Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/10/23 Jim Bovard on Waco, 30 Years Later

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Jim Bovard is back on the show to discuss the Federal Government’s siege at Waco thirty years ago. Scott and Bovard reflect on how they both first learned about the story. Bovard then goes through his experience reporting on the government’s evolving PR campaign to avoid blame for committing mass murder in the middle of Texas.  Discussed on the show: Bovard articles on Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Gun Rights Waco: The Rules of Engagement (IMDb) Waco: A New Revelation (IMDb) Jim Bovard is a columnist for USA Today and the author of Public Policy Hooligan: Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show yes sir back on the line i've got the great jim bovart wrote all those books including lost rights and freedom and chains and the bush betrayal and attention deficit democracy and he

really is the most accomplished libertarian journalist in our history. And it's cool, too, because he does this sort of, you know, investigative punditry so that he can stay angry while also reporting new original facts and details and journalism as he does. The great Jim Bovard, welcome back to the show, sir. How are you? Hey, good. Thanks, Scott. Thanks very much for your kind words. What, me, angry, I'm a nice country boy. Yeah, there you go. Well, listen, I guess what happens is I read your articles and my voice. And so that's different. Well, you know, that's fine.

I mean, I appreciate you, Ream, and I certainly appreciate all the heck, you know, letting people know about them. So, yeah. I should have mentioned that you're regular over at the New York Post these days, but you have been doing this a long time. And, you know, I might have told you this story probably off the air only if I did before, Jim,

but in the 90s, I thought all of libertarianism was a certain orange magazine that didn't care about anything important at all. And, you know, like, oh, check us out, dude. We're pretty skeptical about this whole believing in Jesus means you get to live for everything. Like, yeah, that's really skeptical. But, you know, I got, I figured all that stuff out in third grade. What I'm more interested in is Bill Clinton murdering people in Iraq and murdering people in Waco and at least his agents murdering people in Oklahoma City and his government covering all of that up and the Gulf War illness and these poor soldiers coming home all poisoned from all different things apparently from their time in Iraq War I and as best as I could tell libertarians

didn't care about stuff like that. And so I was paling around with the Patriot movement because at least they cared about the Branch Divideans. We don't have to agree on everything, but we have to agree on the most important things. And what happened to the Branch Divideans

is the most important things. And then it turns out what I didn't know was that you were holding down Waco for the Libertarian movement all those years, writing for the Wall Street Journal and I'm not sure who all else, Playboy magazine, I think. And I just didn't know the name.

I did not know. that there's this, you know, I did read the Wall Street Journal from time to time, but it just never became, I might have even read a piece of years or two or something, but it never became a thing that I knew that there's this guy Beauvoir out there who's really doing great work on this and representing libertarians well. So I didn't really even understand that there were hardcore, like serious, hate government, not to put words in your mouth, but willing to fight about very unjust things type libertarians until, you know, anti-war.com and and Lou Rockwell.com later on.

So, you know, to sell you a short, I'm acknowledging that I did that, you know, you were out there and I just didn't know it. But you were, you know, setting a great example for, you know, what libertarianism is supposed to be about. In the same way as Justin Romando. You know, I started reading Romando. He wasn't writing about libertarianism other than like, come on, libertarians, we're all good on this stuff, right? but the articles were about what the neocons were doing to lie us into war and kill all these people and all these things it was all this very detailed fact-based you know activist stuff about the real world about what's really happening and what we really have to oppose and you know you do that same great kind of work and and all these years and so thanks for that but anyway enough praising you the point is that these archives can be found at jimbovart.com and you have this great archive bovard articles on wake

Ruby Ridge and gun rights, and that'll be in the show notes here. And it's this collection, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, American Spectator, and these go way, way back, all through from 1994, all through the end of the 1990s, sticking up for the truth, which is the same thing as sticking up for the Branch Davidians. So really important stuff, and I've been digging through a bit of it. And so I was hoping we could talk about some of the things that, you you've learned or certainly that you focused on as being, I guess, the most important points back then. Like, for example, the question of how the rate happened and, you know, the ATF's idea of what they were doing there, how it unfolded, and of course, who fired first. Would you like

to start with that and address, especially if you could in context of the time, how this story, how it was that you first noticed, you know, the reports of it or what you thought of it when you started looking at it or why you thought it was so important and what you learned about how it all unfolded there. Okay. Again, thanks very much for your kind words, and it's great to see how you're carrying the flag forward as far as putting out very informed of articles and books on the U.S. foreign policy fiascos. I was following. Waco, Waco went down at the time I was, you know, bust and I asked to try to finish up lost rights, the destruction of American liberty, just working around the clock, and I was kind of

jolted by the ATF raid February 28, 1993, kind of, holy shit, what's going on there. And then the FBI comes in, and the FBI brings in the tanks. And I have memories, April 19, 19th, 1993. I was getting beaten on the head by editor where's the next chapter and I was just pacing in my living room where the TV in the house was smoking a cigar, you know,

watching the tanks go smashing in again and again and again. And it was like, holy crap, I can't believe they're doing this. I think some of the people in the FBI at headquarters were also surprised at that. But, and then, you know, I had some stuff.

