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Waco

By Franklin FoerPosted Sunday, Aug. 31, 1997, at 3:30 AM ET

Waco

By Franklin Foer
(1,145 words; posted Saturday, Aug. 30)

More than four years after the fact, the federal government's raid on the Branch Davidian compound in central Texas remains contentious. And it's not just right-wingers harping about the government's "atrocities." Waco: The Rules of Engagement, a new, much-acclaimed documentary made by liberals, asserts that federal agents went after David Koresh and his followers, intent on slaughter and with their guns blazing.
Where does the Waco debate stand now?

David Koresh: Apocalyptic Nut?
Several prominent academics and journalists argue that the government and press unfairly caricatured the Branch Davidians as "madmen" and "crazed fanatics," when in fact Koresh and his followers have much in common with Pentecostal sects similarly obsessed with apocalyptic passages from the Bible's Book of Revelations. The Davidians split from the Seventh-day Adventists in 1934, believing that the latter had strayed too far from the teachings of their apostle, Ellen White. The group's only new theological twist: It believed that after Jesus' Second Coming, the ancient Kingdom of Israel would be re-established in Palestine.
After Koresh assumed control of the Davidians in 1990, he added wrinkles of his own. He proclaimed himself a "latter-day Christ," and believed in UFOs and the virtues of "killing for God." He also cited Scripture to justify sleeping with young girls, and he forbade the 17 children he had sired from leaving the Mt. Carmel compound, outside Waco. But various independent accounts argue that Koresh attracted his several hundred followers (more than 100 lived with him in Mt. Carmel) using persuasive biblical exegesis, and not by brainwashing them.

Why Did the Government Pursue Koresh?
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a division of the Department of the Treasury, began investigating Koresh in May 1992, suspicious that he was illegally converting semiautomatic guns into automatics. This suspicion appears to have been well founded: UPS delivered the parts needed to convert the weapons, a fact that several ex-cult members corroborated. (Also, two Davidians were later found guilty of possessing automatic weapons, and authorities found 48 automatic weapons at the scene after the fire.)

Did the ATF Overreact?
On Feb. 28, 1993, more than 80 well-armed ATF agents entered Mt. Carmel with a search warrant, looking for illegal arms. The agents had just completed three days of assault training with Green Berets at a nearby military base, having practiced for their Mt. Carmel raid with helicopters and armored trucks. The ATF says the firepower was a necessary precaution because its agents suspected that the Davidians possessed a large cache of grenades and guns. (Grenades were, indeed, found after the fire.) Critics say that the threat posed by the Davidians was dwarfed by the size of the assault, saying that the ATF could have avoided a confrontation by arresting Koresh outside the compound. The ATF says Koresh had not left Mt. Carmel for a month.

Who Shot First?
Eyewitnesses on each side say that the other side shot first. Regardless of who shot whom when, ATF agents say they were greeted by heavily armed men who used their guns within minutes of their arrival. In the course of the Feb. 28 battle, four agents and five Davidians died.

Should the FBI Have Waited Before Ending the Standoff?
When the Feb. 28 ATF raid ended in a cease-fire, the FBI began a 51-day blockade of the Davidians' compound. More than 720 federal agents were imported to Waco for the operation. The FBI even engaged in psychological warfare, blasting the compound at high volume with a recording of Tibetan chanting. Koresh agreed to surrender in the first week of the siege, then recanted. Negotiations eventually resulted in the release of seven Davidians on March 21.
By mid-April, the FBI concluded--after 949 telephone conversations with the Davidians spanning 214 hours--that the group would only surrender under threat of force. In 1996, the FBI blockaded the radical Freemen group in Montana for 81 days, eventually convincing it to surrender. Critics charge that the FBI could have convinced Koresh to back down by displaying such patience and deploying negotiators who better understood Davidian theology.

Did the FBI Use Excessive Force on April 19?
On April 19, the FBI sent tanks and armored vehicles toward the compound and exhausted its entire stock of 400 gas canisters in 90 minutes. The FBI's strategy was to force the Davidians to flee the compound through holes opened by the battering rams installed on six tanks. But the Davidians did not surrender and, 20 minutes after the government fired its last gas canisters, fire began engulfing the compound. More than 80 Davidians died; 17 of them--including Koresh--shot themselves.
The government claims that Koresh set the fires to implement the mass suicide he believed is a prerequisite for the Second Coming. The ATF supports the claim with survivor testimony, and points out that three fires erupted simultaneously--a hallmark, it says, of arson.
Government critics claim that the FBI deliberately torched the complex, saying that the tanks knocked over the lanterns used by the Davidians after the FBI cut off the compound's electricity in early March, and that the explosion of the gas canisters caused the buildings to ignite. They cite infrared photos taken by a government spy plane monitoring the raid to support their theory. According to some independent forensic experts, aerial photos reveal that the government fired randomly at the compound in the April 19 raid. Other experts--and the government--say the spy-plane photos depict nothing more than rays of sunlight. They claim that other photos prove there were no shooters where the gunfire supposedly originated.

Is Janet Reno to Blame?
Attorney General Janet Reno authorized the April 19 raid and claims it was more violent than she had intended. Later, she testified that she had signed off on the FBI's plan, but said that she had not read it carefully. She skipped over a clause that said the government would continue to assault the compound with tear gas and battering rams if an initial five-minute attack failed to drive the Davidians out of the compound.
The gas used in the attack--CS--was banned by the recently ratified chemical weapons treaty. CS is said to be fatal when inhaled by children. Reno says she had been assured by Army doctors that it would cause only painful tearing and nausea--not death. Critics say that even if the Davidians, especially children, had wanted to leave the compound, they would have had a difficult time doing so under the influence of the gas. A congressional report issued last year concluded that President Clinton should have accepted Reno's resignation when she tendered it following the raid.
Citing national security, the government has blocked journalists and Congress alike from accessing tapes made from bugging devices planted within Koresh's compound, transcripts of phone conversations between negotiators and Koresh, as well as other documents that could resolve many of the continuing disputes.

Links

As you would expect, dozens of sites run by right-wingers memorialize Waco. See the Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum and Waco Never Again. A PBS Frontline documentary, Waco: The Inside Story, provides the most evenhanded, comprehensive site. It includes a Who's Who and chronology of the standoff. Excerpts are also available from reporter Dick Reavis' much-talked-about book, The Ashes of Waco. For a lengthy, incomprehensible treatise by David Koresh explicating his theology, click here.

Photographs of: fire by G. Reed Schumann/Reuters; compound from Waco Tribune Herald/Boddy Sanchez/Reuters.