"Your Majesty, the people are crying out for truth."
"Let them have half-truths . . ."
March 15, 1997 -- On March 9, 1997 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
of the London Sunday Telegraph wrote a piece Did FBI shoot in cold blood
at Waco? In the piece, Ambrose promotes the new Waco flick, "Waco:
The Rules of Engagement." No one would argue that some Branch Davidians were
murdered on April 19, 1993. But let's look at Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
(just plain "Ambrose" to Internet denizens) for a moment.
Ambrose claims to have a long-standing interest in exposing the truth about
what happened at Waco. I have worked with him for a number of years, furnishing
him from time to time with information. He is a charming fellow.
On one occasion, Ambrose relied on me for leads concerning Kiri Jewel's testimony
during the 1995 House Waco hearings. The result was his piece Sloppy
Right lets Clinton off the hook, London Sunday Telegraph July 23, 1995,
in which Ambrose challenged the
veracity of Kiri's testimony.
I live in the Washington, D.C. area, home of the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon,
NSA, foreign embassies, and the international press corps. This area
is loaded with spooks and poseurs of every size and shape. Here the
question is not "Is Joe Blow an agent?" but "Who does he
work for?" (which agency).
And a number of savvy people in this town have been telling me for years
that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is British military intelligence. The evaluations
I heard were made without rancor (some even with benign amusement) just as
a Southerner might describe a neighbor as
an employee of Southern Bell. My policy on Ambrose was this:
As long as Ambrose helped expose the lies surrounding Waco, I would help
him, and regard him as an ally.
Now I see Ambrose as part of the Waco cover up, and I come forward. "J'Accuse!"
I say, to borrow a headline from one of Ambrose's own London Sunday Telegraph
articles.
Let's look at the history:
In November, 1996, I had a lengthy conversation with Ambrose concerning the
Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum. I gave Ambrose the Museum's website
address:
http://www.Public-Action.com/SkyWriter/Waco/Museum
and summarized the contents of the site for his convenience. On the
subject of the deaths of the mothers and children, I gave him this
information:
- The story concerning their deaths is phoney
- The structure in which their bodies were found did not collapse
- The bodies of the mothers and children were mutilated -- dismembered,
burned, pulped-- in order to disguise the real time, cause, and manner
of death
- "Body laundering" is the practice of mutilating bodies to disguise
the real time, cause, and circumstances of death
- Body laundering is practiced by the Special Operations Command
of the Pentagon to disguise the circumstances of those killed while serving
in Pentagon/CIA black bag jobs
- Special Operations flew the black helicopters on February 28,
1993 and strafed the Mt. Carmel Center
- Contemporaneous reports stated "a child" or "children" were killed
on February 28
- The state of decomposition of the corpses provides clear evidence
the victims died at different times
- The state of decomposition provides clear evidence that at least
some died long before the April 19, 1993 gas attack.
I referred him to the official Autopsy Reports and the research of world-class
forensic anthropologists, both of which can be found in the Death Gallery
of the Museum. I told him he had access to the original source material
I used--just at the flip of the switch on his computer.
To my surprise, Ambrose became argumentative. He said the notion that
some of the April 19 victims were dead before April 19 was at variance with
what the Branch Davidian survivors said--was I calling them liars?
I explained a few simple truths:
- The government admitted to having plants living among the Branch
Davidians, and has still not released the identities of the plants;
- The surviving Branch Davidians are surely people under duress--their
families have been tortured and murdered, their colleagues are still in jail
and at the mercy of the US.
Arguably there were many ways the feds could blackmail or intimidate the
Branch Davidians. I asked Ambrose if he had seen a Chicago Tribune
article of April 21, 1993, which was based on an interview with the ex-wife
of the present Branch Davidian leader Clive Doyle.
The former Mrs. Doyle, who had lived in Waco for years, said that the Doyle
grandchildren were in the Mt. Carmel Center during the siege. Ultimately
no Doyle grandchildren were listed among the dead after April 19.