And it was funny dealing with the book editor is the book was closing up for print around October 93, and I was elbowing and elbowing. Can we get a couple more paragraphs here on Waco in the chapter on guns, crimes, drugs, and snares? And, you know, they were saying, oh, my God, what do you mean you want to add more? Oh, but this is really good. This is so important. So, and then later, you know, I was able to find editors who were open to to that. David Brooks of the Wall Street Journal was great. He later became a, a pro-government columnist at the New York Times.

I was going to say David Brooks, as in David Brooks, David Brooks? David Brooks. And it's interesting because Brooks is only there as the editorial features editor-ed-er for about a year, and he was probably skeptical of me at first, but then he decided he liked my stuff. I did a piece on Ruby Ridge just after Lewis Free said that they were not going to file charges against any of the FBI agents involved. And the piece was no accountability at the FBI was the headline.

And it talked about how it certainly looked like Vicki Weaver was murdered by the FBI sniper. And the chief of the FBI, Lewis Free Counterattack, wrote a long letter to the Wall Street Journal, which they published. And I wrote a response to that. And I appreciate that Brooks didn't throw me under the bus as far as, you know, oh, the FBI attacked him. we can't publish him anymore. Rooks was very good. I did a couple pieces on Waco for him after that.

Another piece or two in Ruby Ridge. They were very good at that time. But no, it was fascinating to me to see how, first of all, to see how Waco went down and then to see how the media reacted. Janet Reno became a national hero because she went on, was a nightline and said, I take responsibility, but, you know, she also said, but it wasn't my fault. It was all David Correction's fault for wanting to kill those people, something like that. But there was a stampede by the media to put a halo over her head. And that was part of

the general whitewashing of federal law enforcement activity there at Waco. And the first polls showed very high public support for what the FBI had done. And these are the kind of polls that make me skeptical or skeptical about democracy and humanity and, you know. But as time went on, as people look past the pro-government storyline, a lot more Americans became skeptical, and there was a building, a growing push to investigate that. Then along comes April 19, 1995, the Oklahoma City bombing. it's interesting i was at a protest at the um just department i was walking around downtown on that morning and uh i heard there's going to be a protest by some gun owners and gun gun rights groups

and um at the um just department uh because of waco anniversary second anniversary so i got there and there was some journalist comes up and says says to the chief of the group hey i heard your boys were we're behind that bombing in oklahoma city and the guy left No, no, we had nothing to do with it. I think perhaps people at that point didn't realize how serious it was, but people have forgotten how President Clinton used that to demonize any opposition to government and demonize any criticism of government. It's very similar to what the Biden folks have been trying to do for last two years as far as shutting down criticism of the FBI or of the, you know, Biden's entire power grabs. Maybe I should pause and wait for more specific questions since I'm rambling like hell here. No, it's good.

And it's my fault because I asked an overly broad thing in the first place. So we'll get back to who shot first and all that in a second. But I want to pick up on one thing that you said there about the Oklahoma bombing and its relationship to Waco and especially the way it was made to rationalize and justify Waco after the fact. as though, not that anybody ever said this, but it might as well have been, essentially the case was that David Koresh had gone forward in time, him and all of his children too, and had blown up that federal building. And so, of course, it was justified that the FBI would attack them and kill them in justified, you know, righteous retribution for their aggression when, of course, the branch of Indians were all dead and couldn't possibly have blown up that building. They didn't have anything to do

with that and even if somebody claimed to do that in their name the guy who claimed to do that in their name was not a member of their group he was some Nazi and that doesn't reflect on them at all whether you know some third party was angry about it and yet that became such a

slogan is you know really this to me is almost the most important part of it is seeing the way that they really can just almost hypnotize people into saying the certain phrase like, well, the president must have secret information that we don't know about.

That was what they, 20 years ago today, some lady in my cab told me that. Well, the case for war so far is bogus, but we got to be doing it for reasons. So the president must have secret information that we don't know about. The same thing here. You go, man, something, something opinion about Waco. And they go, oh, yeah, well, what about Oklahoma City? You know, it's like someone poked them with a prod or gave him a dog tree. or something. They have to say it every time. What about Oklahoma City? What about Oklahoma City? Well,

what about Oklahoma City? Government employee lives matter more than civilian ones. Is that your point? Or what? Yeah, it's wrong when somebody massacres a hundred people. That's what about Oklahoma City, right? It's the same about Waco. But instead, it becomes somehow the Branch Divideon's fault. And so whatever happen to them, including gassing and shooting and burning them to death, doesn't count. And there are probably people who are listening to this right now who should admit that that's you. You did that. You said that. What about Oklahoma? When somebody said something correct and righteous in defense of the innocent lives at Waco. Because that's how easy people are to control. You just show them some crap on TV and they'll repeat it. Unprovoked attack in Ukraine.

