Ruby Ridge Shooting Rules Are Assailed : Probe: Key Justice Department official backs suspended FBI deputy director. But she criticizes communication during the controversial siege.

The Justice Department’s No. 2 official testified Wednesday that she believes a suspended FBI official’s denial that he approved controversial shoot-to-kill rules in the 1992 shootout at Ruby Ridge, Ida.

But while Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick’s testimony provided a boost for former Deputy Director Larry Potts, she said she found it “appalling” that he failed to determine what the rules meant when he gave his approval to the FBI’s on-site commander at Ruby Ridge. The on-site commander claims that Potts approved one set of rules while Potts says that he approved another.

Gorelick appeared before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism, which is trying to determine responsibility for the so-called “rules of engagement” in the Idaho siege, in which the wife of an anti-government fugitive was killed by an FBI sniper after the fugitive’s 14-year-old son and a deputy U.S. marshal had died in a shootout a day earlier.

Also on Wednesday, Potts drew support for his version of events from recently discovered notes that he said he made at the time of the siege. Those notes did not include the provision that snipers “should” fire on any armed adult male outside the remote cabin of Randy Weaver, who was wanted on illegal-weapons charges.

Instead, Potts’ handwritten notes stated: “Adults who are seen with a weapon are to be considered an immediate threat and appropriate action can be taken.”

But Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) questioned the authenticity of the notes, citing an undated typewritten version of the shooting rules that Potts said he had an FBI clerk make. That version says that agents “may” use deadly force--rather than “should”--against any adult “observed with a weapon in the area of the Weaver home or the general location of the gun battle.”

Eugene Glenn, the FBI’s on-site commander at Ruby Ridge, has told the subcommittee that Potts had approved the rules that snipers “should” fire on armed adults.

Gorelick, asked by Sen. Herbert Kohl (D-Wis.) who she thought had approved the rules, said: “I think Mr. Potts and Mr. Glenn discussed Mr. Potts’ approval of the rules but neither one of them took the time and effort, which I think is appalling, to determine which rules they were talking about when they agreed.”

The failure to establish responsibility produced an anguished question from Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Ida.), who has been sitting in on the hearings because his home state is involved: “Why won’t someone stand up and say: ‘I was in charge and I was responsible?’ ” He added: “Nobody’s willing to say, ‘I did it.’ ”

Glenn, among those most severely disciplined for their roles in the siege, charged in a letter last May to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog unit that the FBI’s investigation of the incident had been flawed and that a cover-up was taking place.

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When the unit’s inquiry into the incident turned into a full-fledged criminal investigation, Potts was among five FBI officials suspended with pay until it is concluded.

Potts reiterated his innocence Wednesday, after being recalled by the subcommittee to testify about his notes--which only recently surfaced at the FBI.

“I have not shredded or thrown any documents away, and I have not asked anyone to do so,” Potts said.

Listing steps that the Justice Department and the FBI have taken to avoid a similar tragedy, Gorelick noted that the Justice Department has adopted a written, uniform policy on the use of deadly force. The policy applies to all of its law enforcement agencies as well as Treasury Department units.

The policy provides that law enforcement and corrections officers “may use deadly force only when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

That policy is similar to the FBI deadly-force policy that was in effect at the time of the Ruby Ridge siege, but with the word “imminent” added.

The new policy also adds this provision: “Deadly force may not be used if an alternative reasonably appears to be sufficient to accomplish the law enforcement purpose.”

In addition to the FBI, the policy applies to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Bureau of Prisons and inspectors general at both the Justice Department and the Treasury Department.

It also applies to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Customs Service, the Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service, Gorelick said.