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Before anybody gets too excited about the recent discovery that the FBI lied -- imagine that -- for six years when it denied firing incendiary grenades into the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, we ought to consider how the raid started. That seems more worthy of a congressional investigation than yet another announcement that some federal employees have been misleading the people who pay their salaries.
Go back to early 1993. A new administration had just
taken office in Washington, with talk of re-inventing
government
and reducing federal spending by eliminating
or consolidating agencies.
Now consider the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
& Firearms, an arm of the Department of Treasury
charged with licensing distilleries (causing BATF to be
known as the damn guvmint revenooers
in certain
backwoods zones), collecting cigarette excise taxes, and
enforcing some federal gun laws (causing BATF to be known
as jack-booted thugs
in those portions of the
hinterland that subscribe to the National Rifle
Association).
In theory, the BATF is just a Treasury bureau that collects certain taxes, but in practice, it's a law-enforcement agency. On that account, why not save some tax dollars by abolishing BATF and turning its enforcement duties over to the FBI? BATF agents could transfer, and there would be one less government bureaucracy, thereby allowing the new Clinton Administration to demonstrate its commitment to change and leaner government.
Assume, though, that you're a high official in the BATF, and you're hearing rumors that they want to abolish your outfit. As with the rest of us, a government bureau naturally follows the law of self-preservation.
How to preserve the BATF, a rather obscure agency not nearly as famous as the FBI, DEA and Secret Service? Get some publicity. Stage a big raid on something -- preferably something that could be demonized as a threat to the American way of life -- and thus demonstrate that we really needed the BATF to protect us from this threat.
In other words, contrive a publicity stunt.
Is that how the Branch Davidian tragedy started? Alas, there's no transcript of top BATF officials at a strategy session devoted to the preservation of their bureau.
But there was serious talk in Washington then of abolishing BATF, and the BATF's Branch Davidian raid on Feb. 28, 1993, seemed to have elements of a publicity stunt.
Or so it appeared to me then. To see if I was the only one, last week I called a one-time colleague of sorts -- John Young, editorial-page editor at the Waco Times-Herald. He was there in 1993; I knew him 20 years ago when he edited the Alamosa Valley Courier in Colorado.
The raid was certainly no secret to the media,
he
recalled. BATF had tipped off at least one major-market
TV station, one in Dallas, that something big was going to
happen that weekend.
Young added that it was in the air here, too, and so
we had reporters and photographers at the compound on that
Sunday morning [Feb. 28].
This led to accusations that the media, having gotten wind of the impending raid, had tipped off the Davidians, who then responded with defensive firepower when confronted by an armed invasion.
Then again, one cult member who had left the compound said the warning came from another cult member who called in from the outside after hearing the rumors.
The Times-Herald had prepared an extensive series about David Koreesh and the Davidians. The newspaper was ready to run it in early February, but postponed it, partly at the request of BATF.
Later that month, the editors decided to go ahead.
Again, BATF didn't want it published, but when the
newspaper decided to proceed anyway, BATF asked to be
notified in advance of the schedule. The first installment
of Sinful Messiah
ran on Feb. 27.
Thus the public became more aware of this sect, and the next morning, BATF stormed the compound, presumably in the hopes of gaining acres of favorable publicity by heroically protecting society from sequestered religious cultists.
Four BATF agents died and 16 were wounded. The siege lasted until that April 19, when 21 children were incinerated, presumably to protect them from further abuse.
Did they all die because BATF staged a publicity stunt
to protect its bureaucratic existence and funding? I
couldn't put that past them,
Young said, and neither
can I.
Assuming that Congress wants to get to the truth this time around, let's hope the investigation begins by nosing into the BATF's motivations for conducting the raid in the time and manner that it did.
After all, if BATF indeed wanted Congress to recognize the job it does, the planning of that raid would be the place to start.
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