Word: waco
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...that is, in the absence of world-historical events or the fall of empires, they filled the news hole, they fed the many-headed media beast. Once the Soviet Union and the Cold War were gone, we have had Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, the O.J. Simpson case, Waco, Oklahoma City, the death of Princess Diana, Colombine, the Icarus descent of John Kennedy Jr, Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Elian Gonzalez, and much, much more...
Welcome to the NFL. Just as Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, grappled with the Waco disaster a month after taking the reins, Ashcroft so far has been involved mostly with crisis control. Hanssen was indicted last week after plea negotiations between the feds and his lawyers broke down. The impasse, sources told TIME, was over Ashcroft's insistence on preserving the option to seek the death penalty in the case. That's against the advice of many in the FBI and the intelligence community--among them, the sources say, CIA Director George Tenet, who has personally lobbied Ashcroft several times...
...extraordinary deal between prosecutors and the defense, this total disclosure of even marginal material; but it was designed to instill the greatest possible public confidence in the outcome of a trial of homegrown terror--an act staged in supposed retaliation for questionable acts by federal officials, like Waco and the Ruby Ridge shootings...
That, of course, was McVeigh's goal all along, the one he and his fellows in arms were never going to achieve on the battlefields that stretched from Ruby Ridge to Waco to Oklahoma City: the crusade to turn citizens against a tyrannous government. Through mistakes, misjudgment and misconduct, the feds have, over time, done damage to themselves worse than any McVeigh could have inflicted in his poisonous revolutionary dreams. "This clearly nudges [the FBI] off its pedestal," says Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating...
...deep ambivalence, our awkward love for both order and liberty. We don't want people stockpiling weapons and holding children hostage in Texas religious sects, but we don't want tanks firing on church camps in Waco either. We want something done about hate groups, but we don't want FBI sharpshooters killing militants' wives on Idaho mountaintops. We don't want China stealing our nuclear secrets, but we don't want a racial-profiling witch hunt. We don't want organized crime to hide its computer files online, but we don't like the idea that...