FROM THE EDITOR

	In my tenure as editor of Women & Guns, I have never before 
given up "my" editorial space.

	I do so this month, in order that we can bring you this full 
report on the Waco hearings held in late July and early August--and some 
sense of what they were about, what they accomplished (and didn't 
accomplish), and what lies ahead in the public debate over this issue, 
without using up any of our scheduled "feature" space.

	Gunowners who think Waco is behind us, or that in the end the 
hearings were only about partisan politics, should, in my opinion, 
rethink that opinion in light of what substantive information that the 
hearings did produce.

	Since some people seem determined to link gunowners to Waco, 
while ignoring the concerns of a majority of Americans about what 
happened there and why, it is especially important that all of us have 
what facts are known available to us.

	Unsavory as David Koresh was--and gunowners have never disputed 
this--questions remain unanswered, ignored, or ridiculed by those in a 
position to respond to our concerns, leaving us with many of the 
questions we had before.

	This report was written by staffers of our sister publication, 
Gun Week, and we appreciate their assistance with it.


Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor




                  WACO HEARINGS END BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN

	The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and 
Criminal Justice and the Government Reform and Oversight Committee's 
Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal 
Justice on Aug. 1 completed 10 days of joint hearings on the conduct of 
federal law enforcement agencies at the Mount Carmel Center near Waco, 
TX, in 1993.

	The Subcommittees called almost 100 witnesses to testify on 
panels devoted to nine major areas of inquiry.  These included: 1.) An 
opening panel, introducing the "critical issues" for the hearing; 2.) The 
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) investigation of David 
Koresh, and the warrants used to justify the Feb. 28, 1993 raid; 3.) 
Planning for the BATF raid (including the "dynamic entry" issue), and 
Department of Defense involvement; 4.) Execution of the original raid; 
5.) The Treasury Department response to the failed raid; 6.) The 
subsequent negotiations and siege by the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
(FBI); 7.) The CS gas plan, including planning and approval by the 
Justice Department and White House; 8.) The gas insertion, demolition of 
the building and the final fire which claimed the lives of over 70 Branch 
Davidians at Mount Carmel, including 24 children, and 9.) the Justice 
Department response.

	Those who expected the hearings to unmask some dark government 
conspiracy were as disappointed by the revelations as those who expected 
definitive answers to a number of nagging questions and inconsistencies 
that have marked official reports of the event.  While some answers were 
provided, the hearings, marred by politics, inappropriate rules, and 
incessant spin-doctoring produced even more questions.

	James Bovard, who has written extensively about the Waco disaster 
in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, commented in The Journal's Aug. 2 issue that 
the hearings "were marked by administration obfuscation, Democratic 
pettifogging and far too feeble, half-hearted questioning from Republicans."

	However, Bovard concluded, "The evidence of a cover-up and gross 
federal misconduct is far stronger in the Waco hearings than in the 
Whitewater Investigation.  The Republican leadership in Congress should 
seize upon the recent revelations to demand a special counsel to be 
appointed to investigate possible federal crimes and cover-ups regarding 
Waco."

	Whether that will happened remains doubtful.  The subcommittees will 
prepare reports on the hearings which are expected to be made public next 
year.  Given the acrimonious and partisan approach to the hearings, we 
can expect a Republican majority report and a Democratic minority report.

	In the meanwhile, original House pledges to hold additional 
hearings on the Weaver standoff in Idaho involving the US Marshals 
Service and the FBI, as well as other alleged incidents of federal law 
enforcement abuse, remain uncertain.  As we go to press, Congress is in 
recess.  When it returns, the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on 
Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, chaired by Sen. Arlen 
Specter (R-PA), a candidate for the 1996 Republican presidential 
nomination, was expected to hold hearings into the Weaver incident.  

	Despite his frequently expressed criticism of government actions 
at Waco, Bovard's review of the hearings was not too dissimilar from that 
of THE NEW YORK TIMES.  In an unsigned editorial on Aug. 3, The Times said:

		"Ten days of hearings into the disastrous Federal 
encounters with the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Tex., have confirmed 
what seemed clear from the start.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and 
Firearms expected an arrest-and search plan in a grossly stupid manner 
that cost the lives of four agents.  Then the F.B.I. took over and, after 
the 51-day siege, staged an imprudent and needless raid with tanks and 
tear gas.  The final fact is the Attorney General Janet Reno still has no 
explanation that will excuse her rush to needless confrontation.

