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Free! The Freedom Forum
Online
September 21, 1999
Shunned Waco documentary now sees
light
By Beverly Kees
Pacific Coast Center
BERKELEY, Calif. — Dan Gifford was Mr. Lonely Guy for a few years,
even though his documentary film, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," had
won an Academy Award nomination and later would win an Emmy.
A few art houses ran the film. Most theaters shied away from it, no
public relations firm wanted to handle it, most journalists ignored
it.
Gifford, the film's executive producer, told the California First
Amendment Assembly on Sept. 18 after a screening that he believed journalists
ignored the documentary because most newsrooms are liberal, anti-gun
and somewhat suspicious of deeply religious people. They didn't want
to be seen siding with gun-toting "wackos" against the U.S. government.
Few journalists these days have been in the military or handled firearms
and "they are extremely deferential to law enforcement in these matters,"
Gifford said.
Gifford's appearance at the Assembly was sponsored by The Freedom
Forum Pacific Coast Center.
The two-hour-plus documentary traces the history of the Branch Davidians
and their beliefs and their violent, fatal encounters with the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Four federal agents were killed when they stormed the sect's Mount Carmel
Center. Later 76 men, women and children who belong to the Branch Davidians
were killed, although the FBI asserted at the time that its agents never
fired a shot and that the sect members committed suicide. In recent
weeks, an FBI agent has admitted that wasn't true.
Gifford's documentary, which premiered in January 1997 at the Sundance
Film Festival, shows film of government tanks tearing out large sections
of the center's walls and shooting in flammable tear gas; thermal film
shows rapid-fire gunshots aimed at the center; other film shows corpses
with parts of their bodies sheared off — most likely by the tanks. The
film contains interviews with a Texas coroner and Texas Rangers grumbling
about the FBI taking and then "losing" evidence and destroying the crime
scene.
How was Gifford able to obtain this damning evidence that was never
seen on television newscasts or in newspapers? From the Branch Davidians'
lawyers. "Everything in the film was available in 1993, but politically
no one cared," Gifford said. "Anything that deviated from the official
record was deemed not true."
No one from the federal government would agree to be interviewed in
the film, but there is a lot of footage of officials in news conferences
and giving sworn testimony before Congress.
The FBI is careful in its choice of language. "What for 50 years had
been the Mount Carmel Center became the 'compound,' " Gifford said.
"The Branch Davidians became a 'cult.' " The words were chosen to create
a certain response and the news media picked them up, he said.
Journalists were kept two to three miles away from the center and
could not see what was happening in the rear. What, Gifford was asked
at the Assembly screening, should journalists have done?
"Make yourself a pain in the ass. That's what you're there for. You
are the surrogate witness for everyone," he responded.
Other Assembly participants asked if Janet Reno or congressional committee
members attending the 1995 hearing on Waco had seen the documentary.
"It's available, but they don't want to see it. They dismiss it as
'Ah, that's just right-wing conspiracy stuff,' " he said, and dismiss
him as a right-wing nut.
Gifford, former newsman with ABC News, CNN and the "MacNeil-Lehrer
Report" on PBS, is on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union
of Southern California — "You know," he joked, "that well-known right
wing group."
Ironically, Gifford is now a hero in militia circles, where federal
law enforcement is held in contempt. One radio broadcaster happily assured
Gifford that he was making copies of "Waco" and sending them to militias
all over the country.
But there is comfort for Gifford now. A week before the Assembly,
he and his wife and business partner, Amy Sommer Gifford, were sharing
their dinner table at a New York hotel with their newly won Emmy award
for investigative journalism for the Waco documentary that aired on
HBO. Strangers came up to have their pictures taken with the Giffords
and the Emmy.
It's not so lonely anymore.
© Copyright 1999 Free! The Freedom Forum Online
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