The Hearings: Waco and Ruby Ridge

The week before last July's congressional hearings on ATF wrongdoing during the initial raid of the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (whose department oversees the ATF) denounced the hearings on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley, claiming that extremist groups would seize the opportunity to "distort Waco" and "undermine law enforcement." He added that the hearings "might better be focused on extremist groups and those militia that are dangerous to society." Perhaps he was right; Texas Constitutional Militia commander Steve Brown used the hearings as a rallying cry for his militia that same week, asking members, "Do you think the Waco hearings would even be going on right now if they didn't know we were arming ourselves?" -- though privately, even Brown seemed cynical that the hearings would do any good.

And indeed, the Waco hearings, which ended August 1, quickly became a fiasco. Republicans used them to snipe at the Clinton administration's handling of Waco, and in turn were sharply criticized for accepting legal aid and advice from the obviously partisan NRA.

Meanwhile, the ATF did little to improve its tarnished image. Robert Rodriguez, an undercover officer living inside the compound prior to the raid, still insisted he told supervisors that Branch Davidian leader David Koresh had been tipped off and warned them not to proceed with it. And those supervisors, Phillip Chojnack and Chuck Sarabyn, continued their insistence that Rodriguez was lying. Their bosses, former ATF deputy director Stephen Higgins and former ATF director Dan Hartnett, in turn laid the blame for the whole thing with the Treasury Department. To add to the confusion, Chojnack and Sarabyn were initially fired, but later rehired, and although Higgins and Hartnett resigned, neither was disciplined. So who's lying?

Obviously, someone is. This is apparent even
to low-level ATF officers, one of whom wrote to an agency-published magazine after Chojnack and Sarabyn were rehired that, "I've never been more ashamed of being an ATF agent than I am right now."

The Ruby Ridge hearings, on the other hand, which began in September and ended last week, centered around controversial orders which allowed an FBI sharpshooter to kill the wife of white supremacist and weapons dealer Randy Weaver in 1992. Weaver was wanted for, but later cleared of, charges of weapons violations -- though at the time he vowed not to be taken alive.

After Weaver's 14-year-old son and a U.S. Marshal had already been killed in an exchange of fire, FBI shooters were given the order to shoot any armed male spotted on the premises -- an unusual order, since agents are normally only permitted to shoot when someone's life is directly threatened. One agent on the scene, Peter King, told the Senate panel that the order was "crazy" and "ridiculous," and that "we all felt it was inappropriate." Now, no one wants to admit having given it. Four FBI officials took the Fifth Amendment at the start of proceedings, seeming to confirm critics' charges of a cover-up.

On-site commander Eugene Glenn, who was fired for his role in the incident, claims that senior FBI official Larry Potts gave the order. Potts denied it. Following the Ruby Ridge incident, Potts was initially elevated to the number two position in the bureau by FBI director Louis Freeh, but was later suspended when questions began to resurface before the hearings.

So perhaps Secretary Rubin and Steve Brown are right -- the hearings have done little to reaffirm public faith in the ATF or FBI and seem to have even failed at affixing proper blame for the incidents. Yet they do appear to have accomplished one thing: derailing draconian legislation, which might have given both agencies increased powers to combat militias and domestic terrorism but might also -- because of the limitless powers they would have granted law enforcement agencies -- have sparked yet another incident. -- D.C.