Waco

Seeking to refute charges of a cover-up at Waco, a ranking Democrat released documents Monday showing that Congress had information as far back as 1995 on the FBI's use of military munitions on the final day of the Branch Davidian siege. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), launching an aggressive counterattack in defense of the Clinton administration's handling of the Waco controversy, said GOP lawmakers are distorting the facts of the tragedy to bludgeon Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

The Justice Department acknowledged Friday that in 1995 it sent congressional investigators an FBI crime lab report without including a potentially incriminating page that referred to the use of military tear gas canisters during the Branch Davidian siege. Justice Department officials said that they suspect the final page of the report may simply have been left out by accident. But the omission seemed certain to fuel the controversy over the Branch Davidian disaster, offering Atty. Gen.

There seem to be two issues of great significance in the current FBI-Branch Davidian fire controversy. All of the accounts of the FBI's motives in using flammable tear gas say the FBI wanted to use tear gas in the underground bunker to prevent David Koresh or any of his followers from using it as an escape route. Just what did the FBI want to prevent them from escaping? They had the bunker surrounded, so "escape" does not mean to freedom, it means escaping something else--a fire? And if the FBI is continuing its long-standing tradition of lying and violating Americans' civil and human rights, then why is Atty.

Last week, in a farcical show of moral resolve, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno sent U.S. marshals crashing into FBI headquarters looking for tapes implicating that agency in the wanton murder of almost 80 people, including 19 children, in Waco, Tex., six years ago. Her action is too little, too late, and she should be fired immediately as a disgrace to her office. Admittedly, this is not a fresh idea on my part.

It's our companion, it's our teacher, it's our everything. --Roseanne speaking about television Given recent headlines, what a movie the FBI's 1993 clash with David Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult would make. There was one? Oh, yes. "In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco" aired on NBC during a ratings sweeps, one of those critical-for-profit months in which the TV industry seeks to capture the attention of the multitudes by putting on and heavily promoting its most eye-catching programs.

After denying for six years that federal agents used pyrotechnic devices capable of starting the fire that burned down the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in April 1993, the FBI admitted last month that it deployed flammable tear gas. It is difficult to imagine anything more damaging to the already fragile trust that Americans have in their government. There was a time in American politics when the Federal Bureau of Investigation symbolized incorruptible integrity.

While official Washington gears up for a new independent investigation of the inferno that killed Branch Davidian cultists, the question of who was really to blame for the 1993 tragedy is likely to be answered sooner and more definitively in a courtroom in Waco, Texas. Six years ago, two teams of lawyers filed civil lawsuits against the government claiming it wrongfully caused the deaths of about 80 people, many of them women and children, in the Branch Davidian compound.