Congressman to Present Evidence of Clinton Involvement in Waco Assault
John Q. Public
on NBC's "Meet the Press" today that he will present evidence
next week that suggests Clinton was directly involved in
decisionmaking regarding the 4/19/93 assault on the BD complex.
Given the odd behavior of the WH regarding this disaster since
Clinton's initial statement on 4/19/93, given the atrocious
behavior of the Democrats in Congress during the hearings,
given the "disappearance" of various pieces of forensic evidence
as well as three hours of Webster Hubbell's telephone logs
on 4/19/93, and given NBC's Report that Reichsprotektor Reno was on
her way to an out of town meeting when the assault was launched,
it seems inconceivable that Clinton would not have had direct
involvement in giving the "Show Time" order, at the very least.
An independent Special Prosecutor should be appointed, a Grand Jury
should be convened, and criminal charges should be sought.
Roads End
WIRED 1.6
Features
Big Brother Wants to Look Into Your Bank Account (Any Time It Pleases)
The US government is constructing a system to track all financial
transactions in real-time - ostensibly to catch drug traffickers,
terrorists, and financial criminals. Does that leave you with the warm
fuzzies - or scare you out of your wits?
By Anthony L. Kimery
There wasn't much to go on. The police salvaged the slip of paper that a
small-time East Coast drug dealer tried to eat before being arrested, but
on it they found scribbled only a telephone number and what appeared to be
the name "John." This frustrated the police. They had anticipated more
incriminating information on the man they believed was the supplier not
only to the dealer they'd just busted, but also to dozens of other street
corner crack peddlers. With two slim leads, the police weren't technically
equipped to do much more than antiquated detective work that probably
wouldn't yield evidence they could use to indict John. So they turned to
the quasi-secretive, federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
for the digital sleuthing they needed.
Less than 45 minutes after receiving the official police request for help,
FinCEN had retrieved enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing from
government databases that the district attorney prosecuting the case was
able to seek indictments against John on charges of money laundering and
conspiracy to traffic narcotics. The local police were impressed.
Launched with a low-key champagne reception at the Treasury Department in
April 1990, FinCEN is the US government's (perhaps the world's) most
effective financial crime investigation unit. Even Russian President Boris
Yeltsin asked for its help in locating stolen Communist Party funds. This
state-of-the-art computer-snooping agency is quietly tucked away under the
auspices of the Treasury Department. Its mission is to map the digital
trails of dirty money, be it the laundered profits from drug sales, stolen
S&L loot, hidden political slush funds, or the financing conduits of
terrorists. It's the only federal unit devoted solely to the systematic
collation and cross-analysis of law enforcement, intelligence, and public
databases.
Until August 1993, FinCEN headquarters was an old Social Security
Administration building with a ceiling ravaged by asbestos abatement
crews, but that didn't seem to faze director Brian Bruh (he retired in
October). With 25 years of experience in law enforcement, Bruh is a
seasoned federal cop who has headed up criminal investigations at both the
IRS and the Pentagon. Prior to overseeing FinCEN, he was the chief
investigator for the Tower Commission, President Reagan's blue ribbon
probe into the Iran-Contra scandal. FinCEN was his crowning achievement,
and he took pride in directing visitors to FinCEN's computer command
center as he touted the agency's successes.
In private and in testimony to Congress, statistics roll off Bruh's
tongue. Last year FinCEN's computer operations center responded to
priority requests for tactical intelligence on nearly 12,000 individuals
and entities, doubling the 1991 workload. The 1993 total will be three
times the 1991 sum. Longer-term strategic analytical reports have been
completed for 715 investigations involving 16,000 other individuals and
entities.
Two of the government's biggest strikes against organized drug-money
laundering - operations Green Ice (a lengthy DEA operation that resulted
in the arrests of high-ranking Cali and Medellin cartel financial officers
and the seizure of US$54 million in cash and assets) and Polar Cap V (a
spinoff of Green Ice that culminated in April 1990) - owe a great deal to
FinCEN for having identified and targeted money laundering activities via
computer. In the Polar Cap operation, FinCEN's computer tracking
documented more than US$500 million in financial activity by 47
individuals who have since been indicted on drug trafficking and money
laundering charges.
