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NRA-ILA Special Report
                   THE WACO HEARINGS: DAY TWO

      POLL REVEALS WACO HEARINGS MORE LEGIT THAN WHITEWATER

The hearings are being held mainly ...       WHITEWATER     WACO
...to investigate legitimate issues          28%            56%
...because Hill GOP wants to
   embarrass Clinton Admin                   67%            38%

               -- Washington Post/ABC News Poll, July 14-17, 1995

              LACK OF PROBING RAISED MORE QUESTIONS

Day one of the Waco hearings turned into night one, as the
Committees continued to look into the events leading up to the
February 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian center near Waco,
Texas.  The night ended leaving several questions still
unanswered.

                       ISSUING THE WARRANT

While questioned on Wednesday night about the warrant-issuing
procedure, Chuck Sarabyn, former BATF Assistant Special Agent in
Charge (ASAC) in Houston and commander of the Waco raid,
testified that he did not know who was to serve the warrant.
Hard to believe that the leader of the raid did not know who he
authorized to issue the warrant.  Were agents trying to serve a
warrant or stage a raid?

Dan Hartnett, former BATF Deputy Director for Enforcement,
testified Wednesday night that when the agents approached the
door, they saw Koresh standing outside.  Yet according to Dick
Reavis, author of Ashes of Waco, Agent Ballesteros testified at
the pre-trial hearing that when he approached the door, he saw
the door open and Koresh was standing in the doorway with a hand
on each side.  More contradicting stories and unanswered
questions...

Henry McMahon, the firearms dealer who sold to Koresh, called
Koresh with Special Agent Aguilera standing by.  Koresh invited
the agent over to inspect his firearms, but Aguilera declined.
He testified Wednesday night that the reason he didn't go was
because he wanted to check McMahon's records further to see if
Koresh was dealing without a license.  A perfect opportunity to
gain access to the house and conduct an examination peacefully
was passed up.  At Thursday's hearing, the Committee members went
down the line of experts to ask them whether or not they would
have taken up Koresh on his offer.  Every one of them said yes.
      POSTPONING INVESTIGATION ... SO WITNESS MEMORIES FADE

An exchange on Thursday between U.S. Rep. Barr and Robert
Sanders, former deputy director for enforcement for the BATF, led
to the conclusion that the Department of the Treasury and the
Department of Justice postponed the investigation process in an
attempt to dull witnesses memories.

"I would ask you to take a look [at] some documents," began
Congressman Barr.  "[O]ne of the documents ... is dated September
17, but it refers to a March 1st  meeting specifically
referencing the shooting review -- and there [are] notes in there
-- this is a Department of the Treasury document in which the
assistant U.S. attorney is advising Hartnett to stop the ATF
shooting review.

"There's another document that you'll see there dated April 14, a
Treasury document, which says the Department of Justice does not
want Treasury to conduct any interviews or have discussions with
any participants who may be potential witnesses, and then later
on there is the reference that I mentioned earlier about hoping
the passage of time will dim memories, the prosecutors being
concerned about developing anything negative, even preliminarily.

"You'll see a memo dated April 9, 1993, in which again the
Treasury Department, coming from their deputy general counsel,
references Department of Justice prosecutors, saying, 'Words
critical of ATF must be avoided.'

"And then you'll also see some handwritten notes which are less
clear, certainly, since they're handwritten notes, than these
official documents that I've referenced earlier.

"Would this, in your mind, raise the specter of, at best, a
disinclination on the part of the administration to see that the
facts come out and to do a proper shooting review and, at worse,
a deliberate effort to make sure that the facts do not come out?"

"Yes, I agree with both," responded Sanders.

"In your experience, in your years with the Treasury, have you
ever seen anything like that?" asked Barr.

"No, I haven't, sir."

                      WHY DYNAMIC ENTRY?

ATF called upon the military because of an alleged
methamphetamine lab.  Why the dynamic entry when volatile
chemicals were supposedly involved?  Why wasn't the DEA called
in?  Why wasn't training given to individuals to deal with such a
forceful entry on an alleged meth lab?  According to a DEA
testifier, weeks of training are necessary to prevent the dangers
of an explosion.  Yet no such training occurred. Most revealing,
an exchange between U.S. Rep. John Shadegg and Sergeant Steve
Fritts, U.S. Army.

"Well, maybe I'm confused here," Shadegg begins, "but my
understanding is that either directly or through other members of
the military that were involved in this project, you had contact
with ATF and it became pretty evident to you that ATF was not
worried about the concerns expressed in your paper.  Isn't that
correct?"

"Sir, my impression was that they were not worried about the
methamphetamine lab, no," Fritts replied.

