  PRESS | Home | Premiere | Showings | FAQ | Gallery | Order | Email | |
|
Critics target tactics used on civilian suspectsBy Scott Parks / Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News While the FBI held center stage throughout the Branch Davidian siege in 1993, the American public never saw the depth of the U.S. military' s role behind the scenes. National Guard and active-duty Army units provided federal law enforcement agents more than $1 million worth of support during the events at Waco, according to a U.S. Government Accounting Office audit released last month. But the full scope of the military's role in the tragedy remains hidden in classified government documents. Critics call the Branch Davidian siege a prime example of what can go wrong when law enforcement targets civilian suspects with military-inspired tactics. James Terry Scott, a retired Army general now teaching at Harvard, said new investigations of the Waco siege should focus on policy questions about military involvement. "If any good comes out of these new investigations, it will be to redraw a bright line between the military function and the police function," said Gen. Scott, director of national security programs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The military spent money at Waco to train federal agents in urban warfare tactics and the firing of 40 mm grenade launchers. The military also supplied tanks, helicopters, aerial reconnaissance, munitions and support personnel, according to the GAO report. Recently released records show that super-secret commando units, including members of the elite Delta Force and the British Strategic Air Service, came to Waco during the siege. But the Pentagon says they were only observers and never fired a shot. Throughout the operation, records show, Army lawyers argued about how far soldiers could go in support of civilian federal agents without breaking laws against their direct participation in the initial raid and lengthy siege. More than 120 years ago, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 in response to military excesses against Southerners during Reconstruction. Simply, the law prevented soldiers from acting as police officers. The law remained unchanged until 1981, when Congress amended it to allow the military to assist civilian police in drug cases. Another amendment in 1991 allowed military training of police departments to combat drugs and terrorism. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI used those and other federal laws to gain military assistance in Waco. Justice Department figures show that most U.S. police departments in cities with more than 100,000 residents have paramilitary units and that active military units have trained almost half of them. Police administrators say that the complexity of many drug and counter-terrorism investigations requires expertise and resources they could never afford, and that military support gives them an extra edge. The Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. research organization, recently published a paper titled, "Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments." Diane Cecilia Weber, who researched the paper, argued that police are supposed to use minimum force on suspects and deliver them to court. The military, however, is trained to inflict maximum damage on targets and kill the enemy. "The use of paramilitary tactics in everyday police work should alarm people of good will from across the political spectrum," she said. The ATF's commando-style raid on the Branch Davidians began with the failed attempt to forcibly enter the compound. Fifty-one days later, the FBI ended the standoff by crashing military vehicles into the wooden building and flooding it with tear gas. Then, fires broke out, killing more than 80 men, women and children. Government officials have long insisted that the Branch Davidians - and not the FBI - started the fire. But last month, after years of denials, Justice Department officials conceded that the FBI fired pyrotechnic military tear-gas grenades at the Branch Davidians. The resulting uproar caused Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint former U.S. Sen. John Danforth of Missouri to lead an investigation of what happened at the siege. Mr. Danforth said he will attempt to determine if the federal government killed Branch Davidians on April 19, 1993, and if the FBI or Justice Department covered up wrongdoing. Harvard's Gen. Scott, who commanded Delta Force and other Army Special Operations groups after the Waco siege, said the real issue is whether military tactics should have been used against civilian targets. "The forced entry into a compound like that is a very specialized business," he said. "As a military officer, I'm not sure the military solution is the right solution for law enforcement." What did Delta do? The most dramatic example of military involvement at Waco surfaced last month when federal officials acknowledged that Delta Force commandos were present as observers. Government policy requires that Delta Force's mere existence be kept secret. Known formally as the Combat Applications Group or Special Operations