{"id":21794,"date":"2025-07-22T08:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T12:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21794"},"modified":"2025-07-23T12:25:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T16:25:24","slug":"waco-and-the-death-of-congressional-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/22\/waco-and-the-death-of-congressional-oversight\/","title":{"rendered":"Waco and the Death of Congressional Oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Waco and the Death of Congressional Oversight<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard, July 22, 2025\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

How many atrocities can the federal government get away with? Americans are still vexed by the answers that Congress failed to deliver in 1995. Thirty summers ago, Washington was fixated by a Capitol Hill showdown over the greatest federal abuse of power of the decade.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, trusting congressional hearings to discover the truth is like trusting a roomful of monkeys with typewriters to write great novels\u2014it might happen, but only in an eternity<\/strong>. As comedian Milton Berle quipped long ago, \u201cYou can send a man to Congress but you can\u2019t make him think.\u201d <\/b><\/p>\n

On February 28, 1993, scores of federal Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents launched an attack on the home of the Branch Davidians. The ATF\u2019s lead investigator had previously rejected an offer to peacefully search the Davidians\u2019 home for firearms violations. Four ATF agents and six Davidians were killed in the fracas that day.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s Hostage Rescue Team took over the scene and 59 days later, FBI tanks collapsed much of the Davidians\u2019 ramshackle dwelling while heavily gassing the women, children, and men inside the building and nearby shelter. A fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. The Clinton administration had begun a cover-up long before the final assault. (Check out Scott Horton\u2019s superb thirtieth anniversary podcast series on Waco<\/span><\/a> as well as plenty of zesty articles<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on this website.)<\/p>\n

On the evening of the Waco fire, Attorney General Janet Reno went on Nightline<\/i> and announced, \u201cI made the decision. I\u2019m accountable. The buck stops with me.\u201d Reno then asserted that the fiery end was all somebody else\u2019s fault: \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody has ever dealt with a David Koresh, who would purposely set people afire in that number.\u201d Nightline host Ted Koppel asked Reno why the feds used \u201ctanks to ram the compound down.\u201d Reno replied, \u201cI think that what we were trying to do was to give everybody an opportunity to come out in the most unobtrusive way<\/i> possible, not with a frontal assault.\u201d Because she had a lofty federal job title, nobody called out her \u201cunobtrusive\u201d 54-ton tank BS.<\/p>\n

Snap polls just after the Waco fire showed that the American people overwhelmingly supported the FBI assault. A few days after the fire, the opening of a congressional appropriations committee hearing had to be delayed so senators could have their pictures taken with Attorney General Reno, who became a national hero for her \u201cthe buck stops with me\u201d pretense.<\/p>\n

Reno received a different reception from Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) when she testified at a House hearing. Reno cried when Conyers berated her for authorizing the final assault. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh, reflecting the conservative idolization of law enforcement, slammed Conyers for being disrespectful to Reno and accused him of grandstanding. Perhaps the most honest statement of congressional sentiment came from Rep. Jack Brooks (D-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Brooks declared that the Davidians were \u201chorrible people. Despicable people. Burning to death was too good for them.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

In November 1994, Republicans captured control of Congress. On the second anniversary of the final FBI assault at Waco, a truck bomb killed more than 170 people at a federal office building in Oklahoma City. When news of that atrocity hit, a top New York op-ed editor told his colleagues, \u201cThese are Jim Bovard\u2019s friends!\u201d Waco had become a rallying cry for folks who distrusted Washington, creating new pressure to expose federal wrongdoing. In a May 1995 Wall Street Journal<\/em> piece headlined, \u201cWaco Must Get a Hearing<\/span><\/a>,\u201d I warned, \u201cThe ghosts of Waco will continue to haunt the U.S. government until the truth is told about what the government did and why.\u201d I also hammered the Waco coverup in the The New Republic<\/span><\/a><\/em>, Washington Times<\/span><\/a><\/em>, and other publications.<\/p>\n

