furious.
Media Matters, the propaganda operation funded by the globalist George Soros, claims reportage on the growing scandal is some sort of right-wing conspiracy and defends the mendacity of government bureaucrats who have made excuses for the illegal operations.
Obama has said AG Holder was not aware of Fast & Furious, so it is safe to assume the Holder and the Justice Department will claim they know nothing about Operation Castaway as well.
As noted by Joseph Alan Sanchez writing for Infowars.com on Tuesday, the U.S. has shipped weapons south of the border for over a decade.
“For at least a decade now, covert operation specialist Celerino ‘Cele’ Castillo III has been telling the world that the U.S. has been shipping guns south of the border on a regular basis as a sidebar to revelations of drug running from South America into North America. And now in the summer of 2011, the BATF is under fire for observing the sale and distribution of machine guns into Mexico. Congressional testimony in recent months is revealing a calculated plan called Operation Fast and Furious,” writes Sanchez.
Adding weight to Castillo’s accusation, one of the kingpins of the infamous Los Zetas drug running gang, Rejón Aguilar, told Mexican federal police earlier this month that the group purchased its weapons directly from U.S. government officials.
For his truth telling efforts and his Iran Contra whistleblowing, Castillo was convicted in 2008 on federal charges of dealing firearms without a license in a case marked by numerous irregularities and peculiar coincidences that raised the specter of a frame-up.
Despite the denials, congressional Republicans believe the Fast & Furious scandal reaches the highest levels of the Justice Department.
They have asked the attorney general’s office to turn over a sweeping trove of emails, documents and other material to determine Washington’s role in the “reckless” operation that allowed U.S. semiautomatic weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels, according to the Los Angeles Times.
It should be obvious by now that the ATF is a renegade federal agency. Hearings should be held immediately calling for its decertification and the systematic disarming of its agents.
“Let’s transform them back into the stamp clerks (suitable for affixing labels on wine and whiskey bottles) that they once were. Then the only harm they can inflict on the body politic would be paper cuts,” writes Charles Heller, Executive Director of Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
“Take away their badges. Badges are symbols of honor from a country as great as ours. BATFE Agents can carry business cards, like any other overpaid, tax consuming, foot dragging bureaucrat. Let’s convert these morally challenged individuals from jackboots to fur boots, or at least gumshoes without guns,” Heller concludes.
In addition to providing weapons to violent drug cartels favored by bankers, the Fast & Furious operation was cooked up to make it appear Americans legally selling firearms are engaged in criminal activity.
Democrats have wasted little time blaming the Second Amendment for the violence spawned by Mexican drug cartels and gangs using weapons provided by the U.S. government.
In June, Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, tried to affix blame on law-abiding Americans.
His effort, however, was doomed to failure – at least in the “rightwing” media singled out by Media Matters and its patron, George Soros – when news of the complicity of the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and a renegade ATF hit the streets.
How in the world are Americans living in the southwest United States supposed to sleep peacefully at night when the U.S. government has given thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and continues to leave the border completely wide open? The brutality and viciousness of Mexican drug cartels is almost beyond description, and yet the U.S. government has armed them to the teeth and does next to nothing to stop their incursions into U.S. territory. "Project Gunrunner" was supposed to be a U.S. government initiative to fight the flow of guns into Mexico. Instead, it has now come out that ATF agents were ordered to facilitate the acquisition of thousands of U.S. guns by Mexican drug cartels and then halt surveillance on where those guns where going. One of these operations was known as "Fast and Furious" and the revelations that are now coming out have Congress in an uproar. If the full truth about what has been going on is revealed to the American people it is going to turn Washington D.C. upside down. (Read More.....)
One of the kingpins of the infamous Los Zetas drug running gang has told Mexican federal police that the group purchased its weapons directly from U.S. government officials inside America, a revelation that will only serve to heighten suspicions that the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious program was a deliberate attempt to undermine the Second Amendment by stealth.
Under Operation Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “Sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.” Some of the weapons were later used to kill US Border Patrol agents like Brian Terry.
