As four marshals were checking out Weaver’s property, his dog started barking and gave them away. A gunfight ensued, leaving Marshal William F. Degan and Weaver’s fourteen-year-old son Sammy dead. The rest of his family remained in the cabin.
When the marshals asked for assistance from the FBI, a Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) headed by Richard M. Rogers arrived on August 22 in two Air Force C-130s. Instead of waiting to arrest suspects when they left the compound, the HRT deployed eleven agents to surround Weaver’s cabin. Because a marshal had already been killed and Weaver was thought to be extremely dangerous, Larry A. Potts, the assistant director in charge of the Criminal Investigative Division under Sessions, approved special rules of engagement for the incident stating that agents “can and should” shoot any of the armed adults in Weaver’s cabin.
In firearms training at Quantico, every agent is taught the FBI’s deadly force policy: an agent may shoot only when he believes that he or another person is in imminent danger of being killed or seriously injured by a suspect. Opening fire for any other reason amounts to “wartime rules [that] are patently unconstitutional for a police action,” as an appeals court said.
The other policy the FBI drums into the heads of new agents is that sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing. Over time, suspects will get tired, hungry, and bored and eventually give up peacefully. When dealing with what the FBI calls crisis management, agents are taught at Quantico to “isolate, contain, and negotiate.”
Both policies were violated at Ruby Ridge. In fact, Rogers came up with an assault plan that called for dismantling the house with two armored personnel carriers if Weaver and his family did not come out within two days.
Just after 5:00 p.m., the Hostage Rescue Team snipers began taking positions around the cabin. It had started to sleet. An hour later, an FBI helicopter took off for a reconnaissance run around the cabin. As the helicopter clattered overhead, Weaver, his sixteen-year-old daughter, Sara, and his adopted son, Kevin Harris, stepped out of the cabin carrying rifles. FBI Agent Lon Horiuchi thought one of the men looked as if he were about to shoot at the helicopter, and Horiuchi fired at him. Because Horiuchi believed the man was preparing to shoot, his shot fell within the FBI’s standard deadly force policy. The man he wounded was Randy Weaver.
As all three ran back toward the cabin, Horiuchi fired again at the same man. He figured the man would continue to threaten the helicopter from inside the house, where it would be difficult, with women and children around, for Horiuchi to get a clear shot. As it turned out, Horiuchi’s second shot blasted through the cabin’s wooden door and into the face of Vicki Weaver, Randy’s wife. The round exited the other side of her head and struck Harris in the arm. Vicki Weaver died almost instantly. Not until the bodies were recovered did Horiuchi realize he had killed her.
Since Horiuchi thought he was firing at a man he believed was endangering an FBI helicopter, the second shot also fell within the FBI’s original deadly force policy. Weaver continued to hold off the FBI from his cabin until he surrendered ten days later.
A state prosecutor filed criminal charges against Horiuchi, but a federal judge agreed with the agent that because he had been acting in an official capacity, a federal court should hear the case. The federal court dismissed it.
Weaver was charged with the murder of U.S. Marshal Degan. In July 1993, a federal jury, believing the marshals shot first, acquitted him. He was also acquitted of the weapons charge. Ultimately, the Justice Department agreed to pay Randy Weaver $3.1 million to settle his wrongful death lawsuit.
To be sure, the FBI had made many mistakes in dealing with the siege, but in the end, Ruby Ridge came down to an accidental shooting: Horiuchi did not intend to shoot Vicki Weaver. The more permissive rules of engagement—while abhorrent—had nothing to do with the outcome. Anyone who has fired weapons knows how easy it is to miss the target, particularly when under stress. Almost every day, police officers accidentally shoot suspects, and—unless it becomes a racial issue—there is usually little public outcry.
