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Oct. 18, 1999 - Bill Cooper
01:00:05
Rules of Engagement #1
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Time Text
Light hour of the hour, is the hour of the time.
And so, once again, I'm going to go through this in a very short, short, short time.
And I'm going to do it in a very short, short, short time.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
Good evening.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Tonight, folks, I'm going to, well, you know, we did this once before.
We played the soundtrack from Waco, the Rules of Engagement, and then encouraged you to go out and find the videotape and watch it.
But that was one of the severely cut ones because we could not find the original, unabridged, uncut Waco, the Rules of Engagement, which is two hours and sixteen minutes long.
A hundred and thirty-six, excuse me, a hundred and sixteen minutes is what it is.
One hundred and sixteen minutes, which is two hours, and no, that's wrong too.
It's a hundred and thirty-six minutes long, which is two hours and sixteen minutes.
One hundred and thirty-six minutes long, two hours and sixteen minutes.
And so tonight, tomorrow night, and the following night, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night, you're going to hear the uncut soundtrack from the uncut video, Waco the Rules of Engagement.
We want you to find a copy of this video.
It's very hard.
It's taken me a long time to find one.
Occasionally you'll find one on eBay.
You might find one and just keep looking and you'll find one.
But you've got to get a copy and you've got to watch it.
And you're not doing your job, folks.
You should be calling your congressmen and senators.
You should be writing them letters.
You should be sending email.
You should be doing everything that you can to make sure that this investigation into what happened to Waco doesn't fizzle out without public pressure.
That's exactly what it's going to do.
Don't you understand that?
So I'm going to keep the pressure on here.
And all of us have to keep the pressure on Washington, D.C.
If this goes unpunished, then God forgive us.
May God forgive us.
I don't see how He could.
I really don't.
So, it's going to be tonight, tomorrow night, and the following night through Wednesday.
And then we'll talk about what we heard on Thursday night.
Make sure you listen very carefully.
A lot of things happen in here that people don't catch.
It goes right over their head.
For instance, in the congressional hearings, one of the congressmen asked the witnesses if they found fully automatic weapons in the wreckage of the compound after it all burned down, after everything was all over.
And the guy held up an AK-47.
He says, this is a fully automatic AK-47.
And everybody thought, oh, they did.
They found that AK-47 in there.
And it's fully automatic.
Bullshit.
And I wish people would wake up.
The Congressman asked, did you find any fully automatic weapons in the Branch Davidian Church after it was all over?
The guy holds up an AK-47 and says, this is a fully automatic AK-47.
You understand what I'm telling you folks?
He did not answer the question.
If he answered truthfully, he would have had to say no.
What he held up was a brand new AK-47.
It didn't have a scratch on it.
It had never been in a fire.
And it had never been used.
And that's how they lie.
And that's how stupid people get sucked into their lie.
So easy.
So pay attention, people.
I'm going to be a little bit more quiet.
I'm going to be a little bit more quiet.
Quiet.
David, he believes that you're fixing to hit us tonight, he says.
No, we are not fixing to hit you.
That is not true.
Nobody's coming in with.
Okay.
You got my word, it's solid.
It's a thousand percent absolute, okay?
Okay.
I know everybody's skittish, but, you know, we just gotta work on the kids.
I was waiting.
Hello?
No, honey.
Nobody's gonna come and kill you.
No.
No.
No, no, nobody's hurt me.
What is God intending to bring out of this situation?
If we do our part as His servants, the government does their part as whoever they are in the plan of God.
What is it that God plans to bring out of it?
That's the way they thought.
We never went in.
I'll We did not introduce fire into this compound.
It was not our intention that this compound be burned down.
I can't tell you the shock and the horror that all of us felt when we saw those flames coming out there.
It was, oh my God, they're killing themselves.
I just hope everyone doesn't jump to making decisions before they've heard our advice.
Because right now all you're doing is the press.
You're doing a very perverted press.
Trust God. Read the Bible. Know what you're talking about.
What are you doing with your life?
What do you do every day with your life?
Is it something God approved of?
I mean, before you judge us, make sure your own life is clean.
You know, I mean, we're being discriminated.
We believe that this thing had to be brought to a logical conclusion at some point.
We never fired one single round of ammunition.
Were there rules of engagement for the FBI?
What were they?
Yes, they were, but they would not shoot unless someone's life was in danger.
The joint hearings of the Oversight Subcommittee on Crime will now come to order.
and I'll see you next time.
The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Colville, for five minutes.
Thank you, gentlemen.
In the fall of 1993, Treasury and Justice issued their respective reports about Waco.