Provided the former Mrs. Doyle was not lying or mistaken about having grandchildren,
the ramifications might be obvious to an independent observer: The
lives of the youngsters are perhaps being used as bargaining chips by the
FBI. "Liar" would not describe a person who succumbed to such intimidation.
An investigator would at least entertain the possibility that the Tribune
report might be factual and worth follow-up investigation. But Ambrose
instantly dismissed it--out of hand--as erroneous. "Why would you believe
the Chicago Tribune and not Clive Doyle?" he
asked me.
On the other hand, why would Ambrose leap to the conclusion that another
newspaper had necessarily done a shoddy reporting job, or that Mrs. Doyle
was lying or mistaken about having grandchildren? The Chicago Tribune report
of grandchildren certainly did not
discredit the Davidians or hold them up to ridicule; if the Chicago Tribune
report had been accurate, and the children used as bargaining chips, obviously
Clive Doyle could not admit to having grandchildren.
With the incurious and brusque dismissal of that report, it seemed to me
Ambrose had clearly stepped out of his role as a reporter and revealed himself
as a partisan.
During this conversation, Ambrose asked several times if I knew who had perpetrated
the crimes of April 19, 1993. He seemed concerned. No, I did not say
"the 'butcher-and-bolt' British commandos helped kill them," even though
we are aware that the British were
accessories to the torture of the Branch Davidians. Recall the SAS
spy plane over the Mt. Carmel Center, reported by the London Times on March
21, 1993?
http://www.Public-Action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/war/fig/w_fig01.jpg
AMBROSE THEN TOLD ME THAT HE COULD NOT USE THE MUSEUM'S INFORMATION BECAUSE
HIS EDITORS THOUGHT HE HAD DONE ENOUGH ON WACO ALREADY.
At a later date Ambrose called me, this time to ask questions concerning
Livingstone Fagan. His editors wanted Fagan's treatment in prison covered
because Fagan was British, he said. [Note: Ambrose later told me he
found out Livingstone Fagan was Jamaican.] On that occasion, I again
suggested Ambrose cover the evidence contained in the Waco Holocaust Electronic
Museum for his paper.
AGAIN AMBROSE DECLINED, SAYING HIS EDITOR ONLY AGREED TO COVER
LIVINGSTONE BECAUSE LIVINGSTONE WAS BRITISH. Otherwise, the London
readers would have no interest in Waco.
When I got off the phone, I wondered why the London Telegraph editors were
not interested in the other British citizens who died in the Holocaust.
Surely the scandalous cover-up and body laundering documented in the Museum
would be of interest to British readership--after all, the Death Certificates
issued the British victims were arguably false! Honestly reported,
the US cover-up and murder of British citizens could cause international
repercussions.
Surely this was news worthy.
On March 4, 1997, before Ambrose traveled to the West Coast to see "Waco:
The Rules of Engagement," he called me to ask if I had seen the flick.
I said no, but I had visited the film's webpage, and read the synopsis of
the film. I pointed out to Ambrose:
- The flick apparently forwards the lie that the February 28, 1993
raid was a bungled law enforcement action, despite abundant evidence that
the raid was a domestic Gulf of Tonkin incident, set up to provide an excuse
for military escalation. I again referred Ambrose to the publicly available
evidence in the Museum.
- The flick apparently makes no mention that at least some of the
Branch Davidians whose remains were found in the concrete room were long
dead by April 19, 1993 and that the bodies had been laundered to disguise
the real time, cause, and circumstance of death.
But Ambrose said he still was not interested in covering this evidence contained
in the Museum for his London readers. Why?
THIS TIME AMBROSE SAID THE IDEA THAT THE BRANCH DAVIDIANS WERE
DELIBERATELY MURDERED WAS TOO MUCH FOR MOST PEOPLE TO ACCEPT,
INCLUDING HIS EDITORS. Most people still believed that the Davidians
set themselves on fire, and people had to be brought up to the truth slowly,
he said.
