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Enterprise, Number 22, February 15, 1997.
Your FBI: Perjurers, Murderers ... or Both?
By Vin Suprynowicz
[email protected]Special to The Libertarian Enterprise
Word is the new 165-minute Waco documentary, "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," by William Gazecki and Mike McNulty, made quite an impression on audiences at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
I've seen excerpts of the FBI's Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) footage, shot from an aircraft circling overhead just prior to the April 19, 1993 conflagration, and obtained by the filmmakers under the Freedom of Information Act. The filmmakers' consultants contend the rapid series of white flashes coming from off the stern quarters of the government armored personnel carriers as they knock down the compounds' walls are the typical signature -- viewed on infrared -- of the government's MP-5 German machine pistols firing three-shot bursts into the building ahead of the tank, to suppress any resistance.
If so -- and I can certainly see the rapid flashes on my tape -- there goes the government claim that they never fired into the building that day, and were merely standing by, hoping to rescue the poor Christians who had "set themselves afire."
No commercial distributor for the film has yet been signed (surprise.) Interested current and future victims of federal oppression can stay up-to-date on those distribution efforts by visiting the filmmakers' web page at http://www.waco93.com/index.htm.# # #
In answer to my recent column on private-school scholarships for poor urban kids, Marshall Fritz of the Separation of School and State Alliance (209-292-1776; [email protected]) writes:
"I cannot remember your position on tax-funded vouchers. If you believe them dangerous, then please be cautious with the 'Private Voucher Movement.' Of the 25 or so programs, 20 see themselves as temporary 'demonstration projects' to show government the way. They are financed for three years. They intend to be replaced by tax-funded vouchers. In effect, they are a stalking horse for expansion of the education entitlement mentality to the 5 million children in families who are now paying fore their children's schooling.
"There are two organizations that help others get started. By far the best funded is CEO, headed by Fritz Steiger. It is explicitly aimed at getting tax-funded vouchers to succeed. ...
"On the other hand, there is an organization that helps people set up permanent programs and is not political: the National Scholarship Center in Washington, D.C. It is headed by Doug Dewey. He can be reached at 202-842-1355. ...
"I encourage people to involve themselves with Dewey, not Steiger, because I believe that tax-funded vouchers are harmful to Separation."
Sincere thanks to Marshall for keeping us on the straight and narrow.
Financing with stolen "tax" loot a program designed to inculcate the younger generation with our culture's values is particularly insidious.
And pragmatically, the courts have always ruled that where "government" funds go, there must follow government oversight. This is a recipe for turning our private schools into The Public Schools, Part Two.
My original column praised the ongoing New York City experiment precisely because it's privately funded. That's still the way to go.# # #
On the recurring topic of how "a few bad apples" should not lead us to believe that all G-men are lying crooks, the Associated Press reported Jan. 30: "LOS ANGELES -- Officials at the FBI's crime lab complained that agents pressured them to lie about their scientific findings and say supervisors sometimes altered their conclusions to support criminal prosecutions, the Los Angeles Times reported today. ..."
Among the potential impacts? Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who writes for the London Telegraph, reports from Washington Feb. 2: "The government case in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, due to open next month, is disintegrating. ...
"The latest blow to the prosecution is a report that the FBI crime lab altered forensic conclusions to accommodate government claims that the blast, which killed 168 people in the spring of 1995, was caused by a 4,000-lb. ammonium nitrate bomb. ... With the FBI crime lab going through the worst crisis in the history of the Bureau, everything it touches is now tainted.
"But there are deeper problems with the case, ... one that precipitated a witch hunt against the militia movement and ... arguably helped President Clinton's re-election. ...
An Oklahoma newspaper, the McCurtain Daily Gazette, "has gathered evidence that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was monitoring the bombing conspiracy from the very start," Evans-Pritchard reports.
"The only conclusion that one can draw is that the Justice Department is protecting a federal informant who had penetrated the bombing conspiracy ... and is trying to cover up a bungled sting. ..."
Michael Sniffen of the Associated Press in Washington confirms as of Jan. 31: "One FBI supervisory agent, Dave Williams, who oversaw collection of explosives evidence at Oklahoma City, has been withdrawn as an expert witness in McVeigh's trial. ... Williams and two other lab supervisors criticized in the report were transferred out of the lab."Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Pallas, the new sci-fi adventure novel by L. Neil Smith is out in paperback from Tor. Is there room for a socialist utopia on an individualist asteroid?
Now available at good bookstores everywhere!