"Your impression was that they were not worried about it?"

"Yes, sir."

The next time the Army heard any BATF reference to the alleged
drug lab occurred during an attempt to gain clearance from Fort
Hood for flash-bang stun grenades.

"Mr. Fritts," Shadegg continued, "Let me just go back to this one
more time.  In discussions with committee staff, I thought -- it
is my understanding you made it clear to at least the staff that
BATF pretty well blew off the issue of there being a
methamphetamine lab."

"Yes, sir," Sergeant Fritts replied.  "I said the impression I
received that they -- once the paper was presented, they no
longer showed any interest in a methamphetamine lab."

In reading from one of the subpoenaed Treasury documents, U.S.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called into question whether Treasury
officials were aware that the methamphetamine lab was nothing
more than a hoax.  Ros-Lehtinen posed her question to Mr. Wade
Ishimoto: "Following up on our conversation about the drug nexus,
we have in our committee notes from someone who appears to have
worked or continues to work with ATF, and this was just given to
us in a loose form, and let me read to you a few of the sentences
here....'the National Guard was a scam, in my opinion.  To my
knowledge, there was never any mention of a meth lab being on the
compound, that this was a scam initiated by the bureau's
headquarters, again, in my opinion, to obtain the additional
resources of the National Guard.'"

                    PUBLICITY STUNT PERHAPS?

Marion K. Pinsdorf, communications professor at Fordham's
Graduate School of Business wrote in the Summer 1995 issue of The
Public Relations Strategist , "Journalist Mary Gotschall said
BATF wanted to showcase its costly special response team to stave
off a merger with the FBI or Internal Revenue Service.  `They
were bureaucrats trying to protect their jobs,' she wrote.  They
invited, indeed sought, maximum media coverage by tipping off
local media that `something big' was going to happen near Waco.

"On the day of the raid, Sharon Wheeler, BATF's public relations
director, was positioned near the compound with press releases
and fax machines, ready to announce the BATF's glowing triumph to
the world,' Gotschall wrote."

Even Bob Sanders, former deputy director for enforcement for the
BATF, thinks the raid was a publicity stunt for the troubled
agency.

During Wednesday's hearing, U.S. Rep. Bill Brewster asked Mr.
Hartnett about rumors that the public relations coordinator for
the ATF had released information to the press that something big
was going to happen in Waco.  But Mr. Hartnett's responded
guardedly:

"Yes, and we heard that, and the person -- I believe her name was
Sharon Wheeler -- she's testified before committees and she just
did not give any information out about Waco, Texas, at all.

"She was in -- she was in Dallas and she called, called a
reporter to ask if he was going to be in, or called two reporters
-- I'm not quite sure, I don't recall -- and said, are you going
to be in, we're going to have something coming up in the next day
or two.  As I recall, that's how it came out.  She never
mentioned Waco."

Congressman Brewster:  "Why did she do that?"

Mr. Hartnett:  "She wanted to be able to get a hold of them if
there was a story and they recovered these arms.  Now this all
came up after the fact that we heard this and it came out at
hearings before."

Concluded Professor Pinsdorf in Public Relations Strategist:
"At Waco, 'public relations considerations' were paramount,
dooming the raid from the start."

KEY FINDING OF DAY ONE?  TREASURY COVER-UP

Under questioning July 19, a former BATF deputy director vilified
the Treasury report on BATF actions in the 1993 tragedy near
Waco, Texas, as "filled with falsehoods and distortion of the
facts." That was the key finding of the previous day offered by
U.S. Rep. Zeliff.

At first, Congressman Zeliff said, former BATF deputy director
Jim Hartnett described the Treasury Report on BATF's action in
Waco as "a cover-up," but noted that the former official tried to
retrieve that phrase in later testimony.  Even Hartnett's
retrieval was revealing:

"I feel that the Treasury Department has said things since the
time of the raid at Waco that have been incorrect.  I feel that
the Treasury report, where it says some very good things that
should be done, things that we could correct in law enforcement.
I think it also had many omissions, distortions and false
statements in it...I believe that they were concerned about the
fallout from the media that they couldn't just say that
management at the scene there made mistakes, but that wasn't the
tone of the report. They felt that they had to write a scathing
report, which made a lot of people suffer, like Chuck [Sarabyn]
and some of those other people down there that were just doing
their job, and it was, I think, very biased and unfairly
written."

U.S. Rep. McCollum: "And you think that was a coverup of sorts
for what?"

