  PRESS | Home | Press | Showings | FAQ | Gallery | Order | Email | |
| Contra Costa
Times April 18, 1997 "Waco" Uses Fed's Footage to Make Point By Anita Amirrezvani Times Staff Writer  "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" is
one of the most troubling and controversial documentaries you'll ever
see. It tells the story of the government's confrontation with the Branch
Davidians, which ended four years ago today. Approximately 80 people died,
including two sisters who grew up in Martinez, in a blaze that consumed
their home.The producers of the film, Amy Sommer and Dan Gifford, decided to take on the project after a friend showed them a copy of a government serial surveillance tape of the armed vehicles that destroyed the building. "It raised a lot of interesting questions that piqued the side of us that used to be in the newsroom," says Gifford, a former reporter for CNN, the "MacNeil Lehrer NewsHour," and the Village Voice. "Also we knew it would be salable." He and Sommer, a married couple, started SomFord Entertainment, a production company in Los Angeles, with the intention of focusing on "entertainment stuff," like made-for- TV movies. But the serial surveillance tape convinced them to dig into the story behind Waco. "A lot of people who saw the initial news coverage had the feeling that it seemed weird; it just didn't feel right," says Sommer, who used to work for "The Maury Povich Show" and International Creative Management. "We wanted to say: 'What's going on?'" "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which was directed by William Gazecki, opened in the Bay Area in late February and showed at a couple of venues through early April. It opens April 26 at Cinema West in Sebastopol. The film builds a case that the Branch Davidians were essentially set up, and that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, (ATF) and the FBI lied repeatedly about their role in their deaths. Although a 1993 U.S. Treasury Department report criticized the way the ATF handled the raid, a Justice Department report the same year exonerated the FBI. A Congressional investigation in 1995 didn't lead to any major punitive actions. The film details how the ATF first served a search warrant on the Branch Davidians to check if they were stockpiling weapons. It's not clear who fired the first shot, according to the film, but the skirmish left four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians dead. The film argues that the ATF chose this ultimately disastrous effort to get some good publicity for the agency, which was facing appropriations hearings. After this debacle, the FBI took over at Waco, and most of the Branch Davidians refused to leave the building during a 51-day siege. Although the Branch Davidians' leader, David Koresh, had promised to come out, he began stalling, claiming that God told him to remain. He was in the process of issuing a theological explanation of the Seven Seals when the FBI began pumping tear gas into the building and attacking it with tanks. One of the most powerful moments in the film occurs when Edward Allard, former manager of the Defense Department's night vision laboratory, says that the infrared surveillance tape conclusively shows that tanks fired bursts of gunfire at the back of the compound, the side that television viewers couldn't see. The FBI claimed that it did not fire weapons, and that the Branch Davidians started the blaze themselves and then committed suicide. "I've taken this tape to four different [experts]. They all said it couldn't be anything but gunfire. It's in coordination with the tanks and it's not random," says Gifford. The film is a powerful indictment of the government, but it's not a balanced view because it doesn't include interviews with government officials. Gifford says that those requests for interviews were refused. "We made repeated attempts with the ATF, the FBI and the Treasury. It was just a complete shutoff," he says. "Waco" starts out with a fascinating look of the history of the Branch Davidians, a group which was started in 1932. It shows David Koresh preaching the Bible to his followers as the literal word of God, and it includes home videos that the Davidians made of themselves and their children after the skirmish with the ATF. "The Davidians were definitely strange; I would not want my sons to marry a Davidian," says Sommer. But did they deserve the treatment they received? The film documents the FBI's harassment of the Branch Davidians, which included shining bright lights on their home at night, playing Nancy Sinatra music, Tibetan chants and the noise made by dying rabbits over loudspeakers, and repeatedly driving over one of their graves with a Bradley tank. "The point has been made several times: Who were the real child abusers, was it the Davidians who forced them to go to Bible class and eat their vegetables, or was it the FBI who pumped tear has in?" says Gifford. The film shows charred, mutilated bodies which are almost too gruesome to look at. Not surprisingly, Sommer and Gifford have taken some heat for the film, "We've been called far-left wackos and far-right wackos, but I think whatever part of the spectrum you find yourself on, 90 human lives lost is a tragedy," says Sommer. "Eighty-six of them were pretty darn weird...but it's that pesky First Amendment that says you have the right to be weird." (The number of people who died is in dispute.) For the producers, the events at Waco prove that the government needs to be more willing to undergo self-scrutiny. "We live in 200 years of uninterrupted democracy, a thing to be incredibly proud of, and I think we have to have more faith that we can look at this," Sommer says. When "Waco" was shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the audience reaction was very strong, but the film didn't get picked up by a distributor. The subject of "Waco" might have made it too hot to handle. Sommer and Gifford are distributing it themselves at film festivals and through theaters. ©1997 Contra Costa Times |
