Waco 2005 12th Anniversary PowerPoint Presentation/Movie

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Waco 2005 12th Anniversary PowerPoint Presentation/Movie
http://www.apfn.org/Movies/waco.ppt

There are NO Statutes of Limitations on the Crimes of Genocide!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/genocide.htm

Why Waco?

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/whywaco.htm
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WACO ~ One of the Biggest "Federal Lies" of All Time
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wacolies.htm

Rapoport-Hubble Report
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/rapoport.htm

FBI, David Koresch, "Defense Electronics" and Igor Smirnov
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/smirnov.htm

Waco & The Drug Mafia:
http://www.konformist.com/vault/wacodrug.htm

WACO WALK
During the 1995 congressional hearings on Waco, Rep. Tom Lantos
(D-Calif.) was mystified that "the lunatic fringe still clings to
the notion that there was a gigantic government conspiracy that
brought about this nightmare." He said "it is difficult to see how
any rational human being subscribes to such a notion." But as you
examine the details of what happened at Waco and what government
officials said about it, the tendency to see a conspiracy is not so
hard to understand.

The bald-faced lies highlighted in Waco: The Rules of Engagement,
William Gazecki's critically acclaimed documentary, leave you
shaking your head. The catalog of incompetence, arrogance,
ignorance, recklessness, dishonesty, and moral obtuseness in No
More Wacos, David B. Kopel and Paul Blackman's comprehensive
account of the disaster, is overwhelming. In many ways, it is
easier to believe that the whole thing was planned by a few evil
men at the top than to think that it unfolded haphazardly, without
rhyme or reason.

But the most troubling thing about Waco, the deadliest law
enforcement operation in U.S. history, is the absence of a grand
conspiracy. As Kopel and Blackman show, the investigation of the
Branch Davidians by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms,
the BATF's February 1993 raid on Mount Carmel, the 51-day FBI
siege, the April 19 assault that led to the final fire, the trial
of the survivors, and the subsequent explanations can all be
understood in terms of prevalent prejudices and familiar failings.
Hostility toward private gun ownership and unconventional religions
played an important role in the government's actions against the
Davidians and in the public's indifference to their fate. Another
conspicuous factor was the tendency for overconfident people to
screw up, dodge responsibility afterward, and rationalize their
behavior as justified by some greater good. As scary as it is to
contemplate, it's doubtful that anyone involved in this shameful
episode felt in his heart that he was doing wrong.

At the same time, to blame the deaths of 86 men, women, and
children (including four BATF agents) on a series of errors does
not do justice to the government's conduct at Waco, which rose at
least to the level of negligent homicide, or to the cowardly
cover-up that followed. And to blame the dead themselves is
audacious, since all would be alive today but for the government's
gratuitous use of force. Yet Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who makes an
appearance toward the end of Waco: The Rules of Engagement, managed
to do both. "The record of the Waco incident documents mistakes,"
he said. "The record from Waco does not evidence, however, improper
motive or intent on the part of law enforcement. David Koresh and
the Davidians set fire to themselves and committed suicide. The
government did not do that."

Five years after Mount Carmel went up in flames, the view that the
Branch Davidians did it to themselves--which is also the position
taken by President Clinton and Attorney General Janet
Reno--remains quite popular. But as Rep. Lantos might say, it is
difficult to see how any rational human being subscribes to such a
notion. If you know an otherwise decent and reasonable person who
still believes the Davidians basically had it coming, show him
Waco: The Rules of Engagement, which had a limited theater run and
is now available from Amazon.com and Laissez Faire Books.

The documentary, which was nominated for an Academy Award, is
powerful enough to appall people who have followed the story
closely. Judging from the positive reviews in publications not
known for their pro-gun or pro-religious sympathies (The New
Republic, The New York Times, the Boston Globe), it has an even
stronger impact on people who have not given Waco much thought.
Director William Gazecki and his co-writers, Michael McNulty and
Dan Gifford, skillfully weave together excerpts from the
congressional hearings, press conferences, and negotiation tapes;
interviews with witnesses, experts, and local officials; and images
of Mount Carmel before, during, and after the siege. Their approach
is calm and matter-of-fact, but their juxtaposition of official
statements with reality is devastating.