Inside FinCEN's new digs on the second floor of a gleaming high-rise
office building down the road from the CIA in Vienna, Virginia (otherwise
known as "Spook City"), the talents of the IRS, FBI, DEA, Secret Service,
and other traditional federal cops such as customs agents and postal
inspectors are pooled. According to senior intelligence officers, these
investigative units can access the resources of the CIA, the National
Security Agency (which intercepts data on electronic currency movements
into and out of the United States, some of which make their way into
FinCEN's analyses), and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Bruh and other FinCEN officials openly acknowledge their association with
the CIA, but they refuse to discuss further any aspect of FinCEN's
dealings with it or any other intelligence agency. In addition to the CIA,
intelligence officials have admitted, off the record, that the National
Security Council and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research (INR) have also joined FinCEN's impressive intelligence crew. In
short, FinCEN is a one-of-a-kind cauldron containing all the available
financial intelligence in the United States.
"It's the first ever government-wide, multi-source intelligence and
analytical network brought together under one roof to combat financial
crimes," said Peter Djinis, director of the Treasury Department's Office
of Financial Enforcement and one of the few Treasury officials close to
FinCEN activities.
"FinCEN is absolutely necessary," said a senior General Accounting Office
(GAO) official involved in an audit of FinCEN required by new
anti-money-laundering laws passed last year. The agency's report wasn't
released by press time, but according to the GAO official, no
irregularities were uncovered. However, the GAO's scrutiny skirted
emerging concerns about privacy, civil rights, and the appropriate role of
the intelligence community.
FinCEN's mission requires the involvement of the intelligence community,
particularly in tracking the financial dealings of terrorists and in
conducting financial counterintelligence, although few are willing to
discuss the trend openly. Because these activities cross into the world of
cloaks and daggers, some watchdogs are concerned that such endeavors will
encroach on privacy and civil rights. When you look at the power of FinCEN
and its proposed offspring, their fears seem justified.
How to Bust a John
The whiz kids at FinCEN are good. Very good. That's why state and local
police have come to depend on FinCEN to pull them out of the
electronic-sleuthing quicksand. The case of John the drug supplier is a
good example of one of their less-complex assignments, and it illustrates
the adeptness with which the government can collate existing financial
data.
Seated at a computer terminal inside FinCEN's former command post, a
FinCEN analyst began the hunt. He started by querying a database of
business phone numbers. He scored a hit with the number of a local
restaurant. Next he entered the Currency and Banking Database (CBDB), an
IRS database accessed through the Currency and Banking Retrieval System.
CBDB contains roughly 50 million Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs),
which document all financial transactions of more than US$10,000. By law
these transactions must be filed by banks, S&Ls, credit unions, securities
brokers, casinos, and other individuals and businesses engaged in the
exchange of large sums of money.
The analyst narrowed his quest by searching for CTRs filed for
transactions deemed "suspicious." Financial institutions must still file a
CTR, or IRS Form 4789, if a transaction under US$10,000 is considered
suspicious under the terms of an extensive federal government list. There
was a hit. A series of "suspicious" CTRs existed in the restaurant's ZIP
code. Punching up images of the identified CTRs on his terminal, the
FinCEN analyst noted that the transactions were made by a person whose
first name was John. The CTRs were suspicious all right; they were
submitted for a series of transactions each in the amount of US$9,500,
just below the CTR threshold of US$10,000. This was hard evidence that
John structured the deposits to avoid filinga Form 4789, and that is a
federal crime.
Selecting one of the CTRs for "an expanded review," the analyst got John's
full name, Social Security number, date of birth, home address, driver
license number, and other vital statistics, including bank account
numbers.
Plunging back into the IRS database, the analyst broadened his search for
all CTRs filed on behalf of the suspect, including non-suspicious CTRs.
Only 20 reports deemed suspicious popped up on the screen, but more than
150 CTRs were filed in all. A review of the non-suspicious ones revealed
that on several, John listed his occupation as the owner or manager of the
restaurant identified by the telephone number on the slip of paper taken
from the arrested drug dealer. The connection between the name and the
phone number originally given to FinCEN was secured.
The FinCEN analyst then tapped commercial and government databases, and
turned up business information on the restaurant showing that John had
reported an expected annual revenue for his eatery of substantially less
than the money he had been depositing, as indicated by the CTRs. Fishing
in a database of local tax assessment records, the analyst discovered that
John owned other properties and businesses. With the names of these other
companies, the analyst went back into the CTR database and found that
suspicious transaction reports were filed on several of them as well.
