Submitted by James Bovard
How many atrocities can the federal government get away with? Americans are still vexed by the answers that Congress failed to deliver in 1995. Thirty summers ago, Washington was fixated by a Capitol Hill showdown over the greatest federal abuse of power of the decade.
Unfortunately, trusting congressional hearings to discover the truth is like trusting a roomful of monkeys with typewriters to write great novels—it might happen, but only in an eternity. As comedian Milton Berle quipped long ago, “You can send a man to Congress but you can’t make him think.”
On February 28, 1993, scores of federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents launched an attack on the home of the Branch Davidians. The ATF’s lead investigator had previously rejected an offer to peacefully search the Davidians’ home for firearms violations. Four ATF agents and six Davidians were killed in the fracas that day.
The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team took over the scene and 59 days later, FBI tanks collapsed much of the Davidians’ ramshackle dwelling while heavily gassing the women, children, and men inside the building and nearby shelter. A fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. The Clinton administration had begun a cover-up long before the final assault. (Check out Scott Horton’s superb thirtieth anniversary podcast series on Waco as well as plenty of zesty articles on this website.)
On the evening of the Waco fire, Attorney General Janet Reno went on Nightline and announced, “I made the decision. I’m accountable. The buck stops with me.” Reno then asserted that the fiery end was all somebody else’s fault: “I don’t think anybody has ever dealt with a David Koresh, who would purposely set people afire in that number.” Nightline host Ted Koppel asked Reno why the feds used “tanks to ram the compound down.” Reno replied, “I think that what we were trying to do was to give everybody an opportunity to come out in the most unobtrusive way possible, not with a frontal assault.” Because she had a lofty federal job title, nobody called out her “unobtrusive” 54-ton tank BS.
Snap polls just after the Waco fire showed that the American people overwhelmingly supported the FBI assault. A few days after the fire, the opening of a congressional appropriations committee hearing had to be delayed so senators could have their pictures taken with Attorney General Reno, who became a national hero for her “the buck stops with me” pretense.
Reno received a different reception from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) when she testified at a House hearing. Reno cried when Conyers berated her for authorizing the final assault. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh, reflecting the conservative idolization of law enforcement, slammed Conyers for being disrespectful to Reno and accused him of grandstanding. Perhaps the most honest statement of congressional sentiment came from Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Brooks declared that the Davidians were “horrible people. Despicable people. Burning to death was too good for them.”
In November 1994, Republicans captured control of Congress. On the second anniversary of the final FBI assault at Waco, a truck bomb killed more than 170 people at a federal office building in Oklahoma City. When news of that atrocity hit, a top New York op-ed editor told his colleagues, “These are Jim Bovard’s friends!” Waco had become a rallying cry for folks who distrusted Washington, creating new pressure to expose federal wrongdoing. In a May 1995 Wall Street Journal piece headlined, “Waco Must Get a Hearing,” I warned, “The ghosts of Waco will continue to haunt the U.S. government until the truth is told about what the government did and why.” I also hammered the Waco coverup in the The New Republic, Washington Times, and other publications.
After two House committees scheduled joint hearings for July, then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) denounced holding any hearings: “It’s pandering to a paranoid fringe in America that wants to believe that Waco was a conspiracy.” Treasury Undersecretary Ron Noble warned that extremists might view the hearings “and decide to blow up some other building.” After the main hearings began, President Bill Clinton condemned them as part of a Republican “war on police,” and declared that “there is no moral equivalence between the disgusting acts which took place inside that compound in Waco and the efforts law enforcement officers made to protect the lives of innocent people.” The Treasury Department mass-faxed a letter from Secretary Robert Rubin warning journalists that federal action at Waco “cannot be understood properly outside the context of Oklahoma City.” An alleged truck bomber invoking Waco in 1995 miraculously vindicated the feds killing American citizens in 1993.
The hearings exposed how vast amounts of the key documentation and videotapes vanished in the maw of federal agencies. The ATF claimed it never had a formal, written raid plan prior to launching the largest military-style attack in the agency’s history. Apparently no ATF agents made written statements after a raid in which four ATF agents died. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) observed, “It’s very unusual that nobody connected with this debacle made a written statement. I think that classifies as a unique event in the history of law enforcement.” The Treasury Department quickly recognized that ATF agents’ statements could blight or destroy any federal court case against surviving Davidians; agency bosses were paranoid of creating exculpatory evidence that would expose ATF outrages.