Treasury, in effect, said, well, ATF blew it, we were the bad guys.
Justice, on the other hand, exonerates the FBI.
Folks, when I got those two reports, I thought this is all too coincidental.
One group conveniently assuming blame, the other group waltzing away with no blame.
This is the approach of what I call the lunatic fringe.
Still clings to the notion that there was a gigantic governmental conspiracy that brought about this nightmare.
It's difficult to see how any rational human being subscribes to such a notion, but obviously many do.
What I am telling you is that the most plausible single explanation for this nightmare, namely the apocalyptic vision of a criminally insane charismatic cult leader who was hell-bent on bringing about this infernal nightmare in flames and The extermination of the children, and the women, and the other innocents, is not an explanation that should be cast aside.
Revelation states that Christ has the key of David, and only he can open and then he can shut.
There's a hundred and fifty signs here.
Some people find it amazing that I'm the only one of them.
John and Hal think he's the Lamb of God.
When all he is is a cheap thug who interprets the Bible through the barrel of a gun.
Now they're making self-serving statements that ATF opened fire... There was an element in the press conferences every day to demonize David and it was through the language, you know, cult leader David Koresh and compound and bunker and militarize the situation so that Nothing ever positive, you know.
There was never any sense of telling the public, uh, well, who are these people?
I'm Paulina.
I'm Peter.
I'm Vanessa.
We had a bunch of women, children, elderly people.
They were all good, good people.
They had different beliefs from others, different beliefs than I have, maybe different beliefs than you have in their way of life.
And especially in their religious beliefs.
But basically they were good people.
I was around them quite a lot.
They were always nice, mannerly.
They minded their own business.
They were never overbearing.
They were always clean and courteous.
I liked them.
And what brings you, all the way from England, the nice lovely home of which I've seen and been in, what brings you to America, to a place called Waco, Texas, or Waco, Waco, Texas?
Anybody want to speak first?
I've always wanted to know, to understand the Bible, and I wanted to know about the seven sails.
And I met somebody who can show me the seven sails.
I asked my pastors, my ministers, I wasn't fully prepared for this.
Nobody showed me.
And now I found what I've been looking for.
The home video shown throughout this film is the only record of the Davidians during the 51-day siege.
It was made because the FBI gave them a camera and asked them to talk about themselves.
We're going to be just fine, sir.
We've got it under control.
The FBI showed those tapes to no one.
And in its report, it admits that it did not do that because it thought that those tapes would have won sympathy for Koresh.
Of course, the public heard of David Koresh in February of 93, but the history of the group goes back for about 50 years, long before David Koresh was even born.
The Branch Davidians are a break-off from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Advent and the Second Coming of Jesus.
The Davidians, starting with a man by the name of Victor Hothepp in the 1930s and 40s, believe that God had once again visited his people with a living prophet.
That's the key.
Victor Hothepp claimed to be that living prophet and moved his followers to Waco, Texas from Southern California during the 1930s.
Living outside town in cottages, The Davidians studied the Bible as literal truth.
The book of Revelation and its cryptic seven seals were their focus.
Christians generally believe the seals tell God's planned sequence of events leading to Judgment Day, and that their true meaning can only be explained by the Lamb of God, a Messiah who will come during the last days.
Five years after Hottis' death in 1954, All Davidians gathered at Mount Carmel.
They believed Armageddon, the Bible's predicted final battle between good and evil, was close.
We feel that world conditions are such, in alignment with prophecy, that all nations are soon to gather against Jerusalem's battle.
In fact, we expect that to be this spring.
The Davidian church almost disappeared after that.
But then and Lois Roden kept a small group together.
Lois left the Davidians after her husband died, and it was she who tutored young Vernon Howell as her understudy.
When Lois Roden died, a leadership conflict between Howell and her son George, dubbed the Mad Man of Waco, split the Davidians.
The whole of jihad.
What you have The majority backed Howell.
When George chased them off at some point, Howell and his followers moved to Palosine, Texas, where they lived together in buses and tents.
After an armed confrontation between the two rivals, Vernon Howell became the new Davidian leader.
George Rodin was later convicted of murder in an unrelated matter.
During a pilgrimage to Israel, Howell believed God chose him to be a contemporary Cyrus and free God's chosen people, just as the ancient Persian King Cyrus had defeated the Babylonians and freed the captive Jews.
On the journey to the United States, he legally changed his first name to David, honoring the Hebrew King David, and his last name to Koresh, after the Messiah Koresh mentioned in the book of Isaiah.
What he essentially claimed was not to be God or not to be Jesus Christ.
