In the summer of 1995, FBI agents who commanded the government�s armored assault on the Branch Davidians� home outside of Waco, Texas, swore under oath to a congressional oversight committee that although their tanks battered down the flimsy walls of the Davidian�s Mt. Carmel Center, and spewed CS gas at women and children for six hours, they never did anything that could have started the fire that eventually took more than 76 civilian lives. Now, four years later, a previously undisclosed FBI audiotape clearly reveals that agents fired combustible tear gas rounds.

Congressional leaders�some of whom presided over the 1995 hearings that let the FBI off the hook�are now calling for a new set of hearings. But there is little reason to believe that a forum presided over by Democrats and Republicans will ever elicit a satisfactory explanation as to how our law enforcement officials provoked this tragedy. If the history of the 1995 hearings is any guide, any new investigations of the FBI�s actions will be milked by both parties for every possible partisan advantage and then discarded.

Athough there were some "true believers" among congressional staff and some first-term members, no one in the leadership of either party ever seriously wanted hearings that would uncover law enforcement abuses and lay the basis for much-needed reform of the agencies in question. In the wake of the greatest law enforcement disaster in FBI history, no one with oversight responsibilities wanted to do anything at all. Grassroots activists and independent investigators across the political spectrum�religious scholars who had studies the Branch Davidian sect, Second Amendment activists, civil rights campaigners unafraid to stand up for the rights of those most Americans regard as "fringe"�started lobbying Congress in the month after the fire, urging that the FBI be held to account.

Members on both sides of the aisle turned a deaf ear.

But by the summer of 1995, the political environment had changed.

The Republicans now had a majority, and the National Rifle Association was boasting, with good reason, that its campaign contributions had helped the Republicans in their 1994 electoral sweep. They instructed their congressional beneficiaries that it was time to roll back the assault weapons ban and other restrictions on gun ownership passed by President Clinton and his Democratic allies. The egregious abuses by law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms�at Waco, Ruby Ridge and elsewhere�became ammunition in the Republican/NRA campaign against the Clinton administration.

Meanwhile, the Democrats mobilized for the defense of their Commander-in-Chief and the nation�s law enforcement agencies.

Many observers of the 1995 hearings remarked that the Democrats and Republicans seemed to have switched places, with the Republicans defending the rights of an outcast minority, while the Democrats defended the abusive government agents.

From the opening gavel, in my eyes, the five Congressional Black Caucus members on the panel made it clear they were Democrats first, civil rights leaders second. Only months earlier they had led a spirited defense of the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unwarranted search and seizure, in response to an (ultimately successful) attempt by Republicans to overturn the "exclusionary rule" that said evidence obtained illegally at trial could not be introduced in court. But, in spite of pleas from myself and other advocates for the rights of the Branch Davidians, they refused to speak up on the gross violations of Fourth Amendment rights committed by the ATF when they falsely obtained a defective warrant and used it as justification for the original raid on Mt. Carmel.

Trying to score points against the Republicans was everything; joining ranks with them in a defense of civil liberties was apparently impossible for some Democrats to do.

Though the Republicans did question law enforcement abuses, their partisan agenda became clear when they focused their line of questioning on trying to expose the White House�s role in signing off on the final gas/tank assault on Mt. Carmel. This took the form of trying to show that Attorney General Janet Reno was not really the one ultimately responsible for giving the OK to the assault. But if one thing emerges from all the testimony and reports it is that the attorney general was thoroughly bamboozled by the FBI.

Bill Johnson, a prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney�s office in San Antonio involved in the original and new investigations, recently wrote Ms. Reno a warning that aides misled her about the role of federal agents in the assault: "I have formed the belief that facts may have been kept from you�and quite possibly are being kept from you even now�by components of the department."

If the goal is now to investigate law enforcement abuses, it would be fruitful to focus the inquiry on how it was that the FBI fed the attorney general selective information to support the course of action they had already settled on, how the American people were misinformed and misled and how the partisan agendas of both political parties fueled a bi-partisan cover-up of one of the most shameful and destructive abuses of constitutional rights ever in American history.