Danforth Report
The Oklahoma City
bombing in April 1995 caused the media to revisit many of the questionable
aspects of the government's actions at Waco,
and many Americans who previously supported those actions began asking for an
investigation. By 1999—as a result of certain aspects of the documentaries
discussed below, as well as allegations made by advocates for Branch Davidians during
litigation—a public opinion held that the federal government had engaged in
serious misconduct at Waco. A Time
poll conducted on August 26, 1999, for example, indicated that 61 percent of
the public believed that federal law enforcement officials started the fire at
the Branch Davidian complex.
In September 1999, Attorney
General Reno appointed former U.S.
Senator John C. Danforth as Special
Counsel to investigate the matter. In particular, the Special Counsel was directed to investigate charges that government
agents started or spread the fire at the Mount
Carmel complex directed gunfire at the Branch
Davidians, and unlawfully employed the armed forces of the United States. A yearlong investigation
ensued, during which the Office of the
Special Counsel interviewed 1,001 witnesses, reviewed over 2.3 million
pages of documents, and examined thousands of pounds of physical evidence. In
the "Final report to the Deputy Attorney General concerning the
1993 confrontation at the Mt. Carmel
Complex, Waco Texas" of November 8, 2000, Special Counsel Danforth concluded that the allegations were
meritless. The report found, however, that certain government employees had
failed to disclose during litigation against the Branch Davidians the use of pyrotechnic devices at the complex, and
had obstructed the Special Counsel's
investigation. Disciplinary action was pursued against those individuals.
Allegations that the government started the fire were based
largely on an FBI agent's having
fired three "pyrotechnic"
tear gas rounds, which are delivered with a charge that burns. The Special Counsel concluded that the
rounds did not start or contribute to the spread of the fire, based on the
finding that the FBI fired the
rounds nearly four hours before the fire started, at a concrete construction
pit partially filled with water, 75 feet (23 m) away and downwind from the main
living quarters of the complex. The Special
Counsel noted, by contrast, that recorded interceptions of Branch Davidian conversations included
such statements as "David said we
have to get the fuel on" and "So we light it first when they come in
with the tank right ... right as they're coming in." Some Branch Davidians who survived the fire
acknowledged that other Branch Davidians
started the fire. FBI agents
witnessed Branch Davidians pouring
fuel and igniting a fire, and noted these observations contemporaneously. Lab
analysis found accelerants on the clothing of Branch Davidians, and investigators found deliberately punctured
fuel cans and a homemade torch at the site. Based on this evidence and
testimony, the Special Counsel concluded that the fire was started by the Branch Davidians.
Charges that government agents fired shots into the complex
on April 19, 1993, were based on forward-looking infrared (FLIR) video recorded
by the Night Stalkers aircraft. These
tapes showed 57 flashes, with some occurring around government vehicles that
were operating near the complex. The Office of Special Counsel conducted a
field test of FLIR technology on
March 19, 2000, to determine whether gunfire caused the flashes. The testing
was conducted under a protocol agreed to and signed by attorneys and experts
for the Branch Davidians and their
families, as well as for the government. Analysis of the shape, duration, and
location of the flashes indicated that they resulted from a reflection of
debris on or around the complex, rather than gunfire. Additionally, an independent
expert review of photography taken at the scene showed no people at or near the
points from which the flashes emanated. Interviews of Branch Davidians, government witnesses, filmmakers, writers, and
advocates for the Branch Davidians
found that none had witnessed any government gunfire on April 19. None of the Branch Davidians who died on that day
displayed evidence of having been struck by a high velocity round, as would be
expected had they been shot from outside of the complex by government sniper
rifles or other assault weapons. In view of this evidence, the Special Counsel
concluded that the claim that government gunfire occurred on April 19, 1993,
amounted to "an unsupportable case
based entirely upon flawed technological assumptions."
