The Specter of a new cover-up

Will we ever find out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the
truth regarding the federal government’s wholesale slaughter of 80 men,
women and children at Waco?

The U.S. Senate is off to a bad start.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has abandoned the idea of a task
force, voting instead to turn over the already extremely limited inquiry
of possible Justice Department “missteps” to its administrative
oversight and courts subcommittee.

Democrats had refused to participate in the task force, saying its
creation would violate Senate rules and was tantamount to a partisan
witchhunt against Attorney General Janet Reno and her Justice
Department. Isn’t that interesting? In the initial hearings on Waco, it
was the Democrats who asked the toughest questions and hurled the most
explosive accusations against Reno. What a difference six years and an
impending presidential election can make.

Perhaps the worst news is that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had
been tapped to head the task force, will chair the Judiciary
subcommittee probe in an unusual arrangement that calls for the panel’s
chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to relinquish his leadership
for purposes of that investigation. Unusual? Highly unusual. Why are
senators so intent on having professional cover-up artist Arlen Specter
as the point man on Waco? Hmmmm.

Specter is not trusted by the American people to conduct a fair and
impartial investigation of such an important debacle. Remember, Specter
first came to national prominence for his role on the Warren Commission
and his wholly unbelievable “single-bullet theory.” Almost 36 years
later, Americans still widely distrust the Warren Commission findings on
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Specter played a key
role in that botched investigation.

But, if that history wasn’t bad enough, Specter helped ensure that
the U.S. Senate would not conduct a real impeachment trial of President
Clinton last year. Remember his theories about “Scottish law”? He came
up with his rationalizations for acquittal of the criminal-in-chief only
after his wife got a plum appointment to the National Endowment for the
Arts.

Nevertheless, Specter assures the nation: “We intend to move ahead
with dispatch.”

Yeah, expect Waco to be dispatched to the dustbins of history.
Specter is an establishment cover-up artist. Not only is he the wrong
person for the job, he himself should be investigated for his conflict
of interest in the impeachment inquiry.

Oddly enough, if there is any hope for new revelations from this
committee, they are likely to be spurred by Sen. Robert Torricelli of
New Jersey, the top Democrat, who has been a stinging critic of Reno and
her injustice department. But Torricelli has a history of closing ranks
with his Democratic Party friends in the administration when things
start getting really hot. He’d like to have Reno’s scalp. But he is not
eager to bring down a Democratic president over Waco or any other
scandal.

The probe was proposed weeks ago during the initial furor over
Justice and FBI officials’ belated admission that potentially incendiary
tear gas was used during the 1993 Waco raid. But, since then, we have
learned that the Justice and FBI cover-up is much bigger. The Dallas
Morning News reported this week that the FBI had the Branch Davidian
church surrounded with video cameras. Many of those tapes have never
been made available to congressional investigators.

As long as Specter is in charge of the Senate investigation of Waco,
you can expect the cover-up of this massacre to continue.

What can we do about it? Don’t give up. Keep plugging away. Talk it
up. Tell your friends. Write your senators.
Keep the memory of those kids alive. Throw the bums out of office next
year. Expose the corruption. Hold your government accountable. Demand
the truth. Support those who fight for it. Refuse to accept the lies.

If the government can get away with the slaughter of the Branch
Davidians, live and in color on our television screens, then none of us
are safe.