Detachment-D, Delta Force is based at Fort Bragg, N.C. It specializes in urban warfare and hostage rescue. Delta commandos are expert in the close-range use of automatic weapons and explosives to enter buildings, rescue hostages and kill terrorists. Gene Cullen, a retired CIA officer, has said Delta Force soldiers told him that their unit participated in the FBI's final tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound. Congressional investigators are checking out Mr. Cullen's story. Some investigators sympathetic to the Branch Davidians maintain that videotape of the final assault reveals government gunfire being directed at the compound - an allegation the FBI has consistently denied. Gen. Scott, who retired in 1996, said he believes Delta Force soldiers did not participate in the final assault. "If they were there, it was to learn and to advise law enforcement in case they had to assault or take down part of the compound," said Gen. Scott, who was stationed overseas during the Waco incident. Questions about Delta Force are also surfacing in a wrongful-death suit filed against the U.S. government by families of Branch Davidians killed in the siege. In response to questions about the presence of the military's special operations groups at Waco, government lawyers have acknowledged that as many as 10 "technicians and observers" were present at various times through the siege. What equipment they operated and their identities are "classified," government lawyers said in court papers. "Classified" means the federal government believes it can keep the information secret in the interest of national security. Plaintiffs' lawyers contend the government's cloak of national security is meant to conceal embarrassing facts. Attorneys for the Branch Davidians have also asked government lawyers whether any government agency, either U.S. or foreign, fired into the compound April 19. "No person in the employment of the FBI, or under the supervision, direction or control of the FBI, directed gunfire at the Branch Davidians on April 19, 1993," government lawyers responded. A different approach McLennan County Sheriff Jack Harwell was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper on Sunday morning, Feb. 28, 1993, when he heard that the ATF had raided the Branch Davidian commune to arrest its leader, David Koresh, and to search for illegal weapons and explosives. Sheriff Harwell jumped in his car and arrived at the scene to find chaos. ATF agents, dressed in paramilitary uniforms, had attempted a forced entry and been rebuffed by heavy Branch Davidian gunfire. Four ATF agents were killed, and 13 were wounded. "I don't want to say what I thought when I got there," said Sheriff Harwell, an old-style Texas lawman. "I didn't nose into what they were doing. I was not privileged to know what they knew." About eight months before the raid, the Sheriff's Department had handed off the investigation to ATF after learning that the Branch Davidians might be making hand grenades and converting rifles into automatic weapons. Despite his suspicions, Sheriff Harwell said, he thought he could deal with David Koresh and believed he understood the collective mind- set of the 115 Branch Davidians who lived and worshiped at the commune they called Mount Carmel. "I would have handled it differently," Sheriff Harwell said. "I think he [Mr. Koresh] would have come in to talk to me if I had asked him. Then, I would have told him we needed to go back out to the compound to serve these warrants. They thought of that place out there as their country." The path taken by ATF could not have been more different. The drug connection On Dec. 4, 1992, almost three months before the raid, ATF decided to seek military assistance to serve its warrants at the Branch Davidian commune, according to government records. ATF learned it could go one of two ways. Agents could seek military assistance under federal laws that would require them to reimburse the Department of Defense for manpower and equipment. Or they might qualify for free military support if evidence of illegal drugs came up in their investigation. ATF began looking for a drug connection on Dec. 14, 1992, according to GAO investigators. The GAO report said ATF agents found people who told them that Mr. Koresh had said "drug trafficking was a desirable way to raise money." And they found informants who told them that a methamphetamine lab once operated on Branch Davidian property. Criminal record checks determined that several Branch Davidians had been convicted of drug offenses. Defense department records show that some military lawyers suspected ATF of manufacturing the drug connection just to get thousands of dollars in free military assistance. And others, including Sheriff Harwell, said ATF's information appeared to be several years old. Unproven allegations of a meth lab on Branch Davidian property had only been a hot topic before Mr. Koresh took over the religious sect in 1988, Sheriff Harwell said. "I never knew David and the Davidians to be into drugs," the sheriff said last week. With its drug-connection evidence in hand, ATF approached Operation Alliance, a multiagency