Ambrose Evans Pritchard:
 J'Accuse!

by Carol A. Valentine
Curator, Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum
http://www.Public-Action.com
Copyright, March, 1997
May be reproduced for non-commercial purposes

 


"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:
  1. The government admitted to having plants living among the Branch Davidians, and has still not released the identities of the plants;
  2. 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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Carol A. Valentine President, Public Action, Inc. http://www.Public-Action.com
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