From Waco to Yugoslavia:
The US military was at Waco
General Wesley Clark was involved in the siege and final assault near Waco, Texas that killed, by a combination of toxic gas and fire, at least 82 people including some three dozen women, children and infants. As outlandish as this claim may seem, it's a reasonable conclusion that can be drawn by any fair minded person who takes the time to examine the evidence. Further, there is substantial circumstantial evidence that, Clark, in addition to acting as a tactical consultant, may, in fact, have been the prime architect and commander of the entire operation.
If this is true, why is it important? First, it represents a clear violation of US law. The military is banned from involvement in the enforcement of US civil law except under certain carefully defined circumstances. The incident at Waco did not come even close to legally qualifying. Second, it casts light on some of the more outrageous tactics used in the war against Yugoslavia, in particular the bombing attacks on Yugoslavian news media, essential life support services, and on civilians, the latter which were sometimes, but not always, described as "accidents." Third, President Clinton began the year with the statement that he is considering a Pentagon proposal to create a new US military command, commander-in-chief for the defense of the continental U.S., a first in peace time and an alarming move for reasons described in "Bombing 'suspended' - and now, the future"
http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia/directory/61099a.html
One of the officers most likely to receive this appointment would be, as the result of his "success" in Yugoslavia, General Wesley K. Clark. Fourth, US military leadership must be well aware of Clark's role in Waco, yet they have rewarded him with significant promotions ever since. * The US military was at Waco The initial reaction of virtually every person who hears about Clark's involvement in the attack on the Mt. Carmel Center of the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas is surprise and/or disbelief: "I thought it was an ATF/FBI operation that went wrong and all the military did was lend a few tanks."
Let's start by dispelling that myth. Here is the list of US military personnel and equipment that the US Justice Department admits were used at Mt. Carmel: "Military Personnel and Equipment - Personnel Active Duty Personnel - 15 Texas National Guard Personnel - 13 - Track vehicles Bradley fighting vehicle (OMZ) - 9 Combat Engineer Vehicle (M728) - 5 Tank Retrieval vehicle (M88) - 1 Abrams Tanks (M1A1) - 2 Source: Department of the Treasury, Report of the Department of the Treasury on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Investigation of Vernon Wayne Howell also known as David Koresh, U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1993 If you'd like to see a photocopy of the original document, See below:
The Justice Department list has some very important deliberate omissions as will become clear later in the section on the final assault. * The real command structure at Waco Since the recent bombing campaign against Yugoslavia started, "NATO commanders" (i.e. General Wesley Clark) have insisted that that NATO, not the UN, would be the commanding force in Kosovo and everyone else, like the Russians, would have to submit to NATO orders. Epic ineptitude on Clark's part may has thwarted NATO's designs, but the lesson is of critical importance for understanding Waco.
It is this: No military commander "lends" 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to anybody, let alone the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, willingly. The principle is very simple: my men, my arms, my show. In a lawful operation, the command structure would have been publicly announced, but since the involvement of the military in Waco was entirely illegal and indefensible, it was necessary to paint the situation as an FBI operation. The obviously substantial presence of US military equipment used in the operation was dismissed as being equivalent to a "rent a car" service.
The US news media which received all of its information on Waco by dutifully attending FBI press conference briefings and then repeating them uncritically swallowed the "FBI in charge" story hook, line and sinker. Still not convinced Waco was a military operation? There's more. * The key role of the Fort Hood, Texas army base The military equipment and personnel used at Waco came from the US Army base at Ft. Hood,Texas, headquarters of III Corps. Here's an succinct account of the initial raid that caused the standoff submitted by David T. Hardy, an attorney who battled to force the government to release evidence in the case. Take special note of the passages I've marked with *** "The incident originated in an attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to serve search and arrest warrants on a building, known to its residents as Mount Carmel, located in a rural area a few miles outside of Waco, Texas.
The operation required mustering approximately a hundred agents (flown in from sites around the country), and who ***received military training*** at Ft. Hood. They traveled in a convoy of sixty vehicles and were supported by three National Guard helicopters and one fixed-wing aircraft, ***with armored vehicles in reserve***."(Archived) http://www.indirect.com/www/dhardy/waco.html The personnel, described as ATF employees, received military training at Ft. Hood in preparation for the raid. Why? The reason is that the original charges against the Branch Davidians included drug violations. On the strength of these charges - which later were found to be absolutely false - the ATF qualified to receive military training and other assistance for the raid.
