Editorial: Conspiracy buffs are rejected twice

Friday, July 28, 2000 | 9:27 a.m.

Maybe now, after seven years, the Waco conspiracy theorists finally will give it a rest. For starters, a civil jury decided July 14 that the federal government wasn't negligent in its 51-day standoff in 1993 with the Branch Davidians, which tragically ended in the deaths of 80 members of the religious sect. Then last Friday former Sen. John Danforth, a special counsel separately investigating the government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound, exonerated the government "with 100 percent certainty."

Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Danforth to head the independent probe after it was revealed last September that the FBI had in fact used potentially incendiary devices on the last day of its standoff with Branch Davidians -- despite denials for six years that it had not. The revelation was shocking and warranted an inquiry. Danforth acknowledges an FBI lawyer failed to tell superiors that pyrotechnic tear gas canisters were used, but he also adds that the government didn't engage in a major coverup. The bottom line, Danforth said, is that the evidence overwhelmingly shows federal agents didn't start the fire that killed the religious sect's members. Also, Danforth said, the agents didn't fire at the Branch Davidians.

Danforth's probe should end any lingering doubts about the government's role at Waco. Still, it remains to be seen whether even someone who is as respected as Danforth, a former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri, will be able to quell all of the conspiracy theorists who have turned Waco into a cottage industry for their yarns of intrigue.