As routine as such assignments as this case may be, the chumminess between
FinCEN and the intelligence community raises serious questions about the
privacy and security of the financial records of citizens John and Jane
Doe, considering the intelligence community's historic penchant for
illegal spying on non-criminals. Given the vast reach and ease with which
the government can now tap into an individual's or business's financial
records on a whim, these questions have received far too little scrutiny.
Whose Privacy?
"There are legitimate concerns" regarding privacy, a ranking House banking
committee staffer conceded in an interview with WIRED. "Quite frankly,
there hasn't been much congressional oversight with respect to the
intelligence community's involvement with FinCEN. When you start trying to
look into this, you start running up against all kinds of roadblocks." The
GAO official involved in auditing FinCEN agreed that questions regarding
the intelligence community's involvement and attendant privacy concerns
haven't been addressed. If such issues have been the subject of discussion
behind the closed doors of the House and Senate intelligence committees,
no one is talking openly about it. Meanwhile, the potential for abusive
intrusion by government into the financial affairs of private citizens and
businesses is growing almost unnoticed and unchecked.
Two of the latest electronic inroads into the financial records of private
citizens and businesses are "Operation Gateway," a FinCEN initiative, and
the proposed Deposit Tracking System, which other intelligence agencies
would like to see established. Both are inherently prone to abuse and
provide a disturbing indication of the direction in which the government
is moving.
Gateway is a pilot program launched in Texas this July that gives state
and local law enforcement officials direct access to the massive federal
Financial Database (FDB) through a designated FinCEN coordinator. The FDB
contains the records that financial institutions have been filing under
the Bank Secrecy Act for the last 23 years - CTRs, suspicious transaction
reports, International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments
reports, and Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts reports. In addition,
Congress is expected to grant FinCEN authority to tap into the database of
Forms 8300, which are reports of payments over US$10,000 received in a
trade or business. These documents principally contain information on
deposits, withdrawals, and the movement of large sums of currency. It is
FinCEN's intent to give all state governments individual access to the
FDB.
Under the Gateway proposal, results from all queries would be written into
a master audit file that will constantly be compared against other
requests and databases to track whether the subject of the inquiry is of
interest to another agency or has popped up in a record somewhere else.
State coordinators designated by FinCEN will do the logging on, as FinCEN
is uncomfortable with giving 50,000 federal agents and 500,000 police
officers direct electronic access to its database. "This is very sensitive
information," concedes Andy Flodin, special assistant to the FinCEN
director. "We'd have to have additional security safeguards before we
could open it up to every police agency."
But while the FDB contains only records on major money movements and thus
is not as much of a threat to individual privacy, the Deposit Tracking
System (DTS) is a potential menace. If implemented, the estimated US$12.5
million computer system could be used to penetrate the security of bank
accounts belonging to you, me, and 388 million other bank account holders
in the US.
The government argues that such a system is necessary for two reasons:
first, to assess adequately the funding needed for federal deposit
insurance and second, to locate the assets of individuals ordered by
courts to make restitution for financial crimes - like the savings and
loan crooks. (It seems the government can't trace most of the money they
stole.)
The first reason stems from a requirement of the seemingly innocuous
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 - one of
Congress's legislative responses to the savings and loan debacle. The Act
requires the FDIC to study the costs, feasibility, and privacy
implications of tracking every bank deposit in the United States.
So far the DTS exists only on paper. The FDIC's completed feasibility
study is currently being examined by Congress, but it is unlikely to act
on it before late next year. For the time being, the US$12.5 million price
tag seems to be the biggest drawback to its implementation.
Concerns about the DTS have been widespread, although it has received
scant attention in the mainstream press. But according to Diane Casey,
executive director of the Independent Bankers Association of America, the
DTS "would fundamentally change the relationships among banks, consumers,
and the government in ways that have implications beyond banking policy.
Our open and democratic society would be changed profoundly if any agency
of the government maintained the scope of information on private citizens
described in this proposal. It raises questions about our democracy that
would have to be addressed by the highest policy-making levels of
government."
The American Bankers Association (ABA) voiced equally serious concerns.
The ABA doubts "whether there are any privacy safeguards that would be
adequate to effectively protect this database from use by government
agencies and, eventually, private parties," an ABA spokesman explains. "It
is inconceivable to the ABA that such a database could be used only by the
FDIC in deposit insurance coverage functions. Such a database...would
provide a wealth of information for investigations being conducted by the
FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the IRS, to name but a few.
