-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.freedomforum.org/professional/1999/9/21waco.asp - Shunned Waco documentary now sees light By Beverly Kees Pacific Coast Center 9.21.99 What do you think? Have your say in The Forum. Dan Gifford BERKELEY, Calif. � Dan Gifford was Mr. Lonely Guy for a few years, even though his documentary film, �Waco: The Rules of Engagement,� had won an Academy Award nomination and later would win an Emmy. A few art houses ran the film. Most theaters shied away from it, no public relations firm wanted to handle it, most journalists ignored it. Gifford, the film�s executive producer, told the California First Amendment Assembly on Sept. 18 after a screening that he believed journalists ignored the documentary because most newsrooms are liberal, anti-gun and somewhat suspicious of deeply religious people. They didn�t want to be seen siding with gun-toting �wackos� against the U.S. government. Few journalists these days have been in the military or handled firearms and �they are extremely deferential to law enforcement in these matters,� Gifford said. Gifford�s appearance at the Assembly was sponsored by The Freedom Forum Pacific Coast Center. The two-hour-plus documentary traces the history of the Branch Davidians and their beliefs and their violent, fatal encounters with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Four federal agents were killed when they stormed the sect�s Mount Carmel Center. Later 76 men, women and children who belong to the Branch Davidians were killed, although the FBI asserted at the time that its agents never fired a shot and that the sect members committed suicide. In recent weeks, an FBI agent has admitted that wasn�t true. Gifford�s documentary, which premiered in January 1997 at the Sundance Film Festival, shows film of government tanks tearing out large sections of the center�s walls and shooting in flammable tear gas; thermal film shows rapid-fire gunshots aimed at the center; other film shows corpses with parts of their bodies sheared off � most likely by the tanks. The film contains interviews with a Texas coroner and Texas Rangers grumbling about the FBI taking and then �losing� evidence and destroying the crime scene. How was Gifford able to obtain this damning evidence that was never seen on television newscasts or in newspapers? From the Branch Davidians� lawyers. �Everything in the film was available in 1993, but politically no one cared,� Gifford said. �Anything that deviated from the official record was deemed not true.� No one from the federal government would agree to be interviewed in the film, but there is a lot of footage of officials in news conferences and giving sworn testimony before Congress. The FBI is careful in its choice of language. �What for 50 years had been the Mount Carmel Center became the �compound,� " Gifford said. "The Branch Davidians became a �cult.� � The words were chosen to create a certain response and the news media picked them up, he said. Journalists were kept two to three miles away from the center and could not see what was happening in the rear. What, Gifford was asked at the Assembly screening, should journalists have done? �Make yourself a pain in the ass. That�s what you�re there for. You are the surrogate witness for everyone,� he responded. Other Assembly participants asked if Janet Reno or congressional committee members attending the 1995 hearing on Waco had seen the documentary. �It�s available, but they don�t want to see it. They dismiss it as �Ah, that �s just right-wing conspiracy stuff,� � he said, and dismiss him as a right-wing nut. Gifford, former newsman with ABC News, CNN and the "MacNeil-Lehrer Report" on PBS, is on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California � �You know,� he joked, �that well-known right wing group.� Ironically, Gifford is now a hero in militia circles, where federal law enforcement is held in contempt. One radio broadcaster happily assured Gifford that he was making copies of �Waco� and sending them to militias all over the country. But there is comfort for Gifford now. A week before the Assembly, he and his wife and business partner, Amy Sommer Gifford, were sharing their dinner table at a New York hotel with their newly won Emmy award for investigative journalism for the Waco documentary that aired on HBO. Strangers came up to have their pictures taken with the Giffords and the Emmy. It�s not so lonely anymore. -- Dan S DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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