The Davidians believe that Jesus Christ is in heaven and they are Christian in the broad sense.
But he claimed to be a final Christ figure, an anointed one.
The word Christ really doesn't refer just to Jesus, but it means somebody that's chosen or sent or anointed.
He claimed to be that final one.
As mentioned in the book of Revelation, the seventh messenger, the final messenger, is to come.
And he also found himself prophesied throughout the Hebrew scriptures, but particularly the book of Isaiah and many of the Psalms, in very detailed ways.
And he would go through the scriptures and find references to a sinful Messiah.
And he says, My sins are more than the hairs of my head.
Who could this be?
Oh, this time, when Christ reveals himself, it's going to be according to the book!
Because there's some statements in there that might make you a little bit happy.
Okay?
Such as the rest of Psalm 40.
Lord, I have preached righteousness in a great congregation.
What are you going to preach?
In fact, the sinful messiah, Frey, got picked up by the Waco-Sibion herald and pushed in the wrong direction.
The claim of Qoresh and his followers was not Go out and deliberately sin, but unlike Christ, this one will not be without sin.
We'll be an ordinary human being without sin.
Attracted by Koresh's biblical teachings, new members increased the Davidians' numbers.
In 1991, they recycled the lumber from the cottages and built a communal church that
became familiar during the siege.
As a multiracial congregation of all ages from around the world.
Residents contributed both their labor and money earned by work around Waco to support
the spiritual life of Mount Carmel.
Do you believe that Quresh was the Messiah?
I think he was a Messiah.
The allegations of child abuse and instances of violence in the past are generally consistent
with the religious groups that you've studied.
The pattern of allegations is a very familiar one.
I mean, the way people describe what was going on inside convents.
Sounds an awful lot like what we hear people describing going on inside the Branch Davidians, or what people thought, as was referred to earlier, about what was going on with the Mormons in their early history.
I think it's very important for us both to take those allegations seriously in the sense of actually investigating them, but also to realize that there is this predictable pattern once a group has decided that they want to live very differently and see the rest of us as wrong.
That we're also likely to respond with a variety of kinds of fears and expectations and exaggerations.
The two things about the group that I guess created the most sensation would be the reported sexual irregularities, polygamy and so forth.
Underage women marrying David.
And the arms.
It makes nobody's business whether we have a gun or not at this place.
Guns are the right of Americans to have.
Our guns are the greatest in the world.
We have freedom.
Not freedom for religion, not freedom for state, but freedom for all.
You see?
And that's what a lot of people don't understand.
What he usually quoted is a scripture from Jesus on the night of his arrest, which Jesus did not resist.
Jesus says, from now on, from now on, let him who has no sword Fire one.
Did King David have swords?
Did Jesus tell the apostles to carry a sword with you?
Yes.
In other words, say, get ready for the future.
This is for the little children, right?
God knows how it should be.
Stars and stripes are flying.
It is justice and liberty for the children's sake.
You know, you might have to bear a gun one day.
Now, how does that translate into, say, the communal living Even the sexual arrangements of the group.
It's still sexually based.
At the time of the end, those who have wives should live as though they have none.
That's a teaching in the New Testament.
And it explains the whole Catholic teaching on celibacy.
See this here?
This is my family.
It may not be like your family.
Now David, of course, himself obviously is not living the celibate life.
The family that you just showed that is yours.
Is that family mentioned in the scriptures?
Anything to do with the seven seals?
Steve, you answer that.
Y'all answer that.
I mean, is my great, wonderful looks something that women can't resist?
Huh?
It has everything to do with the seals.
It has everything to do with the seals, you know?
Despite all the smears and snickers that I would cause on the part of the public, what they believed is that although celibacy is the way for the group, that this figure, this final figure, has the obligation to beget 24 children, and he has multiple lives.
It's in prophecy, in other words.
Might have been convenient, but this is what they found.
A lot of belief people have may seem abnormal and so strange to other people.
That doesn't mean that it's not right, though.
And these 24 children are to become the 24 elders that are to rule the earth.
And they found these various prophecies.
He would have claimed, and did claim, that this was nothing to do with sensuality or sexual desire.
Essentially, it was for procreation.
And he believed that these children, through these selected, wise, Would be pure.
And like no children ever born.
They're the beginning of the New Eden.
You know, our children know how to respect.
They know how to be mindful.
They know how to do right because they see it here.
They see it in the parents.
We subject ourselves to God.
We're obedient unto God.
We follow the pattern that God would have us do.
They would be raised completely in the community.
They would have never eaten even the diet of the world, the defiled world out there.
Never watched TV, never participated in all the things that he saw as a corruption of the culture.