somebody who thought that Ukraine was a part of Russia the other day. Well, okay, so to take a step back, you were talking about the tying Oklahoma City to Waco. There was a letter that the Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin sent on July 6, 1995, just before the House hearings on Waco. And he said that Waco, federal action at Waco, quote, cannot be understood properly outside the context of, of Oklahoma City, even though Oklahoma City happened two years afterwards, and it was like, it was like expo facto, you know, expo facto exoneration. Yep. And you had President Clinton saying that, you know, there was no need for any hearings on Waco

because we had an independent panel review what the ATF did there. Yeah, independent. chosen by Bill Clinton's buddies. Seriously. Well, and so, you know what? I'm going to put that in my notes, and maybe we can get back to that in a minute, the different so-called independent and not independent investigations, the Treasury and Justice reports and all that,

because there are some important aspects to cover about that. But so let's rewind a little bit and just talk about, you know, I don't know, we assume too much about what people know. This was 30 years ago. So can you just describe a little bit about who is this sect? What are they doing out there in, you know, the northeastern outskirts of Waco, Texas, Jim? Well, you know, it was people in Texas, so you shouldn't have high expectations of them. Oh, man.

That's rough. So this is a group that was an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist, and they had been there for decades at some point. some years before 1993, David Koresh kind of took over the group. He was doing a lot of, he was, he had painted himself as a type of religious savior. I think many of not most of the people in the group bought into that message. And he was investigated, I think, at least a couple times for allegations of child abuse. and there was not grounds for prosecution on that. That did not stop the feds from later trying to justify killing the children to prevent child abuse.

So what happened? The, you know, the Branch Civilians, they were outspoken in favor of guns in the Second Amendment. They were also went to a lot of gun shows in Texas and probably elsewhere, maybe not elsewhere. I don't know what the federal laws were at that point. They had laws, licenses in other states nearby. But so what happened was there was an ATF agent July 1992, went to Koresh's gun dealer and asked him whether the Devidians could be violating federal law by converting semi-automatics to full automatic firing without a federal license. The dealer picked up the phone and called David Koresh. And Koresh invited the ATF agent to come and do an inspection of the branched David's home.

I mean, you know, he was trying to settle the issue right there. The federal, the ATF agent said no. Instead, they went and launched this massive investigation, and there was a search warrant which they used to justify the preemptive attack on the Davidians. A congressional report said that that's application for the search warrant contained an incredible number of false statements. One of the reasons that the ATF said the search was justified. because someone had seen a gun owners of America video

criticizing the ATF at the Branch Davidian's residence. Yeah, well, sounds like probable cause to me. Or, hey, an objective of reasonable belief. So, listen, I mean, it seems strange that, well, you know, the ATF, they knew already, right, that this guy didn't have fully automatic weapons. He had these hellfire triggers, right, which is, you know, I guess, like the equivalent of a bump stock, something that sort of kind of approximates automatic fire,

but they had been shooting with him, right? They knew what he had and didn't have already. Well, and the thing, it's fascinating. And it's, you know, there were so many levels of cover-up on this case. So what happened is the ATF got the search warrant, and then they had, what was it, 76 heavily armed agents on a cattle trailer came in and basically, and attacked the defense. Davidians' home on a Sunday morning without pretext and without warning. But a huge rationale for that was ATF claimed it wasn't possible to arrest Koresh outside of his house. That quickly was exposed as BS. But what we didn't know until five or six years later, thanks to federal former lawyer David Hardy and his FOIA request, was that nine days before the ATF, 76 agents attacked

the Divideon's home, several or two ATF agents who the Davidians recognizes undercover agents knocked on the Divideon's door and asked David Koresh if he wanted to go target shooting with him. So David Koresh, another guy joined him and the four of them went out planking, and they talked about the Second Amendment and self-defense and stuff like that. So, and if the ATF wanted to, it would have been easy to slap the handcuffs on right there. You've got to go. You've got two agents. Boom. It's a slam dunk.

But instead of doing that, they wanted to do their showtime, high-profile raid, followed by a couple of TV news crews. Yeah. You know, it's really unfortunate, too, that that morning, when the agent was there and then left. And, you know, I guess the news cameraman had told the Branch Davidian Postman that this was all going down and this and that. And so the guy went to leave and I don't know if Koresh

called him out like, look, I know you're an ATF agent or whatever, but it was clear between the two of them. And he says, you know, good luck buddy out there, whatever. That right then, Rodriguez could have said, look, man, you should just come with me. We can diffuse this whole thing. I'll go ahead and

arrest you now. I'll be in trouble later. But we got to keep this raid from happening. Somebody could get hurt. something like that and david caresh could have done the same thing you know what robert you should just take me in right now before this thing gets nuts and then that way your guys can walk in here instead of running in with their guns drawn kind of thing because he could anticipate what was going on they knew there was a raid coming this was not going to be men in three piece suits knocking on the door um so to speak and so there's a real failure on both of their parts to diffuse this right then really

