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At the time, all I knew for sure was that David was the only male who was allowed a sex life and that he had a number of "wives," some of whom were legally married to other men. I didn't know the details of how the couples felt about this bizarre arrangement or how hard it had been for them to accept it. At times I suspected David might just have conned everyone into allowing him an exclusive harem, so to speak. Still, I knew there was more to it than that.

More to the point, says Pitcavage, is what they were doing with all those guns. "I'm curious how many weapons made fully automatic by the Davidians ended up in the hands of the militia groups," he says. "That's not dangerous in the sense that they're gonna go out and attack Waco town hall, but [it's] dangerous to society."

In "Rules of Engagement," defenders of the Branch Davidians (an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists who had been involved in an interfaith shootout years before) point out that they were licensed to sell guns at fairs, and the "stockpile" of weapons the media refers to would be called an inventory in any other business. Waco, Gifford maintains, was a war of words that was fought with just such semantic weaponry. "When you use the word 'compound,' you are perpetuating this newspeak image," he insists. "[It's a] psychological warfare word chosen by the FBI for these situations. I'm sure you've noticed every time they're in a standoff, the guy could be in an outhouse in the middle of a cow pasture, well, that's a 'compound' suddenly."

Also Today The truth about Waco A survivor says the government still isn't admitting its role in the deaths of 74 Branch Davidians.

Neither was the choice of nomenclature lost on those within the walls of Mount Carmel (as the church called its headquarters)."The constant use of that word by the feds and the press to describe Mount Carmel really annoyed us," Thibodeau writes. "It made us seem as if we were living in a prison camp, locked like convicts in a circle of barbed wire ... The word was meant as a clear putdown, meant to reduce our status as free men and women." At a remove of several miles from Mount Carmel, the press was allowed to watch the siege -- rather boring stuff until that final day, though the sight of the buildings shimmering in the Texas sun became as familiar as wallpaper to watchers of CNN. There were daily news briefings during which federal spokesmen handed down the truth about Koresh and the Davidians. When asked if they were using sound effects and music (sirens, seagulls, the mews of slaughtered lambs and Nancy Sinatra singing "These Boots Are Made for Walking") to disrupt the Davidians' sleep, the government blandly denied it. All of this, sound effects and denial, are captured in Gifford's film.

Now about those two videos: Gifford's is the official version, the one nominated for an Oscar and lauded by critics across the country. The rogue version is the work of Michael McNulty, a co-producer and original researcher on the film who felt Gifford's film was not vehement enough. (For future versions, McNulty, who hosted a right-wing radio program in Colorado and has strong ties to the militia movement, has threatened to trace the decision to attack in Waco all the way to that mistress of the dark side, Hillary Rodham Clinton.) The matter is under litigation now, which may further complicate the film's message, and that's too bad.

The film is heavily slanted toward the Davidians (it features several religious scholars who come off as cult apologists) and inconclusive in its charges that the government was firing on the building on April 19 or meant to start a fire. Still, it is persuasive to those who tend toward the view that the assault was a murderous travesty of justice and that no one was ultimately held accountable.

Both sides are skeptical that any new investigation (congressional or the independent one to be headed by former Sen. John Danforth) will cast much new light on the subject, even as it becomes apparent that law-enforcement figures lied about the use of incendiary tear gas canisters and the presence of military personnel. (Still unclear is whether the forces actually shot at the compound, particularly during the fire, as "Rules of Engagement" alleges but others dispute. For a thorough hashing -- and a persuasive, if not definitive, debunking -- of the videos' claim that an infrared tape "proves" government agents fired on the compound before the fire, see the Washington Post's exhaustive article of April 18, 1997.)

But the half-truths and coverups can only fuel the burning rage and paranoia those on the Waco fringe feel. They should concern you, too. As Pitcavage acknowledges, it ain't just Janet Reno who has a credibility problem. "If they were wrong about this," he says of the government, "after denying it for six years, can you accept their word on this or that or the other thing?" And if you don't think that kind of doubt has major repercussions, ask Tim McVeigh, or anyone in Oklahoma City.
salon.com | Sept. 9, 1999

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