The Special Counsel
considered whether the use of active-duty military at Waco violated the Posse
Comitatus Act or the Military
Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. These statutes generally prohibit direct
military participation in law enforcement functions but do not preclude
indirect support such as lending equipment, training in the use of equipment,
offering expert advice, and providing equipment maintenance. The Special Counsel noted that the military
provided "extensive" loans
of equipment to the ATF and FBI, including—among other things—two
tanks, the offensive capability of which had been disabled. Additionally, the
military provided limited advice, training, and medical support. The Special Counsel concluded that these
actions amounted to indirect military assistance within the bounds of
applicable law. The Texas National Guard,
in its state status, also provided substantial loans of military equipment, as
well as performing reconnaissance flights over the Branch Davidian complex. Because the Posse Comitatus Act does not apply to the National Guard in its state status, the Special Counsel determined that the National Guard lawfully provided its assistance.
David Koresh's
lawyer called the Danforth report a whitewash. Ramsey
Clark—a former U.S. Attorney General,
who represented several Branch Davidian
survivors and relatives in a civil lawsuit—said that the report "failed to address the obvious":
"History will clearly record, I
believe, that these assaults on the Mt.
Carmel church center remains the greatest domestic law enforcement tragedy
in the history of the United States."
Equipment and
manpower
Government agencies
Raid (February
28): 75 federal agents (ATF and FBI);
3 Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters manned by 10 Texas National Guard counter-drug personnel as a distraction during the
raid and filming. Ballistic protection equipment, fire retardant
clothing, regular flashlights, regular cameras (i.e. flash photography),
pump-action shotguns and flashbang grenades, 9 mm handguns, 9 mm MP5 submachine
guns, 5.56 NATO M16 rifle, a .308 bolt-action sniper rifle.
Siege (March 1
through April 18): Hundreds of federal agents; 2 Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters.
Assault (April
19): Hundreds of federal agents; military vehicles (with their normal weapon
systems removed): 9–10 M3 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, 4–5 M728 Combat
Engineering Vehicles (CEVs) armed with CS gas, 2 M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks,
1 M88 tank retriever.
Support: 1
Britten-Norman Defender surveillance aircraft; a number of Texas National Guard personnel for maintenance of military vehicles
and training on the use of the vehicles and their support vehicles (Humvees and
flatbed trucks); surveillance from Texas
National Guard counter-drug UC-26 surveillance aircraft and from Alabama National Guard; 10 active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces (Delta Force)
soldiers as observers and trainers (also present during the assault); 2 senior U.S.
Army officers as advisers, 2 members of the British Army's 22nd Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment as observers;
50+ men in total.
Branch Davidians
The Branch Davidians
were well armed with small arms, possessing 305 total firearms, including
numerous rifles (semi-automatic AK-47s and AR-15s), shotguns, revolvers and
pistols; 46 semi-automatic firearms modified to fire in fully automatic mode
(included on the above list): 22 AR-15 (erroneously referred to as M16), 20 AK-47, 2
HK SP-89, 2 M-11/Nine Texas Rangers reported
"at least 16 AR-15 rifles,";
2 AR-15 lower receivers modified to fire in fully automatic mode;39 "full auto sears" devices used
to convert semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons; parts for fully
automatic AK-47 and M16 rifles; 30-round magazines and 100-round magazines for
M16 and AK-47 rifles; pouches to carry large ammunition magazines; substantial
quantities of ammunition of various sizes.
Other items found at the compound included about 1.9 million
rounds of "cooked off"
ammunition; grenade launcher parts; flare launchers; gas masks and chemical
warfare suits; night vision equipment; hundreds of practice hand grenade hulls
and components (including more than 200 inert M31 practice rifle grenades, more
than 100 modified M-21 practice hand grenade bodies, 219 grenade safety pins
and 243 grenade safety levers found after the fire); Kevlar helmets and
bulletproof vests; 88 lower receivers for the AR-15 rifle; and approximately 15
sound suppressors or silencers (the Treasury reports list 21 silencers, Texas Rangers report that at least six
items had been mislabeled and were actually 40 mm grenades or flashbang
grenades from manufacturers who sold those models to the ATF or FBI exclusively; former
Branch Davidian Donald Bunds testified he had manufactured silencers under direct
orders of Koresh).