Not that really the Devidians had any responsibility for it, but, you know, I don't know. I think it's important, too, and I want to nail this down because I knew this anecdote, and I know David Tibido told me this, but I want to really verify this. I know that he left with a truck full of guns, but the way I remember learning was that Paul Fata had left the morning of the raid, like at 7 in the morning before the raid at 9, with a duly pickup truck with a camper show. and towing a U-Haul trailer full of rifles, both the camper and the bed of the truck and the U-Haul trailer. So this is hundreds of guns, hundreds of rifles. And to me, well, you know what,

give or take the damn U-Haul trailer, seriously, like even just the truck full. To me, you have either the story of Waco and the Branch Divideans and the raid and all this, or you have the story of the branched and the raid and all this including the fact that some guy left with 99% of their armaments

that morning to drive down here to Austin to do a gun show and sell guns right there in broad daylight in public in front of everyone at his legitimate gun business and once you know that part of this story doesn't that change the entire story

that it's now you can't even pretend you can't even pretend for a minute to entertain the idea that oh yeah these people were arming themselves up for some dangerous action, which the government did claim. They're like, oh, Koresh is mind control over these people. They could have marched on downtown Waco. He could have used them as a weapon to take over something or attack somebody or this kind of thing is what they claimed.

But geez, that's funny because he told his buddy Paul, okay, Paul, good luck out there selling guns and making money today, buddy, as his buddy Paul drove away with all of their guns, almost all of their guns that morning. It's just amazing to me that nobody ever really dwells on that, but to me that's like the crux of the whole thing. That changes the whole thing from, you know, you might as well change like which police agency did the raid or whether it was night or day or snowing or not or something. It's just entirely different story with this guy leaving with all the guns that morning, you know? Yeah, well, this is something that's gotten very little focus by most of the Waco commentators. yeah it's unfortunate because i just think to me anyway it just seems like it's just the crux of the thing it just shouts their innocence right off the bat there on one hand they're arming up for armageddon on the other hand clearly they're not yeah i don't know well there were so many farcical elements in the uh federal storyline um especially after the uh um shit hit the fan with the initial raid and uh you got four dead ATF agents

and you've got to find scapegoats real fast. And, you know, there was... Yeah, and go back to that, by the way, because that was the original question way back when was about who fired first, because it does matter a lot, doesn't it? Yeah, and the, you know, the tell-tale thing on that was that the feds said that the Vividians fired first.

ATF claimed that they had a video proving that. Too bad that video somehow vanished into either. So, but what happened was that the ATF agents, according to, I think, at least one, if not two or three of their testimony, the shooting started when they pulled up and killed the Branch Divideon's dogs prior to assaulting the building. And, you know, you go and you shoot a Texan's dog, you know, not a good idea. So, I mean, I was raised in the mountains of Virginia. You go around shooting people's dogs, you know, you can have a lot of trouble. So that was one storyline of how the shooting started. Another one is that the ATF fabricated a drug nexus,

claiming the Divideons had a meth lab on their basement, and used that to get military equipment and assistance for their attack on the Davidians. And the ATF used a National Guard helicopter, according to some of the Divideons. That helicopter was passing over the Divideon's house. and firing into it. And they think that those might have been the first shots that were fired? I've heard, you know, I've heard different things from different folks.

So I think you might find a better source on this than me. Okay, well, fair enough. I mean, we know for a fact that they did fire from their M-16s from those Huey helicopters, at least at some point. And in fact that, I believe it's a fact that three of the six dead. Davidians were killed by helicopters. Winston Blake was inside, and I'm sorry. I always forget their names, but there was the guy in the water tower,

and then there was a guy on the third floor who possibly was trying to shoot at the helicopters that they killed him. And the lawyers, Dick DeGaron, oh, no, it wasn't Dick DeGaron. I just reread this in your thing. It was the other lawyer whose name escapes me, talked about. He was a Marine, and he saw all the incoming bullet holes in the ceiling and in the front door. And he knew because he was a Marine in the war, I think in Vietnam, and was like, I'm telling you, that was incoming, you know, fire rounds there. You can see.

It's just too bad that they lost the door. I know. I'm sure they tried their best. And look, I honestly don't think it's hyperbolic to suspect that that's why they burn the house down. It's because the house itself was Defense Exhibit A. And once they knew that Koresh was ready to, you know, write down his final version of the Seven Seals and all this stuff, they decided that they weren't going to wait for that and let that happen.