After two House committees scheduled joint hearings for July, then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY) denounced holding any hearings: \u201cIt\u2019s pandering to a paranoid fringe in America that wants to believe that Waco was a conspiracy.\u201d Treasury Undersecretary Ron Noble warned that extremists might view the hearings \u201cand decide to blow up some other building.\u201d After the main hearings began, President Bill Clinton condemned them as part of a Republican \u201cwar on police,\u201d and declared that \u201cthere is no moral equivalence between the disgusting acts which took place inside that compound in Waco and the efforts law enforcement officers made to protect the lives of innocent people.\u201d The Treasury Department mass-faxed a letter from Secretary Robert Rubin warning journalists that federal action at Waco \u201ccannot be understood properly outside the context of Oklahoma City.\u201d An alleged truck bomber invoking Waco in 1995 miraculously vindicated the feds killing American citizens in 1993.<\/p>\n

The hearings exposed how vast amounts of the key documentation and videotapes vanished in the maw of federal agencies.<\/strong> The ATF claimed it never had a formal, written raid plan prior to launching the largest military-style attack in the agency\u2019s history. Apparently no ATF agents made written statements after a raid in which four ATF agents died. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) observed, \u201cIt\u2019s very unusual that nobody connected with this debacle made a written statement. I think that classifies as a unique event in the history of law enforcement.\u201d The Treasury Department quickly recognized that ATF agents\u2019 statements could blight or destroy any federal court case against surviving Davidians; agency bosses were paranoid of creating exculpatory evidence that would expose ATF outrages.<\/p>\n

Congressional Democrats rushed to dehumanize the government\u2019s victims<\/strong>. The toxic gas that may have killed dozens of children on April 19 was a volatile issue for the hearing. Though CS gas previously killed dozens of children in the Gaza Strip, Democrats portrayed it as innocuous as a Flintstone vitamin. Benjamin Garrett, executive director the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, observed that the CS gas \u201cwould have panicked the children. Their eyes would have involuntarily shut. Their skin would have been burning. They would have been gasping for air and coughing wildly. Eventually, they would have been overcome with vomiting in a final hell.\u201d Rep. Steven Schiff (R-NM) declared that \u201cno rational person can conclude that the use of CS gas under any circumstances against children, would do anything other than cause extreme physical problems and possibly death\u2026 I believe the deaths of dozens of men, women and children can be directly and indirectly attributable to the use of this gas in the way it was injected by the FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n

The confidential FBI report that Janet Reno received before approving the attack stated that the impact of the CS gas on \u201cinfants and children cannot be ignored because gas masks are not available for infants and younger children.\u201d When Reno testified on the final day, Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R\u2013FL) presented her with a gas mask to illustrate that it could not have fit children. Reno casually tossed the mask on the floor and announced that \u201cit\u2019s not very helpful, in terms of trying to understand what happened there, to just show gas masks. We\u2019ve got to show the people what went into the process.\u201d Mica told me that even if the children didn\u2019t die directly from the CS gas, \u201cwe sure as hell tortured them for six hours before they died.\u201d (See my 2023 photo of the vault where women and children were gassed.)<\/p>\n

The gaudy grandeur of the House Judiciary Committee hearing room could not disguise a vast moral and mental wasteland<\/strong>. Most of the committee members were absent for most of the hearings. The rules seemed crafted to deter disclosing facts that would embarrass officialdom. Each congressman received only five minutes to question witnesses per round of questioning (which could last hours). Witnesses knew that the more they blathered, the less they\u2019d need to disclose. Many Republicans groveled before the FBI officials they were supposed to be cross-examining\u2014as if the G-men could give absolution to any politician who doubted their holy status. The typical congressman\u2019s idea of oversight of law enforcement is to assure that he is included in photo opportunities after federal busts in his home district. \u201cHow are you so great and how can we help you?\u201d is the usual response when the FBI director testifies on Capitol Hill, as Guardian<\/i> columnist Trevor Timm noted.<\/p>\n