The ATF knew that
the Branch Davidians had a pair of
.50 caliber rifles, so they asked for Bradley
armored vehicles, which could resist that caliber. During the siege, Koresh said that he had
weapons bigger than .50 rifles and that he could destroy the Bradleys, so they were supplemented with
two Abrams tanks and five M728
vehicles. The Texas Rangers recovered at least two .50 caliber weapons from the remains
of the compound.
There is the question of whether the Branch Davidians actually fired the .50 caliber rifles during the
raid or during the assault. Various groups supporting gun bans, such as Handgun Control Incorporated and the
Violence Policy Center have claimed that the Branch Davidians had used .50 caliber rifles and that therefore
these types of firearms should be banned. The ATF claims such rifles were used against ATF agents the day of the search. Several years later, the General Accounting Office, in response
to a request from Henry Waxman,
released a briefing paper titled "Criminal
Activity Associated with .50 Caliber Semiautomatic Rifles" which
repeated the ATF's claims that the Branch Davidians used .50 caliber rifles
during the search. FBI Hostage Rescue Team snipers reported sighting one of the
weapons, readily identifiable by its distinctive muzzle brake, during the
siege.
Legacy
Oklahoma City bombing
connection
Timothy McVeigh
cited the Waco incident as a primary
motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing,
his April 19, 1995, truck bomb attack that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, a U.S. government office complex
in downtown Oklahoma City, and destroyed
or damaged numerous other buildings in the vicinity. The attack claimed 168
lives (including 19 children under age 6) and leftover 600 injured in the
deadliest act of terrorism on U.S.
soil prior to the September 11 attacks, and as of 2020, it remains the
deadliest act of domestic terrorism in American
history.
Within days after the bombing, McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both taken into
custody for their roles in the bombing. Investigators determined that the two
were both sympathizers of an anti-government militia movement and that their
motive was to avenge the government's handling of the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents.
McVeigh testified that he chose the date of April 19 because it was the second
anniversary of the deadly fire at Mount
Carmel. In March 1993, McVeigh drove from Arizona to Waco in order
to observe the federal standoff. Along with other protesters, he was
photographed by the FBI. A
courtroom reporter also claims to have seen McVeigh outside the courthouse at Waco, selling anti-government bumper
stickers.
Other events sharing the date of fire at Mt. Carmel have been mentioned in
discussions of the Waco siege. The
April 20, 1999, Columbine High School
massacre might have been timed to mark either an anniversary of the FBI's assault at Waco or Adolf Hitler's
birthday. Some of the connections appear coincidental. Eight years prior to the
Waco fire, the ATF and FBI raided
another compound of a religious cult: The
Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. Some ATF
agents who were present at that raid were present at Waco. April 19 was also the date from the American Revolution's opening battles ("the shot heard round the world").
Media portrayals
The Waco siege has
been the subject of numerous documentary films and books. The first film was a made-for-television docudrama film, In
the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco, which was made during the siege, before
the April 19 assault on the church, and presented the initial firefight of
February 28, 1993, as an ambush. The film's writer, Phil Penningroth, has since disowned his screenplay as pro-ATF "propaganda".
The first book about the incident was 1993's Inside the Cult co-authored by ex-Branch Davidian Marc Breault, who
left the group in September 1989, and Martin
King who interviewed Koresh for Australian
television in 1992. In July 1993, true
crime author Clifford L. Linedecker
published his book Massacre at Waco,
Texas. Shortly after, in 1994, a collection of 45 essays called From the Ashes: Making Sense of Waco was
published, about the events of Waco from
various cultural, historical, and religious perspectives. The essays in the
book includes one by Michael Barkun
that talked about how the Branch
Davidians' behavior was consistent with other millenarian religious sects
and how the use of the word cult is used to discredit religious organizations,
one by James R. Lewis that claims a
large amount of evidence that the FBI
lit the fires, and many others. All of these perspectives are united in the
belief that the deaths of the Branch
Davidians at Waco could have
been prevented and that "the popular
demonization of nontraditional religious movements in the aftermath of Waco represents a continuing threat to
freedom of religion".
The first documentary films critical of the official versions
were Waco, the Big Lie and Waco II, the Big Lie Continues, both
produced by Linda Thompson in 1993.
