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Liberty September 1997 Documenting Disaster By Gary Alexander Waco: The Rules of Engagement, William Gazecki's compelling new film documentary, is not for the faint of heart. The images are disturbing and unforgettable: images of the charred, contorted, bullet-ridden bodies of children and women, bent into jagged angles after lethal CS gas was poured into their living quarters, forcing them to flee, only to be immolated in a bonfire ignited by government tanks; images of government agents firing on civilians running for cover; images of politicians lying again and again about the government assault on the Branch Davidian home near Waco, Texas, on February 28, 1993, and the FBI massacre of the survivors on April 19. Rules of Engagement does a heroic job of uncovering the truth about what happened and why. Sketchy federal records show only that the Davidian women and children burned to death or suffocated, and 19 others--probably men who stayed in the home until fire drove them out--died of gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, we'll never know the whole story--both because journalists were kept more than a mile from the site of the action, and because most of the evidence was destroyed or conveniently "lost." Among the most critical evidence that disappeared is: › the building's front door, which would have proved whether the Davidians or government agents fired the first shots--and which survived the fire, but somehow disappeared while in FBI custody; › the crime scene video made by the coroner's office, which was commandeered by the FBI and then lost; › the entire crime scene itself, which was burned down and then bulldozed the same day. Using Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) technology, Waco: The Rules of Engagement offers dramatic new evidence about what happened that day. Edward Allard--a former supervisor at the U.S. Army Night Vision Laboratory and an acknowledged expert on this technology-- presents FLIR footage showing flashes that appear to be muzzle blasts fired from automatic weapons, directed into the concrete bunker where the women and children had sought refuge during the final assault. Other FLIR footage shows ground troops directing automatic weapons at a single exit door at the back of the compound, and bullets fired at people trying to escape from the burning building. The film includes footage of a tank deliberately driving over the body of a Davidian, just to make a point to those inside. We see FBI agents using hand-held grenade launchers to hurl firebombs and grenades, and tanks blowing gaping wholes in the side walls of the Davidians' wooden structure, stockpiled with kerosene for heating; the whole place was a tinderbox. (Some of the kerosene had been improvised into Molotov cocktails, apparently intended for defense against tanks. Perhaps the Davidians remembered Hungary in 1956.) We hear the Davidians' frantic calls to 911, begging for a cease-fire. Rules of Engagement also shows FBI negotiators lying repeatedly to the Davidians and the public. This should be no surprise of course, since many of them came from the same gang that was in charge at Ruby Ridge, where killers shot "at first opportunity" under the revised "rules of engagement" drafted in Idaho that summer, then lied about what they had done to the Weaver family--and got away with it. Public tolerance of Ruby Ridge paved the way for Waco in the same way that tolerance of earlier holocausts in Armenia and the Ukraine paved the way for Hitler's Final Solution. The Seeds of February 28 The film offers ballistic evidence that the BATF fired first. but we may never know the truth about the initial engagement on February 28, because the FBI subsequently "lost" the most conclusive evidence (the front door). And the duplicity of the FBI's actions following the assault is equally disturbing. One of the most dramatic scenes records FBI agent Jim Cavanaugh's negotiations with the Davidians. Cavanaugh repeatedly and adamantly claims that there were "no guns on those helicopters" that day. Koresh screams, "Now Jim, you're a damn liar....You're sittin' there and tellin' me that there were no guns on that helicopter?" Cavanaugh replies, "I said they didn't shoot," and Koresh again calls him a liar. The agent answers, "Well, you're wrong, David," but later modifies his story again. "What I'm sayin' is that those helicopters didn't have mounted guns, ok?" For nearly two hours that day, Davidian Wayne Martin--one of the first blacks to graduate from Harvard Law School--was yelling at the various 911 operators on duty, "Stop the shooting, and we'll stop shooting." The firing finally stopped when the BATF raiders ran out of bullets and grenades. The film shows them backing up, with their hands up. The were sitting ducks. Why didn't the "evil cultists" just pick them off, one by one? Maybe the Davidians were not "turn-the- other-cheek" Christians. But they certainly weren't the aggressive monsters that the BATF and FBI claimed they were. The True Villains in the Drama The day before the final attack, Koresh had finished tape-recording his essay on the Seven Seals--the same day he told the FBI that he was ready to come out with his tape and surrender. This was a first for Koresh. He had promised once before to come out on a certain day if the government would agree to an uncensored radio broadcast of his tape. Later, he changed his mind on that offer and said God had told him to wait. On the basis of this single vacillation, the FBI maligned Koresh as a chronic liar--though FBI lies were far more frequent. Indeed, even the politicians don't come off as badly as the bureau--men and women just "dong their job," coldly and brutally killing innocent people, posing for "trophy" photographs over the smoldering ruins, then going abut their business as if nothing had happened. The hypocrisy of politicians, to be sure, was shameless: Janet Reno smilingly referred to huge tanks as "big rental cars," playing bumper pool on the side of a building; Rep. Charles Schumer railed bitterly against any witness at the Congressional hearings who defended individual rights or religious freedom, and baldly claimed that the Davidians most likely killed themselves. But it is the working press that comes off worst of all. The mythically fearless folks who risk their lives to get a good picture, in Bosnia or Vietnam, felt compelled to obey FBI orders at Mt. Carmel. After the February 28 shootout, the FBI kept the press so far away that the back of the complex was completely out of view. Journalists had no way of knowing what happened on April 10, when, the FLIR film shows, the FBI used automatic weapons to cut off the women and children's only escape route. We never heard a peep of protest about that quarantine. The Davidians tried to communicate with the press and the world by hanging signs on the front of the building. "Rodney King, we understand," said one; "FBI broke