Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

The agency's involvement in the Waco Texas massacre paints a disturbing picture of the "New FBI". Of special concern was the FBI's obsession with controlling information about the actual situation and observation of their actions. After the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) bungled an allegedly illegal raid resulting in 4 dead agents and a number of wounded agents and Davidians, the FBI took over control of the siege of the Branch Davidian compound.

I'd be the last one to defend the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians, but I'm obliged to support their right to practice what ever twisted dogma they pleased as long as they didn't try to impose their beliefs on others. What they were doing to themselves was no one's business but their own.

The Government decided to attack the group's compound based on the accusations of 2 individuals with documented ulterior motives: a minor local official engaged in a bitter custody fight with a Davidian, who's self serving accusations of child abuse had already been investigated and rejected; and a disgruntled ex-Davidian who was expelled from the cult after a failed attempt to take over control. The custody fight that some say was the root cause of the whole tragedy became moot when the children burned to death in the inferno.

The compromised witnesses claimed that the Davidians possessed some illegal gun parts. Note that none of the group's guns were ever proven to be illegal, nor had they been using their legal guns in an illegal manner. The "huge stockpile of weapons" - proclaimed in bold headlines in an obvious attempt to manipulate public opinion against the victims - totaled fewer than one firearm per resident. Clearing away all the spin control and distortions, the official justification for the deadly assault was the minor technical violation of possessing some pieces of metal formed in illegal shapes. For this 80 innocent citizens were terrorized for an extended period and ultimately killed by agents of their government.

(Those survivors convicted after the tragedy were charged with "crimes" allegedly committed during the defense of the compound. No one has been formally tried for any crimes alleged in the original warrants that authorized the lethal paramilitary assault.)

Regardless of the possibility that a court of law might find the Davidians' successful repulse of the first bungled assault on their compound lawful self defense, the FBI led an orchestrated campaign of terror and intimidation against the group. Claiming they were concerned about the welfare of the children in the compound, the FBI employed psychological warfare tactics that would be considered human and civil rights violations if directed against convicted criminals.

The aggressive harassment campaign backfired and caused the Davidians to close ranks in their determination to hold out until their declared surrender date. The FBI tried to deny the Davidians contact with the outside world - including their attorneys and relatives. Particularly embarrassing to the FBI were the accounts by visitors to the compound that the damage to the building appeared to confirm the Davidians' account of the fatal first assault.

Critics of the FBI's handling of the tragedy point out that the worst possible outcome for the Government would have been a formal legal finding that the Davidians had lawfully killed Federal agents in self defense. The Davidians' attorneys, after viewing the physical evidence in the embattled compound first hand, stated in a video interview that they were confident they could beat the government's murder charge and prove the Davidians had acted in self defense - if the physical evidence they had seen could be preserved for trial. It then follows logically that if the building and the physical evidence of self defense it contained happened to be destroyed during the siege, at least the worst possible outcome would be eliminated as well.

The Davidians only fired their weapons during the initial assault, after which they didn't actively resist the various actions of the besieging forces. This isn't surprising since most were accomplished using armored vehicles that were immune to any of the legal weapons the defenders possessed.

There's a further legal conundrum in that not all of the inhabitants were actually participants in the central drama. Most of the 80 fatalities had not been involved in the deaths of the agents or materially participated in the stand off that followed. All they technically had done was refuse to comply with a Government demand that they evacuate their home. Even if all of the adults could be considered guilty by association, the young children could hardly be considered hardened "cop killers". The FBI apparently decided to classify the "noncombatants" as hostages.

The Davidians did repeatedly change their surrender date, but waiting could hardly be said to increase the risk to the "hostages", the public, or the besieging forces. Ironically, the official concern was that the Davidians might commit mass suicide. Good reason to risk killing all of them in a "rescue" attempt...

Frustrated and humiliated by their inability to dominate the situation and enforce their own demands, the Justice Department resorted to violence. They ultimately used weapons designed to destroy the full armored might of the old Soviet Union in an all out war in Europe, to incinerate over 80 men, women, and children vainly defending their home with small caliber firearms.

Even though forced to record the events from 3 miles away, critics claim that their video tapes clearly show that the fatal fire was deliberately caused by flame throwers mounted on the armored tanks used by the FBI to crash through the compound walls.

The authorized videos of the siege show primarily Bradley type armored personnel carriers with small caliber turrets in use. But there was a quick close-up of at least one large tank transport unloading what appears to be an M60 heavy tank. The unauthorized video I've seen, while fuzzy, does appear to show orange flames extending from the muzzle of what looks like an M60 Heavy Tank as it backs out of the huge hole it just smashed through the wall of the building. (A maneuver referred to as an "insertion" in official double speak.)

The compound inhabitants still might have survived the fire if they'd been able to reach the underground bunker below the rear of the compound. That is if the government forces, after studying the architectural plans from the county building permit files and discovering the bunker, hadn't driven their tanks into the back of the building to collapse the interior staircases and walls, closing off all escape paths to the safety of the underground bunker.

Waco wouldn't be the first time the Government resorted to fire as a weapon. It was hard to conceal the number of buildings burned down in Philadelphia a while back when a Government helicopter dropped explosives on the roof of the urban apartment building they were attacking.

The more recent attempt in Idaho was greatly underpublicized - I was surprised when I stumbled across one of the few interviews with the witnesses. During the siege of the Weaver home in Idaho, a TV news crew that had sneaked into the exclusion zone video taped a Government helicopter with a barrel of gasoline suspended on a cable preparing to firebomb the occupied Weaver cabin. When the pilot spotted the camera crew and realized his intention to incinerate the cabin and its occupants was being observed, he aborted the attack. It would appear from the Waco massacre that the only lesson the FBI learned from the Idaho tragedy was to better control outside observers.

In light of the FBI's forced exclusion of impartial observers, and reports of previous offensive firebombing attempts by Government agencies, I'm inclined to believe the critics over the inconsistent denials and "inaccuracies" of Government officials. While the decision makers may have hoped the fire would force the Davidians to abandon their defensible positions in the building and surrender, the reality is that the deaths of over 80 men, women, and children were directly caused by the inferno.

After the fires burned out, the Attorney General both publicly assumed full responsibility for the events, and less publicly conducted the official "investigation" that found no official wrong doing. One has to wonder at the outcome of the investigation if the same criteria were used to judge the Oklahoma City bombers. Would they be found faultless as well?