Once you get your friend's attention with the movie, give him No
More Wacos, which meticulously documents and analyzes what went
wrong and suggests specific reforms to rein in federal law
enforcement. The book, which won last year's Szasz Award from the
Center for Independent Thought, relies exclusively on material
already in the public record. But Kopel, research director at the
Colorado-based Independence Institute, and Blackman, research
coordinator for the National Rifle Association's Institute for
Legislative Action, put it all together in one coherent narrative,
with appendices detailing the legal changes they recommend, laying
out the chronology, identifying the important figures, and
summarizing the negotiation tapes. Their thoroughness makes the
book a very useful reference.

The most startling revelation in Waco: The Rules of Engagement is
that government personnel apparently fired automatic weapons into
Mount Carmel during the FBI's assault, deterring the Davidians from
escaping the deathtrap their home had become. Two professional
analyses of infrared footage shot by a government plane during the
assault identified several instances of machine-gun fire coming
from the outside. As the movie reminds us, the FBI repeatedly
bragged that it did not fire a single round at Waco--an assertion
that was not challenged during the congressional hearings.

Kopel and Blackman complain, with justification, that the hearings
degenerated into a partisan battle, with Republicans trying to pin
the blame on Clinton appointees, even though the BATF investigation
began under the Bush administration and "almost everything that
went wrong at Waco...was the result of acts by career federal
employees." But Gazecki's film shows that the Republicans were not
the only ones who were willing to obscure the truth for the sake of
political advantage. Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), for example,
clearly saw his job as denying that the government bore any
responsibility for what happened to the Davidians.

In one illustrative exchange, Schumer asked Dick DeGuerin, one of
Koresh's lawyers, if it was true that the Davidians were
stockpiling grenades. DeGuerin said the only grenades he had seen
at Mount Carmel were the ones BATF agents tossed in during their
raid. A startled Schumer insisted that the "flashbang" grenades
used by the BATF--which create a bright flash and a loud noise to
distract and disorient the enemy--are not really grenades. Later he
contemptuously dismissed DeGuerin's testimony: "Mr. DeGuerin said
flashbangers can kill, injure, maim. Anyone who knows anything
about these things knows they can't." But it was Schumer who didn't
know what he was talking about: As Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) noted,
flashbangs are classified as "destructive devices" under federal
law, and in response to Barr's questioning a BATF agent conceded
that they can kill at close range.

Schumer's underlying message--that the BATF had acted with
restraint during the raid--is equally absurd. As Waco: The Rules of
Engagement shows, the agents fired wildly into the thin-walled
building, heedless of the women, children, and unarmed men within.
Wayne Martin, one of the Davidians, made a panicked 911 call during
the attack, trying to find someone who could stop the shooting. If
anyone held back during the raid, it was the Davidians, who knew
the BATF was coming and easily could have killed almost all of the
76 agents as they arrived at Mount Carmel in cattle trailers.

"Is there any way that somebody could believe that justifiable
homicide could be used as a defense here?" Schumer incredulously
asked during the hearings. Well, yes. Under common law, you are
entitled to resist excessive force by government agents, even when
they have a valid search warrant (and as Kopel and Blackman detail,
the warrant in this case, which alleged that Koresh and a few other
residents had illegally produced machine guns and hand grenades,
was marred by errors, false statements, stale information,
unreliable sources, and inflammatory charges of child abuse that
had nothing to do with the search). A jury rejected murder charges
against 11 surviving Davidians, apparently concluding that they had
acted in self-defense. The forewoman summed up the jury's view this
way: "The federal government was absolutely out of control there.
We spoke in the jury room about the fact that the wrong people were
on trial, that it should have been the ones that planned the raid
and orchestrated it and insisted on carrying out this plan."

Neither the book nor the movie answers the important question of
who fired first. That issue may never be resolved satisfactorily,
given the amount of evidence that has been destroyed or suppressed.
The missing evidence suggests some rather ham-handed efforts to
hide the truth, so obviously fishy that they actually count against
the idea of a sophisticated conspiracy. Waco: The Rules of
Engagement includes congressional testimony by a combat expert who
said the BATF's failure to anticipate that the raid might not go
off as expected amounted to an "`Oh, shit' contingency plan." Much
the same could be said of the cover-up.

The BATF initially claimed that an official videotape of the raid
would show the Davidians started the shootout; then it said the
tape was inexplicably blank. The bureau aborted its own
investigation of the raid when the Justice Department started
worrying that interviews with the agents who had been at the scene
would produce contradictory accounts or other material that could
be useful in defending the surviving Davidians--evidence that the
prosecution would be legally obliged to share. We know this because
a Treasury Department official explicitly said so in a memo.