The five-minute rule exemplified the pro forma pursuit of truth in Washington.<\/strong> Hearing co-chairman Bill McCullom (R-FL) repeatedly cut off Republican members following vital lines of questioning, rescuing one fabricating federal agent after another. At the end of the hearings, Schumer\u2014<\/span>who did everything except call for the public hanging of\u00a0 <\/span>the surviving Davidians\u2014praised McCullom for his bipartisan spirit, and McCullom beamed like a Cocker Spaniel.<\/p>\n

A few Republican congressmen doggedly pushed federal officials for the hard facts. But near the end of the hearings, one Republican staffer complained to me that the Republican \u201cmembers were real pansies this morning\u201d in their questioning of federal witnesses. Many Republican congressmen lacked the courage to challenge any federal agent. Few members of Congress could ask intelligent follow-ups because all they knew was the specific question or two aides had printed on a piece of paper for them to recite. Jason Whiting, press spokesman for Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), observed, \u201cWe didn\u2019t really want to use any of the questions the committee prepared. Not only were the questions soft, but they weren\u2019t well planned. There were stacks and stacks of [confidential] documents that went untouched.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point during the hearings, I went to the committee\u2019s Republican staff room to get a copy of an earlier statement from a Republican member. Sitting at the entrance desk was a twenty-something blond haired dude with a cowlick. He was swiveling in his chair and looking slightly bored yet immensely proud of his title\u2014\u201clegislative assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clinton administration had delayed turning over Waco-related records to Republicans until the week before the hearings began. Dozens of legal-type boxes were stacked on desks and on the floor.<\/p>\n

I asked whether this was the documentation from the FBI and other agencies. The young guy nodded, glanced over his shoulder at the boxes, and lamented, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what to do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you thought about reading them?\u201d I replied.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The staffer shrugged, sighed, and wondered how soon I would cease darkening their doorway.<\/p>\n

Republican congressmen were shooting blanks while here was an ammo cache that could have blown half the witnesses through the roof<\/strong>. Unfortunately, reading is the only unnatural act on Capitol Hill. I salivated just looking at those boxes but knew I\u2019d never be permitted to delve into this treasure trove. (The average House member spent less than twelve minutes a day reading on the job, according to an earlier congressional survey.)<\/p>\n

I usually avoided sitting at the hearing room tables reserved for the press. Some reporters saw the hearings as an outbreak by right-wing Know-Nothings\u2014a new McCarthyite inquisition, with Janet Reno and the FBI as victims. Some \u201cStep \u2018n Fetch It\u201d journalists were willing to pick up and print anything that a Clinton administration official scattered at their feet.<\/p>\n

But there were some hardline exceptions to the prevailing docility. I had lunch a time or two with Jim Pate, a reporter from North Carolina who was working as a consultant for ABC News. Pate would be summoned to testify at the Timothy McVeigh trial because McVeigh had several Soldier of Fortune<\/i> magazines with Pate\u2019s Waco articles in his car when he was arrested. I bantered several times with Mike McNulty<\/span><\/a>, a gun rights zealot who was later the co-producer (along with Dan Gifford and William Gazecki) of the movie Waco: Rules of Engagement<\/span><\/a><\/em>, which won an Emmy and was an Oscar finalist for best documentary.<\/p>\n

After ten days of hearings, most of the congressmen finally recognized that the ATF and FBI were different federal agencies.<\/strong> But that was the limit of the learning curve for some of those politicians. The grand finale of the Waco Follies was the August 1 testimony of Janet Reno.<\/p>\n

Republicans squandered hours trying to get Reno to admit that the FBI\u2019s final assault was approved by the White House. The<\/em> New York Times<\/i> reported that Republicans \u201cseemed to lose their focus gradually as they unsuccessfully tried to force Ms. Reno to acknowledge that she had erred.\u201d But most Republicans did not have any focus to lose. Reno dodged key questions and used enough complete sentences to awe the Washington press corps.<\/p>\n

