In an article for Salon.Com (“Hollering fire in a crowded theater”), Daryl Lindsey interviews Waco negotiator Byron Sage about the recent Danforth report and the controversy over the documentary, “Waco: The Rules of Engagement.”
Sage dismisses the “conspiracy theories” of films like “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” who claim that the FBI fired assault weapons on the Branch Davidians during the final day of the standoff and then covered it up.
Sage whines:
The point here is that the American public has now been conditioned (and I am hoping that we can reverse this) to start from a position of believing that anything that the government tells them — and I hate to use that term in such a broad sweeping fashion, and in fact I won’t — anything that the FBI tells them is immediately subject to question.
I am very skeptical of some of the claims made in “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” and don’t think anyone has proven that the FBI a) started the fire or b) fired on the Branch Davidians. On the other hand, from beginning to end the U.S. government lied, lied, and then lied some more about what happened at Waco. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that government officials tried to hide and obfuscate their actions at Waco — their own words and the official state-sponsored reports of what happened at Waco confirm this.
If people like Sage want Americans to think that the FBI and the government tell them the truth, perhaps they could start by simply stopping the interminable flood of lies.
More darkly, regardless of whether or not you believe the scenario as outlined in “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” Sage’s own comments toward the end of his interview with Lindsey will only reinforce the view by some that the government is out to get them by any means necessary. This is what Sage unbelievably has to say about the film:
And they marketed that type of material, which comes very close in my mind of standing up in a crowded theater and hollering fire.
They have so inflamed elements of the American public that there has been irreversible damage done to the trust that the public has had in the past — and should have now — in the integrity and professionalism of law enforcement. I am referring to actions like Timothy McVeigh took on the second anniversary of the bombing of, I mean the fiery conclusion of Waco when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. That was before “The Rules of Engagement” came out, but it is still based on the same type of response to inaccuracies.
Anyone who thinks there was a conspiracy at Waco is implicitly responsible for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building! A film that argues there was is very close, according to Sage, to inciting a riot or mayhem. Sage’s choice of metaphors is interesting since the “fire in a crowded theater” line was invented earlier in the century to cover another act of state repression. Antiwar activists handed out leaflets to those drafted to serve in World War I urging them not to go. The activists were arrested and jailed. Oliver Wendell Holmes, giving the opinion for the Supreme Court majority that upheld their jail sentences, wrote that giving drafted men pamphlets opposing World War I and urging them to listen to their consciences and not report for the draft was akin to shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater.
Of course when government actions actually lead to real fires and the deaths of dozens of people, that’s just another day at the office for folks like Sage. If Americans treat what their government says with a healthy dose of skepticism, that’s probably one of the best things to come out of Waco.