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.
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