Waco Stand-Off: David Koresh and the Branch Davidians (Part III)

FBI siege

ATF agents established contact with Koresh and others inside the compound after they withdrew. The FBI took command soon after as a result of the deaths of federal agents, placing Jeff Jamar, head of the Bureau's San Antonio field office, in charge of the siege as Site Commander. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) was headed by HRT Commander Richard Rogers, who had previously been criticized for his actions during the Ruby Ridge incident. As at Ruby Ridge, Rogers often overrode the Site Commander at Waco and had mobilized both the Blue and Gold HRT tactical teams to the same site, which ultimately created pressure to resolve the situation tactically due to a lack of HRT reserves.

At first, the Davidians had telephone contact with local news media, and Koresh gave phone interviews. The FBI cut Davidian communication to the outside world. For the next 51 days, communication with those inside was by telephone by a group of 25 FBI negotiators. The final Justice Department report found that negotiators criticized the tactical commanders for undercutting negotiations.

In the first few days, the FBI believed they had made a breakthrough when they negotiated with Koresh an agreement that the Branch Davidians would peacefully leave the compound in return for a message, recorded by Koresh, being broadcast on national radio.  The broadcast was made, but Koresh then told negotiators that God had told him to remain in the building and "wait".  Despite this, soon afterward negotiators managed to facilitate the release of 19 children, ranging in age from five months to 12 years old, without their parents.  However, 98 people remained in the building.  The children were then interviewed by the FBI and Texas Rangers, some for hours at a time.  Allegedly, the children had been physically and sexually abused long before the standoff.  This was the key justification offered by the FBI (both to President Bill Clinton and to Attorney General Janet Reno) for launching tear gas attacks to force the Branch Davidians out of the compound.

During the siege, the FBI sent a video camera to the Branch Davidians. In the videotape made by Koresh's followers, Koresh introduced his children and his "wives" to the FBI negotiators, including several minors who claimed to have had babies fathered by Koresh. (Koresh had fathered perhaps 14 of the children who stayed with him in the compound.) Several Branch Davidians made statements in the video.  On day nine, Monday, March 8, the Branch Davidians sent out the videotape to show the FBI that there were no hostages, but in fact, everyone was staying inside of their own free will. This video also included a message from Koresh.

The negotiators' log showed that—when the tape was reviewed—there was concern that the tape's release to the media would gain sympathy for Koresh and the Branch Davidians.  Videos also showed the 23 children still inside the compound, and child care professionals on the outside prepared to take care of those children as well as the previous 21 released.  As the siege continued, Koresh negotiated more time, allegedly so that he could write religious documents which he said he needed to complete before he surrendered. His conversations—dense with Biblical imagery—alienated the federal negotiators, who treated the situation as a hostage crisis; just amongst themselves, the negotiation teams took to calling these diatribes "Bible babble".

As the siege wore on, two factions developed within the FBI, one believing negotiation to be the answer, the other, force. Increasingly aggressive techniques were used to try to force the Branch Davidians out. For instance, sleep deprivation of the inhabitants by means of all-night broadcasts of recordings of jet planes, pop music, chanting, and the screams of rabbits being slaughtered. Outside the compound, nine Bradley Fighting Vehicles carrying M651 CS tear gas grenades and Ferret rounds and five M728 Combat Engineer Vehicles obtained from the U.S. Army began patrolling.  The armored vehicles were used to destroy perimeter fencing and outbuildings and crush cars belonging to the Branch Davidians. Armored vehicles repeatedly drove over the grave of Branch Davidian Peter Gent despite protests by the Branch Davidians and the negotiators.

Two of the three water storage tanks on the roof of the main building had been damaged during the initial ATF raid. Eventually, the FBI cut all power and water to the compound, forcing those inside to survive on rainwater and stockpiled military MRE rations.  Criticism was later leveled by Schneider's attorney, Jack Zimmerman, at the tactic of using sleep-and-peace-disrupting sound against the Branch Davidians: "The point was this – they were trying to have sleep disturbance and they were trying to take someone that they viewed as unstable to start with, and they were trying to drive him crazy. And then they got mad 'cos he does something that they think is irrational!"

Despite the increasingly aggressive tactics, Koresh ordered a group of followers to leave. Eleven people left and were arrested as material witnesses, with one person charged with conspiracy to murder. The children's willingness to stay with Koresh disturbed the negotiators, who were unprepared to work around the Branch Davidians' religious zeal. However, as the siege went on, the children were aware that an earlier group of children who had left with some women were immediately separated, and the women arrested.

During the siege, a number of scholars who study apocalypticism in religious groups attempted to persuade the FBI that the siege tactics being used by government agents would only reinforce the impression within the Branch Davidians that they were part of a Biblical "end-of-times" confrontation that had cosmic significance.  This would likely increase the chances of a violent and deadly outcome. The religious scholars pointed out that the beliefs of the group may have appeared to be extreme, but to the Branch Davidians, their religious beliefs were deeply meaningful, and they were willing to die for them.

Koresh's discussions with the negotiating team became increasingly difficult. He proclaimed that he was the Second Coming of Christ and had been commanded by his father in heaven to remain in the compound.  One week prior to the April 19 assault, FBI planners considered using snipers to kill David Koresh and possibly other key Branch Davidians.  The FBI voiced concern that the Branch Davidians might commit mass suicide, as had happened in 1978 at Jim Jones's Jonestown complex. Koresh had repeatedly denied any plans for mass suicide when confronted by negotiators during the standoff and people leaving the compound had not seen any such preparation.

