- The United States deputy marshal
had been murdered, and two other deputy marshals
had been pinned down.
- We were told the ones that killed the marshal
were now on the loose.
[tense music]
- The marshals were there to arrest Randall Weaver
for failure to appear warrant.
- He had some connection as a white separatist
with the Aryan Nations.
[reporter]: Randy Weaver has been holed up in a remote
mountain cabin in Idaho surrounded by an army of police
and federal agents.
- You want to know everything about this guy,
what he's capable of, and who our opponent is going to be.
- This guy was former military.
He may have had Special Forces training.
- Mr. Woodland.
Mr. Firearms.
Booby traps...
And we didn't know exactly how many people were up there
with him. They were all heavily armed.
[tense music]
- And I see this individual walking up.
So I'm taking pressure off the trigger,
and all of a sudden, the shot goes off.
[gunshot]
- You're a disgrace to the white race!
[camera shutter clicking]
[narrator]: In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.
Drug busts, mob stings.
Terrorist takedowns.
[indistinct shouting]
We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it. - Freeze!
- FBI. - FBI.
- Action!
[narrator]: But they don't know the half of it.
What really goes down?
We save that for each other,
when we're talking agent to agent.
This is FBI True.
[soft eerie music]
- Guys, is this the first time you've ever been together
and talking about this Ruby Ridge situation in public?
- It is. - Absolutely.
I avoid talking about these things as much as possible.
- I don't, uh...
It's not something I enjoy speaking of.
- What made you decide at this point that
this was a good venue to talk about this together?
- We trust you guys to do the right thing,
because these documentaries, I don't care who does it,
it's always skewed one way or the other.
This is the only way it will probably ever
be told truthfully.
- There's no spin.
- There is no spin here.
[narrator]: Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FB.
She worked gangs, crimes against children
as well as human and drug trafficking.
- Take me back to when you first get the notification
that you have to deploy.
- It was a Friday, it was around midday.
I was over in the gym, working out...
[narrator]: Jim McGee began his career as a firefighter
for the National Forest Service.
As a member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team,
he received the Medal of Valor for Exceptional Heroism.
- We get the 333 over the pager.
- We got the triple threes.
And then you knew it was for real.
Something bad had happened somewhere
and we need to deploy.
[narrator]: As an FBI Special Agent, Charlie Rasner
worked domestic terrorism and civil rights cases
before joining the FBI's Hostae Rescue Team as a sniper.
- When you get the triple three, I mean, that's a good day.
That's what you were on HRT for, is mission.
[narrator]: Dale Monroe was a pilot in the Marine Corps
before becoming a Special Agent with the FBI.
He joined the Hostage Rescue Team in 1991.
- Did anyone have an idea already
where you might be going? - No.
- Nothing.
- You'd go over to the HRT building,
get the briefing, and then you find out.
[Kottis]: So you guys are all in the briefing room.
What do you hear?
- We had a United States
deputy marshal who had been murdered.
And apparently, he was with at least two other
deputy marshals, and they're doing
a reconnaissance of a cabin.
And they had been engaged in a firefight.
- The marshals were there to arrest Randall Weaver...
...for failure to appear warrant.
That's all we really knew,
that he had violated his court order
to appear in court. - Later on,
we found out the whole thing started
with the ATF case.
- Who's the ATF looking at? - Aryan Nation.
- The Aryan Nation. - Well, they had a source
and he convinces Randy Weaver
to saw off a couple of shotguns.
And now they want to do what they did with their source,
they wanna make him the next source.
And Randy? No, he doesn't want to work for them.
He said, no, I'm not.
So they say, well, we can charge you if you don't.
And he says, Go ahead, charge me. So they charge him.
The charge is illegally...
[Kottis]: ...modifying a weapon. [Monroe]: Modifying shotguns.
The court docket says he was supposed to report
February 20th.
They give him his paperwork.
His paperwork says he's supposed to report
March 20th. So 2/20 goes by,
and he doesn't come down. He's now a failure to appear.
- Right. - So they arrest him.
He shows him his paperwork, everybody realizes
there's been a mistake, but you still have to answer
for these charges. He says you'll never see me again.
- And so the marshals were ordered by a federal judge
to bring him in. And that's why they were
conducting surveillance, to try to catch him off
the compound so they could peacefully arrest him
and bring him in.
- The marshals were actually leaving for the day,
but they had to change the batteries.
- Surveillance was burned, and they were
essentially ambushed.
[gunshot]
[ominous music]
And the marshal was killed.
- So that's what we're hearing. Basically, it's a bad situation.
From our perspective. All right, well,
there may be a need for a rescue here, right?
Immediately, to get those guys out who are pinned down.
So they're going to call the final option.
That's the HRT. - Mm-hmm.
- You know, we're going into this situation,
this guy, he's in like, this isolated cabin...
[tense music]
...up on a mountaintop in the panhandle of Idaho.
I knew we were going into some very, very
rough terrain, because, just by chance,
ten years earlier, I had spent a month in that area
fighting a major forest fire.
