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Challenging Danny Coulson (FBI: Waco, Ruby Ridge, HRT)

Posted on by scrambled_transmission

Hi all, I'm a student at Miami University (Ohio) organizing against an upcoming speaker, Danny Coulson. Aside from being a founder and former director of the FBI's hostage rescue team (HRT), Coulson also played key roles in directing the murders at Waco and Ruby Ridge. We need to separate patriotism from blind allegiance to everyone in our government - especially those involved in some of the worst domestic crimes committed by this government. Coulson seems like a decent guy personally, but that doesn't excuse what he's been responsible for.

If anyone here is interested in coming to see Mr. Coulson, he's speaking on Tuesday, November 27, at 7 p.m. in Shriver, our student union.

Coulson references on FR

See also Alamo Girl's Downside Legacy chapter on Waco.

The following is a decent summary of Coulson's life and post-Waco rationalizations:

TALES FROM WACO AND RUBY RIDGE

A Tell-All Book From an Angry Former FBI Agent

By Mark Rollenhagen

Danny O. Coulson is an FBI agent with an ego the size of his native Texas.

After graduating from Southern Methodist University with a law degree, he signed on with the bureau in 1966, looking for adventure and opportunity to do good. He quickly found both in their most basic forms.

As a young agent in the New York City office, he literally chased fugitives, bank robbers and a band of brutal cop killers who called themselves the Black Liberation Army. It was good work for a young man who saw the world in simple terms.

"The world was made up of good guys and bad guys," he says in his new autobiography, No Heroes: Inside the FBI's Secret Counter-Terror Force (Pocket Books, $24). "I was going to be one of the good guys."

Tale of bravado and betrayal

His story -- which includes his accounts of the handling of Ruby Ridge, Waco and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City -- is full of the sort of braggadocio and self-promotion that FBI agents are famous for. But it also provides an unusual glimpse of an agent's struggle to deal with failure and with betrayal by the agency that demanded and got his undivided loyalty.

Throughout his career, Coulson relished the FBI ideals of fidelity, bravery and integrity, and he liked the street work and the challenge of hunting down criminals.

"I rationalized that the high I felt came from doing the Lord's work, dragging killers and bloodsuckers out of the neighborhoods, making life a little easier for the shop owners, the old people and the kids," Coulson writes. "But, God help me, I loved it. I lived for that high when we actually put our hands on someone who thought he was invisible."

Coulson's personal claim to fame is not based on his work in New York, however. It is the development of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), a paramilitary unit designed to deal with terrorism inside the United States.

Downfall at Ruby Ridge

But his hallmark was also his downfall after a bullet from an FBI sniper's rifle killed white separatist Randy Weaver's wife, Vicki, during a standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. It was a moment that had far-reaching consequences for law enforcement throughout the nation, bolstering anti-government sentiment and evoking sympathy and cynicism from the broader population.

Coulson was suspended for two years during a criminal probe of the FBI command's handling of Ruby Ridge. He was cleared before he retired in 1997.

Coulson says there are two kinds of agents in the FBI: those who like the action and the physical and intellectual challenge of investigations and the "drivers," supervisors and careerists who, like the wheel men in a bank robbery, avoid the action.

His harshest criticism is directed at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), blaming ATF for the tragedies at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

But he is careful to blame the bosses and not the agents on the street.

Weighing in on Waco

"Those men and women performed as heroes because incompetent leaders put them in a desperate situation," Coulson writes of ATF's attempt to arrest Branch Davidian leader David Koresh in Waco. "I could only pray that, in the future, law enforcement leaders would do everything in their power to see that no one had to be a hero to get the job done."

He defends the FBI's work at Waco and says that he has replayed the siege countless times in his head and, in the end, "I couldn't think of a thing that might work."

The root of the tragedy at Ruby Ridge was the result of "a lousy ATF case involving two guns that had nothing to do with crime in the United States," Coulson writes.