That's how they would explain it.
I think that all you got kids in the supermarkets who run and scream and eat all this junk food all the time and all this candy.
I think if you look at the children, you'll see the actual product of the parents.
After the Waco disaster, Alan Stone, a Harvard professor of both law and psychiatry, was
asked to serve on a United States Department of Justice panel examining law enforcement
policy toward unconventional groups like the Branch Davidians and leaders like David Koresh.
Koresh was not a criminal psychopathic type.
He had, as a youngster, spent months memorizing the Bible.
And particularly these particular passages about the seven seals.
And that sort of repetitive study, memorization, A throwing yourself into that kind of disciplined project is not what sociopaths do.
And he was able to convince the other people by his knowledge of the Bible and the way he put it together.
That's how he convinced people like Mr. Martin and Mr. Schneider, who were both intelligent, serious people.
Mr. Martin was a graduate of Harvard Law School.
He was one of our earliest African American graduates.
He was certainly not a weirdo.
He was certainly not a criminal.
He was certainly not a psychopath.
He had gone on and done further religious studies after leaving Harvard Law School and had become interested in Horatio's That is how he got into the company.
So, the idea that these people like Snyder and Martin are somehow criminal types, or people who have just been sort of buffaloed by Koresh, I think, is a most unfortunate mischaracterization.
In contrast to somebody, though, like Jim Jones, of the Jonestown disaster.
Forrest did not really exercise this stunning, spellbinding, mesmerizing, stare you down sort of approach.
Nobody, you talk to the Davidians that have survived, none of them come out talking about, Boy, when David spoke, I just felt like, you know, it was God.
That isn't how they talk.
They don't even have this sort of pious feeling about it.
Why do they need a raise?
What's their problem?
And the people imagine a vain thing.
What are they thinking?
Their thoughts are make-believe.
It's a vanity.
Their thoughts are vain.
I mean nothing to myself.
I want to know what truth is.
And I'm searching for it.
He happens to be the vehicle that shows me I thank God for that.
I think he's great.
Is he the son of God?
I hope he moves.
Can you kind of describe for us how your findings differ from the rest of the report, or the
reporters who have covered this story?
First of all, I want to say thanks for reading my book.
Well, you're welcome.
The biggest surprise I encountered in writing this book is that I had no competitors.
And naturally, my conclusions differ or my questions differ because I learned a lot more than they did because they abandoned the story when the building burned down.
Now, of course, there were some who didn't abandon it quite as quickly as others.
But in general, this represents a major failure of the press in our country.
One of the prophecies that had been around Mount Carmel since 1934 called for an ultimate confrontation between God's people, or those at Mount Carmel, and the forces of an armed apostate power called Babylon.
Perhaps with that in mind, in 1991, He began studying armaments and buying and selling guns.
He pretty quickly found out there's a lot of money to be made at gun shows, and he and other people started going to gun shows.
And they bought and sold.
We now say, or the press now says, and most people say, they stockpile weapons.
All gun dealers stockpile weapons.
All gun shops stockpile weapons.
We call those stockpiles An inventory.
How can one use firearms as an investment?
The guns that he was buying would go up in value.
No questions.
And do you know other people who do that?
Yes, sir.
Not uncommon, by no means.
There was obviously, you know, firearms that were there.
I know a lot of individuals that had their own firearms.
And there were, you know, quite an amount of firearms.
But being in Texas, You know, we had people come from the community out to our property and shoot with us on our firing range.
And it was not really a big deal.
You know, I went to a couple gun shows before.
I'm not an enthusiast at all, to say the least.
But I went to a couple gun shows.
I met some people.
And, you know, some of our neighbors I would talk to had, themselves, they had like 10 and 12 guns just in their little family.
You know, so, I just kind of call it the good old boy syndrome.
The good old boy, you know, kind of mentality down in Texas.
It's a constitutional right.
It's not, you know, evil or demonized.
Did you state in your book at page 122 that you thought that the ATF was seeking to enforce unconstitutional firearms laws?
I found a scholar who studied the constitutional history of firearms laws and whose opinion is that they may not be constitutional.
I was quite impressed to find out that that argument could be made.
And thought readers deserved a chance to see it.
Well, now that you've studied it and written and promoted it, what do you think now?
Whether or not they're constitutional?
Aren't you worried about that?
Yeah.
Whether they're constitutional.
If the findings of these professors are trustworthy, that is a question to be litigated in the courts.
I understand.
I mean, it's nice to write a book about what may or may not be constitutional and unconstitutional, But yet when you come here to testify, I understand.