However, according to the testimony of Rejón Aguilar, one of the original seven members of Los Zetas who was recently captured by police, in some cases Mexican drug gangs did not have to wait until the firearms reached the border – they purchased guns directly from the US government itself inside America.
In an interview with Mexican federal police that was later uploaded to You Tube and translated, Aguilar sensationally blows the whistle on how the Zetas’ weapons were obtained straight from U.S. federal authorities.
“They are bought in the U.S. The buyers (on the U.S. side of the border) have said in the past that sometimes they would acquire them from the U.S. Government itself,” Aguilar told police.
The video interview can be seen at the bottom of the page.
Some have questioned the legitimacy of efforts on behalf of the US government to catch drug smuggling kingpins in Mexico by way of sting operations involving firearms, the reason offered by the Obama administration as the motivation behind Fast and Furious, given the fact that those same kingpins are in many cases working for US intelligence itself.
With the gang having first been trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, Castillo affirms that Los Zetas are still working for the US government in protecting drug routes to keep the wheels of Wall Street well-oiled. Castillo has gone on the record to state that the commandos are working directly for the US government drug cartel in carrying out hits on rival drug smugglers who aren’t paying their cut.
The Obama administration has repeatedly invoked rhetoric about the flow of guns being smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico as a talking point with which to chill gun rights of American citizens, repeating the demonstrably false myth that 90% of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S.
Despite the establishment media attempting to debunk the notion that Fast and Furious was a deliberate effort on behalf of Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder to demonize gun rights by pointing to the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico, a process now revealed to have been largely overseen by the federal government itself, the fallout from the scandal, with no one in the administration willing to admit culpability, is starting to confirm precisely that premise.
Indeed, during a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama “dropped in,” the president reportedly told Brady, “I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” The quote appeared in an April 11 Washington Post story about Obama’s gun control czar Steve Croley.
Given the fact that arrested Mexican drug runners are now admitting that they both worked directly for and bought weapons from the US government, the notion that Fast and Furious was an Obama administration plot to attack the second amendment by stealth is perfectly plausible.
Watch the video interview in Spanish with Rejón Aguilar below.
(NaturalNews) It is now a widely-reported fact that under the Obama administration, U.S. federal agents actively placed over 30,000 fully-functional weapons into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, then halted all surveillance and tracking activities of where those weapons were going.
This is not a conspiracy theory, nor a piece of fiction. It is now an openly-admitted fact that this was pulled off by the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more commonly called "ATF") under orders from Washington. The program was called "Fast and Furious."
Even Reuters is now covering the news and reporting how members of Congress are outraged to learn that this happened (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011...).
Details are also starting to leak about the cover-up inside ATF, which was led by the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, Dennis Burke, an Obama appointee (http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/06/i...). The engineering of the illegal gun running went right up the chain of command to the director of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, who is now expected to resign. The real planning of this event went even higher up the chain of command in Washington, possibly all the way to Attorney General Eric Holder (http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/21/i...).
Among the firearms sold to the Mexican drug gangs were AK-47s, thousands of pistols and, remarkably, .50-caliber rifles which are typically used to disable vehicles or carry out sniper-based assassinations at extremely long ranges (up to two miles). The mainstream media is now reporting that these weapons are turning up in violent crimes being committed in Phoenix, Arizona...[Full Article]
Despite the Obama administration’s best efforts to characterize Operation Fast and Furious, a recently revealed ATF program that sought to put U.S.-based firearms into the hands of Mexican drug smugglers, as little more than a ‘screw up’, the most damning evidence strongly indicates that the whole operation was in fact an attempt to launch a false flag assault on the second amendment rights of the American people.
Under Operation Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “Sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.” Some of the weapons were later used to kill US Border Patrol agents like Brian Terry.
An editorial posted at Investors.com this week asks, Was Fast And Furious A Gun-Control Plot?, a reasonable assumption to make given the fact that Obama has openly revealed his administration’s plans to sabotage the second amendment by stealth.
