19 August 1997
The New York Times, August 19, 1997, pp. C9, C13.
Four Years After the Flames of Waco, a Film Keeps the
Doubts Smoldering
By Sam Howe Verhovek
Houston, Aug. 18 -- The questions about what really
happened near Waco Tex., more than four years ago will not
go away: not just in the minds of those obsessed with the
notion of a Government conspiracy but in the minds of
thousands of curious Americans who are turning out to see
a documentary, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," that has
been causing a stir at film festivals and in theaters
around the nation this summer.
For Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City bomber who
made a veiled reference to the fiery deaths of 80 Branch
Davidians at his sentencing last week, "the fire of Waco
continued to burn," one of his lawyers said.
That fire may have burned out of control in Mr. McVeigh,
but he is hardly the only one to ask the questions: What
was the Government doing out in the middle of the Texas
prairie to begin with? Why, 51 days later, did Federal
agents go into the Branch Davidian compound with tanks? How
did the fire that consumed the compound start?
A typical reaction to the new film came from Scott Hannah,
a 29-year-old sales representative here who watched it this
summer at a screening at Rice University. Like many people
who describe themselves as not inherently anti-Government,
he said he had come simply because he was "upset with the
original course of events" and wanted to learn more about
what happened.
"I'm even more upset after getting more information," Mr.
Hannah said after seeing the film. "It's scary what certain
people given a little power can do."
Sissy Allen, a 73-year-old retiree, said after viewing the
film: "The Government declared war against its own people."
The documentary, lasting 2 hours 15 minutes, examines the
siege, drawing on interviews, Congressional testimony,
Government tape recordings of negotiations and some
striking videotape of David Koresh, leader of the Branch
Davidians, a religious group, and others inside their
ramshackle home during the standoff. It will hardly be the
last word on the subject. Some of its more sensational
allegations, including one that some Federal agents may
have shot at the Branch Davidians as the fire raged, cannot
be definitively proved (or disproved, for that matter), and
the Government has staunchly dismissed that particular
charge as utterly false.
"Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which cost $1 million, was
not a film bankrolled by anti-Government militias but by a
group of independent filmmakers who say they are generally
left-leaning and who argue that questioning what the
Government did at Waco should have nothing to do with
fueling the hatreds of militia groups. As one of the film's
producers, Amy Sommer Gifford, has put it, "What I want to
know is when did the wacko right take over the issue of
questioning authority?"
But since its debut at the Sundance Festival early this
year, the documentary has been provoking audiences, from
the Human Rights International Film Festival in New York
City to a recent packed showing at the Simon Wiesenthal
Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. In September,
the film will have its busiest month, with screenings at
Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, N.Y., as well as in
Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Chicago, Cleveland,
San Jose, Calif., Cincinnati and Vancouver, B.C.
Partly like a Texas version of Wounded Knee and partly like
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Waco is
probably fated to remain shrouded not just in controversy,
but in mystery as well. So much of the evidence was
destroyed in the fire that many questions will never be
satisfactorily answered, both about how the shooting began
on Feb. 28, 1993, leaving six Branch Davidians and four
Federal agents dead, and how the building came to burn down
51 days later.
There were several quickie television movies about Waco, a
few books, and a documentary called "Waco: The Big Lie,"
which was widely circulated among militias and other anti-
Government groups but never caught on with the public,
probably because its characterization of the Branch
Davidians as almost total innocents and Government agents
as flame-throwing monsters struck many people as too
imbalanced.
Dick J. Reavis, the author of "The Ashes of Waco: An
Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, 1995), who appears on the
film during his testimony before Congress, has not gone so
far as to say that the new film settles all the questions.
But in an article earlier this year in the liberal Texas
Observer magazine, Mr. Reavis wrote, " 'Rules of
Engagement' presents a new and serious demand for an
unfettered re-examination of what happened four years ago."
The documentary, he added, "further erodes the official
version of what happened in Waco in April 1993. With any
luck, the film will create enough public pressure to elicit
new information about a mystery that refuses to die."