They were going to go ahead and make their move then and destroy the place so that the people wouldn't be able to prove that they were defending themselves. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, you mentioned there were several new books out on Waco. I haven't looked at them yet, but I don't know. I hope more truth can come out on this. Yeah, me too. All right, so one of the things that you wrote about,

what time is it? We still have a little time. Tell me about, this is something that I guess I could have thought of, but it never did occur to me. But this is the whole thing that you had details on was that during the time of the fire on the last day there, they obviously had all these recording devices in there. And, of course, we've heard the clips of somebody saying,

pour it, which is evidently them talking about a Molotov cocktail at 6 o'clock in the morning, you know, taken out of context. But then you talked about how they admitted that they edited those tapes and to a significant agrees. Do you remember about that? No. All right. I just read it on your site. So I'll tell you what you wrote was that they admitted that they edited out all the sounds of the children screaming for their as they were killed. The Times reported that Mike Deggeran, demonstrated that 100 hours had been reduced to one hour, and part of it was people praying and children calling for their parents. I said screaming. That's not right. Yeah, there was so much

evidence that the feds covered up after the April 19th fire caused by the FBI. And there were audio tapes. And back in May, 295, Attorney General Jan Reno was trying to whitewash the FBI by Janet Reno claimed there were words that were tape recorded while they were spreading the fuels to ignite the fire. The Branch Divideans' words were captured on tape. However, there were a lot of controversies about those audio tapes from inside the compound from the federal listening devices. At the trial in 1994, federal prosecutors put out a transcript that they said was from the electronic listening devices inside the compound, I'm claiming that it showed a Davidian suicide scheme, but the defense attorneys challenged that, and the government's audio expert admitted that he had altered the transcripts after meeting with Justice Department officials.

New York Times report, the Davidian's lawyer showed that more than 100 hours of FBI tapes from the compound had been reduced to a single hour of excerpts by the audio expert for the prosecution. And this defense lawyer says what we didn't hear today was from the transcripts such as people praying as the tanks were smashing in their homes or children calling out for their parents as the FBI was crushing their house. Yeah. Give me just a minute here. At the Libertarian Institute, we published books, real good ones. So far, we've got Will Griggs-Snow Quarter. Sheldon Richmond's coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. and four of mine, fools Aaron, enough already, the great Ron Paul, and my brand new one,

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See The Roses. Only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. Well, no wonder they edited that out. Just like it's in the rules of engagement that they sent in camcorders and said, here, tape yourselves being crazy, Jim Jones, you know, Heaven's Gate lunatics so we could put you on TV. And so they all filmed each other. And then they sent the tapes out and the FBI buried them because if they put them on TV, then people would have seen that, hey, wait a minute. These people aren't crazy Heaven's Gate lunatics at all. they're regular people. Why are we doing this? So they cover that up too. And of course they didn't

want tapes getting out of the children calling for their parents as they're being killed by the FBI tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. But same damn difference. If you're a civilian on the receiving end of one of them, that's for sure. I mean, they're tracked vehicles with guns on them. And anyway, so what is this, dang clock? Okay. good we're doing okay um so can we talk about the origins of the fires here because you really develop you know not conclusions but definitely possibilities and and reasons to suspect one thing that i didn't realize jim was that uh as you wrote here that they had admitted that they had thrown in flashbang grenades on april the 19th and i knew that hardy and mcnulty had found those flashbang

grenades in the evidence lockers where they had been mislabeled, the silencers. But I did not realize, that's an important footnote for keeping, that they had admitted they had thrown in flashbangs, but don't worry, they said, Jim, the CS gas is not flammable, right? Yep, yep. Well, and it's important because the, uh, a crux of the FBI, uh, self, self-absolution was that the flashbangs, as you said, were not flamble. And it was not until Mike McNulty, in 1999, going through the evidence locker held by the Texas Rangers, found pyrotechnic devices. The FBI had fired at the Davidians' home on April 19th during the assault.

And that caused such an uproar that it forced Janet Reno to appoint a special counsel, who was a boot liquor, but that's another story. So there were all kinds of things which came out. And it's interesting looking at the details of the FBI. So there were a lot of warning details on the CS gas that was used.

It was not allowed for indoor use. It had been, there were a number of Palestinians had been killed when Israelis and the occupied territories had used it to suppress protests. And I think shooting inside of houses was where people passed away. But there were, you know, there were all these warnings from Dow Chemical, you know. You aren't supposed to use this in closed circumstances. There were experts who warned that there were very few studies, you know, indicating that this was

safe, but it's interesting that the FBI portrayed itself as an innocent victim after the fire broke out, but it was the FBI plan all along to destroy the building, to destroy the building where there were 80 or more civilians, 90 women, children, men, and it wasn't like it was by accident. And prior to the fires breaking out, the FBI had collapsed 20 percent. of the building. They were well on their way. So, and yet, you know, the FBI kept broadcasting throughout the day on loudspeakers. This is not an assault. You know, I think David Hardy did a book by that title. So, yeah. Man, and, you know, it's interesting. I didn't realize this. I knew that it was banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention CS Gas. But I didn't read. I didn't

realize that that was signed by President Bush one week before Bill Clinton was sworn in to replace him in January of 1993. I didn't realize that either. Yeah, I guess, you know, it would be against the law for America to use them against Iraqis, but they can use them against Texans. Yeah, there's a lot of loopholes in the international arms treaties that let governments use weapons on their own people that they could not use in a foreign war. Yeah, of course.

