Back during the trial of the Branch Davidians some covert tapes were played for the jury. They had to use headphones to keep out distracting noises and the words were so indistinct they were given a transcript to follow them. These were the tapes made by bugs the FBI had inserted in the compound. They were the words purporting to show the Davidians had started the fire.
However, just last month the government released those same tapes. They were of remarkable clarity, even of studio quality one might add. Anyone who has tried to make tapes of a meeting knows how indistinct to incomprehensible such recordings are.
We certainly can accept that the tapes played for the jury appear to be the kind we get when recording a meeting. But there is more. These recordings were made covertly. No one was speaking into the microphone. They were in things that were hidden from sight.
Certainly that would explain why the jury needed all the help it could get in understanding the tapes. But then what were the tapes we heard on ABC Nightline and which were used at the Waco hearings? Those are indeed studio quality.
The magic word "enhanced" is used to explain it. What is not explained is why they were not "enhanced" for the jury which was a trial with life in prison attached but were enhanced for the potential hand slap penalty of a hearing.
The more important point to make, the prosecution at the Davidian trial said the tapes had been enhanced. So we have barely intelligible enhanced tapes at the trial and studio quality enhanced tapes for Congress.
There has not been any technological breakthrough in audio enhancement techniques since the trial yet there is a great improvement in the clarity of the same words. What do we make of this? On one hand it is clear they are not the same tapes, no matter how "enhanced." On the other, why would they be different tapes?
But there is more. The tapes are always introduced as proof the Davidians started the fire, then these magic, excuse me, enhanced tapes are played, and we are told we have heard the proof. I have a problem with that.
My problem is that the words do not indicate any fire is being started by the Davidians nor in fact did the government actually say that. The trial tapes have times associated with the words. Those times are between 6:15 and 7:23 am, over four and one half hours before the fires start. And they are interestingly not the same words given to the press and Congress.
At 6:12 am the court has words "You got the fuel ready?" and "It's already poured."
At 7:23, "So we light 'em as they come in [unintelligible] right?" is one of the lines from the court transcript. But for Congress we hear, "is it lit?" clear as a bell with no indication whatsoever what time the recording was made. Obviously the words for the court indicate a possibility of more than one fire but the words for Congress only indicate one fire neither set of words has any apparent connection with any of the fires that occurred in time.
But there is more. Congress gets studio quality recordings of "Pour the fuel" and "Is it lit?" Let us for the moment accept the possibility of studio quality enhancement. How did they happen to have mikes in exactly the right places to get these recordings?
If these are related to the actual fires shown on tape to Congress then the first is an order to get ready to start a fire and the second a question as to whether it had been started. Now the survivors agree as should anyone who watched the tanks demolishing the building that there was so much debris and destruction inside that it was difficult to walk any place much less to the places where the fuel was poured six hours earlier.
And yet, if these words refer to the start of the fires then we are to believe that people were sent out from where the studio quality bug was hidden, go to places determined six hours earlier, fires lit and when one of them returns through a flaming building to report and he is asked if he has lit the fire. One has to admire the determination of these people not to mention their ability to predict just the right places to pour fuel that would have a path from the bugged place. You have to admire their bravery in returning through a burning building to report.
But wait, there is more! One of these fire starters actually jumped up to the second floor after the stairs had been collapsed (sort of like a Hollywood stuntman) and started a fire. Why anyone would start a fire on the second story of a wood frame building is beyond the imaginative abilities of even the FBI but that is what the FBI says happened.
And then we must not forget how calm these people were in facing a fiery and painful death. Someone has the presence of mind to suggest that some fuel be saved for later, perhaps to soak himself if the burning building doesn't get him.
I could go on with this a while longer but what is the use? The only saving grace of this FBI scenario is that it must be the truth because fiction has to make sense and this scenario certainly does not make a bit of sense.
And to top it all off, someone shot Koresh, the mastermind behind it all, in the head to prevent him from escaping the fire.
Lets all hear it for magic enhanced tapes. Lets hear a cheer for hearing what you want to hear. Lets all take a leaf from the Red Queen and practice believing seven impossible FBI scenarios every morning before breakfast.
How else could these fires have started? Accident of course, as the Davidians who survived said. The tanks knocked over lanterns that started the fire. Would you rather believe Murphy's Law or the FBI's concoction?
Rather, there is no reason to believe either story. We may never know how the fires started any more than we will know who started the shooting (at people, the BATF testified they started shooting the dogs first) the day of the first raid. But the FBI has a desperate need to be considered the good guys in all of this.
After all, it was they who provoked whatever happened. They look less guilty if it was deliberate suicide rather than an irrational act by sleep deprived people or caused by their shaking the house or because they did not follow the plan or because they said it was not an attack and immediately started shooting grenades into the building.
I have to end this now. I need to read some Stephen King to ease back into reality after this excursion.