To be fair to CBS…

This is a transcript of a 60 Minutes II report on Waco. Good stuff. Of course, I suppose this is all made up…

CBS SIXTY MINUTES II WITH DAN RATHER
January 25, 2001
Producer: Christopher Martin

DAN RATHER (voice over video)
What really happened at Waco? Did federal agents fire shots into the Branch Davidian compound? For years, the government has said “no.” But this surveillance video may tell a different story. The FBI has repeatedly said no FBI person, at any time, fired into the compound.

BYRON SAGE (retired FBI agent)
Correct. No FBI person fired, period during the entire 51 days.

PAUL BEAVER (Jane’s Defence weapons expert):
It’s not a glitch in the camera. It’s not the sun striking something. It’s not swamp gas reflecting off the planet Venus. This is somebody shooting.

DAN RATHER (on camera)
What really happened at Waco? Is the US government responsible for the deaths of more than 70 men, women and children at the Branch Davidian compound in 1993? For years, this has been the rallying point for anti government conspiracy theorists. Today, it is the subject of two congressional investigations, an independent counsel and a multi million dollar civil lawsuit against the government. Why has this never gone away? In large part because details of the disaster have only recently come to light giving some ammunition to those who think the government caused those deaths.

RATHER, cont. (At Texas Ranger Evidence Locker)
Today, virtually all of the evidence from Waco is here. More than 12 tons of it. Anything gathered by every government agency involved. The federal judge handling the civil trial ordered it collected and stockpiled here to protect it from being tampered with or tainted.

RATHER, cont.:
In these rooms under lock and under guard, are approximately a million documents plus files, photographs, physical evidence including various weapons. In here may be the answers to the key questions of what really happened at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco.

MICHAEL CADDELL (Davidian attorney):
What’s interesting is that in the last three months we’ve learned more about what happened than we did in the preceding six and a half years.

RATHER cont.
Michael Caddell is a Houston attorney representing survivors and family members of the Branch Davidians in their suit against the government. With what are we dealing?

CADDELL
Many, many women and children died tragically and the government has never been able to deal with that reality..never been able to accept responsibility. for its share of the blame for that event.

RATHER
It all started nearly seven years ago with a raid by more than 70 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in February, 1993. David Koresh and his followers, the Branch Davidians, were known to have a cache of high powered weapons. The ATF suspected the group had explosives–and the parts to manufacture machine guns illegally. When they arrived to search the compound, shooting started almost immediately. When it finally stopped, four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians were dead. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) moved in and a lengthy stand-off ensued.

JEFF JAMAR (FBI Agent in Charge at Waco)
We’re prepared to do whatever it takes, to stay here as long as it takes, to settle this matter without any further bloodshed.

RATHER
For more than seven frustrating weeks, the FBI tried to persuade the Davidians to come out. BYRON SAGE was head of the FBI negotiating team in Waco.

SAGE
The FBI’s job was to try to resolve this matter and to convince these people to come out and face multiple first degree murder charges in a state that leads the nation in capital punishment. It was virtually an insurmountable task.

RATHER
The stand-off ended on the morning of April 19th. Using a tank and other armored vehicles, the FBI moved in. They spent the next several hours shooting tear gas into the compound. Shortly after noon, the building was engulfed in flames.

SAGE
I called in immediately over the loud speaker system. And I said, David, don’t do this to those people. This is not the way to end this.

RATHER
At the end of the day, more than seventy men, women and children were dead.

SAGE
We played right into the hands of David Koresh. He had an apocalyptic end in mind apparently and he used us to fulfill his own prophesy.

RATHER
But the question that will not go away is this: Did the FBI and the Justice Department contribute in some way to that apocalyptic end? Either by pushing the Davidians to the brink as the assault of the compound progressed? Or, by doing something that could have caused the fire? In amongst the massive trove of Waco material, an independent filmaker named Michael McNulty came upon some evidence that appeared damaging to the government—a shell casing from a certain kind of tear gas round that could start a fire. A device the FBI and the Justice Department had repeatedly denied using both publicly and to Congress.

BILL JOHNSTON
Congress was misled on this. There’s no question about it.

RATHER
Assistant US Attorney Bill Johnston is the top Justice Department official in Waco. The discovery of this tear gas round made him worry that someone in the Justice Department was hiding the truth.

JOHNSTON
I wasn’t going to be a party to misleading the American public about this issue when I full well knew the import of it.

RATHER
Any big organization whether it’s a big company, a big union, a big news outfit gets into a lawsuit, the word goes out: Keep your mouth shut about things that might hurt us. Is there any reason not to say that’s what happened in this case?

JOHNSTON
It may have. If it did, the Department of Justice isn’t IBM or anybody else. The Department of Justice, by its very name, is different. It has a higher responsibility. We cannot hide the ball in criminal or civil cases feel good about it. It’s not what the Justice Department is supposed to be about.

RATHER
Johnston wrote to his superiors for several weeks warning them that the new evidence contradicted what they had been saying. But the Justice Department did not change its story until last August when the Attorney General was forced to make an embarrassing admission.

JANET RENO (US Attorney General)
I am very, very troubled by the information I received this week suggesting that pyrotechnic devices may have been used in the early morning hours of April the 19th, 1993 at Waco.

SAGE
This is what’s become the infamous 651 round. You can see the size of it. It’s very small. It’s about three inches long.

RATHER
Investigators had concluded that two of these devices were used. Though most experts overwhelmingly still believe that the Davidians started the fire, the damage had been done. The FBI was caught in a lie.