“Rather than a botched attempt to catch criminals, was the ATF program actually an attempt to advance gun-control efforts by an administration that has blamed Mexican violence on easy access to U.S. weapons?” asks the author.
“If “Operation Fast and Furious” was merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee?”
The Obama administration and the ATF claim that the program was part of a sting operation to catch leading Mexican drug runners, and yet it’s admitted that the government stopped tracking the firearms as soon as they reached the border, defeating the entire object of the mission, unless the mission was about pushing through gun control in the US and had nothing to do with the drug war.
That would also explain why ATF agents like James Casa were repeatedly ordered to stand down and not seize the firearms, while the Obama administration failed to even inform Mexican authorities of the program’s existence.
Unbelievably, both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder maintain that they had no knowledge of the operation until it became public, and no one will admit to authorizing it. ATF Acting Chief Ken Melson is “strongly resisting pressure” to resign over the program, claiming that he is being used as a “fall guy” to take the blame and make the controversy disappear.
However, the notion that the Obama administration would deliberately implement a program they knew could later be used to demonize gun rights is hardly conspiratorial given the fact that Obama himself told gun control advocate Sarah Brady earlier this year that his administration was working “under the radar” to sneak attack the second amendment.
During a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama “dropped in,” the president reportedly told Brady, “I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
There also seems to be little motivation on behalf of the US government to catch drug smuggling kingpins in Mexico by way of sting operations involving firearms given the fact that those same kingpins are in many cases working for US intelligence itself.
With the gang having first been trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, Castillo affirms that Los Zetas are still working for the US government in protecting drug routes to keep the wheels of Wall Street well-oiled. Castillo has gone on the record to state that the commandos are working directly for the US government drug cartel in carrying out hits on rival drug smugglers who aren’t paying their cut.
The Obama administration has repeatedly invoked rhetoric about the flow of guns being smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico as a talking point with which to chill gun rights of American citizens, repeating the demonstrably false myth that 90% of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S.
Before his election, Obama attracted the fury of gun rights activists when he said that Americans frustrated with the declining economy “cling to guns or religion” as a means of relieving their stress.
Just months into his term in the Oval Office, Obama told Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the U.S. was to blame for much of Mexico’s drug violence because of firearms that were purchased in America.
“I will not pretend that this is Mexico’s responsibility alone. The demand for these drugs in the United States is what’s helping keep these cartels in business,” Obama told Calderon during a press conference. “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States. More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border.”
Back in April, the administration failed in its bid to push through a law that would have mandated licensed gun dealers in the southwestern states to “file reports with BAFTE on all sales of two or more semi-automatic rifles larger than a .22 caliber”.
Given the Obama administration’s open hostility to the second amendment, with Obama himself promising to launch a sneak attack against the second amendment “under the radar” shortly before the details of Fast and Furious were made public, coupled with the highly suspicious methods employed during the program itself, and added to the US government’s history of controlling Mexican drug lords, there seems little doubt that the entire scope of the mission was to launch a false flag against the second amendment, one that has thankfully failed due to the program being revealed by whistleblowers.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
WASHINGTON - Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.
He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?
"Yes ma'am," Dodson told CBS News. "The agency was."
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.
Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public.
"I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. "Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen."
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.
ATF named the case "Fast and Furious."
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News shows suspected drug cartel suppliers carrying boxes of weapons to their cars at a Phoenix gun shop. The long boxes shown in the video being loaded in were AK-47-type assault rifles.
So it turns out ATF not only allowed it - they videotaped it...[Full Article]
WASHINGTON – The federal agency that monitors gun sales wants weapons dealers near the Mexican border to start reporting multiple sales of high-powered rifles, according to a notice published in the Federal Register.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has asked the White House budget office to approve an emergency request requiring border-area gun dealers to report the sales of two or more rifles to the same customer within a five-day period...