Thompson's films made a number of controversial allegations, the most notorious
of which was her claim that footage of an armored vehicle breaking through the
outer walls of the compound, with an appearance of orange light on its front,
was showing a flamethrower attached to the vehicle, setting fire to the
building. As a response to Thompson, Michael
McNulty released footage to support his counter-claim that the appearance
of light was a reflection on aluminized insulation that was torn from the wall
and snagged on the vehicle. (The vehicle is an M728 CEV, which is not normally
equipped with a flamethrower.). McNulty accused Thompson of "creative editing" in his film
Waco: An Apparent Deviation.
Thompson worked from a VHS copy of
the surveillance tape; McNulty was given access to a beta original. However,
McNulty, in turn, was later accused of having digitally altered his footage, an
allegation he denied. The next film was Day
51: The True Story of Waco, produced in 1995 by Richard Mosley and featuring Ron
Cole, a self-proclaimed militia member from Colorado who was later prosecuted for weapons violations. Thompson's and Mosley's films, along with
extensive coverage given to the Waco siege on some talk radio shows, galvanized
support for the Branch Davidians
among some sections of the right including the nascent militia movement, while
critics on the left also denounced the government siege on civil liberties
grounds. Radio host and conspiracy
theorist Alex Jones made his own documentary film, America Wake Up (Or Waco), in 2000.
In 1997, filmmakers Dan
Gifford and Amy Sommer produced
their Emmy Award-winning documentary
film, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, presenting a history of the Branch Davidian movement and a critical
examination of the conduct of law enforcement, both leading up to the raid and
through the aftermath of the fire. The film features footage of the Congressional hearings on Waco and the
juxtaposition of official government spokespeople with footage and evidence
often directly contradicting the spokespeople. In the documentary, Dr. Edward Allard (who held patents on FLIR technology) maintained that
flashes on the FBI's infra-red
footage was consistent with a grenade launcher and automatic small arms fire
from FBI positions at the back of
the complex toward the locations which would have been exited for Branch Davidians attempting to flee the
fire. Waco: The Rules of Engagement was
nominated for a 1997 Academy Award
for best documentary and was followed by another film in 1999, Waco: A New Revelation. In 2001, another Michael McNulty documentary, The
F.L.I.R. Project researched the aerial thermal images recorded by the FBI and using identical FLIR equipment recreated the same
results as were recorded by federal agencies April 19, 1993. Subsequent
government-funded studies contend that the infra-red evidence does not support
the view that the FBI improperly used incendiary devices or fired on Branch Davidians. Infra-red experts
continue to disagree and filmmaker Amy
Sommer stands by the original conclusions presented in Waco: The Rules of Engagement.
The documentary The
Assault on Waco was first aired in 2006 on the Discovery Channel, detailing the entire incident. A British-American documentary, Inside Waco, was produced jointly by Channel 4 and HBO in 2007, attempting to show what really happened inside by
piecing together accounts from the parties involved.
Branch Davidian
survivor David Thibodeau wrote his account of life in the group and of the
siege in the book A Place Called Waco,
published in 1999. His book served in part as the basis for the 2018 Paramount Network six-part television
drama miniseries Waco, starring Michael Shannon as the FBI negotiator Gary Noesner and Taylor Kitsch as David Koresh.
The City of God: A New
American Opera, an opera by Joshua
Armenta dramatizing the negotiations between the FBI and Koresh, premiered in 2012, utilizing actual transcripts
from the negotiations as well as biblical texts and hymns from the Davidian hymnal. In 2015, Retro
Report released a mini-documentary looking back at Waco and how it has fueled many right-wing militias.
In 2015, a tactical shooter video game, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, was released with one of the
in-game maps, Oregon, is based on
the Waco compound. In 2018, the Parcast Network podcast "Cults"
released a two-part episode detailing the life of David Koresh, as well as describing the rise of the Branch Davidians and the Waco siege. That same year, BBC Radio 5 live created a radio
podcast, End of Days, about the death
and life of David Koresh, and his
recruitment of people from England.
In 2018 the miniseries Waco
was released. Developed by John Erick
Dowdle and Drew Dowdle, it
premiered on January 24, 2018, on Paramount
Network.
No comments:
Post a Comment