negotiations, We want press," said another. I'll bet you never saw these signs on television or in the newspaper. The press didn't just back off. The journalists in Rules of Engagement come off as flippant, cynical wimps, pawns in the hands of government spin-doctors like Bob Ricks. Safe and comfortable in their press room, reporters didn't press for the truth. Instead, they were content to accept BATF and FBI accounts of what was happening. And the blackout continues. All major news organizations have been sent the FLIR film. CBS and 60 Minutes have had the film for more than two years, but will not show it. Neither will any other news organization. (The FLIR film was also available at congressional hearings, but the committee was not interested.) Rules of Engagement was first shown at the Sundance Festival in January, then in a pair of trendy Berkeley and San Francisco film houses in March. Otherwise, it has had only limited distribution. I saw it in a nearly empty theater in Washington, D.C., on the last day of its engagement. The lack of a crowd was no surprise: it was no longer being advertised or even listed in the newspapers. The film originated with Michael McNulty, an insurance salesman in Corona, California, who kept tracking down Waco evidence in his spare time. Trying to figure out what was really happening on some FBI film footage, he consulted Hollywood producer Dan Gifford, who in turn sought the help of William Gazecki, a professional sound mixer whose credits included films such as The Rose and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. After viewing the tape over and over, they agreed that it should be made into a one-hour TV documentary, accompanied by some expert testimony. Dan Gifford and co-producer Amy Sommer Gifford agreed to finance the film. The Giffords are "mainstream Hollywood," transplants from New York's trendy Upper West Side ("Woody Allen Country"). Dan Gifford had previously worked for MacNeil-Lehrer and CNN in New York; Amy Sommer had worked on lighter material for A Current Affair and The Maury Povich Show. Gazecki was a Buddhist and a Deadhead who'd always voted Democrat. "When I started this thing, I hated guns to the degree that I was terrified of 'em. I still don't' like 'em. But I will say that in learning more about how this country was founded, the reason we were given the right to have guns is in case we're gonna have to overthrow our government again." All the principals had their original intentions reversed by the facts. Gazecki said: "When my friends heard about it, their reaction was 'Those nuts deserved what was coming; anybody who molests children should be lined up and shot.' I'm talking about the touch-feely, liberal crowd in Santa Monica; they said that." Dan Gifford added: "Doing a piece like this was the farthest thing we had from our minds." Amy Sommer is perhaps most uncomfortable with the public view of what happened: "It infuriates me that Waco has become an issue of far-right gun nuts. It's a human rights violation. No one seems to remember, because they're too busy arguing over pieces of metal, that 90 human lives were lost. There are 90 grieving families out there. Eighty-six of those people were pretty bloody weird. But we have something called the First Amendment. It gives you the right to be weird." A Separate People What is a Branch Davidian, anyway? Does anyone know, or care? One major reason why up to 90 people died near Waco, Texas comes down to the fact that the Davidians and the U.S. government spoke different languages. They may as well have conversed in Mandarin and Portuguese for all they understood each other. The Davidians were "religious nuts"; as such, they spoke in biblical terms. BATF and FBI agents were secular, "law-and-order nuts." But the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team wouldn't use a translator (and there were many around) who could speak the Davidian language; apparently, the Hostage Rescue Team was not all that interested in talking them off the cliff. In brief, the Davidians are a branch (offshoot sect) of the Seventh Day Adventist church. The Davidians first broke away in the mid-1930s, and they eventually formed a religious commune in east Texas. As often happens, there eventually was a power struggle. In the end, the loser of that struggle went to the press, and to the government, with all the dirt he had on the sins of the winner--including allegations of child abuse, stockpiling of guns, and polygamy. Not Unprecedented Waco: The Rules of Engagement is a difficult film for me to review. From 1963 to 1975, I was a member of another sect, which also grew out of the Seventh Day (Saturday/Sabbath- keeping) churches. Like the Branch Davidians, the Worldwide Church of God was founded in the mid-1930s. And like the Davidians, it later added a Texas campus (compound?) and published unique theories on the book of Revelation and its Seven Seals. Also like the Davidians, my church was raided by the government--albeit with a more peaceable outcome. The Worldwide Church of God and its affiliate, Ambassador College, were raided by dozens of officers of the state of California early one Wednesday morning in 1979. Thankfully, it was not an armed church, so nobody was killed. But the agents did take over all administrative offices and commandeered church finances for nine months because ofallegations from dissident groups that these funds were being misused. (Are church finances now subject to state control? If so, heaven help us all.) On April 19, 1993, I happened to be in a barber shop when a television news bulletin showed the blaze. I said, "This is a sad day for America." The barber shot back, "They're a bunch of religious nuts with guns. They asked for it. Good riddance, if you ask me. And most of the rest of the customers in the shop agreed with the barber. Rather than say to a man with a razor at my throat that this nation was founded by religious nuts with guns, I shut up. In the Tiananmen Square Massacre (siege?) in 1989, Americans across the nation rooted for the lone man standing up to a tank. (The tank backed off, if you remember). But in America, when a lone Davidian is trodden under by our tanks, the majority seem to root for the man in the tank, rolling over the nut on the ground in the name of "law and order. In this age of pro forma apologies for sins of 150 years past--when neither perpetrator nor victim is alive--why are there no apologies by the assassins in the agencies--the men who pulled the trigger? If Janet Reno ever has the pride to fall on her sword, or Ruby Ridge assassin Lon Horiucki is prosecuted for murder, or Bill Clinton apologizes to the families of the 80 or 90 fallen "nuts" in Waco--with the same flourish offered in the tributes to the 168 victims in Oklahoma City--I'll begin to believe that Americans truly care about the outcasts Christ referred to as "these, the least of my brothers." © 1997 Liberty

 



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