American Experience

MAN

At the time, it was all shrouded in secrecy. But there were meetings at the highest of levels, clear back to Washington, D.C., like, "How can we effect the arrest of this man?" Some people, I later found out, were actually advocating a front-on tactical assault, to go up there with armored personnel carriers and, you know, whatever kind of armament they needed and just shoot it out with him. I told Randy, I said, "You don't really understand "what the full weight and power of this government is, "and what it would really mean if you want a confrontation with it." I think I used the term that it's like a locomotive. Once you get it rolling down the tracks, it's hard to stop. You're murderers! (protesters yelling) You call yourself an American? These are Americans! These are God-fearing people! You don't even know your Constitution. Go back and read what your founding fathers said! (protesters shouting)

WOMAN

We were taught from a very early age to never point a gun at anything you don't plan on shooting. Dad was very, very strict about that. Guns were tools in our family. They were there for protection from wild animals, or to hunt game. Guns were there for a purpose.

MAN

This is north Idaho, 1992. 50 miles or so from the Canadian border. Here's a man with his family, armed to the teeth, who knew that a federal judge wanted him to come to court, and he was refusing to do that. And he lived with the consequences.

WOMAN

When Mom and Dad met, Dad was in the Army. He was a Green Beret. It wasn't until he was home on leave that they actually got together and really started to date and fall in love. I have memories of hot Iowa summers and cold Iowa winters, and Grandma and Grandpa's farm. I do remember my parents discussing always wanting to move to the mountains. So, you know, they learned about how to raise kids without electricity and things like that. And then I remember they started to sell things, and Mom and Dad, you know, just prepared by buying stuff you might need living on top of a mountain somewhere. (auctioneer counting bids)

MAN

Randy Weaver wanted to move his family from Iowa to Idaho partly because of the farm crisis. By the early 1980s, the economy in Iowa had been deteriorating for some time. Fuel and input costs were rising, and farmers were going bankrupt. You don't need to sell it. You don't need to sell it. I'm going to sell it. It's part of my business, part of my livelihood. You don't have to do away with the farmers, sir. I'm not doing away with the farmers. Give the farmer a break! Farmers are losing their family farms, interest rates are 15, 16, 18 percent. Randy's working at the John Deere factory, afraid that he was going to get fired. And for the Weavers, who are starting to explore the idea of Bible prophecy, they began to see things that were occurring as... as being part of the end times, the very thing that the Book of Revelations was promising. (protesters chanting) And I think those connections were the ones Vicki especially was making.

WEAVER

My mom interpreted some of the things in the Bible very literally. There's a verse in the Old Testament about not having graven images, and so there was a point when the TV, you know, kind of left, and my parents started to dig deeper into the Bible. They did believe in an apocalyptic future. And I think that they started to take that more seriously as they got ready to leave Iowa. Fear was a big part of it. As they leave Iowa, they're telling their friends and family that a great conflagration is coming and they must seek a place to be safe. They must go to the West and find a mountaintop. They were really imagining this fortress, this place where they could really separate themselves from a corrupt and dangerous world.

MAN

It was incredibly remote. I mean, they had no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. We're talking about a cabin made by Randy Weaver and his wife. On a mountaintop. They thought that they were living on the edge of Armageddon, and this was the sort of sanctuary that Randy and Vicki Weaver wanted.

WEAVER

There was definitely work involved in living that way. Dishes and firewood and hauling water, and doing laundry with a washtub and a washboard. I loved to garden, so as I got older, I kind of took over the gardening. Sam and I, we worked hard, but we enjoyed working and helping Mom and Dad out. You depend on each other for your survival, living that way, so we were very close. Growing up on the mountain, there was so many things for Sam and I to explore and learn and do every single day. I was best friends with my brother, and I think it was good for us, I really do.

MAN

I don't know that Randy Weaver knew at the time that they moved to Ruby Ridge that they would be so close to the Aryan Nations compound, which was just 60 miles south. But they started showing up. At first, it was purely social. They attended family picnics and those kinds of things. But as Randy began to interact more with them, he started to buy into the message. We, the white race, lost the war. A plague known as Jews won the war, infiltrated our bloodstream of our race in every country in which we reside.

LEVITAS

The founding principle of the Aryan Nations was something called Christian Identity theology, which teaches that white Anglo-Saxon Christians are the true descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and that those who call themselves Jews are not merely imposters, but are actually children of the Devil. It also teaches that African-Americans and other people of color are subhuman.

MAN

Every major city in the United States is now non-white, following the catastrophic destruction of our race in the so-called Civil War, or the War Between the States. America shall again become white and Christian. There'll be a lot of blood running one day. I don't advocate it, I don't want it, but it's going to come, as sure as day follows night and night follows day.

WALTER

The Weavers were on this journey of religious discovery that had led them to isolate themselves and to live in a style they believed was Old Testament Christian. Christian Identity shared some of those tenets, so I think the Weavers saw some kinship in these people. But they also were really clear that they didn't want to join, that there were things they didn't believe, that they didn't agree with. Essentially, for the Weavers, the Aryan Nations was a chance to meet people, and, you know, and to make friends.