What made Ruby Ridge a symbol of government tyranny is that right-wing groups seized on the case and turned it into a cause célèbre. That happened again with the siege at Waco. That disaster began on February 28, 1993, when the ATF staged a calamitous raid on a ramshackle compound in Mount Carmel, Texas, ten miles east of Waco. There, thirty-three-year-old David Koresh and his group of religious fanatics had been arming themselves with illegal machine guns and explosive devices, preparing for what Koresh said would be a bloody confrontation with nonbelievers.
In the forty-five-minute gun battle during the raid, the Davidians, as they called themselves, killed four ATF agents and wounded or injured another fifteen. The ATF had to withdraw, and President Clinton ordered the FBI to take over. Under the direction of Jeffrey Jamar, the beefy FBI special agent in charge (SAC) in San Antonio, members of the HRT began surrounding the compound on the afternoon of February 28, hoping to negotiate an end to the standoff.
But after more than a month had elapsed, the FBI realized its strategy for dealing with Koresh was not working. Koresh would promise to come out but then say God had told him to wait. Meanwhile, conditions within the compound were deteriorating. From several people who had chosen to leave, FBI agents learned that the Davidians were surrounded by human waste and dead bodies from the ATF raid. Plus Koresh continued to live with his wives, who were as young as twelve, an abuse of children and a violation of statutory rape laws.
After obtaining approval from Sessions and Attorney General Janet Reno, Jamar picked the morning of April 19 to move on the compound. Just before six in the morning, when the wind had died down, the FBI warned Koresh and his followers over loudspeakers, “This is not an assault! Do not fire! Come out now and you will not be harmed!” For some, this only confirmed Koresh’s predictions that the world was coming to an end. Steve Schneider, Koresh’s lieutenant, broke off communication by defiantly throwing a telephone he was using out a front window.
A few minutes later, a modified M-60 tank began battering holes near the entrance to the compound and spraying a mist of CS tear gas through a boom on the tank. The Davidians began firing at the tanks, but agents held their fire. At nine in the morning, a tank bashed in the front door to make it easier for the occupants to leave. It also knocked a hole in the wall near the northwest corner of the compound. At noon, the FBI demolished whole sections of the exterior. The fifty-one-day standoff was over.
At 12:05 p.m., a wisp of smoke followed by a small tongue of flame appeared at the southwest corner of the compound. By 12:20, fire was whipping along the west side, fanned by thirty-mile-an-hour prairie winds. Two minutes later, FBI agents climbed out of their tanks and surrounded the compound. One cult member fell from the roof, engulfed in flames. As the cult member tried to wave them off, agents tore off his burning clothing and placed him inside an armored vehicle. A distraught woman emerged from the flames, her clothes smoking. An agent snatched her as she tried to run back into the burning compound. The agents entered the building and tried to find children, wading thigh-deep into a concrete pit filled with water, human excrement, floating body parts, and rats.
From the FBI officials on the ground to those back at headquarters watching the events unfold in the command center, everyone was stunned.
A local arson investigation established that the fire began with internal fires that had been set. In addition to the obvious evidence—billowing black clouds of smoke, signifying the use of an accelerant—the FBI’s infrared aerial video photography showed at least four fires, separated by half a city block, starting almost simultaneously in different parts of the compound.
Beyond the infrared photography, FBI snipers peering through the windows of the compound saw Davidians pouring what appeared to be a liquid seconds before the fires started. They also saw cultists cupping their hands as if lighting matches. Kerosene and gasoline were detected on the clothes of some of the survivors, who maintained that the FBI had starte
d the fire. After enhancing the tape recordings of electronically bugged conversations, the FBI learned that as the flames started, the Davidians were telling one another to pour more fuel around the compound.
Eighty Davidians, including twenty-five children, were identified as having been killed in the fire. Seven—including Koresh—had gunshot wounds in their heads, most likely self-inflicted. The autopsy reports showed that some of the children had been stabbed or bludgeoned to death.