Given that the training was customized for this particular raid, the assistance in all likelihood included intelligence support. In other words, military personnel looked the compound over, drew up attack plans, created a training program for the ATF agents, and then, one would assume, were there on the day of the raid - along with the local news cameras which had been tipped off in advance - to watch the thing go down. (The Department of Justice reports that the code word used to launch the raid was "Showtime.") Note too that armored vehicles were held "in reserve" on the day of the raid as well. There are at least two published local press photographs that show armored military vehicles at and on their way to the Mt. Carmel center on the very day of the raid.
The presence of so much military owned equipment on the scene, along with the documented fact that the raid was prepared for at Ft. Hood by military trainers seems to me to be all the evidence needed to show heavy military involvement preceding the initial raid. Perhaps equally significant is the amount of dissembling that surrounded the undeniable fact of pre-raid military involvement. For example, the governor of Texas claimed to the press that she requested National Guard presence after the raid. President Clinton was quoted as saying: "The first thing I did after the ATF agents were killed, once we knew that the FBI was going to go in, was to ask that the military be consulted because of the quasi-military nature of the conflict." (Washington Times, April 24, 1993) Attorney General Janet Reno attempted to explain away the "FBI" use of US Army tanks as being equivalent to an innocuous "rent a car" arrangement.
The statements of these three individuals obscure the simple fact that the military vehicles, and personnel who operated and maintained them, were part of the initial raid - and therefore in clear violation of US law. Also, government statements relayed to the public by the US news media made much of the fact that one of the tanks was operated by an FBI agent. It's interesting to note that no reference was ever made to the operators of the other 16 military vehicles used in the operation. * Showtime As I mentioned earlier, the code word that launched the raid was "showtime." The name of the operation itself, according to the aforementioned Department of Justice report, was "Operation Trojan Horse."
Early in the siege, "Operation Trojan Horse" became a popular destination for special forces officers both from around the United States and from its closest ally, the UK. They came to observe the effectiveness of various high tech devices and tactics that were being tested against the Branch Davidians. Source: London Sunday Times, March 21, 1993: "FBI brings out secret electronic weapons as Waco Siege drags on" You can see a photocopy of the original article at:
The raid was on February 28. The London Times article ran on March 21. It's noteworthy that Waco became a focus for US and UK special forces officers so quickly. The 3/21 London Times report states that "observer teams from the American Delta Force and British SAS have *already* visited Waco." (Emphasis mine.) Organizing groups of officers to make a field trip normally takes far more lead time than a couple of weeks. This is the military, not a group of freewheeling bohemians who can pile in a van and travel across the country, or the globe, on a whim. Yet, there they were, with plane and hotel reservations, briefings, tours and the like, all arranged. Such organization implies pre-planning or at least very strong pre-existing relationships with Delta Force and SAS on the part of the officer in charge. It would have taken an officer with unusual connections and motivations to pull off this level of "show and tell."
By the way, the notion that Delta Force and SAS officers would make such a trip to observe the *FBI* using various secret high tech warfare devices is laughable. Who in the FBI would know how to operate them? In any event, the equipment and tactics used came from the military, not any law enforcement agency. In reality, the FBI was not in charge of the Waco siege. Its role instead was twofold: 1) to keep up fruitless negotiations with the Branch Davidians and 2) to act as the front for the real operation which was under military command and therefore entirely illegal. * Cold blooded murder Based on the claim that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh was abusing the children in the compound - a lie according to survivors - and sympathy for the "tired" FBI agents, Attorney General Janet Reno signed off on the plan for the final assault which resulted in the death by toxic gas and fire of over 80 civilians.
Who presented the plan to her? An article in CounterPunch relates the essential facts: "Two senior Army officers subsequently travelled to a crucial April 14 meeting in Washington, D.C. with Attorney General Janet Reno and Justice Department and FBI officials in which the impending April 19 attack on the compound was reviewed. The 186-page "Investigation into the Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Towards the Branch Davidians", prepared by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and lodged in 1996 (CR 104 749) does not name these two officers..."
Was Clark at Waco?
On February 28, 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its disastrous and lethal raid on the Branch Dividian compound outside Waco, Texas. Even before the raid, members of the US Armed Forces, many of them in civilian dress, were around the compound.
