Waco: The Rules of Engagement, was screened before
the Skeptics Society on Sunday, June 14th, at the California Institute of
Technology. According to the Pasadena Star-News account of the discussion
following the screening, "tempers flared and sent the normally cool,
analytical minds in the audience into a fervor that brought The Jerry
Springer Show to mind." This was not far from the truth.
Producer Dan Gifford mounted a spirited defense of his
presentation as an objective search for truth. Evangelical Christian
author Richard Abanes presented his case for the Branch Davidians fully
expecting, and possibly even triggering, their destruction by fire that
they believed was prophesied in the book of Revelation. I was on the panel
as a former member of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne, ODA 594) at
Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, to comment on the military aspects of the raid
on the Davidians. After the viewing, when the Skeptics Society host Dr.
Michael Shermer suggested that perhaps one aspect of the documentary's
commentary on aerial video would have been enhanced by additional viewing
by video experts, he was abruptly interrupted by members of the audience
still inflamed by the film's powerful emotional message. When Abanes
suggested that perhaps the Davidians were as responsible for the disaster
as the government, he was roundly booed and one member of the audience
leapt out of his seat and began to approach the podium before cooler heads
prevailed.
Waco: The Rules of Engagement, the Academy
Award-nominated documentary, is an emotional and flawed account of the
1993 Waco, Texas, gun battle, standoff, and disaster.
Fascinating in its presentation of the events as they
transpired, the documentary artfully commingles facts with half-truths and
outright falsehoods. The result is a documentary that inflames as much as
it informs, ultimately distorting the history of the disaster and duping
the gullible as it attempts to build a case for a government conspiracy to
murder the Branch Davidians.
Perhaps this is the most intriguing aspect of Waco: The
documentary co-opts the techniques of David Koresh, the FBI and the BATF
in an effort to sell its version of the story.
Selecting carefully from the vast amounts of video and
audio information available, director William Grazeki and producers Dan
Gifford and Amy Sommer Gifford piece together the events as they
transpired chronologically and supplement them with congressional hearings
and interviews conducted in the aftermath.
To be sure, many of the allegations made in the film
regarding the BATF and FBI's clumsy and irrational conduct during the
standoff are true. In particular, this pertains to the BATF's actions
prior to the initial raid on the morning of February 28th, 1993. Video
footage taken by the BATF shows an organization more concerned about
obtaining publicity to generate congressional appropriations than it was
about executing a well-planned and implemented raid to serve a warrant for
weapons violations and child abuse.
The BATF's poor preparation showed. The law enforcement
agency knew next to nothing, or chose to ignore what they did know about
the Branch Davidians, their view of the book of Revelation, and their
commitment to ensuring that law enforcement officials would not access
their psychological and structural religious complex. As evidenced by the
fiasco that followed, the BATF clearly spent more time preparing for a
post operation dog and pony show than for successfully conducting a raid
of Waco's magnitude and difficulty.
At the end of the first day, the humiliated BATF left the
area of operations after the failed raiders ran out of munitions, dragging
their dead and wounded comrades and turning the standoff over to the
equally unprepared FBI.
The documentary's treatment of the Branch Davidians'
history reveals as much about Waco the film as it does about the Davidians
and David Koresh. For instance, only brief mention is given to the
Davidian apocalyptic vision established by the group's founder in the
1930s. As a result of their literal interpretation of Revelation, as they
perceived the predicted End Times drawing near, Davidians anticipated an
armed encounter with "Babylon," which they thought would be the U.S.
Government .
As the narrative continues, nothing is said of David
Koresh's previous use of violence-a gun battle in 1987 with rival George
Roden, the son of Koresh's one-time lover and mentor Lois Roden-which
established him as group leader and bolstered position within the group as
the self-proclaimed "Lamb of God."
The importance of this factual omission cannot be
underestimated. The untold incident indicates that Koresh's rise to power
had at least as much to do with his willingness to use guns as it did with
revelations from God. Equally important, the trial—in which he was
acquitted of assault charges—occurred well before Koresh became a "gun
collector" and dealer maintaining a weapons "inventory" for profit as
asserted by his defenders testifying before Congress.
