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Comment by jzb | Hacker News Reader

Waco is more an example of the FBI doing something it should have been doing, but doing it incompetently. Which is certainly a discussion to have, but intervening against the Branch Davidians seems well within the mandate of law enforcement given what was going on there. It shouldn't have happened the way it did, but that doesn't mean the ATF or FBI were over-reaching.

The FBI's history of over-reach and wire-tapping goes back to the 40s and was well-known [even in the mid-80s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies).

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I think the ATF has a much higher incident rate of over-reach then the FBI, the FBI tends to create thier own crimes by "infiltrating" non-violent groups, then making them into extremist, providing them with a plan for a crime, then arresting them before they carry out the FBI informants plan...

ATF however tends to just rewrite regulation based on political goals, and then use their new regulations to make people felon's then respond to these new felons with extreme violence.

Ruby Ridge, Waco, and many other famous cases like them were all started by the incompetent ATF not FBI.

ATF routinely violates the civil rights of citizens and an business owners, openly and with out remorse. Personally I think Waco would have turned out far differently if the FBI was the original agency going after them. the FBI only came in after the ATF royally fucked everything up, as usual

I'm mad too because, look six weeks ago. The FBI declared "radical-traditionalist Catholics" to be a potential enemy to infiltrate, develop tripwires for, and put under surveillance. Even more ridiculous was that it actually attempted to define the term by internal theological opinions (do they like the Vatican II council from 1965? Do they accept or reject the Pope?).

Now, one doesn't need to be a fan of far-right or "radical-traditionalist" Catholics to think that this is an absurdity. When is the last time you've heard of a Catholic bombing a plane? The memo itself had not one incident listed, but said that it was a preemptive action (literally no history of violence listed, but they could be!!). Merrick Garland announced after the leak that the memo was atrocious and would be deleted immediately and rushed to declare that the memo did not meet FBI standards and that the FBI would not investigate 1st-amendment protected activities - but nobody's going to face consequences.

And to top it all off, it used the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) as a source and got away with it, even though the SPLC is blocked as a source in the FBI due to bias concerns. So it's OK to use blocked sources if it's the right motive. What the heck...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-catholics-traditionalists-r...

I would argue that the FBI and ATF should not have been there at all, and the situation should have been handled by local and state law enforcement.

They had the option to handle it any time between 1957 and 1993

> After the siege, McLennan County Sheriff Jack Harwell told The Dallas Morning News: "I would have tried to arrest him, and I would've never walked out of there alive. One day there had to be a confrontation with them. They were building for this."

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