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A secret military organization took part in the raid at Waco
Tue Mar 7, 2006 01:39

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Waco Information: Chuck Harder, Sarah Bain, David Hall and David Thibodeau (a Waco survivor)
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A secret military organization took part in the raid at Waco
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/secretmilitary.htm

PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE JULY 04, 1995 INTERNET ISSUE:
http://www.bigeye.com/pentwaco.htm

Editor's note: Dave Hall, of KPOC-TV in Oklahoma, has been a major investigator of the government's mishandling of the Waco disaster and was of great assistance to us in preparing this article. Hall and KPOC-TV have produced a documentary entitled "The Waco Incident" that is available from Southwest Video, (800) 284-7566.

Copyright © 1995 Penthouse International, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
-----------------
HOLOCAUST AT WACO
by Gary Null

The story is now a series of fading memories and images in most Americans' minds, but mention Waco and people still call up many of those discomforting pieces of the 1993 news story.

There was a Jonestown-like suicide cult down in Texas headed by a psychopathic megalomaniac, David Koresh, a modern-day self-proclaimed messiah....

He had a tremendous arms cache....

His Branch Davidian cult abused children....

They were willing to take over the town of Waco....

They were defiant of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and of the F.B.I....

They were planning to commit mass suicide....

All of these "facts" were supposed to explain why we saw that final image on TV--the Branch Davidian compound burning to the ground. They were supposed to explain why 96 children, women, and men had to die in that conflagration. The problem is, they are not facts. Many are distortions or outright lies fed to the media, swallowed, broadcast, and never questioned.

People in Waco describe the Branch Davidian community as a group of ordinary people and as helpful, friendly, and kind. The Branch Davidian sect was founded in 1893 as an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventist church. Many of the approximately 130 people in the compound held regular jobs outside, and the group had been in Waco since 1935. They had built with their own hands the house that was destroyed in the 1993 fire.

James Scott Trim, a researcher who studied the Branch Davidians for more than a year and a half, offers this perspective: "They were no threat, particularly, to anybody. They had been there since the 1930s and certainly hadn't done any damage to anybody thus far. They weren't a group of idiots." Various members of the group, he points out, were highly educated in theology, comparative religion, and law.

Was this a cult? One of the reasons that pejorative label stuck to this group was that film clips were widely broadcast in which David Koresh, the group's leader, was shown saying, "You better watch out-- I'm God." What wasn't revealed was that this segment was actually part of a longer film clip. A reporter from an Australian network had been asking Koresh about accusations made by an ex-Branch Davidian leader that he, Koresh, had gotten the former leader's 70-year-old mother pregnant. In reply to this obviously around-the-bend assertion, Koresh had said that if he could get a 70-year-old woman pregnant, then you'd better watch out, because he is God. It was a joke. In the uncut film segment, laughter is heard in the background. In the clip, Koresh's remark was taken out of context and played as if it were a serious statement. This deceptive use of a piece of film was enough to paint Koresh as a nut.

Bill Cooper, a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence, also has looked into the Waco affair. Cooper offers an interesting perspective on the idea of cults. "The definition of a cult is extremely difficult to pin down," he says. "It depends largely upon who is labeling something as a cult. If you really want to get honest with all of this, all of our forefathers who left Europe to come to the United States to escape religious persecution belonged to cults. You could say that this nation was built by cultists. Many of our forefathers belonged to the fraternity known as Freemasonry, which throughout history has been labeled a cult and persecuted."

David Koresh believed that God wanted him to deliver the message of the Book of Revelations to the world. But concerning the apocalyptic aspects of the Branch Davidians' beliefs, Cooper points out that "the entire Christian religion and segments of the Jewish religion are apocalyptic. Both religions believe in the imminent return of a messiah and the end of the world as we know it, and the beginning of a new heaven on earth. That is certainly apocalyptic. The view of the Branch Davidians was no different. They believed in the interpretation of the Book of Revelations just as the church that they branched off from."

And, Cooper adds, "The truth is that we have protection in this country under the Constitution to practice whatever religion we wish, as long as we're not harming anyone else in the practice of that religion. The truth is that the members of the Branch Davidian religion, their church, were adults and had the right to believe and practice whatever they wished."

