Pasadena Star News
June 15, 1998
Skeptics Debate Waco Standoff
Film Draws Heated Reaction at Caltech
By Jack Chang
STAFF WRITER
PASADENA -- It isn't every day an auditorium full
of top-notch scientists at Caltech explodes in feverish argument and
finger-pointing.
But on Sunday, when a Skeptics Society debate
focused on the federal government's handling of the 1993 Branch Davidian
standoff in Waco, Texas, tempers flared and sent the normally cool,
analytical minds in the audience into a fervor that brought "The Jerry
Springer Show" to mind.
"That's a lot of nonsense!" yelled a man who said
he was a child psychologist, while another distinguished-looking man
stood up and ordered a colleague to stop talking.
Ultimately, it was Keith Jeffreys, a former member
of the U.S. Army's 5th Special Forces Group, who brought order back to
proceedings.
"This is an emotional issue," Jeffreys told the
audience. "This is a volatile issue. Everyone take a couple of deep
breaths."
Much of that emotion was brought on by the
powerful documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which was shown to
the audience of about 300 Skeptics Society participants at Caltech's
Baxter Auditorium.
Largely based at Caltech, the Skeptics Society is
a loose group of scientists and science followers who meet regularly to
debate and debunk myths, pseudoscience and supernatural phenomenon.
On Sunday, the group turned its critical gaze on
the 1993 standoff between federal agents and more than 130 members of
the Branch Davidian cult that ended in the deaths of 80 people.
Film maker Dan Gifford defended his Academy
Award-nominated film, which accuses federal agents of negligence and
criminality in their raids against the cult's compound. Critics of the
film included national cult expert Richard Abanes and Jeffreys.
"I feel like a Christian being led inside the
coliseum," Gifford told the audience. "This is a very contentious film.
People seem to see this film through the prism of their politics despite
the evidence."
A former reporter with the Cable News Network,
MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour and ABC News, Gifford argued that federal
agents may have intentionally set fire to the cult's compound, although
they knew defenseless women and children were inside.
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms surrounded the Compound in the spring of 1993 while trying to
serve a search warrant for illegal weapons.
"I spent a year after I made the film trying to
disprove all this," Gifford said. "I didn't want to believe the FBI did
this. But the government lied about much of it."
Ironically, the audience of nay-sayers showed more
sympathy for Gifford's conspiracies than for Abanes, who called cult
leader David Koresh a "violent, very paranoid, child-abusing egomaniac."
"The film did not show that side of Koresh,"
Abanes said. "I do believe the FBI used lies to cover up their screw-ups
at Waco, but my point is there was another side to all of this."
An expert in U.S. military weaponry and tactics,
Jeffreys attacked on strategic grounds the film's accusations that
federal agents shot first against cult members and then fired into the
burning building to keep cult members from escaping.
Jeffreys said he was glad such films were being
made to "create some sort of dialogue."
"From the training I see.. the (Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms) were under-manned and under-trained for this
operation," Jeffreys said. "It doesn't appear the ATF is opening fire,
but that doesn't absolve them of their responsibility."
Copyright ©1998 Pasadena Star News
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