Ambush at Ruby Ridge; How government agents set Randy Weaver up and took his family down

On the last hot day of summer in 1992, gunfire cracked over a rocky knob in northern Idaho, just south of the Canadian border. By the next day three people were dead, and a small war was joined, pitting the full might of federal law enforcement against one well-armed family. Drawing on extensive interviews with Randy Weaver's family, government insiders, and others, Jess Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and led the government to treat a family like a gang of criminals. This is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge: the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man in the FBI, and left in its wake a nation increasingly attuned to the dangers of unchecked federal power. AUGUST 21, 1992: A SIX-MAN TEAM from the Special Operations Group of the U.S. Marshals Service, dressed in full regalia and armed with silenced automatic weapons, moved onto Randy Weaver's 20-acre property known as Ruby Ridge. In less than 36 hours they had killed his son and an FBI sniper had shot his wife as she stood in the door of the cabin holding her 10-month-old-baby. Almost immediately the agents declared a hostage situation and a massive paramilitary buildup began, which eventually reached more than 400 heavily armed agents, including most of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and a large array of assault vehicles and weaponry. Ambush at Ruby Ridge: How Government Agents Set Randy Weaver Up and Took His Family Down chronicles the U.S. Marshals Service elaborate, multi-million-dollar 18-month surveillance of Weaver, an Idaho backwoods resident known as a white separatist, indicted on a minor firearms charge many claim was a government act of hatred and blackmail. The resultant 11-day standoff in Weaver's small family cabin and the paramilitary attack that ensued are described through graphic and closely documented accounts: from the details surrounding the initial siege to the shoot-to-kill orders given by FBI headquarters. Through court transcripts, private testimonies and interviews with insiders, local residents, and friends of the Weaver Family, jounalist Alan Bock debunks the myth that government agencies are beyond the realm of entrapment, cover-ups, and even the killing of innocent people. He overturns the hypocrisies and contradictions of the FBI, and takes you straight to the scene-first, to the tragedy of Ruby Ridge, then to the colorful neo-Nazi and protester-filled roadblock, and finally to the courtroom, where prosecutors and flamboyant defense attorney Gerry Spence go head to head. But beyond being a shocking account of bizarre circumstances, Ambush at Ruby Ridge challenges the personal and political implications of the most notorious trial in Idaho history. Maybe if the ambush on David Koresh's Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, hadn't happened as the Weaver trial was underway. the events of Ruby Ridge might be seen as a regional story of government bungling with tragic results. But Waco did happen, causing many Americans to ask hard and fundamental questions about what the United States Government has become. Unlike with Waco, the government may actually be held accountable for what it did at Ruby Ridge.