
    FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 20, 1996
    EDITORS: DUE TO LENGTH, CONSIDER SUBMISSSIONS DATED OCT. 20 AND OCT. 23
    YOUR BONUS COLUMNS FOR OCTOBER. COLUMNS OF NORMAL LENGTH ARE ALSO MOVING.
    THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
    'Not as powerful as many might as first believe'

    S.H., apparently from Texas, recently wrote:

  "I just came across your article (on gunfire from the ATF helicopters at
Waco). I must tell you I am dismayed. ... You are willing to allow for the
honesty of the Davidians in every instance but allow for none from the ATF.

  "Is it your contention that the ATF went to Mt. Carmel with the purpose
of shooting people; with the intent to kill those people?

  "In several places you refer to your personal knowledge of the people
whom you have interviewed to arrive at your conclusions. You allude to
their honesty and integrity. Let me do the same.

  "My father is an ATF agent. He was at Mt. Carmel. He fired his 9mm pistol
and his HK-MP5 rifle (also 9mm and not of the penetrating power that many
who are not familiar with the weapon might at first believe) from the
ground.

  "He was aware of the plan to use the helicopters as a diversion.
Helicopters, mind you, are quite capable of providing such a diversion
simply by their presence. They make quite a bit of noise without the aid of
weapons fire. The agents in the helicopters did have their weapons with
them. They had their 9mm pistols.

  "If you really want a hell of a story, find somebody who can shoot
through a window, let alone at a target in the window, much less on the
other side of it, from inside a moving helicopter with a pistol. ... That
would be a story! (Just so you won't think I am just full of hot air, I am
a National Guardsman and somewhat familiar with such things. It isn't so
easy with an M-16 either.)

  "Let me ask you; if you were going to a gunfight, if you were intending
to engage in trading fire, would you wear a red baseball cap? I know an
agent who went to Mt. Carmel that did. ...

  "The long and the short of it was that the ATF was there to serve an
arrest warrant and to seize the illegal weapons.  If the Davidians had not
opened fire, if they had not sought to ambush federal agents, the ATF would
have arrested two men, taken away some weapons that were illegal and the
rest of the Davidians would still be there, worshiping just as they
pleased. It's hard to serve a warrant when you can't even get to the front
door."

    #  #  #

  I responded:

  Dear Mr. H. --

  I understand how the fact that your father was involved in the government
homicides at Waco may make it hard for you to consider what happened there
objectively.

  However, if you've had military service, I'm sure you understand the
reluctance of any member of a tightly-knit unit to turn "snitch" and expose
his fellow officers to prosecution for a capital crime, ... the ease with
which it can be rationalized that "Maybe things went wrong, but we didn't
start out meaning to do wrong. We/they were just following orders. You have
to follow orders. Things happen, and it could have happened that way to
anyone, it doesn't mean my buddies are bad. ..."

  Remember, both Director Higgins and Secretary Bentsen admitted to
congressional committees and on television that these men could and should
be charged with "wrongful homicide" if they lied about who fired first,
and/or if they in fact fired indiscriminately into the building.

  Well, I'm sorry to ruin your day, young Mr. H. ... they did, and many of
them have already admitted it under oath.

  You say the ATF agents were armed "only" with their 9mm pistols and H&K
submachine guns. If I were caught in possession of a Heckler & Koch MP-5
submachine gun today, I'd be put in jail. TV newswomen would pout and scowl
as this "fully-automatic destructive device" was displayed on a table which
would also contain my kitchen butcher knives, the souvenir Zulu spear which
my mother once sent me from her African vacation, and whatever cash I had
on my person, as evidence of my obvious intent to stage some kind of
assassination or major rebellion.

  One MP-5, Mr. H., not 76.

  Yet you imply the fact that they only carried such puny popguns proves
the combat-clad ATF raiders, in their bulletproof vests and Kevlar army
helmets, were caught completely unawares by the Davidian "ambush" as they
peacefully walked by Mt. Carmel on their way to some kind of Sunday
afternoon softball game.

  The hydroshock bullets the ATF employed that day are defined as "highly
penetrating rounds" available in this country only to law enforcement
special operations teams and the military. Although they could (and did)
easily penetrate the windows and plywood walls at the church at Mount
Carmel, they expand when they hit the human body, tearing out large areas
of flesh, as opposed to passing through as would usually be the case with a
fully-jacketed standard military round. In fact, use of such bullets in war
may well be against the Geneva conventions.