I mean, it's nice to write a book about what may or may not be constitutional and unconstitutional, but yet when you come here to testify, well, there's no question now that you've thought about it, this is not so unconstitutional as you would have thought.
I don't see what harm would result or ensue if the gentleman were allowed to explain perhaps a response he didn't get a chance to do.
I think we have to distinguish between illegality and constitutionality.
Whether or not the arms laws are constitutional will be, at this point, the courts say they are.
Tomorrow they may say different because of the research I cite in my book.
At this time, I believe that all of you have some testimony in front of you from Kerry Jewell.
Kerry, welcome and thank you for being here.
You can begin.
My mom and Lisa and I went to Texas for Passover in 1991.
David preached to us.
I sat on the floor playing with the shoelaces while he talked.
My mom and Lisa went to do a little shopping. I took a shower and then I was brushing my hair,
sitting in the chair and David took me, told me to come and sit down by him in the bed.
I was wearing a long white t-shirt and panties. He kissed me and sat there,
but then he laid me down. I've been very, very critical of the presentation earlier in this
hearing of the victimization of Keri Jewell because as serious as child rape is, of course,
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was conducting a firearms law investigation and search
and the issue of Mr. Koresh's depravity is not what they were investigating or going to
serve a search warrant for.
And I think that that testimony was put into this hearing to take newspaper headlines and other media attention away from a lot of the testimony about the law enforcement participating in the raid.
I'd like to just introduce the biographies of the panel.
Dick Guerin is a widely recognized defense attorney in the state of Texas.
He represented David Koresh and entered the compound during the siege.
Would I also introduce Mr. Jack Zimmerman?
Also a well-known and respected attorney, you represented Steve Snyder.
He also gathered first-hand evidence upon entering the compound during the siege.
In addition to being a defense attorney, Mr. Zimmerman is a colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
He practices as a military judge.
Two very credible witnesses.
Welcome.
You are saying, Mr. Guerin, I saw in David Koresh not a person who was insane, a person who was deeply committed and sincere about his religious beliefs.
Well, I am sorry for you if that's what you see in him.
This was not a bunch of people who had been hypnotized.
These people that I saw, and I met almost everybody in there that died in that fire, these people believed.
They believed in the Bible.
Some people had been there as long as 40 years.
Some people had been born and raised there.
They were there because they believe in a vision of the Bible that was unusual.
I don't understand it.
And these scholars have a difficult time understanding it.
But it was real.
You can't legislate away that.
In fact, the First Amendment says that we can't do anything about that.
Do you doubt the testimony of Curie Jewell who appeared?
Did you hear about that?
Yes, I did.
You doubt that?
Yes.
You doubt that?
Yes, sir.
Do you know why?
Yeah, you can tell me why.
We didn't learn of that the first time when she testified before this hearing.
That kind of claim has been made for some time.
Her own mother didn't believe that.
Her own grandmother didn't believe that.
Right.
There's been doubts about contradictory statements that she's made in the past.
Now, it may be 100% true.
It may be 100% true.
My time is up.
In my judgment, in many ways, these witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as facts about David Cora.
We worked on that for a couple of years.
In fact, we had the Department of Human Services go out and interview some of the kids and whatever they could do.
I had people go out with them to interview.
To this day, we don't have a case That we can make against Vernon Howe or anyone for child abuse.
Even though the news media here and other people kept saying this is what happened.
A man from Australia said this is what happened.
But we could never get them to give us anything more than just we know that's what happened.
You have to have proof to go into court.
Keep in mind too that most of the girls who were involved were at least 14 years old and 14 year olds get married with parental consent.
So if their parents were there and letting things happen in the way of sexual activities and what have you with their 14-year-old kids, you have common law husbands and wives.
I don't say that I agree with them and that I approve of it.
But at the same time, if parents are there and they're giving parental consent, we have a problem with that and making the case.
My investigations convinced me that David Koresh was guilty of statutory rape.
But I don't understand why two-thirds of the search warrant is about child abuse and statutory rape when the ACF has no jurisdiction over those offenses.
We determined that at the compound, machine guns were being manufactured and explosive devices.
Our goal through this investigation was to execute a search warrant on that house to obtain those illegal weapons.
In addition, it had reason to believe that correctionists and followers might pose a danger not
only to themselves but to the surrounding community.
I think in the case of the Davidians, if people had listened carefully to their rhetoric
with an ear towards an understanding of religious apocalyptic language,
would probably not have been worried about them using these weapons against their neighbors.
In a word, what the search warrant found was gun parts.
It was the duty of the ATF to show that those gun parts were owned with an intent to create illegal weapons.
