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It is
important to keep in mind that this whole trial business is a smoke screen. Most
of the people were already dead at the time of the fire. This is what they do
not want us to see even thought the evidence proves it. It is what David Koresh
said would happen. You should consider this heavily!
Andrew
From: "DjL" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/26059_WACO03.html
FBI
plan not followed, Davidian lawyers say
Judge told commanders' use of
tanks makes U.S. culpable for deaths in
siege
02/03/2000
By
Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
The FBI's two lead Waco
commanders violated a Washington-approved plan
by
ordering tanks to
begin demolishing the Branch Davidian compound in
1993, and
thus
should be liable for the horrific tragedy that ensued, the sect's
lawyers
argued Wednesday.
Their Wednesday plea in a Waco federal court lays
out a detailed case
for how
FBI commanders Jeffrey Jamar and Richard
Rogers within hours diverted
from
the plan authorized by top FBI
officials and approved by Attorney
General
Janet Reno. That written
plan allowed for demolition of the sect's
embattled
building only
after tear gas had been sprayed into it for 48 hours,
but FBI
tanks
began demolishing the rear of the building less than five
hours
after
the gassing began.
"The decisions made by
Rogers and Jamar were unauthorized, outside the
scope
of their
authority, unjustified by the circumstances, and caused or
contributed to
the deaths of countless innocent children and some
adults,"
the
plaintiff's motion argued.
The plaintiff's pleading came one day
after the Justice Department
argued
that legal limits on lawsuits
against federal agencies and officials
should
prevent the Branch
Davidians from putting the government on trial for
its
handling of the
1993 gassing operation, including its use of tanks.
The
government
argued that federal law prohibits using lawsuits
to
"second-guess"
the judgment calls of federal officials,
even if those decisions have
tragic
results.
The motions from
both sides come as Judge Smith prepares to make final
decisions about the
size and scope of the sect's wrongful-death case.
He has set a trial
for mid-May on three major questions: Did federal
agents
use excessive
force in the raid that began the 1993 standoff, a
botched
operation
that disintegrated into a gunbattle that left four agents
and
several
sect members dead? Did federal agents shoot at the
Branch
Davidians
and prevent their escape when the compound caught
fire during the
FBI's gas
assault? And was the FBI negligent in
failing to prepare for the
threat of a
fire and for refusing to let
local firetrucks approach when a fire did
erupt?
More than 80
Branch Davidians died in the fire, which began less than
an hour
after
FBI tanks rolled deep into the building on April 19,
1993.
Government
officials have argued that the sect was solely to
blame, noting that
government arson investigators ruled that Branch
Davidians
deliberately set
the blaze.
In his decision last July
to allow the Branch Davidians' case to go to
trial,
Judge Smith
dismissed Agent Jamar, Agent Rogers and most other federal
officials from
the lawsuit.
He left one defendant in the case: a hostage rescue team
sniper
accused by
the sect of firing at the compound during the April
19, 1993, tear-gas
assault. The judge based that decision largely on the
statement of
another
FBI agent, who told investigators after the siege
that he heard shots
fired
from the position where the sniper was
assigned that day. The agent
has since
said he was misquoted, and
other agents in the area have said that the
only
gunfire they heard
came from the sect.
The sniper, FBI Agent Lon Horiuchi, has denied
firing a shot. Earlier
this
week, lawyers for the agent asked the
judge to dismiss him from the
case for
a lack of
evidence.
Lawyers for the sect have conceded that the agent will
probably be
dismissed,
despite recent revelations about evidence that
could support the
gunfire
claim. Texas Rangers issued a report last
fall that described how a
dozen
spent .308 shell casings had been
found after the incident in the
house where
Agent Horiuchi was
stationed.
The house had been used earlier by snipers from the Bureau
of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms during the raid that began the standoff,
and
federal
officials have argued that the shell casings came from ATF
guns. The
office
of special counsel John Danforth is performing
forensic tests to
determine
which agency's guns were used.
The
two FBI commanders were among the large number of
federal
officials
dismissed from the lawsuit last summer.
If
the judge decides to reinstate them as defendants, it would be
the
first
time that either Agent Jamar, the FBI's on-scene Waco
commander, or
Agent
Rogers, head of the FBI's hostage rescue team,
have testified at a
trial
arising from the tragedy. Neither FBI nor
ATF commanders involved in
the
initial raid were called to testify at
the 1994 criminal trial of
surviving
Branch Davidians, in part because
prosecutors feared that defense
lawyers
would use them to put the
government on trial.
In Wednesday's pleading, the sect's lawyers
contended that Agents
Jamar and
Rogers should be reinstated as
defendants because they not only
violated
federal policy but the
sect's constitutional rights. The plaintiff's
brief
argued those
violations stripped the two men of normal federal legal
protections that
severely limit civil lawsuits against federal
officials
and
agencies.
"The problem that the FBI has with calling use
of the tanks to destroy
the
building a judgment call: Those commanders
didn't have the authority
to make
that call. The attorney general of
the United States approved a plan,
and
that plan could not have been
clearer: Don't even consider demolishing
the
building until you've
gassed for 48 hours," lead sect lawyer
Mike
Caddell
said.
"Instead, these two cowboys Jamar and
Rogers, went off on their own
without
authorization, thumbed their
noses at the AG's plan and said, 'We know
better
than you,' " he
said.
Asked about the matter Wednesday, a spokesman for Ms. Reno
declined to
comment. Agents Jamar and Rogers could not be reached for
comment.
Mr. Caddell's filing and a separate motion filed by another
attorney
for the
sect, former U.S. Attorney Ramsey Clark, also argued
that the two men
should
be put on trial because they were commanders
at the time that sect
members
allege gunfire was directed at the
compound.
Officials have denied for years that any FBI agents fired a
shot
during the
51-day siege. But the sect's lawyers have argued that
infrared
videotape shot
by the FBI on April 19 captured repeated
rhythmic flashes that could
have
only come from gunfire.
Judge
Smith has authorized a court-supervised field test next month to
try
to
resolve the issue.
Mr. Caddell's motion focused on the
commanders' decision to send in
tanks to
demolish the rear of the
Branch Davidian compound.
He cited statements by senior FBI
negotiators and other behavioral
experts
who had explicitly warned
prior to the assault that sending in tanks
guaranteed a violent response
and massive loss of life.
He also cited detailed internal agency
reports and congressional
testimony in
which senior FBI and Justice
Department officials said demolishing the
building was thought too risky
to consider in the early stages of the
tear-gas operation.
He
noted that Deputy FBI Director Floyd Clark told Congress a month
after
the
fire that officials had ruled out the idea of using tanks
to
"systematically
dismantle the
building."
"That didn't have a very good likelihood,
because on a number of
occasions
when we were maneuvering around the
building, removing the obstacles,
the
Davidians would appear in the
windows and hold the children up, refer
to them
as the Kevlar
kids," Mr. Clark testified in 1993. "So we had
to
dismiss
that."
The motion alleges that Agent Rogers
later tried to "cover up"
violating the
decision of his
superiors in Washington by telling Congress and the
public
that the
tanks had only tried "to clear a pathway" for spraying in
more
gas.
But internal FBI documents show that Agent Rogers and his
lieutenants
told
bureau leaders that the tanks were on a demolition
operation. A
proposal in
which he and his lieutenants unsuccessfully
lobbied for plaques,
medals and
cash awards for the hostage rescue
team specifically praised two tank
drivers
for courage in carrying out
their "mission of slowly and methodically
beginning the
dismantling" of the rear area of the compound.
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