The Weaver family in 1989 In the 1980s, the mountainous panhandle of northern Idaho became a magnet for right-wingers of all stripes. Government-haters, minority-haters, immigrant-haters, and modern culture-haters all found refuge in the sparsely-populated ponderosa country. In his book Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family, Jess Walter describes Idaho's northernmost county, Boundary County, as a place where "a blurring continuum of home schoolers, Christian survivalists, apocalyptic, John Birchers, Posse Comitatus members, constitutionalists, tax protesters, Identity Christians, and neo-Nazis" could find both one another and "a ridge top on which to hide out and build a life." One family that in 1983 found its way from the heartland of Iowa to an Idaho ridge top was the Randy and Vicki Weaver family. Before long, things just got out of hand--hopelessly and tragically out of hand.
Life in Iowa
Vicki Jordison and Randall ("Pete") Weaver began dating in earnest in 1970. The self-reliant secretary for Sears Roebuck, raised on a farm near Coalville, and the idealistic army private met in Fort Dodge almost every night during Weaver's short leave from Fort Bragg. Randy and Vicki married in November 1971, after Weaver received an honorable discharge, and the couple moved to Cedar Falls, Iowa, where Randy intended to enroll at the University of Northern Iowa and pursue a career in law enforcement. The job in law enforcement never happened. But Randy landed a well-paying job at a John Deere tractor factory in Waterloo and he and Vicki settled into a several year period of happy, and quite normal, domesticity. When their first child, Sara, was born in 1976, Vicki entered enthusiastically into motherhood.
In 1978, Vicki read a book that began what would be a long-term drift toward a Christianity-based apocalyptic view of the world. Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth applied his interpretation of the prophesies of the Old Testament to the events of current times and concluded that we were now in "the end time." A nuclear holocaust and Armageddon were just around the corner, but the good news was that Jesus would return to Earth. Violence and pestilence soon would fall upon the planet, and Christians persecuted, in a terrible time called The Great Tribulation. Then there would be The Rapture, and true believers selected by God to join him in Paradise. Vicki and Randy began to share with friends their plan of moving to a mountain top, as far as possible from false governments, desperate people, and hunters of good Christians like themselves. "We've been having this vision," Vicki would say.
Vicki's search for "the truth" led her into libraries and bookstores. She read and found significance in books such as Ayn's Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a novel warning of the dangers of an all-powerful state, and in the prophetic short stories of H. G. Wells, which dwelled on themes such as Armageddon and Judgment Day. She and Randy began meeting regularly with like-minded radical Christians at the Cedar Falls Sambo's restaurant. Vicki poured over passages from her King James Bible, drawing lessons ranging from what to eat (no unclean meat such as pork or oysters) to how to prepare for the "end time." In Matthew 24 she encountered the passage which reinforced her vision of their future: "Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains."
Vicki and Randy were slipping further and further away from mainstream life. They adopted a conspiratorial world view that linked Jews to the Illuminati, Masons, and the Trilateral Commission. Randy began sleeping in a flak jacket with a loaded gun under his pillow. In an interview with a reporter for a Waterloo paper, they said they planned to build a house in the woods with a defensible 300-yard "kill zone" around its perimeter. They became increasingly isolated, as their radical beliefs caused them to lose former friends. In 1983, the couple left Iowa for good, with Randy driving a moving van and Vicki following behind in a pickup truck, heading west to meet the end time in the mountains.
Trouble in Idaho Weaver cabin on Ruby Ridge
On September 6, 1983, Randy and Vicki found a rocky bluff about eight miles southwest of Bonner's Ferry that was, according to Vicki, "just what the Lord showed" them their new home "would look like." The hilltop was strewn with boulders, perfect for defending the property, and there was a spring with fresh water that could be tapped for their future cabin. They paid $7500 for fifteen acres and began making plans for a rough cabin.
Within a year of their arrival, the Weavers had made both friends and enemies. Randy befriended a number of locals who shared his racist and religious views, but those same views, as well as property disputes and his habit of constantly firing off bullets into the surrounding hillside set some other neighbors against him. One upset neighbor reported to the Boundary County sheriff that Randy had threatened to kill President Reagan and the governor of Idaho, and soon Weaver was the focus of unwelcome attention from federal law enforcement officials. Randy called the report of his alleged threat "a smear campaign" and sent a letter to the Secret Service agent who interviewed him demanding an apology.