  It's also worth noting that such bullets are actually bigger around
(start ital)before(end ital) they expand than the 7.62mm bullets fired from
an M-60 machine gun, the usual weapon of the Huey waist-gunners who combat
veterans tell me were the source of the most accurate and destructive
strafing fire in Vietnam ... despite your contention that no one can
possibly  hit anything from a hovering helicopter.

  At the Davidian trial, in answer to defense questioning, FBI agent James
Cadigan said of the special hydroshock bullets in use by the ATF (and the
ATF alone) that day, "They're designed to kill, disable, wound, destroy
whatever they hit." (Trial transcript page 1235) Yet you tell us these
pitiful little peashooters are so much weaker than what we might think ...
sort of like the rubber bullets used in "crowd control," perhaps?

  Care to stand still while someone pumps four or five 9mm hydroshocks into
you, Mr. H.? Tell you what -- we'll even let you hold up a sheet of normal
construction plywood to stop the rounds. OK?

    #  #  #

  Agent Sprague, when asked at trial and under oath to define the "threats"
at which he shot that day, described a pair of hands at a window, a pair of
arms, and curtains moving. He said he fired at all of them (trial
transcripts, page 2241-2, and 2252-3.)

  Agent Timothy Gabourie admitted that since he was not wearing a helmet
and didn't want to raise his head above the side of the truck behind which
he was hiding, he drew his 9mm pistol and fired 25 to 30 shots into the
building (start ital)without looking(end ital). Agent Barbara Maxwell
admitted under oath that agents were firing indiscriminately through walls
and windows.

  But of course, it's (start ital)not(end ital) true that the 76 attacking
agents were armed only with weapons shooting 9mm "handgun" rounds. BATF
Chief of Special Operations Richard L. Garner admitted to a congressional
committee that the  attacking agents were also equipped with numerous .308
(7.62 NATO) caliber high-power sniper rifles, eight military-style AR-15
rifles (bottlenecked .223, as you know), and 12 large-gauge shotguns.

  At the trial, Texas Rangers testified that they collected more than 70
used shell casings in and around the undercover house, from which ATF
snipers were firing into the building that day with their .308 rifles.
That's more than 300 yards from the church full of mostly-unarmed victims.

  Yes, a good sniper can hit quite precisely with a scoped .308 rifle at
300 yards. But not through walls and curtains. Nor would any responsible
"police" officer ever take such a shot, if he knew (as all the ATF agents
knew) that there were also unarmed women and children in the building,
possibly directly behind their shadowy, curtain-moving "targets."

  Yet they fired more than 70 rounds of .308 NATO.

  Do you consider the bottle-necked NATO .308 cartridge a round "not of the
penetrating power that many who are not familiar with the weapon might at
first believe," Mr. H.? I'll expand my offer. You stand 300 yards away from
a marksman of my choice, holding up a piece of standard construction
plywood -- the same stuff the walls at Mount Carmel were made of -- as a
shield. We'll put 10 or 20 rounds of .308 NATO into the plywood, which you
apparently believe will stop each and every round of the type fired by
government marksmen at Waco. You'll be fine ... won't you?

  As for agents firing machine pistols from helicopters: They wouldn't need
to be good shots to score kills inside a building containing dozens of
people if they fired in enough random rounds through the roof, walls and
windows.

  Given your  familiarity with weapons, would you really fire a 9mm handgun
loaded with (start ital)any kind(end ital) of live ammo at a target pinned
up to the side of your own house, when your family members were inside,
based on your confidence that 9mm rounds won't penetrate the walls of the
average civilian dwelling?

    #  #  #

  But, in fact, it's highly unlikely the firing from the helicopters (start
ital)was(end ital) with 9mm H&Ks or sidearms -- it's far more likely, given
the eyewitness testimony, that it was with fully-automatic M-16s or even
M-60s. Since you seem to have such good contacts inside the agency, why
don't you find out for us precisely what kind of weapon each agent fired
from the helicopters (I'd love the names and current addresses and phone
numbers, with the weapon fired by each); they won't tell us.

