Sorry, I don't buy all this that it was Bush's fault.
By Jon Rappoport
I SPOKE RECENTLY with a former ATF agent who was at Waco in 1993.
He told me, "Now I think that was a manipulated event. We were all prepared for a big bust. It was laid out that way. We would have to show a tremendous collection of people and potential force... The higher-ups couldn't imagine it happening according to a different scenario. The people inside that compound were already judged. They were evil.
They were dangerous. Since I left ATF I've had a chance to look at some of the evidence about the Davidians. Whether or not Koresh was committing crimes, I'm convinced the whole thing could have been handled in a direct way by a few people. No one would have died. But ATF couldn't change gears. They had to stage an assault. They had to be the marauders. That's the style."
June, 1992. The U.S. Treasury Department Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) begins its investigation of the Branch Davidians.
February 28, 1993. 100 armed federal agents of the ATF attempt to serve a warrant for possession of illegal weapons on the Davidians in Waco. Bullets are fired. 4 ATF agents are killed, and 20 are wounded. 10 Davidians are killed. David Koresh is wounded. A standoff ensues.
March 1, 1993. Jurisdiction is handed over from ATF to the FBI.
April 19, 1993. The final assault is launched on the Davidians by a combined FBI/US Army Delta Force group. (Delta Force is a special unit formed in 1977 to combat terrorism around the world. Its use against US citizens in non-drug operations, without a specific waiver by the President, is illegal.) In the final assault, a massive fire begins which burns the Davidian compound to the ground. 76 Davidian members die.
No FBI agents or Delta Force soldiers are disciplined.
2 ATF agents are fired. Later they would be reinstated at lower positions and given back pay. Of the surviving Davidians brought to trial on charges ranging from voluntary manslaughter to weapons violations, 7 are given 40-year prison sentences. 8 are given 5 years in jail. 1 is given a 3-year term.
Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy Volume 18, number 1, Fall 1996
*1 THE UNWARRANTED WARRANT: THE WACO SEARCH WARRANT AND THE DECLINE OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
by David B. Kopel [1] & Paul H. Blackman [2] Copyright C 1996 Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy; David B. Kopel, Paul H. Blackman
The BATF had investigated David Koresh in the summer of 1992. The BATF investigation began about a month after an Australian tabloid television program produced a story about Koresh. [11] Having lain moribund since the summer, the BATF investigation perked up in mid-November. [12] By early December, the BATF was planning the raid on a seventy-seven acre property outside Waco, the Mount Carmel Center, *4 which the Branch Davidians called their communal home. [13]</B