Waco

Don't miss the Charles Theatre's three-day run of "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," the extraordinaryOscar-nominated documentary that, through an examination of public record on the standoff between religious leader David Koresh and Washington, leads the audience to shocking conclusions about their government. It begins Friday. Call 410-727-FILM for ticket information.Pub date: 6/28/98

WACO, Texas - Gingerly, as if it might be too hot to touch, a large photograph circulated among the pews of the Seventh and James Baptist Church on Wednesday night. It passed from white hands to black hands and back to white hands. When it reached Amber Franklin, an African-American who is a junior at Waco High School, she recoiled. But she forced herself to study a panorama of spectators in white boater hats, a smudge of wispy smoke and a tangle of naked human limbs fastened to a chain slung over a spindly tree.

If you missed "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" during its July Fourth weekend run at the Charles Theatre, you can still catch the Oscar-nominated documentary today, when it has its last screening in Baltimore."

JAMES E. SMITH, 92, of Waco (formerly of Baltimore) passed away at a Waco hospital on Tuesday, November 11, 2003. He is survived by his wife, Sandra Smith and three step-children. Memorial Services will be at 9 AM on Tuesday, November 18, at Connally/Compton Funeral Directors in Waco, Texas.

"We believe full-fledged congressional hearings are in order. And the more thorough the preparation, the more responsible -- and credible -- the hearings will be."So we wrote in an editorial in April, 1993, concerning the tragic events at Waco, Texas, that winter and spring. Now the hearings are about to begin. On Wednesday, a joint committee composed of members of a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee and a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee subcommittee will start taking public testimony from witnesses.

Washington -- THE MORE Bill Clinton and administration stooges plead that replaying the Waco, Texas, shootout besmirches U.S. lawmen, the phonier their damage control sounds.What if inept air controllers were causing jet-liner crashes?Or corrupt Internal Revenue Service agents letting zillionaire taxpayers off the hook?Wouldn't airing the truth clean house and blow away paranoia?But with congressional hearings on Waco halfway home, you can understand the president's thin skin about the screw-up on his watch.

The Justice Department's flawed examination of the FBI's handling of the Waco disaster is a curious contrast with the Treasury Department's tougher evaluation last week of its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The Treasury report was devastating in its criticism of ATF's botched raid on the Branch Davidian compound. Several senior ATF officials, in Washington and at the scene, have been suspended. The FBI's more exhaustive study of the 51-day siege and its fiery climax leaves a great many central questions unanswered and lays blame on no one.Blame there was aplenty for the initial raid by a law enforcement force that had no business attempting such an operation.

The investigation of the botched raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, has produced a damning indictment of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Incompetence is bad enough; lying by ATF leaders is far worse. The independent review of the fiery fiasco last spring concludes that the raid was badly planned and executed by the ATF and that senior officials lied and fabricated documents in a futile attempt to conceal their failures. Some top officials have announced their retirements, and others have been suspended pending further disciplinary action.

Were the deaths of federal agents and members of the Branch Davidians at Waco "avoidable"?We have always thought so, and said so. So have many members of two House committees that just concluded ten days of public testimony on the 1993 standoff in Texas. But it is a theory that can't be proved. Were it provable, you can be sure the Republican-led committees would have done so. Partisanship and political motive were nakedly on display by some (but not all) of the inquisitors. (Some Democrats on the committees, of course, were equally partisan defensively.

The verdicts in the murder cases against survivors of the Waco disaster are fittingly ambiguous. None of the 11 defendants was convicted of the more serious murder and conspiracy charges, but five were found guilty of something called aiding and abetting voluntary manslaughter. This acknowledges that four federal agents were killed in the first attempt to storm the Branch Davidian stronghold in Texas a year ago. But it leaves unresolved the question who was really at fault.In no way can the violent deaths of lawmen be condoned.

HOUSTON - Investigators searching a remote abandoned gravel pit outside Waco, Texas, discovered a body believed to be that of Baylor University basketball player Patrick James Dennehy II, who has been missing for six weeks, authorities said yesterday. The body was found Friday night, and investigators began combing the scene at first light yesterday, said Larry Lynch, sheriff of McLennan County. The body, which was at least partially submerged in water and "badly decomposed," was removed from the site and taken to a medical examiner's office in the Dallas area, Lynch said.

