Lon Horiuchi: American Sniper By William Norman Grigg
Pro Libertate Blog
February 6, 2015
Somewhere, a figure clothed in a pseudonym has been tracking the box office returns of American Sniper with great interest and no small measure of envy. He may be among the tens of millions who contributed to its unprecedented commercial success, assuming that a visit to the local Cineplex is permitted under the terms of the federal witness protection program.
Many who have seen the cinematic tribute to the late Chris Kyle describe the experience in religious terms, recalling how a chastened, reverent silence descended on the theater as the end credits rolled. If the individual once known as Lon Horiuchi was part of the congregation, the impious sentiment of jealousy may have tainted his devotion. After all, he had also been true and faithful to his commission as a state-employed killer, shooting people from long distances at the command of his superiors; why isnt he the object of similar veneration?
Chris Kyle, as everyone is required to know, was a Navy SEAL. Lon Horiuchi was an infantry officer and graduate of West Point before becoming a sniper with the FBI and a member of its Hostage Rescue Team, an Orwellian designation for a unit that functioned as a death squad at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993.
Both Kyle and Horiuchi have been described as deeply religious and devoted family men. To the extent presently known, Kyle was a much more prolific killer than Horiuchi, which makes him more admirable in the eyes of the segment of the public that regards state-sanctioned murder as the highest and holiest public calling.
Unlike Horiuchi, who retreated into anonymity after the August 1992 federal standoff at Ruby Ridge, Kyle became a best-selling author-by-proxy and a reality TV celebrity following his retirement from the military. The resulting sense of artificial intimacy with the public helps explain why millions claimed to have felt a personal loss when Kyle was killed by a fellow Iraq war veteran.
His funeral was a state-focused orgy of grief rivalling that decreed by Soviet officials in 1982 following the death of Leonid Brezhnev. When Horiuchi eventually pays his debt to nature he will earn a brief mention in the Whatever happened to? section of whatever media outlets happen to notice his passing.
This is tragically unfair. If proficiency at state-authorized killing constitutes heroism, Horiuchi has been shamefully denied the honor to which he is due.
The victim of Horiuchis first documented kill was a woman who was holding an infant. Kyle inaugurated his career in the same fashion.
I looked through the scope, Kyle narrated by way of his ghost writer. The only people who were moving were [a] woman and maybe a child or two nearby. I watched the troops pull up. Ten young, proud Marines in uniform got out of their vehicles and gathered for a foot patrol. As the Americans organized, the woman took something from beneath her clothes, and yanked at it. Shed set a grenade.
Without any of the agonized reluctance exhibited by his cinematic avatar, Kyle shot the woman twice.
It was my duty to shoot, and I dont regret it, Kyle insisted. The woman was already dead. I was just making sure she didnt take any Marines with her. It was clear that not only did she want to kill them, but she didnt care about anybody else nearby who would have been blown up by the grenade or killed in the firefight. Children on the street, people in the houses, maybeher child
. Kyle described this woman, who was trying to defend her neighborhood from violent foreign invaders, as blinded by evil. She just wanted Americans dead, no matter what. My shots saved several Americans, whose lives were clearly worth more than that womans twisted soul.
Vicki Weaver, the victim of Horiuchis kill-shot, was standing in the doorway of her familys home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The family had come under federal siege because of Randys refusal to become an informant within the Aryan Nation white supremacist group. Randy had been manipulated by an ATF undercover operative named Kenneth Fadeley into selling a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. Eight months after that transaction, two of Fadeleys comrades in that detestable organization demanded that Randy become an informant, threatening his home and family if he didnt cooperate.
For more than two years, the Feds and their dutiful servants in Bonner County pursued Randy and his family. The US Marshals Service became involved, infiltrating the familys property and seeding surveillance devices near the cabin. In August 1992, as they prepared to arrest the fugitive, one of the marshals alerted the familys dog, Stryker. Randys only son, 14-year-old Samuel, went to investigate, suspecting that Stryker might have encountered a predator. In fact, he had albeit of the two-legged, tax-devouring variety. A gunfight erupted in which US Marshal William Deegan was killed (almost certainly by friendly fire), suffering a fate not inappropriate for any other prowler or burglar. As Samuel fled to the cabin, he was shot in the back ripped apart by automatic weapons fire.
Within a day, the Weaver familys pathetic dwelling had been transformed through official propaganda into an armed compound the term used to describe any habitation owned by people the Regime has decided to kill. Randy and a family friend named Kevin Harris had stepped out of the house to tend to the body of 14-year-old Sammy Weaver, which was in an outbuilding nearby.
The rules of engagement for Horiuchi and the rest of the HRT stated that FBI snipers could and should shoot any armed male seen outside the familys cabin. That authorization was broadly comparable to the rules of engagement under which Kyle operated while in Iraq: Our ROEs when the war kicked off were pretty simple: If you see anyone from about sixteen to sixty-five and theyre male, shoot em. Kill every male you see. That wasnt the official language, but that was the idea. (Emphasis added.)
The could and should language employed at Ruby Ridge was revised and expanded without official sanction. In subsequent congressional testimony, former FBI sniper Dale B. Monroe insisted that anyone inside the cabin was also fair game, because of the threat they supposedly posed to FBI agents operating a helicopter in the airspace above the property.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Ruby Ridge was considered a kill zone just as Fallujah, Iraq would later be for Kyle and his comrades. Before Horiuchi slaughtered Vicki, he attempted to murder Randy with a shot to his back intended to sever his spinal cord. A sudden and unanticipated movement by Randy saved his life: The intended kill-shot struck his shoulder and exited his armpit. Another shot struck Vicki in her head as she cradled her 10-month-old daughter Elisheba. The bullet passed through her body and wounded Harris. Although the FBI would later insist that Vickys death was inadvertent, Horiuchi himself would confirm that he knew the identity of his victim.
A psychological profile of the family produced by the Bureau identified Vicki, rather than her ex-Green Beret husband, as the dominant personality in the family. James Bo Gritz, an ex-Special Forces Colonel who acted as a negotiator during the 10-day standoff, later testified under oath that the FBI had deliberately targeted Vicki out of the belief that she would kill her children rather than ever allow them to surrender.
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Poster Comment:
Can you believe that Horiuchi has a Facebook page?