In the mid-1980s, a racist right-wing movement based in northern Idaho and calling itself Aryan Nations became the focus of both FBI and BATF investigations. Members of an Aryan Nations splinter group called The Order embarked on a crime spree that included bank and armored car robberies, counterfeiting, synagogue bombings, and two murders, including the killing of a popular Jewish radio talk show host in Denver, Alan Berg. Indictments and prosecutions followed, but bombings continued and the federal government was determined to find those responsible. When Randy Weaver showed up at the Aryan Nations Congress in Hayden Lake in July 1986, the fact was noticed by a BATF informant who was also in attendance at the gathering.
After his introduction at the World Aryan Congress, informant Kenneth Fadeley, using the alias "Gus Magisono," met several times with Weaver over the next three years. In October 1989, after a conversation in which Randy foresaw an imminent war with the Soviet Union and complained for the umpteenth time about the "world going down the tubes," the two men discussed a deal in which the hard-up Weaver would sell Fadeley sawed-off shot guns. (Fadeley claimed Weaver proposed the deal, while Randy insisted it was the other way around.) Two weeks later at a city park, Weaver presented Fadeley with two shot-guns sawed five inches shorter than federal law allowed.
In June 1990, two ATF agents told Weaver they had solid evidence he violated federal gun laws--and then they offered him a deal. Become an informant on the Aryan Nations, the agents said, and the gun charge would be dropped. Weaver would have no part of it. "You can go to hell," he said. Back at the cabin that night, Vicki composed a letter to "Aryan Nations & all our brethren of the Anglo Saxon race" warning them that ATF agents were looking for snitches. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Randy Weaver.
Knowing that Vicki had filed an affidavit with the Boundary County clerk giving "legal notice that we believe we may have to defend ourselves and our family from physical attacks on our lives" by the federal government, ATF agents were understandably reluctant to simply drive up the Weaver's long dirt driveway and attempt an arrest there. Instead, they hit upon another plan. Posing as stranded motorists one January night after having been radioed by a neighbor that Randy was on his way down the mountain, three agents and the county sheriff surprised Weaver with an arrest at gunpoint. The next afternoon, at the federal building in Coeur d'Alene, a magistrate entered a not-guilty plea entered for Weaver and released him on an unsecured $10,000 bond. A court date was set for February 20, 1991 (although a letter to Weaver incorrectly stated the court date to be March 20).
Weaver never had any intention of returning for his court date. A letter written by Vicki to the U. S. Attorney for Idaho (addressed in the letter as the "Servant of the Queen of Babylon") promised they "will not bow to your evil commandments...whether we live or whether we die." When the February court date passed, with Randy as a no-show, a failure to appear warrant was issued for Weaver's arrest and the case sent to the U. S. Marshal's Service. In light of what became a constant stream of threatening letters to the federal government, Dave Hunt, deputy U. S. Marshal, reluctantly considered calling in Special Operations Group (SOG), an elite marshals force used for raids and difficult fugitive cases.
The Weaver household grew in 1991, with the delivery, in their birthing shed, of a baby girl they named Elisheba. The Weaver children now numbered four. In addition to Elisheba, there was Sara (age 15), Sammy (13), and Rachel (9). Kevin Harris, a teen with a troubled past who the Weavers had taken in, also spent months at a time in the Weaver cabin. The presence of children complicated the Marshal's Service task, especially given Randy Weaver's practice of sending his gun-toting children out in front of him to greet strangers.
By early 1992, the stand-off at Ruby Ridge attracted national notoriety. Press figures ranging from Geraldo Rivera to reporters for the Los Angeles Times requested interviews with the Weavers, but the only reporter they agreed to talk to wrote for a small weekly paper in Bonner's Ferry. In the interview, Randy said the feds were more concerned about "shutting our mouths" than they were about shotguns. The Weavers claimed not to be Aryans or Nazis, just people who came to Idaho to "escape religious persecution." But now, Vicki said, "there's nowhere left to escape our lawless rulers." The Weavers were making the federal government look weak and silly. Pressure mounted on the Marshal's Service to do something.
