1. Two Shotguns

Summary

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Standoff: What Happened at Ruby Ridge?

Episode 1: Two Shotguns (October 31, 2018)

Host: Ruth Graham
Podcast by: Slate Podcasts

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Episode Overview

The inaugural episode, "Two Shotguns," introduces listeners to the fateful events leading up to the infamous 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff. Host Ruth Graham sets the stage with the story of Randy Weaver—an isolated, white separatist whose escalating paranoia and entanglement with federal informants turned a minor firearms offense into an explosive confrontation. The episode delves deep into the Weaver family's beliefs, their move to Idaho, and how a simple firearms transaction catalyzed a chain reaction leading to deadly violence and a foundational myth for the American far right.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Weaver Family: Isolation & Ideology

• Origins: Randy Weaver and wife Vicki, both from Iowa, were initially a typical middle-class family (04:31–05:34).
• Religious Shift: They moved from conventional Christianity toward apocalyptic beliefs, heavily influenced by Christian Identity—a racist, white supremacist movement. They viewed America as ruled by "ZOG" (Zionist Occupied Government) and began isolating themselves, preparing for doomsday (05:34–07:24).
• Life off the Grid: By 1983, the Weavers relocated to rural Idaho, living a pioneer lifestyle: homeschooling, hunting, canning, and stockpiling weapons and food (08:39–09:44).
  • Quote – Jess Walter (Author/Reporter):
    “They loved living off the grid. I think they felt like they’d stumbled on the America that they set out to find.” (09:33)

Idaho Context: The Rise of White Supremacy

• Local Extremism: The Weaver's new home was geographically close to the Aryan Nations compound, a notorious hub for white supremacist activity (10:10–11:20).
  • Aryan Nations events, such as the Aryan World Congress, became networking opportunities for neo-Nazis and Klansmen (11:28–11:41).
  • Quote – Bill Moreland (Reporter):
    “They’d refer to us as the Jew’s media. … Richard Butler would frequently say, you know, Bill, you’re on the wrong side. You’re working for the Jews that control the media, and you should be up here with us.” (12:25–12:46)
• Escalation: The Aryan Nations’ rhetoric turned violent when attendees formed "The Order," a group that committed robberies and murders, spotlighting Idaho in federal investigations (13:14–14:29).

The Firearms Transaction: Seeds of the Standoff

• Informant Setup: At Aryan World Congress, Weaver met "Gus" (real name Kenneth Faidley), a gunrunner and informant for the ATF. In August 1989, a conversation using code words for firearms set up an illegal gun sale (15:51–18:05).

  • Memorable Exchange:
    • Gus: “How about if I give you 300 for both?”
    • Randy: “I’m gonna have to have 300 on the shotgun or the pump.” (17:37–17:50)
  • Randy delivered two sawed-off shotguns for $450 (18:05).

• Suspicion & Paranoia: A November meeting between Weaver and Faidley soured as Weaver voiced suspicions Gus was a federal agent (19:19).

  • Quote – Randy Weaver:
    “I had a guy in Spokane tell me that you were a badge.” (19:19)
  • Gus denied, offering to be searched for a wire—not revealing his car was audio-surveilled, and he was, in fact, an ATF informant (20:00).

The Federal Response: Escalating a Small Case

• Prosecute or Flip: The ATF attempted to flip Weaver into becoming an informant against the Aryan Nations (21:03–22:55).
  • Agent Byerly, ATF (on their logic):
    “Mr. Weaver was informed if he assisted, this information would be relayed to the appropriate assistant U.S. attorney...” (23:01)
• Weaver Refuses: Randy refuses to "snitch," and the ATF indictment proceeds (23:33).
• Critical Misjudgment:
  • Quote – Jess Walter:
    “He and his wife saw it as the first step of a coming apocalypse… they believed it was so that tanks could come down... UN tanks for the coming takeover. So these were people living in fear.” (24:36)

From Paranoia to Reality: Making Conflict Inevitable

• Failed Arrest: Undercover ATF agents botched Randy's first arrest attempt, further stoking the family’s paranoia and resistance (25:10–26:02).

• Going Off the Grid: After his indictment and subsequent release, Weaver refused to appear in court, severing ties with outside authority and making their confrontation with the government a foregone conclusion (26:20–26:28).

