Mr. Speaker, I was encouraged to come across this recent review in the Austin American-Statesman of a new movie which did well at the recent Sundance Film Festival. The film, `Waco: The Rules of Engagement,' deals with the horrible events which occurred in Waco, TX, in 1993. This review correctly describes the hideous event--as shown in the nonfiction `Waco' documentary--which left so many innocent children dead, and so many questions left unanswered. The film apparently answers some of the questions, revealing never-before-released recordings of the conversations between Federal police and the Davidians, as well as never-before-seen footage of the final minutes of the siege. I am pleased to share this review with my colleagues.

`Waco' had crowds riveted.

As usual, many of the stand-outs of the festival have been in the non-fiction categories. Friday morning was brightened considerably with the world premier of `Riding the Rails,' a film about the generation of teen-agers who took to riding boxcars during the Depression. And the envelope wasn't just pushed, it was exploded by the most powerful film to be shown yet at Sundance.

Director William Gazecki presented `Waco: The Rules of Engagement' to a packed screening room on Saturday when it made its world premiere as part of the noncompetitive American Spectrum sidebar. This harrowing tale of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound and its tragic end unearths shattering evidence of hidden agenda, dishonesty, religious persecution and fatal culpability on the part of the U.S. government. With tapes of never-before-heard negotiations between David Koresh and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI, video shot by the FBI at the compound and infrared photography, as well as interviews and congressional testimony, Gazecki leads the audience to the chilling conclusion that, as one former FBI special agent puts it, the Davidians who died in the fire on April 19, 1993 `were victims of a homicide' at the hands of their own government. The audience, most of whom stayed for the three-hour entirety of `Waco,' remained riveted up until its disturbing final shot--an almost unheard-of phenomenon at a Sundance screening, let alone one where everyone knows the ending.