Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org> mumbled:
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.
Lest any naive readers who aren't familiar with the details of the event buy this kind of spin-doctoring, please be aware that the woman in question was probably not visible to the sniper, and it is almost certain that he was aiming at her armed husband who was shooting back. The bullet travelled through a door or some such obstruction I think (I forget the details) before hitting the victim. You could more reasonably blame the husband for having the stupidity or carelessness to get in a firefight with his wife and child in the building. More generally, don't buy any of the spin that anonymous cypherpunks (and plenty of named ones) like to put on such stories without reading the more balanced accounts yourself. Anonymous, above, would _like_ you to think of the FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi as a murderous baby-killer who chuckled gleefully when he saw his opportunity to take out a toddler. Anonymous is no different from hatemongering pamphleteers and propaganda ministers in any penny-ante revolution or Orwellian minitru. Perhaps he's on the side of the good guys, but his tactics have the same stink that I recognize from reading the propaganda blurbs of the bad guys. Regards, Zooko, Journeyman Engineer