	"...But what is a reasonable person to make of her delusional 
assertion that the tanks that poked holes in the compound were no more 
threatening than a "good rent-a-car" carrying out a measured increase in 
pressure on the Davidians?"

	Also on Aug. 3, THE WASHINGTON TIMES editorialized about Reno's 
testimony before the subcommittees that "...some of her comments were so 
preposterous that at one point she was forced into the unstatesmanlike 
position of pleading with lawmakers not to laugh."  Reno has told the 
hearing that the tank inadvertently battered holes in the building until 
it collapsed and then inadvertently repeated trips onto the fallen roof 
until it was little more than rubble.

	Some, particularly the Democrats and their supporters in the 
media, have claimed that the joint subcommittee hearings produced nothing 
new.  However, even THE WASHINGTON POST found value in them, saying:

	"Waco was a story of mistakes and errors in judgment.  There are 
several lessons to be learned.  But it produced no web of conspiracy, no 
major federal villains or victors--only th dead in that fiery compound."

	Waco is a story that is unlikely to go away, especially for any 
of the survivors or the families of the dead and wounded of both the BATF 
and the Branch Davidians.

	Lobbyists for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and 
Bear Arms monitored almost all of the hearing panels, and collected 
hundreds of pages of notes and testimony.  The balance of this report 
summarizes something of the "politics" of the hearings and some of the 
key "revelations" that emerged.

			THE VALUE OF THE HEARINGS

	While observers are aware of some disappointment  among the civil 
and constitutional  rights constituency over what came out of the 
hearings, they believe that it must be regarded as an important victory 
that the hearings actually even took place.  Congress spent 10 days 
conducting a post-mortem on one of the worst law enforcement disasters in 
American history, almost two years after the Departments of Justice and 
Treasury issued their own reports intended to be the last word on that 
disaster.

	Those internal reports were issued prior to the surviving Branch 
Davidians' trial.  The federal court trial testimony produced 
information, evidence and testimony casting enough doubt on the 
government's story to induce a jury to acquit the Branch the Branch 
Davidians of murder charges, even though they were found guilty of lesser 
charges.  The Congressional hearings have now provide a public forum for 
some of the trial testimony, as well as an opportunity for the public to 
hear from two Branch Davidians, David Thibodeau and Clive Doyle, their 
lawyers and a host of other witnesses.

	Finally, the hearings confirmed that it is not just "conspiracy 
theorists" who have grave doubts about government actions at Waco.  While 
much was made of the National Rifle Association's support of the 
hearings, but THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE WASHINGTON POST were compelled 
to acknowledge in their editorials that the hearings were warranted.

	Like all Congressional business, the Waco hearings were rendered 
less useful to the American people than they could have been by the 
partisan bickering of Members of Congress.

	The Republicans continually reiterated that they were conducting 
the hearings to get answers to the American people about governmental 
abuse of power, although some helped fuel the Democrats' contention that 
the hearings were a purely partisan attempt to embarrass the Clinton 
Administration.  The Democrats also claimed that the hearing were a 
payback to the National Rifle Association for all the support the 
Republicans received in the last election.  (Objective observers might 
conclude that they are both right.)

	The Democrats insisted (and Clinton explicitly put forward this 
line) that the purpose of the hearings was to undermine our nation's law 
enforcement agencies, at the behest of the National Rifle Association, 
even though many of the law enforcement people who testified proved 
otherwise.  The Democrats played the NRA card for all it was worth, 
charging that the NRA's involvement with the organization of the hearings 
"tainted" them.  On the opening day, the hearings were delayed for two 
hours while Reps. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the ranking minority member of 
the full Judiciary Committee, and Tom Lantos (D-CA) of the Oversight 
subcommittee, took the lead in demanding that the subcommittees subpoena 
Republican staffers and the NRA people they worked with, to appear 
before the hearing and explain under oath how they worked together.  
(Since only the majority party has subpoena power, and the Republicans 
had no intention of ceding to the Democrats' demands, this wrangling only 
served to divert attention from the main issues and bog down the hearings.)