Like the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams, build this database and they
will come. Eventually, whether legally or illegally, they will gain access
to this database."
The FDIC forcefully argued against the DTS in the 234-page draft report it
submitted to Congress in June 1993, but it may not have the bureaucratic
clout necessary to kill the proposal. WIRED was told by intelligence
analysts and congressional sources dealing with oversight of the
intelligence community that federal law enforcement and intelligence
agencies are privately clamoring for the system, apparently disregarding
both the privacy issues and the system's start-up cost (which does not
include the additional US$20 million a year the feasibility study said
would be required for facilities, for salaries and benefits, and for
routine hardware and software maintenance).
Further driving the intelligence agencies's desire for the DTS is the
much-hyped role of economic intelligence gathering, a key focus of the
Clinton administration's reform of the intelligence community. Agencies
like the CIA view the system as a boon to their ability to monitor foreign
financial dealings in the US, according to both congressional and
intelligence sources.
Adding Intelligence to the Equation
Regardless of the form it takes, the sources said, the DTS and any other
financial databases that come down the pike could be easily interfaced to
FinCEN's Artificial Intelligence/Massive Parallel Processing (AI/MPP)
program, a criminal targeting system that will go online in a few years.
Because laundered money is moved undetected along with the millions of
legitimate computerized wire transfers that occur daily, FinCEN's computer
investigations naturally demand expert systems that can single the dirty
money out of the crowd. FinCEN's current Artificial Intelligence
capability allows it to search the Financial Database for suspicious,
preprogrammed patterns of monetary transactions. While not very flexible,
the system has successfully identified previously unknown criminal
organizations and activities.
But FinCEN has a hush-hush US$2.4 million contract with the US Department
of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop what Bruh and other
FinCEN officials de-scribed as a powerful "money flow model." Unlike
FinCEN's current system, Los Alamos's AI software will look for
unexplained, atypical money flows. Coupled with a massively parallel
computer system, the AI/MPP could perform real-time monitoring of the
entire US electronic banking landscape.
FinCEN's AI capabilities currently exploit the Financial Database for
proactive targeting of criminal activity. The system automatically
monitors the entire FDB database, constantly identifying suspicious
financial activity in supercomputer-aided, rapid-response time. In
addition to the FDB, FinCEN is applying AI to the Criminal Referral Forms
that must be filed with FinCEN whenever banks, examiners, and regulators
uncover financial activities they suspect are illegal.
In the near future, all of these government databases will be interfaced
by way of AI/ MPP technology. "MPP is critical to FinCEN's ability to
analyze (banking) data to its full capacity," Bruh insists.
The pure power of such a "database of databases" terrifies critics. Though
FinCEN and other authorities discount the potential for abuse, tell that
to the CIA. Its charter forbids it from engaging in domestic surveillance;
nonetheless, it spied on Americans for seven consecutive presidential
administrations (it says it finally ceased its internal spying in the
mid-1970s).
FinCEN's AI operation has been employed legitimately with great success.
Perhaps its least-known project was assisting the CIA in identifying and
tracking the flow of money between Iran's state-sponsored Islamic
fundamentalist terrorist organizations and the men linked to the bombing
of the World Trade Center. According to a Treasury official and confirmed
by Anna Fotias, FinCEN's congressional liaison, FinCEN identified
suspicious transaction reports filed by a bank in New Jersey on wire
transfers from Germany to the accounts of two of the men charged in the
bombing. With the bank account in Germany identified, further AI
processing - utilizing intelligence from the CIA's DESIST computer system,
the world's most extensive database on terrorists - identified a company
as a front for an Iranian terrorist group. Coupled with DESIST's data on
the two men's terrorist connections, FinCEN was able to identify a number
of previously unknown conduits of terrorist funding in the US and abroad.
Similarly, FinCEN was crucial in identifying Iraqi assets in the US that
were frozen in the wake of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, according to a
Treasury official.
Still, given the CIA's less-than-spotless record, privacy advocates are
likely to find it disturbing that there are some within the walls of CIA
headquarters - apparently unbeknownst to anyone at FinCEN - who want to
mesh DESIST with FinCEN's eventual AI/MPP ability and with all the
databases FinCEN routinely surveys. The justification for creating such a
system is compelling: More likely than not it would identify scores of
previously unknown financial conduits to terrorists.
