Silence on Waco evidence

August 5, 1999

The mainstream press groupies are ignoring startling new evidence
about the federal government’s assault on the Branch Davidian community
in Waco, Texas, in 1993.

In case you haven’t heard, the evidence I’m talking about was first
chronicled in the Dallas Morning News over a week ago. It seems as
though the chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety — the
Texas Rangers — has evidence that solidly refutes the federal
government’s version of events that took place against members of the
Branch Davidian religious group.

The evidence includes key interdepartmental federal law enforcement
memos, thermal imaging reports, and an examination of video evidence by
an analyst from the National Reconnaissance Office.

Specifically, the evidence:

Establishes a belief among many within the government that if the
Feds get away with what they did at Waco, the rule of law will suffer
the most.
Supports earlier claims made by independent reporters that FLIR
(Forward Looking Infrared) imagery examined by noted expert Dr. Edward
F. Allard indeed shows federal agents firing automatic weapons at
fleeing Davidians.
Shows the FBI admitting in a report that federal automatic weapons
fire during the final assault on the Davidian community originated from
a position designated as “Sierra One.”
Shows the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms admitting in a
memo that three ATF agents went on a friendly shooting trip with
Davidian leader David Koresh just nine days before the initial ATF
assault.
Establishes that explosive canisters of a flammable nature were used
repeatedly during the initial phases of the assault.

There is also evidence that the initial federal judge in the case,
district court Judge Walter Smith, has done everything in his power to
accommodate the government’s cover-up. Judge Smith has sentenced
Davidian survivors for offenses the jury did not convict them of,
prevented some verdicts from casting any doubt on the government’s
“official explanation” of what happened at Waco, and prevented survivors
from being available to the media to tell their stories. And now that
Judge Smith has a number of Waco-related wrongful death suits in his
court, he is doing his best to throw out or block most of them and to
exclude as much evidence as possible. It reminds me of the McVeigh
trial.

While all of this is going on — the makings of a gargantuan scandal
— I have to ask where are the mainstream media crews? Where are the
CNN cameras documenting every second of this ballooning scandal — in
the same manner they documented every second of the Waco showdown over
six years ago? Why aren’t Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw parked outside
Judge Smith’s courtroom, giving viewers a minute-by-minute live analysis
of this enormous breaking story? Where’s the “60 Minutes” crew or the
“Nightline” documentary? Why are the major news web sites more
interested in polling Americans about gun control and how they feel
about the passing of JFK Jr. than reporting the obvious discrepancies in
the federal government’s version of events at Waco?

It makes me sick to hear these people call themselves reporters.

The major media players have been handed this story on a silver
platter, but still they ignore it. Back when independent filmmakers and
producers dug up all the evidence the Texas Rangers now claim to have,
they were discounted as “kooks,” “weirdos,” “right-wing conspirators,”
and losers with an ax to grind against Clinton and Reno. That
assessment was, of course, erroneous, but now it’s beside the point.
This time the vaunted Texas Rangers are making the same
claims.

How much more reputable can you get? How much more substantiated can
this story be? And yet, it continues to be ignored.

By “choosing” not to report this breaking news, editors at the majors
are becoming co-conspirators in the government’s crime against the
Davidians. That makes them worse than worthless as news agencies — it
makes them just as guilty as the federal agents who pulled the triggers
on their assault rifles when they “bravely” gunned down women and
children trying to escape the flames consuming their homes. And it makes
them just as guilty as the people who ordered these agents to do what
they did.

Isn’t it odd how the mainstream press made the deaths of women and
children at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City more important
than the deaths of Davidian women and children?

I guess Davidian women and children deserved to die
because they were “right wing extremists.” I guess the FBI had every
right to use automatic assault weapons to gun them down — unarmed — as
they fled a fire started by the government in the first place.

That must be what the mainstream media crowd thinks because they sure
aren’t interested in the truth about Waco.