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August 31, 1999 One whitewash is enoughEDITORIAL Six years after the Justice Department absolved itself and the FBI of any responsibility for the deaths of 80 Branch Davidians during the government siege at Waco, Attorney General Janet Reno appears be buying paint for another whitewash. Miss Reno said last week that 40 FBI agents led by an agency inspector would conduct a new inquiry into the disaster in the wake of revelations that raised serious questions about the FBI's actions the day the Branch Davidians' headquarters went up in flames. Thanks, but no thanks, Miss Reno. The Justice Department, including the FBI, had its chance to get the job done right in 1993 following the horrible conflagration that ended the siege. Now it seems more obvious than ever that it failed. Even New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a staunch defender of the administration, couldn't accept the notion of the agency's investigating itself given its past mistakes. "The FBI had a chance to do this investigation on its own; they clearly muffed it," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." Six years ago, the author of the Justice Department's Waco review, Edward Dennis Jr., said his work led him to conclude that there was "no place" for fault or blame at the agency. True, "mistakes were made," he said in a particularly infamous use of the passive voice, but he carefully did not say who made them. Apparently he didn't even have all the facts. Former Watergate prosecutor Henry Ruth Jr. told the New York Times recently that even at the time, some people thought the Justice Department evaluation was a "whitewash in the sense that it didn't tell the full facts about what was known." The revelations leading to Miss Reno's current discomfort have to do with the news that the FBI actually lobbed military-style incendiary devices at the Branch Davidians that last terrible day, April 19, 1993. The agency says not to worry: It fired the devices away from the building hours before it caught fire; so the FBI isn't to blame. Perhaps not, but the news spurs still more questions. Who, for example, authorized the use of military devices in a domestic law-enforcement rather than wartime setting? What else, moreover, has the FBI seen fit to neglect to mention after all these years? A lot, if one is to believe Michael McNulty, producer of a documentary on Waco that was nominated for an Academy Award. In a CNN interview with Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Mr. McNulty said he agreed that the controversial incendiary devices now in the news probably did not have anything to do with the fire. "However," he said, "what they're not talking about is the pyrotechnic devices that were found at the points of origin of the fire in the rubble of the building after the fire. What they're not talking about is the other types of 40-millimeter munitions that were also found in the aftermath of the fire that definitely were pyrotechnic, and possibly more than that." He added that there is evidence of a gun battle behind the building between the Branch Davidians and members of the FBI and Delta Force, an elite military group. In the past, one might have dismissed such talk as the stuff of paranoid right-wing crazies, but Miss Reno's agency has so little credibility left that it is not in a strong position to dispute the allegations. The first step to reclaiming that credibility is to consider appointing an outside investigator to handle the job. That's what the Treasury Department did in a highly critical but more responsible review of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in its initial raid at Waco. And it's what she should do now. One whitewash is enough.
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