Advocates of a full-time DESIST/FinCEN system carry their argument one
step further: Hooked into the yet-to-be-authorized Deposit Tracking
System, the DESIST/FinCEN system would be able to identify terrorist
financial movements in real-time, thus providing early warning of
potentially imminent terrorist actions. Some within the intelligence
community take it still another step: They would have the system tied into
the private computers that hold credit card transactions "so that we could
have nearly instant time-tracking capability," according to one source who
works closely with the CIA's Counterterrorist Center.
Conversely, a CIA/FinCEN/DTS endeavor could monitor on a real-time basis
the financial activity of narcotics traffickers, since drug dealing also
is within the purview of the CIA. The agency's Counternarcotics Center, or
CNC, already works closely with FinCEN.
Before the CIA would be allowed to tap into a system as sensitive as the
proposed Deposit Tracking System, it would have to clear plenty of civil
liberties hurdles, not the least of which is the prohibition on the CIA
from gathering intelligence on US citizens. As long as the DTS itself was
shielded from direct access by the CIA, proponents could argue that the
operation was allowable under law. Opponents, on the other hand, fear that
the CIA would find a way to download, copy, or otherwise secretly access
the DTS.
"The risk of the CIA getting its hands on this is serious - we know the
kind of unscrupulous people who populate the spook world," said a
Washington-area private investigator who conducts many legitimate
financial investigations for a CIA-linked firm. "This kind of financial
data, when coupled with other information like a person's credit history,
could be used for blackmail, bribery, and extortion," said the
investigator, who has a military intelligence background.
Bruce Hemmings is a veteran CIA clandestine-services officer who retired
in 1989. Prior to the DTS proposal, he told WIRED that the CIA routinely
digs for financial dirt on people from whom the agency wants specific
information. Typically they are foreign intelligence officers working in
the US under a diplomatic guise, and this financial information is often
used as leverage in getting them to talk. In less civilized venues, this
is called blackmail.
DTS could present an inviting mechanism for quieting unwanted dissent or
for defanging an unruly congressional leader bent on exposing some
questionable CIA operation. Although still in its embryonic stage and in
spite of the looming privacy obstacle it will inevitably confront, FinCEN
is seen by many in the government as the catalyst for a powerful,
all-seeing, all-knowing, global, financial-tracking organization. In fact,
FinCEN is al-ready working closely with INTERPOL, and Bruh's deputy just
resigned to head up INTERPOL's US office.
As the privacy debate heats up, FinCEN's digital dirty-money trackers go
on about their work, hoping they don't have to choose sides if what they
do becomes a full-blown privacy invasion problem. As Bruh puts it,
"There's tons of crooks out there who are disguising their criminal
profits. FinCEN needs to computerize as much as possible to be able to
identify the really significant criminals and their activities."
The question then becomes, at what point does it stop?
Anthony L. Kimery covers financial industry regulatory affairs as an
editor at American Banker Newsletters.
Copyright 1993, WIRED Ventures Ltd. All Rights Reserved. For complete
copyright information, please see the notice in the 'Welcome to WIRED'
folder.
Transmitted: 94-04-18 17:52:35 EDT
----
Om, Shalom.
Roads End
K
Billy Beck
<snip>
>An independent Special Prosecutor should be appointed, a Grand Jury
>should be convened, and criminal charges should be sought.
That is never going to happen, J.Q. Never, ever, in this life. The
hearings have been a band-aid. Big Daddy Sammy will pat us on the
heads like children and tell us to go play.
Mark my words: the band-aid won't stick.
I might be wrong, and I'm sure Bruce Borowski thinks I'm offering yet
another black rose to my romance of catastrophe.
We'll see.
Billy
Billy Beck
Ragnar Danneskjold
Billy Beck <bill...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> "John Q. Public" <capm...@execpc.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >An independent Special Prosecutor should be appointed, a Grand Jury
> >should be convened, and criminal charges should be sought.
>
> That is never going to happen, J.Q. Never, ever, in this life. The
> hearings have been a band-aid. Big Daddy Sammy will pat us on the
> heads like children and tell us to go play.
>
> Mark my words: the band-aid won't stick.