It's a paradox. Yeah. Well, you've got to test these things out on somebody, you know. And it was part of what was fascinating to me was to see how the FBI, how the Clinton administration, FBI, Attorney General Reno, how they, you know, came up with storylines that always made the government look like it was an innocent victim. Oh, all these people killed themselves, wasn't our fault. So Janet, you know, there were congressional hearings, July 1995. Janet Reno testified on the last day. She was pressured about why she had unauthorized using these 54-ton tanks that smashed into the Brass

Divideon's home. And Janet Reno said that she didn't think of them as a military vehicle. They were instead just like a good rent-a-car. And it's fascinating that she would say that, that shows her thinking, that shows the thinking of federal law enforcement, but there was no media reaction to her comment, except for my article in the next day in the Wall Street Journal, which is like, what unholy haves is this? I think I suggested using the tank rent a car in the headline, but they said, no, we don't need to do that.

Yeah. But I remember when Rules of Engagement debuted, we went and saw it at the Dobey Theater Mall, if I could speak English. We went and saw at the Dobey Mall Theater in 1997. And at that clip, I remember the crowd was just gasped and just unbelievable. And she even does this weird thing where she was, and this weird kind of thing with her throat after she says it, where it's just extra disgusting.

Just, what are you talking about? talking about it. And in fact, the guy says, you're talking about tank, knocking down a house full of people. And she goes, yeah, okay. Yeah, there was, there was a moment earlier in the, in the, in her testimony, the FBI and Justice Department tried to exonerate themselves for using the CS gas inside the Homan's Divideons. They were saying, well, the people in there had gas masks, so, you know, I assume that they were fine. But. but there weren't gas mask that would have fit young children. And someone brought one of the gas mask and put it on the table, her witness table next to her.

And she just brushed it off and let it fall on the floor. So it's like, you know, it was like it was, she had so much smoke blown up her butt at that point that she thought she was justice incarnate. Yeah. Well, and that's part of the point too, right? She's some idiot. She didn't know. And these FBI agents are telling her what. And she's going, okay, you go to say something.

So, and, of course, that makes no sense, right? Oh, don't worry. They all have gas masks. Well, then how is this supposed to work then? They all have gas masks. And the whole point is that the poison gas is going to make them uncomfortable and want to seek fresh air, supposedly, something like that, they said. If they could escape, you know, from the collapsed building all around them and on top of them. One damn paradox after another.

I'll tell you. And listen, you also pointed out something that I don't think I'd ever heard. this, Jim, before, that Janet Reno had changed her excuse for the raid. Oh, yes, this is huge. This is freaking huge. So at the time that Jen, of the final federal assault at Waco, Fez were saying, well, you know, they had this excuse and they had that excuse. Flash forward two years later, after the Oklahoma City bombing, And after there was more pressure on the Justice Department to provide answers, Janet Reno gave a speech in front of a bunch of federal prosecutors,

and she announced that the first and foremost reason for that final FBI assault was that law enforcement agents on the ground concluded that the perimeter had become unstable and posed a risk that individuals sympathetic to Koresh were threatening to take matters in their own hands and basically attacked the federal agents from all sides. There was no evidence of this. She was just pouring that out of her ear, and it was completely brazen that she would say that. But like everything else that she made up, she got away with it.

And it's such an obvious like, because obviously they would just arrest anybody that they thought was, what, the Michigan militia was going to come down there and go to war? Come on. Yep, yeah. Well, and it was, this was the same speech in which Janet Reno talking to federal prosecutors was very emphatic that it is unfair, it is unreasonable, it is a lie to spread the poison that the government was responsible at Waco for the murder of innocence. This was their pushback in 1995, absolute total self-exoneration. Right.

Yeah, and, you know, acting all moralistic about it, too, that how dare you go so far as to say otherwise? Well, geez, I've seen the FBI's own forward-looking infrared footage of them masquering these people. And if they want to argue that that's not FBI hostage rescue team agents in that footage, then they can only argue that it's Delta Force Combat Applications Group Team B instead. and it's most likely a mixture of the two, but there's no question that you can see men get out of the tanks and fire machine guns at the house as it's burning down. Guilty?

