I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Kill You Read online

  The impasse had been solved, but it was not a solution that the FBI-HRT’s action-directed members favored. Their viewpoint was laid out by Christopher Whitcomb, an HRT sniper, in his book Cold Zero.45 To Whitcomb, the negotiators were wimps who frustrated the desires of the Hostage Rescue Team operators:

  A virtual war had been brewing between negotiators and tactical personnel. Fifty of the best-trained tactical operators in the world sat idly by, day after monotonous, agonizing day, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened…. For the warriors among us, talk had become tiresome.46

  But now the impasse looked like it would resolve peacefully. The HRT had a simple solution. When Attorney General Reno repeatedly asked whether there was hope for a peaceful end, FBI representatives told her there was no such hope, and the letter’s existence went unmentioned.47 Three days after Koresh told the FBI negotiator that he was coming out, the FBI-HRT hit Mount Carmel with tanks and tear gas.

  To the FBI-HRT, the command to gas represented not a last alternative, but a long-awaited opportunity. As Whitcomb put it, “After nearly two months of mind-numbing frustration, Headquarters was finally handing us the reins.”48 In his mind, “On April 19, 1993, David Koresh was coming out of that compound, one way or the other. None of us there gave a rat’s damn about how.”49

  HOW DID THE APRIL 19 FIRE START?

  As discussed above, there are two types of CS “tear gas” projectiles. The earliest type is the “pyrotechnic” projectile: it uses a burning gunpowder-like mixture to expel the CS. These projectiles commonly are marked with warnings not to use them against buildings because they can start fires. The later type of projectile, trade named the “Ferret,” is a plastic case filled with CS dissolved in the solvent methylene chloride. Upon impact, the plastic bursts, the mixture splatters, and the solvent evaporates, leaving the CS powder in the air.

  The government, as might be expected, claimed that the Davidians must have started the fire; the CS projectiles that it shot in could not have ignited anything, since it had only fired Ferret rounds. Attorney General Reno so testified before Congress, as did one of the Davidians’ prosecutors, Ray Jahn. When the FBI acknowledged that it had made infrared videotapes from an aircraft on the day of the fire, it claimed under oath that the videotapes began at 10:42 a.m.

  The FBI later had to admit that the tapes began when the gassing operation did, more than four hours earlier. Why conceal the earlier infrared tapes? Clouds blocked any view of the ground, so there were no images worth viewing. But there was a soundtrack, and it recorded events in the cockpit, including overheard radio traffic. That radio traffic included HRT’s on-scene commander, shortly after 8:00 a.m., authorizing the use of military pyrotechnic CS gas rounds against an underground structure. During the Congressional hearings, that on-scene commander sat behind Ms. Reno, in silence, as she testified that no such thing ever happened.

  The FBI had an easy response to any criticism over that use of pyrotechnic rounds. Those rounds could not have caused the fire: they were shot four hours before the fire broke out—and into an underground structure that never caught fire. Why take big risks—setting up your boss, the Attorney General, for a perjury charge, lying under oath, hiding a videotape—to conceal the use of pyrotechnics that could not have played a role in the fire? It makes no sense—unless that was not the only use of such dangerous projectiles. Davidian Clive Doyle had experienced the CS gassing, not in the underground structure, but on the first floor of Mount Carmel. In 1995, he described the gassing to a Congressional committee:

  When I first heard they were going to inject gas … in my uneducated understanding, I’m thinking of Hollywood where a grenade is thrown into a room and somebody runs over, picks it up, and throws it out of the window if you don’t want it. I mentioned that to somebody and they said, well, you can’t pick them up, they’re hot.

  And I said, well, maybe we could use a glove. We never got to see them. They whizzed past your head so fast that, as I say, it was like a rocket. The only time you could see them at all is when they hit a wall and stuck in the sheetrock and the hissing and so on.50 [Emphasis supplied]

  Doyle did not realize the importance of what he had said, and neither did the Congressional committee. Ferret rounds don’t heat up or hiss; but pyrotechnics do.