I'm not a lawyer or a judge, but my reading of the warrant does not convince me that that intent was there.
You say it's not been proven that there were 48 illegal machine guns and A bunch of illegal hand grenades on his compound?
I believe there were 48 illegal automatic weapons on April the 19th.
I don't know if that's the case on February 28th, sir.
I see, but there were weapons.
How about hand grenades?
Was there testimony about that?
I don't know.
I don't recall that.
Do you recall, Mr. DeGaran?
No, I don't know anything.
Even though you know every other detail about the trial?
That's not fair, Mr. Schumer.
You doubt that there were 48 illegal weapons and hand grenades?
I never said I knew all the details of the trial.
Do you doubt that?
I'm answering you that right now, sir.
What is your question?
My question is, do you doubt, do you have doubts that Mr. Koresh had on his compounds illegal weapons and illegal hand grenades?
Do you have any doubts about that?
No, he told me he had illegal weapons.
He did not tell me that he had hand grenades there.
I see.
And I saw no hand grenades.
I did see some grenades.
That the ATF had thrown in, and I brought one out... What do you mean, thrown in?
The ATF threw in grenades in their dynamic... Well, they didn't throw any grenades in, as I understand it.
Yes, they did.
I brought one out.
They were flashbacks.
They did not explode.
Have you ever seen what a flashbang can do to somebody?
It's a grenade.
It has an explosive charge in it.
It's very dangerous.
It can blow your hand off.
It can blow your face off.
It can kill.
I would have brought out some of the unexpended grenades that the ATF threw in.
But I was worried about bringing out a live grenade, so I left them there.
There were a number of grenades.
Okay, Mr. DeGaran.
I think that would hamper your credibility because you're the first person who would say that those were grenades.
I've never really sat through a hearing the way the likes of yesterday.
Six and a half hours of defense lawyers, their marathons, their ways of sliding over the truth.
It was very unfortunate.
This idea of the FBI having hand grenades, not flashbangs, but hand grenades.
And finally, coup de grace, Mr. DeGuerin said flashbangers can kill, injure, maim.
Anyone who knows anything about these things knows they can't.
Mr. Kavanaugh, I have in my hand here a amount of Play-Doh.
Mr. Bush, if you could... This is just standard Play-Doh.
If that were a flashbang grenade or a stun grenade, the same thing, Uh, which, uh, was live, which pin had been pulled.
Would you feel comfortable just holding that in your hand?
Well, Mr. Barr, a flashbang grenade?
My answer is no.
I would not want to hold it.
Those are, uh, classified as destructive devices under, uh, uh, 26 U.S.C.
Section 5845F, aren't they?
Yes, sir, they are.
Uh, that they can kill people.
Is that true?
Certainly, yes, sir.
Well, a gentleman by the name of Warren L. Parker, an explosives enforcement officer, Bureau of ATF, on May 11, 1994, in court said under oath that they are designed to help kill the suspect while not endangering the law enforcement officer, when they're used for those purposes.
I'd like to focus on the search warrant.
First, it was put together as a number of witnesses have testified in a prejudicial and inflammatory manner.
And second, It clearly misstates the U.S.
Code statute number for the offense charge, and I think makes other technical mistakes in the law, which means to me it was put together in a sloppy fashion.
Now, you put together inflammatory with sloppy, that translates to me that the ATF was in a hurry to make a big splash with something.
Why was a warrant sought in the first place since David Koresh, on learning that he was being investigated by ATF, invited the agency on July 30, 1992, through his gun dealer, Henry McMahon, to come to his residence and inspect his firearms?
And I go, I got David Koresh on the phone.
And David Aguilera, he goes, he jumps up and goes, don't go, don't go!
And I go, I got him on the phone.
And he goes, They never once followed up on that offer.
Never even tried to follow up on that offer.
I can't imagine any circumstances where I would not take up such an offer.
Perhaps what the ATF thought were violations of the law were really things that Mr. Koresh thought were legal.
Suggests perhaps that what they really wanted to do was to conduct a raid, not make an arrest or conduct a search.
In the opinion of the agents, the planning for Waco and the manner in which it was done was done For the purpose of publicity.
Miss Hartnett, there's a rumor, surely it's unfounded, that the publicity person or public relations person for ATF had released some kind of a press communication the night before to media around the country that something big was going to come down in Texas.
Yes, and we heard that and she called.
Call the reporter to ask if he was going to be in.
Why did she do that?
She wanted to be able to get a hold of them if there was a story and they recovered these arms.
Wouldn't it be ample time after they were recovered?