Well, yes. And what can you say? There's no other explanation. I mean, if it was just a flash, that'd be one thing. But this is flashes on the ends of machine guns being held by men who just got out of a tank. So, yeah. That's muzzle flashes from a machine gun, you know?

but so now I wonder in your coverage back then did you delve very deep into the presence of the delta force on April the 19th in their role there or even before that no I mean I was part of um I heard the allegations you know I was chasing so many other rabbits at that point uh Waco was on my radar screen but there was Ruby Ridge there was you know 20 or 30 or 30 different excerpts from lost rights I was pushing to Playboy in a lot of other places so I didn't do the in-depth investigation into Waco that people like Mike McNulty did so

but I was happy to write about what they found. Sure well and you know you did plenty of your own if not you know real gum shoes stuff at least collecting footnotes and clips and admissions and major points as I've brought up

on the show already here, you know, quite a few that I didn't know about before. So, you know, you're always doing great work. If nothing else on the second hand, scooping up all this stuff that matters the very most, you know. Yeah, well, part of what I was, part of what I was doing back then, it still do now, is pay attention to the words of the government because there was that Janet Reno speech. I had a couple of quotes from on May 5, 1995. I don't think that that ever hit the newspapers, but I was able to get a transcript of it, and all of a sudden it's a whole different way to frame Waco.

There were a lot of comments that federal officials made from 93 onwards that if you take that and juxtapose those quotes with what later came out, then it's jaw-dropping to see the amount of federal falsehoods. And I was seeking first to find out what the government. did and second to stop people from being so deferential to the latest federal storyline because you know how many times can the government change its storyline on Waco and still be credible yeah seriously um well and you know I kind of this is something that we were talking about at the beginning there about their

credibility that people really did believe in this stuff at the time and you know I want to get to the trial. You didn't believe it, did you? No, I sure didn't. And in fact, you know, because I'm a skateboarder. So the first time I ever met a cop in the wild, I was cured of any respect for any government employees ever for the rest of my life. That was it, vendetta forever. So I remember, you know, you talked about you remember the day of the first raid. I do too. I remember watching on TV. And I think the first thing I saw was they were on the roof trying to get in that window. And my, you know how you see a, you're driving, you see a plastic bag floating by out of your peripheral vision? And you're not sure if it's a cat. And you're not sure if it's a cat.

or what at first, you know, kind of. So my very first thing is, like, I thought I was looking at a hotel, and it's like the second floor, but outside balcony, kind of outside the doors, you know, something like that, like a little motel type thing. And like, no, that's not quite right. And then the TVs explained, this is a church that the cops are raiding here. And of course, they're all dressed up like soldiers and all that. So, you know, I remember being pretty impressed about their brutality right then. And then the day they were burning it, I was with my friend John, and we went to his house and um we go in the front door and his mom goes look they're burning it they're burning it and i go who's burning it and she goes well the tv says they're burning it and i go

bullshit man you know they never show us the back of that house those cops are killing those people man you know they're sick of their shit and they're just killing them and she's like yeah i guess you're probably right and i just always felt that way from that moment on there's no well and of course all the evidence came out again the four looking infrared footage proves it. It just proves to be on any doubt of what is happening there. Those aren't branched of vidians getting out of those Bradley's and shooting their fellow churchgoers there. You know, those are cops or soldiers that are doing that. And so, yeah, that is, you know, always the way I felt about it. But, you know, I was, I've told this story

a lot of times, but I think it's important that the housewives of northwest Austin, Texas, wanted those people dead. My job was sacking groceries at the Albertsons at that time. And the consensus was he said he was Jesus. Let's nail him to a tree. And if there's a bunch of women and children in our way, then tough. I say go in there and end it. That's what they would all say.

Go in there and end it. Again, with this mine of bird stuff. Secret evidence that we haven't seen yet. But it must be there. Go in there and end it. But that means machine gunn the people. you know and these are texans these people are a hundred miles up the road but they're a foreign nation they're iraqis dude you could drop the nuke on them and the people the housewives of northwest

austin would have been happy with that and people nowadays try to pretend that oh no all right wingers were good on it was just the democrats that weren't that's not true right wingers were all on the cop's side you'd have had to been part of the patriot movement or the conspiracist right or the militia movement or the libertarians to be good on this. You know, G. Gordon Liddy talked a little bit of smack, but overall, Rush Limbaugh and the Titans of Radio, they were bad on this. They were pro-cop. Rush Limbaugh is a perfect example here because when Janet Reno testified on Capitol Hill

just after the fire, final assault, all the dead people, senators lined up to kiss her boots, they want to be photographed with her, pretty much the same in the House, except for Congressman John Conyers, Democrat out of Michigan, I think in Detroit area, and Conyers just hammered Reno for what she had done. And Reno broke down in tears. And Rush Limbaugh responded by beating up John Conyers. Isn't that interesting? Because he's actually horrible in the movie. in wake of the loss of engagement. Okay, interesting. I don't, he was probably not good in the 1995 hearings, but there was maybe an appropriations

hearing late April, early May, 1993 in which Conyers, you know, smacked Janet Reno around for the use of deadly force against civilians. And she broke down in tears. And Rush Limbaugh jumped on Conyers. Other people jumped on Conyers. It was Conyers' finest hour, and he's someone who had a – he's someone who was, I think, an opponent of the Patriot Act and said some good things, but he also signed off a lot of very bad federal policies, but anyhow. Yeah. Well, you know, to the point about the conservative right, you know, that they were just thin blue line on this, the cult of law enforcement is powerful, and those branched of idioms, they had thumb their nose at lawful authority.

