Ruby Ridge and the Waco Siege happens under Ronald Reagan?

What the reaction be if these events happened in, say, 1986-1987 rather than 1992-1993 like OTL?
 
Who was Attorney General that era? Would he have been prone to create similar conditions as Reno did? If not him then was there any other potential Regan appointee who would have?
 
Very interesting premise. The 1988 election should be very interesting at least in the Democratic primaries.
Who was Attorney General that era? Would he have been prone to create similar conditions as Reno did? If not him then was there any other potential Regan appointee who would have?
Ed Meese.
 
I expect Waco to be a minor blip in the news cycle, if it even makes

No one is going to accuse tax cutting commie hating all American loving Uncle Ron of trampling on American liberties
 
ATF wouldn’t be trying to justify their military equipped enforcement arm during that time period.
David Koresh would have been quietly arrested during one of his weekly trips to the town post office.
 
I expect Waco to be a minor blip in the news cycle, if it even makes

No one is going to accuse tax cutting commie hating all American loving Uncle Ron of trampling on American liberties

And IIRC, the OTL response to Waco among conservatives wasn't universally hostile: a lot of them realized that Koresh was a bit of a whackjob, or at least not the kind of guy they'd wanna be seen as championing.

Under Reagan, even if the Waco siege still results in mass death, conservatives will be even less likely to try and whittle it into a political shank. Which might mean that a guy named Timothy McVeigh doesn't get all caught up in the feverish outrage. (I say "might", because I don't know how much McVeigh's w0rldview was influenced by the right-wing commentariat. Also, a Waco occuring before the Gulf War probably butterflies away the precise composition of McVeigh's political psyche.)
 
I can't see Meese creating the sort of confusion over threat & sloppy aggression as Reno. Some other guilty party would have to be in place.

The start of the Ruby Ridge and Waco investigations predate Clinton/Reno.

Reagan's ATF started investigating Ruby Ridge in the mid 1980s when they were concerned about illegal arms being spread in white supremacy groups, and the ATF first filed charges against Weaver purchased sawed off shotguns from an informant in 1990, with the firefight happening in August 1992, during the '92 campaign.

For Waco, the tip to the ATF that they were collecting illegal weapons came in early 1992 and the investigation started later that summer. Barr also authorized the initial use of informants and surveillance in Waco. There's no reason to believe that if we move the timeline up a few years, Barr is going to be any less hostile toward the verified statutory rape and illegal weapons buildup going on in the compound.
 
I understood all that. My remark was aimed st Reno's sloppy & aggressive policy flowing down. Her record in Florida showed the same sort of overreach.
 
I understood all that. My remark was aimed st Reno's sloppy & aggressive policy flowing down. Her record in Florida showed the same sort of overreach.

You seem pretty fixated on Janet Reno as a singular villain when we have the full start to finish cycle of Ruby Ridge, and the initial decisions to execute the government's involvement in Waco before she took control. I get that there's this narrative in some circles that she's incompetent, but most of the evidence points to some pretty similar decision making patterns across administrations.
 
No idea how much was Reno and how much was subordinates. But the ATF did chose an aggressive path at Waco when Koresh could have been easily arrested outside the compound.

The ATF consulted many cult experts, former members, etc. Everything warned against storming the compound.
 
As the management consultants say, The fish rots from the head first. Not interested on a discussion of Reno. I see the problems of Ruby Ridge, Waco not in investigation, but in execution of enforcement. A more professional AG might have started permeating a more professional attitude downwards. The ATF especially needed a dose of that.
 
You seem pretty fixated on Janet Reno as a singular villain when we have the full start to finish cycle of Ruby Ridge.
Weaver was pretty much entrapped by an ATF informant in 1989 into making a shotgun to the Informant's desired dimensions, just under the legal length.
The Idea was to force him to infiltrate and inform on the Ayran Nation, that he knew members of-- in exchange for charges being dropped.
He was pretty much setup from there on out.

You don't need to be a Nazi to think that the Government in the form of the ATF was in fact, screwing him over, hard, before the shooting.
 
No idea how much was Reno and how much was subordinates. But the ATF did chose an aggressive path at Waco when Koresh could have been easily arrested outside the compound.
The Davidian raid was authorized by subordinates many levels below Reno as Attorney General and far down into the ATF has a separate agency. Prior to the raid and shoot out, Koresh was simply not on the national law enforcement radar and Reno was not briefed regarding any proposed actions to be taken against them.

Ruby Ridge, however, was different. The Aryan Brotherhood were a national level law enforcement priority. As a result, investigations directed at them needed approval at the level of the Attorney General.

Though there may of been some wiggle room regarding the initial approaches to Weaver as he was not a member, but a somewhat tertiary associate, once Weaver refused to appear for trial he was given Aryan Brotherhood handling status. Any further actions against him needed approval from way up the chain of command. Such authorization had not been given to conduct close surveillance of his cabin (situation leading to the initial gun fight).
 
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