clearinghouse that rules on civilian law enforcement requests for military assistance in anti-drug cases. Operation Alliance approved the ATF's application and forwarded it to the Texas National Guard and Joint Task Force 6, a special military operation at Fort Bliss near El Paso. Joint Task Force 6's mission is to respond to law enforcement requests for anti-drug assistance. "We . . . found no indication that ATF officials misrepresented the information provided to the military in order to obtain the support, " the GAO report noted. ATF asked Joint Task Force 6 to set up a medical triage center in case agents or Branch Davidians were injured in the upcoming raid. They also asked for "Special Operations Tactics/Close Quarter Battle" training. And they asked for help developing a plan of attack against the Branch Davidian Compound. An eight-man team of Green Berets would be dispatched to Fort Hood, an Army base near Waco, to train more than 50 ATF agents before the raid. But within military channels, lawyers from Joint Task Force 6 and Army Special Operations Command clashed over how to make sure the Green Berets' mission was legal. Finally, lawyers for special operations forces won their struggle to limit the Green Beret training mission. Army medics could train ATF agents how to treat "battlefield" injuries but could not attend the raid. The Berets could train ATF agents in the use of sophisticated firearms, but could not teach them close-quarter battle tactics. And the Berets could teach ATF how to develop an attack plan but not participate in preparing or rehearsing a specific plan against the Branch Davidians. The training at Fort Hood went off as planned Feb. 25-27. ATF raided the Branch Davidians the next day. Military records also indicate that the ATF believed the raid might lead to "a long-term siege." A month before the raid, ATF requested a list of "on-call" equipment it might need from the military. The list included seven armored Bradley fighting vehicles. Soldiers could not drive them during the raid without violating federal law, but could train ATF agents to drive them. The list also included 100 gas masks, 500 sandbags, 90 sleeping bags, 15 night vision goggles, a water tank truck. Ten tents, including one for "VIP sleeping" and one for "VIP meeting," were requested along with electric generators and smoke generators "to cover two square kilometers with concealment smoke." When told of these records recently, attorneys for Branch Davidians said they never understood the depth of military involvement. "They [the ATF] prepared for war against their own citizens," said Rocket Rosen, a Houston attorney who defended one Branch Davidian accused of murdering ATF agents during the raid. ATF agents said it was the apocalyptic Branch Davidians who had prepared for war first, not them. After the ATF raid failed, the FBI arrived to negotiate with the Branch Davidians. Records show FBI requests for military assistance throughout the 51-day siege: the loan of M-1 Abrams tanks, helicopters and big combat engineering vehicles. Military authorities required federal agents to "obscure" U.S. Army markings on any tank, armored vehicle or aircraft "used in an assault role" at Waco, according to records. The FBI also requested and received training in the use of 40 mm grenade launchers, according to the records. Other records suggest the Branch Davidian siege became a real-time laboratory to study Military Operations on Urban Terrain, or MOUT in Army parlance. Records show that at least one commando from the elite British Strategic Air Service, the model for Delta Force, came to Waco as an observer. Another document says a former FBI agent working for a private defense contractor "probably initiated" an FBI request for high-tech surveillance robots equipped with "day and night cameras, forward- looking infrared imaging sensors, acoustic sensors, video recorder, and two-way voice communications." Three robots, all prototypes, were shipped "direct from the factory" to Waco on March 8. They were accompanied by two civilian technicians, a Marine Corps major and an Army captain from U.S. Army Materiel Command. A final entry on the robot records said, "Personnel have been briefed on restrictions on military involvement in civil law enforcement." Investigators will be asking whether soldiers merely served as advisers and observers or took a more active role in the April 19 assault. Gen. Scott said if soldiers illegally attacked civilians at Waco, it could not have remained a secret for six years. But he also said military missions can creep beyond their initial boundaries if not properly managed. Sometimes, he said, the mission is like a poker game. "If you get in for a dime, you can wind up in for a dollar pretty quick," he said. PHOTO(S): 1. (Associated Press: David Philip) A helicopter whizzes low over the Branch Davidian compound near Waco on April 9, 1993. More than 80 people died on April 19 when a fire broke out as government agents stormed the compound. 2. (File photo) Among the U.S. military equipment near the Branch Davidian compound during the siege was the Bradley fighting vehicle, shown on a trailer.
|