To support people's right to follow David Koresh as a leader does not mean that you have to agree with his teachings. Yes, the man may have been a fanatic. Yes, his followers may have been equally zealous. But being a religious zealot is not a crime. Christian fundamentalist groups and Jewish ultraorthodox groups may keep to themselves, or dress, eat, and act in ways others find strange. And many religious groups follow charismatic leaders who act as if they have the inside word from God. You can call these leaders and their followers zealots or fanatics or cultists if you like, but they still have a right to live as they choose. The Branch Davidians had that right, too.

At least they thought they did. Two of the people who found out that this was not the case, and who managed to live through that discovery, were Sheila Martin and Clyde Doyle. Martin had lived at the Waco complex at Mt. Carmel for five years, with her husband and seven children. She lost five members of her family in the fire. Doyle had lived with the group for at least three years, and he lost his daughter in the fire. Their descriptions of life at the compound are certainly at odds with the picture of a bunch of crazed cultists that the media portrayed.

People came to Mt. Carmel from many different walks of life, Doyle recalls. "Many of them were educated. They were high school teachers, computer programmers, university teachers, and so forth. They were ministers, and they were common people. They were from all different countries and all different nationalities. We lived in harmony. We got along great for such a diverse group of people."

Although people lived communally, they had their independence, Martin says. "Some people say we were controlled and that we had to live a certain way, but that's untrue. We had a choice." She goes on to refute the myth that the Branch Davidians stayed within their complex and never came out. "That's not how it was. We had freedom there. We could go into town. We could go shopping. We had all different types of things, but the main object was to know that we were there to read the Bible."

Daily life was primitive, but since people were there for Bible study, they were usually able to overlook the lack of amenities. Doyle recalls that the Mt. Carmel complex was evolving. "When we first began to develop the place, there were a series of small houses in poor condition. Many of them were deteriorating so badly that we began to tear them down. We took the ones that were worst first and used what lumber we could. We bought new lumber and began to build the complex [shown in media coverage of Waco]. There was continual building going on. New rooms were being added to make new room for people to come and stay."


THE GOVERNMENT HAS NEVER PRESENTED ANY EVIDENCE THAT ANY CHILD WAS EVER ABUSED AT THE WACO COMPOUND.

But what of the allegations of child abuse at the Davidians' compound? They are not true, says Martin. "There was no abuse of children. David said the worst abuse children could suffer was when their mothers and fathers did not bring them up to love God and to respect their parents and other people. David said that any of us there who did not treat our children with love and respect were really abusing them."

So where did the allegations come from? Linda Thompson, a lawyer who is investigating the case, believes they started with one man--Mark Breault, often described as a disgruntled former member of the Branch Davidians. A documentary produced by KPOC-TV in Oklahoma reported that some other former Branch Davidians may have alleged that child abuse was taking place in the complex. In any event, the government has never presented any evidence that any child was ever abused at the Waco compound.

And what about allegations of illegal gun caches at the group's compound? For one thing, Thompson says that the Waco sheriff's department found these allegations to be false. Bill Cooper elaborates, "The sheriff investigated on several occasions the allegations that they had illegal weapons, were engaging in illegal activities with those weapons, and had one time even confiscated all their weapons and taken them to the sheriff's facilities for inspection, and ended up returning them all. There were no illegal weapons, nor illegal activity concerning those weapons, whatsoever. In fact, the people at the Mt. Carmel facility possessed less than half the number of weapons possessed by the average citizen of the state of Texas."

Doyle and Martin, as Branch Davidians, certainly have a stake in proclaiming the group's innocence. But this claim has been corroborated by others. A special investigative team under former United States attorney general Ramsey Clark has been researching the events leading up to the deaths at Waco. They found a number of discrepancies between the public story and the actual events, and they support what Doyle and Martin are saying. And Dave Hall, a reporter and the manager of KPOC-TV, has done extensive work on the Waco story. Much of what he and his colleagues at the station have uncovered about this tragedy has been so disturbing that Hall has presented his findings to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the hope that they will commission a special independent investigation of the whole affair. Hall's is another voice that asserts there was no evidence of illegal firearms at Waco. He mentions something else, too. "We saw evidence the A.T.F. admitted that they had left their weapons mingle in with the weapons that were taken into evidence [at the trial].... That was put in the court records. So the evidence that was admitted in court in the trial period was contaminated. Why the judges let it happen, I do not know."


