From: [s--k] at [i-link.net] (Sam A. Kersh) Newsgroups: alt.politics.org.batf,alt.conspiracy,talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc,alt.poitics.org.fbi Subject: Re: Waco/Ruby Ridge Hearings. Enough already! Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:50:33 GMT Extracts from Congressional Hearing WHY DYNAMIC ENTRY? ATF called upon the military because of an alleged methamphetamine lab. Why the dynamic entry when volatile chemicals were supposedly involved? Why wasn't the DEA called in? Why wasn't training given to individuals to deal with such a forceful entry on an alleged meth lab? According to a DEA testifier, weeks of training are necessary to prevent the dangers of an explosion. Yet no such training occurred. Most revealing, an exchange between U.S. Rep. John Shadegg and Sergeant Steve Fritts, U.S. Army. "Well, maybe I'm confused here," Shadegg begins, "but my understanding is that either directly or through other members of the military that were involved in this project, you had contact with ATF and it became pretty evident to you that ATF was not worried about the concerns expressed in your paper. Isn't that correct?" "Sir, my impression was that they were not worried about the methamphetamine lab, no," Fritts replied. "Your impression was that they were not worried about it?" "Yes, sir." The next time the Army heard any BATF reference to the alleged drug lab occurred during an attempt to gain clearance from Fort Hood for flash-bang stun grenades. "Mr. Fritts," Shadegg continued, "Let me just go back to this one more time. In discussions with committee staff, I thought -- it is my understanding you made it clear to at least the staff that BATF pretty well blew off the issue of there being a methamphetamine lab." "Yes, sir," Sergeant Fritts replied. "I said the impression I received that they -- once the paper was presented, they no longer showed any interest in a methamphetamine lab." In reading from one of the subpoenaed Treasury documents, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called into question whether Treasury officials were aware that the methamphetamine lab was nothing more than a hoax. Ros-Lehtinen posed her question to Mr. Wade Ishimoto: "Following up on our conversation about the drug nexus, we have in our committee notes from someone who appears to have worked or continues to work with ATF, and this was just given to us in a loose form, and let me read to you a few of the sentences here....'the National Guard was a scam, in my opinion. To my knowledge, there was never any mention of a meth lab being on the compound, that this was a scam initiated by the bureau's headquarters, again, in my opinion, to obtain the additional resources of the National Guard.'" PUBLICITY STUNT PERHAPS? Marion K. Pinsdorf, communications professor at Fordham's Graduate School of Business wrote in the Summer 1995 issue of The Public Relations Strategist , "Journalist Mary Gotschall said BATF wanted to showcase its costly special response team to stave off a merger with the FBI or Internal Revenue Service. `They were bureaucrats trying to protect their jobs,' she wrote. They invited, indeed sought, maximum media coverage by tipping off local media that `something big' was going to happen near Waco. "On the day of the raid, Sharon Wheeler, BATF's public relations director, was positioned near the compound with press releases and fax machines, ready to announce the BATF's glowing triumph to the world,' Gotschall wrote." Even Bob Sanders, former deputy director for enforcement for the BATF, thinks the raid was a publicity stunt for the troubled agency. During Wednesday's hearing, U.S. Rep. Bill Brewster asked Mr. Hartnett about rumors that the public relations coordinator for the ATF had released information to the press that something big was going to happen in Waco. But Mr. Hartnett's responded guardedly: "Yes, and we heard that, and the person -- I believe her name was Sharon Wheeler -- she's testified before committees and she just did not give any information out about Waco, Texas, at all. "She was in -- she was in Dallas and she called, called a reporter to ask if he was going to be in, or called two reporters -- I'm not quite sure, I don't recall -- and said, are you going to be in, we're going to have something coming up in the next day or two. As I recall, that's how it came out. She never mentioned Waco." Congressman Brewster: "Why did she do that?" Mr. Hartnett: "She wanted to be able to get a hold of them if there was a story and they recovered these arms. Now this all came up after the fact that we heard this and it came out at hearings before." Concluded Professor Pinsdorf in Public Relations Strategist: "At Waco, 'public relations considerations' were paramount, dooming the raid from the start." KEY FINDING OF DAY ONE? TREASURY COVER-UP Under questioning July 19, a former BATF deputy director vilified the Treasury report on BATF actions in the 1993 tragedy near Waco, Texas, as "filled with falsehoods and distortion of the facts." That was the key finding of the previous day offered by U.S. Rep. Zeliff. At first, Congressman Zeliff said, former BATF deputy director Jim Hartnett described the Treasury Report on BATF's action in Waco as "a cover-up," but noted that the former official tried to retrieve that phrase in later testimony. Even Hartnett's retrieval was revealing: "I feel that the Treasury Department has said things since the time of the raid at Waco that have been incorrect. I feel that the Treasury report, where it says some very good things that should be done, things that we could correct in law enforcement. I think it also had many omissions, distortions and false statements in it...I believe that they were concerned about the fallout from the media that they couldn't just say that management at the scene there made mistakes, but that wasn't the tone of the report. They felt that they had to write a scathing report, which made a lot of people suffer, like Chuck [Sarabyn] and some of those other people down there that were just doing their job, and it was, I think, very biased and unfairly written." U.S. Rep. McCollum: "And you think that was a coverup of sorts for what?" Hartnett: "I think they felt like -- and I don't know if coverup is a term that I would use. I would say that they felt that they had to -- at least when it came to the press -- show that they were taking some very strong action, and they weren't responsible for anything, and these managers down there had done this intentionally, and that just was not the case." "The truth is being sought and new facts are starting to come out," the co-chairman said. Other key findings highlighted by Zeliff: ATF agents testified for the first time that they actually refused an invitation by David Koresh to come and examine Koresh's firearms long before the deadly raid and that which followed. Zeliff's second point centered on testimony by legal experts who criticized the search warrant as filled with "inflammatory language ... sloppy ... [with] factual inaccuracies." "Third, we learned that the ATF gave little or no attention to doing a knock-and-serve entry.... a viable option seems to have been under-utilized, perhaps prematurely rejected." Fourth, said Congressman Zeliff, while BATF's request for military involvement hinged on a methamphetamine drug lab at the Mount Carmel Center, a deputy sheriff testified that "he had never seen and had no knowledge of any drug lab." Fifth, a surviving Davidian claimed that "helicopters shot through the roof of the compound," an allegation strongly disputed by authorities. "Sixth, we learned, contrary to [the] Treasury [Department's] prior account, ... at least one ATF agent did carry a loaded gun on board a helicopter that went to the compound on raid day despite testimony from the prosecutor of the Davidians that no one did so." Congressman Zeliff also noted internal BATF documents which confirmed that pages of agency surveillance logs were _torn out._ Documents attributed to a BATF agent fired for his role in Waco and later reinstated were "destroyed." ...........................end of extract............................ . . Sam A. Kersh [s--k] at [i-link.net]