"The ATF fired first"

Government critics of the Waco raid won't be silenced by the Danforth report.

By Daryl Lindsey

Jul 25, 2000 | Former Sen. John Danforth, the special counsel assigned by the Justice Department to investigate the deadly 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, issued his preliminary findings Friday. After years of GOP rhetoric that Janet Reno's minions conducted warfare against David Koresh's sect, Republican stalwart Danforth concluded with "100 percent certainty" that the attorney general and the federal government were not guilty of any wrongdoing.

"The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of David Koresh. This is not a close call," Danforth told reporters at a press conference in St. Louis.

The report concluded that "[g]overnment agents did not start or spread the tragic fire of April 19, 1993, did not direct gunfire at the Branch Davidians, and did not unlawfully employ the armed forces of the United States."

In his preface to the report, Danforth, who was on the short list of potential running mates for George W. Bush, warned of the "readiness of so many of us to accept as true the dark theories about government actions at Waco." Danforth also took aim at the media. "Sensational films," he wrote, "construct dark theories out of little evidence and gain ready audiences for their message." The statement appeared to be an allusion to the Academy Award-nominated 1997 documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement," created by Dan Gifford and Michael McNulty.

One of the theories promoted in the film was that federal agents fired gun shots on the day the Davidians' Mount Carmel complex ignited into a lethal inferno -- a conclusion that has been brought into question by the Danforth report as well as a recent wrongful-death lawsuit ruling in favor of the government. The film has always had its critics, including former FBI agent Bob Ricks (the agency's press liaison during the negotiations in the 51-day standoff), who told the Houston Chronicle that Gifford and McNulty's film was "totally biased, one-sided and without factual basis."

In his first interview since the release of the Danforth report, which was critical of his film's findings, Dan Gifford blasted the Republican senator's conclusions. He offered a library of conspiracy theories and at one point even admitted, "I know this stuff starts to sound like X-Files but this is very real." Gifford suggested that he has been under government surveillance since the film was released, with spooks popping up at his visits to bookstores, cafes and even at a recent lecture he gave in New York.

So it's no surprise that he would take a skeptical view of the findings in Danforth's $12 million, 10-month investigation. Nevertheless, "The Rules of Engagement" was a critical hit on the film festival circuit, and has become the definitive documentary of the 1993 siege. Gifford's admirers no doubt share his skepticism.

In his introduction to the report, Danforth writes that "sensational films construct dark theories out of little evidence and gain ready audiences for their message." As the producer of one of the most referenced films about the Waco siege, how do you respond to that?

If that is a reference to our film, there is not "little evidence." He may be referring to others. I would point out that our film has been out, around the world, under scrutiny for three years, and it has held up. If the intent is to try to denigrate the films or the findings, we stand by them; that's just totally false. It was not put together with scant evidence, it was very thoroughly researched.

But in his preliminary report, Danforth contested one of the primary arguments of "Waco: Rules of Engagement," which is that federal agents directed gunfire at the Branch Davidian compound.

Nothing surprises me. This is what I predicted would be the outcome. As you may know, I refused to talk to them because I had no confidence in what I was hearing. When I was first contacted, my first question to them was, "Can you stop the surveillance and harassment?" Without missing a beat, without so much as a pause, their comeback was, we can't do anything about that. What that tells me is they're really not in charge. Even Danforth says that they had foot-dragging and people in the Department of Justice and FBI lying to them. Everyone wants this to go away, including myself. But the conclusions he's reached are absurd.

Such as?

That the government did not fire at the Davidians, when it's right on their own video and CBS's "60 Minutes" hired an expert who says it's gunfire. This year, even Dan Rather's show "60 Minutes II" hired an expert and did what I've been after reporters for a long time to do, which is to take (and they had a former British Army guy do this) the same kind of rifle they had on the ground and fire in front of an infrared camera and then compare it. He did, and he says there's no question that it's gunfire. It's not swamp gas reflecting off Jupiter, it's gunfire from the government's side working in coordination with the tanks.

In addition you've got Edward Allard, who's in the film as the on-camera expert, whose credentials are impeccable as the head of the Defense Department's night-vision laboratory. Before we even put it in [the film], I took this personally to 10 people with expertise in identification of weapons fire and night-vision technology, and they all agreed that's what it is.

The problem here is that you have the available pool of expertise that is largely working for the government or has government contracts. The Waco reenactment that was done [on March 19 as part of a wrongful death suit brought by Davidian survivors against the government] is always presented as if it was done by an independent firm, implying that it has no axe to grind, no connections, and is completely free to come to whatever its conclusions are. Fact is, that firm is [mostly] owned by Anteon Corporation, one of the largest defense contractors, holding major contracts with the FBI for training and for software and also with the Treasury Department and the ATF for training.

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