you think you're higher than the red, white, and blue? How dare you? And yeah, and that means we'll kill all your kids too. We'll kill everybody. You're not allowed to get away with this and certainly not at the expense of days of our lives and the price is right. Well, it's interesting. There was a split among conservatives. The American Spectator was very critical of Waco, I think, from the start. I think National Review was pro-government on that. There was one line which, looking at that, my piece I did for Wall Street Journal, May of 95, Waco must get a hearing. The last line of that was, the ghosts of Waco will continue to haunt the U.S. government until the truth is told about what the government did and why. And those ghosts of Waco are still haunting the U.S. government. Yeah, got that right. Well, and they're going to, even after all the truth is out, because it just shows how guilty they are. And it ain't like they said, were sorry or anything. There's still lie about it to this day.

And, you know, I guess I haven't looked very close at this, but I've been told that there are three new books out that all say, oh, isn't this an unfortunate series of some mistakes were made? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not going to let them get away with that. There's just, you can't spin, regardless of exactly how the fire started, which I don't think anyone knows exactly for sure, although there's certainly reason to believe, as we talked about those flashbangs and the CS gas,

that it was the government that started that fire, whether deliberately or not, but you just can't spin the machine gun fire from the men that get out of the tanks. There's just no way to make that go away. That was either the hostage rescue team or it was the Delta Force or both. And there are two witnesses in the second movie,

New Revelation there, Gene Cullen, CIA officer, and Stephen Barry, a former Special Forces guy from the Army who says that they were both told firsthand and it's hearsay but I'll, you know, sustained I'll allow it

as they say. They both say that they were told personally by members of Delta Force, Team B, that they participated in a firefight. Those are the words of Cullen and then pulling triggers was the way Stephen Barry put it. And I think in both cases very credibly that yep that's what they told me all right and that goes to show that it wasn't just reno and bill

clinton later admitted this and i have somewhere the fox news clip from tony snow or uh brit hume maybe doing the news where uh bill clinton in a deposition where he's being i'm pretty sure it was a judicial watch deposition about his relationship with james ratti admitted that one he watched wake o'burn with James Riotti, his Chinese intelligence connection, you know, financier, and that, yes, he gave the final approval to Janet Reno to go ahead, which was something that had always been omitted from the story before they made it sound like it was all her. And at the end of his presidency, he admitted that she came to him and or the FBI came to him, and he's the one who gave the order. And of course, he's the only one who could have ordered the Delta Force. I mean, they could have ordered

themselves, I guess. But if they were operating under anyone's authority, it wasn't Janet Reno's. Yep. Well, I'm looking forward to your upcoming podcast in Waco talking to Dan Gifford and stuff like that. I'm sure you'll have a lot of great stuff and some new information. Yep, there's going to be some stuff in there, that's for sure. Now, to wrap up here, Jim, and we don't have too much time, and I know it's a bit complicated,

but I was wondering if you could take us through a little bit of what happened this trial and the screwy way these people were acquitted but then half convicted anyway and what in the hell happened with that well it was a typical federal court trial where you had a federal judge who blocked the defense attorneys from introducing a lot of the evidence of government misconduct I think he came out and said that the government's not on trial here and once you have that storyline when there's been a lot of government violence a lot of dead bodies you know it's basically letting the government skip blame free. But the jury verdict, the feds were hoping for a lot of murder convictions.

The jury threw that back in their face, and the federal prosecutors, the lead prosecutor, burst out in tears when the jury verdict was read because it was far less punitive than what the feds had hoped for. The news media had headlines that the government lost the case. but there was some murky stuff on the jury verdict and you had Judge Walter Smith come back and twist the verdicts and slapped on a bunch of additional prison sentences that would not have been justified by any reasonable interpretation of the jury verdict.

So that was bad faith by the judge, but he'd shown bad faith throughout the trial. Yeah, man, that's something else. All right, look, it's 30 years ago, but for some reason it just won't go away this Waco thing. And as you said there, it's because there's no accountability. There's no honesty. You could take a class, a psychology class or a history class or a Texas government class, and you could learn all about how those people kill themselves. Well, Scott. I learned that in junior college, that it was a crazy cult, just like Charles Manson

and just like Jim Jones, and that's all you need to know. Wow. Well, there is a lot of, this is still a very important issue, and I really appreciate how you're keeping Waco on the radar screen, and I appreciate I'm looking forward to the upcoming work you have on it. Cool. Well, thank you, Jim, and thank you so much for participating with me here, and all your great work on this issue over the years, man. It means a lot. Thanks so much. All right, you guys, that's the great Jim Bovard. He's at Jimbovard. com, and his latest book is Public Policy Hooligan. You'll love it. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com,

Scott Horton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.