- Oh, wow. - I knew we were going
into some steep terrain.
If you weren't used to hiking hills,
you were gonna get used to it.
- We're getting ready. A deputy U.S. marshal
has been murdered. We don't know
how it happened exactly. We want to know everything about
Randall Weaver, about what he's capable of
and who our opponent is going to be.
So we want information.
- After we landed, at an Air Force base
in Washington State,
then we had to drive from there
to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, which is up close
to the Canada border,
and that's where we received the briefing.
- What do they tell you at Bonners Ferry?
- You know, this guy was former military.
And so, he may have had some Special Forces training.
Also that he had some connection
as a white separatist with the Aryan Nations.
[tense music]
- My impression was he was a former Green Beret.
If you remember the movie Rambo at the time,
they were comparing him to that guy.
Mr. Woodland. Mr. Firearms Expert.
Mr. Explosives. Booby traps.
Be careful. He's gonna get out in the woods and outflank you,
if possible, and we didn't know exactly how many people
were up there with him. They were all heavily armed.
- And that's where we found out that the Idaho State Police
SWAT team had the body of Deputy Marshal
William Degan coming off the mountain.
- They'd been able to extract him,
as well as the other deputy marshals
who have also been able to get out of the area.
[ominous music]
So they're no longer pinned down.
That changes things.
Now it goes from an emergency assault
to try to rescue these guys to more of a sniper mission.
So they're going to have to go in and gather intelligence
and see what the heck we're dealing with.
- Our job is to go and arrest this person
who apparently has just murdered a federal marshal.
And so, we want information.
- So at this time, you don't have any details
of how that transpired, how they got burned.
- Right. What we got was incomplete and fragmented,
but we knew that he was viciously murdered.
- Right. - And that they were
running around the mountain and we didn't know where.
- There was no perimeter, no knowledge of where they were.
And so, we were supposed to figure that out.
They gave us a little bit of information on the family.
- Who do you understand those individuals are?
- Randy and Vicki Weaver...
their friend Kevin Harris,
the kids of Randy, Vicki Weaver, Sara, Rachel,
Sammy and Elisheba.
- Two of the kids were armed.
Sammy and Sara.
[tense music]
- We were told that they didn't really care
for trespassers, and we were told this.
They had, around the cabin,
various rock outcroppings which they would run to,
doing these ready action drills
with long weapons to engage anybody
who might come on their property.
- From there, what are you thinking?
- We got somebody up there that's willing to kill
a deputy U.S. marshal. They'll kill us just as well.
So we have to be on our game. We don't know where they are.
We know that the terrain is vast.
It's a wilderness. It's their turf, not ours.
We're foreigners, we're invaders in their eyes.
And we need to be very careful when we go up there.
- Jim, assaulters are not going to get into position
until the snipers have set up the perimeter.
- As an assaulter, I was still at the bottom
of the mountain, where we were planning
for a possible assault on the cabin.
[indistinct chatter]
- We're about two and a half, three-hour climb
from the staging area to... - Yeah, easily.
- ...our perimeter to the cabin.
And before we even got the perimeter set up...
...we could have been ambushed at any time.
[suspenseful music]
So going up there, we're definitely alert
to the right, to the left, to the back of us,
the front of us as to anybody that could ambush us.
- Take me to that scene. You guys have backpacks,
all your equipment, do they drop you at a trailhead?
Like, where do they drop you? Where do you start?
- Well, two marshals led the way.
They took us up most of the way
to what was considered a "Y" in the trail.
And that's where they left us. And then they pointed
to where the cabin was. And then we ended up
working our way to put up a half-moon
sniper positions around the house,
so we could see what was going on,
if anything happened. - Right.
- We only had 13 snipers, which is not many,
when you consider the vastness of the terrain.
- We ended up going in first,
and then we set up the final firing position.
Our observation point. My partner Lon had his rifle.
He decided to kneel.
There was a branch coming out of the tree.
Perfect height. I went prone.
All the other snipers went prone as well.
[ominous music]
- The command post was way down here.
The cabin was way up here.
And my partner and I were in overwatch position,
which was about 600 yards above the cabin.
We had drag bags, I would say we had a couple hundred pounds
here easily with food, water, ammunition, weapons.
We had the long guns and had sidearms.
- We see the helicopter...
...buzzing in and out.
We know it's got our command staff in it.
It's a small helicopter, it's tiny.
We call it the little bird. Two pilots,
maybe two passengers.
We see the helicopter in our face
and then under the clouds dipping back and forth,
trying to get a viewpoint of the cabin,
and the vicinity of the cabin.
- I heard the helicopter.
And as soon as it... It looked like it was up
to my high left. I didn't think anything of it.
And all of a sudden, the cabin door swings open
and three people run out. Sara, Kevin and Randy Weaver.
I'm watching them through my scope.
And all of a sudden, I look, and I'm looking
right at the birthing shed as well as the cabin.
And I see this individual walking up
kind of in a crouched manner,
coming up the back side of the birthing shed.
