Federal prosecutors investigating FBI officials' involvement in the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, have struck a plea bargain with an FBI headquarters manager charged with the obstruction of justice in the case. Prosectutors filed a one-count felony information in Washington yesterday against E. Michael Kahoe, a suspended FBI executive. The charge carries a top penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. News sources report that the filing of criminal information rather than a grand jury indictment means that Kahoe has agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators. No court day has been set. The 1992 standoff led to the death of white separatist Randy Weaver's wife, son, and a U.S. marshal. Weaver and a friend, Kevin Harris, were wounded during the standoff. Four other suspended FBI officials are still being scrutinized for their roles in the incident, including Deputy Director Larry Potts, who supervised the case from FBI headquarters. Kahoe is charged with destroying a written FBI "after-action critique" between January and April of 1993 so that it would not be available to prosecutors when Weaver and Harris were charged with killing William Degan, a U.S. marshal. Kahoe was charged with not only destroying his copies of the critique, but ordering a subordinate to destroy all copies of it. A key issue in the investigation of FBI officials is who approved the "shoot on sight" policy for snipers at the siege, the Associated Press reports. Potts and the FBI's field commander at Ruby Ridge, Eugene Glenn, have given conflicting testimony under oath as to whether Potts approved it. Glenn claimed Potts ordered that agents "could and should" shoot to kill any armed adult male spotted in the open, but Potts denied saying "should."
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