In the end, not even the valiant legal battle for justice
waged by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark was enough.
The case against FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi has been dismissed
and that famous statue of a blind lady justice carrying a set of scales has
just had its head blown off.
Angry? Yes. I’m angry.
I’m angry that a government willing to pay Randy Weaver
and his surviving daughter more than 3 million dollars to make them go away…an
obvious tacit admission of guilt… would have so many jokers in the deck of
justice that even when plan A failed and the Federal appeals panel ruled
Horiuchi could be tried for manslaughter in the death of Weaver’s
wife, Vicki, plan B was already in place.
The safety net worked elegantly.
For those of you not familiar with the case, here’s a
thumbnail overview.
Government agents ambushed Weaver’s young son, a family
friend and their dog on the Weaver property in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992,
after Weaver failed to show up in court to answer charges that he sold a
sawed off shotgun to a federal agent in a sting operation. The boy and his
dog were both killed. The friend shot and killed a police officer in
self-defense.
During the ensuing stand-off and siege around the Weaver’s
mountain cabin, FBI agent Lon Horiuchi claimed to be shooting at a male
target inside the cabin but instead, his bullet went clear through the skull
of Vicki Weaver as she was holding the couple’s 10-month-old child.
As if he couldn't tell the difference through his high powered sniper scope.
For years, state and federal authorities battled over
whether Horiuchi could be tried on criminal charges for obeying orders and
pulling the trigger on an unarmed female. After a federal judge ruled in
Horiuchi’s favor, Ramsey Clark was brought in to represent the local
authorities and his eloquence won over a 3-judge federal appeals court last week.
It ruled Horiuchi could, in fact, face state charges in Vicki Weaver’s
death.
But, lo and behold, there had been a county election between
the time that local prosecutors initiated their court battle with the feds
and the announcement that such proceedings could be held. The new county
prosecutor, Brett Benton, took a much more federally friendly position,
claiming it was too hard to win a conviction on a 9-year-old case, so he
would not be prosecuting Horiuchi, after all.
How could such a thing happen?
To borrow a line from the National Enquirer, inquiring minds
want to know.
For a possible answer, we turned to the recent archives at
World Net Daily and found a June 13th story which claimed that
new local prosecutor Benton is himself under investigation and may be tried
on felony charges of forgery and falsifying documents.
Gee, you don’t suppose it’s possible that those charges
might simply…go away…if Benton plays ball with those higher up the
justice department food chain, do you?
We claim no inside information and do not offer these
questions as allegations, merely as brain-teasers in a world of infinite
possibilities. But we have seen enough of the methods used by Washington to
gag the truth and stuff it in the trunk of a presidential limousine to be
willing to ask the tough questions, out loud.
People who do not follow the official party line in
Washington have an amazing way of disappearing, or committing suicide, or
ending up serving major sentences in federal prisons. That’s not
imagination. That’s fact.
When it comes to redundancy of evil and the willingness to
use any method at its disposal to accomplish its sordid goals, it’s
abundantly clear…the beltway bureaucracy has no equal.
Scary stuff. But true.
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