  In fact, they lied for months, contending the helicopters were "unarmed,"
before they finally admitted they carried loaded weapons with them. They
called the newspaper and TV reporters who said they saw the choppers
circling the building  multiple times "liars," even though some of the
videotape later proved those reporters were correct. Why lie about circling
close to the buildings, if there's nothing else to hide?

  If you grab a weapon "just in case" you might have to shoot a bear at
long range, would you choose a small-caliber handgun ... or the biggest
thing available? What would have been the "biggest thing available" at the
National Guard base from which these helicopters initially took off? Don't
such helicopters have gun-door slings specifically designed to hold M-60
machine guns?

  You criticize those who are not willing to accept the truthfulness of the
ATF at face value. Maybe that's because they've been shown to lie, over and
over again.

  They lied about the suspected drug lab to acquire the helicopters,
remember? It now turns out they lied when they said the helicopters were
unarmed. They lied in the affidavit filed to obtain the search warrant.
They invented lies after the fact about being there to "prevent child
abuse" (a charge which had already been checked out and dismissed by the
proper Texas state authorities -- and no responsibility of any federal
agency, in any case). They lied about believing the Davidians had illegal
50-caliber machine guns.

  There were no 50-caliber machine guns. ATF commanders, who had told the
press again and again on the first day that their men were pinned down by
50-caliber  machine gun fire (which has a fairly distinctive sound, easy to
tell from a semi-auto AR-15 firing .223, wouldn't you agree?), finally had
to admit under oath at trial that the Davidians owned only two perfectly
legal single-shot bolt-action 50-caliber (start ital)rifles(end ital), and
that none of their shells showed any firing pin impressions ... that they
only "cooked off" in the final, fatal fire, two months later.

    #  #  #

  Lies? Go do a little reading about the raid that crippled Air Force
veteran Ken Ballew in Silver Spring, Maryland, and how ATF agents went
outside after they shot this poor man in the head (a man running naked from
his bath to the door of his apartment with an old black-powder pistol to
defend his naked wife against unidentified armed intruders with no uniforms
or badges), how ATF agents went outside to put on their insignia after the
fact so they could lie about how they'd identified themselves to the
Ballews.

  The ATF routinely and famously lies about how weapons they seize are
"full-auto," altering them after seizure till they'll fire a two-round
burst even if they then jam ... all that's required to meet their
definition of an "illegal, fully-automatic machine gun."

  They're (start ital)instructed(end ital) to lie under oath at trial about
their third-class tax and permit records being "100 percent accurate" (and
dutifully do so, every time), when they know actual accuracy has only
recently been improved, after considerable effort, from 50 to perhaps 70
percent. They lied to Randy Weaver, who had never committed any known
crime, to entrap him in hopes of turning him into a snitch on an Idaho
church. (Now there's an area we surely want the ATF meddling in ... racism
at the pulpit.)

  The whole claim that the Waco raid was necessary (start ital)in any
way(end ital), is a lie. When BATF investigators Davy Aguilera and Jim
Skinner visited local gun dealer Henry McMahon on July 20, 1992 to ask
about David Koresh's gun purchases, McMahon called Koresh on the phone.
Koresh said "If there's a problem, tell them to come out here. If they want
to see my guns, they're more than  welcome."

  Mr. McMahon walked back into the room where the ATF agents were waiting,
carrying the cellular phone. "I've got him (the Rev. Koresh) on the phone,"
he said. "If you'd like to go out there and see those guns, you're more
than welcome to." Growing quite agitated, Agent Aguilera responded, "No,
no!" that the agents "didn't want to to do it that way."

  At the trial of the surviving victims in San Antonio, Judge Walter Smith
allowed Mr. McMahon's business partner and friend, Karen Kilpatrick, who is
not a Branch Davidian, and who witnessed this incident, to describe it
(start ital)under oath(end ital). When she got to the point where she waved
her hands over her head and shook her head, in imitation of Agent Aguilera,
the whole courtroom burst into laughter (trial transcript, page 4904.)

  At that point Judge Smith, no friend of the defense, who had previously
stated he was "not going to allow the government to be put on trial here,"
refused to allow McMahon himself to take the stand.

  Next time: the myth of the "ambush."

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@intermind.net.
The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at
http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United
States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas
Nev. 89127.

***

Vin Suprynowicz          vin@intermind.net

"Next year in Galt's Gulch!"



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