His strongest criticism regarding the FBI is directed at Director Louis Freeh. Coulson points to a statement Freeh issued on the occasion of the FBI's 90th anniversary in which the director stressed the importance of constitutional guarantees, fairness and compassion.

"I only wish that when the political heat was turned up," Coulson writes, "he had been the kind of man to apply those ideals to me and the others in the Ruby Ridge chain of command."

Mark Rollenhagen is a crime reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.

=======================

from a Borders.com interview:

Suzianna: I understand the Hostage Rescue Team was involved in both Waco and Ruby Ridge - what differences are there now in the way the team approaches situations because of what happened at Waco?

Danny Coulson: Suzianna, great question! Thank you! In both Waco and Ruby Ridge, the FBI inherited those cases from the Treasury Department and frankly neither was resolved the way we would have liked them to be. In cases where the FBI has been first on the scene or has instituted the operation we have been 100% successful. We do not do as well when we have to clean up failed missions. The FBI has made many changes in its crisis management.

Our on-scene commanders are now better trained. Our negotiators have a stronger voice and greater access to our commanders. The command of a situation does not necessarily go to the geographical commander of that area; it goes to the best commanders wherever they may be located.

For example, at Oklahoma, Weldon Kennedy, the commander for Arizona, was brought in to be the overall commander of the Oklahoma incident. I was the commander of North Texas and I was brought in to take responsibility of the blast site, the bomb, the arrest of Mr. McVeigh and later was sent to Arizona to handle the case on Michael Fortier. I believe the FBI has learned much since those two incidents as evidenced by the case in Montana by the group known as the Freemen. As you may recall, that case involved a very, very long standoff where the subjects ultimately surrendered with no violence and no bloodshed.

(Notice that the FBI's tactics and PR have improved, but not fundamentally - the idea that Waco was a "mistake" when it was really calculated murder, and he maintains a blame-the-victim mentality. I agree with his assessment of Ruby Ridge, more or less, but if he was aware that it was "a lousy ATF case involving two guns that had nothing to do with crime in the United States," why didn't he do anything to stop it?)



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Please forward this message to anyone interested. Also, feel free to post more info re: Coulson here and mail me for more info or directions. Miami is about 45 minutes from Cincinnati and Dayton, in the city of Oxford, near Hamilton and Middletown.



To: scrambled_transmission

Suzianna: I understand the Hostage Rescue Team was involved in both Waco and Ruby Ridge ----------------------- Hostage rescue team? Might I be so bold to ask who was being held hostage. Vici Weaver?



To: scrambled_transmission

Humor Check: I know the students will give Coulson a fair hearing, weigh both sides, draw intelligent conclusions, and treat him in a civil manner. After all, today's students are tomorrow's voters, right?



To: scrambled_transmission

Bump for a new day.



To: scrambled_transmission; Uncle Bill

You might ask him to explain Lon Horuchi's practice of posing with his quarry, and whether he was disappointed that only he got a picture with Mrs Weaver's dress. Gee, if it was an accident, why did he pose with her dress at all? I'm sure the picture of Lon with Mrs Weaver's dress is on FR somewhere. ---->Help



To: scrambled_transmission

Actually, if you read Coulson memoirs (No Heroes), available in paperback, you find that he was not in charge at Ruby Ridge (in fact he wasn't even there) and he played a secondary role in Waco.



To: DonQ

I have a copy of No Heroes, but I'm not entirely convinced that Coulson is as blameless as he makes himself out to be. He does seem to be somewhat of a voice of reason within the FBI, however, since he was the first to admit that they used CS gas and forced Reno to backtrack. But as I said before, it comes down to the idea of whether we need a militarized domestic police force, and that the Waco siege was unjust to begin with.



To: scrambled_transmission

'If the only Tools in your Toolbox are Hammers, You are always looking for Nails.'



To: KeepTheEdge

Exactly.



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