DnA 3-8: Agency Atrocities Issue I
Federal Terrorism #1
This will be an on-going section in DnA magazine. This section will report/expose current abuses of power by our wonderful phederal agencies that are supposed to "serve" us.
For our premier article, we present an agency that needs no introduction. They were the hosts of the "Most Expensive Barbecue In History", the ones that can't even serve a search warrant without screwing it up, the ones that throw "frag" grenades at their own people. I give you: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. A big hand for the BATF!
The following is in tribute to the BATF. A branch of the government that doesn't seem to have to answer to anyone except themselves.
Written by: Alan W. Bock
6-28-93
In Idaho, the BATF strikes again
The firestorm at Waco and its aftermath have pretty much fallen off the media's scopes. But another case, now being played out in Idaho, offers further evidence that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has sometimes operated as something of a rogue agency, engaging in deliberately provocative actions that often lead to shoot-outs.
Randy Weaver, 45, the main defendant in this trial, is probably not the person most of us would choose first as a next-door neighbor. He is at least on the fringe of being a white supremacist. A slight, crew-cut former Green Beret, he moved to Idaho in 1983 with his family. He bought a plot of land and built himself a little house without electricity or running water. He lived on what he could hunt, grow, or trade. Quite a few people, for various reasons, live pretty much that way in the Idaho woods.
As The New York Times reported June 23, "despite his beliefs, Mr. Weaver never had a run-in with the law until he met up in 1991 with the federal undercover agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The agents said they would buy two shotguns from Mr. Weaver if he sawed off the barrels, making them illegal. Mr. Weaver altered and sold the guns to the agents."
Maybe that's entrapment, maybe not quite. Mr. Weaver's friends say the BATF used the firearms infraction as leverage to get him to inform on friends in the white-supremacist Aryan Nation (Weaver himself doesn't seem to have been an activist). Weaver said no. As the trial proceeded, he became convinced he was being railroaded, so he simply went back to his mountain retreat.
Weaver was then accused of failing to show up for his trial, although federal authorities have admitted he was given the wrong date. Would he have shown up if he had known the right date? Who knows?
Failure to appear wouldn't seem to justify a military-style assault. But that's what happened. The Times reported, "testimony showed that the federal authorities never attempted or even considered a simple arrest. They spent nearly $1 million for an operation that involved 16 months of surveillance of Mr. Weaver's cabin and a final siege with about 400 heavily armed federal agents."
Last August 21, three of the government's sharpshooters, hiding in the woods and dressed in camouflage, were flushed by Weaver's dog, out for a walk with his 14-year-old son, Sammy. The agents shot the dog dead. The son shot in their direction, and he was shot in the back. A family friend also shot back, and a federal agent was killed. Later, Weaver's wife was shot in the temple by a sharpshooter with a scope, as she stood in the doorway with her 10-month-old baby in her arms. An armed stand-off ensued.
The government tried to create the image of a dangerous neo-Nazi who plotted an armed confrontation. But, to quote the Times again, that image "has been eclipsed by courtroom revelations. Federal authorities have been sanctioned by the judge for withholding evidence, and the government's case against Mr. Weaver has been contradicted by its won witnesses. At one point, Judge Lodge said that 75 percent of the testimony and evidence presented by the government had aided the defense."
The similarities to Waco are eery: A zealot seems again to have been targeted because of his zealotry, with marginally illegal actions induced or alleged as justification. BATF agents seem determined to have an armed confrontation. When things went wrong, they covered up and lied.
The BATF, in search for a real mission since Prohibition was repealed, was almost abolished during the Reagan years. It should have been. It should be now.
