The Justice Department's former No. 2 official testified Friday that the FBI was "clearly in error" when it issued a directive that snipers should fire at armed adults at the Idaho homestead of white separatist Randy Weaver.
At the same Senate hearing, the author of a Justice Department task force report on the August 1992 Ruby Ridge siege stood by the report's conclusion in June 1994 that the FBI shooting directive was unconstitutional. The Justice Department recently disputed that finding, saying it remains an open question that is part of a pending criminal investigation.The report's author, Barbara Berman, then assistant counsel in the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, also said she hadn't seen notes described by suspended former FBI Deputy Director Larry Potts, which Potts said demonstrate he did not approve the improper shooting rules.
Former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger said, "I do not believe" the order that preceded the FBI's killing of the white separatist's wife, Vicki Weaver, "was meant to be an unlawful license to kill."
That shooting by an FBI sniper during the 11-day Ruby Ridge siege came as Vicki Weaver stood behind the door of the family's mountainside cabin holding her infant daughter on Aug. 22, 1992. A day earlier, the Weavers' 14-year-old son, Sam, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan died in a gunfight that occurred as federal agents checked out Weaver's property in anticipation of arresting him on a weapons charge.
Terwilliger told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, technology and government information that the language using the word "should" was "clearly in error."
Terwilliger said he was on vacation during the siege and that his top deputy, Jeffrey Howard, handled the Justice Department's liaison with the FBI in the operation's first days.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she detected a "syndrome of plausible deniability" in the testimony by Terwilliger and other former officials.
Terwilliger conceded that he bears some responsibility for what happened.
Berman testified she had been unable to determine who approved the unique FBI rule saying snipers "could and should" shoot at armed adult males at Ruby Ridge.