Rep. Shadegg challenged Reno as to why tanks had repeatedly smashed into the compound during the final assault. Reno responded by claiming that the tanks\u2019 entry into the building (via demolishing the walls and 25% of the compound) had merely been an \u201cinadvertent crushing of a back support.\u201d Shadegg burst out laughing and noted that FBI tanks had \u201cinadvertently\u201d smashed into the compound eight different times. The FBI plan for the tank assault specifically called for the destruction of the building\u2014regardless of whether occupants exited. Reno\u2019s claim that the tanks\u2019 destruction of much of the building was \u201cinadvertent\u201d was either feeble perjury or gross stupidity, though it was often difficult to tell the difference with Clinton administration appointees.<\/p>\n

Rep. Bill Zeliff (R-NH) pushed Reno on the use of 54-ton tanks to smash into a building that she knew was occupied by women and children. Zeliff asked, \u201cWhen military weapons are turned on American people, who makes that decision?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reno replied that she didn\u2019t consider the tanks as a military vehicle\u2014instead, they were \u201clike a good rent-a-car.\u201d Her comment reflected the Clinton administration\u2019s view that Waco was a routine law enforcement effort, except for the number of toe tags needed afterwards.<\/p>\n

I showcased Reno\u2019s rent-a-tank line in a Wall Street Journal<\/i> piece<\/span><\/a> the following day that detailed how the hearings shattered the government\u2019s credibility on Waco. My article concluded:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe evidence of a coverup and gross federal misconduct is far stronger in the Waco hearings than in the Whitewater investigation. The Republican leadership in Congress should seize upon the recent revelations to demand a special counsel to be appointed to investigate possible federal crimes and coverups regarding Waco.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My article may have been the only piece in the national media that skewered Reno\u2019s bizarre exoneration of the military assault on American citizens.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Clinton administration correctly predicted that House Republicans would not have the courage to have a second round of hearings to deal with questions raised or information withheld in the July hearings. White House officials ridiculed GOP congressmen as \u201cBranch Republicans\u201d due to their supposed failure to find a smoking gun.<\/p>\n

In July 1996, the House Republicans released their official findings from their investigation of Waco. According to Republican congressional leaders, a key lesson of Waco was that the FBI\u2019s Hostage Rescue Team should be expanded. Congress had already sharply increased the FBI budget.<\/p>\n

At a sparsely-attended press conference in the House press gallery, I asked whether federal agencies had \u201cfully opened their doors\u201d to congressional investigators. Rep. Zeliff, the co-chairman of the committee, replied, \u201cNot totally\u2026 We couldn\u2019t get any information from the Department of Defense\u2026 We didn\u2019t get all the information we were looking for\u201d from other agencies, either. I was stunned by the Winnie the Pooh \u201coh bother\u201d response to the Pentagon\u2019s Waco stonewall. Congress controlled the Pentagon\u2019s budget and a simple rider could have been added to an appropriations bill compelling disclosure of any Waco-related Pentagon evidence.<\/p>\n

The Clinton administration swayed the media to portray Waco as a battle of good versus evil\u2014with the feds as the saviors, naturally. The Clinton team pulled off that con thanks to the failure of congressional investigators to timely find and reveal evidence that would have utterly obliterated all federal credibility<\/strong>. Respectable opinion\u2014<\/span>at least in Washington\u2014lapsed to pretending no Waco debacle had occurred. The Women\u2019s Bar Association of the District of Columbia created a special award to honor the nation\u2019s first female attorney general: the Janet Reno Torchbearer Award. The first recipient, in 1997, was Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor; the award was presented by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg<\/p>\n

Shortly after the hearings ended, former federal lawyer David Hardy began hounding ATF with Freedom of Information Act requests. In 1999, Hardy received documents revealing that nine days before the February 28, 1993 raid, ATF agents invited David Koresh to go target shooting. They had a fine time, with Koresh providing the ammo and the ATF agents allowing Koresh to fire their guns. Koresh strongly suspected the guys were undercover feds but went shooting with them anyhow. One ATF participant wrote a memo to headquarters on the shooting party and noted that \u201cMr. Koresh stated that he believed that every person had the right to own firearms and protect their homes.\u201d With such crazy ideas, the feds had no choice but to destroy Koresh.<\/b> If Americans had learned during the hearings that the ATF had scorned an ideal opportunity to easily arrest Koresh, ATF credibility never would have recovered.<\/p>\n