Perhaps as troubling as any other aspect of the Waco film
is the presentation of the government's own Forward Looking Infra Red (FLIR)
video, shot from a fixed-wing aircraft circling overhead during the
attempt to force the Davidians from their compound on April 19th.
With Waco building toward a government conspiracy to
commit mass murder, the footage supposedly supports assertions that fire
was introduced to the structure by two tank-like Combat Engineering
Vehicles (CEVs) and that the FBI fired semi-automatic and automatic
weapons at the Davidians during the conflagration.
In support of this interpretation of the FLIR tapes, an
expert points to bright "flashes," stating that they are "gun shots." Yet
in each instance, the positioning, duration, and direction of the flashes
present problematic evidence. For example, in one series, the expert
points to "flashes" of apparent weapons fire emanating from a CEV's rear
deck. Unfortunately, the CEV's construction undermines the allegation. The
rear deck sits atop the engine and behind the turret. There is no space in
the engine compartment for a shooter and placing him atop the rear deck
would expose a shooter to incoming fire.
In another instance, the expert points to heat flashes to
demonstrate the FBI's supposed introduction of fire to the Branch Davidian
complex. The flashes appear well after the CEVs leave the damaged
structure and do not demonstrate with any degree of certainty where or
when the fires began. Yet the filmmakers persist in pushing this scenario.
One of the more egregious errors committed in Waco concerns the CS gas
introduced by the CEVs. The film alleges that "CS was dissolved in
methylene chloride" to create a highly flammable mixture. According to
this scenario "both the CS and the methylene chloride will become involved
in the fire and add to the fire." Once lit, the mixture combined with fuel
oil and kerosene spilled in the combat engineering vehicle's assault on
the building and caused "fireballs" to spread rapidly throughout the
structure. (In fact methelyne chloride is not flammable and CS gas is
vaporized for dispersal and does not burn.)
Continuing in the same vein, the documentary asserts that
once the building was burning, the CS gas was converted into hydrogen
cyanide. While the conversion of CS to cyanide gas can occur at
temperatures between 1600 and 2000º, it is not likely to have caused the
deaths of the Davidians.
The only evidence that cyanide was present is a ghastly
photograph showing a young girl's backward-bowed body. An EPA toxicologist
supposedly backs up this assertion by stating that prisoners are heavily
strapped into chairs during executions to "prevent people watching the
execution from observing the effect it [cyanide] has on their muscles." In
all fairness to the EPA toxicologist his point is well taken, but may be
out of context. Without conclusive tests demonstrating cyanide presence in
the cadaver, the assertions can only be regarded as inference.
Unfortunately for viewers, much of the history of Waco the
disaster and Waco the documentary rests on conjecture. According to an FBI
spokesperson in San Antonio, civil suits against the government are now
pending in federal court. Hopefully the FBI will present all the evidence
it has, and the witnesses will tell the truth about what they observed. If
Waco: The Rules of Engagement is any indication of what will happen
in the civil trial, don't count on it.
Perhaps it is time for the American people to take a long
hard look at the assumptions we consider necessary to our survival. Guns
and religion will always be with us, but when combined to assure ascension
to heaven they should be closely scrutinized. Don't be fooled—the
government often makes the same argument for the necessity of God and guns
that David Koresh made-it's just done to justify larger armies and
different aims.
Even more important is the need to improve our levels of
literacy so we are not susceptible to propaganda and hysteria, whether it
is propagated by charismatics, government agencies, or the media. USC
Professor of Communications Stephen O'Leary, who first suggested that the
Skeptics Society host a viewing of and debate on the film, opined that
"every American citizen should watch this film." Watch Waco: The Rules
of Engagement closely. It speaks volumes about the government, about
"documentary" film making, and about ourselves and our ability, or lack
thereof, to remain objective in the face of emotional events like Waco,
the disaster.
Copyright 2003 Keith Jeffreys
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