I visited the inside of my tailgate friday. 97 also. The inner cover of the tailgate (plastic panel) is held on by two screws and a bunch of plastic rivets. After you remove the two screws on each side of the window latch you can pop the rest of the panel off. Note: I haven't tried this with the tailgate closed, but it seems like it will work. Under this there is a steel cover held on by several bolts with 10 mm heads. When you get this off you will have access to the mechanism. You will see a rotation device operated by the tailgate handle that pulls a rod going to each side of the tailgate. Turn this and the tailgate should open. From here you can reach in and pop out the sheet metal thats pushed in. I could find very few adjustments on the mechanism. Once its tweaked a little the tailgate latch, window latch, wiper/washer enable switch etc. won't be in adjustment and nothing will work. There are adjustments on each of the plunger actuation rods for more or less travel. After popping mine back out I gently adjusted a couple of the actuator pieces with a big pair of pliers to get them to work like they were supposed to. Now everything works again.
Let me know if you have more questions.
Mike