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:

  • Quote – Jess Walter:
    “Federal law enforcement goes out looking for radicalized white supremacist criminals and they end up creating one.” (26:45)

Ruby Ridge as Right-Wing Mythology

• Narrative Power: Ruth Graham discusses how the right seized the Ruby Ridge story as a parable of innocent whites under siege by government tyranny, while she finds it more complex—with “unsympathetic protagonists, well-meaning villains, and unexpected heroes.” (27:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Vicki Weaver’s death recounted by Randy Weaver, testifying before the Senate (03:24):

  “She was helpless. She was standing in the doorway of her home... As the bullet crashed through her head, she slumped to her knees. We took the baby from her as she lay dead and bleeding on her kitchen floor.”

• On the original offense (by Ruth Graham, 04:31):

  “It all started when one guy sold another guy a couple of sawed-off shotguns.”

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Key Timestamps

• 00:05–01:44: Opening scene and immediate aftermath of the Weaver standoff
• 04:31–06:29: Weaver family background, beliefs, and early radicalization
• 09:33: Jess Walter on the Weavers' attraction to Idaho
• 11:41–12:55: Annual Aryan World Congress and extreme rituals
• 15:51–18:05: The first illegal firearms transaction
• 19:19–20:22: The moment Weaver suspects Gus is a federal agent
• 21:03–23:10: ATF’s failed attempt to recruit Weaver as an informant
• 24:36: Jess Walter on the Weavers’ apocalyptic worldview
• 26:45: Jess Walter on the “self-fulfilling prophecy” between radicals and law enforcement
• 27:12: Ruth Graham reflects on the myth and meaning of Ruby Ridge

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Conclusion

Episode 1 of Standoff intricately sets up the tragic confrontation by exploring how deep-seated paranoia, extremist ideology, and missteps by federal agents coalesced into deadly violence at Ruby Ridge. The story is neither simple nor comforting—painting the protagonists, law enforcement, and the context of 1980s-90s American radicalism in shades of gray. This complex origin story would soon feed into the folklore of the American right, with lessons still resonant today.

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Coming up in Episode 2:
The opening shots at Ruby Ridge and how an 11-day siege unfolded in bloodshed.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

The following podcast contains explicit language.

[Ruth Graham]

The first sign of trouble at Ruby Ridge was when the dog started barking. The dog's name was Stryker, and he belonged to a man called Randy Weaver. Weaver and his family lived on top of a rocky outcropping in a ramshackle cabin a few miles outside Naples, Idaho. There was no electricity or phone service and no indoor plumbing. Randy's wife, Vicky, retreated to a shed when she was menstruating. They followed their own idiosyncrasion religious belief system, and their view of the world tended toward paranoia. They thought America was secretly under the rule of a cabal they called zog, the Zionist Occupied Government. When Stryker started barking, the Weavers followed. Maybe he'd caught the scent of a game animal. But they were wary because they lived in fear that their isolated mountain homestead would come under attack by armed agents of the federal government. They were right. Six U.S. marshals, including several members of the agency's elite special operations group, had arrived at the Weaver's property, and Stryker had picked up their scent. It was August 21, 1992.

[Narrator/Host]

Weaver, a fugitive on a federal firearms charge, has been holed up in a cabin near Naples for more than a year.

[Ruth Graham]

They say Weaver is a white supremacist and claim he's heavily armed. The U.S. marshals on the scene had been tasked with getting Randy Weaver off the mountain peacefully. That wasn't going to happen.

[Narrator/Host]

Good afternoon. A federal agent has been shot and killed in a confrontation with a fugitive in North Idaho.

[Ruth Graham]

Shots rang out near the home of Randy Weaver.

[Narrator/Host]

Federal authorities from all over the country planning their next move. John Allison, News 4.

[Ruth Graham]

John Allison was a news reporter at a TV station in Spokane, just across the Washington border. When he arrived on the scene, hundreds of representatives from local and federal agencies were setting up a command post about a mile from the cabin.

