Hiding The Truth Breeds Paranoia
You don’t have to be a paranoid kook who thinks the New World Order is coming after you in black helicopters.
Don’t have to be a militia fruitcake playing with AK-47s in the woods. Or a guvmint-hatin’ Dittohead.
Certainly you don’t have to be callous about the Oklahoma City horror.
Don’t have to be any of those stereotypes to wonder if U.S. government officials level with us about law-enforcement fiascos.
Especially the calamity at Waco, Texas.
This is no defense, of course, for Timothy McVeigh, whose obsession with Waco may have led to Oklahoma City’s insanity. And no slur on the FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms squads’ performance after the Oklahoma blast.
But it’s time to face the music. Right or wrong, actions of the FBI and ATF agents at Waco and in the Randy Weaver shootout should be exposed.
Not only because government arrogance feeds hatreds of arms-toting militia gangs. But because truth hidden festers paranoia. Violence begets violence.
It’s timely for Senate and House committees to bring witnesses, survivors and law agents into the dock. Quickly.
Until Congress lifts the murk, I’ve made three stark judgments about the Waco and Weaver episodes:
Somebody at the top screwed up.
Government officials whitewashed and covered up their actions.
Nobody was fired.
Sure, even the president buys into questionable Waco myths. “Before there was any raid,” Bill Clinton said on “60 Minutes,” “there were dead federal law-enforcement officials on the ground.
“And when the raid occurred, it was the people in their cult compound at Waco who murdered their own children.”
Clinton’s version, frozen in official memory, is debatable.
All we know for certain is that 80 people, including 17 children, were crushed, asphyxiated by gas, shot or burned to death on April 19, 1993.
Plus four Federal agents and six Branch Davidians were killed in the initial February raid.
If Congress wants to unveil Waco’s truth, it should call Dean Kelley, respected legal scholar for the National Council of Churches, who reviewed 1,300 pages of Treasury and Justice Department reports plus the jury trial of Branch Davidian survivors.
Kelly’s chilling conclusions:
The FBI, tone-deaf about religious cults, operated on a fatally flawed model at Waco.
The FBI mistakenly believed, says Kelly, that “it faced a typical hostage-rescue situation, not reality of a band of adults voluntarily following a cult leader (David Koresh).”
Bucking Clinton’s version, federal lawmen had no plans for a peaceful search of the Waco compound but a “dynamic entry” - 70 agents with SWAT gear, ski masks and heavy firepower storming the building, even though they knew surprise was lost.
A Treasury report says Koresh’s followers “ambushed” the ATF raiders. “A more accurate statement,” writes Kelly, “is that they decided to fend them off.”
Who shot first? Unknown. A steel door that could show bullet-hole direction has disappeared.
Who ordered the final assault on the compound, smashing it with tanks, spewing CS gas so potent it’s unlawful in war, that led to a catastrophic fire? Why, asks Kelly, did the FBI have no fire-fighting trucks?
Clearly, Waco was an enormous blunder. No one was fired. The ATF director quit. Two suspended agents have been rehired with back pay.
Same result after the shootout between FBI agents, marshals and the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. The 11-day siege left a marshal dead, Weaver’s wife and young son killed.
A jury, believing the government provoked the gunfight, freed Weaver on the weapons charge.
Again, nobody was fired. The FBI took away a couple weeks’ pay or rebuked a dozen agents. Outrageously, Larry Potts, who oversaw the raid, has been named FBI deputy director.
Goof up, kill people with sniper fire, you’re promoted. Approaching the 10th anniversary of Philadelphia’s MOVE disaster, in which former Mayor Wilson Goode’s cops dropped a bomb that climaxed in 11 deaths, there’s similar missing guilt.
No cop or city official faced criminal charges.
Whether Waco, Ruby Ridge or MOVE, someone should pay when people are killed by official bungling. Treat us like adults. Uncover the facts.
Fortunately, Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., wants hearings on Waco. So does Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., who heads a crime subcommittee.
Under the Nuremberg principles, start at the top - meaning Attorney General Janet Reno, always vague about her Waco role.
“I’ll never forget Waco,” said Reno. “Its ghost will be with me all of my life.”
Chase down the ghosts, name the guilty. Don’t give bombers an alibi for paranoia.
Time to shine light into government’s dirty corners.
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