	The low point in the Democrats' NRA-baiting occurred when Schumer 
attempted to discredit the testimony of Dr. Alan Stone by forcing him to 
admit that he had been contacted by Fran Haga, a researcher working for 
the NRA who had also been charged by the Democrats with misrepresenting 
herself to Mrs. Joyce Sparks fo the Texas Department of Protective 
Services.  Dr. Stone, of course, had been one of the independent experts 
tapped by the Justice Department to review the Waco events, and he wrote 
a scathing critique of the BATF and the FBI i September 1993, long before 
the NRA involved itself in this issue.  Mrs. Sparks, who would not 
otherwise have been invited to testify, did so and helped show how 
incompetent and insensitive BATF and FBI leaders on the ground really were.

	Many observers have commented on the fact that the Democrats and 
Republicans seemed to have switched places in these hearings" the 
Republicans were the defenders of the civil rights of the accused, while 
the Democrats were the champions of our men and women in law enforcement, 
who daily face "vicious criminals" like David Koresh, who are armed to 
the teeth with "assault weapons" and armor-piercing ammunition.  Under 
leading questioning by the Democrats, lawmen had the opportunity to imply 
that, with all the weapons out there in the population, it is no longer 
possible for law enforcement to serve a warrant without sending a SWAT 
team to the door, a scenario that bodes ill for all Americans.

	Perhaps no member of either committee better exemplified the 
Democrats defense of all government power so much as Rep. Gene Taylor 
(D-MS).  Taylor asked every witness the same question: "Does anything you 
have seen or know about the Waco case justify the killing of four federal 
agents?"  Taylor repeatedly implied that one can never question the 
actions of law enforcement without appearing to be against law 
enforcement, a tactic further designed to alienate gunowners from their 
former allies in local, state and federal police agencies.

	It was a female member of Congress, Karen Thurman (D-FL), the 
ranking minority member of the Oversight subcommittee, who apparently 
arranged the spectacularly exploitative testimony of Kiri Jewell.  A 
Republican congressman noted the next day that in his state they have 
laws against even publishing the names of minors who have been sexually 
molested.  This early public relations coup succeeded in making Koresh, 
no law enforcement, the focus of the hearings.  By the end of the first 
day, BATF witnesses were explaining, prompted by the Democrats' leading 
questions, that they were so inflamed by reports that young girls wee 
being raped at Mount Carmel that they let their anger and their haste get 
the better of them, and this was why they went in after losing the 
element of surprise!

	In vain did Rep. Steven Schiff (R-AZ) try to remind everyone that 
David Koresh was not a government employee and not the subject of the 
hearing, and that the goal of the hearings was to exercise oversight over 
government agencies, not try David Koresh.  Young Jewell's testimony 
provided the BATF and FBI witnesses who followed with the ultimate 
justification for their actions: excessive force was "necessary" because 
they were confronted with a "monster," to use the language of Lantos, who 
also compared Koresh to Hitler.  (This did not prevent Lantos, however, 
from frequently supporting the widespread us of the military in civil law 
enforcement cases.)

	From the first day of the hearings, when Conyers stated that the 
hearings were just an extension of the attack on the "assault weapons" 
ban, and then ridiculed and attempted to discredit a witness sympathetic 
to the plight of the Davidians, the journalist and Waco book author Dick 
Reavis it was clear that the five Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) 
members on the subcommittees were going to be Democrats first, and civil 
rights leaders second.  These members shied completely away from exposing 
constitutional violations by law enforcement in Waco.  Instead, the line 
of questioning pursued by the CBC members was designed to expose the 
disingenuousness of the Republican concern with the defectiveness of the 
BATF warrant.  As previously reported, last spring the Republicans 
managed to overturn the "exclusionary rule," a rule which strengthened 
Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure by 
ruling that evidence illegally obtained by police could not be admitted 
at trial.  The CBC fought the Republicans on this "good faith exception" 
and lost.  So they used the occasion of the Waco hearings to accuse the 
Republicans of crying "crocodile tears" over the defective warrant 
against David Koresh.  The actual defects of the warrant, and the 
consequences of its extraordinary enforcement, were of little or no 
concern to them; what was of concern was scoring partisan points against 
the Republicans.