[Narrator/Host]

We were starting to see an influx of military vehicles, helicopters, even a couple of armored personnel carriers. It is a stunning and overwhelming show of force. They were staging for a major effort, a major enterprise. And so I got word that a lot of this was coming in and staging at the airport in Bonner's ferry, which was 10 or 15 miles to the north. So I took a photographer up to the airport, and it was fairly early in the morning and got up there and it looked like a scene from Vietnam. And so I did a standup from that airport that said something to the effect that, you know, Randy Weaver was somebody who simply wanted to be left alone. But with the sudden appearance of military hardware like this, his one man Stand against the law is suddenly taking on the appearance of a full blown war.

[Ruth Graham]

The Weavers home at Ruby Ridge was under siege. The standoff lasted for 11 days and three people died in all, including Vicki Weaver. Here's Randy describing the moment she was killed. He's speaking to a Senate subcommittee in 1995.

[Narrator/Host]

At the time she was gunned down, she was helpless. She was standing in the doorway of her home. She was holding Elisheba, our 10 month old baby girl in her arms. As the bullet crashed through her head, she slumped to her knees. We took the baby from her as she lay dead and bleeding on her k kitchen floor. Take whatever, whatever time you need, Mr. Weaver. Thank you. Now I'm not without fault in this matter. If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I would make different choices

[Ruth Graham]

when the whole thing was over. The government had spent millions of dollars to pursue one small case against one small man and would go on to spend millions more to fix its own mistakes. There would be a federal trial, hearings in the U.S. senate and an investigation by the Department of Justice.

[Bill Moreland]

Foreign.

[Ruth Graham]

Podcasts this is Standoff. I'm your host Ruth Graham. How did a middle class family from Iowa end up on a remote Idaho mountain, heavily armed and facing down the FBI? And how did law enforcement agencies screw up a small potatoes criminal case so badly that they turned a paranoid nobody into a right wing folk hero? It all started when one guy sold another guy a couple of sawed off shotguns. Randy Weaver was born in a small town in Iowa in 1948. He joined the army during the Vietnam War and passed the training required to join the elite special forces. But he ended up quitting before he made it overseas. Randy met Vicki Jordison in the late 1960s. Vicki was raised on a farm and she was close to her father who followed a breakaway sect of Mormonism and was interested in prophecy and the end times. After Vicki and Randy married, they sold Amway products to get by. Then Randy got a better job at a John Deere factory. Over time, Randy and Vicki became more interested in religion. They pored over a best selling book called the Late Great Planet Earth that found predictions of nuclear war in Bible passages and warned that the end was near. And they wandered pretty far from mainstream Christian teachings. They read only the King James version of the Bible and started following Old Testament laws about things like eating unclean meat. Randy hosted a raucous late night Bible study that met at a local family restaurant and they sent away for pamphlets, comic books and tapes with Titles like Satan's Angels Exposed.

[Jess Walter]

You know, for the Weavers, this America that they felt they'd grown up with was disappearing, and they were looking for some kind of answer.

[Ruth Graham]

That's Jess Walter, who covered Ruby Ridge for the Spokane Spokesman Review and later wrote a book about it. He said the Weavers developed their own belief system, finding prophecies in the Old Testament and signs of the coming apocalypse and current events. The Weavers distrusted the Jews, other minorities, the Illuminati, credit cards, and most churches. They both had visions about their future and what God wanted them to do. The family resisted labels at times. They didn't even call themselves Christians. But they were strongly influenced by a racist movement called Christian Identity that was on the rise in the 1980s. The idea behind Christian Identity is that white people are the true people of God and that a race war has to take place before the second coming of Christ.

[Jess Walter]

The sides of this religion that are truly damaging and truly dangerous are that people of color, Africans are mud people, that people we see as Jewish are the spawn of Satan.

[Ruth Graham]

At some point, the Weavers stopped talking about the imminent apocalypse and started actively preparing for it. In early 1983, they told a reporter they believed the government was going to purposely create chaos as an excuse to institute martial law and ultimately establish a one world government. They had begun stockpiling weapons and canned food. And most importantly, the family said they were planning to move out west.

[Jess Walter]

They were looking in Colorado or Montana or Idaho. This was almost something that was driven by the voice of God himself.

[Narrator/Host]

We had had beliefs that, you know, if there ever was a natural disaster or downfall of the government or whatever, we wanted to be separated from the rest of the world. We did not want to be a part of it. Survival, you might call it.

