Randy Weaver To Tell His Side Of Standoff At Ruby Ridge

SANDPOINT, Idaho - White separatist Randy Weaver and his eldest daughter, Sara, are writing a book about the siege at Ruby Ridge.

Weaver has formed Ruby Ridge Inc. and will publish the book himself next month and market it on the Internet.

Weaver's wife and teenage son, along with a federal marshal, were killed in the infamous 1992 standoff.

"I want the American people to understand how my daughters and I felt when all this . . . was going on. It was a tough time. It is something we will never get over," Weaver said from his home in Marion, Mont.

No one knows what it was like to have his three daughters watch their mother die on the cabin floor, he said. Sara was 16 at the time.

"It's going to be our feelings as things happened," he said of the book. "There will be several things in there that have never been brought to light and a little about how we feel now."

Weaver wants to warn people about a government that he said forgets it is supposed to be serving the people.

"I want the American people to realize the government can do what they want and, in most cases, get away with it," he said. "They didn't at Ruby Ridge. They got caught with their pants down."

Weaver, his family and friend Kevin Harris were surrounded by federal agents at his mountaintop cabin. Government officials wanted Weaver for failing to appear in court on an illegal-weapons charge.

Agents went on a surveillance trip to Weaver's cabin in August

1992. The Weavers spotted the team and a gun battle erupted. Marshal William Degan was killed, as was 14-year-old Sam Weaver. The next day, an FBI sniper shot at Randy Weaver, wounding him. Another shot by the sniper, intended for Harris, killed Vicki Weaver instantly.

Weaver and Harris were acquitted of murder in federal court in 1993. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi is scheduled to stand trial next month for killing Vicki Weaver. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter by Boundary County Prosecutor Denise Woodbury.

Weaver wanted Horiuchi charged with murder, just as he was years ago.