	One procedural victory won by the Democrats had a profound effect 
on the hearings and probably prevented anyone in Congress from conducting 
a truly informative hearing.  Because the Democrats refused to agree to a 
"unanimous consent rule," which would have permitted each side to 
designate questioners and allocate as much time to them as they wanted, 
the subcommittees wee forced to revert to the five-minute rule.  This 
format made it extremely difficult ot sustain any line of questioning, 
and to follow up questions adequately.   It also led to a lot of 
repetition, as each side tried to get back on the track it was pursuing 
prior to having to yield to the other side.

	The Republicans opted to pursue a partisan agenda to the 
detriment of exposing law enforcement abuses, when they made a big deal 
out of the White House's role in signing off on the final gas/tank 
assault o Mount Carmel: i.e., when they tried to show that Reno was not 
really the one ultimately responsible for giving the OK for the assault.  
Some believe this was a mistake, because it seemed obvious that Reno had 
been bamboozled by the FBI.  If the goal was to investigate law 
enforcement abuses, it would have been more fruitful to focus the inquiry 
on how it was that the FBI fed the Attorney General selective information 
to support the course of action they had already settled on.

	While Rep. Schumer scornfully asserted that "no new evidence" cam 
to light to justify the hearings, there have been some significant new 
revelations, or confirmations of opinions long-held by Waco-watchers.  
Many of the following items answer specific questions which were prepared 
for the subcommittees:

	1.) It was acknowledged that the affidavit in support of the 
BATF warrant was built on stale hearsay, and that it was based on 
information received from people who had no knowledge of firearms.  It 
was acknowledged that one of the people who testified about seeing arms 
in Mount Carmel--Marc Breaux--was legally blind.

	Nevertheless, it was also acknowledged by sympathetic witnesses 
that affidavits of this caliber are routinely accepted by magistrates, 
and that in spite of its numerous defects, the courts would probably say 
that the affidavit established probable cause.  Schumer ruthlessly 
grilled Gerald Goldstein, president of the National Association of 
Criminal Defense Lawyers, on why the Davidians' attorneys did not 
challenge the warrant in the course of their trial, implying that their 
failure to do so was an acknowledgment  that the government did have 
probable cause for the "dynamic entry" raid.  It was only several panels 
later that another lawyer told Schumer that the defense attorneys did not 
challenge the affidavit in court because the judge had already ruled that 
the warrant was moot.

	2.) US Attorney Bill Johnston vigorously denied under oath the 
allegation that he refused to approve a search warrant for anything other 
than a "dynamic entry."

	3.) Chuck Sarabyn, former BATF Assistant SAC and commander of the 
Waco raid, testified that he did not know who on his team was to serve 
the warrant, leading credence to the belief that no peaceful service of 
the warrant was contemplated or planned.  In fact, his testimony revealed 
that neither he nor Philip Chojnacki, the other BATF raid supervisor, 
actually had the warrant in possession or even knew where it was during 
the raid.

	4.) Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) introduced several documents the 
Subcommittee obtained from the Treasury Department which revealed that:

	--"DOJ does not want Treasury to conduct any interviews or have 
discussions with any of the participants, who may be potential witnesses; 
the prosecutors do not want us to generate additional Jencks, Brady or 
Giglio material or oral statements which could be used for impeachment."

	--A deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department references 
Department of Justice prosecutors saying "Words critical of ATF must be 
avoided."

	--"...at some point we are going to have to interview the crucial 
witnesses and perhaps may have to take statements; while we may be able 
to wait for some of them to have testified in the criminal trial, the 
passage of time will dim memories;...DOJ does not want us to make any 
findings or draw any conclusions from what we review; the prosecutors are 
concerned that anything negative, even preliminary, could be grist for 
the defense mill."

