New evidence has emerged that an agent with the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team might have opened fire on Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, a central player in an anti-government standoff in Oregon, after Finicum’s truck crashed near a police roadblock.
Several members of the FBI unit were present Jan. 26 when authorities attempted to stop two vehicles carrying leaders of the standoff. During the encounter, two Oregon State Police troopers shot and killed Finicum; eight other people were arrested.
Last week, Deschutes County Sheriff Shane Nelson, who is overseeing the investigation, said he had concluded that “FBI HRT operators fired two shots as Mr. Finicum exited the truck, and one shot hit the truck.” Nelson accused the agents of failing to “disclose their shots to our investigators.”
The FBI agents have denied firing their assault rifles in the incident. But in a recently released interview, an OSP officer told investigators that he spotted two copper-colored rifle casings near where the FBI agents were standing. The Hostage Rescue Team has used copper-colored casings, former agents said; the Oregon State Police uses only silver-colored casings. The copper casings were never recovered.
The Oregonian reported Tuesday that FBI video taken after the shooting shows its agents searching the area with flashlights and huddling. One of them bends over twice and appears to be picking something up.
On Wednesday, a law enforcement official confirmed the video account. If allegations of a cover-up are determined to be true, the incident would be embarrassing to the FBI and deal a blow to the FBI team’s reputation.
The Hostage Rescue Team is a highly trained unit formed after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Many operators were once in the U.S. military and served in the Joint Special Operations Command. The unit has played a role in some of the FBI’s disasters — including raids in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho — and some of its finest operations. In 2013, its operators were involved in the rescues of a 16-year-old girl in Idaho and a 7-year-old boy in Alabama.
Little is known about the operators involved in the Oregon standoff. An OSP trooper told investigators he wasn’t sure whether they used their real names. An investigator described them as “pretty mysterious.”
Finicum and other anti-government activists seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on Jan. 2. Three weeks later, as Finicum and other leaders of the standoff traveled to a meeting in a nearby town, the FBI and Oregon State Police pulled over their vehicles on a snowy highway. Finicum, driving a Dodge pickup that carried four other passengers, attempted to flee, but crashed into a snowbank as he tried to go around the roadblock. Finicum left the truck, and was shot and killed as he appeared to reach for a gun in his jacket. Oregon State Police said they fired six shots, three of which struck Finicum.
Before the shooting, video footage taken by one of the truck’s passengers shows one of its windows being shattered by a bullet as Finicum stands outside with his hands in the air. Investigators say a second shot immediately followed the first, but it didn’t appear to strike the truck.
Photos of the pickup and surveillance video later showed the first bullet had entered the roof at a trajectory that traces back toward the spot where a Hostage Rescue Team operator was positioned.
The FBI declined Wednesday to comment. Earlier this month, FBI Portland Special Agent in Charge Greg Bretzing said, “The question of who fired these shots has not been resolved.”
The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice is investigating. The new information provides circumstantial evidence of possible misconduct, officials said, but is not conclusive.
Former Hostage Rescue Team operators played down the footage, saying it’s common for operators to scour the area for anything that might pose a threat, such as unexploded ordnance. They said it also not unusual for operators to huddle for a post mortem after a mission.