[Ruth Graham]

The family left Iowa that year and drove around the west in an old grain truck, sleeping in motels and searching for land they could afford. By then, they had three children, two daughters and a son. Vicki said that God had made it known to her that the family was to have a place to live. By September 7, 1983. They found their property in northern Idaho, just under the deadline, in a spot then known as Caribou Ridge. Vicki wrote in her diary that when they drove up to the property, it was just what God had shown them it would look like. The Weavers built a cabin, patching it together out of plywood and two by fours. The building was surrounded by a thick woods, and the family's water came from a spring about a quarter mile below the house. The Weavers lived like pioneers. They homeschooled their children and taught them to use guns. They hunted, gardened and canned.

[Jess Walter]

And they loved, you know, living off the grid. They loved the lifestyle. And I think they. They felt like they'd stumbled on the America that they set out to find.

[Ruth Graham]

But the Weavers idea of pastoral contentment was wrapped up in apocalyptic fantasy. Randy told a neighbor before they even moved in, armageddon's gonna end on that hill. The Weaver family had moved to Idaho in part to get away from the reach of the federal government. What they didn't know was that the federal government was paying more and more attention to Idaho.

[Narrator/Host]

Kootenai county in northern Idaho is home to some of the choicest scenery and the best recreation in the west. But there is trouble in Kootenai county because this is also home for the white supremacist Aryan nations church. Not a large group, but one regarded as quite dangerous by law enforcement agencies.

[Ruth Graham]

The Aryan nations church was an anti Semitic organization with connections to the same Christian identity theology the family had been attracted to in Iowa.

[Narrator/Host]

It calls itself a church, but its leaders preach hate. Believers who regard Adolf Hitler as one of their main prophets, blacks and Jews as their main enemies.

[Ruth Graham]

Since the 1970s, the church had operated out of an armed compound about an hour from the Weaver's new home. Founder Richard Butler, a former engineer from California, claimed 300 members in northern Idaho and 6,000 followers nationally. He believed that white nationalists should move to the northwest in order to establish their own Aryan homeland. And he called for his congregants to arm themselves to prepare for a coming race war.

[Narrator/Host]

Are you at war with blacks and Jews? No, I am not.

[Ruth Graham]

War of them.

[Narrator/Host]

They're at war with us.

[Ruth Graham]

Every year, Butler's fans and followers convened for an event called the Aryan World Congress. Bikers, skinheads, neo Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members came for speeches and spaghetti dinners.

[Narrator/Host]

Their goal, they say, is a separate all white nation headed by provisional government. We want a national homeland for our people. Anything in furtherance of this holy cause is approved. Anything, without exception.

[Ruth Graham]

Once news cameras captured them shooting at photos of the one time Israeli prime minister.

[Narrator/Host]

And the adults practice in deadly earnest, taking potshots at pictures of Menachem Begin. He ain't got a hook nose anymore.

[Ruth Graham]

Butler billed it as a family friendly

[Bill Moreland]

event with guns and burning crosses, if you will.

[Ruth Graham]

That's journalist Bill Moreland, who covered extremist groups throughout the 1980s for the spokesman Review. Moreland and a few other reporters were invited to cover these annual gatherings.

[Bill Moreland]

They would Refer to us as the Jews media. In my case, I happen to be of Norwegian ancestry. I have blonde hair, what's left of it, and blue eyes. And so they viewed me as a race traitor. Richard Butler would frequently say, you know, bill, you're on the wrong side. You're working for the Jews that control the media, and you should be up here with us.

[Ruth Graham]

The culmination of the Aryan world Congress was usually a cross burning on Saturday night, though Butler preferred to call it a cross lighting.

[Bill Moreland]

The ceremony that I witnessed was actually called a blessing of the weapons ceremony. Each participant in a circle around these burning crosses would come forward with their weapon and have it blessed under this burning cross. These were, you know, weapons of war for these Aryan warriors. At least that was their storyline.

[Ruth Graham]

For some time, the Aryan nation's hateful rhetoric was mostly just that, a lot of talk. But that changed in 1983.

[Bill Moreland]

Well, among those people who attended these Aryan World Congresses at the Aryan nations were a group of young men, some of whom had just gotten out of prison. And they were tired of just listening to Richard Butler, and they thought the time had come to, you know, get into action, to actually start a race war in the United States.

