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CIVIL LIBERTIES
November 15, 2000 (ET)
Waco payback
The feds want revenge on a Waco whistleblower
by J.D. Truccille
Original
Article Link The rumors are true! The world has continued to rotate
even as the United States' presidential election remains unresolved.
But don't expect former federal prosecutor Bill Johnston to be too pleased
about the onward course of events; one of the things rotating is his
butt, on a spit over a fire set by one-time colleagues pissed-off by
his whistleblowing ways.
Former assistant U.S. Attorney William Johnston was, by all accounts
once upon a time a happy Justice Department camper, enforcing the laws
of the land, good, bad and indifferent, from his base in Waco, Texas.
Unlike some of his colleagues, though, Mr. Johnston apparently believed
that the word "Justice" extended beyond some print on his paycheck,
and demanded more than lip service from employees of the United States
government.
When the controversy over the Waco debacle came to a boil last year,
Bill Johnston came across evidence that not all government pronouncements
made about the events of 1993 were entirely true, and that federal officials
were sitting rather firmly on information that cast doubt on the official
story. Johnston first served as a go-between, gaining access to key
evidence for Mike McNulty, who worked with Dan Gifford to create the
excellent documentary,
Waco: The Rules of Engagement and was, at the time, producing
Waco: A New Revelation.
This did not please Mr. Johnston's fellows at the Justice Department,
who began to treat him as some sort of pariah.
The next step in Bill Johnston's evolving martyrdom came with a
letter he sent to Attorney General Janet Reno, which was subsequently
made public. He wrote, in part:
As I have watched the responses made by the Department of Justice
to
the recent Davidian evidence controversy, I have formed the belief
that facts
may have been kept from you-and quite possibly are being kept from
you even
now, by components of the Department. ....
Last week, a fax which originated with the Department of Justice came
to me.
The fax was in three pages. The first was a copy of handwritten notes
which
had apparently been written by a paralegal who assisted in the Davidian
trial
preparation. The notes were of an interview of an FBI agent which
was
probably conducted in 1993. The notes reflect that the agent said
that
he fired ferret rounds and a "military gas round." ....
It appears that someone was making decisions about whether the
plaintiffs in the civil case, or others, should have access to these
documents. It is my own hypothesis that the Torts Branch has had these
documents for years, and that they decided not to make them available
to the plaintiffs. ....
Shortly thereafter, Johnston was
pulled from the case and a few months later, in January 2000, he
quit the Justice Department. At the time, the Dallas Morning News
reported that "the strain of the last six months, a period in which
he has been ostracized by federal colleagues outside Waco, was a major
reason for his decision to leave the office he opened for the Justice
Department in 1987."
Incidentally, the full details
of the mess are available at the Web site of the Dallas Morning News,
which has been the single mainstream news site to thoroughly and fairly
cover the unpleasant revelations about government misconduct at Waco,
the related litigation, and former Sen. Danforth's
whitewashing report on the fiasco.
Well, now it's the fall of 2000, U.S. District Judge Walter Smith
and former Sen. John Danforth have officially opined that federal agents
committed no important transgression at Waco in 1993 or in the subsequent
handling of evidence, and the matter is off the news radar across the
country. It's payback time.
At the instigation of John Danforth, now acting more like a hit man
than an investigator, the one government whistleblower in the Waco case,
Bill Johnston, has been
indicted on federal charges of obstructing the special counsel's
investigation. That's right, the man who revealed the coverup is accused
of impeding justice, with the threat of prison time as the special booby
prize for revealing his colleagues' shenanigans.
Mr. Johnston's great crime appears to have been to withhold several
pages of notes that show that he was long aware of some of the information
that he revealed in 1999. He acknowledges his error, but argues that
he was afraid that his colleagues, who had clearly taken umbrage at
his revelatory ways, would use the information to crucify him. What
he did was illegal, no doubt, but would seem to pale in comparison to
the conduct of ATF and FBI agents at Waco in 1993, and Justice Department
officials at the subsequent trial and in the years after.
For example,
quoting the Danforth report on the conduct of Ray and LeRoy Jahn,
the husband-wife federal team that directed the prosecution of surviving
Branch Davidians:
The Office of Special Counsel has investigated exhaustively the conduct
of the Jahns before,
during and after the criminal trial of the Davidians to determine
whether they engaged in a cover
up of the FBI’s use of three pyrotechnic tear gas rounds at Waco on
April 19, 1993....
As detailed below, the Office of Special Counsel has concluded that
the Jahns knew as early as
November 1993 that the FBI had fired pyrotechnic tear gas, that they
had a legal duty to
disclose this fact, and that they failed to do so.
What penalty did the Danforth report recommend?
The Special Counsel also believes that there is sufficient evidence
to conclude that the Jahns
conducted themselves dishonestly and unprofessionally, and the Special
Counsel therefore
recommends that the Jahns no longer be permitted to serve as Assistant
United States
Attorneys.
So, let's get this straight. The penalty for arguably fixing a criminal
trial is to be fired, but the penalty for covering your ass is criminal
prosecution?
This looks an awful lot like crude official revenge against a whistleblower,
and a shot across the bow to any other government officials with loose
lips.
Make no mistake, Bill Johnston is no pristine hero. He was a "good
soldier" for the government for many years, and participated in the
prosecution of the Branch Davidians. In that case, he was part of the
team that turned convictions on minor counts into sentences that were
denounced by the jury forewoman and were finally ruled illegal by the
Supreme Court just this year.
But everybody has an opportunity to do both good and ill in life,
and Johnston did the right thing when he helped a documentary maker
gain access to key evidence, and then when he blew the whistle on a
coverup by his Justice Department colleagues.
We should give Johnston a pat on the back - and offer him the chance
to prosecute some of the folks still warming seats at the Justice Department.
© 2000 by CIVIL LIBERTIES
All rights reserved.
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