Text Excerpt 20: Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum But Who Would Do Such A Thing? [Note to readers: Many of the official autopsy reports of the Branch Davidians, autopsy photographs, and official diagrams showing the locations of body recoveries are available for viewing at the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum website. Unfortunately, this documentation cannot be included in a text excerpt.] By now many of us, looking at the remains inside the concrete room, have come to the conclusion that the bodies found therein may have been deliberately mutilated. But who would do such a thing? Visitors to the Museum's website have already seen evidence that members of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command were key actors in the Waco Holocaust from the first day, February 28, 1993. In order to throw some understanding on the remains of the women and children in the concrete room, we might look at a Special Ops practice called "body laundering," or "body washing." When Special Ops personnel die on secret and illegal missions (see "The Black Army," and "A Death Cult Wears Black" in the War Gallery of the Museum) a problem is created for the military bureaucracy. The military cannot tell the families how the serviceman died, so the body is "laundered." That is, a cover story is invented to explain the death, and the body of the dead soldier is mutilated in such a way to corroborate the cover story. Journalists Frank Greve and Ellen Warren wrote of the practice in their series which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 16 & 17, 1984. According to the article, during the Vietnam War, soldiers were killed while on CIA secret missions in Laos and Cambodia. "If a guy was killed on a mission, and if it was sensitive politically, we'd ship the body back home and have a jeep roll over on him at Fort Huachuca," one former officer told the two Knight-Ridder writers. Ft. Huachuca is a covert operations base in Arizona. "Or," the former officer said, "we'd arrange a chopper crash, or wait until one happened and insert a body or two into the wreckage later. It's not that difficult." And the secret Special Ops helicopter unit, the 160th Task Force as it was called, almost certainly laundered the bodies of its servicemen when they were killed in El Salvador. The widow of a 160th pilot who died in a crash reported that her husband told her just days before his death, "If I ever die in an accident and they tell you I was a spy, or if I crash somewhere that I'm not supposed to be, don't ever believe that I was spying or wasn't working for the Army," according to Greve and Warren. A cousin of another deceased member of the 160th Task Force said that two weeks before his death, the man told her that whatever happened to him, "the Army could pull whatever they wanted to make it look other ways." (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 16, 1984). According to the Greve and Warren article, fines, imprisonment, and loss of rank can result from breaches of security by military personnel. "That's in the top-secret category, so I'm not going to talk about that," said one Army airman familiar with the Central American missions. "I don't want to go to jail." The Washington Post, May 6, 1996 ("Public Honors for Secret Combat") described body laundering during the El Salvador operation. Many who knew the truth about the circumstances surrounding the soldiers deaths were troubled by the outright false official reports relatives received, says the Post. Judy Lujan, wife of Army Lt. Col. Joseph H. Lujan, was told her husband died in 1987 when the helicopter carrying him crashed into a hillside during stormy weather. But the Army never produced her husband's personal effects or photographs of his corpse, despite her repeated requests, she said. "I can't get on with my life, I can't do anything, until I know for sure he's dead." Relatives of Gregory A. Fronius, a 28-year-old Green Beret sergeant, knew he was slain during a guerrilla attack on a Salvadoran brigade's headquarters at El Paraiso. But initially they were informed Fronius had died in his barracks when a mortar shell struck. In fact, Fronius had bolted from the barracks and was trying to rally Salvadoran soldiers for a counterattack when several guerrilla snipers shot him, then blew up his body with an explosive charge. "First they told me one thing, then I found out something else," said Celinda Carney, who was married to Fronius. "I was upset." Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996 reported that one of the magazine's Special Ops contacts was predicting bodies would be laundered as a result of the Bosnian "peacekeeping" mission. With many Special Ops personnel operating in Bosnia, some of their missions will likely be extremely sensitive and high risk, with plausible deniability built into them, said the source. "When their bodies come home, they will be identified not as soldiers, but as businessmen or members of nonmilitary government agencies. The truths about their deaths will be difficult to learn," says author Anthony Kinnery. "If I'm on one of these missions that's deep, deep black, you can safely bet few, if any, in Congress--maybe not even the secretary of defense--knows about what the hell I'm doing," says a black operative. "And if I get killed and my body's fortunate enough to be recovered, you can also bet I'll turn up dead in a car wreck in some place like Munich or Berlin." (Insight Magazine, January 29, 1996, Secrecy Shrouds Spy Deaths.) The remains of the mothers and children found in the concrete room, then, bear marks of having been subjected to "body laundering" . . . Next: Excerpt 21, Bits, Pieces, and Human Identities ---------------------------------------------------------- Entire set of text excerpts from the Museum available with anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.public-action.com/wm2-0txt.zip Excerpted by Carol Valentine. Images omitted. Visit the Museum at http://www.Public-Action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum. SkyWriter@Public-Action.com Copyright 1996-2000 by Carol A. Valentine, on loan to Public Action, Inc. All commercial rights are reserved. Full statement of terms and conditions for copying and redistribution is available in the Museum Library. "Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum," "SkyWriter," and the skywriting logo are trademarks of Public Action Inc.