Shoot-Out at Ruby Ridge Sketch by FBI sniper showing what he saw immediately before firing bullet that killed Vicki Weaver
A SOG surveillance team consisting of six marshals entered the Weaver property on August 21, 1992, with the intent of scouting out positions for an undercover plan to capture Weaver. At about 10:45 a.m., near the end of the operation, three marshals were moving back down the mountain to rejoin their other comrades. The Weaver's yellow Lab, Striker, had caught a whiff and ran down the road to investigate, followed by Sammy Weaver and Kevin Harris. The dog closed in on the retreating three marshals, Arthur Roderick, Larry Cooper, and 15-year SOG veteran Billy Degan. Soon the dog had Cooper cornered. As Harris came up behind the dog, Cooper rose and shouted, "Back off! U.S. Marshal!" Seconds later, from behind a stump, Degan rose to his knee and shouted, "Freeze! U.S. Marshal!"
Then the shots began. Who shot who first remains a point of contention even today. The government story is that Harris wheeled and fired first, fatally wounding Billy Degan in the chest. Cooper responded by firing two three-round bursts at Harris, but missed him. Roderick, meanwhile, from his location further down the path, worried that the dog might give away the location of the other marshals. He fired and killed Striker. What the government stories cannot account for is how Sammy Weaver, Randy's thirteen-year old son, ended up dead with a bullet in his back. According to the marshals, they had no clue Sammy had been killed until his body was discovered days later in the Weaver's birthing shed. What is known is that when the machine guns were finally gathered up, to the great surprise of Cooper (who was certain Degan never fired), it was discovered that seven rounds were missing from Degan's gun.
Kevin Harris later offered a different version of the events. He said that when Roderick shot his dog, Sammy Weaver yelled, "You killed my dog, you son of a bitch!" and began firing at the marshals, one of whom opened up on him with a barrage of bullets. Kevin claimed he fired at Degan only to protect Sammy, but it was too late.
Reports of a marshal dead on Ruby Ridge set off alarm bells in Washington, where FBI officials began plotting their next moves, which included revising the agency's rules of engagement to allow agents to shoot to kill any adult at Ruby Ridge seen in the possession of a firearm--whether or not that adult was presently posing a risk of immediate death or bodily harm. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), including its most elite snipers, arrived in Idaho early the next morning. When briefed on their assignment at Ruby Ridge on August 22, snipers were told that if they observed an adult carrying a weapon, deadly force "can and should" be used to take them out.
The FBI had as of yet made no surrender demand when Sniper Len Horiuchi's opportunity arose shortly after taking his position. Randy, Sara, and Kevin left the cabin to visit Sammy's body in the birthing shed. As Randy reached for the shed door, a bullet tore through his arm. After the shot, the three ran back to the cabin. Vicki through open the door as her husband and eldest daughter, followed by Harris, dove in. Then another shot rang out. From inside the cabin, screams could be heard. What the HRT did not know, and what they would not find out for days, is that the second bullet from Horiuchi's .308-caliber gun had ripped its way through Vicki Weaver's brain and lodged in the arm of Kevin Harris. Three hours after the shooting, Harris, coughing up blood and in agony, begged Randy to finish him off. "Kevin, I can't do that," Randy replied.
Negotiation efforts for a surrender continued for days as angry right-wing protesters gathered near Ruby Ridge. Skinheads, looking for action, flocked in from as far away as Las Vegas and Portland. Some of the negotiation efforts, inspired by the belief that Vicki was still alive and was the key to a peaceful resolution of the stand-off, backfired miserably. Notably, for example, there was the suggestion by a negotiator on the third day, "Good morning, Mrs. Weaver. We had pancakes this morning. And what did you have for breakfast? Why don't you send the children out for some pancakes, Mrs. Weaver." The Weavers interpreted the pancakes idea as just a cruel joke. Expecting to die at any time in a hail or bullets or a firestorm, Kevin and Randy composed a six-page letter offering their side of the confrontation.