[Ruth Graham]

These men formed a group called the Order, or Bruder Schwagen, German for the Silent Brotherhood. And they went on a violent crime spree

[Narrator/Host]

last year. Half a million dollars stolen from an armored car. Denver, June 18th. Local radio personality Alan Berg, a jewel machine gun to death in the driveway of his home. Ukiah, California. July 19th. Another armored car holdup. More than three and a half million dollars taken.

[Ruth Graham]

The Order was only active for a little more than a year until Robert J. Matthews, the group's leader, was killed in an FBI standoff. But the group's highly visible crimes drew law enforcement attention to the Aryan World Congress, where the members had met the

[Bill Moreland]

FBI and the atf. And local law enforcement knew that the Aryan nations was a magnet for criminal activity that really wasn't in dispute. And so all those agencies set about doing major investigations of what was going on there. And in the middle of all this comes Randy Weaver.

[Ruth Graham]

Randy Weaver attended several Aryan World congresses, tagging along at first with a survivalist friend in 1985. He was never a formal member of the church. Randy had some theological differences with Richard Butler, and he just wasn't a joiner. He later claimed he was simply there to see what was going on, but he obviously wasn't that alarmed by what he saw and heard at Butler's compound. One year, he even brought Vicki and the Kids with him. At his first Aryan World Congress, Randy met a friend of a friend named Gustav Magesano. Gus was a scruffy motorcycle buff and a gun runner who said he had contacts eager to buy illegal weapons. Three years later, Randy needed money. In a moment of desperation, he turned to Gus Magisano. In August 1989, he told Gus that he'd like to go to work for him. That is, to help him with his illegal gun operation.

[Narrator/Host]

Hey, Vicki, this is Gus. Hi.

[Ruth Graham]

Now, Gus was calling to follow up.

[Narrator/Host]

How are you? Real good. What's going on? Nothing much. Is your old man around? Yeah, hold on. Thanks. Hi. Hey, guy. How you doing? Good.

[Ruth Graham]

Within 30 seconds, Randy and Gus got down to business.

[Narrator/Host]

Tend to the. The chainsaws. What do you think you can do with those? As far as the sizes of them that we talked about.

[Ruth Graham]

Gus wasn't really talking about chainsaws. Chainsaw was an Aryan Nation's code word for a gun. In this case, a shotgun. In their initial conversation, Randy said he could cut down the gun's barrels. But making a sawed off shotgun is illegal under most circumstances, and Randy knew it.

[Narrator/Host]

Well, I'll have to see. I'll talk to you more about it then, okay? Okay. That'll be fine.

[Ruth Graham]

Gus and Randy met up 11 days later to complete the transaction. They first stopped at a local restaurant, but left to keep the deal private.

[Narrator/Host]

How about the public park?

[Ruth Graham]

Okay.

[Narrator/Host]

Now, that way we can kind of keep an eye on anything that's coming around. This is a little too. Yeah, too many people around. Yeah. Okay.

[Ruth Graham]

The audio here is somewhat hard to understand, but the sale went like this. Randy showed Gus two shotguns he had cut down with a vise and a hacksaw. Gus admired the quality.

[Narrator/Host]

All right. Beautiful. This looks like you did a real nice job, so. Hey, I can do better than that. I mean. All right.

[Ruth Graham]

They haggled over the price.

[Narrator/Host]

How about if I give you today. How about if I give you 300 for both?

[Ruth Graham]

Gus offered 300 for both. Randy said he needed more.

[Narrator/Host]

I'm gonna have to have 300 on the shotgun or the pump. All right.

[Ruth Graham]

Gus gave Randy the 300 he had on hand and promised to pay him 150 more the next time they saw each other.

[Narrator/Host]

100, 20, 40, 60, 80. 120, 40, 60, 83. All right.

[Ruth Graham]

And the deal was done. Two sawed off shotguns for $450. Randy told Gus he could get more guns. And he promised that if things went bad, he wouldn't rat on Gus.

[Narrator/Host]

If I go down the tubes. I'd be down the tubes, all right. Well, I don't. Nobody. Nobody goes down the tubes.

