I heard there were two explosions.
Posted at 05:47 a.m. PDT; Thursday, September 9, 1999
Waco: a sickening failure of American journalism
by Alexander Cockburn
Creators Syndicate
THE ashes of the murdered Branch Davidians and their children - about 80 of them, though we can't be sure - were still glowing as almost all the nation's major news institutions rousingly endorsed the decision of Attorney General Janet Reno and her boss, President Clinton, to give the FBI (and, as it turned out, the Delta Force) the go-ahead for an operation that ensured massacre.
It was one of the great failures of American journalism, one of the most sickening, one of the most predictable and one of the most revealing. Liberals, by and large, were worse than conservatives in giving Reno a vote of confidence.
To this day, I meet progressive types who devote many of their waking hours to activities designed to save Mumia abu Jamal, who didn't give a toss about the Branch Davidians and their terrible slaughter by the federal government, and who still don't.
Use the word "cult," and both reason and moral judgment enter recess. So now comes further proof of the lies, deceptions and cover-ups of the FBI, and how do the big press pooh-bahs react? Do they make forthright confession that they bought a cover-up and tried to sell it to the American people, many of whom steadfastly continued to believe that the government was lying and that an infamy had been perpetrated?
Here's Ted Koppel, the night of Sept. 1, discussing the seizure by federal marshals of tapes of FBI hostage "negotiators" discussing the use of pyrotechnic grenades the morning of the Waco raid:
". . . The credibility of the FBI, which probably did tell the truth about most of what happened, that credibility is badly damaged, while the credibility of conspiracy theorists, who tend to be wrong about most of what they've spun together about Waco, their credibility is newly enhanced. It is on these two fronts that the greatest damage has been done."
In this repellent passage, Koppel defines his career role as flack for state power. For him, the issue is not that an agency of government appears to have planned mass murder, exactly as the so-called "conspiracy nuts" first conjectured, then proved. For him, the issue is the credibility of the state. For the liberal elite - in whose ranks most so-called conservatives can be numbered - this is always the issue.
Koppel was scarcely alone. Here's a CBS broadcast of Sept. 2:
"For years now, the disaster near Waco has been exhibit No. 1 for many who have deep distrust of the American government. From conspiracy sites on the Internet to documentary films, Waco has provided a focus for those who see the government as the enemy. And now they say there is proof the government has been lying, reports CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone.
" 'This is just fodder for the conspiracy theorists,' says psychologist Margaret Singer. She says this is just what the militia movement needs to say, 'We told you so.' . . . Many are certain to see this as government out of control.
" 'The anti-government movement, the militia, hate groups are absolutely going to get a boost out of this, and I think it's really a tragedy for that reason,' said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. At one time, conspiracy theorists may have been viewed as eccentrics far out on the fringe, but then Timothy McVeigh drove a truck full of explosives to Oklahoma City, and we all discovered just how dangerous it can be when people stop trusting the government."
As with Koppel, the problem for these CBS broadcasters is not one of overweening and murderous government (entirely in control), but of potential sedition. Anything that disturbs popular torpor is tactically inept. Accomplices in the great and ongoing Cover-up of Everything that Really Matters - the central mission of the Fourth Estate - they tremble for Power, whenever Power is displayed in an undignified or unappetizing light. It's why they thought Clinton should resign over the Lewinsky affair.
The film "Waco, A New Revelation," whose disclosures about the pyrotechnic devices provoked the current storm, has had the benign effect of discrediting the FBI and the Department of Justice and its chieftain, but in the end, it may permit the FBI to recoup by saying that the target of the pyrotechnic devices was just an outhouse, and that these same projectiles never struck the main building in which the Branch Davidians were sheltered.
As Dan Gifford, executive producer of the earlier "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," pointed out on Sept. 3, "No national news organization is saying anything at all about the government's careful prepping of the Davidian building to burn, nor its machine-gunning of the Davidians in the burning building that is so clearly shown in the FBI's own aerial surveillance video that is included in 'Waco: The Rules of Engagement.' "
One riposte of the state to the latest Waco disclosures is to emphasize, as did CBS's Blackstone, that those who mistrust government are by definition subversive, dangerous and possibly homicidal, and therefore deserving of incineration. A Reuters story by Jim Wolf, put out on Aug. 31, sets the stage.
"The U.S. government is preparing for possible violence from cults, guerrillas, hate groups and end-of-world-fearing zealots as 2000 approaches," the report began.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation expects to see increased and possibly violent activities among certain groups related to the millennium," a top official warned Congress in July. So we can see the stage being set for the next Waco. The SWAT teams shouldn't forget Ronald Reagan. He used to express his confidence in the imminence of Armageddon, citing Holy Scripture as his authority.
Maybe the ATF, which launched the first unprovoked attack on the Branch Davidian compound, should launch a preemptive strike on the former president's house, just to be on the safe side.
(Copyright, 1999, Creators Syndicate Inc.)
Copyright © 1999 Seattle Times Company
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