-Caveat Lector-
Censure of Freeh Was Secretly Rejected
Review of FBI's Flawed Ruby Ridge Probes Had Prompted Disciplinary
Recommendation
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 5, 2001; Page A01
Justice Department officials who reviewed the FBI's flawed investigations
of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, called for disciplinary action
against FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and three other FBI veterans, but the
recommendations were secretly rejected in the closing days of the Clinton
administration.
Stephen R. Colgate, an assistant attorney general who had the authority to
mete out final sanctions in the Ruby Ridge case, denied a recommendation to
censure Freeh for condoning the shortcomings of the FBI investigations. In
a brief interview on Friday, Colgate, who is now in private practice, said
he stood by his Jan. 3 decision. He said a prominent FBI ethics official
also favored no action.
But FBI agents who spent years turning up flaws in the FBI's initial
inquiries into the events at Ruby Ridge denounced Colgate's refusal to
impose sanctions on top FBI officials as "outrageous" and "a whitewash."
The agents told the Senate Judiciary Committee, which learned only last
month of Colgate's decision, that they were especially dismayed because
senior FBI officials had subjected them to threats and retaliation for
conducting a thorough investigation.
The lead agent, John E. Roberts, testified that his wife, an FBI support
employee, was hounded from her job in the Boston division and that his
attempts to win a promotion have been rejected 14 times.
"Ruby Ridge . . . has been a textbook example of [FBI] abuses," Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee chairman, said in a statement. "It
appears from this that the 'good old boy' network has been allowed to
persist at the FBI. It serves to protect some senior FBI executives from
the same scrutiny and discipline applied to rank-and-file agents. . . .
This double standard is unfair and demoralizing."
Freeh, who left the FBI on June 22, did not respond to a request for
comment.
The FBI and Freeh have been buffeted in recent months by the revelation
that an agent had secretly spied for Moscow since 1979, by problems with
the investigation of Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee and by the
FBI's failure to turn over thousands of documents in the Oklahoma City
bombing case. Five separate reviews of FBI conduct are underway.
The aftermath of events at Ruby Ridge -- where an FBI sniper killed the
wife of separatist Randy Weaver -- is an example of what even Justice
Department officials acknowledge is the FBI's unwillingness to police
itself, especially when top officials are involved.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said he views the
situation as "a serious matter." Ashcroft recently ordered the Justice
Department's inspector general to take the primary role in investigating
allegations of FBI misconduct.
The recommended disciplinary actions against Freeh and others were cited in
a July 27 letter to Ashcroft from Leahy and four other committee members
seeking documents related to Colgate's decision.
They noted that the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility (OPR) and a task force of the Justice Management Division
"recommended in 1999 that two senior FBI executives be suspended and that
the FBI director and one other FBI agent be censured." However, committee
officials refused to disclose the names of the other three FBI officials.
They also noted that officials at Justice had urged that the disciplinary
actions taken by Freeh in January 1995 against three other unnamed agents
involved in Ruby Ridge be rescinded, because they believed the punishments
were not warranted.
Nothing was done about the recommendations until Jan. 3, when Colgate, the
assistant attorney general for administration, decided that "no new
discipline would be imposed." Colgate, designated by Attorney General Janet
Reno as the final arbiter in the matter, also refused to rescind any
previous disciplinary actions.
He conveyed his decision in a memo to then-Deputy Attorney General Eric H.
Holder Jr. It was not announced publicly or reported to Congress. Leahy
said the decision surfaced when he asked direct questions about "final
discipline" while preparing for a July 18 FBI oversight hearing.
The reasons for Freeh's proposed censure have not been spelled out, but
Leahy suggested a rationale in written questions he sent to the agents who
testified at the hearing.
Leahy asked whether it would be a breach of conduct warranting discipline
if an FBI official ordered or took part in an inquiry knowing that the
person conducting the inquiry was biased or a friend of the target. Leahy
also inquired about officials accepting the results of such an
investigation when it had "obvious holes."
Agent Roberts, the OPR unit chief in charge of the FBI's internal
investigations, said this would amount to "investigative dereliction."