RATHER cont.
What am I dealing with here as a reporter pertaining to the FBI? Is it a case of cover up or a case of screw up?

SAGE
It’s not a case of cover up. And I would have to say that it is a case of screw up. It was not flagged for its importance, therefore it has taken on a life of its own.

RATHER
Most significantly, it breathes new life into the conspiracy theories that surround the Waco case. Retired agent Byron Sage blames the FBI for not addressing accusations more seriously.

SAGE
I told the Bureau awhile back that in Texas, if your eyes start stingin’ and your nose hurts and you reach up and you’ve got blood on your face, you’re in a fight. And you damn well better realize that you are in a fight. The Bureau, the credibility, the public perception of the Bureau’s integrity is in danger here,

RATHER
And the government’s integrity has been damaged by other discoveries. Within the past six months, they were forced to acknowledge that military Special Forces, believed to be the super secret Delta Force, were present outside Waco. And, a surveillance tape with suspicious gaps was discovered at FBI headquarters. But the most serious question that remains today is this: Did government agents fire shots into that compound on the final day?

RATHER cont.
What are the main contentions of your suit?

CADDELL
One, that the government was responsible for gunfire on April 19th that in fact either killed Davidians or pinned them down so that they could not escape the fire.

RATHER
So you’re convinced the government fired?

CADDELL
I don’t think there’s any question.

RATHER
Although the Attorney General, the head of the FBI and the FBI as a whole has consistently maintained it did not fire a single shot.

CADDELL
That’s correct.

RATHER
This, he says, is proof. Video shot by a camera aboard an FBI aircraft. A heat detecting eye in the sky known as FLIR or Forward Looking Infra Red. Attorney Caddell is convinced it tells the story.

CADDELL
What we see on numerous occasions is an ongoing gun battle between government forces and the Davidians.

RATHER
Caddell says that these flashes of heat recorded by the sensitive camera are evidence of someone shooting into the compound in response to Davidian gunfire. They begin late in the morning and continue until a little after noon.

CADDELL
You continue to see gunfire at various times from behind that tank directed primarily at the Davidian gun positions here and in the tower and also into this dining room area on the back.

RATHER
But the government calls Caddell’s theory impossible. Sage says this aerial photograph was taken within seconds of the flash and says it shows no one on the ground to be doing the shooting.

RATHER cont.
And your point is that there’s nobody in there?

SAGE
That’s correct.

RATHER
He says this still frame enlargement of the infra red tape makes the same point. But what else could those flashes be?

SAGE
I am not a FLIR expert. My layman’s view is that it’s probably water or moisture reflecting sunlight. But I am confident that I can tell you what they’re not. They’re not gunfire.

RATHER
And to that you say what?

CADDELL
To that I say what we would say in Texas. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not Zebras. When I see flashes on an infra red like that, and I see that sort of abrupt, precise signature, I think gunfire.

RATHER
And so does Paul Beaver. He has used infra red imagery extensively in the British Army. He’s also a writer on military and law enforcement tactics and technology. We hired him to demonstrate what gunfire looks like on a thermal imaging camera.

PAUL BEAVER
No watch the end here. That plume there you see shooting out is what you can’t see with the naked eye. That’s actually the report and it’s almost identical to the report that we saw down here (on the FBI’s Waco FLIR).

RATHER
We asked him to compare this to what is on the Waco tapes.

BEAVER
This is flashes there which to me look exactly as if they’re gunfire. They have all the right characteristics. There we go, there we go. Two rounds. It’s what’s called a double tap. It’s what you expect a trained marksman to do. To fire two rounds in close proximity of each other. One, two, yeah. It’s not a glitch in the camera. It’s not the sun striking something. It’s not swamp gas reflecting off the planet Venus. This is somebody shooting.

RATHER
But the FBI denies this emphatically. Despite the fact that FBI agents came under Davidian machine gun fire, The FBI maintains that no agent fired back. That no one fire a weapon into the compound at all.

RATHER cont.
The FBI has repeatedly said no FBI person, at any time, fired into the vcompound.

SAGE
Correct. No FBI person fired period during the entire 51 days. Now that’s an extra ordinary statement. The fact that these agents did not return fire is an extra ordinary statement to the professionalism and the discipline that is pervasive throughout the hostage rescue team and throughout the FBI for that matter.

RATHER
And you’ve talked to some of these people who were back there at this time? And they’ve told you agent to agent, didn’t happen.

SAGE
Did not happen. there were no shots fired back there by FBI or anyone else.

RATHER
Today on the very spot where David Koresh and his followers died, volunteers are putting the finishing touches on a church intended to be a lasting memorial. But it’s the legacy of Waco that may prove most haunting. The Oklahoma City bombing and the events at Columbine High School in Colorado were both pegged to the anniversary of the tragedy here. Whatever the current investigations conclude, the FBI’s Byron Sage regrets what happened that day.

SAGE
The hind sight is a wonderful thing. And I think if you ask anyone that was involved in this situation from the on scene commander to the rank and file agent in the field, that we probably would not have gone forward on the 19th of April or any other time with a tear gassing operation knowing now that they intended to set that place on fire. Our reason for being there was preservation of life, not to contribute to the loss of life. Approximately 27 children perished on that day. That loss of life–the loss of any life–is something that I think any of us would have moved heaven and Earth to try to change.

RATHER
An independent counsel appointed by Janet Reno is hoping to settle the matter of alleged gunfire through a meticulous recreation of the conditions at Waco in a field test this March. And today, Bill Johnston, the Assistant United States Attorney at Waco, who helped bring key evidence to light, announced he’s leaving the Justice Department after more than 12 years of service.

END