Declan McCullagh writes:
The FBI will continue to stand behind Lon Horiuchi, an FBI sharpshooter charged last month by local authorities with involuntary manslaughter for the shooting death of Vicky Weaver, wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver, during a deadly standoff in Idaho, Freeh said. "We fully support him," Freeh said. "It was a horrible tragedy. It was a mistake on his part, but we believe he was acting as he was trained to do. He was within the scope of his authority. ... He reasonably believed at the time that what he was doing was proper."
It's amazing that Freeh would admit that shooting an unarmed woman holding an infant is what "he was trained to do" and was "within the scope of his authority" and that he "reasonably believed [it] was proper" to do so. What are they teaching at FBI school nowadays? Horiuchi's defense is really no different than Timothy McVeigh's: "yes, it was a mistake but he felt it was justified and reasonably believed at the time that what he was doing was proper..." Too bad McVeigh didn't have a badge saying FBI on it.