	5.) The hearings showed fairly definitively that the BATF 
invented the "drug nexus" -- "evidence" of a methamphetamine lab at Mount 
Carmel--in order to justify obtaining helicopters and other military 
resources for use in carrying out their raid.

	However, it was determined that the BATF could have received the 
military assistance legally anyway, if they had reimbursed the Department 
of Defense for it.  The lie about the drug nexus allowed the BATF to 
access these resources for free.

	The information that had been developed by Jim Pate, an 
investigative reporter for SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, GUN WEEK and other 
publications, and other investigators concerning te violations of the 
POSSE COMITATUS law, was largely finessed away by the Army witnesses.  
Those who thought they had a smoking gun in the discovery of a letter 
from an army lawyer warning that the Army would get into trouble if they 
complied with BATF requests were disappointed.  In the hearing, it came 
out that the BATF subsequently modified its requests to make them legal.  
The Ft. Hood trainers flatly denied teaching close quarter combat 
techniques to BATF agents.  Nevertheless, the Army was chastised for 
going along with the BATF deception about the meth lab.

	6.) A surviving Davidian, David Thibodeau, testified that 
"helicopters shot through the roof of the compound," an allegation that 
has always been totally denied by the BATF.  The government had 
previously said that none of the agents flying overhead in the 
helicopters on Feb. 28 was carrying a loaded firearm.  They even have 
cited a regulation that said that agents could not have loaded firearms 
in helicopters.  In the hearing, Sarabyn admitted he was carrying a 
loaded firearm in te helicopter.  Moreover, it came out that in the 
original planning for the Feb. 28 raid, they considered firing at the 
perimeter of Mount Carmel from helicopters.

	(Another Davidian who appeared at the CCRKBA-sponsored press 
conference on July 18 but was not called to testify at the hearings, 
Annetta Richards, also claimed that the helicopters had fired into the 
compound to start the raid.)

	7.) Dan Hartnett, former BATF Deputy Director for Enforcement, 
accused Ron Noble, Undersecretary of Treasury for Law Enforcement, of 
covering up the truth in the Treasury Report.  At issue is whether the 
agents received the order to abort in case surprise was lost.  Sarabyn 
and Chojnacki (and Hartnett, who even testified that he had never heard 
of the "element of surprise" before the hearings) say they did not 
receive such an order, while the Treasury Report assumes they did, and 
describes their failure to abort as one of the main causes of the 
disaster.  To compound the idiocy, Sarabyn testified in the hearing that 
when he received the word from undercover Agent Robert Rodriquez  that 
the Branch Davidians knew the BATF was coming, he discounted the report, 
because he thought Koresh meant they were coming "in the metaphorical" 
not the "physical" sense.

	Two Texas Rangers who testified, Captain Maurice Cook and Captain 
David Burns, said that Sarabyn and Chojnacki lied to them and knew quite 
well that the raid had been compromised.  Cook and Burns also emphasized 
the lack of cooperation and communication between federal agencies and 
local and state law enforcement.

	The mystery of the reinstatement of Sarabyn and Chojnacki was 
debated, but not resolved.  It was insinuated by some Republicans that 
there was some sort of deal made to protect higher-ups, but the hearings 
got no closer to the truth.

	8.) Not surprisingly, the hearings did not resolve the issue of 
"who fired first."  Attorney Dick D3Guerin testified that the front door 
was riddled  with incoming rounds, to which Schumer scornfully replied 
that, of course they are incoming, the Davidians would scarcely be 
expected to fire through their front door.  To Which DeGuerin was able to 
reply that, as a matter of fact, that is precisely the unlikely scenario 
that is alleged by the government, both in the Treasury report and in 
testimony at trial.

	Attorneys Jack Zimmerman and DeGuerin suggested two scenarios in 
which the BATF fired first: an accidental discharge of a weapon by a BATF 
agent (this according to a BATF source quoted by a member of the press), 
and/or, agents firing on and killing the community's dogs at the beginning 
of the raid.