[Ruth Graham]

Nobody goes down the tubes. The deal seemed to go pretty smoothly. But the next time the men met, something had shifted. It was late November, and the pair met up in Gus's Nissan parked outside a motel in nearby Sandpoint, Idaho. This time, their conversation was tense. Gus wanted Randy to take him to Montana to meet some guys who he had heard were trafficking weapons out there. The Montana guys had broken off from the Aryan nations. And Gus was interested in making a connection. But Gus still owed Randy $150. And Randy wouldn't let him forget it.

[Narrator/Host]

Well, if you just give me what you owe me, I can hang on till next time I meet you. This isn't going to cause a problem between us, is it? Well, I hope not.

[Ruth Graham]

Finally, Randy got to what was really troubling him.

[Narrator/Host]

I. I had a guy from Spokane tell me that you were a badge.

[Ruth Graham]

I had a guy in Spokane tell me that you were a badge. Randy was worried that Gus was a cop.

[Narrator/Host]

That's all I care about is my family. And if I get go to prison or anywhere, you know I'm gonna be pissed off. That's all I gotta say. You approached me and offered me a deal. This scumbag.

[Ruth Graham]

Gus was indignant.

[Narrator/Host]

Will you do me a favor? You get a hold of whoever this clown is in Spokane. And you tell him to shove it up his ass. Because I'm not a badge. And if I was a badge, I suppose I'd be wired. And you're welcome to check me for a wire. And that's bullshit. I don't like it.

[Ruth Graham]

You're welcome to check me for a wire. That was misdirection. Gus wasn't wired at the time, but his car was. And no, he wasn't a badge, but he was an informant. You've been hearing the recordings he made for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and firearms or the ATF.

[Narrator/Host]

And this will be a recording in reference to ATF case 933-808-85576. And your name is Ken Bradley. You understand, Ken, that there's a tape recorder in here and you give your permission to record your conversations? Yes, I do.

[Ruth Graham]

Gus's real name was Kenneth Faidley. He was one of many federal informants keeping an eye on the Aryan nations after the Order's violent crime spree. Faidley would later claim that he was barely interested in Randy Weaver at first. In fact, at this point, Randy didn't have a criminal record. Of any kind. But on top of selling him the sawed off shotguns. Randy had told Faidley he knew those guys out in Montana. Fadeley was hoping that Randy could make that connection for him. Randy was like the street level drug dealer. Who the cops bust in the hopes they can pressure him to flip on someone bigger. It was going to be a quick operation. Randy introduces the feds to the gun runners. The gun charges are wiped from the books. And Randy goes back to his reclusive mountain life. But Randy got suspicious and refused to make the introduction. The Montana plan was a bust. Randy's involvement with the ATF might have ended there. But four months later, Faidley's cover was blown. That meant the ATF needed to find a new informant. Someone to gather information for the Bureau on an ongoing basis. And they thought maybe Randy Weaver was ready to become a snitch. It wasn't a crazy idea. Randy had run for sheriff a few years back. And he was a military veteran. So they thought he might be sympathetic to law enforcement. And the ATF had some dirt on him. In June, two ATF agents found Randy and Vicky at a restaurant in Naples. They told Randy they had evidence of the illegal shotgun sale. They offered to play him the tapes of his conversation with Faidley. And told him he was likely to be indicted on federal charges.

[Narrator/Host]

Unless we asked for his assistance in providing information on certain persons associated with the Aryan Nations.

[Ruth Graham]

Herb Byerly, one of the agents, testified about the offer later. He'd been Kenneth Fai's supervisor.

[Narrator/Host]

Mr. Weaver was informed if he assisted. This information would be relayed to the appropriate assistant U.S. attorney, Mr. Weaver, Byerly

[Ruth Graham]

and his colleagues at the ATF figured it could go one of two ways. Either Randy would become an informant. And gather dirt on his white supremacist associates for them. Or he'd submit to charges on the gun sale. And probably cop a plea or get acquitted. The experienced criminals they usually dealt with. Would not have viewed the gun rap as a big deal. Randy was not an experienced criminal.