In 1999, film maker and private investigator Mike McNulty discovered shell casings in a Texas Ranger evidence locker that proved the FBI had fired pyrotechnic grenades at the Davidians prior to the fatal fire. That discovery nuked the Clinton administration\u2019s perpetual denials that the FBI had any role in starting the conflagration. The FBI was caught in a massive cover-up; Newsweek<\/i> reported that \u201cas many as 100 FBI agents and officials may have known about\u201d the military-style pyrotechnic explosive devices used by the FBI at Waco.<\/p>\n

Republican congressmen momentarily pretended to be indignant about the fresh revelations of FBI perfidy. But, a few weeks later, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) declared that Republicans were suffering from \u201cWaco fatigue\u2026There\u2019s a feeling that the political risk may be higher than the political gain of pursuing this subject at this time.\u201d The only \u201cfatigue\u201d most congressmen experienced was the nuisance of responding to constituents who believed that their representative should give a damn. The Republican leadership decided that the \u201crisk\u201d of pursuing more Waco disclosures outweighed the political profits\u2014without even knowing what new investigations might discover. Besides, they were too busy with their Bill Clinton panty chases to pay attention to how American citizens were being oppressed by Washington.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I thought Waco should have been the most important education lesson of the 1990s for our nation. But the real lesson<\/strong> was: Truth delayed is truth defused<\/span><\/a>. Congressional failures on Waco vivify the folly of expecting checks and balances in Washington to protect the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Waco exemplified the Capitol Hill version of \u201cAttention Deficit Democracy\u201d\u2014congressmen clueless and careless about the atrocities they bankrolled. That near-total default foreshadowed similar congressional pratfalls on the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the bombing of Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, et.al.<\/strong> \u201cOversight\u201d is a polite term for rote congressional procedures designed to avoid discovering embarrassing information. A senior House Republican admitted in 2004, \u201cOur party controls the levers of government. We\u2019re not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to cause heartburn.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Joe Biden administration, congressional oversight became completely depraved. The Select Committee to investigate the January 6 [2021] Attack on the U.S. Capitol was so skewed that those members of Congress chose to destroy \u201cevidence\u201d they had gathered during their kangaroo court effort to vilify anyone who protested at the Capitol. The January 6 Committee was the first congressional oversight effort that required a presidential pardon to absolve everyone involved\u2014including the committee members, all the staffers, and all the Capitol Police and DC police who testified.<\/p>\n

The failure of congressional oversight exemplifies why \u201cLeviathan Democracy\u201d is a fatal contradiction in terms. Once the government becomes so vast, elected representatives become increasingly inept or unwilling to pull in the reins.<\/strong> Members of Congress rise to the top by championing the worst abuses that federal agencies inflict. Congressmen are proud to receive the Agency Seal Medal from the Central Intelligence Agency as a reward for covering up CIA<\/span><\/a> crimes. In 2017, Georgetown University Professor P.G. Eddington, a former CIA official, lamented \u201cthe House Intelligence Committee\u2019s slow degeneration from overseer to cheerleader of surveillance\u201d over the previous quarter century.<\/p>\n

Only a vast rollback in political control over American life could allow Congress to fulfill its duty to protect citizens against the executive branch. But few members of Congress have the courage or comprehension to even attempt that constitutional rescue mission. A more likely outcome is Congress imitating how the Roman Senate elevated Roman emperors. Congress can simply designate U.S. presidents as living gods\u2014thus ending the need for any limits or controls on government power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waco and the Death of Congressional Oversight by James Bovard, July 22, 2025 How many atrocities can the federal government get away with? Americans are still vexed by the answers that Congress failed to deliver in 1995. 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