>
I have pretty strong feelings about Waco and often wonder if my opinion of the
what effect the hearings will have is too biased to be accurate. So, over the
last two weeks I made a conscious effort not to offer any information to
someone when THEY brought up the topic of Waco in conversation. By
"information" I mean everything us Net literate people have known for sometime
(i.e. contents of the warrant, effects of CS on children, lies to secure
military assistance, etc. etc.).
I have been amazed at the number of everyday people who are beginning to think
that the government has really gone bad. For the hell of it I have twice
brought up Keri Jewel's testimony as evidence that the government was right
and both times the people I was speaking to told me that her testimony was
not relevant (and they did not even know that she never lived in the compound
and that her dad likely wrote her statement). These people just do not trust
the government and law enforcement anymore. Waco is just another factor in
their growing distrust.
I think you are right Mr. Beck, the band-aid won't stick.
jpsb
: <snip>
: >An independent Special Prosecutor should be appointed, a Grand Jury
: >should be convened, and criminal charges should be sought.
: That is never going to happen, J.Q. Never, ever, in this life. The
: hearings have been a band-aid. Big Daddy Sammy will pat us on the
: heads like children and tell us to go play.
: Mark my words: the band-aid won't stick.
: I might be wrong, and I'm sure Bruce Borowski thinks I'm offering yet
: another black rose to my romance of catastrophe.
: We'll see.
: Billy
I agree, there will be no Special Prosecutor for Waco. The last best chance
to reveal the truth about Waco, and numerious other exambles of federal
abuse of law enforcement pasted with the Congreesional Hearing. Those to
whom I looked hopefully, srank from the task of revealing the face of the
Federal Beast. They left lie after lie after lie standing. It was a pitiful
sight. Now the wounds inflicted upon this great nation by the federal
government at Waco will not heal. They will fester, "remember Waco" will either
be the warning words of a all powerful Federal Government or the rallying
cry of those opposed to it. Either way Waco, like the Alamo, and Harpers
Ferry will take it's place in American folk lore, more important as a
symbol then as a fact. Democrates placed a higher value on party politics
then on curbing federal power, Republicans were more concerned with thier
"image" then the good of the country. 80 people were attacked, shot, gassed
and burned, no one lost thier job, no one is accounable, it is all the
fault of a dead man, who can not defend himself.
Your tax dollars at work.
jim shirreffs
Billy Beck
>I agree, there will be no Special Prosecutor for Waco. The last best chance
>to reveal the truth about Waco, and numerious other exambles of federal
>abuse of law enforcement pasted with the Congreesional Hearing. Those to
>whom I looked hopefully, srank from the task of revealing the face of the
>Federal Beast. They left lie after lie after lie standing. It was a pitiful
>sight. Now the wounds inflicted upon this great nation by the federal
>government at Waco will not heal. They will fester, "remember Waco" will either
>be the warning words of a all powerful Federal Government or the rallying
>cry of those opposed to it.
Agreed.
I don't know who the posers in the hearing thought they were playing
to, but they really blew it. It was yet another opportunity to
exhibit authentic leadership, pissed away.
"Remember Waco" was *already* a rallying cry in some circles.
It will be again. Personally, I think the most important invocations
of that memory will take place far out of the hearing of most of us.
They will be underground.
>Either way Waco, like the Alamo, and Harpers Ferry will take it's place in
>American folk lore, more important as a symbol then as a fact.
I don't know about this, JIm.
We'll see, but I think there are a lot more "facts" available to
ordinary, contemporary, examination of Waco than then Alamo. Today,
we're able to examine history being made in real-time in ways that
were completely un-imaginable 100 years ago. I don't think there is
any doubt that Waco will become *symbollic*, though.
>Democrates placed a higher value on party politics then on curbing federal power,
>Republicans were more concerned with thier "image" then the good of the
>country. 80 people were attacked, shot, gassed and burned, no one lost
>thier job, no one is accounable, it is all the fault of a dead man, who can not
>defend himself.
>Your tax dollars at work.
<heh>
Guess again.
Billy
Billy Beck
>In article <3vscof$9...@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>
>Billy Beck <bill...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> Mark my words: the band-aid won't stick.
>I have pretty strong feelings about Waco and often wonder if my opinion of the
>what effect the hearings will have is too biased to be accurate. So, over the
>last two weeks I made a conscious effort not to offer any information to
>someone when THEY brought up the topic of Waco in conversation. By
>"information" I mean everything us Net literate people have known for sometime
>(i.e. contents of the warrant, effects of CS on children, lies to secure
>military assistance, etc. etc.).
