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 Reuters August 14, 1997 Waco By Patrick Connole  New York--Most Americans think of Waco as the Texascity
where a fire engulfed suicidal Branch Davidian cultists in a 1993 horror show, killing
76 and ending a 51-day siege by federal agents.Two years to the day after cult leader David Koresh and most of his followers perished, Timothy McVeigh made sure Waco never faded from memory, marking the April 19 anniversary by murdering 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. For four years since Waco, conspiracy theorists have spun yarns accusing the government of covering up "what really happened." Waco has become a "Who killed Kennedy?" for the 1990s, helping those who believe U.N. black helicopters are patrolling America's heartland spread their gospel. McVeigh's defense attorneys at the bombing trial in Denver portrayed their now-doomed client as a believer in such theories, beliefs that they said transformed the ex-Army gunner into an anti- government crusader.  Now, everything we know or think we know
about Waco and conspiracy may change as charges of a government cover-up move from
Internet home pages to the arthouse cinema. A new documentary film, "Waco: The
Rules of Engagement," has changed some perceptions.Since its debut at Robert Redford's Sundance festival in January, the nearly three-hour work, which opened the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York, has toured the country, challenging assertions by the Justice Department and Attorney General Janet Reno that Davidians, not government agents, burned their compound and shot one another. FILM ASKS MOTIVATION FOR WACO RAID The filmmakers are anxious to separate themselves from anti-government types who may use the documentary to promote their theories, but they also feel they need to promote what they believe is an important film. "What McVeigh did was reprehensible, but why haven't the mainstream media and federal officials questioned Waco? One of the things we tried to accomplish in the film was to ask what was the motivation for doing the Waco raid," said Dan Gifford, a former CNN newsman who with his wife Amy Sommer-Gifford, is the film's executive producer. © 1997 Reuters News Service |