[117397] in Cypherpunks
Sept. 1 column -- pardon Davidian survivors
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Thu Sep 2 13:04:06 1999
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Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 14:53:48 -0700
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From: Vin_Suprynowicz@lvrj.com (Vin Suprynowicz)
Subject: Sept. 1 column -- pardon Davidian survivors
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FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 1, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Set the Branch Davidians free
Documentary filmmaker Mike McNulty of Colorado, whose "Waco: The Rules
of Engagement" was nominated for an Academy Award, is prepared to release a
sequel this fall, presenting evidence that at least six spent incendiary
mortar rounds and "flash-bang devices" (the kind that can start fires) were
found in the main Mount Carmel church (not just two, and not just in some
outbuilding) following the final assault by federal troops in Waco, Texas
in April of 1993. The new film will also document the assignment -- illegal
without a special presidential order -- of members of the Army's elite
Delta Force to be present during that final, deadly government assault,
against American civilians on American soil.
What a coincidence that the FBI in the past week has admitted to only as
much as Mr. McNulty and the Texas Rangers can apparently now prove --
"spinning" these revelations with the bizarre explanation that (only two)
incendiary mortar rounds were fired, only into an outbuilding, hours before
the fatal fire which killed 80 people (including scores of innocent women
and children.)
Of course, it was Mr. McNulty and his associates who first used the
Freedom of Information Act to pry from the federal government the aerial
"Forward-Looking Infrared" footage of the final Waco assault -- the real
assault, conducted on the back side of the building, out of sight of
commercial television cameras -- revealing what several experts have
interpreted as fully-automatic rifle fire into the building from positions
behind the armored vehicles as those converted tanks moved in to knock down
walls and staircases and spray in flammable and disorienting CS gas,
effectively making escape impossible for most.
The idea that these are the first "Waco lies" to be revealed is mere
wishful thinking. To gain access to military helicopters for the initial
assault (by armed tax collectors supposedly investigating reports of an
unpaid $200 machine gun tax, but in fact mostly anxious to pull off a
dramatic televised raid shortly before their upcoming congressional funding
hearings), government agents had to lie on affidavits contending they
believed the Rev. David Koresh was running a methamphetamine lab in his
church. He was not, and no one ever believed he was.
The government has long insisted there was no gunfire into the building
from the helicopters during the initial February raid, though non-Branch
Davidian witnesses allowed into the building before it burned saw
downward-splintered bullet holes through the ceiling, and eyewitnesses have
sworn to me they saw gunfire coming from those helicopters.
Attorney General Janet Reno said the final assault had to be ordered
because of new evidence Koresh and others were abusing children in the
church, though the Justice Department later admitted there was no such new
evidence.
Some might be tempted to dismiss all this as ancient history. But let's
recall that most of the Branch Davidian survivors -- not their assailants
-- were put on trial following the fiery holocaust at Waco, and seven were
sentenced to decades in prison despite being unanimously found (start
ital)innocent(end ital) on every major, capital charge.
Yes, they're all still in jail, despite being unanimously acquitted of
any wrongdoing in the deaths of four federal agents -- agents killed in the
initial raid by bullets whose type and caliber the prosecutors were never
willing to identify.
And those sentences were meted out over the written objection of jury
forewoman Sarah Bain, a Texas schoolteacher, who tells me the jury was
shocked at the size of the sentences -- and who wrote to the judge that the
jury assumed the defendants would be released for "time served" on the few
minor, technical charges on which they were convicted.
Writing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Dr. Alan Stone, who teaches
both law and psychiatry at Harvard University and who was brought in by the
Justice Department to write an independent review of the handling of the
Waco siege, says: "I do not know whether the FBI's pyrotechnic devices,
which the bureau has finally acknowledged, actually started the fire. I do
know that much of the gas was aimed at the so-called bunker where most of
the children suffocated. I do not know whether Delta Force military
advisers drove the tanks; I do know the tank drivers departed from the
agreed-upon plan and, for reasons never explained, started crushing the
compound. As in Vietnam, the government decided to destroy the village in
order to save it. ...
"But there is one truth that should be obvious by now; the Branch
Davidians were more victims than culprits. ... Mr. Clinton should pardon
them. By now he must realize both that the government made reckless
mistakes at Waco and that those federal prisoners were motivated by deeply
held religious convictions."
Dr. Stone is correct. If Mr. Clinton can justify his recent pardon of a
dozen pro-independence Puerto Rican terrorists who set off of bombs --
causing one police officer to lose an eye -- how can he allow breakaway
Seventh Day Adventist parishioners who merely tried to defend themselves
and their children when illegally attacked in their home to continue
serving sentences longer than those which we impose on many a premeditated
killer?
Set the Branch Davidians free. Indict their perjury-prone assailants.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6
UPS; $2 shipping each additional copy) through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
271122, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127. The 500-page trade paperback may also be
ordered via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at
1-800-244-2224. Credit cards accepted; volume discounts available.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