[Narrator/Host]

Mr. Weaver declined, saying he would not be a snitch. And that providing information or assistance was against his beliefs. Do you think now, looking back at it, Mr. Violet. That you might have handled certain things differently if I had? If I know what I know now about the whole thing? Yeah. Well, I would certainly have. Knowing the totality of the whole thing. Yes. It's like taking your family on a Sunday drive. And being involved in a car accident. And your family is killed and you survive. If I knew that, would I take my family on the Sunday outing. No.

[Ruth Graham]

The atf, in all their planning, missed the fact that their prospective informant was kind of a paranoid extremist. Here's Jess Walter again.

[Jess Walter]

He and his wife saw it as the first step of. Of a coming apocalypse that they thought would come through federal law enforcement anyway. You have to remember this is a family that went from Canada to Bonner's. Ferry was widened to four lanes. They believed it was so that tanks could come down. UN tanks for the coming takeover. So these were people who were living in fear. And when federal agents approach them and say, we want you to be an informant, that's what they think is going to happen. They think that this is the beginning of the end.

[Ruth Graham]

Randy was indicted on the gun charges in December of 1990, just as Herb Byerly of the ATF had warned. As the court date approached, Randy and Vicki vowed he wouldn't surrender to the authorities. In January, he and Vicki ventured into town for supplies after a series of snowstorms. Driving their pickup, they saw another truck with a camper broken down on a bridge. A man with shaggy hair was tinkering with the engine and a woman without a winter coat was beside him. The Weavers stopped to help. The stranded motorists were in fact undercover ATF agents. Other officers rushed out of the camper to arrest Randy. Vicki got into a struggle with the female agent and ended up face down in a snowbank. Randy was released on bail the next day and returned to the cabin. That futile encounter only made the Weavers more determined to resist.

[Bill Moreland]

Weaver would pay no heed to anyone.

[Ruth Graham]

Bill Moreland.

[Bill Moreland]

Again, he was steadfast in his intention to stay on the mountaintop cabin with his family. His friends and neighbors would bring him up, you know, survival supplies and food and bring up his mail. And they were as linked to the outside world.

[Ruth Graham]

Randy didn't show up for his court date. Just like they had always predicted. It was the Weaver family against the government.

[Jess Walter]

They will live in a constant state of alert, waiting for this coming invasion that they've been expecting since they left Iowa.

[Ruth Graham]

It's amazing that it's almost like they started with this paranoia and they somehow manifested it. It became true on both sides.

[Jess Walter]

It's a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. You know, the federal law enforcement goes out looking for radicalized white supremacist criminals and they end up creating one. And the Weavers, you know, venture out in the world thinking that the world's going to end, you know, through a federal attack. And in both cases, a sort of blindness, you know, leads to this tragic outcome.

[Ruth Graham]

What Happened at Ruby Ridge captivated the far right because they see it as a story about an innocent family, a white family specifically assaulted by a federal government that they love to hate. But for me, Ruby Ridge is compelling precisely because it's something much less comforting. A story with unsympathetic protagonists, well meaning villains and unexpected heroes. A story that, if just a few things had gone differently, never would have been a story at all. Next week on Standoff, we'll find out what happened in August 1992 when a dog barked and set off two days of violence and chaos at Ruby Ridge.

[Narrator/Host]

The marshals are going up there to arrest him. So they go up there. They don't even know what they're doing. They're from back east. They haven't even been here before.

[Jess Walter]

Samuel Weaver screamed, you killed my dog, you son of a bitch. And opened fire on them.

[Ruth Graham]

To hear the rest of this series, subscribe to Standoff what Happened at Ruby Ridge? In Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, what Happened at Ruby Ridge is brought to you by Slate plus, Slate's membership program. Slate plus members get a bonus episode of the show every week with in depth interviews going further into the characters and themes. This week I chat with Slate's Chow 2 about the origin of the series, and then I interview Jim Aho, an Idaho sociologist who studied the Order and other white separatist groups back in the 1980s. To hear that episode and help support the show, sign [e-mail] standoff. Standoff is produced by me and Nina Ernest, with production help from Andrew Parsons. Slate's editorial director for audio is Gabriel Roth. Thanks to Chow Tu, Dan Dundon, Jess Walter, Andrew Perela at New Hampshire Public Radio, Willa Paskin, Dan Kois, Bill Carey and Michael Josh. And special thanks to Patrick Weigel and Lenae Preston at the National Archives in Seattle.