The Specter of a new cover-up

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Will we ever find out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the federal government's wholesale slaughter of 80 men, women and children at Waco?

The U.S. Senate is off to a bad start.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has abandoned the idea of a task force, voting instead to turn over the already extremely limited inquiry of possible Justice Department "missteps" to its administrative oversight and courts subcommittee.

Democrats had refused to participate in the task force, saying its creation would violate Senate rules and was tantamount to a partisan witchhunt against Attorney General Janet Reno and her Justice Department. Isn't that interesting? In the initial hearings on Waco, it was the Democrats who asked the toughest questions and hurled the most explosive accusations against Reno. What a difference six years and an impending presidential election can make.

Perhaps the worst news is that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who had been tapped to head the task force, will chair the Judiciary subcommittee probe in an unusual arrangement that calls for the panel's chairman, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to relinquish his leadership for purposes of that investigation. Unusual? Highly unusual. Why are senators so intent on having professional cover-up artist Arlen Specter as the point man on Waco? Hmmm.

Specter is not trusted by the American people to conduct a fair and impartial investigation of such an important debacle. Remember, Specter first came to national prominence for his role on the Warren Commission and his wholly unbelievable "single-bullet theory." Almost 36 years later, Americans still widely distrust the Warren Commission findings on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Specter played a key role in that botched investigation.

But, if that history wasn't bad enough, Specter helped ensure that the U.S. Senate would not conduct a real impeachment trial of President Clinton last year. Remember his theories about "Scottish law"? He came up with his rationalizations for acquittal of the criminal-in-chief only after his wife got a plum appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Nevertheless, Specter assures the nation: "We intend to move ahead with dispatch." Yeah, expect Waco to be dispatched to the dustbins of history. Specter is an establishment cover-up artist. Not only is he the wrong person for the job, he himself should be investigated for his conflict of interest in the impeachment inquiry.

Oddly enough, if there is any hope for new revelations from this committee, they are likely to be spurred by Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, the top Democrat, who has been a stinging critic of Reno and her injustice department. But Torricelli has a history of closing ranks with his Democratic Party fiends in the administration when things start getting really hot. He'd like to have Reno's scalp. But he is not eager to bring down a Democratic president over Waco or any other scandal.

The probe was proposed weeks ago during the initial furor over Justice and FBI officials' belated admission that potentially incendiary tear gas was used during the 1993 Waco raid. But, since then, we have learned that the Justice and FBI cover-up is much bigger. The Dallas Morning News reported this week that the FBI had the Branch Davidian church surrounded with video cameras. Many of those tapes have never been made available to congressional investigators.

As long as Specter is in charge of the Senate investigation of Waco, you can expect the cover-up of this massacre to continue.

What can we do about it? Don't give up. Keep plugging away. Talk it up. Tell your friends. Write your senators. Keep the memory of those kids alive. Throw the bums out of office next year. Expose the corruption. Hold your government accountable. Demand the truth. Support those who fight for it. Refuse to accept the lies.

If the government can get away with the slaughter of the Branch Davidians, live and in color on our television screens, then none of us are safe.

This article was written by Joseph Farah in his Between the Lines column of the WorldNetDaily Friday, October 15, 1999. He is the editor of WND and this article is copyrighted by them as well.