WACO, Texas - The Branch Davidian compound is barely visible here on this piece of central Texas prairie, where tall green grasses and blooming wildflowers cover traces of the building that erupted in a deadly inferno 10 years ago. A persistent wind blew yesterday, just as it did on April 19, 1993, when a fire and explosion consumed the Davidians and their compound after federal agents stormed the grounds at Mount Carmel, bringing a conclusion to a...

WACO, Texas - Worshippers filed into Antioch Community Church yesterday morning to rejoice over what they say was undoubtedly a miracle. Two of their own, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, were among the eight Christian aid workers rescued by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan last week. A recorded message from the two women was played during services at the church, which occupies a refurbished grocery building in a fading commercial district in Waco. "I love you guys so much," said Curry, who, like Mercer, is expected to return to Waco in several weeks.

WACO, Texas - Central Texas is a place that prides itself on patriotism, a place where many people drive pickup trucks and a place that is proud to call President Bush a neighbor. All that was apparent yesterday in an extraordinary scene on Texas Highway 6. Almost 20 vehicles - plenty of pickups, the occasional RV and an old Cadillac - formed a caravan and took a half-hour journey from a strip mall in Waco to Crawford, near Bush's ranch. The vehicles were plastered with American flags.

THE CONSPIRACY theorists won't be satisfied. But for the rest of us, the recently released interim report of special counsel John C. Danforth on the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco ends questions about federal wrongdoing. Mr. Danforth, the respected former Republican senator from Missouri, was brought in to investigate allegations that federal agents started the fire at the compound in which 80 people died and that a conspiracy ensued to hide that fact. That those agents were not responsible for the deadly incident and, therefore, there was no attempted government cover-up, was stated by Mr. Danforth in the strongest terms last week.

WACO, Texas -- A lot is at stake in the Branch Davidians' wrongful-death lawsuit against the government, which opens tomorrow in Waco. It's not just about money, although the plaintiffs -- surviving Davidians and the relatives of those who died at Mount Carmel--are asking for $675 million. A verdict in favor of the Davidians would mean that a federal judge, and not just critics, had found the government's actions at Mount Carmel to be negligent. "This particular civil trial could have a much greater impact on government conduct in the future than a criminal case would," said Mike Caddell, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

At the precise point in his presidency when John F. Kennedy was clobbered by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Bill Clinton finds himself under siege because of the cult catastrophe in Waco. Despite the vast differences between the two events -- one a failed attempt to overthrow a foreign government, the other a botched effort to deal with a religious fanatic -- there are also similarities that raise questions about presidential leadership.In both cases, these presidents accepted Cabinet and intelligence agency advice that proved disastrously wrong.

WACO -- Woody Lambert's motto is right there on his ball cap: "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." At 75, the retired jack-of-all-trades, decked in denim from his cowboy boots to his sun ripened face, looks as content as a boy with a new pony.He's standing on a small hill near his house about 10 miles northeast of this central Texas city of 100,000, handing his binoculars to a school teacher from San Antonio.She, like so many of the more than 5,000 people who have borrowed Mr. Lambert's field glasses in the last 34 days, was lured off the nearby interstate highway out of morbid curiosity.

Police are investigating the death of Carlos Ghigliotti, a Laurel man who was an expert on the FBI's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, after his badly decomposed body was discovered Friday. Laurel police found Ghigliotti, 42, inside his firm, Infrared Technology, in the 600 block of Washington Blvd. in Laurel, about 1: 30 p.m. Police believe Ghigliotti may have been dead several weeks, but said there was no sign of a break-in or struggle. An autopsy was being conducted at the State Medical Examiner's Office in Baltimore.

WASHINGTON -- Justice Department documents released yesterday by a senior House Democrat raise questions about Republican allegations that the FBI and Justice Department deliberately covered up the use of military rounds at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco.The documents, which have been in the possession of House Republicans for four years, disclose the FBI's use of potentially incendiary tear gas rounds during the disastrous assault on Waco in 1993."They appear to conflict fundamentally with the assertions that evidence about the use of military tear gas rounds was deliberately withheld from Congress," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, in a letter to former Republican Sen. John C. Danforth, the newly appointed special counsel investigating Waco.