"In the case of the Ruby Ridge investigation," said Roberts, who won the
FBI's Ethics Award last year, "we are talking about senior executives in
the FBI with many years of experience." He said at the hearing that
culpability "goes to the highest levels of the FBI."
FBI agent Frank Perry, who worked with Roberts on the final Ruby Ridge
probe, said he agreed, "without question," that discipline would be
warranted in the scenario Leahy described.
The 11-day Ruby Ridge standoff began with a shootout between three
camouflaged federal marshals and Weaver, his 14-year-old son, Sammy, and a
family friend, Kevin Harris. One of the marshals, William Degan, and Sammy
Weaver were killed.
FBI sharpshooters were among the hundreds of lawmen who surrounded the
Weaver cabin the next day. The snipers were given unprecedented rules of
engagement later deemed to be illegal: that "any armed male observed within
the vicinity of the Weaver cabin could and should" be shot.
A federal appeals court ruled this year that "such wartime rules are
patently unconstitutional for a police action."
One of the snipers, Lon Horiuchi, killed Randy Weaver's wife, Vicki, as she
stood in the doorway of the cabin. Horiuchi has testified that he was
trying to kill Harris as Harris was ducking back into the cabin and that he
did not see Vicki Weaver. State authorities charged Horiuchi with
involuntary manslaughter, but the charge was dropped.
The first FBI review of the debacle was conducted by Robert E. Walsh, a
longtime friend of one of the targets of the investigation, then-Assistant
Director Larry Potts. Potts was in charge of the siege from FBI
headquarters.
A Senate subcommittee investigation later found that Walsh's 1994 report
was tilted to justify the shooting of Vicki Weaver. A Justice Department
task force had already rejected Walsh's report. The task force concluded
that the shot that killed Vicki Weaver was illegal and that FBI officials
at headquarters must have known about the controversial rules.
A second internal FBI review was then assigned to longtime agent Charles
Mathews III, a friend of another target, then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director
Danny O. Coulson, who was Potts's deputy in the Ruby Ridge crisis.
Mathews blamed on-site commander Eugene F. Glenn for the controversial
rules of engagement and maintained that they were crafted without the
knowledge of anyone at FBI headquarters.
Agents of the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility were not assigned
to the case until Glenn, who received the stiffest punishment meted out,
protested in May 1995 that he had been made a scapegoat. He said Potts
approved the rules of engagement and that Coulson knew of them. (Potts and
Coulson retired in 1997.)
Former FBI agent John Werner, who also testified at the July 18 hearing,
said he and Roberts found that many officials at FBI headquarters were not
interviewed and that "very serious allegations of misconduct" had not been
thoroughly explored.
The OPR investigators finished their work in June 1999, forwarding the
still secret report to the Justice Department's Office of Professional
Responsibility, which recommended the disciplinary actions. A Justice
Department management division task force -- which reviewed the report --
agreed.
In rejecting the recommendations, Colgate appears to have relied entirely
on an April 17, 2000, memo from two of his deputies in which highly
questionable assertions were made, Senate investigators said.
Leahy said in his written questions that these included claims that there
was "little purpose in 'parsing' the exact language of the [rules of
engagement] to determine their legality" or in focusing "on the niceties
of" whether the rules said deadly force "could" or "should" be used.
The memo, Leahy said, also questioned whether the FBI director could be
disciplined by the Justice Department, noting that he is a presidential
appointee and that the judgments of the FBI director "should not [be] the
subject of discipline, no matter what others may think of them."
Colgate said that he had the "utmost respect" for Roberts and the three
other FBI agents who testified at the July 18 hearing and that he agreed
generally that "there is a double standard [at the FBI] and it needs to be
corrected."
But he stood by his decision in the Ruby Ridge matter, saying he took into
account the advice of his staff and "the views of the FBI's Office of
Professional Responsibility." Although Agent Roberts and his colleagues
favored disciplinary action, their boss, FBI Assistant Director Michael
DeFeo, did not.
Staff researcher Margaret Smith contributed to this report.
================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