There was finally a breakthrough in the long stand-off on August 28, when Randy agreed to speak with Bo Gritz, a former Green Beret and proponent of right-wing views who was then running for president of the United States on the Populist Party ticket. Gritz and two other friends of Randy succeeded on August 30 in convincing the injured Harris to surrender and receive medical treatment. The Weavers surrendered the next day following word from Gritz that famed defense attorney Gerry Spence had readily agreed to represent Weaver in his trial. Bo Gritz, meanwhile, had a new campaign issue. He told supporters at Ruby Ridge: "There's a bureaucrat up here that's guilty. Somebody is going to be brought to justice. I believe we're gonna find some fat bureaucrat who authorized this to go down." The FBI's top agent at Ruby Ridge, Gene Glenn, said of the events on the mountain: "We are very sorry....There are no winners in a situation with all this sadness."...
In 1992 a federal force of U.S. Marshals, FBI and BATF agents conducted a murderous assault on the homestead of Randy and Vicki Weaver, resulting in the deaths of Vicki and their son, Sammy. This incident is highly controversial, and has raised serious questions about the abusive use of force by federal agencies against U.S. citizens.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lon Horiuchi: The FBI Sniper-Assassin-Hitman Who Murdered Vicki Weaver
Was the FBI really at Waco to contain a siege or were trigger-happy agents purposely brought to the Davidian church to finish off the job the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms botched?
Yesterday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that FBI agent Charles Riley said all the way back in June 1993 that he heard shots fired from a sniper post occupied by agent Lon Horiuchi, according to court documents filed by Branch Davidians and relatives as part of a wrongful-death suit scheduled to go to trial next month.
If this fact is true, and if the sniper fire occurred, as Davidians charge, on the final day of the siege, this is a very interesting development, indeed.
Why?
Think about it. The final Waco conflagration occurred April 19, 1993. But this was hardly the first time Lon Horiuchi had found himself in a position to shoot innocent civilians.
You see, Horiuchi was the paid assassin the FBI used Aug. 22, 1992 -- eight months earlier -- to plug a fatal hole in the head of Vickie Weaver, an unarmed mother clutching her 10-month-old baby during a similar siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It seems Lon Horiuchi is something of a specialist -- the FBI's go-to guy when it's open season on women and children.
Imagine that. Eight months earlier, Horiuchi had blown Vickie Weaver's head off while she stood in a doorway in an isolated rural area. She was no threat to anyone, not wanted on any charges and, of course, unarmed -- unless the FBI now considers infants dangerous weapons.
Horiuchi was indicted for manslaughter by Idaho authorities for the shooting, but the charges were thrown out. The federal government only made excuses for him. And now we have reason to believe that eight months after the incident at Ruby Ridge, one that ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers $3.1 million in a civil settlement with Randy Weaver, Horiuchi was assigned to another volatile siege with civilians -- including women and children...
Posted on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:23:18 PM by AAABEST
This is really incredible.
H-S Precision is sells hunting and tactical rifles. Here is a scan from the back cover of their Catalog. Note who did the write-up (circled in yellow):
For the three of you who don't know who Lon Horiuchi is, he's the FBI sniper of Ruby Ridge infamy who murdered Vicki Weaver in cold blood while she was holding her baby.
I'm not sure what H-S was thinking when they decided to hire this despicable thug as a spokesperson, but they are in dire need of remedial correction for this deplorable business decision. No gun decent gun owner/buyer should give them a single dime of their business. For those wishing to contact them, here's the info:
Felons, illegal immigrants and all others banned from buying a gun in the United States have a new alternative if they’re looking to get their hands on a firearm: Just buy a toy.
A FoxNews.com investigation reveals that a popular recreational pellet gun can be converted easily to a real semi-automatic weapon. And while the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is already aware of the issue, these “toys” -- new, top-of-the-line airsoft rifles -- continue to be sold throughout the country...