Hartnett: "I think they felt like -- and I don't know if coverup
is a term that I would use.  I would say that they felt that they
had to -- at least when it came to the press -- show that they
were taking some very strong action, and they weren't responsible
for anything, and these managers down there had done this
intentionally, and that just was not the case."

"The truth is being sought and new facts are starting to come
out," the co-chairman said.  Other key findings highlighted by
Zeliff:

ATF agents testified for the first time that they actually
refused an invitation by David Koresh to come and examine
Koresh's firearms long before the deadly raid and that which
followed.

Zeliff's second point centered on testimony by legal experts who
criticized the search warrant as filled with "inflammatory
language ... sloppy ... [with] factual inaccuracies."

"Third, we learned that the ATF gave little or no attention to
doing a knock-and-serve entry....  a viable option seems to have
been under-utilized, perhaps prematurely rejected."

Fourth, said Congressman Zeliff, while BATF's request for
military involvement hinged on a methamphetamine drug lab at the
Mount Carmel Center, a deputy sheriff testified that "he had
never seen and had no knowledge of any drug lab."

Fifth, a surviving Davidian claimed that "helicopters shot
through the roof of the compound," an allegation strongly
disputed by authorities.

"Sixth, we learned, contrary to [the] Treasury [Department's]
prior account, ... at least one ATF agent did carry a loaded gun
on board a helicopter that went to the compound on raid day
despite testimony from the prosecutor of the Davidians that no
one did so."

Congressman Zeliff also noted internal BATF documents which
confirmed that pages of agency surveillance logs were þtorn out.þ
Documents attributed to a BATF agent fired for his role in Waco
and later reinstated were "destroyed."

Also yesterday, while BATF firearms expert Ed Owen was displaying
gun after gun, U.S. Rep Zeliff interjected a long-standing
complaint:   "I would just like to make a comment on behalf of
our side as far as these weapons are concerned.  We tried at
great length to try to have access to those weapons and received
a letter dated July 11 from Mr. Kent Marcus, Principal Deputy
Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, saying
... That [transporting Davidian guns from Austin to Washington
for inspection] will cost the taxpayers of Texas and the United
States many thousands of dollars.  We would have enjoyed the
opportunity to have worked with both sides here to examine those
weapons as well.... [W]e tried to ... Get a third party or at
least get the Justice Department to x-ray these weapons ... You
know, you have a serious heat problem in a fire.  Certain
materials get melted down...."

WACO, WACO, WACO?  OR SIDESHOW, SIDESHOW, SIDESHOW?

Diversion and distraction were again the tools of choice of
politicians intent on executing the Administration's Waco damage
control plan revealed in the Washington Post the day before.
U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos called for dispelling the "cloud that hangs
over these hearings ... the people involved, the circumstances,
the financing, the intricate intertwining of committee staffs and
staff of the National Rifle Association."

Predictably, U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer weighed in.  "The issue of
... how the NRA influenced those hearings ... is very, very, very
important in terms of the fairness of the hearing."

And U.S. Rep. Conyers complained that Republican leaders of the
panel left the minority with unacceptable choices: "we should go
to the ethics committee to file a complaint, or perhaps we should
go to the Department of Justice and file a criminal charge.

"The defect with those suggestions is that we don't know what the
problem is that we would like to complain about.  We're searching
for facts right now." Congressman Conyers suggested that the
minority party allow the proceedings to go forward "with the
understanding that this is the last day that we are going to
tolerate any stalling on the questions of how NRA may have
impacted upon the investigation leading to these hearings."

Schumer and others were intent on issuing a subpoena for NRA
attorneys and associates to answer questions on the oft-repeated
charges that NRA "orchestrated" the Waco hearings.

U.S. Rep. McCollum reiterated his pledge to speak to leadership
about the Democrat's complaints but declared their request
inappropriate.  A unanimous consent rule governed the proceedings
thus far, and McCollum would revert to a slower questioning
regimen if that rule were challenged.  "I just want everybody to
understand that [delay] will be the net sum gain of this.   The
hearings will go forward."

U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde cleared the air: "I think one of the most
telling remarks I've heard this decade was just uttered by my
good friend, Mr. Conyers.  They got to find out what the problem
is.  They are a bunch of legislators in search of a problem.
Anything, but let's proceed with hearings on Waco.... [I]f you
wish to question the conduct of a private party who 'volunteered
their services,' quote, quote, then go question that party.  But
I don't intend to recommend the subpoena, because that's a
diversion from what we are inquiring about -- Waco, Waco, Waco.
Not NRA."

Quotes are excerpted from hearing transcripts provided by the
Federal News Service.

Tomorrow: Day Three of the Waco Hearings-- read all about it
through the NRA-ILA FaxLine!

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