(This might lead somewhere interesting...)

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Thursday August 9 3:43 AM ET

Report: FBI Probed for Treatment of Siege Critics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating claims senior FBI officials retaliated against three agents who uncovered shortcomings in the 1992 bloody siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The probe looks into whether one agent's career was derailed and another was threatened after they openly criticized FBI flaws in the standoff in which the wife and son of separatist Randy Weaver and a federal marshal were killed, the newspaper said.

The Post quoted officials, who were not named, as saying the investigation -- headed by Inspector General Glenn Fine -- would also focus on complaints about a double standard of discipline at the FBI that allows top managers to avoid punishment.

The investigation will examine a former assistant general's decision not to censure former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who retired in June, or discipline three other FBI officials for condoning the shortcomings in the Ruby Ridge case. Freeh may be interviewed, the officials were quoted as saying.

The 11-day standoff at Ruby Ridge began with a shootout between three federal marshals and Weaver, his 14-year-old son and a family friend Kevin Harris. A marshal and the boy were killed in the initial exchange.

The following day FBI sharpshooters came to the scene along with hundreds of lawmen. One FBI sniper shot Weaver's unarmed wife, Vicki.

The Post said the investigation into the treatment of the agents who complained had been under way for months but was broadened in July.

The inquiry followed complaints from agents John Roberts, John Werner and Frank Perry who examined the inadequacies of the FBI's early reviews of the Ruby Ridge siege, the Post said. The three FBI agents had been assigned to work on the case for the Justice Department.

The agents said they were outraged when they learned that recommendations for disciplinary action against Freeh and three FBI veterans had been rejected in the final days of the Clinton administration.

The FBI's reputation has been affected by the Ruby Ridge incident. In recent years, the agency has also been hurt by revelations that a top agent allegedly spied for Moscow since 1979, by a failure to give Timothy McVeigh's lawyers documents relating to the Oklahoma City bombing and problems in the investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear scientist at Los Alamos.

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