Devastated by the outcome, FBI agents who had risked their lives to try to rescue the Davidians faced an onslaught of criticism from the media, Congress, the survivors, and the families. Why couldn’t the FBI have waited? It was a good question. The negotiators wanted more time, while the HRT, headed by Rogers, took a more aggressive approach.
“We had waited for two months,” Rogers tells me. “What is reasonable for a government agency? Four government agents were dead and sixteen wounded. They had weapons they had used on helicopters. What is the least amount of force that can be used? Tear gas. What would have been said if we had allowed it go on, and they died of disease? You want to end it on your terms.”
Sessions had a similar attitude. In one meeting with Attorney General Reno on April 17 before the raid, Sessions was emotional, flailing his arms. “They’re [the Davidians] making monkeys of the FBI,” he said.
“A lot of pressure is coming from Rogers,” Deputy Assistant FBI Director Danny O. Coulson complained in a March 23 memo nearly a month before the raid.
Given the outcome, senior FBI officials realized the bureau should have waited out the Davidians, as the bureau often does in hostage situations. While underage children were being abused, stopping that was not worth the chance that the Davidians would go on a suicide rampage
Because the various FBI elements at the scene—the HRT, the negotiators, and the profilers—did not come under one commander, the HRT won out, and the FBI moved in.
Because of the lack of coordination, “We were our own worst enemy,” says Byron Sage, the chief FBI negotiator.
12
THE CO-DIRECTOR WIFE
THE FIRST HINT OF SOMETHING WRONG WAS WHEN JOHN E. Otto, the acting FBI director, called William Sessions at home several times to discuss procedures for Sessions’ swearing in as director. Each time, Sessions’ wife, Alice, would grab the receiver from her husband and make her own demands.
“Alice would interject and criticize the swearing-in procedures,” Otto says. “I finally said we cannot accept having a Martha Mitchell dictating to the bureau. He said he agreed.”
As it turned out, Alice Sessions saw herself as a co-director of the FBI. When referring to her husband becoming FBI director, Alice Sessions said, “When we were sworn in …” She called herself her husband’s “eyes and ears.” Referring to gossip she picked up, she said, “I learn things in the elevator.”
After describing how his wife helped him in representing the FBI, Sessions said, “So I think it’s kind of a two-for-one proposition. You have a director, and you also have a director’s wife—very important to the bureau.”
But Alice Sessions had a warped view.
“We are probably being recorded,” she told me ominously during a phone interview patched through the FBI headquarters switchboard for my book The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency. Asked in another interview if she believed the FBI was wiretapping all her calls or only those calls routed to her home through headquarters, Alice said, “My other line often gives me indications of compromise,” referring to a second line to her home. “I have no idea if they are doing it on other calls.” Referring to the FBI’s wiretapping capabilities, Alice said, “I have consulted some other people professionally about this. In fact, I had the telephone company in a year ago.”
At one point Alice Sessions told Ronald H. McCall, then the head of the director’s FBI security detail, that the bureau had placed an electronic bugging device in their bedroom. Alice Sessions said she thought the bug was in a transmitter supplied to Sessions by the bureau for coded communications.
“I began thinking that the radio was kind of funny, you know,” she told me.
The allegation was reported through the chain of command of the Administrative Services Division up to the level of assistant director, startling the entire bureau.
Alice Sessions freely advised her husband on matters ranging from the qualifications of bureau officials to the handling of maternity leave. Her opinions were overwhelmingly negative, but she shared them freely with wives of bureau officials. In her view, the bureau was full of self-serving, inept officials with their own agendas.
At foreign embassy receptions, Alice would amaze members of the FBI security detail by asking for doggie bags. While attending a meeting of Interpol in Lyon, France, Alice Sessions dined with Interpol officials at one of France’s best restaurants. Alice complained to astonished FBI agents that the food was terrible.