>I have been amazed at the number of everyday people who are beginning to think
>that the government has really gone bad.
Very good, Ragnar.
Ordinary people are becoming radically politicized. They are headed
towards conclusions which never would have occured to them only 5
years ago. This was one implication of my "analog statists" bit. The
bureaubots in D.C. don't have the most random clue that their checks
are being cashed all over the country in the minds of people who
are*not* "extremist". More and more of them (people) are taking the
initiative to think about the way things really are, and it is
becoming much more common to hear them *talking* about it out loud.
>For the hell of it I have twice brought up Keri Jewel's testimony as evidence
>that the government was right and both times the people I was speaking to
>told me that her testimony was not relevant (and they did not even know that
>she never lived in the compound and that her dad likely wrote her statement).
>These people just do not trust the government and law enforcement anymore.
>Waco is just another factor in their growing distrust.
"Just another" one.
I have long been sadly amused by the rhetoric of "change" in American
politics at, say, election times. "More speed, less direction," is
what I hear when somebody mouths platitudes about "change".
If we have not already reached the point where people understand the
word "change" to be the sound of politicians frantically clutching
their cynical grip on power, we soon will. The recent shadow play of
the Waco hearings will not go away. People will remember that.
>I think you are right Mr. Beck, the band-aid won't stick.
My only questions involve what the infection will look like when it
falls off.
Billy
Michael Rivero
>rag...@apk.net (Ragnar Danneskjold) wrote:
>
>>In article <3vscof$9...@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>
>>Billy Beck <bill...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>>> Mark my words: the band-aid won't stick.
>
>>I have pretty strong feelings about Waco and often wonder if my opinion of the
>>what effect the hearings will have is too biased to be accurate. So, over the
>>last two weeks I made a conscious effort not to offer any information to
>>someone when THEY brought up the topic of Waco in conversation. By
>>"information" I mean everything us Net literate people have known for sometime
>>(i.e. contents of the warrant, effects of CS on children, lies to secure
>>military assistance, etc. etc.).
>
>>I have been amazed at the number of everyday people who are beginning to think
>>that the government has really gone bad.
>
> Very good, Ragnar.
>
> Ordinary people are becoming radically politicized. They are headed
>towards conclusions which never would have occured to them only 5
>years ago. This was one implication of my "analog statists" bit. The
>bureaubots in D.C. don't have the most random clue that their checks
>are being cashed all over the country in the minds of people who
>are*not* "extremist". More and more of them (people) are taking the
>initiative to think about the way things really are, and it is
>becoming much more common to hear them *talking* about it out loud.
>
I've been noticing it as well. Here in Los Angeles, people are shedding their
imposed barries of race and gender and are really talking about what's
happening in Washington. Despite the efforts of a few individuals to
fan the flames of race hatred (Mr. Frank), the reality out here is that
people are coming together into a single unit. We The People are becoming
a people.
--
=========== T H E A N I M A T I O N P L A N T A T I O N ============
| Michael F. Rivero - riv...@netcom.com - 16 years in the business |
| Award Winning Digital Effects for TV & Feature Films |
===========================================================================
Paul H. Henry
> I agree, there will be no Special Prosecutor for Waco. The last best chance
> to reveal the truth about Waco, and numerious other exambles of federal
> abuse of law enforcement pasted with the Congreesional Hearing. Those to
> whom I looked hopefully, srank from the task of revealing the face of the
> Federal Beast.
Translation: "I am very mad because the hearings did not produce the
results that I had predetermined they should produce."
--
=============================================================================
_ (phe...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu) ||"I later learned that every state in the
|_) || Union, with the exception of Nebraska,
| aul H. Henry - Lawrence, Kansas ||felt disdain for Kansas." --Louise Brooks
==================== http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~phenry ===================
Wayne Mann
phe...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Paul H. Henry) writes:
>Subject: Re: Congressman to Present Evidence of Clinton Involvement
in Waco
>From: phe...@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Paul H. Henry)
>Date: 9 Aug 95 19:23:03 CDT
>
>In article <3vvk7o$9...@uuneo.neosoft.com>, jp...@starbase.neosoft.com
(jpsb)
>writes:
>
>> I agree, there will be no Special Prosecutor for Waco. The last best
chance
>> to reveal the truth about Waco, and numerious other exambles of federal
>> abuse of law enforcement pasted with the Congreesional Hearing. Those
to
>> whom I looked hopefully, srank from the task of revealing the face of
the
>> Federal Beast.