Oh yes, I mean... What happened is that I contacted Channel 8 and Channel 5 in Dallas.
I just said we might have something going on here in Dallas this weekend and I'd like to have a weekend contact number, and that's what I was given.
What was the purpose of contacting them?
Were you actually seeking publicity for the agency?
Absolutely not, sir.
Okay, maybe then I don't understand the purpose for contacting them.
With its appropriations hearings a week away, a large successful raid would produce major positive headlines to counter the ACF's reputation as a rogue agency, whose debacles blackened the reputation of other agencies.
And it would scare the public enough about fringe groups to create political pressure on Congress to increase its budget.
At least part of the APF motivation, even if it never rose to the surface of discussion, was to enforce the moral of our society.
To enforce the psyche of right thinking by retaliating against these odd people.
Let me just ask, Mr. Molson, was there a cover-up?
Absolutely not.
Not by the Treasury Department.
In the preparation of that report, absolutely not.
Do you agree with that comment?
No, I don't.
Why?
I feel that the Treasury Department has said things since the time of the raid of Waco that have been incorrect.
It also had many omissions, distortions, and false statements.
And why do you believe those omissions and false statements are in that report?
I believe that they were concerned about the fallout from the media.
Were these agents knowingly outdone before they started?
We weren't outdone at Waco, that's for sure.
Almost 100 agents spent three days in dress rehearsals at Fort Hood, Texas, all at U.S.
Army expense.
In order for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to have obtained the military assistance they did receive, not because of the Posse Comitatus Act, but because of existing military policy, They misrepresented to the military that this was an anti-drug raid when it was never an anti-drug raid.
Unfortunately, there are many people who still, when they speak to me about Waco, say, well, those people were involved in drugs.
And there's no evidence that Koresh was or that any of these people were.
As practicing lawyers, we know that usually judges rubber-stamp the applications for search warrants.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and events.
Ironically, a charred copy of the very amendment was found in the debris at Waco.
There's a chart copy that was found right there at Waco.
The morning of February 28th.
ATF and Texas Department of Public Safety officers blocked the roads leading to Mount Carmel Center.
Several miles away, the raid team was busy suiting up, fully expecting the surprise of
the vignettes.
The raid team was not able to get to the site.
you Sharon Wheeler had ample videotape with the many cameras that agency officials thought would record a major publicity coup.
Most of the 130 men, women, and children inside Mount Carmel learned about the raid only minutes before it happened.
The news people were out there 30 minutes before the raid.
That's how supposedly they were ticked off.
I'm a news person.
About the time I got there, David came in from the other side.
You're with Koresh, correct?
He gets very nervous.
Did you request that the raid be called off because the LMS Pride had been lost?
Yes, sir.
I arrived at the command post and the first thing I asked was, where's Chuck?
who he would go down to the front of the car and talk to them.
You're with Koresh, correct?
He gets very nervous.
Did you request that the raid be called off because the Elvis pride had been lost?
Yes, sir.
I arrived at the command post, and the first thing I asked was, where's Chuck?
Where's Chuck?
And the advisor that he had left.
At that time, I started yelling, and I said, why?
Why?
They know we're coming.
They know we're coming.
I did not feel he knew that we were coming at that time.
When I talked with Robert, like I testified before, I took notes while we were talking over the thing.
I've read all of Robert's statements.
Robert did a great job.
I think everything that you heard from our testimony was not passed on to me.
Those two men know what I told them and they knew exactly what I meant.
And instead of coming up and admitting to the American people right after the raid that they had made a mistake, that the element of surprise had been lost, that the agents had advised them that they knew we were coming.
Instead of doing that, they lied to the public.
And in doing so, it's just about destroyed a very great agency.
The helicopters were to arrive first at the rear of Mount Carmel and divert the Davidians' attention from the ATF agents moving in on the ground from the proxies.
Approximately 9.15, we saw three helicopters, two small ones and a large one.
And we sat there and watched them.
They were making big loops behind the compound.
this sort of surfing not the compound but behind it and i got the camera out so you can shoot the helicopter
flying around get the camera back in we looked up and a cattle trailer
goes by it's a chuck full of uh atf agents and we're sitting there about two three four
seconds later another cattle trailer goes by i saw a shark come in and very long starting from doing
this long thing the um second shark stopped and barely stopped and the manager himself and all kind of
whatever gear it was behind on had done and says okay boy then i heard a voice to the right of
me downstairs so i was at the door then i heard a voice on the outside then i heard another
voice inside and then i heard shots outside and when we drove up
The Davidians opened fire, and I'm sickened by any other assertion.
I sat there and I watched this.
