Ambush at Ruby Ridge

Bock chronicles the U.S. government's elaborate 18-month surveillance of Randy Weaver, an Idaho backwoods resident indicted on a fireamrs charge many claim was a government act of hatred and blackmail. The resultant 11-day standoff and Weaver's cabin and the paramilitary assault that ensued are described through-never-before-told accounts. Photos. Simultaneous release with the made-for TV movie.

August 21, 1992: A six-man team from the Special Operations Group of the U.S. Marshals Service, dressed in full camouflage regalia and armed with silenced automatic weapons, moved onto Randy Weaver's 20-acre property known as Ruby Ridge. In less than 36 hours they had killed his son and an FBI sniper had shot his wife as she stood in the door of the cabin holding her 10-month-old baby. Almost immediately the agents declared a hostage situation and a massive paramilitary buildup began, which eventually reached more than 400 heavily armed agents, including most of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and a large array of assault vehicles and weaponry.

Through court transcripts, private testimonies, and interviews with insiders, local residents, and friends of the Weaver family, journalist Alan Bock debunks the myth that government agencies are beyond the realm of entrapment, cover-ups, and even the killing of innocent people. He overturns the hyprocrisies and contradictions of the FBI, and takes you straight to the scene-first, to the tragedy of Ruby Ridge, then to the colorful neo-nazi- and protester-filled roadblock, and finally to the courtroom, where prosecutors and flamboyant defense attorney Gerry Spence go head to head.

But beyond being a shocking account of bizarre circumstances, Ambush at Ruby Ridge challenges the personal and political implications of the most notorious trial in Idaho history. Maybe if the ambush on David Koresh's Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, hadn't happened as the Weaver trail was underway, the events of Ruby Ridge might be seen as a regional story of government bungling with tragic results. But Waco did happen, causing many Americans to ask hard and fundamental questions about what the United States government has become. Unlike with Waco, the government may actually be held accountable for what it did at Ruby Ridge.