agingrebel.com
This is the 114th day of the Twin Peaks Massacre coverup. It is worth noting for two lamentable reasons.
First, the degree to which government officials have been uncooperative, obstructive and evasive about the Massacre is prima facie evidence that there is an official coverup. There was no probable cause to believe that most of the 177, or 182, or so, people arrested that day were guilty of “engaging in organized criminal activity.” There is probable cause to believe that police murdered at least six men and may have attempted to murder 20 more.
The second reason to note the ongoing coverup is the apparent disappearance of what just a few years ago was being called “the investigative impulse” in American journalism. The investigative impulse began, according to Jon Marshall of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, “in the 1600s, when Enlightenment philosophers taught that ‘people have a right to question their leaders.’”
To its inerasable shame, the Waco Tribune-Herald has not noticed the coverup. To its credit, the Houston Chronicle has. “Any time a prosecutor’s office or a politician does not want people talking about something, one should raise a red flag and insist we talk about it,” a law professor named Patrick Metze told the Chronicle this morning. “They may say it is to protect the investigation, but they are protecting themselves from whatever it is that they don’t want us to see or know about.” You can read the entire Chronicle piece here.
Based on information supplied by various sources who believe their lives, careers and pensions are in actual danger and who have spoken with The Aging Rebel under conditions of either “off the record” or “deep background,” this page will continue to report that the Twin Peaks Massacre was the result of a contrived and avoidable confrontation between members of the Cossacks Motorcycle Club and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club. The Aging Rebel believes that the confrontation was engineered by and anticipated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Texas Department of Public Safety and a Waco area law enforcement agency that was not the Waco Police Department. The Aging Rebel also believes that these police agencies, and possibly the Waco Police Department, began physically preparing for an armed confrontation to include the use of deadly force in the Twin Peaks restaurant parking lot at or before dawn on May 17. And finally, this page believes the Massacre was captured in its entirety by at least 44 video cameras.
Investigating This Mess
The Associated Press defines information gained “off the record” as information that “cannot be used for publication.” The same news agency and most publications define “deep background” as information that “can be used but without attribution. The source does not want to be identified in any way, even on condition of anonymity.” Generally, information gained off the record can only be used after being substantiated by additional independent sources. Off the record information tells reporters where to llok and what to look for.Off the record information about federal police actions is often substantiated by filing Freedom of Information Act requests with, for example, the Disclosure Division of the ATF. The information requests involving bikers are almost routinely denied on the grounds of either what the FOIA Act calls “Exemption Seven” or one of three “Exclusions.”
The exempt information is defined as, “Certain types of information compiled for law enforcement purposes.” The three exclusions are: One, “Subject of a criminal investigation or proceeding is unaware of the existence of records concerning the pending investigation or proceeding and disclosure of such records would interfere with the investigation or proceeding;” two, “Informant records maintained by a criminal law enforcement agency and the individual’s status as an informant is not known; and three, “Existence of FBI foreign intelligence, counterintelligence or international terrorism records are classified fact.”
Exclusion three is one reason why motorcycle clubs are frequently described as “transnational gangs.”
Taken together, the exemption and exclusions explain why “gang investigations” are always classified as “ongoing” even when the newest information in those investigations is more than a decade old.
After a FOIA request is denied, large news gathering organizations and some private law firms have the means to bring suit in federal court to discover exempt and excluded information. The Aging Rebel does not have the resources to pursue such lawsuits at this time. This page is aware that many of its conclusions about what happened in Waco on May 17 are unsubstantiated sand have been described as “speculative.” As one 23-year-old reporter recently put it, “A blog favorable to motorcycle clubs citing an undisclosed source…is not credible.”
Credible or not, the authorities in Texas have been blatantly manipulating public opinion since the day of the Massacre and the Department of Justice has, as yet, not chosen to intervene. One plausible explanation for that inaction is that the Department of Justice has been involved since sometime before May 1.
The Aging Rebel stands by its coverage of the Waco Twin Peaks Massacre and will continue to pursue the story.