And the gunfire came through those double white doors.
I watched this.
It's unbelievable, but that's what happened.
And anybody else who says anything different, they shot first.
And if I thought that an ATF agent would drive up in front of the structure and shoot, I'd throw my badge in the garbage.
Didn't happen.
If the Branch Davidians intended to ambush those people with .48 machine guns and .50 caliber machine guns, and they came up in unprotected cattle cars with nothing but tarps on them, they would have blown them away!
So, that convinced us that they did not, that the Davidians did not fire first.
I sat by that door for several hours.
I went in and out of that door ten times.
And I saw the bullet holes on the door on the right side.
Almost every bullet hole was an incoming round.
And what I mean by that, it's a metal door.
You could easily tell that the bullets were incoming rounds.
They were punched in.
I'm not the marine expert that Jack Zimmerman is, but I've been hunting since I was 10 years old, and I know a bullet hole when I see it.
And those were bullet holes that were punched in.
Of course, the majority of bullet holes Would be through, would be going in that direction because the Davidians are not going to keep the door closed and shoot through it.
What you need to find is the videotape that was made of the raid.
It disappeared.
What you need to get is the photographs of the front that are similar to the one that's being displayed right now.
Now, you have the power to get that evidence and you ought to get it.
That is not fair.
That is not a proceeding that is right.
If we want to go over the issue of who fired first, then we should... Wait a second.
I'd like to finish my point.
It's not a point of order.
It is a point of order.
It is not a point of order.
You are out of order.
Mr. Zimmerman... I will just make one comment to the witnesses relative to the videotape and the front door.
We have consistently asked as a committee to get a copy of the videotape, which they now say is blank.
We have asked for the door and the door is missing.
The first cattle trailer had already pulled up.
The second one was pulling up when we got about halfway down the driveway and all hell broke loose.
The third one was pulling up when we got about halfway down the driveway and all hell broke loose.
All this is happening while they're supposed to serve a knock search warrant.
You know, when they knock on the door and serve the warrant.
And you have one group of ATF agents who goes to the front of the building and visit a very large pent-up area that we had for Fawn, an Alaskan Malamute, and her four pups that were living there.
And they shot him in cold blood first things. This was an unreasonable...
Search done in an unreasonable manner with excessive force.
And the law is clear.
Even an arrest by lawfully constituted officers can be resisted if, before anything else happens, those officers use excessive force.
Day of a couple of agents or a couple of detectives walking up to somebody's front door and knocking on a door in three-piece suits to execute a warrant Of any kind, is over.
And that's where we stand.
We stand between the caressers of the world, and everybody here.
you soon. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
First 15-20 minutes, it was get the job done, shoot the video.
you.
And then when you see people getting shot, you can hear people screaming and the bullets hitting.
I have two daughters.
I started thinking about my daughters.
And at that point, I wondered, how the heck am I going to get out of here?
Somebody said to me, Winston Blake is dead.
I said, where's he at?
And they said, he's up in his room.
So as I was approaching Winston's room I could hear water running and I couldn't figure it out.
What would that be?
As I turned into his doorway, Winston's lying on the floor beside his bed in a pool of blood and water and there's water pouring into the room from just Good night, folks.
Don't miss tomorrow night's episode of The Hour of the Time.
God bless each and every single one of you.
Good night, Annie, Pooh, and Allison.
I hope nothing like this ever happens to you.
Well, there was a woman in the library.
She had been sick, sick for very long.
Well, she had not even the chance to lie.
No, she'd gone with every brawl.
And while she was pushing her way through, someone asked her, what are you trying to do?
She said, if I were your sister, Emory daughter, I know I'd be waiting for you.
She found a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, a road, The doctors did all they could, but their medicines were to no good.
When she touched it, the baby didn't speak.
He's been around, he's got somebody touch me.
He's ready to go, just want to touch him when you're gone.
I know I'll be ready, know right now.
She's still down crying, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Let his eyes be just as under him when you're gone.
I know I'll be ready, know right now.
Toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, of a flower that blooms in the main.
A lovely thought spent at the end of a day.
Someone, nothing, a stranger along the way That's never been me, whoa
The feeling I had when I hear a touching prayer It makes me know, oh, there's somewhere in the air
Even the man lying in the ground in the air Must have a way, oh
It doesn't have to be a miracle.
The Lord has called me to be, I know.
The goodness of God, my Savior.
He'll never be far from me, I know.
Even the children playing in the street.
Saying a friendly hello to everyone they meet.
Even the leaves moving on, going on, going on, going on, on the street.
That's chemistry.
Oh!
Welcome to this show!
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