Congressional Democrats rushed to dehumanize the government’s victims. The toxic gas that may have killed dozens of children on April 19 was a volatile issue for the hearing. Though CS gas previously killed dozens of children in the Gaza Strip, Democrats portrayed it as innocuous as a Flintstone vitamin. Benjamin Garrett, executive director the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, observed that the CS gas “would have panicked the children. Their eyes would have involuntarily shut. Their skin would have been burning. They would have been gasping for air and coughing wildly. Eventually, they would have been overcome with vomiting in a final hell.” Rep. Steven Schiff (R-NM) declared that “no rational person can conclude that the use of CS gas under any circumstances against children, would do anything other than cause extreme physical problems and possibly death…I believe the deaths of dozens of men, women and children can be directly and indirectly attributable to the use of this gas in the way it was injected by the FBI.”
The confidential FBI report that Janet Reno received before approving the attack stated that the impact of the CS gas on “infants and children cannot be ignored because gas masks are not available for infants and younger children.” When Reno testified on the final day, Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R–FL) presented her with a gas mask to illustrate that it could not have fit children. Reno casually tossed the mask on the floor and announced that “it’s not very helpful, in terms of trying to understand what happened there, to just show gas masks. We’ve got to show the people what went into the process.” Mica told me that even if the children didn’t die directly from the CS gas, “we sure as hell tortured them for six hours before they died.” (See my 2023 photo of the vault where women and children were gassed.)
The gaudy grandeur of the House Judiciary Committee hearing room could not disguise a vast moral and mental wasteland. Most of the committee members were absent for most of the hearings. The rules seemed crafted to deter disclosing facts that would embarrass officialdom. Each congressman received only five minutes to question witnesses per round of questioning (which could last hours). Witnesses knew that the more they blathered, the less they’d need to disclose. Many Republicans groveled before the FBI officials they were supposed to be cross-examining—as if the G-men could give absolution to any politician who doubted their holy status. The typical congressman’s idea of oversight of law enforcement is to assure that he is included in photo opportunities after federal busts in his home district. “How are you so great and how can we help you?” is the usual response when the FBI director testifies on Capitol Hill, as Guardian columnist Trevor Timm noted.
The five-minute rule exemplified the pro forma pursuit of truth in Washington. Hearing co-chairman Bill McCullom (R-FL) repeatedly cut off Republican members following vital lines of questioning, rescuing one fabricating federal agent after another. At the end of the hearings, Schumer—who did everything except call for the public hanging of the surviving Davidians—praised McCullom for his bipartisan spirit, and McCullom beamed like a cocker spaniel.
A few Republican congressmen doggedly pushed federal officials for the hard facts. But near the end of the hearings, one Republican staffer complained to me that the Republican “members were real pansies this morning” in their questioning of federal witnesses. Many Republican congressmen lacked the courage to challenge any federal agent. Few members of Congress could ask intelligent follow-ups because all they knew was the specific question or two aides had printed on a piece of paper for them to recite. Jason Whiting, press spokesman for Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), observed, “We didn’t really want to use any of the questions the committee prepared. Not only were the questions soft, but they weren’t well planned. There were stacks and stacks of [confidential] documents that went untouched.”
At one point during the hearings, I went to the committee’s Republican staff room to get a copy of an earlier statement from a Republican member. Sitting at the entrance desk was a twenty-something blond haired dude with a cowlick. He was swiveling in his chair and looking slightly bored yet immensely proud of his title—“legislative assistant.”
The Clinton administration had delayed turning over Waco-related records to Republicans until the week before the hearings began. Dozens of legal-type boxes were stacked on desks and on the floor.
I asked whether this was the documentation from the FBI and other agencies. The young guy nodded, glanced over his shoulder at the boxes, and lamented, “We don’t know what to do with them.”
“Have you thought about reading them?” I replied.
The staffer shrugged, sighed, and wondered how soon I would cease darkening their doorway.