	9.) It appears that the agents on the ground in Waco, in 
particular, Jeffrey Jamar and Byron Sage, suppressed the information that 
negotiations with Koresh had reached a turning point on April 14.  
Zimmerman and DeGuerin testified that they obtained from Koresh a letter 
promising to surrender upon his (Koresh's) completion of an exegesis of 
the Seven Seals.  Koresh was encouraged in this endeavor by two religious 
scholars, Philip Arnold and Jim Tabor (both of whom testified before the 
subcommittees).  This letter, and information from the scholars 
evaluating the likelihood that Koresh would truly exit the compound upon 
completion of his manuscript, never made it up the chain of command to 
Janet Reno.  Judiciary Subcommittee Chair Bill McCollum (R-FL), in 
listing the Attorney General's mistakes in approving the raid, cited her 
failure to ascertain for herself the status of the negotiations as a 
serious lapse in responsibility.

	10.) Pete Smerick, one of the FBI's behavioral scientists, who 
had written four memos to the FBI warning them that their confrontational 
tactics were counter-productive and could lead to loss of life, admitted 
that he changed his advice in his fifth memo, in order to be a "team player."


				CS GAS EXPOSURE

	11.) The Democrats produced two British CS-gas experts, Drs. Rice 
and Upshaw, who testified to the safety of CS-gas.  There were three 
other witnesses who testified that CS-gas could cause, and indeed has 
caused, pulmonary edema in small children and infants.  The credentials 
of these three witnesses were attacked by Schumer and the Democrats 
because they were merely doctors and toxicologists, and not CS-gas experts.

	It was noteworthy that Rice and Upshaw never said that CS-gas 
could never, under any circumstances, cause serious harm; they merely 
stated their opinion that, with the holes in Mount Carmel's walls, and 
the wind at 25 knots, the gas never reached concentrations necessary to 
do so.  These assertions were vigorously disputed by the other scientists 
on the panel.  Rice and Upshaw continually qualified their endorsement of 
the gassing plan with the statement that one must "weigh the risks" to 
the children of gas exposure against the risks of children faced through 
a continuation of the stand-off.  This gave the Democratic side an 
opening to once again review their theories that children were being 
beaten and abused.  The testimony of Rice and Upshaw thus fed into and 
reinforced a fundamental assumption of the Waco commanders and their 
congressional defense: they were dealing with a irrational cult, and the 
behavior inside Mount Carmel was so exceptionally deviant that the most 
extreme law enforcement response was justified, even at the risk of 
causing children intense suffering.

	DeGuerin and Zimmerman, Reavis, and religious scholars Stuart 
Wright, Philip Arnold and Jim Tabor all tried in their testimony to 
debunk this fundamental assumption.  To the extent that the Republicans 
did not aggressively challenge this assumption, they were handicapped in 
their ability to demonstrate that the government used excessive force.  
Additional questions which might have reached this issue, apparently were 
not pursued.

	12.) Larry Potts, former No. 2 at the FBI, admitted that if he 
had it ot do over again, he would probably not use the psychological 
warfare tactics that were employed against the Branch Davidians (i.e., 
Nancy Sinatra recordings, Tibetan chants, recordings of rabbits dying, etc.)

	13.) Four days before Mount Carmel burned to the ground, Lloyd 
Bentsen, then the Treasury Secretary, was warned by his top deputy, Roger 
C. Altman, that the Justice Department was considering using an advanced 
form of "tear gas" and that it was Altman's opinion that the "risks of 
tragedy are great."  Bentsen ignored the warning, reporting that he 
considered it a matter for the Justice Department.  According to THE 
WASHINGTON TIMES, a GOP staffer said that "Our contention is that 
economists should no be in charge of law enforcement."  Bentsen's 
testimony is expected to be used later to support the Republican plan to 
consolidate federal agencies.

	14.) Extensive evidence was presented t make the case that the 
fires were deliberately started from inside Mount Carmel.  There is 
still a large question, however, over whether the Davidians intended to 
commit suicide.  Witnesses sympathetic to the Davidians have testified 
that the fuel was spread and fires were lit as a defense against the 
tanks, and in the belief that God would protect his people from being 
themselves engulfed in the flames.