Final assault and burning of Mount Carmel

Newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno approved recommendations by the FBI Hostage Rescue Team to mount an assault, after being told that conditions were deteriorating and that children were being abused inside the compound.   Reno made the FBI's case to President Clinton. Recalling the April 19, 1985, The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSAL) siege in Arkansas (which was ended without loss of life by a blockade without a deadline), President Clinton suggested similar tactics against the Branch Davidians. Reno countered that the FBI Hostage Rescue Team was tired of waiting; that the standoff was costing a million dollars per week; that the Branch Davidians could hold out longer than the CSAL; and that the chances of child sexual abuse and mass suicide were imminent. Clinton later recounted: "Finally, I told her that if she thought it was the right thing to do, she could go ahead."  Over the next several months, Janet Reno's reason for approving the final gas attack varied from her initial claim that the FBI Hostage Rescue Team had told her that Koresh was sexually abusing children and beating babies (the FBI Hostage Rescue Team later denied evidence of child abuse during the standoff) to her claim that Linda Thompson's "Unorganized Militia of the United States" was on the way to Waco "either to help Koresh or to attack him."

The assault took place on April 19, 1993. Because of the Branch Davidians were heavily armed, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team's arms included .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles and armored Combat Engineering Vehicles (CEV). The CEVs used explosives to punch holes in the walls of buildings of the compound so they could pump in CS gas ("tear gas") and try to force the Branch Davidians out without harming them. The stated plan called for increasing amounts of gas to be pumped in over two days to increase pressure.  Officially, no armed assault was to be made. Loudspeakers were to be used to tell the Branch Davidians that there would be no armed assault and to ask them not to fire on the vehicles. According to the FBI, the Hostage Rescue Team agents had been permitted to return any incoming fire, but no shots were fired by federal agents on April 19. When several Branch Davidians opened fire, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team's response was only to increase the amount of gas being used.

The FBI Hostage Rescue Team delivered 40-millimetre (1.6 in) CS grenade fire from M79 grenade launchers. Very early in the morning, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team fired two military M651 rounds at the Branch Davidian construction site. Around mid-morning, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team began to run low on 40 mm Ferret CS rounds and asked Texas Ranger Captain David Byrnes for tear gas rounds. The tear gas rounds procured from Company "F" in Waco turned out to be unusable pyrotechnic rounds and were returned to the Company "F" office afterward.   40 mm munitions recovered by the Texas Rangers at Waco included dozens of plastic Ferret Model SGA-400 Liquid CS rounds, two metal M651E1 military pyrotechnic tear gas rounds, two metal NICO Pyrotechnik Sound & Flash grenades, and parachute illumination flares.  After more than six hours, no Branch Davidians had left the building, sheltering instead in an underground concrete block room ("the bunker") within the building or using gas masks.

At around noon, three fires broke out almost simultaneously in different parts of the building and spread quickly; footage of the blaze was broadcast live by television crews. The government maintains the fires were deliberately started by the Branch Davidians.  Some Branch Davidian survivors maintain that the fires were accidentally or deliberately started by the assault.

Only nine people left the building during the fire.  The remaining Branch Davidians, including the children, were either buried alive by rubble, suffocated, or shot. Many were killed by smoke or carbon monoxide inhalation and other causes as fire engulfed the building.  According to the FBI, Steve Schneider—Koresh's top aide—shot and killed Koresh and then himself.  In all, 76 people died.  A large concentration of bodies, weapons, and ammunition was found in "the bunker" storage room. The Texas Rangers' arson investigator report assumes that many of the occupants were either denied escape from within or refused to leave until escape was not an option. It also mentions that the structural debris from the breaching operations on the west end of the building could have blocked a possible escape route through the tunnel system.  An independent investigation by two experts from the University of Maryland's Department of Fire Protection Engineering concluded that the compound residents had sufficient time to escape the fire if they had so desired.

Autopsies of the dead revealed that some women and children found beneath a fallen concrete wall of a storage room died of skull injuries. Autopsy photographs of other children locked in what appear to be spasmic death poses are consistent with cyanide poisoning, one of the results produced by burning CS gas.  The U.S. Department of Justice report indicated that only one body had traces of benzene, one of the components of solvent-dispersed CS gas, but that the gas insertions had finished nearly one hour before the fire started, and that it was enough time for solvents to dissipate from the bodies of the Branch Davidians that had inhaled the tear gas.  Autopsy records also indicate that at least 20 Branch Davidians were shot, including Koresh as well as five children under the age of 14. Three-year-old Dayland Gent was stabbed in the chest. The medical examiner who performed the autopsies believed these deaths were mercy killings by the Branch Davidians trapped in the fire with no escape. The expert retained by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that many of the gunshot wounds "support self-destruction either by overt suicide, consensual execution (suicide by proxy), or less likely, forced execution."

The new ATF Director, John Magaw criticized several aspects of the ATF raid. Magaw made the Treasury "Blue Book" report on Waco required reading for new agents. A 1995 Government Accountability Office report on the use of force by federal law enforcement agencies observed that "On the basis of Treasury's report on the Waco operation and views of tactical operations experts and ATF's own personnel, ATF decided in October 1995 that dynamic entry would only be planned after all other options have been considered and began to adjust its training accordingly."

Nothing remains of the buildings today other than concrete foundation components, as the entire site was bulldozed two weeks after the end of the siege. Only small chapel, built years after the siege, stands on the site.