Waco & Scope Management

Any successful Project Manager will tell you that the single most important feature of project planning is a clearly defined and tightly managed "scope". By clearly defining what is and is not part of the project the Project Manager controls what is "do-able" in the required timeframes. A clever Project Manager can actually increase the odds of a desired outcome by defining "Out of Scope" those tasks and issues which are most likely to be difficult to manage or accomplish, and by defining "In Scope" those which are "Slam Dunks".

These thoughts struck me as I read the interim report issued by John Danforth on the Waco engagement. The initial news of this report brought hosannas from the media because it apparently completely exonerated the government. I was curious as to how this could be, and so tracked down the report. It did not take long to realize that exoneration was foreordained, thanks to clever scope management by the Justice Department. From the report:

" Senator Danforth and his staff negotiated the terms of the order directly with the Attorney General and her staff… [they] agreed that the investigation should determine whether representatives of the United States committed bad acts, not whether they exercised bad judgement. Therefore, they drafted a very specific Order that identified five principle issues:

whether agents of the United States started or contributed to the spread of fire that killed members of the Branch Davidian group on April 19, 1993;

whether agents of the United States directed gunfire at the Branch Davidian complex on April 19, 1993;

whether agents of the United States used any incendiary or pyrotechnic devices at the Branch Davidian complex on April 19, 1993;

whether there was any illegal use of the armed forces in connection with the events leading up to the deaths occurring at the Branch Davidian complex on April 19, 1993;

whether any government representative made or allowed others to make false or misleading statements, withheld evidence or information from any individual or entity entitled to receive it, or destroyed, altered, or suppressed evidence or information concerning the events occurring at the Branch Davidian complex on April 19, 1993."

(Go to http://www.osc-waco.org for the full report)

Let’s get this straight. First, the investigator lets the investigatee set the scope of the investigation. Then that scope is defined so narrowly that only a Justice Dept fitting the profile of a conspiracy-theorist’s nightmare could fail to be exonerated. And yet… And yet, despite what the media proclaimed, they were not exonerated. Danforth concluded that agents did use incendiary devices (although these probably could not have started the fatal fire) and that they lied through their teeth about it. But because Reno was not personally fingered as responsible, the media declared it an exoneration and hopes it will all finally go away.

Although this report is useful from a political standpoint, it is essentially worthless in terms of understanding what the hell actually happened at Waco, and why. By narrowing the scope, all of the really important stuff is removed from scrutiny.

Let’s use an analogy to illustrate this. Suppose I decide to drive 55 MPH in a 55 zone, but do so during a vicious ice storm that makes the roads unnavigable. As a consequence of this act of "bad judgement" I careen into several cars, badly injuring their drivers. I am so incensed by their getting in my way that I walk up to one the poor folks and start kicking him as he lays injured on the ground. When I get to Court, the judge rules that I can only be judged on my bad acts, not on my bad judgement, and so only allows me to be prosecuted for kicking the driver. Clearly, in this example as in Waco, it is the bad judgement, in the form of a reckless disregard for life and safety, that matters. It is the cause of the bad acts, which could not have happened in its absence.

Another useful Project Management concept is the "critical path", which defines the sequence of tasks that must be done on time and in sequence in order for the Project to succeed. If one looks at the critical path in Waco, those things that had to happen in order to achieve the final miserable outcome, the initial decision to send in ATF assault troops is smack dab in the middle of it. If that raid had not happened, many people would have been spared bloody, burning and awful deaths. The discussions of incendiaries and shooting would have been moot. There were so many other viable means of achieving the desired law enforcement ends that one has to suspect that the ATF desperately wanted a shoot ‘em out solution. It was "bad judgement" on a criminal scale, the sort of thing that would result in jail time if it had happened as a result of private sector recklessness.

That "bad judgement" is precisely what Reno and her cronies must answer for. That bad judgement killed people, for no good reason. Narrowing the scope of the investigation to avoid scrutiny of this is classic Reno. Permitting her do it is to buy into a whitewash.