>
>Translation: "I am very mad because the hearings did not produce the
>results that I had predetermined they should produce."
>
>
This does not belong on alt.current-events.whitewater
Michael Lodman
>Translation: "I am very mad because the hearings did not produce the
>results that I had predetermined they should produce."
Actually, they did. The coverage caused quite a few fence sitters on the
subject I know to become convinced that Washington stinks to high
heaven.
The Democrats, who for all my voting life have gathered most
of my votes, have as much chance of a vote now as Ford does of
selling me a car. None. I was non-partisan anti-BATFJBT prior
to the hearings.
The hearings did not produce the desired result of you apologists -
that the issue would go away. If anything, the clamor appears to be
getting worse. Much worse.
Horne Broward
: Ordinary people are becoming radically politicized. They are headed
: towards conclusions which never would have occured to them only 5
A theory: Interactive versus Non-interactive
Non-interactive entities - Newspapers, television network
news, etc. All losing market share.
Interactive entities - Internet, talk radio, etc. All
gaining in popularity.
I watched MTV this week. They've got a feature now where
you can do an IRC conversation while videos are playing.
User's comments scroll across the bottom of the screen
during the video. Interactive.
Federal government does Waco and Whitewater hearings,
and either chooses to ignore areas of questioning, or
bumbles questioning. Either way, they're a bunch of
bozos, for me now. Non-Interactive government.
Event-driven programming - Interactive, growing like mad.
Batch programming - Non-interactive, a dying art.
Watch for it. You'll start to see it everywhere. I was
in San Diego at Sea World last Tuesday. So what do they
have for Shamu? A big television screen, perhaps 20 feet
by 20 feet, panning across the audience (perhaps 5000 people),
and as the camera pans, people are waving, etc. Interactive.
Billy Beck
>Billy Beck (bill...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
*Without question*, Horne! This is so flagrantly clear to me that I'm
bored to have to go over it for people who don't get it (...although I
don't mind a concise rendtion like yours here).
Newly detailed permutations on the theme keep popping up in the
periphery of my vision (like the MTV thing - I've not seen that
yet)...nobody can see it all in one glance at one time...but it
*never* surprises me.
Millions of people don't even know how to grasp the *concept* of an
"information model". Many of them will go to their graves never
getting it, and never understanding how close they came to the biggest
deal in communications in the past 500 years. (I think my father will
be one of them. He sort of understands that something big is
happening - but he's content to smile and let it slide by. My
grandmother is absolutely flabbergasted when I tell her how many
people *around the world* can look at her face on my web page. She
simply cannot grasp visibility on a scale which was reserved only for
movie stars when she was young...and still *is*, in her world view.
She's 91 years old now, and she definitely won't get it.)
*Politics as we have known it will not survive this.*
The government goons need to get this straight. When Donna Shalala
sits in front of the Nightline cameras (as she did last night -
smoothing the prezgoon's cigarette game) grinning that square-frame
grin which is the fading shadow of a 50+ year-old propaganda
tool...she should bear in mind that people don't laugh at her *alone*
any more. They get to elbow each other around the world and laugh
right out loud: "Look at that *fool*"...as they hook up tobacco
transhipments and re-arrange markets...
Of course, she doesn't get it. She can't afford to get it. Niether
can the charade that she works for.
Their authority is burning down every time somebody logs on.
They operate from a presumption of "representation" which is rapidly
becoming flatly absurd. They stand up in front of the old-time
scribblers and talking heads, and tell us all about what "the people"
want. Who needs that?
Any random sterno-bum can now find out what real people, with
individual ethical systems, "want"....think...reason...argue...and
become outraged at. Thoreau's "quiet desperation" is well on its way
into the dim past. Shalala can never speak down to me again, like I'm
a child with no recourse but silent submission to her remote authority
of proclamation, batch-processed in a one-way channel.
I can now match the authority of my mind against hers. I get to tell
her to go fuck herself, and why.
The coming challenge to civilization is implicit in the fact that the
authority she poses is trained to respond to reason with force.
It will be very interesting.
Billy