Whistle-Blower in Davidian Siege Faces Charges

The whistle-blower who sparked a probe into whether the federal government was responsible for the deaths of 74 Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, has been notified that he faces criminal charges after acknowledging he withheld notes from special counsel John C. Danforth’s investigators and misled a federal grand jury about the papers.

Prosecutors have told former Assistant U.S. Atty. William Johnston that they will seek to indict him on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation unless he agrees to a plea bargain.

Though he acknowledges withholding three pages of notes he feared would be used to smear him, Johnston, 41, asserted that he did not commit a crime and will not plead guilty to a felony, which would cause him to lose his law license in Texas.

If Danforth’s prosecutors follow through on their threat to indict Johnston, it would mark the first and only criminal prosecution to come out of the $12-million probe, which began a year ago with Johnston’s disclosure of evidence that FBI agents had used incendiary tear gas projectiles during the 1993 raid in Texas.

It also would stand in sharp contrast to the former senator’s decision not to indict several other people who committed wrongdoing, including a junior FBI lawyer who misled investigators.

What makes Johnston’s case different, sources familiar with it said, is that he triggered the Danforth probe and then did not cooperate fully with investigators, drawing the ire of front-line prosecutors working on the case.

Danforth’s “treatment of Bill is completely the opposite of the way he treated other people who misstepped during the course of this investigation,” said Michael Kennedy, Johnston’s lawyer. “The only distinction I can see between Bill’s mistakes and the mistakes of other people is that he is a whistle-blower who caused a tremendous amount of embarrassment.”