25. BILL CLINTON: BOOMER REALIST

MAJOR DOMESTIC EVENTS THAT SHAKE AMERICA

Although the eight years of the Clinton Presidency involved a relatively peaceful domestic scene, a number of singular events would impact the times.  Of course the bombing of the World Trade Center topped the list. But there were three separate incidents, tragically connected, that rattled the country.  These events pitted the government's widening policing powers against those who felt called to challenge exactly those growing powers.  The contest became very deadly, and a lot of innocent individuals were caught in the middle.  The whole thing was reminiscent of the semi-insane behavior of John Brown and the way in 1859 he attempted to bring on a massive slave uprising because he personally felt that the government was not doing its job.  John Brown's mini-rebellion got a lot of people killed.  And so also did a lot of people in these three events of the 1990s.

The first of these events occurred in a very remote part of northern Idaho near the Canadian border, at a place called Ruby Ridge.  The Weaver family had moved there in the 1980s to escape the "corruption" of American society, actually believing that some kind of apocalyptic event was about to hit the world.  Problems for the Weaver family began with a land dispute with a neighbor, in which the Weavers won a court case and small financial award, and the neighbor retaliated by informing the FBI and the Secret Service that the father of the family, Randy, had made threats on the life of the President, the Pope and the Idaho governor (all lies fabricated by the angry neighbor).  This then put the Weaver family under watch by the federal authorities.  And here is where the matter got completely out of control – by government action ... not through anything that the Weavers had done.

Using a government informant that Weaver thought was a friend, Weaver was invited by that person in 1986 to attend meetings of the World Aryan Congress, and then the "friend" reported on Weaver for the next few years to federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) authorities.  Then in 1990 ATF charged Weaver with a flimsy firearms case, in order to get him to also become an informant, which he refused to do.

Thus, after building up an intricate plan of attack, the ATF in January of 1981 moved to arrest Weaver.  To do so, ATF agents posed along the side of the road as broken-down motorists, in order to intercept him away from his "dangerous" home – people that Weaver stopped to assist.  Then the warrant sent to Weaver for him to appear in court failed (accidently?) to get the right date of the hearing. Thus Weaver, naturally, did not show up on schedule.

This then became cause for more serious action when Weaver, suspecting a federal government trap, refused to give himself up to authorities when they came to arrest him for his failure to show up in court on schedule.  Now a long stand-off developed, bringing the federal authorities to develop a plan to bring the "dangerous" Weaver in (who had actually at that point still committed no particular crime, except the one growing from the government's own failure to get the dates right on a warrant).

Taking the next months to try to build a stronger case against Weaver, the federal authorities believed they finally had cause when a news helicopter claimed (falsely) that it had been fired on when it was covering the story of the stand-off above the Weaver cabin.  Now the feds could move on the Weaver family.

Thus in August of the next year (1992) six Federal Marshals were sent to raid his home. Shooting broke out in the woods nearby when his fourteen-year-old son and his dog and Weaver's friend Harris went out to see why the dog was making such a commotion, and a firefight broke out, in which Harris was wounded, the boy and the dog were killed, and a U.S. Marshall was killed.  Now the Marshals were furious and moved on the main house, a government sniper killing Weaver's wife when she went to the door to let Harris back into the house.  Then for the next twelve days a stand-off took place, as several hundred state and federal officers took position around the house while agents negotiated a Weaver surrender.

In a follow-up investigation it was revealed that the Federal agents had disregarded horribly the Rules of Engagement (ROE).  And they also had virtually no case against Weaver.  Thus the trial which took place the next year (1993) did not go well for the federal government.  Weaver was ultimately acquitted of all charges, except the one of missing the court date, which cost him an additional four months in prison and a $10,000 fine.  Charges against Harris, who had shot the Marshall during the firefight in the woods, were dismissed on the grounds that he had merely responded to being fired on by individuals who had not identified themselves as federal officers.  In 1997 a second attempt to convict Harris would be attempted, charges thrown out by a judge because this constituted "double-jeopardy" (a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime).

Ultimately the surviving members of the Weaver family brought a $200 million suit against the federal government for wrongful death (the Weaver son and wife), but settled out of court for an award of a little over $3 million (although the prosecuting attorney later confessed that had the Weavers actually gone to trial, they probably would have indeed won the $200 million award).

The whole "Ruby Ridge episode" became famous, as books and even songs were written and a CBS miniseries (1996) and a follow-up Hollywood movie were produced based on this horrible tragedy.

It was a huge embarrassment for the U.S. government, which subsequently undertook to review its arresting procedures.  But this would not occur until another tragedy of a like nature had taken place.

This other event took place a half-year later outside of Waco, Texas, in early 1993.  Some of the people of Waco had been complaining for months about illegal doings (suspicions concerning polygamy, child abuse and possession of illegal weapons) going on at a large commune located just outside of town, the Mount Carmel compound of the Branch Davidians.  These religious millennialists (a breakaway group from the Seventh-Day Adventists) were operating in Waco under the power of its messianic leader, David Koresh.

A report of firearms in the commune finally brought the commune to the attention of federal (ATF) officials.  But Koresh refused to recognize the right of the ATF to search his compound.  He had broken no laws.  A bitter standoff thus resulted between the Davidians – who understood this confrontation with the authorities as the arrival of the "end times" – and the federal police on February 28th, when the police attempted to force their way into the compound.  Four federal agents and five Davidians died and more than 20 other federal officials were injured, some very seriously, in a gun battle that erupted between the Davidians and the ATF.  The ATF thus backed off.

Finally on April 19th, after failed negotiations accompanied by a long effort to squeeze the Davidians out of the compound (cutting off their water supply, for instance), a federal force of 900 officers (now including FBI agents) made its move on the compound, not only with guns and disabling tear gas unleashed but with armored tanks crashing into the compound.  And then the compound broke into flames, and 76 Davidians (including numerous women and 25 children) died in what soon turned into a blazing inferno (only nine Davidians got out of the compound alive).

The whole event became a national scandal, and the ATF undertook not only an investigation as to the cause of the fire but again now also a review of its enforcement policies.

The nine surviving Davidians were tried and sentenced on various charges, the sentencing subsequently going through years of appeal, all the way to the Supreme Court, at which point the sentences were greatly reduced.  Finally, in 2007, the last of the Davidians was released from prison.