Waco: The Rules of Engagement - New York Times Article

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The New York Times
August 19, 1997

Four Years After the Flames of Waco,
a Film Keeps the Doubts Smoldering

By Sam Howe Verhovek

Houston, August 18--The questions about what really happened near Waco, Texas, more than four years ago will not go away: not just in the minds of those obsessed with the notion of a Government conspiracy but in the minds of thousands of curious Americans who are turning out to see a documentary, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" that has been causing a stir at film festivals and in theaters around the nation this summer.

For Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City bomber who made a veiled reference to the fiery deaths of 80 Branch Davidians at his sentencing last week, "the fire of Waco continued to burn," one of his lawyers said.

That fire may have burned out of control in Mr. McVeigh, but he is hardly the only one to ask the questions: what was the Government doing out in the middle of the Texas prairie to begin with? Why, 51 days later, did Federal agents go into the Branch Davidian compound with tanks? How did the fire that consumed the compound start?

A typical reaction to the new film came from Scott Hannah, a 29-year-old sales representative here who watched it this summer at a screening at Rice University. Like many people who describe themselves as not inherently anti-Government, he said he had come simply because he was "upset with the original course of events" and wanted to learn more about what happened.

"I'm even more upset after getting more information," Mr. Hannah said after seeing the film. "It's scary what certain people given a little power can do."

Sissy Allen, a 73-year-old retiree, said after viewing the film, "The Government declared war against its own people."

The documentary, lasting 2 hours 15 minutes, examines the siege, drawing on interviews, Congressional testimony, Government tape recordings of negotiations, and some striking videotape of David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians, a religious group., and others inside their ramshackle home during the standoff. It will hardly be the last word on the subject. Some of its more sensational allegations, including one that some Federal agents may have shot at the Branch Davidians as the fire raged, cannot be definitively proved (or disproved, for that
matter), and the Government has staunchly dismissed that particular charge as utterly false.

"Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which cost $1 million, was not a film bankrolled by anti-Government militias but by a group of independent filmmakers who say they are generally left-leaning and who argue that questioning what the Government did at Waco should have nothing to do with fueling the hatred of militia groups. As one of the film's producers, Amy Sommer Gifford, has put it, "What I want to know is, when did the wacko right take over the issue of questioning authority?"

But since its debut at the Sundance Festival early this year, the documentary has been provoking audiences, from the Human Rights International Film Festival in New York City to a recent packed showing at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. In September, the film will have its busiest month, with screenings at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, New York, as well as in Minneapolis, Los Angeles; Kansas City; Chicago; Cleveland; San Jose, California; Cincinnati; and Vancouver, B.C.

Partly like a Texas version of Wounded Knee and partly like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Waco is probably fated to remain shrouded not just in controversy, but in mystery as well. So much of the evidence was destroyed in this fire that many questions will never be satisfactorily answered, both about how the shooting began on February 28, 1993, leaving six Branch Davidians and four Federal agents dead, and how the building came to burn down 51 days later.

There were several quickie television movies about Waco, a few books, and a documentary called "Waco: The Big Lie," which was widely circulated among militias and other anti-Government groups but never caught on with the public, probably because its characterization of the Branch Davidians as almost total innocents and Government agents as flame-throwing monsters struck many people as too imbalanced.

Dick J. Reavis, the author of "The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, 1993), who appears on the film during his testimony before Congress, has not gone so far as to say that the new film settles all the questions. But in an article earlier this year in the liberal Texas Observer magazine, Mr. Reavis wrote, "'Rules of Engagement' presents a new and serious demand for an unfettered re-examination of what happened four years ago."

The documentary, he added, "further erodes the official version of what happened in Waco in April 1993. With any luck, the film will create enough public pressure to elicit new information about a mystery that refuses to die."

The documentary hardly presents Koresh in a flattering light. He speaks for himself, on videotapes the Branch Davidians made of one another with a Government-provided camera during the standoff but that were not provided to the media at the time.

"Is my great, wonderful looks something that just women can't resist, huh?" he asks at one point, dressed in his undershirt and slouching against a wall. "It has everything to do with the Seals, you know?" he adds, a reference to the Book of Revelation, from which he preached to his followers.

I'm sorry some of you guys got shot," Koresh tells Federal negotiators at another point, "But hey, God will have to sort that out, won't he?"

And the scenes of other Branch Davidians, many of them vacant-eyed or seemingly fixated on him as he spoke, may do little to change the perceptions of many Americans that they were lost souls, following the wrong man to salvation.

Nevertheless, what the film does show is a group of placid-looking people in their home, taking care of their children, studying the Bible, not seemingly intent on Armageddon.

The local sheriff, Jack Harwell, appears in the film. "We had a bunch of women, children, elderly people," he says. "They were all good, good people."

And those images have clearly led some in the audience here, and elsewhere, back to the original question: Why did the Government raid the compound to begin with?

"I'd always been intrigued by Waco," said John Givens, a 37-year-old engineer. "I smelled a rat. I find it hard to believe that these people fought 51 days tooth and nail to survive, then suddenly decided to kill themselves. That doesn't seem to square."

Who fired first has never been proven and almost surely never will be, because much of the critical evidence is unavailable. Officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insist that the Branch Davidians fired first, while surviving Davidians say the Government did.

After a trial of 11 of the survivors in San Antonio in 1993, several jurors said they could not conclude. There was some evidence that a Government agent may have shot a barking dog as the raid began, which provoked Branch Davidians inside to begin firing. The film covers in some detail the chilling 911 call from inside the compound placed by Wayne Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate who later perished in the fire with four of his children.

"There's 75 men around our building and they're shooting at us!" Mr. Martin shouted that day. "Tell 'em there's women and children in here and to call it off!"

A jury in San Antonio acquitted the surviving Branch Davidians put on trial of all murder and conspiracy charges, while eight were convicted of lesser charges, largely relating to illegal weapons possession.

The documentary treats all of this in some detail, then moves on to the siege and to the events of April 19, arriving at the controversial conclusion that Government forces may have fired on the compound. Using FBI-provided video and Forward Infrared technology, a thermal-image vision system with which many Americans became familiar during the Persian Gulf war, the documentary shows several bursts of light that one former Defense Department expert classifies as likely machine-gun fire.

A variety of other experts have since come forward in news accounts, some to agree with the assertion, others to dismiss it, and others to say that there is simply no way to conclude for certain from the available film. In a motion in response to a civil suit that has been filed by several Branch Davidian survivors and relatives of those killed in the fire, the Government has rejected any allegation of reckless or criminal behavior at the compound as outrageous.

If anything is certain from the reactions to the documentary, it is that the controversy over Waco will not die easily. At the screening here in Houston, several people described the film as brilliant, shocking, or both. A few hecklers shouted obscenities at the screen every time Attorney General Janet Reno or practically anyone else in authority appeared, while more than one viewer came away unimpressed, describing this film as very one-sided and "totally out of balance."

In any event, many seemed to come out as baffled as they were when they went in.

"It's still a mystery," said George Szontagh, a 44-year old house inspector. Federal officials, he added, "were following a procedure that worked for them in the past, which was to use overwhelming force, and this time, it didn't work. Since then, the rules have changed."

© 1997 The New York Times