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The Boston Globe An FBI coverup at Waco? By Robert Healy
First shown at the Sundance film festival, the documentary is called "Waco: The rules of engagement." It is provocative because it tries to prove that after the botched ATF raid in February, the FBI, in an act of revenge, trapped the Davidians in a section of the compound with automatic-weapon fire and then created the fireballs with an ignited tear gas spray. The documentary does not prove this case. But there are disturbing elements in the film. There is the picture produced by what is called "FLIR" forward-looking infrared. It is a black-and-white print taken from an FBI aircraft minutes before Mt. Carmel was consumed in flame. FLIR is like the moving image of radar over a bombing target, except that FLIR reflects degrees of heat with bright light and cold with darkness. Unlike a regular camera, it needs no light. It was used extensively in Desert Storm, where night movements of "hot" tanks and trucks were easily detected. A former Army expert on FLIR, Edward Allard, who served as a supervisor and systems analyst for the Army's night vision laboratory, points in the documentary to what he called automatic weapon fire where the FBI was positioned. The automatic fire was directed at a single exit door from the concrete storage room in the compound where Koresh had directed the women and the children to go during the raid. "There is nothing in nature with that kind of signature," said the expert describing the bursts of automatic fire. (At the congressional hearing there was testimony that the flashes could have been caused by reflections of heat from the sun.) It is clinical and powerful material. There is the question of who shot first in both assaults. An ATF agent in tape recordings of exchanges between him and Koresh first denies that there was gunfire from the ATF helicopters early on the scene. When Koresh repeatedly called the agent a "damned liar," the agent backed off, finally saying that they did not have "mounted" automatic weapons on the helicopters, but the agents did have weapons. There is the spent pyrotechnic grenade found in the rubble and the testimony by the Houston fire official that in the end the compound had the configuration of a potbellied stove with the aerosoled tear gas producing a fireball or flash fire in three separate parts of the buildings. And finally there is hard testimony by the local officials that the FBI covered up the crime scene and autopsy of victims.
But there is evidence that Koresh talked about mass suicide and that he clearly anticipated and viewed this confrontation as apocalyptic, with the forces of evil represented by the FBI and the forces of good within the compound, and that for the Davidians to be killed in this confrontation was to be martyred. At the congressional hearings there was testimony from one of the Davidian children, who said that when she was 10, Koresh sexually abused her, and that he molested other children. She testified that Koresh trained his followers for a confrontation with agents and prepared them to commit suicide. Also soft-pedaled was the testimony of the local sheriff, Jack Harwell, who said the Davidians were good people, didn't bother anyone, and minded their own business. What the documentary fails to mention is that at the outset of the dispute with Koresh, Koresh's neighbors complained to Harwell about the cache of illegal weapons the Davidians had accumulated and asked Harwell to call in the federal agents, which he did. There are other holes in that. But what is haunting is the clear picture of the terrible force the bureau brought against the Davidians and the question of who killed those children, Koresh or the U. |
(Washington) It is the documentary
that will not go away. Its subject is four years
old, the object of two government studies and congressional
hearings. it is
Waco. It
is blood and fire; the killing of four lawmen of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and
six members of the Branch Davidian religious group in the first shootout on Feb. 28, 1993, a 51-day
siege of
the Davidians by the FBI, and the final apocalyptical scene of tanks mashing in walls and fireballs
devouring Branch Davidian leader David
Koresh and more than 80 others, including women and
children, in the final
assault at a place called Mt. Carmel on April 19, 1994.
The documentary is clearly
tilted toward Koresh. He is described as not
being a "sociopath," that given the right
kind of negotiations and patience
he might have walked out of the compound with his followers.