Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 15:55:53 -0700
From: apfanning@psn.net ("Alan Fanning")
Subject: [lpaz-repost] FBI Stonewall Starting to crumble on Waco
To: lpaz-repost@onelist.com ("lpaz-repost")
From: "Alan Fanning" <apfanning@psn.net>
It seems that the FBI brass is starting to pull up the drawbridges on Waco.
Alan
People dream of making the virtuous powerful, so they can depend upon them. Since they cannot do that, people choose to make the powerful virtuous, glorifying in becoming victimized by them.
- Thomas Szasz
http://dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/39615_WACO24.html
Sect gives details of ex-FBI official's deposition about assault Ex-official thinks assault violated plan, sect says
02/24/2000
By Lee Hancock / The Dallas Morning News
A former top FBI official has acknowledged that sending tanks into the Branch Davidian compound was inconsistent with the Washington-approved plan for ending the 51-day siege, the sect's lead lawyer said Wednesday.
Former deputy assistant FBI director Danny Coulson also testified in a deposition on Tuesday that he and other senior FBI leaders were stunned when they saw live network TV images of FBI tanks ramming deep into the sect's compound on April 19, 1993, said Houston attorney Michael Caddell.
Mr. Coulson is the first top FBI official involved in the 1993 incident to be questioned under oath in the Branch Davidians' wrongful-death lawsuit. The founding commander of the FBI's hostage rescue team and one of its most experienced tactical experts, Mr. Coulson was one of the bureau's key decision-makers in drafting the detailed gassing-operation plan that Attorney General Janet Reno ultimately approved.
That plan called for demolition of the sect's building only after tear gas had been sprayed in for 48 hours. If Branch Davidians began firing guns at the tanks, the plan allowed FBI agents to begin a large-scale insertion of tear gas.
But early proposals that called for using tanks in the initial stages of the operation to demolish the building were removed from the final plan approved in Washington, FBI and Justice Department records show.
On April 19, however, FBI tanks began demolishing the rear of the building less than five hours after the gas operation began. A fire consumed the compound less than an hour later.
"Mr. Coulson made it clear that the penetrations of the tanks into the building were deviations, were inconsistent with the plan approved by the attorney general," Mr. Caddell said.
Mr. Coulson, now retired and living in the Dallas area, declined to comment Wednesday.
Mr. Caddell said the former official's testimony will bolster his argument that the two former FBI officials who led the Waco operation, Jeffrey Jamar and hostage rescue team commander Dick Rogers, should be held legally liable for the tragedy. U.S. District Judge Walter Smith dismissed the two men as defendants last summer, but lawyers for the sect filed a motion earlier this month arguing that they should be reinstated.
"It's completely understandable from Mr. Coulson's testimony that on April 19, Rogers and Jamar decided to jettison the plans that had been approved in Washington," Mr. Caddell said.
Lawyers for the government declined to comment on Wednesday. Both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Jamar have declined interview requests.
FBI stance
The FBI's lawyers have contended in legal pleadings that the two FBI officials did nothing that would justify lifting the strict legal restrictions on bringing civil lawsuits against federal officials or agencies.
One Justice Department official said that Mr. Coulson's testimony may be of limited importance because he acknowledged that he was not in the FBI command center that kept direct communications with FBI leaders in Waco.
"He wasn't in a position to know if there were authorized modifications to the plan," the official said. "He also said that it was his experience that the people on the ground have some discretion."
FBI lawyers also have argued that federal law prohibits using lawsuits to "second-guess" judgment calls of federal officials, even if they have tragic results.
In a Feb. 10 pleading, they also contended that federal law would prohibit suing the bureau's Waco commanders even if the plaintiffs prove that agents under the commanders' supervision fired guns at the compound on April 19.
The FBI pleading stated that the Branch Davidians have offered no evidence that either commander ordered agents to shoot. But it added that "if government officials were to have fired into the compound, such gunfire would not be 'unprovoked,' nor inconsistent with the FBI's deadly force policy."
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