Police Sieges Idaho

The FBI sniper who killed the wife of a white separatist in the siege at Ruby Ridge, Ida., in 1992 invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege Tuesday and refused to describe to a Senate subcommittee the circumstances of the crucial event. Sniper Lon Horiuchi took the Fifth Amendment after the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism refused to give him limited immunity from prosecution. Immunity for Horiuchi could have complicated criminal inquiries being conducted by the Boundary County, Ida.

A judge dismissed a misdemeanor child neglect charge against JoAnn McGuckin, the mother of six children who held police at bay in a standoff earlier this year at their home near Sandpoint. When McGuckin was arrested May 29 on accusations of child endangerment made by an older daughter, the other children--ages 6 to 13--barred themselves inside the rural house with a pack of semi-wild dogs.

Likening himself to a tuna thrown into the sea to satisfy "hungry sharks," the ranking FBI official at the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Ida., siege said Tuesday that the bureau engaged in "damage control" when questions were raised about the killing of an unarmed woman by an FBI sniper. Testifying publicly for the first time since his May 3 letter to a Justice Department internal watchdog complaining of a cover-up and of being made a scapegoat, Eugene F.

Six children who staged a days-long standoff with authorities at their home near Sandpoint after their mother's arrest on child neglect charges will remain in a foster home indefinitely, a judge ruled. In an hourlong closed hearing, Bonner County Magistrate Judge Debra Heise decided not to allow JoAnn McGuckin to regain custody of her six minor children. A gag order prevented lawyers from either side from commenting on specifics of the hearing.

Federal authorities made a major advance in their investigation of five suspended FBI officials accused of covering up agency actions in the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as one of the five agreed to provide information about the actions of his superiors, sources close to the case said Tuesday. Word of the agreement emerged shortly after prosecutors announced that E.

FBI snipers Thursday defended their actions at the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Ida., siege in which a member of their team killed an unarmed woman, contending that danger to an FBI observation helicopter from armed men outside the woman's cabin justified the shots that were fired. But skeptical senators questioned whether permissive shoot-to-kill orders and exaggerated information about the threat posed by Randy Weaver, the woman's husband, led to an overreaction. Dale R.

Federal prosecutors, concluding a controversial two-year investigation, said Friday that they had found insufficient evidence to prosecute former Deputy FBI Director Larry A. Potts or his deputy, Danny O. Coulson, on criminal charges for their role in the bloody 1992 shootout in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh removed Larry A. Potts as his deputy director Friday, saying that the official is unable to perform his duties effectively because of controversy over the FBI's 1992 siege in Idaho, in which a white separatist's wife was killed. The transfer of Potts, 47, to the FBI's training division in Quantico, Va., was Freeh's most serious setback in his nearly two years as FBI director.

An Idaho county prosecutor Thursday charged FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi with involuntary manslaughter for killing the wife of anti-government activist Randy Weaver in a 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. A charge of first-degree murder was lodged against Weaver family friend Kevin Harris in the death of Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan, who was killed as a team of marshals was checking out the remote Weaver cabin site in an attempt to apprehend Randy Weaver on federal gun charges.

Amid rising concern about the FBI's ability to police itself, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno reacted Thursday by praising FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and declaring her pride in the embattled organization. Concern about the FBI, expressed by Justice Department and even FBI officials who insisted on anonymity, focuses on the outcome of several inquiries into its actions in the August, 1992, siege at white separatist Randy Weaver's cabin at Ruby Ridge, Ida.

JoAnn Dunn McGuckin has had a brief meeting with her children, two weeks after she was arrested on a child neglect charge. Talks are still underway in Sandpoint that could allow the family to live together in the future, McGuckin's lawyer said. Because of that, a custody hearing set for today was postponed. McGuckin's children visited their mother in the Bonner County Jail in Sandpoint, Powell said.

Six children who holed up in their squalid home after their mother was arrested for child neglect have been placed in foster care, authorities said Thursday. The six left Bonner General Hospital to temporarily stay with the family, whom they know, Michelle Britton of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said. "We've placed them with a family in north Idaho that has children of their own," Britton said.

A suitable foster family has been found for six children who remain hospitalized after holing up in their home in a five-day standoff with police, officials said Wednesday. The family has met with the children and agreed to take all six, said Michele Britton of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. It was not immediately known when the children would be released from the hospital.

An FBI sharpshooter can be prosecuted by the state of Idaho for the killing of white separatist Randy Weaver's wife during the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, a sharply divided federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Tuesday. The 6-5 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed two earlier rulings and held that sharpshooter Lon T. Horiuchi's status as a federal agent did not protect him from prosecution because he has not demonstrated that his actions were objectively reasonable.

A judge agreed to free a woman whose arrest last week prompted her children to hunker down in their home for five days, but the woman's attorney said she refused to leave jail under the judge's terms. Judge Barbara Buchanan said she would release JoAnn Dunn McGuckin if she agrees to not violate custodial orders involving six of her children and not to contact them without authorization.

When five armed and frightened children remained holed up in a remote Idaho house last week, lawyer Bryce Powell knew they didn't know whom to trust. So when two envoys went up to the house to win their confidence, he gave them a secret password from their mother: "Wooptiedooperbounce!" That Winnie-the-Pooh phrase, which JoAnn Dunn McGuckin often used with her children, helped win negotiators entry to the house in three days of painstaking efforts that finally brought an end to the standoff.

Three years later, with the eagle-like vision of hindsight, the violent confrontation at Ruby Ridge looks like nothing so much as a tragedy that need never have happened. For all the charges and countercharges from both sides, the evidence emerging from three weeks of Senate hearings suggests that Randy Weaver and a small army of federal agents lumbered into deadly conflict more by accident than design. Each side was spurred on by internal pressures.

A friend of white separatist Randy Weaver posted $10,000 cash bond and was released from jail in Bonners Ferry to await his murder trial in the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge. Family members of Kevin Harris put up the money. Harris, 29, was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of an FBI agent and aggravated assault during an August 1992 standoff with authorities at Weaver's rural Idaho cabin.

Five children holed up in a remote Idaho home with guns and dogs ended their five-day standoff Saturday night. Authorities said all of the children voluntarily left the house at 6 p.m. and were taken to a Sandpoint hospital for examination. "It was exactly the conclusion we were hoping for: safely, quietly, with no undue pressure on the children," said Sgt. Robert Rahn, spokesman for the Bonner County Sheriff's Department.

The children hadn't been to school for years. Visitors were turned away, people with packages of food were threatened with the barrel of a gun and a pack of dogs. Most folks didn't think twice. This is Idaho. "They were recluses. Well, you got a lot of recluses around here.