"Hollering fire in a crowded theater"

The FBI's chief negotiator during the Waco siege says critics and conspiracy theorists are sowing dangerous discord.

By Daryl Lindsey

Aug 4, 2000 | Even though former Sen. John Danforth has cleared the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation of causing the deaths of 80 people at the 1993 Waco, Texas, siege, the cottage industry of conspiracy theorists continues to insist Danforth obscured the truth.

Recently, Salon spoke with Dan Gifford, who along with Michael McNulty created the Academy Award-nominated 1997 documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," which charged the government with firing shots the day of the deadly inferno on Mount Carmel -- an allegation the government has repeatedly denied.

Gifford blasted the Danforth report, insisting that his film was accurate, based on mountains of evidence that were left out of the investigation for dubious reasons. He slammed the Justice Department and the federal agencies involved in the Branch Davidian siege and claimed that the FBI has put him under surveillance and harassed him.

Now Byron Sage, retired chief negotiator for the FBI during the 1993 siege, strikes back at Gifford and other conspiracy theorists. It was Sage who spent hours on the phone with cult leader Koresh, trying to negotiate a peaceful end to what turned out to be a deadly confrontation. Transcripts of their conversations are riveting, full of all the bargaining, emotional accusations and careful manipulation that characterize such high-stakes crises.

In a frank conversation with Salon, Sage calls Gifford's accusations against the FBI "groundless" and "paranoid." In the end, he says there's something very important missing from Gifford and McNulty's presentation of the events at Waco: an eyewitness view. They weren't there; Sage was. He tells Salon what he saw.

What do you think of the Danforth report?

I find that he calls it exactly the way it is. If you read the first part of Danforth's report, he says that the greatest aspect of his findings is the overwhelming evidence that puts these issues to rest -- and why those facts have not been more aggressively represented in the media.

Were there any surprises for you in the report?

There is some information in there that I was not aware of as far as who at the bureau had information regarding the military rounds, possibly pyrotechnic in nature. That information should have absolutely come out in a more aggressive time frame, because it had nothing to do with the fires. But the FBI by not handling that information in a more appropriate fashion -- I don't think it was intentionally concealed, I think it was just not recognized for its importance -- played right into the hands of the conspiracy theorists.

So my feeling, having read this report and having been at the site, I think the Danforth report is very thorough. I think the conclusions are absolutely accurate and appropriate and that includes holding several people accountable for their inaction or not being more aggressive in clarifying certain issues.

Have you seen the film "Waco: The Rules of Engagement"?

I have seen it. After the allegations [against the government agencies] surfaced in September I had an opportunity to watch it. And it's a very convincing, very professionally produced film.

I use the term "film" advisedly instead of documentary, because I do not think it is accurate. I think that it jumps to conclusions based upon their analysis of what they believe. They present it as absolute fact. And the problem with that is that the American public does not have the access, without really putting a great deal of effort into it, to get to information, the raw data. They would have to go to several different sources, congressional records, the court in the western district of Texas, review virtually thousands and thousands of documents. So their other option is to go down to your local video rental and rent a film such as "The Rules of Engagement."

The producers of that film and other films like it have in essence rewritten history inaccurately. The inaccuracies have all along have been pointed out to them by the agencies involved.

The filmmakers interviewed you and other federal agents in the making of the project. How do you feel about the way they represented what you told them?

I talked to McNulty three different times at the request of the FBI. Every time I answered the questions that he had as honestly, as factually as is humanly possible and when he broke some of these issues I told him that he was in error and that is not what happened. He went on and just discarded that as if he had taken judicial notice that an FBI agent was going to lie to him.

The point here is that the American public has now been conditioned (and I am hoping that we can reverse this) to start from a position of believing that anything that the government tells them -- and I hate to use that term in such a broad sweeping fashion, and in fact I won't -- anything that the FBI tells them is immediately subject to question.

Next Page: Sage: Since when are filmmakers important enough for FBI surveillance?

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