When her husband was a judge, Alice Sessions displayed little interest in the court. Now that Sessions was FBI director, she saw an opportunity to enhance her own status and power. When the FBI decided the director’s home off Sixteenth Street in Washington needed improved security, Alice suggested that the security detail use Donald Munford. Then the husband of Sarah Munford, Sessions’ longtime assistant, Don Munford was in the home security alarm business in San Antonio, not in Washington. Because she was the director’s wife and she was determined, the security detail complied with her request and asked for an estimate.
Don Munford proposed a system that would have cost $97,046—roughly a quarter of the $435,000 the Sessions paid for the three-bedroom home in 1989. Bureau officials vetoed the proposal. If allowed to proceed before other firms could bid, it would have violated government procurement rules because of the lack of competitive bidding. In addition, bureau officials decided it would have been improper to award the contract to him because of his relationship to the director’s special assistant.
In the end, the FBI hired another private firm to improve security, including installing a fence. So intruders could be seen, the FBI wanted to install what is known as a security fence with vertical iron pickets, the same kind used around the White House and foreign embassies in Washington. But Alice Sessions insisted on a six-foot wooden fence with slats almost touching each other. It would give her more privacy, she said. FBI security officials objected. They said the FBI should not pay for the fence she wanted because it would allow snipers to hide behind it and would not enhance security. They believed that Alice Sessions wanted the fence to keep in Petey, the family dog.
William Sessions walked out of an FBI meeting called to discuss the issue, leaving Alice Sessions in charge. Similarly, when Alice demanded a pass so she could enter FBI headquarters without being escorted in, the director ordered it done. Only employees with a top-secret security clearance are allowed to have the pass, yet the FBI issued her building pass no. 14592, which entitled her to the special privileges accorded an assistant director or above. With the special gold pass, Alice Sessions could bring in visitors without signing them in.
When headquarters employees forget their passes, their supervisors are notified in writing. But because she often forgot to bring the pass, Alice Sessions and her friends were admitted without any pass. Realizing that the director exempted his wife from such regulations, FBI security officials were afraid to challenge her.
Even this level of access was not enough for Alice Sessions, who asked for and received a four-digit code that allowed her access to the director’s suite without going through receptionists. Entry is controlled in this way because of the extraordinarily sensitive information the suite contains. On an official’s desk could be the name of a Mafia informant or a spy the FBI is watching, or documents from other supersecret agencies such as the CIA or NSA. In general, only those FBI officials who work in this high-security area—known as “Mahogany Row” because of its wood paneling—have a code to enter the suite.
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nbsp; When I asked about her special access, Alice Sessions said she did not know a top-secret clearance was required. “Why shouldn’t I be able to go in and out of Bill’s office?” she asked. “They better get on to investigating me for a top-secret clearance because, believe me, I hear a lot more things than the girls in the telephone room do. I’m privy to a lot more things than that.”
In his own dealings, Sessions seemed to go out of his way to demonstrate his propriety. He would return FBI paper clips attached to documents sent to his home. In his courtroom, he had been a stickler for rules and procedures. In his speeches, he would talk about the importance of following regulations and laws.
But in other settings, Sessions betrayed a lack of sensitivity about the way he conducted himself. As director, he repeatedly steered his speaking engagements toward his home state of Texas. In his first four years as director, one of every five of his official trips was to his home state—an average of one trip every two months. While Sessions could justify each trip as being related to business, the pattern made it clear he was taking advantage of his position to see his family, friends, doctor, and dentist back in Texas.
At various times, most of the FBI’s top officials, including Floyd Clarke, Jim Greenleaf, John Otto, and Buck Revell, warned Sessions about his abuses and the problems caused by Sessions’ assistant Sarah Munford and Alice Sessions. Revell issued standing orders that any agent in his Dallas field office who received a call from Alice Sessions or Sarah Munford was to take no action on their requests and to refer them to him. Prophetically, Revell and the other top FBI officials speculated that Sessions could lose his directorship if the abuses got out. While the FBI director can serve no longer than ten years, the president can remove him at any time.
The Secrets of the FBI Page 9