Randy Weaver Trial: 1993

Some question the truth of these statements, and say government spokesmen used it to explain their conduct in the violent confrontation that broke out near the Weaver home on August 21, 1992. The single, undeniably true statement is the location of the home, which was located on an outcropping in the mountainous terrain of Boundary County. It was a simple, uninsulated, homebuilt cabin with plywood sides. It contained 14 guns of various sorts, not an unusual number for a home in that part of Idaho, especially for a family that obtained much of its food by hunting. None were automatic; some were as much as 70 years old. It also contained a library of books for the four Weaver children, and a large supply of dried and canned food under the house. It was the home of a family who were isolated by choice.

Randy Weaver in August 1992 was technically a fugitive from justice, although he was in his own home. The previous January he had been arrested by federal agents on a weapons charge and freed on $10,000 bail. He had failed to appear for his court date on February 20. His failure is somewhat understandable in view of the charge against him. In 1989 he had been entrapped by Kenneth Fadely, an ex-convict working as an informer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF), into selling Fadely two sawed-off shotguns without a federal license to do so. Weaver had been reluctant to make the sale, but he was hard pressed for money, and trusted Fadely as an acquaintance. Not long after the transaction, two BATF agents approached Weaver with tapes of his conversations and threatened him with prosecution and loss of his home unless he collaborated with them to become a government spy on Aryan Nations. Weaver refused, and his arrest followed.

The BATF had considered Weaver a good prospect to spy on Aryan Nations, since he shared many of their racist views. Randy and Vicki Weaver, who had moved to Idaho from Iowa in 1983, were fundamentalist Christians who believed that white people were the true Chosen People of the Bible, favored by God over other races. They had friends in the area, some of whom belonged to Aryan Nations, and had attended gatherings there. Nonetheless, they disagreed with much of the group's stand. Aryan Nations was a white supremacist group with political aims, which recruited ex-convicts, preached violence against minorities, and hoped eventually to seize power; the Weavers were narrowly religious and had no use for revolution.

Learning how the BATF had entrapped them into violating the law, the Weavers became strongly convinced that they were being persecuted by a Godless government, and determined to resist. "We have decided to stay on this mountain," Vicki Weaver wrote to the head of Aryan Nations in 1990; "you could not drag us away with chains."