MIM NOTES No. 196        October 15, 1999	

Murder at Waco : 'Justice' Department under investigation

by MC44

One day after the massacre of more than 80 Branch Davidians in 
Waco, Texas in April 1993, FBI agents insisted that "cult" members 
deliberately set fire to the compound where they were engaged in a 
51-day armed standoff with the government. "I can't tell you the 
shock and horror that all of us felt when we saw those flames," 
[commanding] Agent Ricks said. "It was, "Oh my God. They're 
killing themselves. . . . We did not want this to occur." (1)

But the Texas Rangers -- the state law enforcement agency 
responsible since 1993 for investigating the federal raid in 
February and the April attack by the FBI -- recently released new 
evidence of the massacre showing otherwise. The pigs not only used 
incendiary, military-style tear gas, but they also fired multiple 
gunshots from their sniper post into the compound. For six years, 
throughout Congressional investigations and civil litigation by 
Branch Davidian relatives and survivors, the pigs have denied the 
use of both of these types of weapons.

In this case, the state has exposed itself for the murders and the 
lies and is now making a lot of noise about further investigation 
into the entire Waco incident -- from the initial raid on the 
compound by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents 
supposedly looking for illegal weapons -- to the April fire. The 
FBI finally admits that they used incendiary gas, and admits they 
lied, but insists that they couldn't have started the fire, 
because the canisters they used were thrown three or four hours 
before the flames began and couldn't have smoldered that long.

MIM takes advantage of this exposure of the state's brutality to 
make some observations on this well-worn territory of state-
sponsored murder with impunity:

First, the whole discussion about who started the fire is 
ridiculous. When the government's highest law enforcement agency 
surrounds a civilian site (that hadn't DONE anything) with a 
military arsenal, there is no question about whose fault it is 
that more than 80 people were killed, even if Branch Davidian 
leader David Koresh did light the fatal match.

That arsenal included not only tear gas capable of igniting a 
fire, but also combat helicopters from day one of the ATF raid. 
And according to even the bourgeois magazine The New Republic, the 
ATF procured the helicopters, flown by the Texas National Guard, 
by fabricating evidence that the Branch Davidians were 
manufacturing drugs. And even The New Republic, which concludes 
with a reactionary condemnation of the Branch Davidians for their 
violence and culpability in the outcome of the Waco siege, wrote 
that "when the ATF brought combat helicopters to the scene, it 
created an environment of combat."(2)

Second, the state is constitutionally (and we don't mean the U$ 
Constitution!) incapable of sincerely investigating itself. This 
is a public relations inspired sham. The government has surrounded 
and then massacred groups before - - in the Attica prison 
rebellion, in Philadelphia when it firebombed the MOVE house -- 
and has followed those killings with "investigations" that led 
nowhere in terms of real accountability or prosecution of the 
murderers. In this case, significantly, the victims were mostly 
white settlers, so the government has to work harder at 
investigating the siege and attack. And in contrast to the 
relative silence in the years following the MOVE massacre, the 
bourgeois media and those in government responsible for the 
current investigation of Waco all call it a "tragedy" for America.

But the Branch Davidians' whiteness did not protect them from the 
government's brutality in the first place. We remind readers that 
one of the justifications for the FBI's attack in April 1993 was 
that there was child abuse inside the compound. But during 
Congressional investigations into the siege, held in 1995, 
Attorney General Janet Reno defended the FBI's use of (ordinary) 
tear gas in an enclosed space where there were children present. 
Later, the "Justice" Department revealed that there was in fact no 
evidence of child abuse in the first place, and that Reno was 
either lied to or lying in order to justify the assault on the 
compound.(3) 

The ATF/FBI attack on the Branch Davidians was not the worst 
incident in U$ history of the government massacring civilians -- 
but because the civilians were mostly white, we may get the 
greatest detail about the scope, planning and coverup of the 
attack. There are and have been many investigations by other cop 
organizations, media, Congress, etc. that we did not see from the 
other incidents. Without sharing the political motives of the 
reactionaries opposed to Janet Reno, we take advantage of the 
exposure they create.

Notes:
1. Dallas Morning News, 20 April 1993, 
http://www.dallasnews.com/specials/waco/standoff/w0420n.htm
2. New Republic, 27 Sept. 1999.  p. 16.
3. New Republic, 27 Sept.   1999, p.17.
edited by MC17.