[ominous music]
And so, I mentioned this to Lon. He sees it too.
And then the individual gets to the edge
of the birthing shed.
And now he turns and in a crouched,
aggressive kind of stance, and up comes the rifle.
There was no doubt in my mind he was going to fire
at the helicopter. - Right.
- So I'm taking pressure off the trigger,
and all of a sudden, the shot goes off.
[gunshot]
And it was right into my ear
because it was my partner Lon's shot that went off.
I see it hit Weaver.
And he starts running, and then all of a sudden,
I see the other two come into view,
and then Randy joined up with Kevin,
and they're looking at Lon and I's direction,
like they knew where the shot came from.
- Mm-hmm. - And their weapons
are at port arms,
pointing at our direction,
and they're moving toward the cabin.
So, Weaver was ahead of him
and got in, and Lon's shot goes off again.
[gunshot]
[ominous music]
And it's the same thing. I know... It's again Lon's shot.
Then I see Harris stumble a bit
and then fall into the doorway.
That was the last thing I saw
until we heard about 30 seconds worth of screams.
And we're wondering, you know, what the heck is that?
I was thinking the two males had been shot.
And I thought maybe more seriously
than I thought they were shot, because of all these screams.
After the shots, we talked about the hits.
- Right. - And I told him
I definitely know he hit Weaver.
And I said, and I'm pretty sure
you hit the second shot.
You hit Harris.
- We have a dead United States deputy marshal.
And these guys are suspected of murdering him.
- Mm-hmm. - So we're getting the job done.
- The next day, we went right back up there.
- We knew we were gonna go right back out.
- Not knowing where they were again.
- Right. - Right.
- And what we've been tasked to do is to clear
and dismantle these various outbuildings;
birthing shed, tack shed, outhouse, whatever,
so that the snipers, and us as well,
would have a clear view of the cabin,
because now, we're going to set up on the perimeter
in an emergency assault status.
We were going to continue that mission until all of those
buildings were dismantled
and then we were gonna start on the cabin.
- My partner and I had moved down
to the birthing shed, which was 20 yards from the main cabin.
One of the operators, Jack Morrison,
exited the APC, because the thought was,
"Well, we better check the building before
we start dismantling, we can't just knock it down.
It might have explosives, it might have anything,
it may be booby trapped. We don't know."
So Jack goes over to the building and I...
I'm 20 yards from him at that point,
and I realize he doesn't have anybody with him.
He's by himself clearing this building.
And I hear him, he kicks the door,
starts giving commands. I run up there.
Probably a foolish thing to do
because I expose myself to fire from the house.
But I thought, I've gotta get up there.
- You weren't gonna let him go by himself.
- Precisely. So we both go up there.
We both go in the building and we're yelling at this person
that's on this table to get down on the ground,
to follow commands. We're the FBI,
we announce who we are over and over.
Nothing.
I go up to him, grab him,
I look, realize he's not moving. Dead.
Look into his eyes.
They're black holes almost.
Been dead three or four days,
it looked like.
And then we radio the TOC. "We have a crime scene
here in the shed. There's a corpse."
I describe, he looked like about 10 to 12 years old.
It's a child. Yeah. - A child.
Body's cold, lifeless.
He was naked to his underwear.
He had been cleaned because I could tell
he had wounds. We unwrapped him.
He was wrapped in a shower curtain.
White shower curtain. So I unwrap the body.
And I looked at his wounds. I lifted his arms.
His right arm was shredded, because in my mind,
it appeared to me that he was shot
while holding something like a rifle,
the bullet had entered here in his right arm
and shredded his whole arm, the flesh hanging out
and he had been cleaned up by the family,
I think, probably for burial or something.
And he had another wound here in the back,
and the exit wound. So I think he probably
got spun around when he got shot.
- What rushed across to you at that point?
- That we needed to slow this train.
We need to stop this train.
Figure out what we have here, because we have an unidentified
deceased individual.
And I started going through my mind,
who all was in there on this compound
that this could be? And it hit me that it was maybe
Sammy, the kid, the son.
[soft ominous music]
I'm thinking this is worse than we thought.
It was a really, really bad...
Now it's really way worse.
[soft music]
The family was grief-stricken. And so, I felt for them,
I felt horrible for them, a tremendous loss.
Parents, there's no telling the amount of grief
you go through when you lose a child before your death.
So I thought, well, how is this going to affect
these people mentally, and what are they thinking
inside there? Are they now just going to say,
to heck with it, and kill us all?
[narrator]: Next time, on FBI True.
- You know, he's putting suppression fire down
and ends up killing Sammy.
- It's beginning to get more and more aggressive.
Now, you have not only a threat from within,
but you have an outer perimeter threat.
And it's really a perimeter that you cannot contain.
[man]: We're going to war!
[tense music]
- Never!
- But when I get through that door,
I'm not stopping 'til I get to the opposite wall,
because I'm going home when this is over with.
So if that little girl is standing there
with a long weapon pointed at me,
I mean, you got to do what you got to do.
[tense music]
Subtitling: difuze