And then there is the notorious steel door. The BATF claimed the
shootout started when the Davidians fired a fusillade through the
front door of Mount Carmel. But one of Koresh's lawyers, Jack
Zimmerman, said he had examined the door, and almost all of the
holes puckered inward. The door itself, which presumably could
resolve this dispute, survived the fire and promptly vanished.
During a recent debate with Kopel at NYU Law School, Ron Noble, who
oversaw the Treasury Department's report on Waco, seemed sincerely
exasperated by this little mystery: "Where's the door? I wish I
knew. It stinks of a cover-up."

The other major issue that remains unresolved is who started the
fire at the end of the FBI siege. Both the book and the movie note
that the blaze did not start until five or six hours after an FBI
bug in Mount Carmel recorded a conversation about spreading fuel,
usually taken to be evidence that the Davidians deliberately set
the fire. During this time, the FBI was knocking into the building
with tanks, which closed off escape routes and created vents that
made the fire spread more quickly. The tanks pumped in an aerosol
consisting of CS powder, a chemical warfare agent that causes
tearing, temporary blindness, nausea, and vomiting, and methylene
chloride, a toxic and volatile carrier that forms flammable
mixtures when exposed to the air. The FBI also shot the powder into
the building in cannisters. It later insisted that it did not fire
any incendiary rounds, but two were recovered from the site.
Whoever actually ignited the fire, the FBI clearly made it more
deadly.

What the FBI admitted about its tactics may be just as horrifying
as what it denied. Waco: The Rules of Engagement shows a bureau
spokesman explaining that the idea behind filling Mount Carmel with
CS was to torture the children (who had no gas masks) until their
parents surrendered. "We thought that their instincts, their
motherly instincts, would take place and that they would want their
children out of that environment," he said. "It appears that they
don't care that much about their children, which is unfortunate."
According to experts cited in the book and quoted in the movie, the
CS powder probably incapacitated Davidians who otherwise might have
fled and may even have killed some of them. The powder can be fatal
in high doses, and it turns into cyanide when burned.

If Koresh did order the fire, then obviously he and his accomplices
bear much of the responsibility for the ensuing deaths. In any
case, he and several other Davidians died of gunshot wounds they
apparently inflicted on each other to avoid surrendering or dying
in the fire. But, as Kopel and Blackman note, "the government gave
David Koresh unnecessary help in his misguided quest for
martyrdom."

In the movie, Clive Doyle, one of the surviving Davidians, asks a
good question: "If they thought that we were all brainwashed and
such a bunch of crazies, why would the FBI push David and the rest
of us to the limit?" The movie and the book document the FBI's many
gratuitous acts of provocation: shining bright lights and blaring
obnoxious sounds (including Nancy Sinatra singing "These Boots Are
Made for Walking") to prevent the Davidians from sleeping,
destroying cars and children's go-carts, mooning the women and
giving them the finger, deliberately and repeatedly running over a
Davidian's grave with a tank. Despite this harassment, note Kopel
and Blackman, the FBI negotiators tried to reassure the Davidians
that the government wanted a peaceful resolution, saying, "nobody's
going to run tanks through buildings that contain people" and "the
last thing that's going to happen is for the government to take any
kind of offensive action....You know, we don't hurt babies. You
know, we don't hurt women. We don't do those types of things."

And yet they did. In the documentary, Alan Stone, the Harvard
professor of psychiatry and law who reviewed the Justice
Department's report on Waco, tells an interviewer: "When I was
first asked to be involved as a member of the panel, I thought the
main problem was going to be understanding the psychology of the
people inside the compound. But as I got into it, I quickly became
aware that the psychology of the people outside the compound was
more important."

The men who confronted the Davidians were angry, tired, and
frustrated. They did not understand this weird "cult" and did not
care to. They saw the people who lived at Mount Carmel as mindless
drones under Koresh's control, when in fact the Davidians included
many intelligent, well-educated people, who were attracted by
Koresh's religious message rather than his personal charisma (of
which he had little). In Waco: The Rules of Engagement, the
surviving Davidians come across as rational and articulate,
especially in comparison to raving demagogues like Rep. Schumer. "I
liked them," says the local sheriff, Jack Harwell, who describes
the Davidians as "good people"--courteous, well-groomed,
unassuming. But the FBI did not want the public to sympathize with
the Davidians, so it kept the press at a distance and held back a
videotape shot inside Mount Carmel during the siege, which showed
not crazed cultists but apparently normal, decent folks with strong
religious beliefs. Had Americans seen