THE INITIAL RAID

No crimes had been committed by David Koresh or the members of his group when, on February 28, 1993, they were invaded by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. There had been some unsubstantiated talk about the group planning to commit mass suicide, but even if it had been true, this is not within the A.T.F.'s purview. Nor is child abuse--not that that charge had been substantiated, either, nor had the weapons-cache charge. So the first attack on the compound was totally uncalled for.

Film footage of the raid is included in a revealing video put together by Linda Thompson. (The video, "Waco: The Big Lie," can be obtained from the American Justice Federation, 3850 South Emerson Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana 46203; (317) 780-5204 or (800) 749-9939; FAX: (317) 780-5209. A second video, "Waco II: The Big Lie Continues," is also available.) In the first video, the viewer can see A.T.F. agents firing at the Branch Davidian compound with automatic weapons. There are helicopters flying overhead. The A.T.F. fire does not seem to be returned.

As reporter Dave Hall explains his findings, "For nine to 12 minutes, these people were being attacked, unannounced, with bullets flying indiscriminately through that building. They were calling for help from the sheriff's department.... Wayne [a Davidian] is telling the 911 operator that there are men out there shooting at them. He was asking them to get the police out to call these people off of them.... We have reporters that have told us that the A.T.F. did not announce themselves until well into the shooting. And judging from the 911 tape, we come to the conclusion that, at the very least, they were under attack for nine minutes by over 100 men, and possibly as much as 15 minutes, before firing back."

Hall points out that the A.T.F. men were not identifiable to the people in the house because the lettering labeling them as A.T.F. agents appears on the back of their black uniforms, not the front. So to the Davidians, the men attacking them were unknown assailants dressed in black. Adding to the confusion and fear of February 28, as well as to the body count, was a helicopter gunship firing down on the roof of the house. Why this brutal military-style assault, in which six Davidians died, was necessary is puzzling. Hall asks, "Why did they not take the sheriff out there, who several times before had served warrants down there and never had a problem? Why didn't they just go down there with a couple of men in business suits?"


KORESH SAID, "HOLD ON... THERE ARE WOMEN AND CHILDREN HERE..." BEFORE HE COULD GET THE LAST WORDS OUT, SHOTS CAME FROM THE OUTSIDE.

An account of the raid by a Davidian survivor is chilling. Clyde Doyle recalls, "David [Koresh] advised everybody to stay cool and to go back to their rooms. He would go and talk to [the officials] at the front door. I then went back to my room, which was in the front of the building on the first floor, up towards the north end. Within a minute or so, I heard his voice at the door saying, 'Hold on a minute. There are women and children here. We need to talk about this.' Before he could get the last words out of his mouth, shots came from the outside....

"My reaction was to run down the hall towards the front door. I was thinking that some people were bound to be shot and hurt. As I ran down the hall towards the door, I found Perry Jones laying in the hall crying in great pain, saying he had been shot. Perry Jones was an older man, in his sixties. He apparently had been standing behind David as David opened the door. I asked him if he could hang in there a minute. I wanted to see if anyone else was hurt, but as I ran towards the door, I found nobody there....

"I ran back to Perry and helped him up. A young black man from England appeared and gave me a hand. As he began to lift Perry up on the left side, Perry let out a scream. We helped Perry up into the north end of the building, where the men's quarters were, and put him on a bunk bed away from the front wall, where the bullets were continuing to fire. Perry was in great pain.

"I asked two or three guys to stay with him to help him with whatever he needed and went running back down the hall to see what had happened at the door. As I was running, people were yelling at me to get down. People were shooting through the walls from the outside. I noticed a line of bullets down the hallway from the kitchen on down through the front door. It was as if somebody with a machine gun on the outside blindly sprayed bullets, hoping to hit somebody running down the hall without being able to see them because there were no windows. It was like somebody made a sweeping arc with a machine gun. This row of bullet holes penetrated into the hallway.

"Wayne Martin was in the process of getting the 911 calls going. During the shootings that day, I spent part of my time running back and forth, getting messages. The sheriff's deputy that was talking on the 911 line with Wayne was asking v

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