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The New Republic July 4, 1997 On Films: Apocalypse Now By Stanley Kauffmann By coincidence, on the day that Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death, I saw a documentary called Waco: The Rules of Engagement (SomFord). It would be obscene to suggest that this film affords an iota of a fragment of justification for what happened in Oklahoma City, but Waco vivifies some matters that might easily drive a canted mind further askew. It shows that, despite immense media coverage, despite several books, many of us remain underinformed about the Waco horror. The word "proof" has a forlorn sound in relation to this story, but as this 165- minute film demonstrates, somber questions still hang in the air about it. The director of Waco was William Gazecki; the executive producers were Dan Gifford and Amy Sommer-Gifford. First-class work by all of them and their colleagues. The editing develops rhythmic and thematic shape without distorting the film's reportorial intent. Interviews and portions of testimony on both sides of the story are handled without "tennis" effect. (One side's shots, then the other's.) But of course we know from the start--before the start--that the film would not have been made if the makers had agreed with the government's findings. The first raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, on February 28, 1993, was conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and followed months of planning by that agency. Reason: the religious sect had allegedly been stockpiling weapons, some of them illegal, In fact, the Davidians were conducting a legal gun business to support themselves, though certainly their faith was apocalyptic, leaning heavily on the Book of Revelation, and they were prepared for an apocalyptic end. That first raid was unsuccessful for the ATF (and their publicity person had summoned the press!). Six Davidians and four agents were killed. Then the FBI was called in. The second raid was on April 19, 1993, (Two years later, to the day, the government building in Oklahoma City was bombed.) That second raid ended in the burning of the compound. Seventy-four Davidians, including twenty-nine children under the age of 14, were immolated. Some of the charred corpses had gunshot wounds. We see: footage of the first attack; of the second attack, the metal pipes of a combat emergency vehicle that poured inflammable tear gas into the compound; footage shot earlier by Davidians of themselves (with a camcorder provided by the FBI), all of them happy. We are given a sketch of the history of the sect and of the troubled life of their leader, David Koresh, who was adored. We see interviews done specifically for this film and also large sections of testimony before the Joint Congressional Committee investigating Waco in 1995. We hear excerpts from phone conversations between Koresh and FBI negotiators in the weeks before the second raid; we hear the 911 call from the compound on February 28 after fire had started and the response of the 911 operator, who was either incredibly slow-witted or lackadaisical. Outstanding for me was some of the congressional testimony; the film's interview with Edward Allard, an expert on FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared), the aerial photography used in combat that was used on April 19; and the statements of Janet Reno. At the Washington hearing, the testimony of a young teenage girl who says she was molested by Koresh in truncated by the film editors. (Why? It's relevant that we know about Koresh's sex life, including his many marriages, including some to 14-year olds. We ought to have the chance to weigh whether his disturbing behavior figured in decisions that led to a mass immolation.) We get pungent replies from two seasoned Texas lawyers who had been retained by the Davidians and who refute government accounts of some matters--and who are questioned aggressively by Representative Charles Schumer (a Democrat, just conceivably interested in defending the Clinton administration). Two FBI officials testify forcefully that no FBI agent fired a shot in the April 19 raid. Then Allard shows us through FLIR footage that, after the Davidian women and children had been put into a concrete storage space to protect them during the FBI assault, flashes that might have been two firing machine guns were directed into that concrete haven. Janet Reno appears before the congressional committee and testifies that she is "very satisfied" with the FBI reports that she has seen. When she is asked why, on the morning of April 19, she didn't cancel a speaking engagement in Baltimore so that she could stay in her office and monitor what was about to happen, she replies that, if she had canceled, it might have created a public impression of a great emergency--though the whole country already thought it was an emergency. One point about Reno is omitted from the film and from most discussions of the episode that I have read. Reno assumed the office of attorney general on March 12, 1993--after the ATF raid, which had been under the Treasury Department, and before the FBI raid, which was under her command. She had been catapulted from obscurity into an intense national spotlight, into the middle of a ghastly confrontation--a newcomer surrounded by experienced officials who already had certain views on the Davidian matter. Certainly the FBI was attempting to settle the difficulty by negotiations; almost equally certainly the April attack on the compound might have been delayed or altered by a more experienced attorney general. It's said that Reno agreed to go ahead with the attack because of the reports of child abuse. Later that week the Department of Justice itself stated that it had no evidence of child abuse during the fifty-one-day siege. In my view, the basis of the government's actions against the Davidians is best understood historically. Indispensable here is Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-intellectualism in American Life. In a chapter called "The Evangelical Spirit" Hofstadter says: "The American mind was shaped in the mold of early modern Protestantism...the subordination of men of ideas to men of emotional power or manipulative skill." Examples abound before the Davidians, and since then we have seen Heaven's Gate. What Hofstadter calls "revivalist or enthusiastic movements" have been a continuing worry to American propriety, to rationalism. Fundamentally, far beneath the Waco arguments and testimony, that old and deep conflict is the root of the horror. In the film world, Waco joins the honorably long list of American documentaries that examine governmental actions--the De Antonio-Talbot Point of Order, about Joe McCarthy; Eugene S. Jones's A Face of War, about Vietnam; and many more. Of course, one can treat those films merely as consolations because people were free to make them in this country. But it's possibly not too delusory to think that they contribute to the vitalizing of American conscience. Note. Waco is part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival now touring around, but it has also been given separate release. Already shown in a number of cities, it will appear in several more around the country. ©1997 The New Republic

 


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