  If government-launched pyrotechnic projectiles did start a fire, they had been aimed at the most dangerous location for igniting one. On April 19, powerful winds were sweeping Mount Carmel, coming in from the right (southeast) side. Survivor Clive Doyle was on the first floor, right side, when he heard the pyrotechnic rounds making hissing noises. The winds would drive a fire started at the right side down the length of Mount Carmel.

  A few minutes before fire breaks out, the FBI’s airborne infrared video shows something happening on the right side at a second-floor window. A bright white (i.e., hot) elongated object suddenly appears next to the window, consistent with a pyrotechnic round becoming stuck in the window sash. Within minutes, the infrared camera records hot gases bursting through the window and driving into the oncoming wind. The most likely explanation is that a fire has begun inside the room and that its internal door is closed. The flames and expanding hot gases cannot escape into the rest of the building and must vent into the wind.

  A few minutes later, the venting stops. The fire has eaten through the door, a flashover has occurred, and the powerful winds are blasting the firestorm down the second-story hallway. FBI photographs taken from the ground confirm that the second story was an inferno before fire began on the first story. The Davidians on the lower floor may have had little warning of a fire before the burning upper story collapsed on them. Clive Doyle testified that “the whole area that we were in just turned pitch-black, and almost immediately it was like you could feel heat over your head and on both sides, and I found myself down on the floor rolling around trying to protect myself from the heat.”51

  But the greatest death rate was among the women caught in the vault. The vault was the concrete room in the center of the first floor, where the mothers and children had gone for shelter—and where every one of them perished. At 11:43, a quarter hour before the fire, a tank rammed its way up to the opening to the vault, and sprayed in a full load, ten gallons, of liquid CS. Why? During the 1995 House hearings, FBI Agent Byron Sage tried to portray the Davidian mothers as callous, but in so doing he let slip the FBI’s own callous reason for gassing a building occupied by children: “I am telling you, I’ve been through CS gas a number of times and I would move heaven and earth to get my children out of that type of environment. That’s why it was introduced, Congressman, to initiate an environment which would cause those people to come out safely, not even orderly.”52

  But most of that “liquid CS,” about 98 percent of it by weight, is not CS but the solvent that carries it, methylene chloride (MeCl). MeCl vapor functions as an anesthetic, producing disorientation, giddiness, and eventually coma and death. Dow Chemical, one of the manufacturers of MeCl, warns that it is intoxicating at 500–1,000 parts per million (or 0.05 percent to 0.1 percent of air) and causes death by cardiac arrest at 10,000 parts per million (or 1 percent of air).53 Still more dangerously, MeCl is metabolized in the body into carbon monoxide. These traits have led to its ban as paint remover after several deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning.54

  Dr. Eric Larson, formerly a Dow chemist, estimated the discharge of one bottle of MeCl into the vault would have made its occupants comatose and unable to escape a fire, and two bottles (the actual amount used) would have raised the MeCl concentration to lethal levels.55

  The autopsies showed that nine persons in the vault died of asphyxiation without signs of smoke inhalation—they died before the fire began. The rest were likely comatose. When the fire did begin, the occupants of Mount Carmel faced another complication: burning CS releases deadly cyanide gas, and by that point Mount Carmel was saturated with CS powder. At autopsy, more than half the Davidians’ bodies had measurable cyanide le
vels, and at least one had a lethal concentration.56 (Burning plastic also releases cyanide, a major factor in aircraft fires, but a study of Dallas residential fires found that cyanide gas was only detectable in 12 percent of them, and never reached near-lethal levels.57)

  In short, Davidians trying to escape the blaze faced a multitude of obstacles, all created by the government. They had to fight their way past wreckage, were probably blinded by the CS, were made groggy or comatose by the MeCl, and had been breathing smoke made deadlier by cyanide gas.

  Some of the Davidians brought suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The District Court ruled: “Claims relating to the planning of the raid, the standoff, or the final assault … are barred by the discretionary function exception because they involve the permissible exercise of law enforcement policy judgment.”58

  WHERE WERE THE FIRE ENGINES?