In the wake of the Feb 28 debacle Texas governor Anne Richards asked to consult with knowledgeable military personnel. Her request went to the US Army base at Fort Hood, where the commanding officer of the US Army's III corps referred her to the Cavalry Division of the III Corps, whose commander at the time was Wesley Clark. Subsequent congressional enquiry records that Richards met with Wesley Clark's number two, the assistant division commander, who advised her on military equipment that might be used in a subsequent raid. Clark's man, at Richard's request, also met with the head of the Texas National Guard.
Two senior Army officers subsequently travelled to a crucial April 14 meeting in Washington, D.C. with Attorney General Janet Reno and Justice Department and FBI officials in which the impending April 19 attack on the compound was reviewed. The 186-page "Investigation into the Activities of Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Towards the Branch Davidians", prepared by the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight and lodged in 1996 (CR 104 749) does not name these two officers and at deadline CounterPunch has so far been unable to unearth them. One of these officers had reconnoitered the Branch Davidian compound a day earlier, on April 13. During the Justice Dept. meeting one of the officers told Reno that if the military had been called in to end a barricade situation as part of a military operation in a foreign country, it would focus its efforts on "taking out" the leader of the operation.
Ultimately tanks from Fort Hood were used in the final catastrophic assault on the Branch Davidian compound on April 19. Certainly the Waco onslaught bears characteristics typical of Gen. Wesley Clark: the eagerness to take out the leader (viz., the Clark-ordered bombing of Milosevich's private residence); the utter disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children; the arrogant miscalculations about the effects of force; disregard for law, whether of the Posse Comitatus Act governing military actions within the United States or, abroad, the purview of the Nuremberg laws on war crimes and attacks on civilians.
http://www.counterpunch.org/waco.html
From the sound of this, it appears clear that the final solution to the growing political problem of Waco came directly from the US military. How odd if, in fact, Waco was an FBI operation. * The final solution The final assault on the Mt. Carmel complex occurred in three stages: 1) armored military vehicles punched holes in both ends of the main building of the complex, 2) "crowd control" gas was sprayed in, and 3) a fire started which destroyed the complex Witnesses expected that the gas would drive the inhabitants out. Instead, no one came out and the complex was engulfed in fire. Why didn't the residents come out?
The cover story as related by the FBI and the Department of Justice is that the Branch Davidians killed their own children and then themselves and simultaneneously set the complex on fire rather than surrender. There is no forensic evidence to support this claim. Here's what a Failure Analysis Associates' study found about the nature of the "crowd control" gas that was used: "1. The first assault started at approximately 6:00 A.M. .... CS concentrations in the rooms directly injected by the M5 delivery alone ranged from 2 to 90 times that required to deter trained soldiers. Methylene chloride concentrations in the rooms directly injected by gas were as high as 1.8 times the IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health) concentration and nearly to the concentration that would render a person unconscious. 2. The second assault started at approximately 7:30 A.M. CS concentrations in the rooms directly injected by gas from M5 delivery alone ranged from 2 to 80 times that required to deter trained soldiers. Methylene chloride concentrations ... were as high as 1.6 times the IDLH...."
All in all, nearly 400 gas filled projectiles were fired into the building, and CS was sprayed from four tank rack dispensers on the armored vehicles. As Failure Analysis Associates concluded in it report, this was the most intensive use of crowd control chemicals in the history of the United States. Methylene chloride is even more dangerous than CS--and five pounds of MeCl were injected for every ounce of CS. MeCl is an industrial solvent, with powerful anesthetic properties. It was once used as paint remover before being banned for that purpose for being too dangerous to handle. Both gases are flammable. In other words, the gases used and the quantities they were used in were sufficient to kill many of the inhabitants on contact, especially the young children, and would have been more or less capable of instantly incapacitating the rest. Finally, there is the issue of the fire which destroyed most of the evidence. Edward Allard, a leading expert in FLIR (forward looking infrared recorder) stated his conclusions in a court document after reviewing the official FLIR footage of the final assault: "11. At 12:08:32, the FLIR depicts events at the rear of the building, where the large "gymnasium" structure has largely been demolished.
Two very bright thermal flashes are visible near to or in the window at the center, in front of and to one side of the (armored vehicle) which is stopped there. I see no natural explanation for these flashes. They would not, for instance, be reflections of sunlight off glass... I declare under penalty of perjury that the above is true and correct."
READ MORE HERE: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/clark.htm