The documentary hardly presents Koresh in a flattering
light. He speaks for himself, on videotapes the Branch
Davidians made of one another with a Government-provided
camera during the standoff but that were not provided to
the media at the time.
"Is my great, wonderful looks something that just women
can't resist, huh?" he asks at one point, dressed in his
undershirt and slouched against a wall. "It has everything
to do with the Seals, you know?" he adds, a reference to
the Book of Revelation, from which he preached to his
followers.
"I'm sorry some of you guys got shot," Koresh tells Federal
negotiators at another point. "But, hey, God will have to
sort that out, won't he?"
And the scenes of other Branch Davidians, many of them
vacant-eyed or seemingly fixated on him as he spoke, may do
little change the perceptions of many Americans that they
were lost souls, following the wrong man to salvation.
Nevertheless, what the film does show is a group of
placid-looking people in their home, taking care of their
children, studying the Bible, not seemingly intent on
Armageddon.
The local Sheriff, Jack Harwell appears in the film. "We
had a bunch of women, children, elderly people," he says.
"They were all good, good people."
And those images have clearly led some in the audience
here, and elsewhere, back to the original question: Why did
the Government raid the compound to begun with?
"I'd always been intrigued by Waco," said John Givens, a
37-year-old engineer. "I smelled a rat. I find it hard to
believe that these people fought 51 days tooth and nail to
survive, then suddenly decided to kill themselves. That
doesn't seem to square."
Who fired first has never been proven and almost surely
never will be, because much of the critical evidence is
unavailable. Officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms insist that the Branch Davidians fired first,
while surviving Davidians say the Government did.
After a trial of 11 of the survivors in San Antonio in
1993, several jurors said they could not conclude. There
was some evidence that a Government agent may have shot a
barking dog as the raid began, which provoked Branch
Davidians inside to begin firing. The film covers in some
detail the chilling 911 call from inside the compound
placed by Wayne Martin, a Harvard Law School graduate who
later perished in the fire with four of his children.
"There's 75 men around our building and they're shooting at
us!" Mr. Martin shouted that day. "Tell 'em there's women
and children in here and to call it off!"
A jury in San Antonio acquitted the surviving Branch
Davidians put on trial of all murder and conspiracy
charges, while eight were convicted of lesser charges
largely relating to illegal weapons possession.
The documentary treats all of this in some detail, then
moves on to the siege and to the events of April 19,
arriving at the controversial conclusion that Government
forces may have fired on the compound. Using
F.B.I.-provided video and Forward Infrared technology, a
thermal-image vision system with which many Americans
became familiar during the Persian Gulf war, the
documentary shows several bursts of light that one former
Defense Department expert classifies as likely machine-gun
fire.
A variety of other experts have since come forward in news
accounts, some to agree with the assertion, others to
dismiss it, and others to say that there is simply no way
to conclude for certain from the available film. In a
motion in response to a civil suit that has been filed by
several Branch Davidian survivors and relatives of those
killed in the fire, the Government has rejected any
allegation of reckless or criminal behavior at the compound
as outrageous.
If anything is certain from the reactions to the
documentary, it is that the controversy over Waco will not
die easily. At the screening here in Houston, several
people described the film as brilliant, shocking or both.
A few hecklers shouted obscenities at the screen every time
Attorney General Janet Reno or practically anyone else in
authority appeared, while more than one viewer came away
unimpressed, describing the film as very one sided and
"totally out of balance."
In any event, many seemed to come out as baffled as they
were when they went in.
"It's still a mystery," said George Szontagh, a 44-year-old
house inspector. Federal officials, he added, "were
following a procedure that worked for them in the past,
which was to use overwhelming force, and this time, it
didn't work. Since then, the rules have changed."
[End]
See the file on the U.S. Treasury Department's Waco
Administrative Review Group Investigation:
http://jya.com/treas-do-waco.txt