  The final reason why the fire was so lethal: the FBI wanted it that way. No fire engines. The nearest fire department—with a total of one full-time employee and twelve volunteers—who must be summoned to the station before trucks can roll—is in Bellmead, ten miles from Mount Carmel. The fire department would later inform CNN that while the FBI had alerted them on other days when action seemed likely, they were never alerted to stand by on April 19.

  Then there is an interesting series of conversations between the FBI Tactical Operations Center (“TOC”), Dick Rogers, the HRT commander (“HR-1”), and Jeff Jamar, Special Agent in Charge and overall commander (“SA-1”), as captured on the audio feed of the orbiting aircraft’s FLIR camera:

  [Rogers speaking] 12:31:00 HR-1 to Forward TOC, if you have any fire engines, get them out here NOW.

  [TOC speaking] 12:31:42 We’ll have the fire trucks sent to the T [road intersection, about a mile from Mount Carmel] for instructions.

  [Rogers speaking] HR-1. I want the fire trucks up here at the scene!

  In his deposition testimony in the Davidians’ wrongful death cases, Jamar stated that he detained the engines until Rogers indicated it was safe for them to proceed. Yet Rogers had indicated that he wanted them “at the scene.”

  There follows an ominous exchange between Jamar and Rogers—an exchange that clearly indicates that some FBI officials did envision that burning the adult Davidians alive was a good idea:

  [Jamar speaking] SA-1 to HR-1.

  [Rogers speaking] Go ahead, SA-1.

  [Jamar speaking] Our people focused on the bus area for the kids, is that what we’re doing?

  [Rogers speaking] That’s what we’re trying to do.

  [Jamar speaking] No one else, I hope.

  Rogers, the HRT leader, is silent for a few seconds, and then responds in a tone of frustration: “What’s the ETA [estimated time of arrival] on the fire engines, SA-1?”

  At this point, according to the Justice Department Report, the fire engines had already been held for several minutes at the FBI roadblocks, perhaps a mile from Mount Carmel. Jamar replies, “They will be there momentarily.”

  But they aren’t. At 12:36 p.m., HRT commander Rogers shouts angrily, so angrily, in fact, that his voice overloads the microphone: “IF YOU HAVE FIRE ENGINES DOWN THERE, PULL THEM UP HERE IMMEDIATELY!”

  Instead of a reply, a minute later another voice appears: “No fire engines at the T [a road junction].” The fire engines were still sitting at the outer FBI checkpoint, despite the HRT leader’s repeated requests to allow them to pass immediately to the scene, his frustrated protests, and his superior’s assurance that they were on the way.

  The decision had been made. The Davidians, including those who had never fired on anyone, were cop killers who deserved death. At nearly 12:40 p.m., an aircraft crewman finally observes that two fire engines were approaching. At that point, Mount Carmel had already collapsed in flames; nine persons, some seriously burned, had managed to escape through the flames. No one else would be leaving it alive.

  WHO WAS HELD ACCOUNTABLE?

  The Davidians paid the highest price. Their next generation was virtually annihilated in the flames of April 19:

  Chanel Andrade, 1

  Shari Doyle, 18

  Bobbie Lane Koresh, 2

  Cyrus Koresh, 8

  Star Koresh, 6

  Dayland Gent, 3

  Page Gent, 1

  Chica Jones, 2

  Little One Jones, 2

  Serenity Jones, 4

  Unborn child of Nicole Gent Little

  Anita Martin, 18

  Lisa Martin, 13

  Sheila Martin, Jr., 15

  Abigail Martinez, 11

  Audrey Martinez, 13

  Crystal Martinez, 3

  Isaiah Martinez, 4

  Joseph Martinez, 8

  Melissa Morrison, 6

  Mayanah Schneider, 2

  Aisha Gyrfas Summers, 17, and unborn child

  Startle Summers, 1

  Hollywood Sylvia, 1

  Rachel Sylvia, 12

  Michelle Jones Thibodeau, 18

  The handful of surviving Davidians likewise paid a huge price. A jury (hearing perjured testimony about multiple machine guns) convicted nine for aiding and abetting (i.e., helping others commit) voluntary manslaughter (homicide after extreme provocation) and of using a firearm in such an offense. Kathryn Schroeder, who testified for the government, was sentenced to two years. The court came down hard on the rest. Renos Avraam, Brad Branch, Jamie Castillo, Livingston Fagan, and Kevin Whitecliff were sentenced to the maximum of forty years each59 for use of machine guns in a federal crime (although only two such guns were ever heard from and both operators almost surely died). The Supreme Court ultimately reduced the forty-year terms to fifteen years. Paul Fatta received fifteen years, Graeme Craddock ten years, and Ruth Riddle received five years.

  On the government side, Attorney General Janet Reno formally accepted full responsibility for Waco—then, rather than resigning, she became the longest serving Attorney General in 150 years.

  BATF did initiate proceedings to fire the two supervisors most responsible for the first day’s gunfight. Agents Phillip Chojnacki and Charles Sarabyn stood charged with gross errors in judgment, lying to investigators, tampering with the evidence, and “attempting to wrongfully shift responsibility to a subordinate for failure to properly supervise the raid.”60 But their attorneys suggested that certain facts would become public if their clients were fired—in particular that “Some people ‘way up’ said some things after that weren’t true, and that goes right down to the decision to go, and they were part of it.”61 The blackmail threat had immediate results. The termination proceedings were dismissed; the BATF supervisors were reinstated and given full back pay. The agency purged all mention of the disciplinary proceedings from their personnel files and paid their attorneys’ fees.62

  Only one government employee paid a serious price. Janet Reno eventually appointed Republican Senator and minister John Danforth as an independent counsel to investigate the Waco matter. Danforth hired staff, mostly present or retired federal attorneys, who were far from “independent” in their outlook. (The author was present when attorneys for the Davidians, and USDOJ attorneys for the government, arrived at the independent counsel’s offices. The Davidians’ attorneys were told to wait outside since the offices were a secure area. The USDOJ attorneys were immediately invited in.)

  Danforth limited his study to the day the compound was destroyed, leaving out the BATF and FBI lead-up to the final attack, yet he still took fourteen months and spent $17 million. The investigation report documented a number of cover-ups and some outright perjuries; then spent the remainder of the report explaining why Danforth refused to prosecute those responsible.63

  There was one exception, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston, the man who let Mike McNulty see the warehouse full of evidence, and who thereafter wrote a letter to Janet Reno informing her that pyrotechnic tear gas projectiles had been used. Danforth’s people found that he had withheld one page of notes from a grand jury and eventually forced him to pl
ead guilty to a felony charge.64

  The Supreme Court has long ruled that the government may not prosecute a person while concealing evidence that tends to prove their innocence. But in a 2001 affidavit, a former FBI agent stated that the agency had “zero files,” known for their numbering, that were kept secret from prosecutors so that they wouldn’t have to disclose them.65

  Independent Counsel John Danforth’s Waco report noted at one point that an FBI attorney had “placed a number on the Hickey memorandum which would result in its being placed in an FBI litigation file that would not be disclosed to the Department of Justice.”66 Apparently, neither FBI attorney, nor the Independent Counsel, nor the Deputy Attorney General to whom the report was given thought this was unusual.

  While Danforth’s team let everyone else walk, they pursued Johnston with a vengeance, seeking prison time rather than probation, issuing grand jury subpoenas to people who contributed to his defense fund, and trying to have him disbarred.67 The judge gave Johnston probation and the Texas Bar Association refused to disbar him, but his finances and career suffered for his serious and dangerous crime—allowing the public to know the truth. Johnston had committed the bureaucrat’s ultimate sin: he had embarrassed his agency, the USDOJ, by exposing its cover-up. That Senator Danforth was a Republican and Attorney General Reno and the Clinton White House were Democrats reveals much about the unity of the ruling class and its separation from the average taxpayer. Even with nearly a hundred Americans dead, the instinct of the ruling class was that “the right hand washes the left.” With Danforth’s investigation, the government’s whitewashing reached new levels: he spent $17 million to cover up for a cover-up.