	15.) McCollum took Attorney General Janet Reno to task her for 
contention that she had to go forward with the gas/tank attack on April 
19.  "The evidence we've seen does not corroborate the four reasons you 
gave,"  he said.  First, there was no impasse in the negotiations.  
Koresh would have been out in 10 days to two weeks.  "From the 
transcripts we know that there was alot of hustle and bustle, problems 
with the typewriter...," in other words, the wounded Koresh was working 
on his manuscript.


				FURTHER EVIDENCE

	Moreover, the Hostage Rescue Team had not yet reached the limits 
of its endurance, as Reno and other government witnesses claimed.  "Dick 
Rogers said that there were another two weeks left before there had to be 
a standdown," McCollum noted.  Third, there was no evidence that the 
children were subject to the threat of abuse.  And fourth, there was no 
evidence of potential for a violent "break-out" by the Branch Davidians.  
The plan referenced by the Attorney General -- That Davidians were going 
to break out with explosives strapped to their bodies -- simply was not 
credible.  This story was traced to only one Branch Davidian who left the 
compound during the siege.  There was not one shred of evidence that 
Koresh was considering  such a plan.

	Said McCollum t Reno: "It bothers me alot that you and the FBI 
relied on that particular theory to make your decision.  You had the 
opportunity to speak with DeGuerin and other to find out more about the 
supposed impasse.  I don't think the facts corroborate it."

	16.) McCollum made an excellent point about the decision to 
"accelerate" the gas/tank plan.  Testimony was given to the effect that 
it was decided that if the CEV's and Bradley tanks were fired on, then 
they would move to a more high risk plan to "accelerate" the assault and 
begin to punch holes in the building.  But Jamar had earlier testified 
that we as 99% sure that if the FBI moved in with tanks, they would be 
fired on.  Thus the more to accelerate th plan was not a fall-back plan, 
it was a plan that was 99% certain to happen.  So isn't it a little 
disingenuous to say that the plan was slow, deliberate, 48-hour plan of 
"making it increasingly uncomfortable inside the compound?"

	17.) Arnold has pointed out a discrepancy in the testimony of one 
of the tank drivers.  In the DOJ report, it says that the driver of the 
tank which penetrated the front of Mount Carmel about noon on April 19 
reached the cinder-block "bunker" (kitchen walk-in) where they spotted 
women and children.  In the hearings, that story radically changed.  It 
was reported to the Congressional subcommittees that the tank did not 
penetrate as far as the cinder-block walk-in, but stopped far short, two 
walls away.  It is now claimed that the driver did not see women and 
children there.

	It is admitted that his goal was to reach the walk-in and fill it 
with CS-gas, driving out those hiding there.  But it is now reported that 
the driver was mistaken in his earlier assumption that he reached the 
walk-in and saw women and children there.  The coroner found that Judy 
Schneider and Rachel Koresh and children died not from smoke or fire, 
but from "blunt force trauma" caused from falling cinder blocks.  The 
crucial question remains: Did that tank actually reach the cinder-block 
structure and dislodge cinder-blocks in an attempt to insert gas?  Arnold 
points out that this is important, in view of the outrageous claim made 
by the Justice Department in October 1993 that the Davidian women 
wantonly killed their own children with "blunt force trauma."

	The official House joint subcommittee hearings chaired by Reps. 
Bill McCollum and Bill Zeliff (R-NH) have not ended the public debate 
over the Waco tragedy for those who have concerns about federal law 
enforcement practices and policies.  Unfortunately, they received little 
attention in network television shows, except for PBS's McNeill-Lehrer 
Report, and little attention in print.  Those who watched detailed 
hearing coverage on cable or satellite via C-SPAN, CNN and PBS, instead 
of the Simpson or Smith trials, got a better view of what happened and 
discovered how difficult it was to get answers given the format of the 
hearings.

	All in all, Co-chairs McCollum and Zeliff are to be commended for 
getting as much information as they did to the American people.  As a 
result of their efforts high law enforecement officials may be much more 
careful in the future, if not necessarily about the rights of suspects, 
at least about the sensibilities of the general public.  This can best be 
summed up by paraphrasing the peculiar testimony of Lloyd Bentsen and the 
comments of his Democrat protectors: The government didn't do anything 
wrong at Waco, but it won't happen again.

W&G