Waco: A Blow for Home Video?

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun Sep 5 09:31:54 PDT 1999


David Jennings <djenning at ai.uga.edu> wrote:


> Question: How reliable are the claims in the film? How reliable are
> the criticisms of it?

I think a lot of us would like to know the answer to that question. But judging from recent new disclosures, like the article below from today's New York Times, I think the only answer is that there isn't yet an objective record to check competing claims against.

Michael

September 5, 1999

Documents on Waco Point to a Close Commando Role

By PHILIP SHENON

W ASHINGTON -- The Pentagon's elite Special Operations Command sent

observers to the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas more

than a month before the final assault on the compound, suggesting that

military commandos had a far longer and closer involvement in the

disastrous 1993 operation than previously divulged, according to

declassified Government documents.

The documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act also show

for the first time that officials at the highest levels of the Defense

Department, including Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, were briefed by the Special Operations Command about

the events near Waco.

The command, which is based at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida,

oversees the military's most secretive commando squads, including the

Army's Delta Force and the Navy Seals, and the documents suggest that

the command was monitoring the situation virtually from the start of

the 51-day siege. The command's spokesmen did not return calls for

comment on the documents.

The exact relationship between the military and law-enforcement

agencies in the planning of the raid on April 19, 1993, which ended in

the fiery destruction of the compound and the deaths of about 80

people, has long been a mystery. It is expected to be a topic of

Congressional hearings this fall into the siege, especially given the

new disclosure that possibly incendiary military-issue tear-gas

canisters were fired near the compound. Congressional officials say

they want to know where the canisters came from, and who gave approval

for their use.

Clinton Administration officials, aware of the severe legal

restrictions on the use of American troops in the United States, have

long said that the military's role in the siege was purely advisory to

law-enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of

Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The heavily censored documents do not show that the military took an

active part in the siege and F.B.I. officials have long acknowledged

that the military assisted the law enforcement agency. Today, John

Collingwood, an F.B.I. spokesman said "The Department of Defense

played no operational role at Waco."

A report issued last month by the General Accounting Office, the

accounting arm of Congress, which examined the military's role in

Waco, did not contradict the F.B.I. account, but did find that the

military had provided about $1 million in equipment, supplies and

electronic surveillance gear to the F.B.I. and the A.T.F., which had

launched an ill-fated arrest raid on the compound in February 1993.

Although Administration officials have previously acknowledged that

three soldiers assigned to Delta Force were at the cult compound on

the day of the fiery raid as observers, the documents show that the

first Special Operations monitors actually went there more than a

month earlier, and that their findings were reported to Washington and

to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The documents were provided to The New York Times by the National

Security News Agency, a nonprofit research group in Washington that

has often unearthed Government documents and other information

embarrassing to the Pentagon.

In a report to the Joint Chiefs and the F.B.I. in Washington that was

dated March 2, 1993, commanders of the Special Operations Command said

they had carried out "observation of operations in Waco, Tex."

The one-page document was heavily edited by military censors but

appears to outline the deteriorating situation found by the monitors

at the site near Waco, where the Davidians had barricaded themselves

in their compound.

The siege began on Feb. 28, when agents of the Bureau of Alcohol,

Tobacco and Firearms conducted a failed raid on the compound,

resulting in a firefight in which four Federal officers and two of the

cult members were killed.

The report is stamped "secret specat," or special category, which

would have limited its distribution to a select group of Government

officials with security clearances. The identity of the monitors sent

to Texas and their ranks were not revealed.

In a report dated March 30, nearly three weeks before the final

assault on the compound, the Special Operations Command responded to

an "F.B.I. request for assistance" at the site.

The exact nature of the request is not clear in the heavily censored

copy of the document that was released by the Defense Department. But

the request clearly was important because the report prepared by the

Special Operations Command was forwarded to the highest levels of the

Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Aspin, and to the Joint Chiefs,

then led by Gen. Colin Powell.

Federal law-enforcement agencies at the compound requested help from

the Pentagon, including heavy weapons and military training, almost

immediately after the raid on Feb. 28. Over the next weeks, the F.B.I.

was provided with military helicopters, tanks, armored personnel

carriers and weapons.

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company



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