Waco Housing Authority: Fill & Download for Free

What’s my understanding of what happened during the Waco siege? Well… there was this guy, let’s call him David Koresh, and he was a bit odd. And so were the people who followed him, the Branch Davidians.How was he odd?Well… There was a bunch of people, over 100, living in this big house called the New Mount Carmel Center on 77 acres outside of Waco, Texas. And there were rumors that the guy in charge, this Koresh character, was engaging in polygamy. And it wasn’t just that he was marrying multiple women. The rumors were that he was marrying young women.Like too young of women. Girls. The gossip that was running through Waco was that the girls were as young as 12. At one point, Children and Youth Services got involved, but the girl in question who was legally married to Koresh was 14 and at that time in Texas, marrying a 14 year old was legal as long as there was parental consent.Like it or not, the law is the law.But it wasn’t just the marrying of young girls that had people a little fearful of these folks. It was the fact that David and his friends liked to shoot guns. A lot. So much so that it made people uncomfortable.Now, I’m not saying Koresh was or was not doing anything wrong. What I’m saying is he was drawing attention to himself and his people whether he wanted to or not.Eventually, the local authorities became concerned that Koresh was stockpiling weapons and crafting automatic guns. They got the ATF involved.Now, at this point in time, the ATF was a little sketchy. Erratic. Maybe even rogue. And it definitely appeared as though they liked to flex their big, government-backed muscles.So anyway, the ATF gets involved. They show up on February 28th, surround the place and, as I understand it, shoot the Davidians dogs. Which, mind you, were safely held in kennels. This led to a bit of gunfire, six dead Davidians and four dead ATF agents. When the ATF ran out of ammo, they contacted the local sheriff, who negotiated a ceasefire.The Branch Davidians held up their end of the ceasefire for 51 days and during that time, the FBI joined the ATF, surrounding the place with armored vehicles and over 600 federal agents. Throughout these 51 days, there wasn’t any “violence,” but have no doubt, psychological warfare techniques were definitely at play with the Feds. They assaulted Mount Carmel with loud noises and flash-bang grenades. They screamed profanities.They mooned them.The exact sort of professional behavior you would expect from agents of the federal government (insert sarcasm).And then on April 19th, 1993, shit hit the fan. Janet Reno, the newly appointed US Attorney General, wanted to see more progress at Waco and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team was released.Oops. I mean deployed.They used .50 caliber rifles and explosives to blow holes through the walls and filled the building with military-grade CS tear gas.And within hours, the first of the fires started.No one knows who started the fires. What we know is that only nine people from inside the building were able to escape the flames (and dare I say bullets). The rest, 76 Branch Davidians, 20 of whom were children, perished in the massacre.Autopsy results showed that 27 died from gunshot wounds. The rest died from either smoke inhalation, the fire, from being buried alive, or from cyanide poisoning, likely from the CS gas.That’s the basics of what I understand happened at the Mount Carmel Waco siege. I’m not going to say that Koresh was innocent or guilty. I’m not going to say that the ATF was wrong (which is really hard).What I will say is that, from my understanding, much of these deaths could have been avoided. Koresh could have been picked up outside of the house. They could have brought snipers in. They could have waited out the Davidians. They could have worked with local authorities, which Koresh would have been more likely to trust.They could have done something to de-escalate the situation instead of doing everything in their power to escalate it.That’s my understanding, anyway.If you want to learn more about what happened in Waco, check out my article: The Waco Siege: What Happened When the Feds Laid Siege to the Branch Davidian Compound.

Unfortunately for Will, he’s very much mistaken.The law allows for a Special Counsel or Prosecutor to be appointed by the Attorney-General (or, in this case, his Deputy, because Sessions recused himself) most specifically when an investigation by the DOJ itself would represent a conflict of interest, or when it is in the public interest for such an investigation to happen.Put bluntly: the DOJ can’t investigate Trump in-house, because Trump has the authority to close down any investigation and fire any of the upper-tier staff, and would therefore be capable of curtailing the investigation, no matter how legitimate. As such, the AG is supposed to use external investigators in matters that require investigation that may include the Executive Branch, particularly the President.Will’s argument boils down to how he feels Mueller should be classified: as a principal law enforcement officer, one who would need to be appointed and formally confirmed by Congress. This, however, is not the case. Mueller was appointed by someone who was confirmed by Congress, and therefore has all the authority of his office, and could appoint a Special Counsel if he saw fit to do so.Put bluntly, it comes down to George Will not understanding the nature of Special Counsel: they’re not a Congressional appointee, and not subject to nomination by the President (which would be highly suspect) or approval from the Legislative Branch. After all, Mueller is empowered to investigate those two branches of government, if that’s where his investigation leads. You can’t expect a man beholden to the President or to Congress to be able to be impartial, and that’s exactly why this system exists.It’s worth noting that the government has employed Special Counsel on a significant number of occasions: for the Whitewater Scandal, to investigate Waco, the Iran-Contra affair, and so on.As for Constitutionality, that’s a fairly absurd observation: the only really legitimate critique has been that, because the Special Counsel is a member of the Executive Branch, they cannot therefore investigate the President, and nor would the President be compelled to answer to a subpoena issued by the Special Counsel. The Supreme Court has, however, disagreed with this, as in Morrison v Olson. You’ll note that this decision specifically observed the right for a Special Counsel to be appointed, and was upheld by the Supreme Court, which is responsible for deciding the constitutionality of acts by the other two branches of government.So, the TL;DR version: Will has no clue what he’s talking about, and the constitutionality of the Special Counsel’s investigation is not under formal legal question. It’s mud-slinging by Trump and his supporters to try and stop an investigation which was instituted to protect the democracy of the United States, and one which seems to be pointing to Trump having done something wrong, particularly given his zeal to stop it before the findings are released to Congress.It’s a perfectly legal and constitutionally-appropriate investigation.

I read the following work on the subject:The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation: Dick J. Reavis: 9780815605027: Amazon.com: BooksDick J. Reavis was a well respected journalist in Texas prior to the events at Waco. His work is well documented and clear.I find many things deeply disturbing.In spite of enormous evidence of very serious misconduct by numerous federal officials, no federal official was ever penalized, or fired over this.Claims that the ATF fired from Helicopters at the Davidians was backed by evidence (incoming bullet holes in metal roofs) that were seen by non-Davidian witnesses were denied and the evidence destroyed in the fire, and federal authorities refused to allow non-federal investigators to look at the evidence.A federal judge treated a jury “not-guilty” verdict of some Davidians as a guilty verdict.ATF agents testified under oath that they fired first (at dogs). To do so they would have to be firing in the general direction of a church structure where numerous small children were housed. If that is not direct provocation of self-defense or defense of innocents nothing is.Evidence of bodies recovered after the fire show that small children had very clearly been run over during the fire by tracked vehicles (tanks). It was not possible to determine if they were alive or dead when run over.Just five of very many things I find very deeply disturbing.