Let's apply Ambrose's logic to another atrocity: First you tell the
world that 100 Jews were killed in the German Holocaust. When that
is accepted, you change the number to 200. On and on, up until you
hit the six million mark. Does the logic make sense? If not,
why
apply it to the Davidians?
I told Ambrose that people should be directed to the evidence, including
his editors. Ambrose intimated his editors were too delicate psychologically
to deal with the news directly, and had to be brought up to the truth over
a matter of time. I told Ambrose his editors sounded like cot cases, and
Ambrose defended them, saying all editors were cot cases.
"They are newspeople. They deal in news," he explained.
Ambrose said that he was going to write a story about "Waco: The Rules
of Engagement," to illustrate the "changing perceptions" about Waco.
"Changing perceptions?" Since when do newspapers chronicle "changing
perceptions?" Perceptions are based on information. Newspapers used
to be the source of INFORMATION. If perceptions are based on newspaper reports,
and newspaper reports cover only
"perceptions," what kind of an information system do we have?
Exactly. Not an information system at all. It is a PsyOps operation, and
Ambrose is right in the middle of it.
Consider: Ambrose's employers were willing to fly him across the continent,
pay for airfare, lodgings, meals--all to have an article about "perceptions."
Meanwhile, Ambrose's employers are uninterested in an article about cold
factual evidence which would have cost them virtually nothing, evidence which
had been available to them for months.
Consider: Ambrose is UNwilling to report evidence of murder as documented
in the Museum, but is willing to report "changing perceptions" about the
murder which the film portrays. Why is "murder" verboten in one
case, but not in the other?
I asked Ambrose if he had read the Museum yet, and he allowed he'd popped
in quickly, but had not really read it closely because he had not written
anything about Waco since. Yet here he was getting ready to go on a
plane to do . . . an article on Waco.
Ambrose has developed the non sequitur to high art form.
Since the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum was posted on the World Wide Web,
many thousands of people around the world have read it and downloaded
the material to their own computers. Surely this is evidence of changing
perceptions? No matter. Apparently the London Sunday Telegraph
wants London readers to hear about movie-generated
changing perceptions but not Internet-generated changing perceptions.
In this March 4 conversation Ambrose called the new flick "damning." Considering
that Ambrose had not seen the movie yet, it sounded like he had the story
already drafted before he got on the plane.
Folks, I think what is going on is this:
* The powers-that-be don't want to publicize the fact that the February
28, 1993 raid was a set-up, a phoney, a domestic Gulf of Tonkin incident,
courtesy of the US military looking to secure a broadened role for
itself in civilian US life.
* The powers-that-be don't want to publicize the fact that some of
the mothers and children were long dead by the April 19, 1993 gas attack.
They don't want us to know the real time, cause, and circumstances of death
of the victims.
* If public attention is diverted to the murder of adult Davidians, people
will forget about the murders of the mothers and children. The adults,
remember, are accused of shooting at the agents, and as active combatants,
do not hold the same victim status as three-dozen-odd mothers and children
and babies.
* The British are in it up to their ears, much like The LondonTimes
reported, and much like Linda Thompson and George Zimmerlee have been reporting.
Kiri Jewel's statements did not impact on the interests of the British government.
Ambrose's article on her testimony made him an opinion leader on Waco, at
no expense to the British. But the nature of the military involvement
in the initial attack and the dates of the mothers and children's deaths
are
British sensitivities. That's why they can't be reported and attention
must be taken off that information and placed elsewhere. And that's where
Ambrose comes in.
Next time you speak to Ambrose, he may tell you I have mischaracterized our
conversations. In response, just challenge him to tell his British
readers about the Waco Holocaust Electronic
Museum and give them its website address. See what he says.
If he agrees to do the story and actually does one, I will eat these words.
Until then: "J'Accuse!"
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