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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 23, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------FBI files show
Gov't allowed Davidians to burn to death in Waco
By G. Dunkel
Most of the more than 80 deaths at the end of a 51-day government siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993, were caused by fires that could have been prevented, according to recently revealed internal memos from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The memos have come to light in a wrongful death suit that the survivors are currently pursuing against the agency and against the two FBI agents in charge, Jeffrey Jamar and Richard Rogers. They explicitly spell out that no plans were made to fight the fires that erupted after tanks crashed into the compound, spewing out vast quantities of tear gas.
A memo sent to Washington on April 9, 1993, 10 days before the final assault, said that "per ... Jamar and ... Rogers, there would be no plan to fight a fire should one develop in the Davidian compound."
Jamar told a congressional committee investigating the siege that he held local fire trucks back from the fire for 40 minutes because he did not want to endanger firefighters.
According to the plaintiffs' arson expert Patrick Kennedy, armored fire trucks or forest-fighting helicopters with water slings could have saved many, indeed most, of the victims. Kennedy is a well-known expert who investigated the DuPont Plaza fire in Puerto Rico and the fire that ended the MOVE siege in Philadelphia. He also complained that the FBI, by bulldozing the site, destroyed much of the evidence on what happened.
Kennedy told the Dallas Morning News that the government's investigation was "fatally flawed." It failed to follow national standards and hinged on evidence "that has never been used in such fire investigations before or since." He was referring to tape produced by an infrared scanner located in an FBI plane flying over the scene.
Four major news organizations are suing the government to get these civil proceedings opened up to full public scrutiny, which is normal in such cases. But the government insists that the majority of the hearings be closed.
Most of the people who died in the fire were children and women--the people Attorney General Janet Reno claimed she wanted to save from the clutches of the Davidians.
"The truth is ugly," the plaintiffs say in their motion.
"... Jamar and Rogers simply decreed there would be no plan to fight a fire should one develop in the Davidian compound."
The Davidians, who encompassed both white and Black members, had a particular set of political, philosophical and religious beliefs. The real issue here is not the content of these beliefs, nor the beliefs of their supporters, but how the government acted.
The Davidian lawyers have made a convincing case that the government deliberately set out to destroy the group and their children. It was an example of government terrorism, a warning to all opponents of the state that if opposition goes past a certain point it can lead to death. Mobilizing the masses is the only effective answer to this kind of state terrorism.
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