Republican congressmen were shooting blanks while here was an ammo cache that could have blown half the witnesses through the roof. Unfortunately, reading is the only unnatural act on Capitol Hill. I salivated just looking at those boxes but knew I’d never be permitted to delve into this treasure trove. (The average House member spent less than twelve minutes a day reading on the job, according to an earlier congressional survey.)
I usually avoided sitting at the hearing room tables reserved for the press. Some reporters saw the hearings as an outbreak by right-wing Know-Nothings—a new McCarthyite inquisition, with Janet Reno and the FBI as victims. Some “Step ‘n Fetch It” journalists were willing to pick up and print anything that a Clinton administration official scattered at their feet.
But there were some hardline exceptions to the prevailing docility. I had lunch a time or two with Jim Pate, a reporter from North Carolina who was working as a consultant for ABC News. Pate would be summoned to testify at the Timothy McVeigh trial because McVeigh had several Soldier of Fortune magazines with Pate’s Waco articles in his car when he was arrested. I bantered several times with Mike McNulty, a gun rights zealot who was later the co-producer (along with Dan Gifford and William Gazecki) of the movie Waco: Rules of Engagement, which won an Emmy and was an Oscar finalist for best documentary.
After ten days of hearings, most of the congressmen finally recognized that the ATF and FBI were different federal agencies. But that was the limit of the learning curve for some of those politicians. The grand finale of the Waco Follies was the August 1 testimony of Janet Reno.
Republicans squandered hours trying to get Reno to admit that the FBI’s final assault was approved by the White House. The New York Times reported that Republicans “seemed to lose their focus gradually as they unsuccessfully tried to force Ms. Reno to acknowledge that she had erred.” But most Republicans did not have any focus to lose. Reno dodged key questions and used enough complete sentences to awe the Washington press corps.
Rep. Shadegg challenged Reno as to why tanks had repeatedly smashed into the compound during the final assault. Reno responded by claiming that the tanks’ entry into the building (via demolishing the walls and 25% of the compound) had merely been an “inadvertent crushing of a back support.” Shadegg burst out laughing and noted that FBI tanks had “inadvertently” smashed into the compound eight different times. The FBI plan for the tank assault specifically called for the destruction of the building—regardless of whether occupants exited. Reno’s claim that the tanks’ destruction of much of the building was “inadvertent” was either feeble perjury or gross stupidity, though it was often difficult to tell the difference with Clinton administration appointees.
Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-NH) pushed Reno on the use of 54-ton tanks to smash into a building that she knew was occupied by women and children. Zeliff asked, “When military weapons are turned on American people, who makes that decision?”
Reno replied that she didn’t consider the tanks as a military vehicle—instead, they were “like a good rent-a-car.” Her comment reflected the Clinton administration’s view that Waco was a routine law enforcement effort, except for the number of toe tags needed afterwards.
I showcased Reno’s rent-a-tank line in a Wall Street Journal piece the following day that detailed how the hearings shattered the government’s credibility on Waco. My article concluded:
“The evidence of a coverup and gross federal misconduct is far stronger in the Waco hearings than in the Whitewater investigation. The Republican leadership in Congress should seize upon the recent revelations to demand a special counsel to be appointed to investigate possible federal crimes and coverups regarding Waco.”
My article may have been the only piece in the national media that skewered Reno’s bizarre exoneration of the military assault on American citizens.
The Clinton administration correctly predicted that House Republicans would not have the courage to have a second round of hearings to deal with questions raised or information withheld in the July hearings. White House officials ridiculed GOP congressmen as “Branch Republicans” due to their supposed failure to find a smoking gun.
In July 1996, the House Republicans released their official findings from their investigation of Waco. According to Republican congressional leaders, a key lesson of Waco was that the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team should be expanded. Congress had already sharply increased the FBI budget.
At a sparsely-attended press conference in the House press gallery, I asked whether federal agencies had “fully opened their doors” to congressional investigators. Rep. Zeliff, the co-chairman of the committee, replied, “Not totally… We couldn’t get any information from the Department of Defense… We didn’t get all the information we were looking for” from other agencies, either. I was stunned by the Winnie the Pooh “oh bother” response to the Pentagon’s Waco stonewall. Congress controlled the Pentagon’s budget and a simple rider could have been added to an appropriations bill compelling disclosure of any Waco-related Pentagon evidence.
The Clinton administration swayed the media to portray Waco as a battle of good versus evil—with the feds as the saviors, naturally. The Clinton team pulled off that con thanks to the failure of congressional investigators to timely find and reveal evidence that would have utterly obliterated all federal credibility. Respectable opinion—at least in Washington—lapsed to pretending no Waco debacle had occurred. The Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia created a special award to honor the nation’s first female attorney general: the Janet Reno Torchbearer Award. The first recipient, in 1997, was Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; the award was presented by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Shortly after the hearings ended, former federal lawyer David Hardy began hounding ATF with Freedom of Information Act requests. In 1999, Hardy received documents revealing that nine days before the February 28, 1993 raid, ATF agents invited David Koresh to go target shooting. They had a fine time, with Koresh providing the ammo and the ATF agents allowing Koresh to fire their guns. Koresh strongly suspected the guys were undercover feds but went shooting with them anyhow. One ATF participant wrote a memo to headquarters on the shooting party and noted that “Mr. Koresh stated that he believed that every person had the right to own firearms and protect their homes.” With such crazy ideas, the feds had no choice but to destroy Koresh. If Americans had learned during the hearings that the ATF had scorned an ideal opportunity to easily arrest Koresh, ATF credibility never would have recovered.
In 1999, film maker and private investigator Mike McNulty discovered shell casings in a Texas Ranger evidence locker that proved the FBI had fired pyrotechnic grenades at the Davidians prior to the fatal fire. That discovery nuked the Clinton administration’s perpetual denials that the FBI had any role in starting the conflagration. The FBI was caught in a massive cover-up; Newsweek reported that “as many as 100 FBI agents and officials may have known about” the military-style pyrotechnic explosive devices used by the FBI at Waco.
Republican congressmen momentarily pretended to be indignant about the fresh revelations of FBI perfidy. But, a few weeks later, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) declared that Republicans were suffering from “Waco fatigue…There’s a feeling that the political risk may be higher than the political gain of pursuing this subject at this time.” The only “fatigue” most congressmen experienced was the nuisance of responding to constituents who believed that their representative should give a damn. The Republican leadership decided that the “risk” of pursuing more Waco disclosures outweighed the political profits—without even knowing what new investigations might discover. Besides, they were too busy with their Bill Clinton panty chases to pay attention to how American citizens were being oppressed by Washington.
I thought Waco should have been the most important education lesson of the 1990s for our nation. But the real lesson was: Truth delayed is truth defused. Congressional failures on Waco vivify the folly of expecting checks and balances in Washington to protect the Constitution.
Waco exemplified the Capitol Hill version of “Attention Deficit Democracy”—congressmen clueless and careless about the atrocities they bankrolled. That near-total default foreshadowed similar congressional pratfalls on the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the bombing of Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, et.al. “Oversight” is a polite term for rote congressional procedures designed to avoid discovering embarrassing information. A senior House Republican admitted in 2004, “Our party controls the levers of government. We’re not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to cause heartburn.”
During the Joe Biden administration, congressional oversight became completely depraved. The Select Committee to investigate the January 6 [2021] Attack on the U.S. Capitol was so skewed that those members of Congress chose to destroy “evidence” they had gathered during their kangaroo court effort to vilify anyone who protested at the Capitol. The January 6 Committee was the first congressional oversight effort that required a presidential pardon to absolve everyone involved—including the committee members, all the staffers, and all the Capitol Police and DC police who testified.
The failure of congressional oversight exemplifies why “Leviathan Democracy” is a fatal contradiction in terms. Once the government becomes so vast, elected representatives become increasingly inept or unwilling to pull in the reins. Members of Congress rise to the top by championing the worst abuses that federal agencies inflict. Congressmen are proud to receive the Agency Seal Medal from the Central Intelligence Agency as a reward for covering up CIA crimes. In 2017, Georgetown University Professor P.G. Eddington, a former CIA official, lamented “the House Intelligence Committee’s slow degeneration from overseer to cheerleader of surveillance” over the previous quarter century.
If Congress ignored the federal role in killing scores of women and children, what are the chances that current members of Congress could show the courage to expose a child sex abuse scandal that could incriminate some of the nation’s biggest political donors? Perhaps it is time for Las Vegas to offer betting odds on the triumph of decency in Washington.
